Slate: Bush's U.N. speech offers platitudes instead of solutions

Fred Kaplan reflects on Bush's speech today at the UN.

It was a puzzling speech from start to finish. Near its beginning, when Bush said, 'We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace,' was there a delegate in the chamber who didn't wonder at the irony? It was Bush himself, after all, who was quick to choose war in Iraq - insiders' chronicles agree that he decided on that path in early 2002, over a year before the U.N. debates - while the vast majority of the body's members, free and unfree, were striving for a resolution short of conflict.