But the cartoon depicting Muhammad as a terrorist is a crude racist stereotype. The implication is that every Muslim is a potential terrorist. This is the sort of nonsense that leads to Islamophobia.

Muslims have every right to protest, but the overreaction was unnecessary. In reality, the number of original demonstrators was tiny: 300 in Pakistan, 400 in Indonesia, 200 in Tripoli, a few hundred in Britain (before Saturday's bigger reconciliation march), and government-organised hoodlums in Damascus burning an embassy. Beirut was a bit larger. Why blow this up and pretend that the protests had entered the subsoil of spontaneous mass anger? They certainly haven't anywhere in the Muslim world, though the European media has been busy fertilising the widespread ignorance that exists in this continent.

How many citizens have any real idea of what the Enlightenment really was? French philosophers did take humanity forward by recognising no external authority of any kind, but there was a darker side. Voltaire: "Blacks are inferior to Europeans, but superior to apes." Hume: "The black might develop certain attributes of human beings, the way the parrot manages to speak a few words." There is much more in a similar vein from their colleagues. It is this aspect of the Enlightenment that appears to be more in tune with some of the generalised anti-Muslim ravings in the media.

What I find interesting is that these demonstrations and embassy-burnings are a response to a tasteless cartoon. Did the Danish imam who travelled round the Muslim world pleading for this show the same anger at Danish troops being sent to Iraq? The occupation of Iraq has costs tens of thousands of Iraqi lives. Where is the response to that or the tortures in Abu Ghraib? Or the rapes of Iraqi women by occupying soldiers? Where is the response to the daily deaths of Palestinians? These are the issues that anger me. Last year Afghans protested after a US marine in Guantánamo had urinated on the Qur'an. It was a vile act and there was an official inquiry. The marine in question explained that he had been urinating on a prisoner and a few drops had fallen accidentally on the Qur'an - as if pissing on a prisoner (an old imperial habit) was somehow more acceptable.

Yesterday, footage of British soldiers brutalising and abusing civilians in Iraq - beating teenagers with batons until they pass out, posing for the camera as they kick corpses - was made public. No one can seriously imagine these are the isolated incidents the Ministry of Defence claims; they are of course the norm under colonial occupations. Who will protest now - the media pundits defending the Enlightenment or Muslim clerics frothing over the cartoons?

It's strange that the Danish imams and their friends abroad ignore the real tragedy and instead ensure that the cartoons are now being reprinted everywhere. How will it end? Like all these things do, with no gains on either side and a last tango in Copenhagen around a mountain of unused butter. Meanwhile, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine the occupations continue.

· Tariq Ali is the author of Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity. Email: tariq.ali3@btinternet.com

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

The cartoons, including one depicting the prophet's headdress as a bomb, are only the fuse that set off a combustible mixture of pressures and tensions anchored in a much wider array of problems. These include the cartoons themselves; provocative and arrogant European disdain for Muslim sensitivities about the prophet Muhammad; attempts by some Islamist extremists and criminal-political elements to stir up troubles; the Europeans' clear message that their values count more than the values of Muslims; and, a wider sense by many citizens of Islamic societies that the West in general seeks to weaken and subjugate the Muslim world.

Provocative reprinting

The Danish cartoons only sparked some mild complaints when they first appeared last September. The current wave of intense protests was sparked when half a dozen other newspapers throughout Europe provocatively reprinted the cartoons last month. This was coupled with European political and press leaders flat out telling the Islamic world that Western freedom of press was a higher moral value and a greater political priority than Muslims' concern that their leading prophet not be subjected to blasphemy and insult.

Clearly, some troublemakers in Europe and the Islamic world stirred up Muslims' anger and provoked some of the destructive protests, especially burning embassies and offices in Damascus and Beirut. This is the political equivalent of football hooliganism in Europe - a small minority of unruly criminal thugs that preys on the legitimate sentiments of otherwise peaceful crowds that take to the streets in orderly if lively protests. It would be a huge mistake to focus mainly on the few violent political skinheads, and to ignore the meaning of the vast majority of hundreds of thousands of protesters who marched in earnest and in an orderly way.

This occurs at a time when Islamist political movements throughout the region are winning election after election. Islamist identity repeatedly triumphs where traditional ruling elites have had to open up and make space for others to contest political power democratically and peacefully, including in Arab states, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and elsewhere. The most consistent source of Arab-Islamic angst in the past two centuries - Western colonialism - has now run up against the resistance of the single most consistent form of indigenous identity and anti-imperial opposition: cultural and political Islamism.

A clash of civilizations?

It is too simplistic and easy to categorize this as a clash of civilizations, a very Western perspective that explains political tensions primarily through the lens of cultural and values differences. Most Muslims (and non-Muslim Middle Easterners such as several million Christian Arabs) probably see the current tensions as a political battle, not a cultural one. This is not primarily an argument about freedom of press in Europe, much as our dashing European friends would like to believe it is. It is about Arab-Islamic societies' desire to enjoy freedom from Western and Israeli subjugation, diplomatic double standards and predatory neo-colonial policies.

Muslims have been deeply insulted by much of Europe's behavior regarding the Danish cartoons, but not only the cartoons, because our concerns and fears are much wider and deeper than that. Many ordinary citizens in the Arab-Asian region see the European position on Iran's nuclear industry and the victorious Hamas party in Palestine as moving closer to American-Israeli positions that grossly discriminate against Arabs or Muslims.

Coming after the American-led assault on Iraq, this explains why large majorities of people polled in Arab countries just three months ago believe that the main motives of American policies in the Middle East are "oil, protecting Israel, dominating the region, and weakening the Muslim world."

Editorial cartoons by nature send a message by symbolizing much larger political and social issues. Similarly, the current protests by many Muslims should be understood as reflecting much deeper concerns than only the insulting, blasphemous cartoons in an obscure Danish newspaper.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

© 2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

Earlier this month, even as the Danish and Norwegian embassy buildings were still ablaze, the New York Times noted a report that a "leader of Hezbollah" had declared that if Salman Rushdie had been killed, the Danes never would have dared to publish their cartoons.

Rushdie, of course, is the author of "The Satanic Verses," published in September 1988. Rushdie's novel contained no visual depictions of Mohammed; in one section of the work, however, a deranged man has a dream in which he mocks Mohammed and the Koran.

"The Satanic Verses" was met with widespread critical acclaim, winning Britain's most lucrative book award, the Whitbread Prize. The Muslim community, however, expressed deep dissatisfaction.

In February 1989, the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini issued a religious edict. He called for Rushdie's death, for blasphemy. His fatwa extended also to "those publishers who were aware of its contents … I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they find them, so that no one will dare to insult Islam again …" Iran offered a $1 million reward to spur Rushdie's execution.

Rushdie went into hiding, protected by the British police. The Japanese translator of "The Satanic Verses" was stabbed to death. The Italian translator was also stabbed, although he survived. The Norwegian publisher was shot; he too survived.

By 2001, Rushdie had begun again to appear in public, although usually without advance notice. That fall, his publisher booked an extensive tour for his new, noncontroversial book. Rushdie had long since apologized for the offensive comments contained in "The Satanic Verses," although the book remained in print. Time seemed to have calmed the waters.

And then came Sept. 11.

In October, Washington University in St. Louis canceled its invitation to Rushdie to deliver a talk as part of the reopening of its International Writers Center. The center's director cited security concerns.

"It must be remembered that people who were killed when the fatwa was issued against Rushdie were translators and publishers," he argued. "In this current climate, people at Washington University were not being at all unreasonable to think that they might be targets after Rushdie left because we had invited him."

Rushdie's publisher canceled the entire book tour. Asked to write an op-ed in the New York Times about the affair, Rushdie counseled, "How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared."

In 2004, the Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered two months after the release of his short documentary, "Submission," which was about violence against Muslim women. His film did not caricature Mohammed.

The precipitating cause for the publication of the Danish cartoons occurred in mid-September 2005. An article appeared in Politiken, a Danish newspaper, under the headline, "Profound fear of criticism of Islam."

The article described how one Danish writer was initially unable to find an illustrator willing to illustrate his children's book about Mohammed because they feared violent attacks by Muslims. According to Wikipedia's thorough (and ongoing) coverage of developments, "The refusal of the first three artists to participate was seen as evidence of self-censorship and led to much debate in Denmark, with other examples … soon emerging."

In reaction to that debate, Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of the Jyllands-Posten (Jutland's Post), invited members of the Danish cartoonists union "to draw Mohammed as they see him." In an article accompanying the cartoons, Rose informed the newspaper's readers that he had commissioned the drawings out of concern that a secular society based on freedom of speech was in the process of censoring itself, not out of respect for a religion, but out of fear that if it did anything that was viewed as offensive to a particular religion, violence and even murder could result. "… (W)e are on our way to a slippery slope where no one can tell how the self-censorship will end," Rose warned.

The 12 cartoons were published on Sept. 30, 2005. In the light of the violence they may have stimulated, a non-Muslim like myself must confess they appear remarkably tame.

Several are simple depictions of the Prophet. One shows Mohammed walking alone in the desert, with a donkey far behind. In another his face is composed of the star and crescent moon of Islam.

Two of the drawings don't show Mohammed at all.

The central theme of the rest is clear. They portray fear, not hatred.

The newspaper devoted one full page to the cartoons. On the page was a central cartoon surrounded by 11 smaller ones. The main cartoon depicts what might be the Prophet standing along with six other turban-wearing figures in a police lineup. The witness is saying, "I don't know which one he is."

A smaller cartoon shows the cartoonist crouching over a writing table. On it is a piece of paper with a small drawing of an Arab face wearing a headdress. The table lamp is covered. The artist is clearly fearful.

Another portrays Muhammad looking at a sheet of paper. Presumably the paper contains an image of him. He is holding back two sword-wielding assassins. He says, "Relax, guys, it's just a drawing made by some infidel South Jutlander (i.e., from the middle of nowhere)."

The cartoon that the Western media has talked about the most (but virtually never shown) depicts a very angry-looking Mohammed, his turban in the shape of a bomb with a lit fuse. The cartoon continues the theme of personal fear.

A few of the cartoons poke fun, either at the cartoonist, Danes or Muslims. In one, a schoolboy points to a blackboard on which is written in Farsi, "The editorial team of Jyllands-Posten are a bunch of reactionary provocateurs." As BBC News notes, the boy is labeled, "Mohammed, Valby school 7A," suggesting he is a second-generation Iranian immigrant to Denmark. "The future" is written on his shirt.

In another, Mohammed is standing on a cloud holding back a line of angry suicide bombers trying to get into heaven. "Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins," he says.

When first published, the cartoons did meet with a vigorous, albeit peaceful protest by Danish Muslims. In late October, ambassadors representing 11 Muslim countries complained to the Danish prime minister. The Muslim society brought suit under Danish law, charging that the newspaper and cartoonists had violated the Danish Penal Code.

Denmark protects free speech. Section 140 of the Code prohibits blasphemy, although that law has not been enforced since 1938. And Section 266b of the Code prohibits expressions that threaten, deride or degrade on the grounds of race, color, national or ethnic origin, belief or sexual orientation.

The Danish public prosecutor did investigate. But in early January 2006, he concluded that the cartoons did not violate the law. He may have taken into account that Danish media has not been punished in the past for carrying much more offensive depictions of figures of other religious figures. As Wikipedia notes, "Jesus and other religious figures are often portrayed in Denmark in ways that many other societies would consider illegal blasphemy."

In October, a number of the cartoons were published in an Egyptian newspaper. The paper carried an article denouncing the cartoons. Apparently the act of carrying the cartoons themselves was acceptable to Egyptian Muslims. There was little visible negative reaction toward the newspaper.

In late November, the situation changed dramatically. A group of imams in Denmark put together a 43-page dossier and set out for a tour of the Middle East to present their case and to ask for support. At a Dec. 6 meeting of Arab heads of state, the dossier was handed out. An official communiqué was issued.

The dossier contained at least three cartoons that had never been published in Denmark. These were brutally offensive; indeed, they were incendiary. One shows Mohammed as a pedophiliac demon. Another shows Mohammed with a pig snout. The third shows a praying Muslim being raped by a dog.

Such material spurred the Muslim world to violence. The Norwegian and Danish embassies were burned. Many of the original cartoonists went into hiding. There was an extremely effective boycott of Danish goods, and Danes in Muslim countries were encouraged to leave.

This is when the story began to attract significant coverage in the United States. All U.S. media devoted extensive and ongoing discussion. None, however, showed all of the cartoons. ABC, the bravest of them all, showed its viewers a fleeting glimpse of one. NBC, CBS, CNN and Fox News refused to show any of them. So did virtually all of the nation's newspapers.

Liberal and conservative media were united. The public does not have the right to know.

On the liberal side, Daniel Schorr, commenting on National Public Radio, insisted that in "times of tension," freedom of the press must give ground to other interests. He cited as justification Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous dictum: Free speech should not include someone "falsely shouting fire in a theater."

On the conservative side, State Department spokesman Justin Higgins maintained, "We all fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression, but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable."

Bill Clinton weighed in on the side of the State Department. He called the cartoons "appalling" and "totally outrageous" and likened them to anti-Semitic cartoons.

The difficulty of rationally discussing the issue was brought home to me the other day by my hometown newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The Strib, as it's dubbed hereabouts, explained why it would not publish the cartoons: It didn't want to offend Muslims. But then the editors quickly explained to readers that some of the cartoons were bogus, like the one that likened Mohammed to a pig. They urged Muslims and non-Muslims alike to peacefully discuss their differences.

But how can we have such a discussion when we don't know what caused the violence? Was it all or only a few of the original cartoons? Was it the highly inflammatory bogus cartoons? Clinton's comparison of the cartoons to anti-Semitic literature conjures up in most people's minds the most hate-filled and savage types of imagery.

What would I have done if I were a newspaper editor? I'd have begun by publishing a single cartoon, the one of the artist at his drawing table, glancing fearfully over his shoulder as he drew an image of Mohammed. I would have invited discussion by all parties, not only in the pages of the paper but on its website and in other public forums.

It is possible that a cartoon itself would have generated violence, or the threat of it. More probably, it would have generated a healthy discussion. Possibly the Muslim community as a whole would have found that cartoon acceptable. Perhaps the discussion would have brought to light the many examples of the depiction of Mohammed and other important Islamic figures in Islamic societies. And if the first cartoon generated little negative reaction, I'd have published another.

By doing this, we might be able to stimulate an important discussion about the boundaries of good taste and the limits of free speech.

Flemming Rose currently is on extended leave from the Jyllands-Posten. He proved his point. He published a series of very sober cartoons in an attempt to define the boundaries of free speech in a world of religious fundamentalism. He did so out of concern over the West's increasing tendency toward self-censorship around matters of religion.

And when violence broke out, the Western media largely confirmed his worst fears. They reported the violence and the Muslim community's feeling of rage at being disrespected. But they refused to show the images that purportedly so offended them that it led them to condone that violence.

Thus, as the violence expands, we are no nearer to defining the boundaries of free speech in an age of growing religious assertiveness. Was it the bogus, inflammatory cartoons that ultimately caused rioting? Was the boundary breached as soon as the least offensive of any of the original 12 cartoons were published? Is it possible that any comments about Mohammed and Islam, even those expressing a fear for one's personal safety, are sufficient to generate such violence?

This is the conversation we should be having. But that can occur only if we discuss the cartoons themselves.

David Morris is co-founder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis, Minn., and director of its New Rules project.

U.S. and British embassy staffers were confined to their compounds until police dispersed the protesters, some of whom chanted, "Death to America!"

Witnesses said rioters also damaged more than 200 cars, dozens of shops and a large portrait of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Vandals broke the windows of a Holiday Inn, Pizza Hut and McDonald's.

Two movie theaters were torched, and clouds of tear gas and black smoke from burning vehicles drifted through streets in the city center.

A security guard shot and killed two protesters trying to force their way into a bank, Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said, adding that paramilitary forces were deployed to restore order.

Mohammed Tariq, a doctor at the state-run Mayo Hospital, said three people were being treated for serious bullet wounds, and eight more suffered injuries during clashes with police.

The protest was organized by a little-known religious group supported by local trade associations and one of the main Islamic schools in the city. Intelligence officials, however, suspected that members of outlawed Islamic radical groups may have incited the violence.

Raja Mohammed Basharat, law minister for Punjab province, of which Lahore is the capital, said the organizers promised Monday that the demonstration would be peaceful. No one has been arrested for the violence, but those responsible would be punished, he said.

The unrest began Tuesday in the nation's capital, Islamabad, about 180 miles northwest of Lahore, when between 1,000 and 1,500 people, mostly students, marched into a fenced-off diplomatic enclave through the main gate, as about a dozen police looked on.

The stick-wielding crowd charged about a half-mile down the road to the British High Commission, or embassy, where the students rallied briefly until police fired tear gas.

Outside the enclave, protesters smashed street lights and burned tires while chanting "Death to America!" and other slogans. Police rounded up about 50 protesters and put them in pickup trucks.

Another protest in Islamabad drew about 4,000 people. Separately, about 50 lawmakers from religious and moderate parties marched from Parliament to the diplomatic enclave, where they stood silently for five minutes before dispersing.

Hard-line cleric Hafiz Hussain Ahmad, senior leader of an opposition coalition of six religious parties, said, "We have come to the doors of the embassies to take our voice to the ambassadors. There is anger in the Islamic world. If they do not listen, their problems will increase."

People in this conservative Muslim nation have been enraged by the publications of the drawings, which first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September. Papers in other countries, mostly Europe but including some in the United States, reprinted them.

One of the caricatures depicts Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with an ignited detonator string.

Islam widely holds that representations of Muhammad are banned for fear they could lead to idolatry.

There have been a series of mostly peaceful protests across Pakistan against the cartoons, and last week Parliament adopted resolutions condemning the drawing. Lawmakers also called for a nationwide strike on March 3.

But Aitzaz Ahsan, a lawmaker with the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party, said he will propose that the government call off the March 3 protest strike because of the prospect of further violence.

"It's really gotten out of hand," Ahsan said. "The violence is spiraling out of control."

History will record that the bogus motives alleged by the Bush administration to initiate an illegal war of aggression against Iraq have all been debuked and discredited. It is well documented that ever since he got into power and fell under the spell of his Likudnik Neocon advisors, GWB set in motion a war policy and everything else (facts, intelligence, diplomacy, speeches, propaganda...etc.) were all disingenuously fixed around that policy. The events of 9/11 only served as a convenient pretext to sell this policy to a gullible American public. The CIA's leading counterterrorism analyst, Paul R. Pillar has confirmed that the Bush administration "cherry-picked" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and ignored expert warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Bush had decided to attack Iraq whatever. He then proceeded to frame Iraq up for such an attack in order to conceal his hidden neocon agenda.

He said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; this was false. He said Iraq had mobile chemical labs; it did not. He said Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger to build an atom bomb; it had not. He said that Iraq had defied U.N. demands to destroy its stock of weapons of mass destruction; this was a lie. He said that Iraq had refused the U.N. inspectors entry into Iraq; this was false. (In fact, Chief inspector Hans Blix and his inspectors were back in Iraq in November 2002, and were only forced to leave when Bush threatened to bomb the country.) He said that Iraq posed an "imminent" threat to the United States; it did not. —The litany of falsehoods goes on and on. —The American-led war against Iraq is probably the best example of how an aggressor can launch a war based on dishonest assessments, deception, disinformation and lies, and why the world needs international law.

Having lied and manipulated prewar intelligence to launch an illegal war, George W. Bush now attempts to lie about the real (concealed) reasons for his shameful actions. Last January (2006), Bush Jr. denied that he had attacked Iraq "for the oil and for Israel". What he probably meant, is that there was a third reason to subjugate Iraq, i.e. to establish permanent American military bases in this centrally located Middle East country and to turn Iraq into a military logistics hub.

Let us review these motives for Bush's war, all illegal.

It is a well-documented fact that the U.S. government is obsessed with oil. In 1992, the Pentagon issued  a report on "Post-Cold War Strategy", prepared by neocon Paul Wolfowitz.  It said, "Our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in [the Middle East and Southwest Asia to] preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil." In January 2001, as confirmed by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill

Secretary of Defense Donald  Rumsfeld  tabled plans on "how the world's second largest oil reserve[in Iraq] might be divided among the world's contractors.

It is also true that Saddam Hussein may have lit a fire on his own when, on April 9, 2002, he announced that Iraq was cutting its oil exports for a month to protest Israel's military offensive in the West Bank. Keep in mind that Iraq had switched to selling its oil for euros instead of dollars, in November 2000, and this was considered a direct challenge to the petrodollar financial system. With two oilmen in the White House, it is therefore no surprise that oil was predominant in their minds. It is also par for the course that when American forces took control of Iraq, their first order of business was to secure the oil fields and the buildings of the Iraqi Oil Ministry and leave the other buildings, including hospitals, to be ransacked.

All these realities did no go unnoticed in the Arab world. A recent poll conducted at the University of Maryland among Middle Eastern Arabs, found that a very large majority of Arabs—three out of every four persons—believed that the main motives of American policies in that part of the world were "oil, protecting Israel, dominating the region, and weakening the Muslim world," not the establishment of democracy. It is only in the American corporate media that one finds some semblance of credibility for the bogus motives presented by the Bush administration for its illegal war. This is to be expected because, in Thomas Paine's words, "the greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes." Lies and wars go together. One would expect that in a totalitarian regime, but not in a democracy.

As to the role played by Israel in that illegal war, it is very large. First, the Israeli government, led by Ariel Sharon, had been lobbying in the U.S. for such a war for a long time. On August 15, 2002, for instance, Sharon publicly urged Bush "not to delay attack against Iraq." Secondly, there were the unrelenting calls for war originating from pro-Israel neocon journalists, such as N.Y. Times' William Safire and Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer, and pro-Israel propaganda machines such as Rupert Murdoch's empire (Fox News, New York Post, Weekly Standard), a few large Washington think tanks (American Enterprise, Heritage, Institute for Near East Policy, etc.), and other right wing publications such as the National Review, the US News & World Report, and occasionally, by national newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Wall Street Journal. These tightly controlled corporate media, including the cable media MSNBC and CNN, have poisoned the channels of public information and have knowingly amplified Bush's lies for war by parroting them, while silencing any articulate critics or factual analysis. Thirdly, within the high ranks of the Bush administration itself, information coming from Israeli intelligence, as conveyed by Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad , frequently carried more weight than the advice provided by professional CIA analysts and those at the U.S. State Department.

Finally, the role of the Pentagon and its strategic planning in the Middle East is also all too well documented. The war against Iraq was planned, defended and carried on by the Pentagon. This is also the Amercan government department, aside from the Office of the Vice-president, which counted in its ranks the largest contingent of neocons in the entire U.S. administration. For them, oil-Israel-military bases made a strategic whole that had to be pursued by any means. Their plan was to use the territory of Iraq to control the entire Middle East. For that, they planned building four "super-bases" in Iraq, sort of giant military camps, capable of housing tens of thousands of US soldiers, similar to other sprawling American military facilities around the world. Altogether, the U.S. is planning fourteen major permanent military bases in Iraq.

This grand neocon plan for the Middle East is not secret, but has been outlined in many reports published by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), an organization created in 1997 and whose many founders, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis Libby, Abram Shulsky, etc., have been prominent members of the Bush administration.

In 2000, PNAC published its famous report titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses." It plainly cites the objective of an increased U.S. military presence in the Middle East as a rationale for invading Iraq: "While the unresolved conflict in Iraq provides the immediate justification [for U.S. military presence], the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

In September 2001, the Neocons in the Bush administration got their pretext to implement their long thought-out plan for the Middle East. The rest is history. If you want to learn more about this sordid affair in an historical context, read The New American Empire.