"And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country — your enemy is ruling your country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation."

The president's speech-writers should get a bonus for such stirring prose. There was only one problem.

The brave and oppressed people of Iraq were not listening.

The thing about being oppressed is no matter how brave you might be, when it comes to radio and television, you're only going to see and hear what the oppressors allow. The speech was nowhere to be found on Baghdad radio dials or TV screens.

There is no little irony that on the very day Iraqis weren't listening to Bush, the only democracy in all the Middle East was having an election.

Not an election like the recent one in Iraq when everybody — from university professors to village idiots all over the country — unanimously "voted" for Saddam Hussein.

No, Israel's election was open, spirited, rancorous and as legitimate as any we hold in our country — and much more honest than any voting in Florida. For all their problems with terrorism and scandals, nearly 70 percent of the eligible Israelis (we're lucky if we get 50 percent in the United States) showed up to vote.

I was thinking about Israel as I watched the Bush administration knocking itself out trying to get our European "allies" to support the pending invasion of Iraq.

France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Finland are against the war. Spain, Italy and Portugal support invading Iraq but are basically only going to be cheering from the sidelines.

That just leaves loyal England fighting alongside our troops.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could ask the Israelis to pitch in? After all, they are ready, willing and able with one of the world's best armies, probably the finest fighter pilots on the planet, incredible military intelligence ... and they're even in the neighborhood.

Of course, it will never happen because all of our "friends" in Arab (read: oil-producing) countries would go ballistic, perhaps literally.

Still, having an ally that could kick the hell out of Iraq all by itself is an intriguing thought. Remember also, Saddam Hussein would almost certainly have atom bombs right now had it not been for Israel's courageous air strike that destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981.

The Israelis had been warning the world about Saddam for years, but the world didn't listen until he invaded Kuwait, precipitating the Gulf War.

During that conflict, Saddam sent 39 Scud missiles into Israel. The Jewish state — always fiercely proud of fighting its own battles — refrained from retaliating in order to keep our anti-Iraq coalition together.

Of course, since we were smacking its enemy around, it was in Israel's best interests to do nothing to prevent us from continuing. Still, there's little doubt that if Saddam tries it again, Israel will respond forcefully.

In the meantime, we are certainly cooperating with the Israelis and their crack intelligence agency, the Mossad, to prepare for the next war with Iraq. If the past is prologue, Israeli intelligence will be extremely valuable.

During the 1967 Six-Day War, seemingly hopelessly outnumbered by the combined might of Egypt, Syria and Jordan backed by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Sudan, Algeria and — oh yes — Iraq, Israel won a stunning victory.

Its intelligence service did such a magnificent job that within minutes of the start of the war, the Arab air forces were annihilated, with most of the planes destroyed while still on the ground.

My favorite episode, as detailed in Stewart Steven's revealing 1980 book, "The Spy-Masters of Israel," concerned a large Egyptian tank formation in the Sinai desert that got lost and out of contact with its headquarters.

The Israelis understood the situation before the Egyptian commanders did, so "with a dossier of the tank formation before him," wrote Steven, "an Israeli controller told the commander to change radio frequencies and put the tanks under his wings. For the whole of the war, like robots these tanks moved backward and forward in the Sinai under Israeli control, always well away from the fighting and from any Israelis."

Steven writes that after the quick war, the Israeli controller initially resisted his superiors' orders to direct the tank unit to surrender at the nearest prisoner of war camp. It seems the guy had grown fond of his own, personal Egyptian tank formation.

However, he came around when told that the Egyptians wouldn't be held prisoner for long, and besides, Israel wanted the tanks.

Too bad world politics will keep the Israelis out of the impending fight. They would be very handy fellows to have in our foxhole.

Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607) 441-7208.