To hear his many critics tell it, George Bush had serious charges to answer this week before the United Nations court of international opinion. The leader of the free world stands accused of threatening to disrupt international law and order. America's insistence that Iraq be stripped of its illicit weapons of mass destruction, as a matter of urgency, by force if necessary, is anyway surely a ruse, since Mr Bush has publicly admitted his aim is to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein. Although America has called on others to join it, Mr Bush has said he will go it alone if necessary. Such rampant unilateralism undermines the very authority of the United Nations. The charges are preposterous. Yet Mr Bush had some explaining to do. In a democracy, any leader contemplating going to war has a duty to explain-in Mr Bush's case to Congress and the American people, but also to the wider world-why this needs to be done. His speech to the UN General Assembly on September 12th came too late for The Economist to gauge its impact. But whether the world stands with him in dealing with the menace Iraq poses, as he has asked it to, or against him, it is not Mr Bush who needs hauling into the dock, but Iraq's dangerous regime, and those members of the UN Security Council which for years have helped Iraq wriggle out of the disarmament obligations the council itself imposed.
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