Duhbya Bush went into office by receiving 17.5 per cent of the vote of Americans. A case can be made he was handed the vote by the Supreme court. This is yesterday's news however.

The relevance is to stress that Bush has NO mandate to dictate policy to the rest of the world.

The US had the moral highgrounds to find and take action against those bringing terror and destruction on 9-11. The entire nation united behind Bush in this limited cause.

We did not elect Bush king of the world. For Bush to tell Israel "withddraw without delay" today was an example of an arrogance that is unsupportable and without precedent.

There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation in history. Palestinians never had a nation and have no legitimacy for the re-establishment of a "nation" in the so-called Palestinian homeland.

Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire until it became a possession of the British Empire by virtue of conquest. When the Brits gave part of the mandate to Israel in 1947 it established a legitimacy to Israel--not Palestine.

For Bush to force his will on a soverign nation and flat tell Israel to withdraw without delay could be interpreted as an act of war. It won't of course, and Israel will eventually withdraw because they know they can't continue to exist without US support.

This just shows that extortion works and if a crook has oil Bush will roll over and give way to blackmail for himself and others.

Publius