WASHINGTON, 31 January 2003 — President Bush delivered one of the most important speeches of his political career this week when he delivered his State of the Union speech Tuesday night. The president’s speech took 60 minutes to deliver and was 5,400 words long, but many experts remained unconvinced.

Bush’s speech “defies logic,” said Dr. James E. Jennings, president of Conscience International, and co-coordinator of US Academics Against the War, based in Atlanta, Georgia.

“It flies in the face of the CIA’s report, which stated that Iraq could have a nuclear weapon in the next eight years, if a series of contingent events should occur,” said Jennings, who last month led a delegation of academics from 28 universities to a conference in Baghdad.

President Bush’s statement that he will prove Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein are working together has Jennings concerned: “I’ve been warning for several months that the US was protecting a 600-man contingent of Islamic militants in the no-fly zone in northern Iraq, in the Kurdish zone. It’s very curious that although the CIA and the US government have known about the operations of these militants for nearly a year, that they have not attacked them, as they promised to do worldwide. This may be because they are saving them to use as a casus belli (legal case for war).”

The president’s focus on Iraq, Jennings said, is because “the president is a captive of the ideological right, and firmly believes in the joint Israeli-American dominance of the Middle East. The one phrase that was very telling in his speech last night was about the ‘great potential wealth of Iraq.’ In fact, this is what this war is all about.”

Jennings said it was also an “attempt to surpass Arabism. And the only party that is standing for a complete Arab renaissance in the tradition of Nasser, for example, are the Iraqi Baaths The ideology of the Baaths is that there should be an Arab renaissance, and an Arab coalition of nations would be immensely powerful. For that reason, the US is supporting the Israeli strategic goals in the Middle East, which is to break the Middle East into smaller parts, under the principle for ‘divide and rule.’

“So when the American administration is installed in Baghdad there will be effectively three Iraqis, not one. A federation of Iraqi states will weaken Iraq, scatter its wealth and reduce the threat to Israel,” said Jennings.

Regarding Bush’s statement that US policy “is for a secure Israel and democratic Palestine,” Jennings said: “I think that the president is reading off the same page as Sharon. He said the minimum, which is what they wanted,” said Jennings. “I’m not terribly optimistic.”

Another scholar outlined his concern that war against Iraq has “a tremendous potential to destabilize the entire region, and will serve as a recruiting poster for Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda,” said Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for foreign policy and defense studies at the Washington-based Cato Institute, “People throughout the Arab world will regard it as aggressive imperialism.”

Bush’s comments on Afghanistan were “very strange characterizations,” said Carpenter. “I was under the impression that the US went into Afghanistan to destroy Al-Qaeda and the Taleban. But if you believe President Bush, apparently we went in as a great humanitarian and nation-building mission. I think that would come as a surprise to most people in Afghanistan.”

Regarding Israel and Palestine, Carpenter said Bush’s short sentence “probably reflects the administration’s view that prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians are not good, and that there is very little the US can do to advance the prospects at this point.”

Unlike Jennings, Carpenter believes the administration is not especially happy with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. “They are unhappy with both Arafat and Sharon. I don’t think Israel’s security is the main factor in US policy towards Iraq.”

Ominously, Carpenter said: “I think that if the Iraq intervention is successful, within 2-3 years we will be in the same kind of confrontation with Iran because many people in the Bush Administration regard Iran as an even more serious threat than Iraq.”