Dean Defense Forces: Dean lied about "unilateral"

Andrew Sullivan is the latest to try and portray Dean as deliberately lying about the war on Iraq:

I'll never be able to loathe Howard Dean. For what he did in supporting civil unions in Vermont, any gay person would have to thank him for political sense and courage. But that's all the more reason for calling him on a simple, obvious and brazen fib.

According to the New York Times, Dean made the following remarks to the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee: 'What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic Party leadership is supporting the president's unilateral attack on Iraq? . .

Huh? . . . Whatever else this war is, it's not unilateral. A clear majority of European nations – eighteen at the last count – support the war. From Australia to Poland, we have dozens of allies, large and small. Britain, one of the few remaining non-American military powers, is contributing most of its armed forces. We may not have unanimous global support for an attack but to describe the coming war as 'unilateral' is simply false.

There is no such fib - the definition of unilateral is not "no one agrees with us". It means, in this context, "acting without formal approval of the UN". No one denies that the US can invade Iraq (ie, is capable of), nor that the US does have supporters. But tomorrow if Iraq signed up N. Korea and Iran for its plan to reinvade Kuwait, that would not make it a multilateral act.