The Bush administration is being criticized for not having an exit strategy to get out of Iraq after last year's invasion but the truth is it never intended to leave, said a retired University of Regina history professor in Weyburn Thursday.

Dr. Ray Cleveland said the Iraqi invasion is part of a grandiose plan adopted long before the events of September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center in New York was destroyed by suicide attacks and the Pentagon was bombed.

American deaths on 9/11 were not the motivation to invade Iraq and neither was the invasion carried out for the Iraqi people, he said.

The information session was sponsored by the Weyburn Public Library.

In an interview before the lecture, Cleveland said the invasion is part of a plan devised by vice-president Richard Cheney as long as 10 years ago to control the Middle East through friendly governments.

The point is to rid the world of any rival for power that threatens American interests, those interests being natural gas and oil and maybe defence manufacturers, he said. A new oil pipeline between Iraq and Israel, for Israel and for export, is one of the possible developments, he said.

The administration and its military strategists in the Pentagon planned on permanent U.S. bases being set up in Iraq, he said.

"If the Bush administration had aimed at preventing further attacks on U.S. and its citizens, it would not have invaded Iraq," said Cleveland. More attacks will come as a result of the invasion just as they did after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, he said.

"The rhetoric the Bush people use (about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) is a camouflage for their real motives," he said.

It's also why people are confused about higher oil prices now after they being fed the line that an Iraqi invasion would stabilize the Middle East and keep prices low.

Cleveland points to Bush's former national security advisor, Richard Clarke, who also said in his recently published book that the invasion of Iraq creates more anti-American terrorism in the Middle East, not less.

Even some conservatives like Pat Buchanan are questioning the whole scheme because of the large cost of building an empire, said Cleveland.

But, "If (George W.) Bush can convince voters the plan is working, he can be re-elected," said Cleveland.

The upshot is that the fate of the world rests on the shoulders of American voters in this fall's presidential election, without the kind of wide-ranging discussion about the issue that Canadians enjoy, he said.

Cleveland is an American citizen who taught at the U of R from 1966 to 1994. He said, like many Americans, he is grateful that former Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien refused to join the invasion of Iraq.