WAR ON IRAK

World Socialist Website: Bush lays out his “vision” for the Middle East

With its scare stories about weapons of mass destruction and allegations of Baghdad-terrorist ties having failed to stem worldwide opposition to a war against Iraq, the Bush administration this week unveiled a new pretense for aggression. War, it claimed in typical Orwellian fashion, is the only means of achieving peace, and US military occupation is the road to democracy in the Middle East.

In a speech delivered Wednesday before the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a right-wing Washington think tank, George W. Bush presented what administration officials described as his “vision” for a “liberated” Iraq within a revamped Middle East.