WELL, THIS IS NO SURPRISE:

WASHINGTON — U.S. officials have found evidence corroborating the Bush administration’s allegations that Russian companies sold Saddam Hussein high-tech military equipment that threatened U.S. forces during the invasion of Iraq last March, a senior State Department official said Friday.

The United States has found proof that Russian firms exported night-vision goggles and radar-jamming equipment to Iraq, the official said. The evidence includes the equipment itself and proof that it was used during the war, said the official.

Such exports would violate the terms of United Nations sanctions against Baghdad.

This, of course, is why the Bush Administration’s efforts to keep the UN relevant were a bad idea. The Security Council was — and is — packed with people who were on the other side.

UPDATE: David Boxenhorn emails: “Not only that, they were violating UN rules while insisting that the US abide by them.”

Yeah. Kind of like Kyoto.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader James V. Somers emails:

More evidence, it seems to me, of other nations being just as “unilateral” (i.e., acting in THEIR own best interests) as us. It strikes me that I have never seen a really detailed argument made – say, in National Review, or the Weekly Standard, or MSNBC’s Opinion column section – that one reason that the U.S. should not be overly constrained by “multilateralism” is that almost nobody else is, either.

That’s what really frightens me about the general approach of the Democratic Party to foreign policy – many of their politicians seem to really believe that the whole world would function agreeably and cooperatively in regard to addressing terrorism, weapons proliferation, and a host of other really serious problems if the darned Bush Administration would just stop being so difficult. And it seems to me that that position is taken despite a veritable mountain of evidence to the contrary.

Good point.