Here are excerpts from editorials in newspapers around the world:

The Age, Melbourne, Australia, on President Bush's State of the Union address:

For a president with the third-lowest approval rating on the eve of a State of the Union address (only Harry Truman and Richard Nixon had worse), it must be said George Bush did his best on Tuesday night in Washington as he faced a Congress heavy with Democrats and at least ten presidential hopefuls. Indeed, applying his best gravitas and Churchillian rhetoric, he had this to say about Iraq: "On this day, at this hour, it is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle. So let us find our resolve and turn events toward victory."

Such confidence might have stirred conscience and patriotism at the height of the Second World War, but on a cold January night it rang hollow within the walls of the congressional chamber, sending gloomy echoes across a country and out over a world largely opposed to American involvement in Iraq and increasingly disapproving of the Bush Administration's role in it.

George Bush is caught between the impossibility of his beliefs and the harsh realities of the political and public opinion he continues seriously to misjudge. To him, Iraq is a war in which America can be victorious; to much of the wider world, it is a diabolical mess largely of America's making that has to be cleaned up, not won. The President is marooned; America is isolated.

Star Tribune, Minneapolis, on Lewis Libby's trial>

Most serious of all is how the Bush administration lied to itself.

The current edition of the Atlantic carries a photo of President Bush and the headline, "Why presidents lie, and why the worst lies are to themselves." It may not get at why, but the perjury trial of Lewis Libby getting under way in Washington is all about Bush administration lies on Iraq, and especially lies to itself. The trial offers an important window into how those lies were concocted and how the administration went after anyone who challenged them.

You will recall that Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union message that Iraq had tried to purchase enriched uranium from Africa — from Niger, it was later revealed — for a nuclear weapons program. This upset Ambassador Joseph Wilson because he had been dispatched by the CIA, after it received queries from the White House, to determine the truth behind the Iraq-Niger connection. He found that it was bogus, and he said so publicly a few months later in an op-ed published in the New York Times.

The White House launched a "Swift Boat" campaign against Wilson. During that exercise, it was revealed that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was working as an undercover operative for the CIA. Revealing an agent's identity is a crime under certain circumstances; during the investigation of it, Libby said things to a grand jury that proved untrue, leading to the perjury charge.

Far more interesting than Libby's guilt or innocence is what will be revealed during the trial about how the administration lied itself into believing Saddam Hussein had an ongoing, vigorous nuclear weapons programme. All evidence contradicting that belief was rejected out of hand while a case supporting it was cobbled together from unreliable intelligence and speculative assessments. Because Wilson had the temerity to publicly, aggressively challenge that belief, he was subjected to a brutal attack on his integrity.

To an extent, it worked. Even today, lies about Wilson are repeated as if gospel in the right-wing blogosphere and on talk radio. The Libby trial will, we hope, begin to get at the truth.