“A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom to other nations of the region,” declared President Bush in a recent speech, adding that rebuilding Iraq will require “a sustained commitment from many nations, including our own.”

So there you have it. If Bush’s promise is delivered, Iraq will become a shining example of democracy and stability in the Middle East.

And if all goes as planned, oppressed citizens of other oil-rich misfit countries in the region will be lining up to have liberation bestowed upon them as well.

Yet I get the nagging suspicion that our president’s words amount to no more than a bald-faced lie.

It’s a good bet that this promise, like so many others broken by the Bush administration, will soon amount to literally nothing.

After grandiose talk following the Afghan war, Bush’s 2003 budget request did not include one red cent in aid to Afghanistan (an embarrassed Congress, however, quickly allocated $300 million). Now that the pain and suffering often caused largely by American bombers escapes the administration’s memory, we flash forward to Iraq.

To solve a potential humanitarian catastrophe in the war’s aftermath, the White House predicted a laughable two-year rebuilding process. In addition, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer is downplaying the rebuilding efforts already, hinting that Iraq could pay for much of its own reconstruction.

This is the recipe for democracy that Bush is bestowing upon the lucky people of Iraq, along with 3,000 bombs and missiles that General Tommy Franks proposes to “shock” Iraq with in the first 48 hours of the conflict. Call it “shock” therapy.

At the same time, the mainstream press continues to sanitize the methods we’ll use to “save” this beleaguered patient. Judging by recent wars in Afghanistan and Kosovo, there exists the strong possibility that Franks’ initial “shock” will consist of weapons with “capabilities to inflict mass casualties and destruction,” to use the State Department’s partial definition of weapons of mass destruction.

For instance, America’s widely criticized cluster bombs explode into miniature “bomblets,” of which five percent remain unexploded “duds” which detonate when stepped on.

As a result, 127 Afghan civilians have been killed by these since that war, most of them children, according to the Boston Globe. Thousands of these “bomblets” remain and have killed hundreds of people in Iraq, Kosovo and Vietnam.

These and other weapons, including “smart bombs,” destroyed such civilian targets as power plants, television stations and hospitals in previous bombing operations.

Though these don’t meet the state department’s second criteria for weapons of mass destruction-that they be “chemical, biological or nuclear in nature”- innocent people are going to be just as dead whether they are blown to bits by conventional explosives or gassed.

Still, some argue that the use of radioactive depleted uranium bombs and shells may qualify, since it has been linked to increased cancer and sickness rates.

Also, there is Bush’s ominous ambition to indoctrinate tactical nukes into conventional warfare.

These are just a few examples of our so-called “light show” weaponry, which will inflict mass carnage upon civilian populations with little understanding of the politics behind this war. Yet I suspect the thousands of mothers who are likely to lose their children at Bush’s whim couldn’t care less about his vainglorious promise of democracy.

The aim here is not to point the finger at the military or the Bush administration for the irony of using de-facto weapons of mass destruction in the name of disarmament, but to pose a question: Given the shaky assumption that the administration really will establish a model democracy in Iraq, is it possible that we’re applying a tremendous shock with no therapy?

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