Bush promoting EU constitution.

"President George W. Bush's newfound enthusiasm for working with a 'strong and united' European Union could help the campaign to ratify the new EU constitution," reported the February 24 Financial Times of London, citing supporters of the ratification campaign.

The first stop on Mr. Bush's European tour, significantly, was Brussels, capital city of the embryonic EU mega-state, which former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev called the "new European soviet."

"I'm looking forward to meeting with the EU," the president stated during a February 18 roundtable discussion in the White House with representatives of European print media. Asked by one reporter, "What is your view of the proposed EU Constitution?" Mr. Bush replied: "You know ... we want the EU to be successful. The European Union is a significant partner in many things, particularly trade."

He also said that he is "fascinated to see how the British culture and the French culture and the sovereignty of the nations, longstanding traditional sovereignty can be integrated into the larger whole in the modern era. And progress is being made and I'm hopeful it works...." Interestingly, he referred to the EU--rather than any of its constituent nations--as "a strong partner" in the trans-Atlantic alliance with the United States.

In her February 8 speech before the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice conferred an unqualified benediction on the EU. "The agenda of U.S.-E.U. cooperation is wider than ever, and still growing, along with the European Union itself," stated Rice. "[T]he United States, above all, welcomes the growing unity of Europe."

The unspoken but crucial subtext of these remarks is the drive by the Bush administration to consolidate the nations of the Western Hemisphere into an EU-style soviet through the so-called "Free Trade Area of the Americas."