President Bush is preparing to make his case to the court of world opinion for "regime change" in Iraq. But these are not the best of times for the US to be selling the idea of using military force to change the government of another country – even if it is one run by the likes of Saddam Hussein.

With much of the world having lost whatever sympathy surged for the US in the wake of 9/11, and with fears rising of the world's sole superpower too often acting alone on foreign issues, Washington's tough talk on Iraq is resurrecting images of a warmongering America.

Many foreign leaders, in particular, agreed this week with Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela when he said he was "appalled" by America's willingness to act alone against another country. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is finding his sagging reelection campaign buoyed by his shift to tough talk of his own – against American war drums.

Part of the international hostility stems from what British Prime Minister Tony Blair Tuesday called "straightforward anti-Americanism."

For its part, Iraq has set its own PR machine in motion – with some success. As US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld noted this week, the Iraqis are talented at "play[ing] the international community and the UN process like a guitar, plucking the right string at the right moment to delay something."

With polls showing a majority of Americans favor military action to remove President Hussein from power – provided the US has the support of allies and partners in the region – the Bush administration's case for toppling him becomes all the more crucial, even when making the case for an international audience has become more complex.

For some international observers, any judgment of how the US is doing at selling its case is premature, since Washington has yet to really begin consulting its allies on Iraq.

But that is about to change. Saying "the process starts now," Mr. Bush said at the White House Wednesday that he would use his speech to the UN General Assembly Sept. 12 to begin making the case to the world for action against Iraq. Bush spoke as he began a campaign to woo congressional support for tackling Hussein.

Many, however, say the US will find international misgivings on the issue much harder to overcome today than it was preceding the Gulf War a decade ago – and for reasons that have nothing to do with Iraq's PR talents.

"People are worried about more war in the Middle East: They're fearful when they see the US eager to use force against countries it doesn't like, and that's not because the Iraqis are great at playing the guitar," says Stephen Walt, an international relations expert at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Mass. "It's because people are convinced war with Iraq is going to cause more trouble than ... it solves."

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