CAIRO, Egypt - America's opponents in the Middle East are gloating over the financial meltdown in the United States, painting it as divine retribution for past misdeeds against Muslims and the last gasps of a dying empire.

Hardline clerics across the region and groups like Hamas and al-Qaida took delight in America's financial woes even though it has not left the region unscathed, with stock markets across the Middle East dropping more than 10 percent last week.

"We are witnessing the collapse of the American Empire," Hamas prime minister in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniyeh, told worshippers during Friday prayers. "What's going on in America is a result of the violation of the rights of people in Palestine, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Muslims around the world."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that America was paying the price for exporting inflation and deficits to the rest of the world.

AT the turn of the 20th century, toward the end of a brutal and surprisingly difficult victory in the Second Boer War, the people of Britain began to contemplate the possibility that theirs was a nation in decline. They worried that London's big financial sector was draining resources from the industrial economy and wondered whether Britain's schools were inadequate. In 1905, a new book -- a fictional history, set in the year 2005 -- appeared under the title, "The Decline and Fall of the British Empire."

The crisis of confidence led to a sharp political reaction. In the 1906 election, the Liberals ousted the Conservatives in a landslide and ushered in an era of reform. But it did not stave off a slide from economic or political prominence. Within four decades, a much larger country, across an ocean to the west, would clearly supplant Britain as the world's dominant power.

The United States of today and Britain of 1905 are certainly more different than they are similar. Yet the financial shocks of the past several weeks -- coming on top of an already weak economy and an unpopular war -- have created their own crisis of national confidence.

On Friday, as the stock market finished one of its worst weeks by falling yet again, to roughly half of its level just one year ago, the Gallup Poll reported that Americans were substantially more pessimistic about the economy than they have been in more than two decades of polling. Nearly 60 percent say the economy is in poor shape, and 90 percent say it's still getting worse.

UNITED NATIONS: "Icelandic Pancakes Folded with Jam of Mixed Berries and Whipped Cream" read the stylish calligraphy on a little white card atop the dessert buffet in the UN Delegates Dining Room.

Iceland is locked in a tight race with Austria and Turkey for two rotating seats on the Security Council that are reserved for the mostly European bloc, and the luncheon spread last week was part of its charm offensive. The lobbying effort gained added urgency in tandem with daily headlines trumpeting Iceland's bankruptcy.

Would two buffet tables groaning with delicacies exclusively from Iceland persuade any of the 192 member states that can vote this Friday that Iceland deserves their support? "Well, they have to try to convince people with pancakes, because they don't have any money left," said one European diplomat.

Electric moments have become rarer around the UN Secretariat in recent years, but a hotly contested Security Council vote still creates buzz. Even as members grumble about the declining relevancy of a Security Council designed circa World War II, more and more nations seek to wield the influence gained by winning a seat at the council's iconic horseshoe-shaped table.

U.S. nuked Iraq during Gulf War - report
An American war veteran has claimed that the U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb during the last days of the first Gulf War in Iraq in 1991.

Jim Brown, a mechanic in the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division at the time, told Italian channel RaiNews24 that coalition forces dropped a 5-kilotonne nuclear bomb in a deserted area near the city of Basra.