Not the George Bush speech

If it's a clearer understanding of the post 9/11 world you're after, the speech United States President George W Bush did not give to the United Nations this week will shed more light than the speech he did give.

What Bush did not say when he addressed the General Assembly on Tuesday - in support of a US resolution before the Security Council calling for an expanded UN role in Iraq - was that he and his generals were wrong to draw a direct link between the terrorist organisation al-Qaeda and Iraq in the aftermath of the terrorist strike in New York on September 11, 2001; to portray Iraq as a repository of ``weapons of mass destruction''; and to defy the UN's caution and embark on a unilateral and pre-emptive war against Saddam Hussein before weapons' inspectors had finished their job.

He then did not go on to say that, having made those miscalculations, he was wrong to assume the invading forces would be w...