The JvL Bi-Weekly for 041507

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Sunday, April 15^th, 2007

Volume 6, No. 7

3 Articles

1. Bush's Shadow Army (Part 2 of 2 Parts)

2. Interventions Without End?

3. Public Anxiety Over Foreign Policy Nears 'Crisis'

1. BUSH'S SHADOW ARMY (Part 2 of 2 parts)

BY

JEREMY SCAHILL

For most Americans, it was the first they had heard of private soldiers. "People began to figure out this is quite a phenomenon," says Representative David Price, a North Carolina Democrat, who said he began monitoring the use of private contractors after Falluja. "I'm probably like most Congress members in kind of coming to this awareness and developing an interest in it" after the incident.

What is not so well-known is that in Washington after Falluja, Blackwater executives kicked into high gear, capitalizing on the company's newfound recognition. The day after the ambush, it hired the Alexander Strategy Group, a K Street lobbying firm run by former senior staffers of then-majority leader Tom DeLay before the firm's meltdown in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal. A week to the day after the ambush, Erik Prince was sitting down with at least four senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, including its chair, John Warner. Senator Rick Santorum arranged the meeting, which included Warner and two other key Republican senators--Appropriations Committee chair Ted Stevens of Alaska and George Allen of Virginia. This meeting followed an earlier series of face-to-faces Prince had had with powerful House Republicans who oversaw military contracts. Among them: DeLay; Porter Goss, chair of the House Intelligence Committee (and future CIA director); Duncan Hunter, chair of the House Armed Services Committee; and Representative Bill Young, chair of the House Appropriations Committee. What was discussed at these meetings remains a secret. But Blackwater was clearly positioning itself to make the most of its new fame. Indeed, two months later, Blackwater was handed one of the government's most valuable international security contracts, worth more than $300 million.

The firm was also eager to stake out a role in crafting the rules that would govern mercenaries under US contract. "Because of the public events of March 31, [Blackwater's] visibility and need to communicate a consistent message has elevated here in Washington," said Blackwater's new lobbyist Chris Bertelli. "There are now several federal regulations that apply to their activities, but they are generally broad in nature. One thing that's lacking is an industry standard. That's something we definitely want to be engaged in." By May Blackwater was leading a lobbying effort by the private military industry to try to block Congressional or Pentagon efforts to place their forces under the military court martial system.

But while Blackwater enjoyed its new status as a hero in the "war on terror" within the Administration and the GOP-controlled Congress, the families of the four men killed at Falluja say they were being stonewalled by Blackwater as they attempted to understand the circumstances of how their loved ones were killed. After what they allege was months of effort to get straight answers from the company, the families filed a ground-breaking wrongful death lawsuit against Blackwater in January 2005, accusing the company of not providing the men with what they say were contractually guaranteed safeguards. Among the allegations: The company sent them on the Falluja mission that day short two men, with less powerful weapons than they should have had and in Pajero jeeps instead of armored vehicles. This case could have far-reaching reverberations and is being monitored closely by the war-contractor industry--former Halliburton subsidiary KBR has even filed an amicus brief supporting Blackwater. If the lawsuit is successful, it could pave the way for a tobacco litigation-type scenario, where war contractors find themselves besieged by legal claims of workers killed or injured in war zones.

As the case has made its way through the court system, Blackwater has enlisted powerhouse Republican lawyers to defend it, among them Fred Fielding, who was recently named by Bush as White House counsel, replacing Harriet Miers; and Kenneth Starr, former Whitewater prosecutor investigating President Clinton, and the company's current counsel of record. Blackwater has not formally debated the specific allegations in the suit, but what has emerged in its court filings is a series of legal arguments intended to bolster Blackwater's contention that it is essentially above the law. Blackwater claims that if US courts allow the company to be sued for wrongful death, that could threaten the nation's war-fighting capacity: "Nothing could be more destructive of the all-volunteer, Total Force concept underlying U.S. military manpower doctrine than to expose the private components to the tort liability systems of fifty states, transported overseas to foreign battlefields," the company argued in legal papers. In February Blackwater suffered a major defeat when the Supreme Court declined its appeal to hear the Falluja case, paving the way for the state trial--where there would be no cap on damages a jury could award--to proceed.

Congress is beginning to take an interest in this potentially groundbreaking case. On February 7 Representative Henry Waxman chaired hearings of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. While the hearings were billed as looking at US reliance on military contractors, they largely focused on Blackwater and the Falluja incident. For the first time, Blackwater was forced to share a venue with the families of the men killed at Falluja. "Private contractors like Blackwater work outside the scope of the military's chain of command and can literally do whatever they please without any liability or accountability from the US government," Katy Helvenston, whose son Scott was one of the Blackwater contractors killed, told the committee. "Therefore, Blackwater can continue accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money from the government without having to answer a single question about its security operators."

Citing the pending litigation, Blackwater's general counsel, Andrew Howell, declined to respond to many of the charges levied against his company by the families and asked several times for the committee to go into closed session. "The men who went on the mission on March 31, each had their weapons and they had sufficient ammunition," Howell told the committee, adding that the men were in "appropriate" vehicles. That was sharply disputed by the men's families, who allege that in order to save $1.5 million Blackwater did not provide the four with armored vehicles. "Once the men signed on with Blackwater and were flown to the Middle East, Blackwater treated them as fungible commodities," Helvenston told lawmakers in her emotional testimony, delivered on behalf of all four families.

The issue that put this case on Waxman's radar was the labyrinth of subcontracts underpinning the Falluja mission. Since November 2004 Waxman has been trying to pin down who the Blackwater men were ultimately working for the day of the ambush. "For over eighteen months, the Defense Department wouldn't even respond to my inquiry," says Waxman. "When it finally replied last July, it didn't even supply the breakdown I requested. In fact, it denied that private security contractors did any work at all under the [Pentagon's contracting program]. We now know that isn't true." Waxman's struggle to follow the money on this one contract involving powerful war contractors like KBR provides a graphic illustration of the secretive nature of the whole war contracting industry.

What is not in dispute regarding the Falluja incident is that Blackwater was working with a Kuwaiti business called Regency under a contract with the world's largest food services company, Eurest Support Services. ESS is a subcontractor for KBR and another giant war contractor, Fluor, in Iraq under the Pentagon's LOGCAP contracting program. One contract covering Blackwater's Falluja mission indicated the mission was ultimately a subcontract with KBR. Last summer KBR denied this. Then ESS wrote Waxman to say the mission was conducted under Fluor's contract with ESS. Fluor denied that, and the Pentagon told Waxman it didn't know which company the mission was ultimately linked to. Waxman alleged that Blackwater and the other subcontractors were "adding significant markups" to their subcontracts for the same security services that Waxman believes were then charged to US taxpayers. "It's remarkable that the world of contractors and subcontractors is so murky that we can't even get to the bottom of this, let alone calculate how many millions of dollars taxpayers lose in each step of the subcontracting process," says Waxman.

While it appeared for much of the February 7 hearing that the contract's provenance would remain obscure, that changed when, at the end of the hearing, the Pentagon revealed that the original contractor was, in fact, KBR. In violation of military policy against LOGCAP contractors' using private forces for security instead of US troops, KBR had entered into a subcontract with ESS that was protected by Blackwater; those costs were allegedly passed on to US taxpayers to the tune of $19.6 million. Blackwater said it billed ESS $2.3 million for its services, meaning a markup of more than $17 million was ultimately passed on to the government. Three weeks after the hearing, KBR told shareholders it may be forced to repay up to $400 million to the government as a result of an ongoing Army investigation.

It took more than two years for Waxman to get an answer to a simple question: Whom were US taxpayers paying for services? But, as the Falluja lawsuit shows, it is not just money at issue. It is human life.

A Killing on Christmas Eve

While much of the publicity Blackwater has received stems from Falluja, another, more recent incident is attracting new scrutiny. On Christmas Eve inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, an American Blackwater contractor allegedly shot and killed an Iraqi bodyguard protecting a senior Iraqi official. For weeks after the shooting, unconfirmed reports circulated around the Internet that alcohol may have been involved and that the Iraqi was shot ten times in the chest. The story then went that the contractor was spirited out of Iraq before he could be prosecuted.

Media inquiries got nowhere--the US Embassy refused to confirm that it was a Blackwater contractor, and the company refused to comment.

Then the incident came up at the February 7 Congressional hearing. As the session was drawing to a close, Representative Kucinich raced back into the room with what he said was a final question. He entered a news report on the incident into the record and asked Blackwater counsel Howell if Blackwater had flown the contractor out of Iraq after the alleged shooting. "That gentleman, on the day the incident occurred, he was off duty," Howell said, in what was the first official confirmation of the incident from Blackwater. "Blackwater did bring him back to the United States."

"Is he going to be extradited back to Iraq for murder, and if not, why not?" Kucinich asked.

"Sir, I am not law enforcement. All I can say is that there's currently an investigation," Howell replied. "We are fully cooperating and supporting that investigation."

Kucinich then said, "I just want to point out that there's a question that could actually make [Blackwater's] corporate officers accessories here in helping to create a flight from justice for someone who's committed a murder."

The War on the Hill

Several bills are now making their way through Congress aimed at oversight and transparency of the private forces that have emerged as major players in the wars of the post-9/11 period. In mid-February Senators Byron Dorgan, Patrick Leahy and John Kerry introduced legislation aimed at cracking down on no-bid contracts and cronyism, providing for penalties of up to twenty years in prison and fines of up to $1 million for what they called "war profiteering." It is part of what Democrats describe as a multi-pronged approach. "I think there's a critical mass of us now who are working on it," says Congressman Price, who represents Blackwater's home state. In January Price introduced legislation that would expand the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 (MEJA) to include all contractors in a war zone, not just those working for or alongside the armed forces. Most of Blackwater's work in Iraq, for instance, is contracted by the State Department. Price indicated that the alleged Christmas Eve shooting could be a test case of sorts under his legislation. "I will be following this and I'll be calling for a full investigation," he said.

But there's at least one reason to be wary of this approach: Price's office consulted with the private military lobby as it crafted the legislation, which has the industry's strong endorsement. Perhaps that's because MEJA has been for the most part unenforced. "Even in situations when US civilian law could potentially have been applied to contractor crimes, it wasn't," observed P.W. Singer, a leading scholar on contractors. American prosecutors are already strapped for resources in their home districts--how could they be expected to conduct complex investigations in Iraq? Who will protect the investigators and prosecutors? How will they interview Iraqi victims? How could they effectively oversee 100,000 individuals spread across a dangerous war zone? "It's a good question," concedes Price. "I'm not saying that it would be a simple matter." He argues his legislation is an attempt to "put the whole contracting enterprise on a new accountable footing."

This past fall, taking a different tack--much to the dismay of the industry--Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, an Air Force reserve lawyer and former reserve judge, quietly inserted language into the 2007 Defense Authorization, which Bush signed into law, that places contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), commonly known as the court martial system. Graham implemented the change with no public debate and with almost no awareness among the broader Congress, but war contractors immediately questioned its constitutionality. Indeed, this could be a rare moment when mercenaries and civil libertarians are on the same side. Many contractors are not armed combatants; they work in food, laundry and other support services. While the argument could be made that armed contractors like those working for Blackwater should be placed under the UCMJ, Graham's change could result in a dishwasher from Nepal working for KBR being prosecuted like a US soldier. On top of all this, the military has enough trouble policing its own massive force and could scarcely be expected to monitor an additional 100,000 private personnel. Besides, many contractors in Iraq are there under the auspices of the State Department and other civilian agencies, not the military.

In an attempt to clarify these matters, Senator Barack Obama introduced comprehensive new legislation in February. It requires clear rules of engagement for armed contractors, expands MEJA and provides for the DoD to "arrest and detain" contractors suspected of crimes and then turn them over to civilian authorities for prosecution. It also requires the Justice Department to submit a comprehensive report on current investigations of contractor abuses, the number of complaints received about contractors and criminal cases opened. In a statement to The Nation, Obama said contractors are "operating with unclear lines of authority, out-of-control costs and virtually no oversight by Congress. This black hole of accountability increases the danger to our troops and American civilians serving as contractors." He said his legislation would "re-establish control over these companies," while "bringing contractors under the rule of law."

Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky, a member of the House intelligence committee, has been a leading critic of the war contracting system. Her Iraq and Afghanistan Contractor Sunshine Act, introduced in February, which bolsters Obama's, boils down to what Schakowsky sees as a long overdue fact-finding mission through the secretive contracting bureaucracy. Among other provisions, it requires the government to determine and make public the number of contractors and subcontractors (at any tier) that are employed in Iraq and Afghanistan; any host country's, international or US laws that have been broken by contractors; disciplinary actions taken against contractors; and the total number of dead and wounded contractors. Schakowsky says she has tried repeatedly over the past several years to get this information and has been stonewalled or ignored. "We're talking about billions and billions of dollars--some have estimated forty cents of every dollar [spent on the occupation] goes to these contractors, and we couldn't get any information on casualties, on deaths," says Schakowsky. "It has been virtually impossible to shine the light on this aspect of the war and so when we discuss the war, its scope, its costs, its risks, they have not been part of this whatsoever. This whole shadow force that's been operating in Iraq, we know almost nothing about. I think it keeps at arm's length from the American people what this war is all about."

While not by any means a comprehensive total of the number of contractor casualties, 770 contractor deaths and 7,761 injured in Iraq as of December 31, 2006, were confirmed by the Labor Department. But that only counts those contractors whose families applied for benefits under the government's Defense Base Act insurance. Independent analysts say the number is likely much higher. Blackwater alone has lost at least twenty-seven men in Iraq. And then there's the financial cost: Almost $4 billion in taxpayer funds have been paid for private security forces in Iraq, according to Waxman. Yet even with all these additional forces, the military is struggling to meet the demands of a White House bent on military adventurism.

A week after Donald Rumsfeld's rule at the Pentagon ended, US forces had been stretched so thin by the "war on terror" that former Secretary of State Colin Powell declared "the active Army is about broken." Rather than rethinking its foreign policies, the Administration forged ahead with plans for a troop "surge" in Iraq, and Bush floated a plan to supplement the military with a Civilian Reserve Corps in his January State of the Union address. "Such a corps would function much like our military Reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them," Bush said. The President, it seemed, was just giving a fancy new title to something the Administration has already done with its "revolution" in military affairs and unprecedented reliance on contractors. Yet while Bush's proposed surge has sparked a fierce debate in Congress and among the public, the Administration's increasing reliance on private military contractors has gone largely undebated and underreported.

"The increasing use of contractors, private forces or as some would say 'mercenaries' makes wars easier to begin and to fight--it just takes money and not the citizenry," says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has sued contractors for alleged abuses in Iraq. "To the extent a population is called upon to go to war, there is resistance, a necessary resistance to prevent wars of self-aggrandizement, foolish wars and in the case of the United States, hegemonic imperialist wars. Private forces are almost a necessity for a United States bent on retaining its declining empire."

With talk of a Civilian Reserve Corps and Blackwater promoting the idea of a privatized "contractor brigade" to work with the military, war critics in Congress are homing in on what they see as a sustained, undeclared escalation through the use of private forces. "'Surge' implies a bump that has a beginning and an end," says Schakowsky. "Having a third or a quarter of [the forces] present on the ground not even part of the debate is a very dangerous thing in our democracy, because war is the most critical thing that we do."

Indeed, contractor deaths are not counted in the total US death count, and their crimes and violations go undocumented and unpunished, further masking the true costs of the war. "When you're bringing in contractors whom the law doesn't apply to, the Geneva Conventions, common notions of morality, everything's thrown out the window," says Kucinich. "And what it means is that these private contractors are really an arm of the Administration and its policies."

Kucinich says he plans to investigate the potential involvement of private forces in so-called "black bag," "false flag" or covert operations in Iraq. "What's the difference between covert activities and so-called overt activities which you have no information about? There's no difference," he says. Kucinich also says the problems with contractors are not simply limited to oversight and transparency. "It's the privatization of war," he says. The Administration is "linking private war contractor profits with warmaking. So we're giving incentives for the contractors to lobby the Administration and the Congress to create more opportunities for profits, and those opportunities are more war. And that's why the role of private contractors should be sharply limited by Congress."

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2. INTERVENTIONS WITHOUT END?
BY

PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

"Whatever happens in Iraq, retreat from the world is not an option," wrote Financial Times columnist Philip Stephens last weekend.

Why not? Because a world map highlighting those regions where the West's vital resources are located would exactly overlap a map highlighting those regions where state power is crumbling, disease and poverty are pandemic, and violence rules.

"The implication of this is obvious," says Stephens.

"We can proudly declare ourselves isolationists, resolve to eschew 'imperialist adventures,' decry liberal interventionists such as Britain's Tony Blair, and damn the neoconservatives around U.S. President George W. Bush. But, one way or another, the West cannot avoid getting involved. On this, moral impulse and hardheaded interests are as one."

We are fated to intervene forever. "The reality of interdependence of a world shrunk by globalization cannot be wished away."

Put me down as not so sure. For if America is defeated in Iraq, as we were in Southeast Asia, who will ever again intervene in the Middle East?

As Stephens writes, Europe's "eternal role" seems to be that of the "concerned bystander" to disasters anywhere. And, revisiting the 20th century, the United States did not declare war on the Kaiser's ally Turkey in 1917, despite the Armenian massacres. Nor did we confront Stalin over genocide in the Ukraine. FDR recognized Stalin's regime as it perpetrated that holocaust. Nor did we intervene to halt Mao's slaughter and starvation of millions of Chinese.

America looked on during Pol Pot's genocide. Clinton stood aside in Rwanda. No one is calling for the 82nd Airborne to be dropped into Darfur.

No matter, says Stephens, the West cannot abide the emerging new world disorder. But, again, that begs the question: Who is going to intervene?

If Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the U.S. investment in blood and treasure, end in defeats, who does Stephens think is going to send troops to rescue imperiled "liberal democratic values"?

In his second inaugural, President Bush declared that America's national goal is now to "support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny on earth."

Are Americans still willing to support that utopian mission with blood and billions of dollars?

In a Gallup poll this year that posed the question, "Should the United States try to change a dictatorship to a democracy when it can, or should the United States stay out of other countries' affairs?" – by near five to one Americans said, "Stay out." Fifteen percent said "yes" to the Bush commitment. Sixty-nine percent said to stay out of the internal affairs of other countries.

Columnist David Broder cites a Penn, Schoen poll conducted Jan. 30 to Feb. 4. By 58 percent to 36 percent, respondents said, "It is a dangerous illusion to believe America is superior to other nations; we should not be attempting to reshape other nations in light of our values."

"By an even greater proportion – almost three to one," adds Broder, "they say the main goal of American foreign policy should be to protect the security of the United States and its allies, rather than the promotion of freedom and democracy."

By 70 percent to 27 percent, Americans agreed, "Sometimes it's better to leave a dictator in charge of a hostile country, if he is contained, rather than risk chaos that we can't control if he is brought down."

By 58 percent to 38 percent, American agreed with the statement that "if negotiating with countries that support terrorism like Iran and Syria will help protect our security interests, the U.S. should consider negotiating with them."

"Practicality trumps idealism at every turn," writes Broder.

"Idealism"? That is true only if one buys the proposition that refusing to talk to enemies and fighting unnecessary wars is idealism rather than folly. FDR and Truman talked to Stalin, Ike invited the Butcher of Budapest to Camp David, Nixon went to Beijing to talk to Mao, Reagan accepted Gorbachev's invitation to Reykjavik during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Were all these men devoid of idealism?

Stephens believes the successors to Bush and Blair will find they have no option but to intervene to prevent the new world disorder.

Perhaps. But given the rage and revulsion Americans feel at having been stampeded into Iraq and pinioned in Baghdad, unable to stop the bleeding but unwilling to walk away in defeat, the American appetite for intervention has probably been sated for a long, long time.

U.S. global hegemony is history. Like every nation, America must now choose – between what is vital and worth fighting for, and what may be "idealistic," but is not worth a war.

Not long ago, America produced 96 percent of all she consumed and was the most self-sufficient republic in history. With statesmanship and sacrifice, we can become so again. With leaders like we once had, we can chuck the empire. For what good has it done us?

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3. PUBLIC ANXIETY OVER FOREIGN POLICY NEARS 'CRISIS'

BY

JIM LOBE

Increasingly anxious about the course of U.S. foreign policy under President George W. Bush, particularly in Iraq, the country appears to be moving toward a "full-blown crisis of public confidence," according to the latest "Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy" survey designed by veteran pollster Daniel Yankelovich released here Tuesday.

Among other findings, the survey, the fourth in a semiannual series by the New York-based Public Agenda and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), found that nearly six in 10 respondents doubt the government is being honest with them about foreign policy – a 10-point increase from just six months ago.

It also found a sharp rise – from 58 percent to 67 percent of respondents – in the belief that U.S. foreign policy is "on the wrong track" and a similar increase in the percentage who "worry a lot" that the war in Iraq is leading to too many casualties.

The survey, conducted in late February and early March, also found a spectacular decline in confidence in the utility of military force to solve foreign policy challenges, such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or terrorism.

A 43-percent plurality of respondents, for example, said that attacking countries that develop WMD would enhance national security "not at all" – a 14-point jump in six months – while those who said it would enhance security "a great deal" dropped from 36 percent to 17 percent over the same period.

In dealing with Iran, in particular, 44 percent of respondents said they preferred diplomacy to establish better relations, while 28 percent opted for using economic sanctions. A mere 13 percent said Washington should either threaten (eight percent) or actually take (five percent) military actions against Tehran, while 11 percent said they thought there was no need to do anything.

"Military options are off the table," said ret. Adm. Bobby Inman, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who serves on Public Agenda's board of directors. "It's pretty striking (and) probably a reflection of overall dissatisfaction that the military option was the prime option in Iraq."

The latest edition of the CFPI, which is published by CFR's Foreign Affairs magazine, queried 1,013 randomly selected adults who were broadly representative of the national population in terms of such variables as age, region, political affiliation, education, income, race, and religion.

The Index features what it calls a "Foreign Policy Anxiety Indicator" based on respondents' answers to five key questions, including whether the world is becoming more or less dangerous to the U.S. and how the rest of the world sees the U.S.

The indicator also asks how worried respondents are about the way things are going for the U.S. in the world; how successful the U.S. is as a leader working toward a more peaceful and prosperous world; and whether they believe U.S. relations with the rest of the world are on the right or wrong track.

On a scale of 0 to 200, where 0 connotes complete confidence and 200 panic, the findings six months ago fixed the indicator at 130. At that time, Yankelovich had said that public dissatisfaction with Bush's performance in Iraq had reached a "tipping point" that signaled major political consequences. Indeed, in November's mid-term elections just a few weeks later, Democrats ousted Republicans from power in both houses of Congress.

According to the latest survey, however, the indicator has risen to 137. The increase reflected primarily the sharp rise in the number of respondents who said foreign policy is on the "wrong track" and more modest increases in those who rated Washington's contribution to a more peaceful and prosperous world either "fair" or "poor" (73 percent) and who described the world as becoming "more dangerous" (82 percent).

"The Anxiety Indicator is moving closer to the 150 mark, the 'red zone' that to me would signal a full-blown crisis of public confidence," Yankelovich said Tuesday, adding that the growing public anxiety over foreign policy is by no means confined to Iraq.

Yankelovich, who chairs Public Agenda, said unhappiness with current foreign policy is so pervasive on so many different issues that "it's almost as if the public is shaping its own foreign policy in opposition to official foreign policy."

Seven main elements of such an alternative foreign policy could be extracted from the survey's findings, he added.

First, the public, he said, clearly wants to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq short of achieving "victory" there. A total of 70 percent of respondents wanted to see the U.S. withdraw within the next 12 months, while only 27 percent favored remaining there as long as it takes to stabilize the situation, according to the survey.

Second, two-thirds of the public believe the U.S. should put greater emphasis on diplomatic and economic efforts over military efforts in pursuing its interests, particular in fighting terrorism, than it has in the past, according to the survey. Seven in 10 respondents said that the criticism that Washington has been too quick to resort to military force is at least "partly justified", while 84 percent said "initiating military force only when we have the support of our allies" was either "important" or "very important to our foreign policy.

Third, the public believes that the U.S. must do more to restore "its reputation and credibility with the rest of the world", Yankelovich said, adding that 91 percent of respondents said the image of the U.S. is critical to its national security.

Fourth, the public has become very skeptical of Washington's efforts to impose democracy on other nations. Three out of four respondents said it was something that other countries can only do on their own – a 20-point increase since the CFPI first asked the question in mid-2005. Only 23 percent said they believed the U.S. "can help other countries become democracies" – down from 38 percent in mid-2005.

Fifth, the U.S. should give top priority to stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Three out of four respondents said they considered that objective to be "very important" – the highest in a list of a dozen policy initiatives.

All of these elements – particularly the souring on the use of military force – are likely to endure beyond the Bush administration, suggested Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs. "It may well constrain not just Bush, but also future administrations for some time," he said.

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