CHANGING THE GLOBAL RULES. (cover story)

UNITED States; IRAQ

Even before the war machines thundered into action in Iraq, a process of regime change on a global scale -- the shifting and fracturing and overthrow of the accepted world order -- had been underway for months. The United Nations (UN) failed to act against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad, U.S. leaders charged, but America wouldn't. Former Saudi oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani points to the Bush administration's musings about privatizing Iraq's oil industry as proof that the gift of American-style democracy will cost Iraqis a good share of control over their most valuable raw resource. In Washington, D.C., the White House claimed the road map put a clear, attainable peace in sight. Yet when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon launched a pre-emptive strike against the U.S. peace plan, by insisting that references to Palestinian independence be struck from the text, U.S. President George W. Bush and his team did nothing to rebuke Sharon and instead focussed on Baghdad.