A shining example of freedom
There is a lot of evidence that Washington wants to remove the Iraqi regime in order to bring the whole Middle East more fully under its economic sphere of influence. Bush puts it somewhat differently - after a liberation that is necessitated by breaches of international law, Iraq "will serve as a dramatic and shining exampled of freedom to other nations of the region".

Experts like Udo Steinbach, Director of the German-Orient Institute in Hamburg, have doubts about Bush's bona fides. Steinbach describes the President's announcement last week of a drive to democratize Iraq as "a calculated distortion aimed at justifying war".

There is nothing currently to indicate that Bush truly is pursuing democratization in the region.

"Particularly in Iraq," says Steinbach, "I cannot convince myself that after the fall of Saddam something democratic could take shape."

Control the flow of oil, control your rivals
This so called pre-emptive war that the PNAC ideologues have longed for against Iraq also serves, in the judgment of Uri Avnery, to take the battle to Europe and Japan. It brings US dominance of Eurasia closer.

Avnery notes:

"American occupation of Iraq would secure US control not only of the extensive oil reserves of Iraq, but also the oil of the Caspian Sea and the Gulf States. With control of the supply of oil the US can stall the economies of Germany, France and Japan at will, just by manipulating the oil price. A lower price would damage Russia, a higher one would shaft Germany and Japan. That's why preventing this war is essential to Europe's interests, apart from Europeans' deep desire for peace."

"Washington has never been shy about its desire to tame Europe," argues Avnery. In order to implement his plans for world dominance, says Avnery, "Bush is prepared to spill immense quantities of blood, so long as it's not American blood".

The world will toe the American line
The arrogance of the hawks in the US administration, and their plan to have the world toe their line while they decide on war or peace, shocks experts like the international law expert Hartmut Schiedermair from Cologne. The American "crusading zeal" that can make such statements he says is "highly disturbing".

Similarly Harald Mueller - a leading peace researcher - has long criticized the German Government for "assiduously overlooking and tacitly endorsing" the dramatic shift in US foreign policy of 2001. He says the agenda of the Bush administration is unmistakable:

"America will do as it pleases. It will obey international law if it suits, and break that law or ignore it if necessary ... The USA wants total freedom for itself, to be the aristocrat of world politics."

Infatuated with war
Even senior politicians in countries backing a second Gulf War are appalled by the radicals in the White House.

Beginning last year, responding to the PNAC study, long-serving Labour MP Tam Dalyell raged against it in the House of Commons:

"This is rubbish from right wing think tanks where bird-brained war-mongers huddle together - people who have never experienced the horror of war, but are infatuated with the idea of it."

Even his own leader got a broadside: "I am appalled that a Labour PM would hop into bed with such a troop of moral pygmies."

Across the Atlantic in mid February, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd (at 86 years of age the so-called "Father of the Senate") spoke out. The longest serving member of that Chamber warned the pre-emptive war that the Right was advocating was a "distortion of long-standing concepts of the right of self-defense" and "a blow against international law". Bush's politics, he said, "could well be a turning point in world history" and "lay the foundation for anti-Americanism" across much of the world. (Byrd's speech is at a lonely voice in a US Senate silent on war.)

Holding the rest of the world in contempt

One person who is absolutely unequivocal about the problem of anti-Americanism is former President Jimmy Carter. He judges the PNAC agenda in the same way. At first, argues Carter, Bush responded to the challenge of September 11 in an effective and intelligent way, "but in the meantime a group of conservatives worked to get approval for their long held ambitions under the mantle of 'the war on terror'".

The restrictions on civil rights in the US and at Guantanamo, cancellation of international accords, "contempt for the rest of the world", and finally an attack on Iraq "although there is no threat to the US from Baghdad" - all these things will have devastating consequences, according to Carter.

"This entire unilateralism", warns the ex-President, "will increasingly isolate the US from those nations that we need in order to do battle with terrorism".

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From, cobalt