An article in the Daily (“Bush to cite Hussein’s defiance to U.N.,” Sept. 12) reported on President George W. Bush’s intention to “cite a list of at least a dozen instances in which the Iraqi president defied U.N. resolutions.” The goal was to convince the United Nations that the United States is justified in an attack on Iraq in order to destroy weapons and replace Saddam Hussein. The problem with this is the double standards the United States has in regard to Iraq (current enemy) and Israel (political friend).

Over the years there have been numerous times when U.N. resolutions against Israel nearly passed, failing only because the United States vetoed them in the Security Council. Israel has been in violation of those (proposed and nearly passed) resolutions to at least the same degree as Iraq.

In order for the United States to stand up to the level of justice it claims it has, it needs to treat the nations of the world on an equal basis, without favoritism. This is the same concept President George Washington gave in his 1796 farewell address: “Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.”