Wednesday, February 19, 2003

Iraq to Merge with Jordan?

Is the US planning to merge Iraq and Jordan once Saddam is gone? That's the question William O. Beeman, director of Middle East Studies at Brown University, is asking in an article for Pacific News Service.

Beeman points to this 1996 document on Israeli strategic concerns written by current Bush administration policy advisors, which suggests that "until recently, regime change in Iraq was considered not as a U.S. security issue, but as an Israeli one." This makes him wonder if the Iraq war and planned realignment of the Middle East are motivated more by Israeli priorities than American ones.

Of course, Beeman's not the first person to suggest such blasphemy.