Washington's Folly: Winning a War and Losing the World
'Despite having declared a policy of preemptive war, and saying that he was free to strike Iraq as he wished, ignoring international legality, President George W. Bush seems to have been convinced by Secretary of State Colin Powell that he would do better to have allies and a veneer of international approval. The administration seems not to have understood, however, that there was no point in going to the UN Security Council if the United States intended to ignore other opinions and only wanted endorsement for what it had already said it intended to do.

'The trip to the United Nations thus simply provided time for mobilization of diplomatic and popular opposition to U.S. plans. The result has weakened the administration's domestic as well as international positions. The incompetence of all this is what surprises. Never before has the Iraqi despot had so many governments trying to prevent an attack on him. Never before has opinion in the liberal democracies been so alienated from the United States. The president and his men have put their own team in a hole so deep that when Washington does go to war against Iraq, as it soon will, it is unlikely to have any major allies left other than the governments of Britain, Spain and Poland.'

Washington's Folly: Winning a War and Losing the World
'Despite having declared a policy of preemptive war, and saying that he was free to strike Iraq as he wished, ignoring international legality, President George W. Bush seems to have been convinced by Secretary of State Colin Powell that he would do better to have allies and a veneer of international approval. The administration seems not to have understood, however, that there was no point in going to the UN Security Council if the United States intended to ignore other opinions and only wanted endorsement for what it had already said it intended to do.

'The trip to the United Nations thus simply provided time for mobilization of diplomatic and popular opposition to U.S. plans. The result has weakened the administration's domestic as well as international positions. The incompetence of all this is what surprises. Never before has the Iraqi despot had so many governments trying to prevent an attack on him. Never before has opinion in the liberal democracies been so alienated from the United States. The president and his men have put their own team in a hole so deep that when Washington does go to war against Iraq, as it soon will, it is unlikely to have any major allies left other than the governments of Britain, Spain and Poland.'