Are George W. Bush and his administration pursuing international policies brought on by forces outside of their control (i.e., terrorism), or is Team Bush pursuing a preordained strategy of world domination that would have gotten underway whether or not 19 hijackers brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center?

That is the question that is increasingly being asked by political outsiders like the U.S. Green Party, a handful of analysts like Foreign Policy In Focus' Michael T. Klare, and the usual cadre of lefty intellectuals like Gore Vidal, but not breathed at all by the president's supposed opponents in Congress, or the purportedly neutral policy minders in the American media.

The question is important, because if the administration is simply the vessel through which long-dreamed-of policies of remaking the world might finally be realized, that fact would subvert the very idea of American democracy.

A presidential administration is in many ways an era, and is almost always dubbed as much by historians. That implies that even as each new administration moves through the labyrinth of unplanned events, it carries with it the will of the voters at a moment in history. But if American presidencies move with neither events nor the will of the people, they are no better than ideological dictatorships -- the very kind of "secret governments" conspiracy theorists dream of.

Looking at the professional histories of the men behind George W. Bush's throne -- the advisors who are shaping his policies from within the White House and without -- it's easy to come to the conclusion that this regime is pursuing policies that stand quite apart from the moments in time reflected in November, 2000 or even September, 2001, and quite apart from the will of the vast majority of the American people.

If the conspiracy theorists are right, the administration is instead breathing new life into a scheme thwarted in 1992 by the man who, per Lee Atwater's creepy warning in 1991, dared to "deprive George Bush (Sr.) of a second term." If Bush Sr.'s war on Iraq was supposed to be the opening salvo in a war to reshape the Middle East -- and then the world -- in America's strategic interest, then Bill Clinton's two-term presidency set back the cause of the New World Order by an agonizing eight years.

That left the men who dreamed up a New World order to wait an agonizing near-decade to complete the work of recasting Arabia as an Americanized outpost of "democracy" -- a friendly guarantor of America's resource needs and a crucial pivot with which to leverage American global power. (The drive of these men and their supporters to return to power casts an even more sinister light on attempts by anti-Clinton forces to remove the former president from office.)

Now that they have come in from the cold, the ultra-hawks of the neoconservative movement -- political veterans Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice, and their extra-governmental think-tank and media cohorts (men like Richard Perle, Daniel Pipes, Bill Kristol and William Safire), are pressing their long-hatched agenda from inside the Bush administration -- or so the conspiracy theory goes.

Their goal is "full spectrum dominance" -- an unchallenged America sitting astride the world -- controlling its natural resources and reshaping or replacing governments that don't go along with the program, and even controlling allies (with something akin to economic blackmail) in order to prevent a collusion of would-be equals from growing up in Europe.

The key to getting the program started is Iraq, which as early as 2000, the Rumsfeld Cabal (conspiracy lingo here,) were plotting to invade.

The narrative for the plot comes in the form of a report drawn up in 2000 by the neo-conservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a think-tank peopled by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Florida Governor Jeb Bush (the president's brother,) Lewis "Scooter" Libby (Cheney's chief of staff) and others. The document was entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, and it was published in September 2000 -- a full year before the 9/11 attacks.

The document maps out a "proposed" global strategy for America in the 21st century -- and its tenets are being followed almost to the letter by the current Bush administration.

One of the report's more prescient statements reads: "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

It pointedly asserts that the U.S. should put boots on the ground in Iraq, even if Saddam Hussein steps down or is overthrown.

The document also calls for permanently securing American military-economic preeminence in the world through decisive U.S. victories in a series of "multiple, simultaneous major theater wars," beginning with the occupation of Iraq.

It sets forth the "cavalry of the new American frontier," with a permanent U.S. military presence in the Gulf region, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq.

It warns of a rising Europe and the need to subvert any collusion of Western states that would create an economic or military rival to the United States, and it recommends manipulating allies and undermining the United Nations -- also characterized as a potential U.S. rival.

It proposes "regime change" not just for Iraq, but Iran and Syria and for Asian powers like China and North Korea. And it proposes taking the war to much of the Arab world, in order to put down any pretensions that those states can keep America from the oil within their borders.

The plan even calls for the U.S. to consider developing weapons of mass destruction, including biological weapons.

Much of the world is aware of the plan, and those in Europe who have read the document (which was rewritten as the Bush security doctrine last year, supposedly at the behest of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice,) have rightly excoriated it. But the U.S. media has absolutely ignored the incredible fact of a preexisting plan to invade Iraq irrespective of the 9/11 tragedy. The American press has failed in spectacular fashion to investigate the simple, but critical, question of whether American sentiment, congressional will and the very Constitution of the United States -- not to mention international law -- are being manipulated in order to put in place a plan thought of long ago by men irresponsive to the democratic will.

Former President Clinton was himself not unacquainted with think-tankery, and its propensity to inject itself into the political sphere. Both he and his friend and charge, Tony Blair (a signatory to Bush's war,) are members of the Council on Foreign Relations, a group which itself has often been accused by conspiracy theorists of plotting to take over the world.

But the scheme, which may well underlie the Bush II regime, is not about reshaping the world into a concentric circle of democracies (as the CFR seems bent upon,) nor is it aimed at putting a stop to ethnic cleansing or other human atrocities (as the interventions in Kosovo or Somalia purportedly were). It is about outfitting an unprecedented global empire, and jack-booting any attempts by rival nations, or free people anywhere, to do anything about it. It is about reducing freedom rather than spreading it, and about using allies as diplomatic shields for the use of preemptive war, first in the Middle East, and then around the world.

With that as a backdrop, the fecklessness and cowardice of the U.S. opposition party, the willingness of Congress to abdicate its constitutional role of checking the presidency, and the abject failure of the American media to do even the mildest due diligence as part of the march to war, are not only shameful, they are dangerous to democracy.

If, of course, you believe in conspiracy theories.

Joy-Ann L. Reid is News Editor, NBC6.net in Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

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