critics :The US is sliding towards war with the world of Islam

Roger Hardy BBC Middle East analyst

As Iraq becomes a hotter political issue in the United States, President Bush finds himself under new pressure over his handling of a range of foreign policy issues, including the "war on terror".

Some in Washington are even speaking of a crisis of American leadership in the world.

Polls suggest a majority of Americans believe the US has lost its direction

The two authors contend that, since the attacks of 9/11, the policies of the Bush administration have prolonged the "global insurgency" - as many now call the worldwide threat of radical Islamism - rather than curtailing it.

The recent hotel bombings in Jordan, which killed over 50 people, showed in their view, that Iraq is now the central arena of the global jihad - and that the poison is spreading to Iraq's neighbours.

The US is sliding towards a war with the world of Islam Zbigniew Brzezinski, former US national security adviser

Both, incidentally, worked on counter-terrorism under George Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton.

Washington bookshops are full of new critiques of the administration's policy on Iraq, several of them by former insiders.

Leadership crisis

In a recent speech, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser in the late 1970s, spoke of a crisis of American leadership.

He believes the US is "sliding towards a war with the world of Islam".

In Iraq, he argues, it was necessary to re-define success, since the original goal of creating a stable, secular democracy there was no longer a realistic option.

Iraq's insurgency shows no sign of diminishing

Mr Brzezinski was speaking in Washington on the eve of a conference, bringing together Middle East experts from both the US and the region itself, which echoed and amplified these themes.

Referring to the damage done to the US's image by allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, a senior intelligence expert, Frank Anderson, lamented that the US enjoyed much less worldwide legitimacy today than it had during the Cold War.

Another ex-CIA man, Michael Scheuer, said the claim that al-Qaeda was dead was wishful thinking.