If you're skeptical that the United States can turn Iraq into a democracy, President Bush suggests you consider the U.S. track record.

"There was a time when many said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable of sustaining democratic values," Bush said, but the United States turned those totalitarian aggressors into durable democracies, and it will prove the doubters wrong again in Iraq.

But other less-discussed precedents lead some critics to the opposite conclusion.

In at least four countries the United States engineered or backed the overthrow of elected leaders and their replacement by dictators.

"The historical record, perhaps with the exception of Japan and Germany, doesn't give one much confidence in the sincerity of the U.S. commitment when it says it is going to bring democracy, especially in the Third World said political scientist Ido Oren of Florida University, author of the 2002 book "Our Enemies and US."

Oren predicts that the United States will devise a system for Iraq that permits some kind of elections but will be rigged to produce a pro-U.S. government.

Others defend the U.S. track record, arguing that the critics overlook many U.S. successes in exporting democracy.

Another reading of U.S. pro-democracy efforts — from two centuries of uninterrupted democracy at home to its role in defeating fascism and communism — persuades Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute that "the United States has been the main engine of the spreading of democracy in the world."

The critics' case

The critics argue that the overriding motive for U.S. interventions abroad has been implanting or maintaining governments friendly to U.S. economic and geostrategic interests, whether they were democracies, dictatorships or monarchies.

The cases where the United States overthrew democracies look even worse in the aftermaths' the critics say. These are the cases they cite:

• In 1953, the CIA helped overthrow Muhammad Mussadegh, the elected prime minister of Iran; he was replaced by the Shah.

• In 1954, the CIA organized the ouster of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, and his replacement by a military dictator.

• In 1960, the CIA helped undermine Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, the only legitimately elected leader in Congolese history. He was killed the following year. The corrupt and brutal dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko dominated Congo (which he renamed Zaire) for decades.

• In 1973, the CIA conspired against Chilean President Salvador Allende, who committed suicide after being overthrown by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

  The coups overthrew leftist but non-communist governments that represented a threat to U.S. economic interests, the critics say. For example, Mussadegh had just nationalized Iran's oil. Arbenz had pushed through a law allowing the Guatemalan government to buy and redistribute land from major landowners — such as U.S.-based United Fruit Co. — whether or not the landowners wanted to sell.

In all four cases, the dictatorships received years of U.S. military or economic aid.

These cases are not exceptions, the critics argue. The United States befriended dictatorships on every continent before, during and after the Cold War. Even in Iraq itself, Saddam Hussein received U.S. aid during the 1980s. Saudi Arabia, a theocratic feudal monarchy with no pretense to democracy, has been a U.S. ally continuously since 1945.

Furthermore, the list of cases other than Germany and Japan in which a U.S. occupation led to the creation of new democracy is short, the critics say. A recent study of 16 U.S. military "nation-building" operations in the 20th century concluded that only four of the nations U.S. troops occupied — Japan, Germany, Panama and Grenada — were functioning democracies 10 years after the occupation. But in every case, the United States left behind a pro-U.S. government.

Minxin Pei of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, author of the study, said presidents use democracy to justify interventions "because the American people have this Wilsonian idealism" that makes them reluctant to support military missions unless they have a high moral purpose.

But in most cases involving U.S. intervention, democratization was subordinated to a more self-serving goal such as securing U.S. control of a strategic location or resource, Pei said. That pattern makes him skeptical of the depth of the Bush administration's commitment to democracy in Iraq, he said.

The pattern dates to the aftermath of the Spanish-American war, said Oren, who used to teach at the University of Minnesota. In 1898, the U.S. Navy drove the Spanish out of Cuba and the Philippines, justifying the war as a reaction to Spanish oppression of its colonies.

At the time, a Filipino pro-democracy a movement had been struggling to gain independence The freedom fighters issued declaration based on the U.S. Declaration of Independence, hoping that the United States would recognize their sovereignty, Oren said.

Instead, U.S. forces crushed the independence movement in a brutal three-year operation and annexed the Philippines as a colony. The Philippines gained independence in 1946, and the country has been governed by various pro-U.S. presidents. Ferdinand Marcos was elected in 1965 and then suspended Filipino democracy in 1971, jailed his political opponents, and ruled under martial law for 15 years without losing U.S. support.

Promoting democracy

The defenders of the U.S. record don't deny the cases cited by the critics, but see them as exceptions. "I think they were just big mistakes," Muravchik said of the CIA led coups in Iran and Guatemala. The evidence was less clear in Chile and the Congo that the coups were U.S.-sponsored, he said, while acknowledging the CIA was "mucking about" and working against the governments of Allende and Lumumba.

Just because every U.S. intervention didn't leave behind a democracy doesn't mean the United States isn't trying to promote democracy in the world, Muravchik said. The United States usually has more than one motive, he said, and enhancing national security outranks democracy-building. But that doesn't prove the critics' contention that the United States is neural or even hostile to the cause of democracy, he said.

Since becoming a major power, the United States has used diplomatic pressure, propaganda organs such as the Voice of America, as well as overt and covert interventions to promote and nurture democracy in the world, said Muravchik, author of the 1991 book "Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America's Destiny."

There are many more success stories than Germany and Japan, he said. In the post-World War II period, the United States contributed to the liberation and democratization of several other countries, such as Italy and Austria, he said. The spread of democracy across Western Europe would not have proceeded if Nazi Germany had won the war, or if the United States had left the Soviet Union unchallenged in the post-war era, he argued.

Likewise, the creation of new Eastern European democracies — such as the Baltic Republics, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic — is a result of U.S. success in the Cold War.

The worst black marks on the U.S. record occurred during the peak of the Cold War, the defenders said, when the United States felt it faced an existential threat from international communism.

In those cases, several U.S. presidents believed it was more important to have reliable anti-communists in control of strategically important nations than to abide by the usual U.S. preference for elected governments.

The United States did not overthrow Arbenz in Guatemala to protect United Fruit Co., Muravchik said, but rather because it feared Arbenz would turn Guatemala into a Soviet beachhead in the Americas.

"I'm not saying this justifies it," said Adrian Karatnycky of Freedom House, a think tank that monitors international freedom and democracy. But, in the Cold War context, U.S. presidents believed that socialist-leaning leaders would drift toward authoritarianism. "Retrospectively, from what we know of all these leaders, the fears were not justifiable," he said.

John Tkacik, a retired U.S. foreign service officer who is now a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said that since about 1975, presidents have better reconciled their actions with U.S. rhetoric on democracy.

As a result, several allies that had been sham democracies came under U.S. pressure to allow real elections. Most are now democracies, including Taiwan, South Korea and El Salvador, he said.

Karatnycky said that this trend brought progress even in some of the countries where the United States had helped overthrow democracy earlier. Chile, Guatemala and the Philippines are now rated as democracies by Freedom House. After tolerating martial law for years, the United States finally pressured Marcos to hold new elections, Karatnycky said. When Marcos tried to steal the elections, he was pressured to accept exile in Hawaii. Thus, the defenders said, even in the Philippines where the United States had prevented democracy a century earlier, it ultimately played a role in bringing about democracy.

The U.S. and the Philippines

The Philippines are cited by both critics and defenders of the United States' foreign policy regarding the promotion of democracy. 1898  The United States forces the Spanish out of the Philippines, crushes a Filipino independence movement and makes the country a colony. 1946  The U.S. grants independence to the Philippines. 1972  Ferdinand Marcos, the elected president since 1965, responds to a separatist movement by establishing martial law and jailing political opponents — without losing U.S. support. 1986  After the U.S. pressured him to hold elections, Marcos rigs the vote. A people's uprising — and the loss of U.S. backing — forces him into exile in Hawaii.