Despite George Bush's address to the United Nations prior to the liberation of Iraq, despite Colin Powell's powerful presentation to the United Nations Security Council detailing Saddam's nefarious designs and his history of oppressing and torturing his citizens, despite multiple phone calls, massive attempts art arm twisting and sending Tony Blair off to battle the ignorance and intransigence of the French, Germans and other appeasers, despite draft after draft of resolution put forth at the Security Council and revisions to address the concerns of Chile and Angola, here's how Reuters begins it's story on President Bush's speech today to the U.N.:
President Bush came under fire for bypassing the United Nations to invade Iraq as he tried to convince the world on Tuesday to share the burden of postwar occupation and reconstruction.Bypass? We might have ignored the decision of the French to veto the resolution, we might have ignored the wishes of the Syrian dictator, the Egyptian President-for-life and the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, we might have refused to turn over the Pentagon to Hans Blix and Kofi Annan, but we certainly didn't "bypass" the U.N.
With General Wesley Clark's entry into the Democratic presidential sweepstakes, this would be a good time for the media to ask him about "bypassing" the U.N. The good General surely knows something about it. His president never addressed the U.N. before bombing Serbia, never went to the Security Council, never presented any resolution asking if we could bomb the Serbians. But I'm not going to hold my breath.
