Did you SEE how the author did that?
...Furthermore, although President George W. Bush had to admit on Sept. 17 that there was no evidence to substantiate his administration's assertions that Saddam Hussein was implicated in the outrage of Sept. 11, many Americans believe that the toppling of Saddam was a legitimate response to the attacks.
The first part of this statement is a bald-faced lie. The Bush administration NEVER "asserted" that Hussein was implicated in the September 11th attacks, although a number of people are trying to get across the concept that he somehow made the claim by some kind of osmosis.
So now, the President clarifying something that really should not have needed clarifying, is suddenly "admitting" that he was wrong about something he never said.
This is a superb example of how people in the press create things out of whole cloth. This "admission" take is the one the media will carry on through for the next six months.
It's particularly irritating because a lot of other things in this article are reasonable.
It is reasonable to want to see an international organization capable of helping nations cooperate in handling international problems. The mistake many people make is assuming the United Nations, as currently configured, is that organization. No organization that treats free nations and totalitarian prison countries as though they were equally qualified to deal with human rights, war, and terrorism issues can be trusted with such issues.
I think a case could be made that the ideal of the U.N. was poisoned when the Soviet Union was brought in as an equal partner with free nations, and it's gone downhill from there. Now, it is true that after WWII it would probably have been impossible to create the United Nations without giving Stalin such a role, but that doesn't change the premise.
It's possible we may have to start from scratch, or maybe increase or change the role of NATO, which currently is a bit more discerning about its membership.
And despite all the hassles and ill will right now, certainly France would be a part of such an organization.