Iraq war was intended to boost UN.(Insider Report)

The Bush administration took great pains to assure the American people that the war against Iraq had to be fought because Saddam Hussein's government a) possessed weapons of mass destruction, b) was building a nuclear weapons capability, and c) was tied to al-Qaeda. But there was a little-appreciated reason for the war, something William Norman Grigg elucidated even before it started. He commented in the March 24 edition of this magazine:

 
   The president and his subordinates have made their intent 
   transparently clear: The impending war on, or occupation 
   of, Iraq is intended to carry out the UN Security 
   Council mandates, not to protect our nation or to 
   punish those responsible for the September 11th attack. 
   The war would uphold the UN's supposed authority and 
   vindicate its role as a de facto world government. 

With astonishing candor, President Bush used his November 19 speech at London's Whitehall Palace to describe the war in Iraq as an exercise in validating the power of the UN and saving it from irrelevance.

"Like 11 Presidents before me, I believe in the international institutions and alliances that America helped to form and helps to lead," declared the president. "The United States and Great Britain have labored hard to help make the United Nations what it is supposed to be an effective instrument of our collective security.... America and Great Britain have done, and will do, ...