NEW YORK (CNN) - I don't know about you, but the fact that the United States was ranked 16th among nations in honesty rankles me. My first thought when I read the Transparency International rankings today was sure, these are the same one-worlders who are blasting the United States at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg.

But then I had to square up my reaction with the fact we've been reporting here for nearly a year about corruption in corporate America, that the SEC and the Justice Department are investigating dozens and dozens of companies, including the parent company of our network. And there's a lot of squaring up to do.... Vice President Cheney says the United States must attack Iraq before it's too late, but the administration has offered no specific evidence of the claim that the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction they will use against the United States or it's allies. Those same allies say they won't support a U.S. military strike against Iraq, with even our good friend Britain pulling back. There's a lot of hand-wringing in Europe about stable oil supplies and prices. The United States is not the only nation with an honesty problem.

In fact, surely our friends in Europe must recall that oil prices actually fell in 1991 when the United States finally attacked Iraq by air... and then fell further as the ground war began, and quickly concluded.

The Arab states say there will be an uprising in the streets of the Middle East if the United States attacks Iraq. None of those Arab states is high on the honesty list either. Many Arab leaders said the same thing would happen when the United States attacked al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. And frankly, if Saddam Hussein were demonstrated to have weapons of mass destruction, of what possible interest could it be to any American that a U.S. attack would provoke an uprising in the streets of any nation? There comes a time to square things up... for this administration to show us the evidence against Saddam Hussein, or to move ahead with other priorities in its Middle East policy. It's past time in our dealings with the world to match our actions with our values, to speak as we believe, to act as we believe. It's time for the world's only superpower to assure that by this time next year we're regarded as number one in honesty.