LONDON, January 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Washington is mad to pursue a policy of military action against Iraq which is not an immediate threat to the Middle East let alone to the United States, leading British novelist John Le Carre wrote in a daily newspaper Wednesday, January 15.

"America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War," Le Carre wrote in the Times daily.

"What is at stake is not an 'axis of evil' but oil, money and peoples lives. Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world," wrote Le Carre, novelist and spy expert, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

Last year U.S. President George W. Bush said Iraq, Iran and North Korea represented an "axis of evil."

A piece of Iraq’s oil cake

Bush wants Iraq's oil "and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake," the Times article said.

"If Saddam didn’t have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his hearts content. Other leaders do it every day," wrote the author, citing Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, Syria and Egypt.

"Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbors, and none to the U.S. or Britain. Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, if he is still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes notice."

"What is at stake," Le Carre wrote, "is Americas need to demonstrate its military power to all of us -- to Europe and Russia and China.

As for Britain "the most charitable interpretation of (Prime Minister) Tony Blair’s part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it," the article said, referring to U.S. policy on Iraq.

"He can’t," Le Carre concluded. "Instead, he gave it a phony legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can’t get out."

Blair is Bush's strongest ally on his plans to attack Iraq. But he faces vigorous skepticism among Britons as to whether a military showdown with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is necessary or justified.

The bishops of the Church of England -- the biggest Christian denomination in Britain -- Wednesday expressed their strongest criticism yet of Blair's policy on Iraq.