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Hardliners in the Bush administration reportedly want to give countries in the Americas that did not support the U.S. stance on the Iraq war "the cold treatment" when they ask Washington for help...

Hardliners inside the Bush administration are winning an internal policy debate over how to deal with countries in the Western Hemisphere that opposed the Iraq war, Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer wrote recently. The hardliners want to give what Oppenheimer described as the "cold treatment" to countries that did not support the U.S. position at the U.N. Security Council in early March, or whose leaders have publicly condemned the U.S. invasion to depose Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

If this assessment -- based on interviews with unnamed senior U.S. officials -- is correct, it implies that relations between the Bush administration and several key countries in the Americas might cool for the remainder of Bush's presidency. Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Canada would top the list of affected countries. In fact, the list would include practically every country in the region save Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, which backed the United States on Iraq. Opposition to the war is widespread throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and most leaders there have voiced that opposition.

Mexico and Chile, both non-voting members of the U.N. Security Council, supported giving U.N. arms inspectors more time to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And the government of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has been a strong critic of the war as well.