WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 (Xinhua)-- UN Secretary General Kofi Annan criticized on Monday U.S. foreign policy, noting "Human rights and the rule of law are vital to global security and prosperity."

"When it appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused," Annan said in his speech at the Truman library in Missouri.

"The U.S. has given the world an example of a democracy in which everyone, including the most powerful, is subject to legal restraint."

"Its current moment of world supremacy gives it a priceless opportunity to entrench the same principles at the global level," he said.

Annan did not mention Iraq and the Bush administration by name, but his remarks sound to be a criticism of the American drive to Iraq war to overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2003, and the Bush doctrine of preemptive action against looming threats.

The UN chief argued that no nation could make its actions legitimate to others if they could not convince the world the use of military force was legitimate and for "broadly shared aims -- in accordance with broadly accepted norms."

In an age of threats like weapons of mass destruction in the hands of rogue states, terrorism, and health threats like SARS, "no nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over all others. We share the responsibility for each other's security," Annan said.

Annan will step down by the end of this month after 10 years as the UN chief and be replaced by South Korea's Foreign Minister BanKi-moon.

First, we are all responsible for each other's security.

Second, we can and must give everyone the chance to benefit from global prosperity.

Third, both security and prosperity depend on human rights and the rule of law.

Fourth, states must be accountable to each other, and to a broad range of non-state actors, in their international conduct.

My fifth and final lesson derives inescapably from those other four. We can only do all these things by working together through a multilateral system, and by making the best possible use of the unique instrument bequeathed to us by Harry Truman and his contemporaries, namely the United Nations.

Again and again, Annan's words were obvious, if not explicit, digs at the Bush/Cheney Administration:

In short, human rights and the rule of law are vital to global security and prosperity. As Truman said, "We must, once and for all, prove by our acts conclusively that Right Has Might." That's why this country has historically been in the vanguard of the global human rights movement. But that lead can only be maintained if America remains true to its principles, including in the struggle against terrorism. When it appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused.

And states need to play by the rules towards each other, as well as towards their own citizens. That can sometimes be inconvenient, but ultimately what matters is not convenience. It is doing the right thing. No state can make its own actions legitimate in the eyes of others. When power, especially military force, is used, the world will consider it legitimate only when convinced that it is being used for the right purpose -- for broadly shared aims -- in accordance with broadly accepted norms.

Read the whole speech HERE.

The speech was delivered in Independence, Missouri, in the presidential library of Harry Truman, who presided over the founding of the United Nations six decades ago.

At times, Mr Annan appeared to contrast the principles of global responsibility evoked by Mr Truman with the actions of Mr Bush.

The UN leader, who will be replaced in January by Ban Ki-Moon of South Korea, remained unspecific in his critique of the US, but few in the American audience will have mistaken his references both to the failure of Washington in 2003 to win unequivocal approval at the UN for the invasion of Iraq or subsequent human rights controversies, including revelations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

"This country has historically been in the vanguard of the global human rights movement," Mr Annan said. "But that lead can be maintained only if America remains true to its principles, including in the struggle against terrorism. When it appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused."

Backed by Washington when he was chosen 10 years ago to replace Boutros Boutros Ghali of Egypt to head the UN, Mr Annan has never enjoyed easy ties with Washington. He did not shy yesterday from touching the wounds left by the decision to invade Iraq, justified by the US and Britain as a mission to erase weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.

"No state can make its own actions legitimate in the eyes of others," he warned. "When power, especially military force, is used, the world will consider it legitimate only when convinced that it is being used for the right purpose - for broadly shared aims - in accordance with broadly accepted norms."

It was a lesson expounded by President Truman, Mr Annan noted, implying that Washington needed reminding. "As Harry Truman said, 'We all have to recognise, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the licence to do always as we please'.

"The US has given the world an example of a democracy in which everyone, including the most powerful, is subject to legal restraint. Its current moment of world supremacy gives it a priceless opportunity to entrench the same principles at the global level," he added.

The address included a laundry list of principles at the heart of the UN ideal. Among them was the lesson that "governments must be accountable for their actions in the international arena as well as in the domestic one".

Others included the need to remain committed to multilateralism and to share responsibility to protect people from genocide, hunger and poverty. For these ideals to be followed and for all the multilateral institutions to function properly, "the system still cries out for far-sighted American leadership, in the Truman tradition," Mr Annan said.

On suffering, Mr Annan made clear his belief that the rhetoric of world leaders remained unmatched by action. "When I look at the murder, rape and starvation to which the people of Darfur are being subjected, I fear that we have not got far beyond lip service," he said. "The Security Council is not just another stage on which to act out national interests," he insisted. "It is the management committee, if you will, of our fledgling collective security system."

OLBERMANN: For more on where the president's current stance places him, currently and historically, let's call in Nixon White House counsel John Dean, author of the books "Worse Than Watergate," "The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush," and, of course, "Conservatives Without Conscience."

John, good evening.

JOHN DEAN, FORMER NIXON WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: Good evening, Keith.

OLBERMANN: Let me start with this overall assessment. Between that opinion number, 27 percent approval on handling Iraq, to the speech by the Republican Senator Smith from Oregon [VIDEO], is this presidential administration in peril, not from impeachment, necessarily, but from some sort of internal revolution within the Republican ranks?

DEAN: Well, they--Bush did a wonderful job of dragging them down in the election that I'm sure they have not forgotten.

Keith, a president rules most powerfully with his bully pulpit. This president has never been very good at that. He's obviously got new plans in the works. He's going to have to go out and sell them. I'm told he's pretty good one on one. He may well be able to keep his party people in line.

But if he doesn't have something new to say to them, something that they believe and can buy into, and then they can, in turn, go out and sell it at home, he is in trouble.

So we'll have to wait and see what his review comes up with. But I think he's got to realize, given the aftermath of the election, he's in trouble.

OLBERMANN: But so far, he hasn't realized it. There hasn't been anything new. And about Iraq, do we attribute that kind ostrich-like stance from the president, and what we heard from the defense secretary in his kind of parting shot today, does this all tie into that prescient remark that you made before the election, that even if the Republicans lost control of both the House and the Senate, Karl Rove and the others in the White House would view that setback as nothing more than a temporary phase? Is that--could they still be believing this is a temporary phase politically?

DEAN: I suspect they do. If you look at what kind of president Bush is--and I did this actually back in 2004, in April of 2004, and again in May of 2006, drawing on the very classic analysis by James David Barber, who puts presidents into various schools and categories, and he said this president would fit, on his criteria, into an active negative.

Those are people like...

...Woodrow Wilson, Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. They're people who ride their policies right down to defeat until the very end, and their presidents don't do very well.

So I would--I think it's going to be very surprising if this president does change. And that's why I think that's he's in a lot of trouble if he doesn't.

OLBERMANN: Having dealt with cynical and disastrous presidencies up close, does it look to you like this one, this president, having politicized his way into Iraq, might now be going to try to hold back getting out of Iraq until it can be used to his party's benefit in the 2008 campaign? Or is that too cynical even for this administration?

DEAN: Well, that's a fair question, Keith, because I did work for a president who did want to take every advantage. And I think Nixon was unable to pass the torch because he had to leave before then. I think this president is very definitely going to try to do something where the administration that follows him will not do to him what he has done to Clinton, and that is, to blame everything on them, because there's a lot of blame to be pushed around in this instance.

So if he can pass the torch and help the Republican Party get somebody in there in 2008, he's certainly going to do that. So that'll be a part of his calculation. He's a very political president.

OLBERMANN: I still retain a negative fondness for James Buchanan. But we have talked about this White House being the textbook case of authoritarianism before. Since the last time we discussed this, the war in Iraq has unbelievably gone to even much worse from the original bad.

If, in face of the overwhelming evidence that the plan in Iraq is not working, the public disapproval at this extraordinary high, if, even now, President Bush is not willing to change course on a real basis, and Mr. Rumsfeld's not to--not expressing any remorse, might that be the deciding historical factor in declaring once and for all this president the worst one ever?

DEAN: Well, the worst president ever is a great parlor game. I happen to enjoy playing it, as a lot of other people do. The interesting part of the game is, there's no criteria.

I've often thought if the criteria were, how long does it take us, after a president who makes mistakes, to bail ourselves out and extricate ourselves from the problems he creates, and we judge them on that basis, well, then, this president well could be leaving a legacy that's going to take us a long time to bail out. It would put him right down there with Richard Nixon, who we're still bailing out from.

OLBERMANN: John Dean, author of "Worse Than Watergate" and "Conservatives Without Conscience." As always, John, great thanks for being with us.

DEAN: Thank you, Keith.

Indeed, if one is an "enemy" of the U.S., then he/she would have to be heartened that Bush has pursued this agenda and would have to be elated that the war in Iraq continues today. Given enough rope, Bush may hang not only himself, but American influence and credibility, and the global economy. Like a "sleeper" agent, or Laurence Harvey's famed character, Sgt. Raymond Shaw, in The Manchurian Candidate, George W. Bush, the ultimate insider, is doing more to damage America than Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Hassan Nasrallah, the Syrians, the Iranians, or any other enemy du jour, ever could.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the United States had the sympathy and respect of much of the world. The outpouring of goodwill was unprecedented in the post-Vietnam period, and the United States stood alone as a military and economic power. When Bush responded to the September attacks a month later with the invasion of Afghanistan, where al Qaeda leaders were hiding out, the world community and U.S. populace supported him.

But, beginning in mid-2002, when he returned to his obsession with Iraq, the worm began to turn. Using politicized intelligence and outright lies, the Bush administration, congress and the media all went along with the invasion of Iraq, beginning in March 2003. Consequently, in what we can now see was a remarkably short time, the amity and power accrued after 9/11 melted away.

Although today much of the criticism of Bush and his policies comes from liberals, and Bush is quick to take shots at the "cut-and-run crowd" or "Defeatocrats," what's most striking is how much harm his military and economic policies have done to our national interests. Indeed, the number of conservatives now publicly repudiating Bush is testimony to how far he has strayed from the values he claimed to profess himself with regard to keeping America strong. If anything, George Bush has pursued a program inherently hostile to the conservative ideals he boasted about when running for office, and we have all suffered as a consequence.

Bush's legacy is already particularly troubling with regard to America's credibility and image in the world, our national security and the so-called war on terror, and the U.S. and global economy. In these areas, U.S. policies, in particular since September 11th, 2001, have left us precarious and vulnerable.

The U.S. standing in the world has probably never been lower than it is now in the wake of the dismal war in Iraq. Not only is anti-Americanism rampant in the Middle East, but U.S. enemies like Bin Laden and Nasrallah now dominate the political discourse of the region with great credibility on the so-called Arab Street. Even in Europe, the American image and influence is fading, and travelers may feel uncomfortable abroad, or, more seriously, American tourists and businesses fear boycotts or actual violence, as in Madrid or London in the past few years, and that seriously dampens the U.S. ability to influence other nations.

Ironically, Bush claimed to have launched the war in Iraq to protect American security, but it has had the opposite effect. American troops are stretched thin and lack adequate supplies, and the U.S. is facing its worst manpower crisis since the Vietnam era. Meanwhile, the number of military officials publicly speaking out against this administration's war in Iraq is staggering, discomfiting and unprecedented.

Even more frightening, Bush has actually increased the global threat of terrorism. In October 2002, well before the invasion of Iraq, the Central Intelligence Agency warned that military action in the Middle East would foment serious resistance and actually recruit more terrorists. By going after Iraq, the Agency warned, the U.S. would be ignoring the "root causes" of terror-such as continued crisis in Afghanistan, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and internal dissent in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries-while getting tied down in a peripheral area.

By 2004, that prediction had come true, with even the CIA Director Porter Goss admitting that Iraq had become a "cause for extremists" as daily attacks in Iraq had already more than doubled over the previous year. Just this past Spring, the State Department was more bleak, identifying over 11,000 terrorist incidents in 2005 which killed almost 15,000 people, a four-fold rise over 2004 and were mostly the work not of al-Qaeda but new, smaller and "difficult to detect" groups, which were able to exploit the war to entice new members.

While Bush's policies in Iraq daily bring reports of Iraqis and Americans killed and abducted, some of the worst consequences are yet to be fully felt, namely the potentially devastating economic effects of the war. Bush and Rumsfeld promised a war on the cheap, somewhere in the area of 100 but no more than 200 billion dollars. Already, those figures have been surpassed and economists are now estimating that the costs of operations in Iraq, along with costs for rehabilitating wounded American soldiers and reconstruction, could easily reach the one trillion, or more, mark.

Despite these huge appropriations, Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker charged this past September the army did not have enough money to fight the war in Iraq. More ominously, as the war in Iraq drags on, the U.S. position in the global economy has become more precarious. To pay for the war in a period of massive tax cuts for the rich, Bush has borrowed more than any president in history and run up record deficits, a strange approach for an alleged conservative. The U.S. debt ceiling has risen to a stunning $9 trillion, the current accounts deficits rose above $200 billion, and trade deficits jumped to record highs, as have gas prices at home.

Much of the U.S. debt is held by China, whose own economy has erupted and now presents a serious challenge to U.S. influence in markets all over the world. In fact, China has just reached $1 trillion in currency reserves, more than one-fifth of all global reserves. While the U.S. is spending about $8 million per hour in Iraq and its foreign reserves are being depleted by about $80 million per hour, the Chinese are hourly adding $30 million. China could now purchase all the gold sitting in the vaults of the world's central banks, twice over, according to the Economist.

Obviously, the U.S. is in a much more delicate and dangerous position today-politically, militarily, and economically-than it was prior to the Iraq invasion. National prestige and national security have suffered, and the economic impact will be felt for years. At home, the emphasis on Homeland Security and the Orwellian-titled Patriot Act have restricted our freedoms and liberties. The United States, its soldiers, and its people have suffered because of this war, because of Bush's entire program. Meanwhile, American enemies and rivals-in the Middle East, in China, and elsewhere-have more power, prestige, and wealth than any of us could have imagined just a few years ago.

Given these conditions, there is now great reason for all Americans, including, if not especially, Republicans and conservatives, to demand an end to these policies in Iraq and at home that are making life more dangerous and costly. Some years ago, during the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon said that "Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that." It seems like George Bush has accomplished precisely that all these years later.

Mr. Buzzanco, Professor of History, University of Houston, is the author of several books and articles on Vietnam War.

If the White House reporting wimps have any nerve they'll quiz him at his next availability about recommendation 72, starting on Page 91, that states, "Costs of the war should be included in the President's annual budget request, starting with FY 2008: the war is in its fourth year, and the normal budget process should not be circumvented. Funding requests for the war in Iraq should be presented clearly to Congress and the American people. Congress must carry out its constitutional responsibility to review budget for the war in Iraq carefully and to conduct oversight."

Bush will never come clean with the costs of his war, and the idea that he would bring Congress in to discuss his unbridled spending and welcome a review of the Pentagon's no-bid contracts with Halliburton is unthinkable. War, in the Bush-Cheney perverted view, is the exclusive domain of the unitary executive. They consider congressional oversight a quaint concept best left in civics textbooks.

Bush will take the Iraq Study Group Report, grab a couple of insignificant shards from it, feature his "military assessments" (read: what he wants to hear and what Gen. Peter Pace, the sycophant chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will dutifully provide), toss in a bunch of bromides, and then have a prime-time pre-Christmas address to the nation where he'll sell his massaged policy as the path for "victory" in Iraq.

Bush declared the Iraq Study Group Report was "an opportunity to come together and work together," when in fact, he is already scrapping any aspects of the report that don't satisfy his appetite for unilateralism and don't conform with the neocon madness built on the fantasy that invading Iraq was the way to spread democracy in the region, protect western corporate interests and make Israel more secure in the process.

With those delusions in mind, Bush set out like a picky adolescent spooning through a fruit salad looking for all the maraschino cherries and rejecting the grapefruit, apples and other tart-yet-healthy choices. Just give me those sweet cherries and I'll call them "bipartisan," Bush thought. He'll use the report for a little political cover and then toss the bulk of the recommendations into the trash heap of history.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee the next day, Jim Baker said that his report outlined a "comprehensive strategy" and warned, "I hope we don't treat this like a fruit salad and say 'I like this but I don't like that.'" By that time Bush's tongue was already scarlet.

Vice President Dick Cheney doesn't even bother with the niceties and lip service his underling in the Oval Office so disingenuously employs. Cheney sat and scowled as James Baker and Lee Hamilton, co-chairs of the Iraq Study Group, presented their report.

As the camera panned, we got a glimpse of Cheney, who had the gas-pained look of someone who had just scarfed down four Taco Bell bean burritos with green onions for breakfast.

Cheney is still fuming over his buddy and mentor Donald Rumsfeld's ignominious departure from the Pentagon. He blames Jim Baker and Bush the Elder's crew for dumping Rummy and trying to get the younger Bush to see the light of the dark failure in Iraq.

Cheney, for now, will retreat to his bat cave to work on a plot to have a military confrontation with Iran, the next move in the neocon playbook for American dominance in the Middle East and beyond.

Big Dick is still a skilled infighter and, like his boy Bush, the more wrong they are, the more disastrous their polices, the more intransigent they become. Facts don't faze them -- only their messianic mission matters.

Just ask Cheney. He'll still tell you al-Qaeda was in cahoots with Saddam Hussein, a 9/11 hijacker met with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague, Iraq had a reconstituted nuclear weapons program and the insurgency is in its "last throes."

Bush reaffirmed his Iraq delusions at a joint news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair where the leaders vowed not "to quit" the mess they created in Iraq. Refusing to even consider what he and his neocon corner men did with their fantasies, ignorance, arrogance and incompetence, Bush warned we must focus on bailing out these "sorcerer's apprentices," somehow salvaging his mad mission: "If we were to fail, that failed policy will come to hurt generations of Americans in the future."

He is incapable of introspection and reflection. Bush only looks at the present fiasco and still clings to his claim that even though all the reasons used to support the war were unfounded, it still was a dandy idea to topple Saddam, in spite of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, nearly 3,000 American troops and the result of turning Iraq into a terrorist training ground to spread more violence throughout the region and world.

The Baker-Hamilton report stated bluntly that "the United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional stability."

The report reminded Bush of his own words, which for now remain just words: "There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts: Lebanon, Syria, and President Bush's June 2002 commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine."

Blair underscored that point, saying, "It is important that we do everything we can in the wider Middle East to bring about peace between Israel and Palestine." Blair will soon go to the Middle East and engage in personal diplomacy. Bush has never been personally involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and his malign indifference helps sustain the violence. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was quick to reject the Baker-Hamilton report's linkage of the Palestinian conflict to broader issues in the region.

Olmert showed his shameless fealty to Bush during a recent White House visit when he said, "We are very much impressed and encouraged by the stability which the great operation of America in Iraq brought to the Middle East." Only fools and professional asskissers would utter those words.

Instead of being "an honest broker" for peace, as Blair urged, under Bush there's not a dime's worth of difference between U.S. policy toward Palestine and the position of whatever fractious Israeli government happens to be in power at the moment.

Bush is unlikely to renounce permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq and he'll never agree to prevent American and British corporations from making claims on Iraqi oil reserves. The agony in Iraq is exposing the true, craven U.S. ambitions in the nation.

The biggest failure in the Iraq Study Group Report was the legislative restriction in its creation limiting the panel's focus to the present mess and not even considering how we got into the quagmire. No looking back. All eyes on "the way forward." We are in the midst of the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history, but don't dare think about how we got there. How can we learn and understand with such artificial political restraints?

As the Congress adjourns, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, got his way, lying and stonewalling efforts to examine the White House's use and abuse of intelligence before the invasion of Iraq.

The loathsome Roberts had promised for years that the so-called Phase Two investigation -- an examination of the misuse and distorting of intelligence -- was proceeding. Roberts is the poster boy for the Republicans' choice to abandon congressional oversight and protect the administration's lies and abuses of power.

The new Congress with the Democrats in charge will certainly do better; a family of orangutans could. But with prominent party leaders like Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Joseph Biden, D-Del., still clinging to their notion that invading Iraq was a good idea and sound policy -- just poorly executed under Bush -- the Democrats still bear significant culpability for the ongoing fiasco there.

Bush is now in the phase of his failed presidency other mentally unbalanced megalomaniacs experienced in the Oval Office. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon are now the best Bush models.

The deeper they got into the pit of Vietnam, the more unhinged they became. Nixon dropped more bombs in Southeast Asia than were used during the entire Second World War. Johnson once told an aide in a tape-recorded conversation discussing Vietnam that "it's just the biggest damn mess I ever saw." At least Johnson recognized what Bush will never admit when he added, "It's damned easy to get in a war, but it's gonna be awfully hard to ever extricate yourself if you get in."

George W. Bush is desperately trying to save face and prove his vision to change the Middle East is an inspiration he worked out with God. He will never change his disastrous course.

Bush's presidency is in the same situation as the Baker-Hamilton group described Iraq being in, "grave and deteriorating."