CAIRO, August 10 (IslamOnline.net) - The U.S. has repeatedly purported that toppling the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein serves as the springboard for spreading democracy in the Middle East, triggering a hot debate between Mideast experts themselves.

While some analysts see as "stupid" the U.S. tireless bids to press for its version of democracy, others on the contrary countered that it was in the interest of Arabs to cooperate with the U.S. in its capacity as the world's sole superpower.

"The U.S administration's incomprehensive ignorance of the Mideast political landscape have pulled its legs into the Iraqi quagmire," said Dr. Wahid Abdul Maguid, the deputy director of the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS).

Speaking to IslamOnline.net, Abdul Maguid said that the U.S. President George Bush administration has made "a record failure" in the history of successive U.S. administrations.

"None of its members are specialized in the Middle East affairs," he said, noting that the current U.S. administration failed to represent itself as a democratic model for Arab countries.

"On the contrary, it divulged a horrific example of anarchy that forced it at the end of the day to seek support from other countries," he added.

On Thursday, August 7, U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice pledged to spread democracy to the Middle East, promising to move beyond the recent focus on Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an ambitious but vaguely defined project to transform a troubled region.

In an address entitled "Security Challenge and the Moral Mission of our Time," Rice told a gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists in Dallas that the United States and its allies must make a "generational commitment" to Middle Easterners.

"It (the Middle East) is a region suffering from what leading Arab intellectuals call a political and economic freedom deficit," Rice charged.

"And it is a region where hopelessness provides a fertile ground for ideologies that convince promising youths to aspire not to a university education, a career or family, but to blowing themselves up, taking as many innocent lives with them as possible. We need to address the source of the problem."

She said "patience and perseverance" will be required, and the long-range U.S. commitment would not be primarily military, but diplomatic, economic and cultural.

Rice also claimed that "Saddam Hussein's removal will provide new opportunities for a better Middle East."

"Now that that regime is gone, the people of Iraq are more free, and people everywhere need no longer to fear his weapons, his aggression and his cruelty," she alleged.

On the other extreme, Foad Makhzoumi, a member of the U.S. Council for Foreign Relations, said it is in the interest of Arab countries to fully cooperate with the United States, the world's sole superpower, rather than "leaving it a prey for the Zionist lobby."

"It is stupid not to cooperate with the world's largest economic country and hold a short-sighted vision," Makhzoumi told IOL.

"The Bush administration has thus far achieved its goals in Iraq by toppling Saddam Hussein," he said, adding that the U.S. was now creating a new reality in the Middle East, which cost it dearly.

"It will not come out of nothing," he contended. "The U.S. policy is not stumbling, but it derives lessons from its daily experience in Iraq."

He also said that the U.S. at the very beginning rebuffed the idea of establishing an Iraqi governing council, but eventually approved the council.

"The reality there force the U.S. to adopt a step-by-step approach," he said.

Meanwhile, well-placed sources told IOL that the U.S. had sent last week a special team in a regional tour that took them to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria.