Next, in a move that stunned and angered the international community, George W. Bush killed the proposed enforcement and verification mechanism for the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention -- in December 2001, after the threat of bioweapons attacks was particularly clear.

Passed in 1972, the convention has over 100 signatories, including Iraq and the United States. Because of the lack of an enforcement mechanism, countries were free to violate it, as did Iraq and the United States -- both have attempted to weaponize anthrax, for example, as we found out when U.S.-developed anthrax killed six Americans in the fall of 2001.

In 1995, those signatories started negotiations to provide enforcement through mutual, intrusive inspections. For six years, the U.S. government threw up constant roadblocks, finally terminating negotiations. The reason? Biological weapons inspections in the United States might imperil the profits of biotech companies. Of course, had the enforcement mechanism passed, it could have been used to press for inspections in Iraq.

Even worse, in March 2002, the United States removed Jose Bustani, head of the Organization to Prevent Chemical Weapons, from office. According to George Monbiot of the Guardian, it was because Bustani's efforts to include Iraq in the Chemical Weapons Convention (subjecting it to chemical weapons inspections) would deprive the United States of a casus belli.

There is consensus by arms control experts that weapons inspections in Iraq were extraordinarily effective in finding and dismantling weapons of mass destruction. Clearly, the administration isn't really concerned about this threat.

Constant protests in the Senate hearings and elsewhere to the contrary, the administration is also not concerned about democracy in Iraq. Consider the U.S. reaction to the Iraqi Intifada, the mass uprising of Iraqis after the Gulf War, in response to a call by George Bush, Sr., to the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam. In February and March of 1991, at the peak of that rebellion, Saddam's regime was seriously imperiled.

In order to save Saddam's regime, the U.S. military deliberately lifted the existing no-fly zone, allowing Saddam to use his helicopter gunships against the rebels; it seized arms depots so the rebels couldn't arm themselves; and it even allowed the Republican Guards safe passage through its ranks to put down the uprising.

At the time, Richard Haas of the State Department explained, "What we want is Saddam's regime without Saddam." In 1996, on ABC, Brent Scowcroft explained further that the United States did not want a popular democratic movement that overthrew Saddam -- it wanted a palace coup.

When all the official justifications collapsed, what is left is the same ugly three-letter word that has always been at the core of U.S. Middle East policy -- oil. It's important to clarify, however, that U.S. policy is neither simply about access to oil, which is how mainstream commentators frame it, nor is it completely dictated by oil companies, as some on the left claim.

Access to oil can be obtained by paying for it, as other countries do. The United States has a different attitude because it is an empire, not merely a nation. On any given day, U.S. troops are in 140 countries around the world, with permanent bases in over half of those. After two decades of structural adjustment and one of "free trade," the United States has more control over the internal policies of other countries than the elected governments of those countries. Although "globalization" was recently the more visible face of this imperial expansion, it always had a military underpinning -- and currently the military aspect is dominant.

This empire is predicated, like past empires, on political control for the purpose of economic control and resource and surplus extraction. Oil is the world's most important resource, and control of the flow and pricing of oil is a potent source of political power, as well as a significant source of profits.

Oil companies, arms companies, and general corporate America are all intimately concerned with U.S. Middle East policy.