Bush League Diplomacy: The Empire Strikes Out

As PR Watch reported last year, the Bush administration has always intended to attack Iraq no matter what the results of UN inspections. The US's expensive post-911 propaganda and PR campaign to win foreign friends and change minds about US policy has predictably failed given Bush's bullying insistence on going to war. The Washington Post notes that "Six months after President Bush first appeared before the United Nations
and urged a confrontation with Iraq, the United States appears to have lost
diplomatic ground, not gained it, leaving it in a precarious international
position as it prepares to launch a war. A resolution authorizing military action has been blocked at the United
Nations not only by permanent members with veto power such as France and
Russia but also by close U.S. neighbors such as Chile and Mexico. Some of
the president's closest allies, British Prime Minister Tony Blair foremost
among them, are in desperate political straits over their support of Bush's
Iraq policy ... ."