In the absence of an official announcement and the failure since late last year of a live person to answer its telephone number, a Washington Post obituary would seem to be definitive. And, sure enough, the Post quoted one unidentified source presumably linked to PNAC that the group was "heading toward closing" with the feeling of "goal accomplished."

In fact, the 9-year-old group, whose 27 founders included Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, among at least half a dozen of the most powerful hawks in the George W. Bush administration's first term, has been inactive since January 2005, when it issued the last of its "statements," an appeal to significantly increase the size of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to cope with the growing demands of the kind of "Pax Americana" it had done so much to promote.

As a platform for the three-part coalition that was most enthusiastic about war in Iraq -- aggressive nationalists like Cheney, Christian Zionists of the religious Right, and Israel-centred neo-conservatives -- PNAC actually began breaking down shortly after the Iraq invasion.

It was then that the group's predominantly neo-conservative leadership -- Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, PNAC director Gary Schmitt, and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analyst Robert Kagan -- began attacking Rumsfeld, in particular, for failing to deploy enough troops to pacify the country and launch a true nation-building exercise, as in post-World War II Germany and Japan.

It was the first of a number of policy splits that, along with the deepening quagmire in Iraq itself, have debilitated the hawks, forcing neo-conservatives in the group to reach out to liberal interventionists with whom they sponsored a series of joint statements extolling the virtues of nation-building and a larger army, or calling for a tougher U.S. stance toward Russia and China.

PNAC was launched by Kristol and Kagan in 1997, shortly after their publication of an article in Foreign Affairs magazine entitled "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," in which they called for Washington to exercise "benevolent global hegemony" to be sustained "as far into the future as possible."

While critical of then President Bill Clinton, the article was directed more against a Republican Congress which, in their view, had grown increasingly isolationist, particularly after the precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Somalia in 1994 and strong Republican opposition to intervention in the Balkans against Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

It was in this spirit that the two co-founded PNAC, whose charter was signed by leading neo-conservatives, including Cheney's future chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby; Rumsfeld's future deputy, Paul Wolfowitz; Bush's future top Middle East aide, Elliott Abrams; his future ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad; Rumsfeld's future top international security official, Peter Rodman; American Enterprise Institute (AEI) fellow and neo-cons impresario Richard Perle, and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; as well as Cheney and Rumsfeld themselves.

The charter's few specifics, as well as follow-up reports published by PNAC -- "Rebuilding America's Defenses" and "Present Dangers," both published in 2000 to influence the foreign policy debate during the presidential campaign that year -- were based to a great extent on an infamous "Defense Planning Guidance" (DPG) draft produced under Cheney when he served as secretary of defence under President George H.W. Bush in 1992.

That paper, which was developed by then-Undersecretary of Defence Wolfowitz, Libby, Khalilzad, and the current deputy national security adviser, J.D. Crouch, with assistance from Perle and other like-minded defence specialists, called for the "benevolent domination by one power" (the U.S.) to replace "collective internationalism" and for Washington to ensure that domination, particularly in Eurasia, in order to prevent the emergence, by confrontation if necessary, of any possible regional or global rival.

It was PNAC's role to sustain and propagate these ideas through its reports, its periodic letters and statements signed by right-wing notables, and a steady flow of opinion-pieces and essays, that acted as part of a larger neo-conservative "echo chamber" that included Kristol's Weekly Standard, Fox News, the Washington Times, and the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, to frame debates in official Washington and the mainstream media.

In this sense, PNAC was more of a "letter-head organization" that acted more as a mechanism for developing consensus on issues among different political forces -- in its case, Republican hawks -- and then pushing them in public, than as a think tank.

Indeed, the fact that several of its half-a-dozen staff members -- most recently, PNAC director Schmitt -- have taken posts at the much-larger AEI located just five floors above PNAC's offices helps illustrate the incestuous nature of the larger network. Nonetheless, PNAC was the first to call publicly (in 1998) for Washington to pursue "regime change" in Iraq by military means in conjunction with the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi, who would later play a key role in the propaganda campaign against Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.

But perhaps its most notable letter was sent to Bush Sep. 20, 2001, just nine days after the 9/11 attacks. In addition to calling for the ouster of the Taliban and war on al Qaeda, the letter called for waging a broader and more ambitious "war on terrorism" that would include cutting off the Palestinian Authority under Yassir Arafat, taking on Hezbollah, threatening Syria and Iran and, most importantly, ousting Hussein regardless of his relationship to the attacks or al Qaeda.

"It may be that the Iraqi government provided assistance in some form to the recent attack on the United States," it said. "But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism."

The letter was signed by 38 members of the predominantly neo-conservative Washington echo chamber, many of whom -- especially Kristol, Kagan, Defence Policy Board members Perle, Woolsey, Eliot Cohen, Centre for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney, former Education Secretary William Bennett, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, and Foundation for the Defence of Democracies director Clifford May -- would emerge, along with Woolsey, as the most ubiquitous champions of war with Iraq outside the administration.

Seven months later, PNAC issued another letter signed by many of the same people urging Bush to step up preparations for war with Iraq, sever all ties to the Palestinian Authority under Arafat and give full backing to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's efforts to crush the Palestinian intifada.

"Israel's fight against terrorism is our fight. Israel's victory is an important part of our victory," the letter noted. "For reasons both moral and strategic, we need to stand with Israel in its fight against terrorism." Bush complied two months later.

That period -- Sep. 20, 2001, to the run-up to the Iraq war in early 2003 -- marked the high-water mark of PNAC's existence. Since then, things have generally gone downhill, as the hawks they represented, including the group's dominant neo-conservatives, have fallen prey to internal disagreements: over Rumsfeld's stewardship of Iraq and the Pentagon; over the wisdom of democratic "transformation" in the Arab Middle East; over Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan; over China; and even over the latest administration moves on Iran.

All of which has made it far more difficult to forge consensus -- and compose letters -- in these areas.

Three years after the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces, Washington is abuzz about new reports that the administration of Pres. George W. Bush is preparing to attack Iran, possibly with nuclear weapons.

In just the past few days, lengthy articles detailing planning for aerial attacks on as many as 400 nuclear and military targets have appeared in the Washington Post, the London Sunday Times, The Forward, the main weekly of the U.S. Jewish community, and The New Yorker.

The New Yorker account, written by legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who two years ago was the first to disclose U.S. abuses of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, was the most spectacular, although it relied heavily on unnamed sources outside the administration.

Among other assertions, Hersh's 6,300-word article, "The Iran Plans", alleged that U.S. combat forces have already entered Iran to collect target data and make contact with "anti-government ethnic-minority groups" -- assertions that the Post said it was unable to confirm. It also claimed that efforts by senior military officials to get the administration to eliminate contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against specific hardened targets had been "shouted down" by the Pentagon's civilian leadership.

Unlike other accounts that have argued that any U.S. attack was unlikely to take place until after the November mid-term elections at the earliest, Hersh also suggested that a U.S. attack could come at any time.

"The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot programme, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium," Hersh wrote, citing official sources. In an interview on CNN Monday morning, the journalist insisted that planning for an attack had moved into an "operational" phase, "beyond contingency planning".

Without denying any of Hersh's assertions, Bush himself insisted Monday that the latest reports constituted "wild speculation" and that his administration remained committed to "diplomacy". At the same time, White House spokesman Scott McClellan insisted that military force remained an option.

The sudden spate of detailed stories has raised the question of whether the administration really intends such an attack -- if not imminently, then before it leaves office, as contended by the Sunday Times -- or if it is carrying out a psychological warfare campaign designed to persuade the Iranians and Washington's less warlike friends, especially in Europe, that it will indeed take action unless Tehran agrees to U.S. demands to abandon its enrichment programme.

There is no consensus on this question.

To some experts, the potential costs of such an attack -- from an Iranian-inspired Shiite uprising in Iraq to missile attacks on Saudi oil fields and skyrocketing energy prices (not to mention a rise in anti-U.S. sentiment in Europe and the Islamic world) -- so clearly outweigh the possible benefits that Bush's top political aides would recognise them as exorbitant.

"Although they may be reckless with the security of the United States, I think they are utterly cold-blooded realists when it comes to political power," noted Gary Sick, an Iran policy expert at Columbia University, who sees the latest reports and threats by senior administration officials as an effort to intimidate Tehran.

"(O)ne of their strongest negotiating tools is the widespread belief that they are irrational and capable of the most irresponsible actions. That is their record, so they have no need to invent it. If they can use that reputation to keep Iran -- and everybody else -- off balance, so much the better," he added, noting, however, that if that analysis is correct, "there is always the huge danger of miscalculation and accident".

Graham Fuller, a former CIA officer and Middle East specialist at the RAND Corporation, echoed this view. He told the Forward that the recent spate of articles "shows the fine hand of U.S. (maybe U.K. too) disinformation and psychological warfare against Iran ...(that) may now be intensified, perhaps out of frustration that the 'real thing' is not, in fact, on the table any more."

Other analysts, however, do not see the administration as bluffing.

"For months, I have told interviewers that no senior political or military official was seriously considering a military attack on Iran," wrote Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear proliferation specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) last week.

"In the last few weeks, I have changed my view," he went on. "In part, this shift was triggered by colleagues with close ties to the Pentagon and the executive branch who have convinced me that some senior officials have already made up their minds: They want to hit Iran."

"In recent months, I have grown increasingly concerned that the administration has been giving thought to a heavy dose of air strikes against Iran's nuclear sector without giving enough weight to the possible ramification of such action," Wayne White, the State Department's top Middle East analyst until 2005, told The Forward.

Whether psychological warfare or serious premeditation, leading the charge are clearly the same aggressive nationalist and pro-Israel elements within and outside the administration that were behind the drive to war in Iraq.

Thus, the rhetoric of Vice Pres. Dick Cheney and U.N. Ambassador John Bolton -- two of the administration's most hawkish figures -- has been particularly threatening in recent weeks, with Cheney vowing "meaningful consequences" and Bolton "tangible and painful consequences" in speeches last month to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) if Iran did not freeze its nuclear programme.

Similarly, neo-conservatives closely associated with right-wing sectors in Israel have been most outspoken in arguing that the benefits of an attack strongly outweigh the possible costs.

Thus, while Hersh quoted Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert at the AIPAC-created Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as calling for war, if covert action, including "industrial accidents," is not sufficient to set back Iran's nuclear programme, the Sunday Times quoted former Defence Policy Board chairman, Richard Perle, as asserting that destroying the programme would be much easier than many anticipate.

"The attack would be over before anybody knew what had happened," said Perle who told the AIPAC conference last month that a dozen B-2 bombers could handle the problem overnight.

His colleague at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute, Michael Rubin, has also stressed that "the administration is deadly serious... and while everyone recognises the problems of any military action, there is a real belief that the consequences of Iran going nuclear would be worse."

Indeed, as in Iraq, hardliners in and outside the administration may be embarked on their own psy-war campaign against more moderate forces within the administration, either to counter European pressure on Washington to engage Iran in direct negotiations, to provoke Iran into an overreaction that would offer a pretext for an attack, or to rhetorically box the administration into a position where it would look unacceptably weak if it did not take action.

"A sudden unexplained explosion at a U.S. embassy, a clash with militias in Basra, or a thousand other things could call the administration's bluff," according to Sick. "(T)here are certainly individuals in and around the administration who would not hesitate for a second to recommend a bombing attack on Iran."

All rights reserved, IPS�Inter Press Service (2006)

In a breath-taking victory for right-wing hawks, President George W. Bush has nominated a die-hard unilateralist to become his next ambassador to the United Nations.

John Bolton is best known as one of the most confrontational, combative, and humorless figures within the administration, having earned his formidable reputation as the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security during Bush's first term.

''This is like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse," said Heather Hamilton, vice president of programs for Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) (formerly the World Federalist Association).

The Armageddon Nominee

John Bolton, Hamilton says, is the ''Armageddon nominee,'' alluding to the words of former Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who once admiringly described Bolton as ''the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world."

Bolton began his career-long battle with evil under Ronald Reagan in the '80s, when – despite a notable lack of experience in developing countries – he was appointed to a series of posts in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The highlight of his Reagan years was, however, his tenure as one of then-Attorney General Edwin Meese's top aides, which he spent stonewalling the congressional investigation into the Justice Department's role in the Iran-Contra affair, as well as efforts by Sen. John Kerry to investigate drug- and gun-running operations of the Nicaraguan Contras.

His stellar performance gained him a promotion under Bush Senior to assistant secretary of state for international organizations, a post he held until 1993 when he joined first the right-wing Manhattan Institute and then the neoconservative-dominated American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

By the time former Secretary of State James Baker tapped him to serve as a senior member of George Bush's legal team in Florida after the 2000 election, Bolton had become senior vice president at AEI. By then Bolton had cemented his unilateralist credentials by advocating U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and railing against the grave threat posed to U.S. sovereignty by the United Nations and its Secretary-General Kofi Annan. At one point, Bolton suggested simply halting U.S. payments to the world body.

The Undersecretary From Hell

Bolton was well rewarded for this rich history of far-right advocacy with his undersecretary position at the State Department � an appointment forced on a reluctant Colin Powell by Dick Cheney. Within just a few months, Bolton emerged as a forceful advocate for extremist policies favored by a right-wing coalition of neoconservatives, aggressive nationalists and the Christian right.

In the summer of 2001, he shocked foreign delegations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at the UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons when he announced that Washington would oppose any attempt to regulate the trade in firearms or non-military rifles or any other effort that would "abrogat(e) the constitutional right to bear arms."

Soon after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent anthrax scare, Bolton single-handedly sabotaged a UN meeting to forge an international verification protocol designed to put teeth into a treaty on bio-weapons. On scuttling the agreement, he reportedly told his colleagues, ''It's dead, dead, dead, and I don't want it coming back from the dead."

Within the State Department, Bolton led the drive to repudiate the United States' signature on the 1998 Rome Statute that became the basis for the creation of a new International Criminal Court (ICC), the first permanent tribunal with jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. When Bush approved the move, Bolton prevailed on Powell to allow him to sign the formal notification to Kofi Annan, an act he later described to the Wall Street Journal as "the happiest moment of my government service."

During the same time, Bolton was also embroiled in a lengthy row with U.S. intelligence agencies over his public charge that Cuba had an offensive biological warfare program. His assertion became a source of embarrassment for the administration after anonymous intelligence officials and retired senior military officers, including the former head of the U.S. Southern Command, dismissed the charge and accused Bolton of twisting intelligence to promote political ends.

Bolton's shoot-from-the-hip style and penchant for incendiary, unsubstantiated allegations made him increasingly unpopular among his colleagues. In July 2003, for example, he was forced to cancel plans to testify to Congress about Syria's alleged plans to develop weapons of mass destruction because of a ''revolt'' among U.S. intelligence analysts, who insisted that there was no evidence to warrant such a conclusion.

Powell frequently complained to his closest aides that Bolton was taking his orders from Cheney and the Pentagon hawks, deliberately undermining his own department's policy positions.

For example, just as Pyongyang agreed to the U.S. demand to enter multilateral talks on its nuclear program, Bolton delivered a sharply-worded speech that described life in North Korea as a ''hellish nightmare," and accused its leader, Kim Jong Il, of being a ''dictator'' or ''tyrant,'' running a ''dictatorship'' or ''tyranny'' no less than a dozen times.

Many onlookers agreed that the speech appeared specifically designed to provoke Kim to boycott the meeting. Indeed, the North Korean media described Bolton as ''rude human scum'' and a ''bloodthirsty vampire'' and demanded that he be withdrawn from the delegation that was to take part in the talks.

Return to Unilateralism?

Bolton's nomination comes at a time when many hope that Bush will pursue a more multilateralist policy in his second term � hopes that were fueled by his recent bridge-building trip to Europe. The appointment of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state and Rice's own decision to pick long-time ''realist'' Robert Zoellick as her deputy over Bolton was taken as a clear setback for the coalition of right-wing hawks that have dominated foreign policy since 9/11.

But Bolton's nomination suggests otherwise.

''His nomination sends the exactly the wrong message to the world about the Bush administration's willingness to work with other countries and in multilateral institutions. There's no one who has a greater track record of offending other countries, including our closest allies," Hamilton says.

The "message" to the UN is equally worrisome given Bolton's public and well-documented disdain for the institution. This is, after all, a man who once asserted, ''If the UN (secretariat) building in New York lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.''

While many ranking Democrats in the Senate � including John Kerry and Minority Leader Harry Reid � have expressed reservations about Bolton, they are unlikely to scuttle his nomination. Since it's Democrats who helped approve Bolton's State Department appointment in a 57-43 vote in 2001, any hope for derailing his nomination lies with moderate Republicans such as Dick Lugar. So it's no wonder that the Bush administration is already busy rewriting Bolton's credentials as, in Rice's words, "a tough-minded diplomat" with "a proven track record of effective multilateralism." And, yes, the UN is planning to buy that bridge in Brooklyn.

An influential foreign-policy neoconservative with close and long-standing ties to top hawks in the George W. Bush administration has laid out what he calls ''a checklist of the work the world will demand of this president and his subordinates in a second term.''

The list, which begins with the destruction of Falluja in Iraq and ends with the development of ''appropriate strategies'' for dealing with threats posed by China, Russia and ''the emergence of a number of aggressively anti-American regimes in Latin America,'' calls for ''regime change'' in Iran and North Korea.

The list's author, Frank Gaffney, the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), also warns that the Bush administration should resist any pressure arising from the anticipated demise of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to resume peace talks that could result in Israel's giving up ''defensible boundaries.''

While all seven steps Gaffney listed in an article published Friday morning in the National Review Online have long been favoured by prominent neocons, the article itself, entitled 'Worldwide Value', is the first comprehensive compilation to emerge since Bush's re-election Tuesday.

His article opens by trying to pre-empt an argument that is already being heard on the right against expanding Bush's ''war on terrorism;'' namely that, since a plurality of Bush voters identified ''moral values'' as their chief concern, the president should stick to his social conservative agenda rather than expand the war.

''The reality is that the same moral principles that underpinned the Bush appeal on 'values' issues like gay marriage, stem-cell research, and the right to life were central to his vision of U.S. war aims and foreign policy,'' Gaffney wrote. ''Indeed, the president laid claim square to the ultimate moral value – freedom – as the cornerstone of his strategy for defeating our Islamofascist enemies and their state sponsors, for whom that concept is utterly (sic) anathema.''

To be true to that commitment, policy in the second administration must be directed toward seven priorities,  Gaffney says, beginning with the ''reduction in detail of Fallujah and other safe havens utilized by freedom's enemies in Iraq;'' followed by ''(r)egime change – one way or another – in Iran and North Korea, the only hope for preventing these remaining 'Axis of Evil' states from fully realizing their terrorist and nuclear ambitions.''

Third, the administration must provide ''the substantially increased resources need to re-equip a transforming military and rebuild human-intelligence capabilities (minus, if at all possible, the sorts of intelligence 'reforms' contemplated pre-election that would make matters worse on this and other scores) while we fight World War IV, followed by enhancing ''protection of our homeland,'' including deploying effective missile defenses at sea and in space, as well as ashore.''

Fifth, Washington must keep ''faith with Israel, whose destruction remains a priority for the same people who want to destroy us (and...for our shared 'moral values) especially in the face of Yasser Arafat's demise and the inevitable, post-election pressure to 'solve' the Middle East problem by forcing the Israelis to abandon defensible boundaries.''

Sixth, the administration must deal with France and Germany and the dynamic that made them ''so problematic in the first term: namely, their willingness to make common cause with our enemies for profit and their desire to employ a united Europe and its new constitution – as well as other international institutions and mechanisms – to thwart the expansion and application of American power where deemed necessary by Washington.''

Finally, Bush must adapt ''appropriate strategies for contending with China's increasingly fascistic trade and military policies, (Russian President) Vladimir Putin's accelerating authoritarianism at home and aggressiveness toward the former Soviet republics, the worldwide spread of Islamofascism, and the emergence of a number of aggressively anti-American regimes in Latin America,'' – which Gaffney does not further identify.

It is also sure to be contested – not just by Democrats who, with the election behind them, are poised to take a more anti-war position on Iraq – but by many conservative Republicans in Congress as well. They blame the neoconservatives for failing to anticipate the quagmire in Iraq and worry that their grander ambitions, such as those set forth by Gaffney, will bankrupt the treasury and break an already-overextended military.

Yet its importance as a road map of where neoconservatives – who, with the critical help of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, dominated Bush's foreign policy after the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon – want U.S. policy to go was underlined by Gaffney's listing of the names of his friends in the administration who, in his words, ''helped the president imprint moral values on American security policy in a way and to an extent not seen since Ronald Reagan's first term.''

In addition to Cheney and Rumsfeld, he cited the most clearly identified – and controversial – neoconservatives serving in the administration: Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby; his top Middle East advisors, John Hannah and David Wurmser; weapons proliferation specialist Robert Joseph and top Mideast aide Elliott Abrams on the National Security Council; Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith; and Feith's top Mideast aide, William Luti in the Pentagon; and Undersecretaries for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton and for Global Issues Paula Dobriansky at the State Department.

Virtually all of the same individuals have been cited by critics of the Iraq war, including Democratic lawmakers and retired senior foreign service and military officials, as responsible for hijacking the policy and intelligence process that led to the U.S. invasion.

Indeed, in a lengthy interview about the war last May on  60 Minutes,  the former head of the U.S. Central Command and Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief Middle East envoy until 2003, ret. Gen. Anthony Zinni called for the resignation of Libby, Abrams, Wolfowitz and Feith, as well as Rumsfeld, for their roles.

Zinni also cited former Defense Policy Board (DPB) chairman Richard Perle, who has been close to Gaffney since both of them served, with Abrams, in the office of Washington State Sen. Henry M. Jackson in the early 1970s. When Perle became an assistant secretary of defense under Reagan, he brought Gaffney along as his deputy. When Perle left in 1987, Gaffney succeeded him before setting up CSP in 1989.

As Perle's long-time protegé and associate, Gaffney sits at the center of a network of interlocking think tanks, foundations, lobby groups, arms manufacturers and individuals that constitute the coalition of neoconservatives, aggressive nationalists like Cheney and Rumsfeld, and Christian Right activists responsible for the unilateralist trajectory of U.S. foreign policy since 9/11.

Included among CSP's board of advisors over the years have been Rumsfeld, Perle, Feith, Christian moralist William Bennett, Abrams, Feith, Joseph, former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Navy Undersecretary John Lehman, and former CIA director James Woolsey, who also co-chairs the new Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), another prominent neoconservative-led lobby group that argues that Washington is now engaged in ''World War IV'' against ''Islamo-fascism.''

Also serving on its advisory council are executives from some of the country's largest military contractors, which finance CSP's work,  along with contributions from wealthy pro-Likud individuals, such as prominent New York investor Lawrence Kadish and California casino king Irving Moskowitz, and right-wing foundations, such as the Bradley, Sarah Scaife and Olin Foundations.

Gaffney, a ubiquitous ''talking head'' on television in the run-up to the war in Iraq, himself sits on the boards of CPD's parent organisations, the Foundation for the Defense Democracies (FDD) and Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT), and also was a charter associate, along with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz and Abrams, of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), another prominent neoconservative-led group that offered up a similar checklist of what Bush should do in the ''war on terrorism'' just nine days after the 9/11 attacks.

''These items do not represent some sort of neocon 'imperialist' game plan,'' Gaffney stressed in his article. ''Rather, they constitute a checklist of the work the world will demand of this president and his subordinates in a second term."

The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has been the "most misguided" policy since the Vietnam War, according to an open letter signed by some 500 U.S. national security specialists.

The letter, released Tuesday by Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy (S3FP), said that the current situation in Iraq could have been much better had the Bush administration heeded the advice of some of its most experienced career military and foreign service officers.

But the administration�s failure to do so has actually fueled "the violent opposition to the U.S. military presence," as well as the intervention of terrorists from outside Iraq.

"The results of this policy have been overwhelmingly negative for U.S. interests," according to the group which called for a "fundamental reassessment" in both the U.S. strategy in Iraq and its implementation.

"We�re advising the administration, which is already in a deep hole, to stop digging," said Prof. Barry Posen, the Ford International Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and one of the organizers of S3FP (which includes some of the most eminent U.S. experts on both national security policy and on the Middle East and the Arab world).

Among the signers are six of the last seven presidents of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and professors teaching in more than 150 colleges and universities in 40 states.

Besides Posen, the main organizers included Stanley Kaufman of the University of Delaware; Michael Brown, director of security studies at Georgetown University; Michael Desch, who holds the Robert M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security Decision-Making at the Bush School of Government at Texas A & M University; and Jessica Stern, at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, who also served in a senior counter-terrorism post in the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.

"I think it is telling that so many specialists on international relations, who rarely agree on anything, are unified in their position on the high costs that the U.S. is incurring from this war," said Prof. Robert Keohane of Duke University in North Carolina.

Their critique mirrors an unprecedented statement released by 27 retired top-ranking foreign service and military officials last June, many of whom said they had voted for Bush in the 2000 election.

The 27, called Diplomats for Change, accused the administration of launching the country "into an ill-planned and costly war from which exit is uncertain." As their name suggests, they are calling for Bush to be defeated in 2004.

The statement's signatories include a number of retired government officials � some are career military and foreign service officers; others are political appointees in Democratic and Republican administrations � who are currently working at colleges and universities.

Much of their critique echoes arguments voiced by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry who, in recent weeks, has pounded away at alleged failures in the way Bush has prosecuted the "war on terrorism," particularly with respect to Iraq.

"We judge that the current American policy centered around the war in Iraq is the most misguided one since the Vietnam period, one which harms the cause of the struggle against extreme Islamist terrorists," S3FP writes.

The scholars applauded the Bush administration for its initial focus on destroying al Qaeda�s bases in Afghanistan; they charged that its subsequent "failure to engage sufficient U.S. troops to capture or kill the mass of al Qaeda fighters in the [early] stages of that war was a great blunder."

"It is a fact that the early shift of U.S. focus to Iraq diverted U.S. resources, including special operations forces and intelligence capabilities, away from direct pursuit of the fight against the terrorists."

The letter noted that "many of the justifications" provided by the administration for the Iraq war, including an operational relationship between al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and Iraq�s programs for weapons of mass destruction (WMD), have proven "untrue" and that North Korea and Pakistan pose much greater risks of nuclear proliferation.

"Even on moral grounds, the case for war was dubious: the war itself has killed over a thousand Americans and unknown thousands of Iraqis, and if the threat of civil war becomes reality, ordinary Iraqis could be even worse off than they were under Saddam Hussein."

Since the invasion, "policy errors � have created a situation in Iraq worse than it needed to be," according to the letter which noted that the administration ignored advice from the Army chief of staff on the need for many more U.S. troops to provide security and and also ignored advice from the State Department and other U.S. agencies on how reconstruction could be carried out.

"As a result, Iraqi popular dismay at the lack of security, jobs or reliable electric power fuels much of the violent opposition to the U.S. military presence, while the war itself has drawn in terrorists from outside Iraq."

While Saddam�s removal was "desirable," according to the scholars, the actual benefit to the United States was "small," particularly in light of the fact that Iraq posed far less of a threat to the U.S. or its allies than the administration had asserted.

"On the negative side, the excessive U.S. focus on Iraq led to weak and inadequate responses to the greater challenges posed by North Korea�s and Iran�s nuclear programs, and diverted resources from the economic and diplomatic efforts needed to fight terrorism in its breeding grounds in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East."

Even worse, the occupation�s failures, such as the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere, have acted as a recruitment tool for al Qaeda and similar groups throughout the region, according to the letter.

"Recognizing these negative consequences of the Iraq war, in addition to the cost in lives and money, we believe that a fundamental reassessment is in order," the letter said.

Despite his standing in the polls, George Bush's post-9/11 foreign policy views are broadly rejected by both the average American and by public leaders, according to a major new survey released Tuesday by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR).

The survey, titled "Global Views 2004: American Public Opinion and Foreign Policy,' found that 76 percent of the general public reject the notion that Washington should play the role of world policeman and 80 percent believe that the U.S. is currently playing that role "more than it should be."

The results reflect the views of nearly 1,200 randomly selected members of the public and of 450 "leaders with foreign policy power, specialization, and expertise," including U.S. lawmakers and their senior staff, religious, business and labor leaders, senior administration officials, heads of major foreign policy organizations and lobby groups, and university professors and journalists who make foreign policy their main focus.

The survey, which was conducted in July, shows that all Americans - be it the layperson or a policy leader – much prefer multilateral solutions to foreign-policy problems to the more unilateral approach that has dominated the Bush administration.

Asked what is the more important lesson from the 9/11 attacks, 73 percent of the public said, "The U.S. needs to work more closely with other countries to fight terrorism," as opposed to 23 percent who said it "needs to act on its own more..." Among the leaders, who were surveyed separately, the margin in favor of multilateralism was even larger: 84 percent, as opposed to the mere nine percent who called for more unilateral action.

Support among both groups for strengthening the United Nations is particularly high, especially when compared to the results of the 2002 CCFR survey. More than two-thirds of respondents in both groups said the UN should have a standing peacekeeping force, while some four in five in both groups favored U.S. participation in UN peacekeeping operations.

Strong majorities among both groups also rejected Bush's notion of pre-emptive war, which is codified in his 2002 National Security Strategy and is often cited by the president as a justification for the war after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. Only 17 percent of the public and ten percent of leaders interviewed in the survey said that war was justifiable if the "other country is acquiring (WMDs) that could be used against them at some point in the future."

Some 53 percent of the public and 61 percent of the surveyed leaders said war could only be justified if there was "strong evidence" that the country is in "imminent danger" of attack, while 25 percent of both groups said the U.S. should go to war only if the other country attacks first.

CCFR has conducted the 'Global Views' survey every four years since 1976, making it a standard reference for experts on public and "elite" attitudes on Washington's role in the world. It decided to conduct one this year, just two years after its last one, because of the importance of foreign policy in the current election campaign.

The survey found a "lowered sense of threat" from abroad compared to two years ago, with "protecting American jobs" cited more often among by the American public (but not the leaders) as a "very important" goal of foreign policy than both fighting international terrorism and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. It also found that "Islamic fundamentalism," which was considered a "critical threat" by 61 percent of the public in 2002, was cited by only 38 percent this year.

The most striking changes in elite opinion, on the other hand, were found in the sharp rise in the importance they gave to "improving the standard of living" in poor countries and in "strengthening the United Nations" compared with two years ago. Similarly, the percentage of leaders who cited "maintaining superior power worldwide" as a "very important" goal, fell from 52 percent in 2002 to only 37 percent in 2004 – the first time the issue has received less than a majority since the question was first posed to respondents in 1994.

Contrary to the Bush doctrine, large majorities of the public and surveyed leaders favor retaining rather than loosening traditional constraints on the use of force by individual states, including the U.S..

Majorities of both groups oppose states taking unilateral military action without authorization of the UN Security Council except in cases of genocide. Two thirds of both groups, for example, said the U.S. should be required to get the Council's approval before taking military action to eliminate North Korea's alleged nuclear arsenal.

The survey also found strong support for U.S. participation in international treaties and agreements that have been rejected by the Bush administration.

For example, nearly 90 percent of the public and 85 percent of the leaders said they favor a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty; 80 percent of both groups said the U.S. should agree to the global ban on anti-personnel land mines; and more than 70 percent of both groups said they support U.S. participation in the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming. A strong majority also said that international terrorists should be tried before the ICC if their own countries refuse to put them on trial.

While the survey showed a broad consensus among the two groups in opposing the unilateralist policies pursued by the Bush administration on most issues, it also found that the leaders were unaware of just how multilaterally inclined the American public is.

Asked to predict what percentage of the public supported the ICC, for example, only 20 percent of the leaders predicted the correct answer – a "strong majority." Seventy percent of the elite respondents (including 68 percent of senior administration officials and 91 percent of Republicans on Capitol Hill) thought ICC would receive support from less than a simple majority.

Similarly, the public was far more supportive of other international agreements and of steps to strengthen the UN than the leaders assumed, according to the CCFR results.

On Iraq-related issues, more than two thirds of both groups said the U.S. should withdraw from Iraq if a clear majority of the Iraqi people want it to do so. As to Bush's more ambitious plans for the Middle East, 57 percent of the public do not think Washington should put "greater pressure" on Arab states to become more democratic and 68 percent oppose plans for increasing aid and investment in the region on the order of the Marshall Plan after World War II. On this, as in some other specific areas, the leaders take the opposite view: 64 percent favor a Marshall Plan for the region, while 30 percent oppose the idea.

The CCFR report concludes, "All of these findings points again to the idea that Americans feel that the responsibilities and costs of many international actions are too great for it to shoulder alone ... More than ever, they are turning to other nations and to international institutions to help share the load through collective decision-making and collective action."

One year after President George W. Bush declared the end of major combat in Iraq, the United States appears to be teetering on the brink of strategic defeat in its Mesopotamian adventure.

Even as Bush Friday reiterated his ambition of bringing "freedom and democracy" to Iraq and the Middle East, a series of recent policy reversals -- capped by Friday's announcement that a former Baathist general will take charge of an all-Iraqi security force in Fallujah -- suggests that an increasingly desperate Washington will settle for far less.

Indeed, over the past two weeks, the administration appears to have almost entirely jettisoned the neoconservative vision of an ardently pro-U.S. Iraq led by Iraqi National Congress (INC) chief Ahmed Chalabi, opened wide to U.S. and western capital, and eager to serve as a convenient base for destabilizing Syria, Iran, and even Saudi Arabia if it gets out of line.

The defeat of the neo-conservatives, whose influence has been exercised primarily through the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has been made abundantly clear by the mandate the administration has given UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to essentially handpick the leadership of the new Iraqi government that will gain ''limited sovereignty," as one State Department official put it this week, after June 30.

The fact that the UN has been given such an important role severely undercuts the maximalist objectives of the neo-cons and other right-wing unilateralists whose main aim in going to war in Iraq was to demonstrate that Washington did not need the world body to ''legitimate'' its role as the ultimate guarantor of global security.

Brahimi's apparent decision to exclude Chalabi, for whom he is said to have the greatest contempt, drew strong protests from the INC leader's neocon supporters in the Pentagon and outside the administration who were then further infuriated by Brahimi's statements last week to the current Israeli policies, fervently backed by the neocons, were ''poison'' for the entire region. Bush's refusal to back away from the Algerian diplomat confirmed that the balance of power within the administration, at least on Iraq, has shifted decisively toward the realists.

Finally, the decision not only to forgo a major attack on insurgents in Fallujah, but to also withdraw Marines to positions outside the city and recognize a new, Baathist-led force to guarantee security there, defied the hawks' increasingly shrill insistence that a failure to crush the uprising and capture or kill those responsible for the deaths of four U.S. private-security contractors in early April would mark a strategic defeat for the occupation.

The deal, which clearly caught the Pentagon civilians off-guard, appeared to have been negotiated by commanders on the ground and approved by the National Security Council staff in the White House -- one more indication that neocons have fallen from grace.

But it also indicated a larger policy already announced by Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) chief Paul Bremer a week ago -- that, in the words of Iraq specialist Juan Cole at the University of Michigan, ''the United States has embarked on a policy of re-Baathification, rehabilitating thousands of ex-Baathists and putting them to work." This policy reversal, too, has been strongly opposed by Chalabi, who had been in charge of the de-Baathification program, and his allies in Washington.

But, while the administration no longer appears to be heeding the neo-cons on Iraq policy, the big question is whether these policy reversals will save the U.S. occupation and Washington's minimum goals of putting in place (with Brahimi's help) a broadly representative government that can both ensure stability and accede to the indefinite presence of several discreetly situated U.S. military bases.

On this, opinions in Washington are deeply divided, but a growing number of analysts believe that policy changes may be a case of too little, too late.

The foreign policy establishment was shocked by an interview in the Wall Street Journal by ret. Gen. William E. Odom calling for a swift withdrawal. Odom, who among other posts served as Ronald Reagan's director of the National Security Agency (NSA), said, ''We have failed,'' adding that even if an Iraqi election is held next January as scheduled, ''Anybody that's pro-American cannot gain legitimacy."

Odom, who is based at the conservative Hudson Institute and has never been inclined to traditional isolationism, warned that the very presence of U.S. troops -- let alone a major military crackdown against Iraqi insurgents -- was radicalizing both Iraqis and other Arabs, risking the destabilization of the entire region. He said, ''The issue is how high a price we're going to pay. ... Less, by getting out sooner, or more, by getting out later?"

Odom's analysis is bolstered by the results of a recent Gallup/CNN/USA Today survey, which found that 57 percent of Iraqis wants the U.S. occupation forces to leave the country ''immediately," a time frame defined as ''in the next few months." When the generally pro-U.S. Kurdish sample (representing about 13 percent of the population) was excluded, the portion of Iraqis favoring an immediate withdrawal rose to two-thirds.

The detailed survey largely confirmed reports that the vast majority of Iraqis have become very disillusioned with the U.S. and the occupation forces over the last 13 months. While pleased that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power, four out of five non-Kurdish Iraqis said they now regard the coalition forces as ''occupiers'' rather than ''liberators."

More importantly, the survey was conducted before the sieges of Fallujah and Najaf which, according to most published reports, further alienated Iraqis from the occupation. ''If these polls results are to be believed, we've already lost the war for hearts and minds," notes one congressional aide whose boss initially supported the war.

''I don't believe that the American public generally understand what happened in the first half of April which is that the U.S. lost control of Iraq to a set of popular uprisings and was forced to reconquer the country," says Cole.

But the cost in both Iraqi and U.S. lives has been unexpectedly high. More than 130 U.S. soldiers were killed in April, more than were killed in the first six weeks of the invasion; indeed, more than any one-month military death toll since just before the last U.S. combat troops withdrew from Vietnam in 1973.

The fighting has forced the administration to put off scheduled withdrawals and consider sending in more troops. The political effect here has been a sharp drop in public confidence in Bush's Iraq policy, according to a New York Times/CBS poll which also found that a record 58 percent of the U.S. public now believe that the invasion has not been worth the cost in lives and resources.

Cole said that the decision to pull back from Fallujah, as well as other recent major policy reversals ''may have taken us back from the brink, but we could be back there at any time."

Even as the Marines were pulling back from Fallujah, the Pentagon was expediting the shipment of more heavy tanks and armoured vehicles to Iraq -- precisely the kind of weapons that counter-insurgency specialists say will make it more difficult for occupation troops to win ''hearts and minds."

Moreover, there is every indication that U.S. military is already over-stretched and running low on resources. A telling sign: The Army has requested ski areas in the Sierra Nevada mountains that were using five howitzers to prevent avalanches to return them immediately for use in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jim Lobe writes for the Inter Press Service, TomPaine.com, and foreign Policy in Focus.