"It would be demagogic to suggest that the war in Iraq is terrorism," Brzezinski said, defining terrorism as 'the deliberate killing of innocent people for political purposes'.
Brzezinski was not the only American that expressed discontentment with the Bush administration's actions.
"There is a sort of fundamental misconception in Presidents Bush's mind," said George Soros, Chairman, Soros Fund Management, whose philanthropic network alone spends about $450 million annually. "When he [George W. Bush] says freedom will prevail, he means the American will shall prevail".
The war in Iraq is also draining the US treasury. It represents 25 percent of the American budget deficit, Soros added. "That we may be wrong, this is something that he just doesn't seem to admit".
"He seems to think that we aught to be right, we are the dominant Power in the world, therefore we must be right," he said. "That is very dangerous because that comes very close to saying that might is right."
"We are the most successful open society in the world," Soros said. "Yet we don't understand the principles of open society".
"We are not in a position to determine which country is democratic and what form of democracy a country should take," Soros said to some 3,000 delegates at the forum, the Think Tank of the Middle East.
During the same forum, Madeline Albright, former Secretary of State of America, compared the West to Alexander the Great in its conquest style planting of democracies.
Soros also candidly responded to the suspicions that Arabs voiced regarding the democratisation of countries rich in natural resources. Soros hinted that the root to this lay in companies needing authority to extract or refine or in any number of ways work with a nation's natural resources - most likely because their own consumption exceeded production. With this goal, the companies formed relationships with the nations' rulers. Such relationships were formed without regard to how the rulers were actually ruling their people.
With the influence that the natural resource companies wield, they can dictate the way politicians in their home countries act. Halliburton's field day in Iraq, among other events, has brought this issue to the forefront.
"Countries, which are rich in natural resources, very often have very bad governments, or have a lot of internal conflict and turmoil fighting over the resource," Soros said.
The solution to this 'resource curse' phenomenon, Soros said, lies in insisting on greater transparency - transparency within the government and the companies that are allowed to work with the resources.
"Reform is the name of the game," Amro Moosa, the Arab League Secretary-General emphasised. In a day of honesty, Amro Moosa also pointed out that if asked, people of regions where terrorists are harboured, would state poverty as their number one enemy, not terrorists. Terrorism is a symptom of issues that have been long ignored.
Soros also alluded to this phenomenon, and emphasised that wars turn victims in perpetrators if, for example the families of innocent war casualties seek revenge, thereby, the war in Iraq, may serve to intensify the very problems it is trying to suppress.