“President Bush delivered the commencement address to the graduating class of the University of South Carolina on May 9, 2003. …Bush used the twenty-five minute address to make his case for expanded corporate globalization in the Middle East. Freedom, the president argued, would be advanced through a regionwide area in the Middle East that would adopt the same radical economic policies implemented in Iraq. …The President told the audience, ‘The Middle East presents many obstacles to the advance of freedom. And I understand this transformation will be difficult.’ He expressed his faith in the ability of free trade to overcome these obstacles and explained that the advance of freedom in the Middle East ‘is in our national interest. …Progress,’ the president emphasized, ‘will require increased trade, the engine of economic development.’ ”
– Antonia Juhasz, The Bush Agenda, Page 263