George W. Bush now has his ace of spades, but what he still covets remains as elusive as ever: the joker in the axis of evil deck, wildcard Osama bin Laden.

During his televised address yesterday, the US President did not directly refer to bin Laden, whose defiance of a superpower's manhunt has elevated the terror mastermind to near mythical status in the Islamic world, beyond pledging that the US would press forward "capture by capture, cell by cell, and victory by victory".

But the architect of this 21st-century holy war between the West, and its allies, and Islamic fundamentalism casts a large and daunting shadow across the Bush presidency and the American psyche.

"The only thing that it would take to make Christmas better for the American soldier," said George Heath, a US army spokesman at Fort Campbell, after Hussein's humiliating demise "(is) if we could find Osama bin Laden. That would be a great Christmas present."

Former CIA counter-intelligence chief Vince Cannistraro said getting bin Laden was "absolutely imperative" for the US because of the inspiration, and direction, he provided al-Qa'ida and its numerous freelance off-shoots.

Mr Cannistraro and several other analysts agreed bin Laden was public enemy number one and of much more strategic importance to the US than Hussein.

The effect of Hussein's downfall seems largely symbolic as he appears to have had no operational role, seemingly having spent his time burrowing into holes to avoid capture, as opposed to bin Laden, who continues plotting worldwide terrorism cabals.

Joseph Cirincione, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, characterised the dictator's capture as "largely irrelevant in the larger war against terrorism".

"Saddam means nothing to al-Qa'ida and all the al-Qa'ida-like forces," he said.

It is bin Laden who singlehandedly "has bedeviled American efforts on the war against terrorism", Time magazine editor-at-large Michael Elliott wrote yesterday.

"The capture of Saddam helps, but so long as bin Laden remains at large, all the power and high-tech wizardry of the American armed forces are still losing the battle that is most important in the Islamic world - the struggle to convince ordinary Muslims that those who espouse terror and oppose liberal, modern social developments are bound, eventually, to lose."

For more than two years - since the September 11 attacks - the US, with all its considerable resources, has hunted the Saudi-born millionaire. To their eternal regret, the Americans had bin Laden cornered in the Tora Bora caves of Afghanistan in late 2001 but let him slip through their hands.

Realistically, Hussein was always going to be the easier prey. Consider that 130,000 US troops were virtually on top of the longtime Iraqi strongman.

US commanders were convinced - correctly, as it eventuated - that Hussein would return to his stronghold, the region around Tikrit, north of Baghdad, where an alliance of friends and relatives would help him avoid capture. Yet, despite the efforts of thousands of US soldiers on the ground each day and the lure of a $US25million ($34 million) bounty, it still took more than eight months to catch him.

Bin Laden, by contrast, is believed to be based somewhere in remote mountains along an inhospitable 2400km stretch of border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The region is under the control of tribal warlords whose customs dictate that guests, even if fugitives, be helped. Those who are not religious zealots - to whom betraying bin Laden would be akin to betraying Islam - have so far been unmotivated by the $US25 million reward.

While getting Hussein in the end was a military operation, James Dunnigan, the author of several books about the military, said the nature of bin Laden's situation meant catching him was "more of a CIA job". "Getting bin Laden consists largely of making deals with Pashtun and Baluchi tribal chiefs, not to mention various Pakistani army and Inter Services Intelligence agency people," he said.

Interestingly, the Pentagon said yesterday it would not rush back to Afghanistan the 600 specialised troops - from linguists to commandos and CIA paramilitary units - pulled from the hunt for bin Laden earlier this year and redirected to Iraq. That could be because the US expects Iraq, with or without Hussein's loyalist Baathists, to become perhaps the primary battleground in the war on terrorism.

They are not alone. Newsweek magazine reported last week that bin Laden had personally ordered that fighters and funds be diverted to Iraq from the Taliban resistance in Afghanistan. Evidence, if any was needed, that the joker remains wild.

Without the capacity to inspire terror tyrants fail. The pictures of an old, dishevelled Saddam Hussein the Iraqi people have now seen mean they will never fear him again. For dictators, image is everything.

From Hitler on, totalitarian rulers have obsessively managed the way they are presented on film and and in photographs. And when they lose power over the way they are presented to their subjects, they are doomed. The Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu and his partner in tyranny, wife Elena, were captured on video before being executed in the popular uprising that destroyed their regime in 1989. They were elderly and unremarkable. The drug-running Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega looked nothing like those of an invincible leader after he was toppled by the United States. The people of Iraq have now seen Hussein stripped of his swagger. He has betrayed the image of his own invincibility, an image he killed hundreds of thousands to maintain.

His capture is the best news the people of Iraq have had for 30 years. For as long as Hussein was free many Iraqis feared he might re-emerge when the allied occupation forces left. It was a fear with a frightening precedent. At the end of the first Gulf War, the Shi'ite Muslims in the south of Iraq and the Kurds in the north thought Hussein was defeated and rebelled against his regime. But the dictator was let off the hook when the allies liberated Kuwait only to leave his regime intact - and the rebels paid the price in the slaughter that followed as Hussein re-established his writ across Iraq. Now there is no doubt he is gone for good, and the jubilation of the Iraqi people since news of his capture demonstrates they know it. This is the end of as loathsome a regime as any of the past century. Through all his years in power, Hussein used violence not as a last resort but as his preferred political style. He waged war against all Iraqis who stood in his way, using chemical weapons against the Kurds in the country's north. In the south he killed up to 60,000 Shi'ites following the 1991 insurrection, and would have killed more but for the creation of a military exclusion zone enforced by the British and Americans. Hussein relocated hundreds of thousands of people by force and created more than 3 million refugees who fled Iraq under his rule. And even in Baghdad, where his writ was never challenged, he used execution as a routine measure of social control, with more than 60,000 political murders, according to the results of a survey published last week.

For close to a quarter of a century, Hussein enforced his rule through bribery and blackmail, building a vast police state, which operated on the Hitler principle - the only law was the leader's command. Iraq was as thoroughly a totalitarian state as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. The media and universities were controlled by the regime. There was neither freedom of assembly nor movement for all but Baath party loyalists, and Hussein and his cronies ran Iraq as a kleptocracy, beggaring the people of the oil-rich nation. There was never the possibility of a free election. And as with all dictators he took no advice except from sycophants. The result was a regime as incompetent as it was evil. Hussein's military adventurism beggared the country. The eight-year war he waged against Iran in the 1980s killed 375,000 Iraqi soldiers to no good effect. His invasion of Kuwait in 1990 led to a comprehensive defeat by the US-led coalition. And Hussein allowed his people to suffer under UN sanctions and, this year, invasion, because he refused to abandon his murderous fascination with weapons of mass destruction.

But Hussein's doom was assured from the moment he lost his malignant power to instil fear among ordinary Iraqis. And now he is gone the way of all dictators whose luck turns and who lack the luck or courage to die fighting. Hussein's capture will not mean the immediate end of the violence in Iraq. Terrorists from around the Muslim world have made it their country of choice to fight against democracy. There are 2million members of the Baath party who have lost their privileges and fear retribution from the Iraqis they persecuted. But for all but the most deluded or desperate it is now clear Hussein's dictatorship is consigned to the dustbin of history. Hussein's capture, rather than the toppling of his statue in Baghdad last April, signifies the real achievement of the US and its allies in the war to end his evil regime. One of the world's most brutal totalitarian governments is at an end, and the future belongs to all the people of Iraq rather than a dictator and his henchmen. The reconstruction of Iraq is far from complete, but with his capture Hussein is completely discredited for all Iraqis to see. The main objective of the coalition of the willing - to defeat a tyrant who was addicted to weapons of mass destruction whatever the cost to his own people - is accomplished

The United States achieved its most important military objective in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad when it captured Saddam Hussein. President Bush rightly claimed yesterday that it was a critical milestone toward the reconstruction of Iraq. The image of Mr. Hussein, bedraggled and bearded, being humbled before Iraqi leaders, some of whom had survived his torture chambers, was a tonic of relief. One indisputable fact in the bloody and divisive saga of Iraq is that this man ranked with the world's most vicious dictators. His crimes are monstrous. Hundreds of thousands of his people were murdered or tortured at his order and some may have been brutalized by his own hands.

We hope that his arrest will reduce organized violence against American troops, although Mr. Bush himself was careful to say yesterday that hostilities are not over. We do not know how involved Mr. Hussein was in these attacks against American and allied occupation forces, or against Iraqis who cooperated with them. But the dictator's capture should offer Iraqis some relief from the lingering fear that somehow he might return to power and exact revenge on those who cooperated with the United States.

Though the Hussein regime ended with the fall of Baghdad on April 9, many frustrating puzzles remain. These include the question of what happened to Iraq's unconventional weapons programs in recent years and what was going on in that shadowed regime in the last weeks before the war, when the Iraqi leader seemed reluctant to take steps that might have stayed the president's hand.

It would be good if some of those questions could now be resolved. And it is critical that the dictator be given a fair and open trial to exact justice for his crimes, to give some solace to the people he terrorized and to give pause to other despots. The trial must be above any suspicion that it is merely an exercise in retribution or propaganda. While every effort should be made to maximize Iraqi involvement, Iraq's judicial institutions are too weak to handle the case. Although last week's creation of an Iraqi war crimes tribunal was a promising step, we would suggest this trial be conducted in Iraq under United Nations auspices by international and Iraqi judges. A tribunal picked by Americans would lack legitimacy.

Mr. Hussein's capture leaves the United States facing the same profound questions about how best to create a stable and democratic government in Iraq. The capture does not diminish the need for Washington to find ways to broaden the international nature of the occupation, and to put the nation-building efforts under the United Nations. The ultimate measure of success will be an Iraq held together by consent, not force, with its resources dedicated to development, not weapons. Iraqis will then finally be free of the malign legacy of Saddam Hussein.

The latest terrorist bomb attacks have shaken Istanbul, but not Turkey's resolve to resist the demands of those behind them. Nor should they deflect the United States from its purpose in Iraq: to rebuild and strengthen it with democratic institutions and restore its independence.

The latest terrorist bomb attacks have shaken Istanbul, but not Turkey's resolve to resist the demands of those behind them. Nor should they deflect the United States from its purpose in Iraq: to rebuild and strengthen it with democratic institutions and restore its independence.

Yet, like all terrorist attacks, these have the power to shock and confuse. There is no denying their symbolic impact. For the first time since September 11, 2001, specifically British targets have been hit by terrorists apparently directed or influenced by al-Qaeda.

The attacks, a few minutes apart, struck at British Government and commercial interests, the consulate general and the offices of the British banking giant HSBC. Naturally that has caused an immediate review of security at British diplomatic missions and at the offices of the extensive British commercial interests around the world. While there has never been an al-Qaeda attack in Britain, the bombings in Istanbul create an immediate sense of vulnerability.

They are bound to have a similar effect on Australians' sense of security, not least because of the threats made in the wake of the similar car bomb attacks on two synagogues in Istanbul last Saturday. In a message from a group linked to al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of those outrages addressed "the criminal Bush and his Arab and Western hangers-on - in particular Britain, Italy, Australia and Japan" and threatened further attacks by the "cars of death".

It is possible that Thursday's attacks were precipitated by the heat Turkish police have applied in their search for the perpetrators of the synagogue attacks. More likely, Thursday's attacks were timed to coincide with the state visit of the US President, George Bush, to London.

At a joint press conference with Mr Bush, the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said: "What this latest outrage shows us is that this is war. Its main battleground is in Iraq." That is true, especially in the sense that it is vital - if the United States and its allies are to defeat the terrorists by example - to show that a modern, democratic and free Iraq is possible.

Unfortunately, these attacks also show that in the so-called war on terrorism there are other battlegrounds. They are many, and are chosen by an enemy with an endless supplies of recruits, who emerge at the moment when they are ready to murder and die in the process.

Australia has tasted the horror of this kind of warfare, in Bali. Now, as then, the response is the same. The methods of terrorism are foul and the killing of innocents always inexcusable. The demands made by terrorists must never be acceded to. The threat of terrorism must be met by the utmost vigilance against all possible attacks.

At the same time, the surest answer to terrorism is the removal of the causes of the grievances and the hatreds on which it feeds. In that sense the war in Iraq - to establish a free, strong and independent country - is indeed the main battleground. Unfortunately, there are many more, and this war will be very long.

The country is Muslim and also a secular democracy, so al-Qaeda hates it.

A local radical Islamic group has claimed responsibility for the latest terrorist outrage in Istanbul, in which suicide bombings of the British consulate and a London-based bank killed at least 27 people and wounded more than 400. The attacks, like last weekend's suicide bombings of two syn_agogues in the city, which killed 23 people, bore the hallmarks of al-Qaeda and its local affiliates. This was not only because of the bombers' belief that they would find martyrdom in dying while shedding the blood of others, nor even because the choice of targets reflected alignments in the Bush Administration's war against terr_or, and in the I_sraeli-Palestinian conflict - Britain and Turkey are US allies, and Turkey is Israel's sole ally in the Islamic world. It was also because the Istanbul bombings, like the al-Qaeda attacks earlier this month in the Saud_i capital, Riyadh, are not just part of a war being waged against the West.

Al-Qaeda's founder, Osama bin Laden, has presented himself as the leader of a movement aimed at restoring st_ict Islamic practice, and, as part of that goal, overthrowing regimes deemed to have deviated from it or, worst of all, to have c_ompromised with the secular West. That makes the corrupt House of Saud an obvious t_rget; but for al-Qaeda, Turkey is a far greater one.

Bin Laden has made several speeches tracing what he believes to be the pernicious inroads of Western thought to the foundation of the modern Turkish republic in the aftermath of the First World War. Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the state, pursued a program of aggressive secularisation, and despite continuing tensions between_ mo_dernisers and Islamists, Turkey has remained faithful to his ideals. In the past 80 years it has had recurrent periods of military dictatorship, but after each period the army has always restored civilian rule and the republican institutions Ataturk devised. That history makes Turkey stand out in the Middle East, where only Israel has a record of continuous democracy.

For those who wonder w_h_ether predominantly Muslim societies can accommodate a liberal democratic ethos, Turkey is the available example. The sort of state the U_S _Administration hopes to build in Iraq already exists in Turkey, and has put down strong roots.

All of this means that Turkey, and any Islamic state that follows its example, is likely to be crucial in determining the course of the war against terror. Al-Qa_eda and similar movements will not restrict their list of targets to such countries, but if they are ultimately to be overcome it will be because other Muslims are not lured by the message they _pr_each.

There i_s l_ittle Western nations can do directly to help Turkey, other than through the police co-operation and intelligence exchanges that already take place. But the Turkish Government should be reassured that it will not be abandoned if there are further terrorist atrocities: to isolate Turkey would be to do al-Qaeda's work.

According to the neo-conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, from the end of the Cold War until the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, the United States took a 10-year "holiday from history".

On the face of it, this seems a strange way to characterise American behaviour during the decade. US military forces were more active during these years than at any time since the Vietnam War. The American economy enjoyed a sustained six-year boom, easily outperforming both the Japanese and European economies. On Washington's initiative, NATO expanded eastwards towards the Russian border. The North American Free Trade Agreement was negotiated and the World Trade Organisation established.

Given all this, what does it mean to say that the US had taken a "holiday from history"? What Krauthammer meant was that during these years, the US, having become the sole remaining superpower and an authentic global hegemony, had failed to define and activate a grand purpose or mission commensurate with that status and the opportunity it presented.

No such thing was evident during the last decade of the 20th century. True, George Bush the elder did have a shot at it. But as he himself confessed, he wasn't very good at what he called "the vision thing", and his concept of a "new world order" was stillborn.

His successor, William Jefferson Clinton, was a brilliant intuitive politician, an improviser with little taste for doctrines or vision. Clinton was a pragmatist, a compromiser, a deal-maker, a triangulator of differences. A connoisseur of opinion polls and focus groups, he knew that in the postwar period Americans consistently gave foreign policy a low priority. Clinton acted accordingly, taking a limited interest in foreign policy.

While America has enough strength to defeat all other adversaries and rivals, it remains to be seen whether she can take on and conquer Utopia.
Those who looked for a grand unifying purpose for American foreign policy were left frustrated and unhappy by Clinton's eight years in office.

In January 2001, George Bush succeeded Clinton. When a new president comes to office, especially when he is of a different party, there is a settling-in period that takes months. This process had barely finished when the terrorist attack occurred on September 11. How the Bush Administration's foreign policy would have developed in the absence of that attack, we shall never know, and what evidence we have is ambiguous.

In any case, with the attack of September 11, America's alleged "holiday from history" came to an abrupt end. In an instant the terrorists had given the country the clear purpose, the central organising principle that it had previously lacked and that some had been strenuously demanding.

One of the effects of September 11 was that it shifted the balance in favour of those in Washington's foreign policy establishment who saw things in sweeping terms - away from prudence and moderation towards conceptual boldness and an ambitious, assertive use of American power. Within a year the "war on terror" had metastasised into something much grander and more radical; something that would give full expression to one of the strongest strands in the history of the American people: the profound belief, that is, that they and their country are destined to reshape the world.

There were many in and around the Bush Administration who shared this sense of America's destiny. They now saw in September 11 not merely a disaster to be avenged but an opportunity to reawaken and redirect America to its true historic mission.

In the aftermath of September 11 those who thought in these terms came into their own. The result became fully evident with the publication a year later of a 31-page statement by the President titled The National Security Strategy of the United States of America. In my judgement, this document is without a doubt the most important statement about American foreign policy, not just since the terrorist attack, and not just since the end of the Cold War, but since the enunciation of the Truman Doctrine in 1947. For in it is spelt out how the US intends to use its hegemonic power.

What can we say about this strategic doctrine? Well, the first thing to be emphasised is its breathtaking scope, its huge ambition to do no less than to effect a transformation of the political universe - according to some of its language, to stamp out evil and war between states, to create a benign world.

Students of international politics who belong to the realist school - as I do - tend to see such goals as utopian, beyond even the reach of a country with the enormous power of the US. While America has enough strength to defeat all other adversaries and rivals, it remains to be seen whether she can take on and conquer Utopia.

Second, in emphasising and insisting upon the dominant role of the US and the assertive use of American power, the doctrine makes very questionable assumptions about what the other states will accept and live with. They are asked to take its good intentions and respect for their interests on trust. States have never been prepared to do this in the past with other would-be hegemonies.

Will the US be the exception? Does the fact that it is a democratic and liberal state make a decisive difference? Will other states accept the concept of a benign hegemony or regard it as a contradiction in terms? Indeed, do they have a choice?

The thrust and tone of the doctrine reject the advice given by most pundits on the best way to play a hegemonic role in order to prolong its duration - which is to be restrained and prudent in the use of its power, to disguise it, to strive to act as far as possible by persuasion and consensus to co-opt others. Coral Bell of the Australian National University sums up that advice by saying, "the unipolar world should be run as if it were a concert of powers" - as if, that is, it was really multipolar.

In the 1940s, when the US was already the dominant power within the Western Alliance, it acted on this advice. It went out of its way to act multilaterally, to create a network of rule-making institutions - the UN system, the IMF, the World Bank, the GATT - that allowed it to act co-operatively with others, as the first among equals. There is little of this to be found in the current doctrine, no talk of creating institutions to run the new order. The emphasis is overwhelmingly on the mission.

The Bush doctrine should be taken very seriously and any inclination to treat it as mere rhetoric would be a serious error. It has already been put into effect in Iraq. The four standout features of the doctrine were evident there: the use of American military force as the main instrument; pre-emptive action; a clear indication that the US was prepared to act without a great power consensus, and unilaterally if necessary; and the avowed intention to replace a tyrannical regime with a liberal representative government.

That is why the Iraq commitment has an importance that goes way beyond the fate of Iraq itself. If, in the end, it turns out successfully, it is likely that the mishaps that have occurred since the end of the heavy fighting will be seen as part of a learning experience, a breaking-in period for a new, revolutionary, strategic doctrine.

If, on the other hand, it fails at the first hurdle - if, that is, the US finds that bringing about security, stability, a decent political order, and an improvement in the living standards of the Iraqi people, is beyond its capacity; if the whole thing becomes a "quagmire", or, indeed, if it has to internationalise the whole project by giving the UN a pre-eminent role - then not only will there have to be a reconsideration of the whole global strategy, but the limits of America's capacity will have been made evident, and the inclination to resist it greatly strengthened.

All this is fully understood by the advocates and supporters of the policy. The editors of the influential neo-conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, for example, insist that: "The future course of American foreign policy, American world leadership, and American security is at stake. Failure in Iraq would be a devastating blow to everything the United States hopes to accomplish, and must accomplish, in the decades ahead."

As for the sceptics and critics, some of them will conclude that having committed itself so far, the US now has no option but to go on and see it through - an argument that prevailed for a long time during the Vietnam War.

Others will argue that even at this late stage, it is preferable to cut one's losses than to proceed further with a deeply flawed policy, citing the old saw, "If you're in a hole, stop digging".