From WNYKRC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week in New York, representatives from 191 nations gathered for the 59th meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.

It is tradition for the American President to welcome the General Assembly, and President Bush did just that, defending

his decision to go to war in Iraq for about 24 minutes. The reception was described as polite,

despite the president's strained at best relationship with the United Nations. His remarks come

less than a week after U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said the U.S.-led invasion was

illegal. Martin Walker is editor-in-chief of United Press International. He's tracked global

response to the president's speech. Martin, welcome back. Hello there. Nice to be back on the air

with you. Now, in the American press, we had David Frumkin from the Washington Post who wrote that the speech

could be described as misguided, simplistic, imperious, and trigger-happy, or it could be

described as strong, resolute, unyielding, and unapologetic, depending on your point of view

and your view of the president and the war in Iraq. Do you see a contrast there between the American

coverage and that in Europe

in the Middle East? Absolutely. Almost all of the American newspapers, even ones that were critical,

focused upon President Bush, upon what he'd said, upon his insistence that this was not a time

to retreat but to prevail, that he would stand by Iraq and Afghanistan all the way through the elections and that his

overall grand strategy to try and bring democracy to the Arab world was still his guiding star.

The rest of the world took an entirely different approach, whether you looked at the Financial

Times in Britain, the Times in Britain, you looked at Le Monde or Figuero in France.

You looked at Suddeutsche Zeitung in Germany.

If you looked at the Middle Eastern press,

what you got was not just Bush alone, but a duel,

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