The New Republic Online: Truth Be Told Absent some convincing explanation by the White House, the most plausible theory is that key officials in the Bush administration knew--or at least suspected--they were making false claims. And they made them anyway.

By the time you read this column, the Bush administration may well have lost its bid for U.N. authorization for the war. If so, American officials and commentators will no doubt chalk up the defeat to anti-American suspicion among countries motivated by timidity, resentment, and pique. And they'll be partly correct. But it's worth noting that the suspicion isn't entirely irrational, given what Security Council members have witnessed over the past several months. If the Bush administration wanted to win the world's trust, it should have started by telling the truth.