The London Observer newspaper has reported that it received a leaked memo from the National Security Agency in the United States. The memo indicated that the home and office phones of the UN delegations from countries crucially involved in the UN vote on war with Iraq were to be bugged and the e-mails from these delegations intercepted. A woman working for the General Communications Headquarters in England has been arrested, lending credence to this story.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has issued a report stating that the documents purportedly showing that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger were forgeries. Forensic experts found many discrepancies in the letters, ostensibly between Iraqi agents and officials in the Niger government, including names of government officials in Niger who were not in office at the time of the mailing. These forgeries were presented to the UN by British and American intelligence as proof that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear program.

Another piece of evidence indicating the desperation of the US and British governments in creating an acceptable justification for war was the plagiarism exhibited in Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations. A large portion of this speech was plagiarized word for word from the thesis paper of an American student named Ibrahim al-Marashi, and the supposedly up-to-date intelligence information was over ten years old.

The United States is using the carrot and stick approach to induce Turkey to allow US troops into that country and to get Security Council members like Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan to vote the right way on a UN resolution for war. If they don't bite the carrot, they get hit with the stick. They are offered billions of dollars in US aid and future IMF loans as bribes, and if these inducements are refused, all sorts of economic pressures are brought to bear on these disobedient countries.

These attempts to create a fig leaf for naked aggression are very similar to what was done in the first Persian Gulf war in 1991. Then, too, countries were coerced and bribed, government propaganda was unrelenting and fabrications were created like the story of Iraqi soldiers throwing babies to the floor from their incubators during the invasion of Kuwait. When Yemen had the audacity to vote no on the resolution for war, a US representative was immediately at the side of the Yemeni ambassador, telling him that it would be the most expensive no vote that he ever cast. A few days later, all US aid to Yemen was cut off.

Just prior to the commencement of the 1991 war against Iraq, I distinctly remember that Russia had negotiated an unconditional withdrawal of all Iraqi troops from Kuwait. With utter contempt, George Bush, Sr. rejected this offer because the United States wanted war. President George W. Bush, his administration, the military industrial complex and the oil companies desperately want war this time too, and it will take a lot of effort to stop them.

If these loudmouth conservative commentators, who completely dominate the US airwaves, are so supremely confident that the argument for war with Iraq is exceedingly strong, they need to ask themselves one important question. Why is the US government resorting to spying, lying, fabrications, plagiarism, coercion and bribery? And if the US media is indeed liberal and confrontational, why is the critical information I have elucidated in this article either completely ignored or buried on the back pages of newspapers?