May I suggest it was to destroy the unity of Iraq and to fragment it into warring factions, one of which can be bribed to sign over Iraqi oil to multinational corporations.

America, under its present regime, is a colonizer in cahoots with Israel. Modern colonizers work by fragmenting and weakening the opposition. Iraq, once a strong state, is now a weak mess. The next targets for fragmentation are Iran, Syria and Lebanon — which, thanks to the activity of the Israelis, has a head start.

The goal of United States policy in the Middle East is to assure that no regime will dare oppose either the U.S. or Israel. Therefore, key countries must be weakened. Iraq was falsely accused of having weapons of mass destruction. Syria has been falsely accused of failing to cooperate in the war on terror. Iran has been falsely accused of seeking nuclear weapons and of fomenting strife in Iraq. Lebanon's majority is falsely accused of seeking to destabilize the country.

False accusations are usually a prelude to an attack, but in the meantime, while publicly proclaiming a desire for unity, the U.S. and Israel are covertly inflaming divisions.

You might recall that the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, praised the war against Iraq as a success. Of course it was, if the objective was to destroy the unity of Iraq and to instigate a civil war. Israelis were talking about destroying Iraq and Iran by fragmentation as long ago as the early 1980s. They had thought the Iraq-Iran War would destroy both countries, but when they saw people on both sides uniting behind their respective governments, they devised a plan to prolong the war as long as possible. The Israelis helped arm the Iranians. The U.S. helped the Iraqis.

The history of modern times has been ugly and immoral, and it is still ugly and immoral. It does truly seem, as Oswald Spengler predicted in his book "The Decline of the West," that our world is evolving from what he called the Age of Money to the Age of Caesars. True freedom, except when measured by the false yardstick of elections, is shrinking. It's no accident that George Bush includes the freely elected government of Iran as part of his "axis of evil" while counting the dictatorships in Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf States as "allies." Where was his love for democracy when Hamas won the elections in Palestine? And then there is always an economic factor.

There isn't any war of civilizations, as the neocons try to peddle. There is, however, a war for energy. Regardless of the price at the pump or the temporary status of oil inventories, the truth is that the supply of oil is shrinking as the world demand for it rises. The insiders in the oil industry know this, but, of course, they aren't going to tell you. The elites of this world consider us peasants and make sure we know a lot about Paris Hilton and Rosie O'Donnell. That, the elite think, is our level of intelligence.

The shortage of oil could be met by cooperation among the nations, but unfortunately, the U.S. is choosing to rely on force and subversion. It's a bad choice, not only morally, but strategically. In the long run, we can't sustain our military power.

(Write to Charley Reese at P.O. Box 2446, Orlando, FL 32802)