Washington ? Congress has passed a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq. The House voted 297 to 132 in favor of the resolution. Earlier in the day the Senate cut off debate on a 75 to 25 vote, virtually ensuring passage of the motion. But what does this vote really mean?

Secretary of State Colin Powell has not been an advocate of military action against Iraq, and he especially is opposed to a go-it-alone policy. As a result, he either convinced or coerced the president to seek U.N. approval. Coercion may have come in the form of a threatened resignation.

So President Bush went to the U.N. and gave a speech that was long on suspicion and short on proof. Initially hailed, the speech ended up creating more skeptics than allies. He banked on Powell’s advice, and if that advice proves to have been wrong, an irreparable gulf will open between the two men.

Meanwhile, the president, also on Powell’s recommendation, emphasized the issue of inspectors. This is already looking like a mistake. By making the case that U.N. inspectors must return to Iraq to look for weapons of mass destruction, the president gave Saddam Hussein an opening. All the Iraqi leader had to do to forestall an invasion was to agree to the inspectors’ return and then delay that return with questions and negotiations. And so he did.

This combination of U.N. participation and the return of inspectors is opposite to the track the president originally took. The original path had the United States and its ally Great Britain declaring that Hussein is an international outlaw who has committed crimes against humanity and who is developing weapons of mass destruction that will allow him to do even more harm. The president and Prime Minister Tony Blair did not need inspectors to tell them this was the case. Hussein’s behavior, past and present, combined with intelligence sources already provided the necessary information.

The two allies originally said they did not need U.N. approval to defend their own countries. Indeed, most of their summer rhetoric was emphatic on this point. The right of self-defense is recognized in the U.N. charter.

This is why the passage of a use-of-force resolution represents a victory for Colin Powell, not for Bush and Blair. In part it reads that the president is authorized to “enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions against Iraq.” Conversely, it is implicit in the resolution that the absence of U.N. resolutions would inhibit the use of force.

This then means that the president and prime minister are now saying that even though Hussein represents a clear and present danger to the United States and Great Britain not to mention many other nations no action will be taken, even in pre-emptive self-defense, without U.N. authorization.

This is unique in American history, because, for the first time, it places the terms of national defense in the hands of another entity. And that entity, the U.N., is not even sympathetic to the United States.

Prediction: This policy will backfire, and Secretary of State Colin Powell will end up out of the Cabinet as a result.