Those reading this bill may find themselves feeling a sense of déjà vu. In many cases one can just substitute "Iraq" for "Iran" in this bill and we could be back in the pre-2003 run up to war with Iraq. And the logic of this current push for war is much the same as was the logic used in the argument for war on Iraq. As earlier with Iraq, this resolution demands that Iran perform the impossible task of proving a negative – in this case that Iran does not have plans to build a nuclear weapon.

There are a few things we need to remember when thinking about Iran and this legislation. First, Iran has never been ruled in violation of its international nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

Second, Iran concluded a Safeguards Agreement more than 30 years ago that provides for the verification of Iran's fulfillment of its obligation to not divert nuclear energy programs to nuclear weapons development. Since this agreement was reached, the International Atomic Energy Agency has never found any indication that Iran has diverted or attempted to divert source or special nuclear materials from a peaceful purpose to a military purpose.

But, this does not stop those eager for conflict with Iran from stating otherwise. As the Washington Post reported last year, "U.S. officials, eager to move the Iran issue to the U.N. Security Council – which has the authority to impose sanctions – have begun a new round of briefings for allies designed to convince them that Iran's real intention is to use its energy program as a cover for bomb building. The briefings will focus on the White House's belief that a country with as much oil as Iran would not need an energy program on the scale it is planning, according to two officials."

This reminds us of the quick move to justify the invasion of Iraq by citing Iraq's "intentions" when actual weapons of mass destruction could not be found.

The resolution's second resolved clause is a real misrepresentation of the Iran/EU3 talks. The "efforts of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom" were not "to seek...suspension of enrichment and reprocessing related activities..." As the EU3-Iran Paris Agreement makes very clear, the suspension of enrichment is a purely voluntary measure taken by Iran and is "not a legal obligation."

This is similar to the situation with Iran's voluntarily observation of the Additional Protocols (allowing unannounced inspections) without legally being bound to do so. Suspending voluntary observance of the Additional Protocols is not a violation of the NPT. But, those seeking to push us toward war with Iran are purposely trying to connect the two – to confuse voluntary "confidence building" measures taken by Iran with the legally-binding Treaty itself.

Resolved clause four of this legislation is the most inflammatory and objectionable part of the legislation. It lowers the bar to initiating war on Iran. This clause anticipates that the US may not be successful in getting the Security Council to pass a Resolution because of the potential of a Russian or Chinese veto, so it "calls upon" Russia and China to "take action" in response to "any report" of "Iran's noncompliance. That is right: any report.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution is a drumbeat for war with Iran. Its logic is faulty, its premises are flawed, and its conclusions are dangerous. I urge my colleagues to stop for a moment and ponder the wisdom of starting yet another war in the Middle East.

Mr Mottaki went on to urge European Union governments and media outlets "to take initiatives" to prevent such cartoons, which originally appeared in Denmark, from being published again.

Governments were facing "angry Muslims all around the world. We have to try our best to avoid any violence," he said. "This is what we are trying to do in Iran.

"So many of our policemen were attacked by angry people on the streets."

The Danish foreign minister, Per Stig Moeller, accused "extremists" of being behind the latest explosion of protests in countries such as Pakistan and Turkey, even as demonstrations tapered off elsewhere in the Arab world.

"It's the extremist forces that wish to keep it going," he said. "There is no doubt that all extremists will exploit the situation. Al-Qa'eda, too, will use it and fan the fire."

Iran factfile

Mr Moeller condemned a Pakistani cleric who offered a $1 million (£574,000) bounty for killing one of the cartoonists.

He called the reward "insane" and tantamount to terrorism. "It's incitement to murder. Murder is also banned by the Koran."

The cartoons first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September. But the row took off only in January, after the intervention of powerful Arab clerics and politicians.

Mr Mottaki, one of a number of hardliners brought into the government last year, faced questions yesterday from Euro MPs about his country's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

He was also pressed about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call for Israel to be wiped from the face of the earth and comments that the Holocaust was a "myth".

One Conservative Euro MP, Struan Stevenson, called for Mr Mottaki to be barred from the European parliament, citing allegations about his time as Iran's ambassador to Turkey in the 1980s.

His work there coincided with a series of kidnappings and assassinations of Iranian exiles and dissidents in Turkey.

Mr Stevenson said: "This man is an affront to the world of international diplomacy."

Mr Mottaki also held talks with Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, but failed to make any progress over Iran's nuclear programme.

At a news conference, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad criticized what he called Iran's "negative role" in Iraqi affairs, saying the country's diplomatic relationship with its neighbor was tainted by a policy "to work with militias, to work with extremist groups, to provide training and weapons." He added that there was evidence the Iranians provided "indirect help" to Sunni Arab insurgents who attack U.S. and Iraqi government troops.

The Iranian aid was part of a "comprehensive strategy" by a "player seeking regional preeminence," he said.

It was not the first time the United States and its allies have made such accusations. In October, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said his government was investigating evidence that Iran had sold sophisticated bombs to insurgents in Iraq.

But Khalilzad's remarks were unusually blunt. "I have said to Iraqis that we do not seek to impose our differences with Iran on them," Khalilzad said. "But we do not want Iranian interference in Iraq."

Khalilzad rejected recent Iranian calls for the withdrawal of British troops from the southern Iraqi city of Basra, saying that the demands were "uncalled for" and that the issue was "none of their business." The Iranians, he said, were attempting to divert attention from the dispute over their nuclear ambitions.

Iran called for the withdrawal soon after the release of a tape that appears to show British troops beating teenage boys who were involved in a protest in Basra, which lies near the Iranian border in a predominantly Shiite Muslim area.

"The coalition forces are here under a U.N. mandate, at the request of the Iraqi government," Khalilzad said. "Basra is Iraqi territory, the last time I checked the map."

Iraq's relationship to Iran is a complicated one. The two countries fought a brutal, inconclusive war in the 1980s. But Iraq's population is predominantly Shiite and many Shiite politicians have close ties to Iran, having lived there in exile during the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. This has led many Iraqis to fear that their country will become a pawn of their eastern neighbor.

Some Shiite parties maintain militias in order to back their decisions with force. It has long been a goal of U.S. policy to disband these groups, and critics say the militias, and militia fighters who have joined the country's security forces, are responsible for a campaign of killing and intimidation aimed at Sunni Arabs.

At the news conference, Khalilzad reiterated a call for Iraqis to form a government representing all of the country's ethnic and sectarian groups and to staff their security ministries with competent, nonsectarian leaders. He implied that the United States could cut off aid to Iraq if they do otherwise.

"We're not going to invest the resources of the American people to build forces run by people who are sectarian," Khalilzad said.

At a news conference in Najaf on Monday, Ibrahim al-Jafari, the Iraqi prime minister, said foreign governments were not expected to interfere in the process of forming a government. "The next government will be formed by Iraqi hands and it will take into account the election results," he said. "And will seek to apply standards of honesty, competence and efficiency so that the performance of the government shall be strong."

Meanwhile, at least 25 Iraqis were killed in bombings Monday morning, police said, and a roadside bomb killed a coalition soldier patrolling southeast of Karbala, U.S. military authorities said in a statement.

The bulk of the attacks were in Baghdad. In the worst incident, a man detonated an explosive vest inside a bus in northern Baghdad, killing at least 14 people and wounding more than five, said Maj. Mukhallad Ani, an Interior Ministry spokesman. Ani said the bomber targeted a bus that was carrying Shiites near the Hawija bus station in the Shiite Kadhimiya neighborhood.

In Mosul, a suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt inside a restaurant, killing three and wounding six, all police officers, according to hospital and police officials.

The attack took place in the Abu Ali restaurant in central Mosul, said Gen. Abdul Hamid Jubouri, a spokesman for the Nineveh province police. The restaurant is close to the police headquarters and is frequented by officers, witnesses said.

Last week, insurgents destroyed a communications center in Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's restive Anbar province. The insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq asserted responsibility this week. A U.S. military spokesman confirmed Monday that a communications building had been attacked but did not provide details.

Mahmood Fahdawi, the city's communications manager, said the building housed a tip line that residents could use to inform authorities of insurgent activity. But he said it also controlled cell phone service for a large part of the province.

Residents said the city is now largely disconnected from the rest of the world. Insurgents have targeted people using satellite phones, now the only means to contact security forces in the city, residents said.

Ismael Bayati, a physician, said even the city's hospital was cut off.

Separately, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tehran would no longer hold nuclear talks with the EU-3 of Britain, France and Germany.

He said Iran attached greater weight to negotiations with Moscow on a Russian compromise plan.

"Our contacts with the European Union will no longer be held with the EU-3, but with the different countries of the European Union," Mr Mottaki said a day after talks with EU officials in Brussels.

'Last chance'

The Russian proposal was being seen by many as a last chance for Iran to compromise with the UN nuclear agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

On 6 March the agency is due to issue a report that might move the whole issue to the UN Security Council.

Iran has previously insisted that it will not give up the right to enrich uranium on its own territory.

The agency reported Iran to the security council in January over a lack of co-operation and transparency in its nuclear activities.

Western powers are concerned Iran aims to develop nuclear weapons, but Tehran says its programme is not military.

Iran resumed small-scale uranium enrichment earlier this month.

Enrichment can produce fuel for either civilian nuclear reactors or nuclear bombs.

The nuclear crisis has intensified since Iran resumed nuclear activity last summer after a two-and-a-half year freeze.

The Americans have been putting out feelers, the source, a high-ranking Georgian government foreign affairs official said, in advance of a possible military strike to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability.

American reports in recent months, speculating about the possibility of a campaign against Iran because of the failure of diplomatic efforts to thwart a potential nuclear weapons program, have suggested that sustained military action, rather than a single strike, may be required given the number of Iranian nuclear facilities, their divergent locations and Iranian defenses.

Georgian government officials said that Tbilisi fears harsh Iranian military retaliation against the Georgian republic if U.S. forces were to use its territory as a base for strikes against Iran, but nonetheless may feel obligated to accede to such a request, given the country’s heavy reliance on US aid and support. The US maintains its own military bases in Georgia.

While Americans have been testing the waters lately in this direction, the source indicated, no official request of this kind has yet been made.

Georgia is also worried about the possibility of civil unrest, citing the strong opposition by its Muslim minority to the country’s participation in the war in Iraq, where there is a limited Georgian military contingent.

Military collaboration with the U.S. would also have “a most negative effect” on relations between Moscow and Tbilisi, which remains strained since the election of Georgia’s U.S.-educated president, Mikhail Saakashvili, in 2004.

Saakashvili is considered one of the most consistent U.S. supporters in the post-Soviet bloc and enjoys solid American backing. Indeed, Saakashvili is often accused by Moscow of maintaining an “American outpost in the region.”

The Georgian source added that a similar US request might be made to Azerbaijan, an immediate neighbor of Iran and another close American ally.

The close proximity of both countries to Iran makes Tbilisi and Baku desirable partners in a potential alliance against Iran.

The Jerusalem Post was told that American officials have been quietly probing whether Georgia, situated just northwest of Iran, will be willing to allow Washington to use its military bases and airfields in the event of a military conflict with Teheran.

The Americans have been putting out feelers, a high-ranking Georgian government foreign affairs official told the Post, in advance of a possible military strike to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability.

American reports in recent months, speculating about the possibility of a campaign against Iran because of the failure of diplomatic efforts to thwart a potential nuclear weapons program, have suggested that sustained military action, rather than a single strike, may be required given the number of Iranian nuclear facilities, their divergent locations and Iranian defenses.

Georgian government officials said that Tbilisi fears harsh Iranian military retaliation against the Georgian republic if US forces were to use its territory as a base for strikes against Iran, but nonetheless may feel obligated to accede to such a request, given the country's heavy reliance on US aid and support. The US maintains its own military bases in Georgia.

While the Americans have been testing the waters lately in this direction, the source indicated, no official request of this kind has yet been made.

Georgia is also worried about the possibility of civil unrest, citing the strong opposition by its Muslim minority to the country's participation in the war in Iraq, where there is a limited Georgian military contingent.

Krepinevich says that coming out of Vietnam, military leaders were determined never again to get bogged down in prolonged small-unit combat. If the Army must fight, it would hit with overwhelming force, achieve its objectives and get out. The need to behave that way was reinforced by the end of the draft late in the Vietnam War. U.S. military forces now needed to focus on their ability to attract new recruits and retain experienced personnel.

That doctrine dictated how the Army was organized for Afghanistan and Iraq. It was totally unprepared to cope with extended battles against insurgencies; the Bush administration's strategy didn't take them into account.

Krepinevich says the Army can deploy no more than 13 brigades to hardship tours at one time. It now has 19 brigades deployed. To fill the gap, two Marine brigades have been sent to Iraq. "Stop loss" and "stop move" orders have been implemented. The reserves have been well tapped out. Active duty personnel now are commonly on their third rotation into Iraq.

The effects of this flawed strategy have been dramatic. The Army has no strategic reserve to call on if another threat were to develop. Divorce rates, domestic abuse and all kinds of mental and physical problems are on the rise among active duty soldiers. In sum, the Army is headed for a "catastrophic decline in recruitment and retention" unless something is done. The "thin green line," Krepinevich says, will break. And don't look to NATO, the United Nations or private contractors for more help, or expect Iraqi forces to develop without many years of effort.

Adding an additional 30,000 to 40,000 personnel, "if aggressively executed, could create a force sufficient to sustain current force levels indefinitely, while maintaining a modest strategic reserve," Krepinevich writes. But even that wouldn't help unless the Pentagon's strategy is changed. From a force organized "to compete as a world-class sprinter," Krepinevich says, the Army must recast itself to run marathons _ to put a "greater priority on stability operations." That, he says, will take years, and there are no good options for getting through the transition, even if nothing else happens in the world requiring the Army's attention.

Thus the Army finds itself just where it was in Vietnam, and without a draft. Its near-term future looks bleak, thanks to the flawed vision of Rumsfeld and Bush.

A BRITISH army sergeant killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq four months ago may have been the victim of a rogue Iraqi police attack, an investigation into his death has discovered.

New evidence on the killing of Sergeant Chris Hickey, of the 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards, last October emerged yesterday, as it was revealed that two British soldiers were facing possible murder charges for allegedly shooting an Iraqi in the head.

The suspicion that Iraqi police were behind the death of Sergeant Hickey would appear to undermine the comment from John Reid, the Defence Secretary, yesterday that it was “not far off” from when British troops could start coming home from Iraq.

Sergeant Hickey had spent the six months before his death training the Iraqi police who would play a key role in maintaining stability in Iraq.

An official report into the circumstances leading to the killing of Sergeant Hickey, 30, has disclosed that Iraqi police officers were positioned in a car on waste ground close to where the bomb went off, and were later questioned about their suspected involvement in remotely detonating the device. The Iraqi police had arrived before his patrol turned up on a notoriously dangerous road in Basra, and had parked on the waste ground with the car headlights full on, the report says.

The car remained there, "100 metres from the road", when Sergeant Hickey, who dismounted from his armoured Land Rover, began examining a suspicious mound on the edge of the waste ground.

When the device detonated, killing him instantly, the police car, still with its headlights on, did not move, the report says. Army investigators believe that the bomb was activated remotely from the waste ground.

Sergeant Andy Wilkinson, of the 3rd Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, who was with Sergeant Hickey on the patrol and was injured in the bomb explosion, told The Times in December that the waste ground running beside the road provided the perfect “line of sight” for the attackers to “wait their moment before detonating the device by remote control”.

Pauline Hickey, Sergeant Hickey’s mother, said yesterday she was angry that none of the police officers had been charged. “They were questioned and photographed but allowed to go free,” she said.

Ms Hickey was told that a lieutenant-colonel of the Iraqi police service had arrived at the scene and had “vouched for the policemen in the car”.

The Ministry of Defence confirmed that no Iraqi had been charged with the death of Sergeant Hickey or with the killings of any of the British soldiers who have died from enemy fire since March 2003.

At least six Iraqi police officers are in detention at the British military prison in Shaibah, in connection with other incidents, but none has been charged, the MoD said.

"The United States is investing billions of dollars" in Iraq's police and army, said the ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad. "We are not going to invest the resources of the American people to build forces run by people who are sectarian."

Mr. Khalilzad spoke at a news conference on a day of fresh violence across Iraq. It was the bloodiest day in almost two months.

He was addressing allegations that Shiite death squads operate within the Interior Ministry. Such reports have grown in recent months, with accounts of hundreds of Sunni men being rounded up by men in police uniforms and found dead days or weeks later.

The deaths have infuriated the Sunni Arabs, whose radical fringe leads the insurgency here, and have sharpened their distrust of the Shiite-led government that swept into power last spring.

Bombing attacks on Monday, including one inside a crowded commuter bus in Baghdad and another in a restaurant in northern Iraq, left at least 26 dead and more than 60 wounded. One American soldier was also killed.

Iraqi political leaders are deep in negotiations over forming a government, more than two months after parliamentary elections.

American officials have long argued that new cabinet ministers should place the interests of their country over those of their sects. But by linking American financing to a fair, nonpartisan army and police force, even if not intended as a direct threat, Mr. Khalilzad pressed the American position more forcefully and publicly than before.

American officials are working to draw Sunni Arabs into the new government in an effort to build a stable society and begin bringing American troops home. Allaying Sunni concerns over overtly biased ministries is seen as an essential part of that effort.

The attacks on Monday, however, raised fresh fears of renewed violence.

The worst of the violence began in Mosul, in northern Iraq. Shortly after 7 a.m., a suicide bomber walked into the Abu Ali Restaurant and detonated his payload, spraying shrapnel into diners, killing at least six of them and wounding six more, the police and local officials said.

The attack was a clear strike against the police force: the restaurant is near a police station and is popular among officers, many of whom were eating breakfast.

"I could not hear anything, and there was heavy smoke," said Said Tharwat, a 30-year-old wounded in the attack.

Several hours later in Baghdad, a man wearing a suicide vest boarded a bus in Kadimiya, a bustling Shiite neighborhood, and blew himself up, killing at least 12 Iraqis and wounding 15, most of them Shiite commuters, a Ministry of Interior official said. One witness said the fiery blast, which ignited the bus, had scattered body parts and severely burned the wounded. A nearby traffic policeman was also killed.

The wounded, with burns on their hands and faces, were evacuated to Kadimiya Hospital, where an official reported a higher death toll: 17.

The violence came amid signs of serious disagreement over the shape of the government. The new Parliament is required by law to meet for the first time on Saturday, and Mr. Khalilzad's remarks seemed calculated to put pressure on Iraqis to overcome their differences.

He has sharply criticized Interior Ministry abuses in the past, echoing Sunni concerns about the ministry's failure to stop the killings. He amplified those concerns on Monday, urging the leaders to appoint interior and defense ministers who are "nonsectarian, broadly accepted and not tied to militias."

If Iraq cannot control the sectarian agendas within its government, Mr. Khalilzad said, it "faces the risk of warlordism that Afghanistan went through for a period." Mr. Khalilzad was born in Afghanistan and served as an American envoy there before coming to Iraq last year.

Tensions between Sunni Arabs and Shiite political groups are not the only obstacle to the kind of unity government that Mr. Khalilzad is advocating, and it is unlikely that a government will be formed soon, some Iraqi leaders said.

The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, also arrived Monday to discuss formation of the new government, Reuters reported.

In more behind-the-scenes political negotiating, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari visited the leader of the Shiite majority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in Najaf.

Mr. Jaafari, who was recently selected by the largest Shiite political bloc to remain prime minister in the next government, said Ayatollah Sistani had urged him to speed up the formation of the government "on the basis of high competence, integrity and transparency."

Across Iraq on Monday, insurgents engineered at least eight attacks. In central Baghdad, a homemade bomb went off near a group of Shiite day-laborers around 8 a.m., wounding 20 of them, an Interior Ministry official said.

North of Baghdad, in Nibai district, five truck drivers were killed and four wounded when their convoy supplying building materials to American forces came under attack, a provincial spokesman said. In Buhruz, another town north of Baghdad, an official from a hospital in Baquba was shot dead.

In the Diyala Bridge area south of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near an Iraqi official's convoy, killing 2 of his guards and wounding 11 civilians, the ministry official said.

American forces faced fresh opposition in Karbala, a Shiite city in the south, when the governor of the province, Akeel al-Khazali, barred American troops from entering government buildings, according to the governor's press office. Mr. Khazali took issue with the Americans' bringing dogs into the building, but it was not clear if there was another, more serious disagreement behind the order.

An American soldier was killed when his vehicle struck a home-made bomb just southeast of Karbala, the military said in a statement.

Also on Monday, an Iraqi government official said the number of confirmed human deaths from the avian flu virus have been just two, fewer than previously thought.

KARBALA, Iraq -- The governing council of Karbala province said Monday it was suspending contact with U.S. forces over the behavior of soldiers during a visit to the governor's office two days ago.

The decision followed similar moves by leaders of Maysan and Basra provinces, which have frozen ties with British forces in southern Iraq.

Karbala provincial spokesman Abdel Amir Hanoun complained that U.S. soldiers brought dogs inside the building when their commander visited provincial Gov. Aqeel al-Khazraji, considered an insult by the council.

They also blocked roads leading to the governor's office, preventing council members and the governor from parking cars outside the building, Hanoun said. The governor instructed the council to suspend contacts until U.S. forces apologize, he said.

The Karbala council is controlled by the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's largest Shiite party, and Dawa, the party of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

On Sunday, Maysan province decided to suspend ties with British authorities pending an investigation into a recently released videotape of British soldiers beating Iraqi youths during a January 2004 riot there.

British authorities said three soldiers have been arrested in connection with the beatings shown on the videotape first reported by the London newspaper News of the World.

The Maysan council also called for the release of all the province's detainees held by coalition authorities.

The governing council for Basra province, headquarters of Britain's more than 8,000-member military contingent in Iraq, also cut ties with the British military and civilian operations over the video.

Howard said the Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel would be sent to Afghanistan in late July for a two-year mission, bringing the total number of Australian troops in the country to about 500.

"It will be part of a Netherlands-led provincial reconstruction team. The ADF contribution will be a mixed security and reconstruction task force," Howard told reporters on Tuesday.

Australia helped US forces oust the former Taliban regime in late 2001, then sent back 190 special forces troops last August for a 12-month tour of duty to counter growing rebel attacks.

The numbers were again bolstered last month with an extra 110 troops and two Chinook helicopters.

Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said the latest deployment of 200 Australian troops would operate in the southern province of Uruzgan, a former Taliban stronghold and opium poppy growing area.

"About half will be tradies (tradesmen) and engineers who will essentially be building roads and bridges and reconstructing local communities and the others will be logistics and light armoured protection," he said.

Howard said curtailing the area's thriving heroin trade would be a matter for local officials and not Australian forces.

The Netherlands said earlier this month that it would send an additional 1,200 troops to Afghanistan as it takes the lead role in NATO's 18,500-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which begins its two-year deployment in June.

Nelson said his Dutch counterpart Henk Kamp would visit Australia next month to discuss details of the deployment.

Howard said the latest troop deployment was needed to help ensure the Taliban did not return to power.

"(This) is further evidence of the government's ongoing commitment to assist the people of Afghanistan in consolidating their embrace of democracy and resisting any attempt on the part of the Taliban to come back," he said.

He said the deployment, which he foreshadowed in July when he announced the special forces deployment, would not affect Australia's commitment of about 900 troops in Iraq.

Australian special forces in Uruzgan have already come under fire from militants and defence force head Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston last week warned of increasing suicide bombs attacks in Afghanistan.

"The level of activity has remained reasonably constant. What seems to have changed is the tactics that the anti-Afghanistan government elements are using," he told a Senate committee.

"In the past there was a tendency for them to use guerrilla marauding tactics almost exclusively. What we have seen in the last three months or so is the emergence of terrorist suicide bomber type tactics. That is a new development within Afghanistan."

Labor Party opposition spokesman Robert McClelland welcomed the mission to Uruzgan as a "valuable and strategically shrewd contribution to the fight against terrorism."

"Some of the nations we rely on for oil have unstable governments, or fundamental differences with the United States," he said during a trip here, without naming the countries to which he was referring.

"These countries know we need their oil and that reduces influence. It creates a national security issue when we're held hostage for energy by foreign nations that may not like us," said Bush.

Drawing on the examples of France, China, and India, the president pushed a 1.1 billion dollar program to promote the construction of new nuclear power plants, something the United States has not done since the 1970s.

"We ought to start building nuclear power plants again. I think it makes sense to do so. Technology is such that we can do so and say to the American people, these are safe -- and they're important," he said.

The US leader, echoing remarks he made at his State of the Union speech last month, said the United States was "addicted" to oil and that some crude imports came from countries that have "unstable governments or fundamental differences with the United States."

In his speech to the US Congress on January 31, Bush called for research into ethanol, coal-fired plants, solar and wind technologies and nuclear energy so that 75 percent of oil imports from the Middle East can be replaced by 2025.

New York Gov. George Pataki and Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich on Monday voiced doubts about the acquisition of a British company that has been running six U.S. ports by Dubai Ports World, a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates.

The British company, Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., runs major commercial operations at ports in Baltimore, Miami, New Jersey, New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia.

Both governors indicated they may try to cancel lease arrangements at ports in their states because of the DP World takeover.

"Ensuring the security of New York's port operations is paramount and I am very concerned with the purchase of Peninsular & Oriental Steam by Dubai Ports World," Pataki said in a news release. "I have directed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to explore all legal options that may be available to them."

Ehrlich, concerned about security at the Port of Baltimore, said Monday he was "very troubled" that Maryland officials got no advance notice before the Bush administration approved the Arab company's takeover of the operations at the six ports.

"We needed to know before this was a done deal, given the state of where we are concerning security," Ehrlich told reporters in the State House rotunda in Annapolis.

The arrangement brought protests from both political parties in Congress and a lawsuit in Florida from a company affected by the takeover.

Public fears that the nation's ports are not properly protected, combined with the news of an Arab country's takeover of six major ports, proved a combustible mix.

Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina said on Fox News Sunday that the administration approval was "unbelievably tone deaf politically." GOP Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia said on ABC's "This Week,""It's a tough one to explain, but we're in a global economy. ... I think we need to take a very close look at it."

Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey said Monday that he and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., will introduce legislation prohibiting the sale of port operations to foreign governments.

At least one Senate oversight hearing was planned for later this month.

Critics have noted that some of the 9/11 hijackers used the UAE as an operational and financial base. In addition, they contend the UAE was an important transfer point for shipments of smuggled nuclear components sent to Iran, North Korea and Libya by a Pakistani scientist.

The Bush administration got support Monday from former President Carter, a Democrat and frequent critic of the administration.

"My presumption is, and my belief is, that the president and his secretary of state and the Defense Department and others have adequately cleared the Dubai government organization to manage these ports," Carter told CNN. "I don't think there's any particular threat to our security."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff made the rounds on the talk shows Sunday, asserting that the administration made certain the company agreed to certain conditions to ensure national security. H said details of those agreements were secret.

During a stop Monday in Birmingham, Ala., Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the administration had a "very extensive process" for reviewing such transactions that "takes into account matters of national security, takes into account concerns about port security."

Even so-called "moderate" columnists have contributed to the deterioration of U.S.-Venezuela relations by distorting the Venezuelan government's domestic and foreign policy record. Robertson may indeed be "just a garden-variety crackpot with friends in high places," as the New York Times opined (8/25/05), but the televangelist's erroneous characterization of Venezuela's president as a "strong-arm dictator" is hardly distinguishable from, say, Thomas Friedman's contention that Chávez is an "autocrat" (New York Times, 3/27/05).

In studying the opinion pages of the top 25 circulation newspapers in the United States during the first six months of 2005, Extra! found that 95 percent of the nearly 100 press commentaries that examined Venezuelan politics expressed clear hostility to the country's democratically elected president.

Distribution of U.S. commentaries about Venezuela, by newspaper (January 12, 2005 - July 12, 2005) Consistent with the U.S. media's habit of personalizing international political disputes, commentaries frequently disparaged Chávez as a political "strongman," treating him as if he were the country's sole and all-powerful political actor. U.S. op-ed pages scarcely mentioned the existence of Venezuela's democratically elected National Assembly, much less its independent legislative role. Commentaries almost invariably omitted the Venezuelan government's extensive popular support, as evidenced by Chávez's resounding victory in the August 2004 referendum on his presidency.

Mainstream newspapers rarely publish commentaries by political analysts who sympathize with the Chávez government's policies of extending education, healthcare, subsidized food and micro-credits to the country's poor. It's nearly impossible to find a U.S. op-ed page with commentary like that of Julia Buxton, the British scholar of Venezuelan politics, who argues (Venezuelanalysis.com, 4/23/05) that the Chávez government "has brought marginalized and excluded people into the political process and democratized power."

U.S. op-ed pages' collective derision of the Chávez government reveals profound contradictions within the commercial press. While editorial boards parrot official U.S. rhetoric about "democracy promotion" abroad, they have refused to provide space for commentary representing popular opinion in Venezuela. In spite of the fact that recent polls indicate that Chávez's domestic approval rating has surpassed 70 percent, almost all commentaries about Venezuela represent the views of a small minority of the country, led by a traditional economic elite that has repeatedly attempted to overthrow the government in clearly anti-democratic ways.

In presenting opinions that are almost exclusively hostile to the Chávez government, U.S. commentaries about Venezuela serve as little more than a campaign of indoctrination against a democratic political project that challenges U.S. political and economic domination of South America. The near-absence of alternative perspectives about Venezuela has prevented U.S. readers from weighing opposing arguments so as to form their own opinions about the Chávez government.

The strongman who would be dictator

In assessing Latin American governments, U.S. columnists generally operate on the unspoken assumption that acquiescence to U.S. leadership of the hemisphere is a natural prerequisite to "democracy." By this definition, Venezuela's government--which frequently speaks out in opposition to U.S. meddling in the region--is considered "authoritarian." Gone is the elementary principle that majority rule and popular sovereignty serve as the basic foundations of democracy.

Having no basis to question the Chávez government's popular mandate, op-ed pages resort to casting the president as heavy-handed. Such negative portrayals of Venezuela's government were particularly common in the Miami Herald, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and L.A. Times, which accounted for more than 75 percent of commentaries about Venezuela.

The near uniformity of the op-ed pages' distorted characterizations of Venezuelan politics reveals their propagandistic nature. The Miami Herald's Andrés Oppenheimer called Chávez a "democratically elected populist strongman" (2/27/05), claiming that he has engaged in "piecemeal destruction of the democratic system" (1/30/05). Similarly, the Herald's editorial board (5/8/05) warned that "democracy remains very much at risk under [Chávez's] demagogic sway."

The Wall Street Journal's Mary Anastasia O'Grady labeled Chávez a "tyrant" (1/21/05) and "strongman" (4/29/05), claiming that he has presided over "the collapse of democracy" (2/11/05) in Venezuela. Three Journal editorials also referred to Chávez as a "strongman" (1/14/05, 3/14/05, 5/25/05), and the editorial board went so far as to suggest that Parade magazine should consider placing Chávez on its annual list of the world's worst dictators (2/15/05).

Jackson Diehl, the Washington Post's deputy editorial editor (3/28/05), claimed that Chávez is "well on his way to destroying what was once the most stable and prosperous democracy in Latin America." The Los Angeles Times (5/29/05) called Chávez a "would-be dictator," claiming that he engages in "undemocratic tactics."

Other major U.S. newspapers have cast Venezuela's president in nearly verbatim terms. The Houston Chronicle (2/18/05) called Chávez "authoritarian" and a "strongman," while the Chicago Tribune (6/25/05) labeled him "autocratic." USA Today (4/25/05) editorialized that Chávez “consolidates power in decidedly undemocratic ways," while the Chicago Sun-Times' Robert Novak (2/14/05) asserted that Chávez is "solidifying
dictatorial power."

“Democracy and free enterprise”

The U.S. media's distorted characterizations of Venezuela's government were typified by Diehl (Washington Post, 1/17/05), who claimed that Chávez is "aggressively moving to eliminate the independence of the media and judiciary, criminalize opposition and establish state control over the economy."

The Post more explicitly conflated democracy with U.S.-sponsored "free market" policies in a January 14 editorial, in which it asserted that Chávez's "assault on private property is merely the latest step in what has been a rapidly escalating 'revolution'... that is undermining the foundations of democracy and free enterprise."

The notion that U.S.-sponsored neo-liberalism is the only economic model compatible with democracy was further promoted by the Miami Herald (5/8/05), which declared that "the pugnacious Mr. Chávez is determined to push his populist model to the people of the region as a competitor to real democracies."

Aside from the fact that there is no state-sponsored "assault on private property" in Venezuela, the Post and Herald made no effort to explain how state intervention in the economy negates the Chávez government's democratic credentials. There is, in fact, a long tradition of pro-development state intervention in Latin American democracies. The Chávez government's land-reform policies--which form the basis of the Post's claim that Chávez attacks private property--come in the wake of several democratic experiments in agrarian reform in countries as diverse as Chile, Brazil, Bolivia and Guatemala.

Contrary to the Post and Herald's warped depiction of the Chávez's economic policies as anti-democratic, those policies largely reflect the broad popular rejection of U.S.-sponsored "free-market" policies in Venezuela. In the Post's only commentary during the period surveyed that was favorable to the Chávez government, columnist Harold Meyerson (4/13/05) astutely pointed out that Latin America's recent political swing to the left has come about democratically. Discussing the possibility that Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador might be elected president of Mexico, Meyerson noted:

“Coming after the elections of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina and Hugo Chávez (repeatedly) in Venezuela, it would be one more indication, a huge one, that Latin America has rejected an economics of corporate autonomy, public austerity and no worker rights.”

Separation of powers

In addition to ignoring the Venezuelan government's popular mandate to carry out its policies, columnists ignore the Venezuelan National Assembly's role in formulating major political legislation, such as the recent expansion of the Supreme Court and the Law of Social Responsibility in Radio and Television. U.S. op-ed pages erroneously portray Chávez as the author of all such legislation. For example, Oppenheimer (Miami Herald, 6/5/05) contended that Chávez "single-handedly packed his country's Supreme Court with loyalists."

In reality, the expansion of Venezuela's five-chamber Supreme Court was first debated and then approved by the National Assembly. Pro-government legislators argued that the existing number of judges could not adequately handle their caseloads (Venezuelanalysis.com, 5/27/04). Venezuelan legal expert Carlos Escarrá had pointed out that the court's constitutional and political chambers were backlogged with thousands of cases (Venezuelanalysis.com, 5/17/04).

In contrast to the U.S. system, in which the president makes judicial appointments and the Senate votes on whether to confirm them, Venezuela's National Assembly selects Supreme Court magistrates. In the process of expanding the court, the Assembly selected 17 new justices from a list of 157 candidates pre-selected by a committee made up of representatives of the offices of the human rights ombudsman, the attorney general and the comptroller general (Radio Nacional de Venezuela, 12/13/04). Only in propaganda can this process be described as Chávez having "single-handedly packed" Venezuela's court.

Columnists who attack the "stacking" of Venezuela's Supreme Court also neglect to explain the political context within which the National Assembly voted to increase the number of magistrates. Among U.S. op-ed writers, only the progressive U.S. economist Mark Weisbrot (Miami Herald, 12/20/04) pointed out that Venezuela's Supreme Court had refused to prosecute military officers who temporarily overthrew the elected government in April 2002.

In light of the court's failure to defend the country's democratic institutions against violent attempts to subvert them, Weisbrot argued that it was not unreasonable for the National Assembly to expand the Court (Christian Science Monitor, 8/11/04). "If you had a Supreme Court in the U.S. that ruled that the people who participated in a military coup could not be prosecuted, Congress would impeach those justices," Weisbrot contends.

U.S. commentaries are also inaccurate in asserting that Venezuela's media law was simply "pushed through" the National Assembly by Chávez. Venezuelan legislators not only deliberated about the law, but also held in-depth studies of other countries' communication laws in drafting it. Among the communication laws from which legislators drew inspiration were those of England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Argentina, Mexico and the United States.

When the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress passes a piece of legislation and George W. Bush signs it into law, one scarcely finds U.S. commentaries asserting that the president "pushed" the legislation through a "compliant" congress. However, when Venezuela's democratically elected National Assembly undertakes a similarly complex process of devising legislation that Chávez subsequently signs into law, U.S. commentaries portray the country's legislative process as if it were stage-managed by Chávez.

Guilt by association

Another method that op-ed pages use to cast Venezuela's president as "authoritarian" is to highlight his relationship with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In this case, the principle upon which columnists base their argument is not only irrational but also selectively applied. To point to Venezuela's strategic international alliance with Cuba as "evidence" that Venezuela is copying the Cuban model is no more valid than to argue that the United States is becoming a monarchy on account of its strategic international relationship with the Saudi royal family.

Unfortunately, the faulty logic of classifying a country's political system on the basis of its strategic international relationships is all too common in op-ed coverage of Venezuela. For example, in charging that Chávez is "eroding the institutions on which democracies depend," the only supposed evidence that the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt (5/30/05) offered was Chávez's "embrace" of Fidel Castro. Similarly, the Wall Street Journal's O'Grady (4/1/05) labeled Chávez a "Castroite," and ludicrously claimed (7/8/05) that Venezuela is now a "Cuban province."

Such commentaries failed to distinguish between the political and economic systems of Cuba and Venezuela. The two governments have a mutual interest in countering U.S. political and economic domination of the hemisphere and reaping the benefits of an agreement whereby Cuban healthcare experts and teachers assist impoverished Venezuelan neighborhoods in exchange for Venezuelan oil at preferential prices.

However, as the U.S.-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs noted (6/21/05), Venezuela's "new socialism" differs from Cuba's "real socialism" in that it is "significantly more tolerant of private economic enterprise" and considerably more experimental in its "mixed economy" approach to achieving socialist goals. Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution "promotes state intervention in the economy yet tolerates private business, and mobilizes society through [Chávez's] revolutionary party, but allows political opposition the necessary vehicles to proselytize as well," COHA noted.

A destabilizing force

Columnists pointed to Venezuela's strategic alliance with Cuba in charging that Chávez is destabilizing the Western Hemisphere by meddling in other Latin American countries. For example, Diehl wrote (Washington Post, 6/06/05), "In his ever-closer bonding with Havana's security and intelligence apparatus, his aggressive encouragement of the insurgencies in Bolivia and elsewhere, and his constant stoking of Latin anti-Americanism, the elected but increasingly authoritarian Venezuelan [president] is emerging as the natural successor to a fading Fidel Castro."

Diehl carelessly ignores the fact that no evidence of Chávez's supposed meddling in Bolivia has ever been presented. When Roger Noriega, formerly the U.S. State Department's top official on Latin America, suggested that Chávez was somehow responsible for the demonstrations in Bolivia that culminated in the resignation of the country's president, even the stridently anti-Chávez Miami Herald (6/8/05) could find no proof for the charge. Herald reporter Jane Bussey wrote, "Bolivian government officials and Western diplomats in the region have told the Herald that while the allegations of Chávez's financial aid to [then Bolivian opposition leader Evo] Morales are widespread, there's been no hard evidence to support the charges."

Not even Bolivia's ousted president, Carlos Mesa, was willing to support the claim of Venezuelan interference. "I did not have, while in office, intelligence information" about Venezuela's alleged intervention in the Bolivian conflict, Mesa told Mexico City's El Universal newspaper (6/13/05). Despite the lack of evidence of Chávez's alleged intervention, an April 22 editorial in the Post stated that Chávez has promoted "populist turmoil" in Bolivia.

Aside from neglecting to provide proof for the charge that Chávez destabilizes Latin America, columnists failed to recognize the hypocrisy of accusing Venezuela of meddling in a region where U.S. interference is second to none. In reality, it is the Bush administration--not the Chávez government--that is known to meddle in the internal affairs of Latin American countries. During recent presidential races in Nicaragua (2001), Bolivia (2002) and El Salvador (2004), Bush administration officials openly threatened to penalize the three countries if their citizens elected candidates who opposed U.S. policies.

In addition, the U.S. government has blatantly interfered in the internal politics of Latin American countries by funding allied political organizations through the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI), and by intervening militarily in the region via arms sales, the construction of U.S. military bases, and the sponsorship of massive counter-insurgency efforts in Colombia. Direct U.S. intervention in the region is hardly a distant memory, with the U.S. invading to overthrow the government of Panama as recently as 1989, and U.S. troops arriving to support an unelected government in Haiti in 2004.

Political uniformity

The U.S. press' dismissal of the broad popular support enjoyed by the Chávez government, and that government's success in bringing poor and working-class Venezuelans into the political process, makes it hard to argue that op-ed attacks on Chávez are motivated by a genuine concern for democracy. Instead, newspapers seem to be following the lead of the U.S. government, which has long divided countries into friends and foes less on the basis of political openness or popular legitimacy and more on the question of how subservient they are to U.S. economic interests.

In a rare commentary that took a sympathetic approach to the Chávez government, then Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer (who was fired by the Times in December) summed up the hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy (1/25/05):

“The fact is...that when totalitarian nations like China and Saudi Arabia play ball with U.S. business interests, we like them just fine. But when Venezuela's freely elected president threatens powerful corporate interests, the Bush administration treats him as an enemy.”

As this review of op-ed coverage of Venezuela suggests, this double standard with respect to "democracy promotion" is constantly echoed in major U.S. media, which are economically tied to those same corporate interests. In grossly slanting their op-ed coverage against the Chávez government and in line with Bush administration policy, the press demonstrates a degree of political uniformity that any "would-be dictator" would surely envy.

Justin Delacour (jdelac@unm.edu) is a freelance writer and doctoral student of political science at the University of New Mexico. He edits a blog, Latin America News Review, which can be viewed at http://www.lanr.blogspot.com.

The original version of this article appeared in the December 2005 issue of Extra!, the magazine of the U.S. media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (http://www.fair.org/). The article has been slightly revised