It's a tangled distinction but this reader makes an interesting point:
What distinguishes American hegemony from Empire is that we have never forced a sovereign government to give our army the right to arrest its nation's citizens; a distinction that we are very close to breaking in Iraq.
Would it be unprecedented?
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/07/empire-or-hegemony/214437/
