`The coalition of the hopeful' banking on success for Bush

A small group of Latin American countries, which we may call the coalition of the hopeful, expects to reap major rewards for supporting the U.S.-led war on Iraq.

Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama hope to emerge as President Bush's new ''best friends'' in the region. They deny any offer of paybacks, but they expect that their decision will create a climate of goodwill with the United States and produce concrete benefits.

In most of Latin America, where polls show an overwhelming majority of the population opposes the war, the leaders who supported Bush are dismissed as U.S. lackeys. In America, critics call them the ``coalition of the billing.''

But the way the coalition members see it, the big nations that opposed the war -- Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela, among others -- will end up on the wrong side of history, much where some of them found themselves during World War II, or when President Jimmy Carter launched his human rights campaign.

Most of the pro-Bush countries say that, as current or past victims of terrorism themselves, they had no choice but to support the U.S.-led war effort. Some of their officials say privately that the countries opposing the war are failing to uphold the principle of self-defense and betraying their national interests. They risk becoming irrelevant in the post-Iraq war world, they say.

They are also crossing their fingers that coalition forces will find credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that world public opinion will become appalled when Iraqi reports of Hussein's atrocities come to the surface.

Once the truth comes out, they believe, France and Germany will try to find an accommodation with Bush, and Canada will drop its previous opposition to the war. Already Canadian Deputy Prime Minister John Manley has said that ``there should be no mistake in the sympathy that we have for the ultimate success of the coalition forces.''

Then, one pro-Bush Latin American official says, the countries that have been most vocal in their opposition to the war will find that they have hurt the well-being of millions of their citizens, whose livelihoods depend on trade and investment from the United States, Spain, Italy, Japan and other countries that have supported the war.

Is the coalition of the hopeful trying to inject some logic into what critics call checkbook diplomacy? Are they trying to retaliate against those who accuse them of being U.S. puppets?

Probably. As someone who has written that Bush should not have launched the war before getting support from a nine-member U.N. Security Council majority, I find it hard to criticize some of the bigger Latin American countries that were pressing for a U.N.-sanctioned military offensive. Had Bush supported Canadian and British-proposed resolutions giving Iraq an extra three week ultimatum, world public opinion would most likely be talking about Hussein's noncompliance, instead of Bush's ``aggression.''

But the coalition of the hopeful is right about one thing: Its members will replace Mexico and Chile as Bush's new ''best friends'' in the region. According to a quote attributed to Bush among Latin American ambassadors in Washington, the president said recently that, ``From now on, it's going to be our friends, and the others.''

Bush is already moving in that direction. Bush waited four days before answering a call in March from Mexican President Vicente Fox, who once enjoyed instant access. Bush also ''decoupled'' a bill that would have asked Congress to simultaneously approve free-trade agreements with Chile and Singapore. Now, the two bills will go separately to Congress, in effect allowing U.S. legislators to vote against Chile.

Simultaneously, Bush plans to meet with five Central American presidents in Washington on April 10 and is expected to announce a free-trade agreement with them later this year. Bush has also invited Colombian President Alvaro Uribe for a White House visit on May 2, after announcing last week that Colombia will get a $105 million slice from Bush's $74 billion Iraq war spending package.

My conclusion: If Bush proves he was right about Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, remains popular and wins the 2004 election, the coalition of the hopeful will have six years of unprecedented access to the White House.

But if Bush is thrown out of office, they will merely enjoy a brief -- although passionate -- honeymoon, until the next Democratic president decides to rebuild bridges with the region's bigger countries.

The Secret War*** We are in for some shocks as we learn of unsuspected betrayals. But the states of the region will be in for much greater surprises in the coming years.

It has been noted that the French and Russians did not want this war because they knew we would learn how they cheated on U.N. sanctions against Iraq. But the treasure trove of information we will collect on the Arab world and other Islamic states will be much more important. It will enable us to see into previously opaque issues and to squeeze many a corrupt leader who believed he was safe from external scrutiny.

The Iraqi archives will be a mother lode of information for scholars. But there is much we will choose to keep under lock and key for strategic purposes. The psychological effects of our access to those archives and to former regime officials anxious to tell all will be even greater than the practical information we accumulate.

No Arab leader will know what was or wasn't in those files. Each will have to fear the worst. President-for-life X will always have to wonder what we know as we sit across the negotiating table.

Our immediate goal will be to help the Iraqi people build the first rule-of-law democracy in the Middle East. That will bring its own rewards. But the long-term dividends we will reap from our secret war will keep paying off for decades.

The destruction of Saddam's regime will result in the greatest intelligence coup in history. ***

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For those who oppose the liberation of Iraq, the question should be, "What did Saddam have on you?"

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