Short on Friends - Bush U.N. Speech Doesn’t Impress (Poll too)

[dArKeR]

Bush made his case on Iraq to the United Nations, but didn’t win any new allies. Now what?

One year ago, George W. Bush stood in front of the green-marble podium inside the United Nations to issue a stark challenge to the rest of the world. Iraq, he said, was a mortal threat to the U.N. and to peace. “All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment,” he warned. “Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?”

BY MOST MEASURES, the U.N. flunked the Bush test. The Security Council spoke of serious consequences, but refused to support the war. In the president’s terms, the U.N. was now irrelevant.
        Yet there was President Bush again on Tuesday, standing by the same green marble. On the sidelines, his diplomats were pressing for U.N. help to rebuild Iraq while Bush made his own case. Rather than irrelevent, the United Nations he described in his speech is doing “vital and effective work” in Iraq. According to the president, the U.N. is now even united about its “fundamental principles” including global security and human rights. “So let us move forward,” he urged.
        Maybe the president missed the speeches delivered before he reached the podium. But they hardly sounded as if the United Nations and the Bush administration agree at all about those fundamental principles, or, for that matter, about world security.

---------- POLL----------

Is President Bush right to resist pressure to speed up the transfer of power and give the U.N. a much greater role in Iraq?
* 22787 responses

Yes. Yielding would be a recipe for failure.
 41%

No. The U.S. needs to do more to garner international support.
 48%

Unsure. There are both plusses and minuses to the U.S. approach.
 11%
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http://msnbc.com/news/970796.asp?0cl=c1