A Nobel Peace Prize for George W. Bush?

Deployment of forces for such an assault, involving around 50,000 rather than 250,000 troops, has already been going ahead.

Shipping in the Gulf is being "patrolled."

We cannot assume that American power will inevitably prevail and do so quickly. Risks are real; but Saddam has been overestimated in the past and a quick, overwhelming and, for Iraq, humiliating American victory is not unlikely.

Most people assume that this would provoke an upsurge in hatred for the Americans and more rather than less terrorism. One tyranny in Iraq would be replaced by another, not by a free and open democracy. The United States could get bogged down in Iraq for years.

The last would probably be true but the Americans might not see it as being "bogged down." Rather they might embrace the need for a gradual process towards democracy, requiring "supervision" over a period of five, perhaps ten years or more.

Meantime, United States forces would occupy one of the world's largest oil provinces.

What's more, they would be in a position to "encourage" cooperation from Kuwait and, yes, from the biggest oil producer of all, Saudi Arabia, a tottering feudal-like tyranny and coincidentally one of the most prolific producers of effective, totalitarian terrorists in recent years.

Mideast oil would thus be effectively in the hands or under the control of the United States. Any threat to United States oil supplies would be over.

OPEC would be finished or become a paper tiger. United States oil corporations could have "their interests protected" - even promoted.

There would be other bonuses. Iran which humiliated the United States after the 1979 revolution and has been troublesome ever since, would be nicely encircled by United States power to the east in Afghanistan and to the west in Iraq. The United States Navy and Air Force would rule the Persian Gulf and its approaches.

To the north, the United States position with the former territories of the Soviet Union might be less secure but ways might be found to effect pragmatic improvements even there. In Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, as the Foreign Minister of the latter recently pointed out, "The world has changed."

Already, since September the Eleventh, four of the five governments in the region, formerly part of the Soviet Union, have offered military facilities to and become military partners of the United States.