The United States is conducting a secret 'dirty tricks' campaign against UN Security Council delegations in New York as part of its battle to win votes in favour of war against Iraq.

Details of the aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the emails of UN delegates in New York, are revealed in a document leaked to The Observer. ...

The memo describes orders to staff at the agency, whose work is clouded in secrecy, to step up its surveillance operations 'particularly directed at... UN Security Council Members (minus US and GBR, of course)' to provide up-to-the-minute intelligence for Bush officials on the voting intentions of UN members regarding the issue of Iraq.

The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York - the so-called 'Middle Six' delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the US and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for UN inspections, led by France, China and Russia.

Since 9/11, Americans have been subjected to the most intense propaganda campaign from their government since World War I. Much of the mainstream U.S. media have been intimidated by the Bush administration into unquestioningly amplifying its party line.

Or, in the worst tradition of yellow, jingoist journalism, they act as cheerleaders for war.

I am reminded of the sycophantic Soviet media during the days of Chairman Leonid Brezhnev.

The American public, often wobbly about geography, history and international affairs, has been alternatively terrified and enraged by bare-faced lies that Iraq was about to attack America with nuclear weapons or germs, and was a secret ally of al-Qaida.

A shocking two-thirds of Americans mistakenly believe Iraq staged the 9/11 attacks.

A surging wave of anti-Islamic hate, promoted in part by Bush's allies on the loony far right, and administration repression of Muslims, frighteningly recalls Europe's growing anti-Semitism of the early 1930s.

These are the reasons why a majority of Americans still support a war of aggression against Iraq, though more and more question the president's motives.

My dilemma is that while I believe in such a bold project, I fear that Mr. Bush has failed to create a context for his boldness to succeed, a context that could maximize support for his vision — support vital to seeing it through. He and his team are the only people who would ever have conceived this project, but they may be the worst people to implement it. The only place they've been bold is in their military preparations (which have at least gotten Saddam to begin disarming).

What do I mean? I mean that if taking out Saddam and rebuilding Iraq had been my goal from the minute I took office (as it was for the Bush team), I would not have angered all of Europe by trashing the Kyoto global warming treaty without offering an alternative. I would not have alienated the entire Russian national security elite by telling the Russians that we were ripping up the ABM treaty and that they would just have to get used to it. (You're now seeing their revenge.) I would not have proposed one radical tax cut on top of another on the eve of a huge, costly nation-building marathon abroad.

I would, though, have rallied the nation for real energy conservation and initiated a Manhattan Project for alternative energies so I would not find myself with $2.25-per-gallon gasoline on the eve of this war — because OPEC capacity is nearly tapped out. I would have told the Palestinians that until they stop suicide bombing and get a more serious leadership, we're not dealing with them, but I would also have told the Israelis that every new or expanded settlement they built would cost them $100 million in U.S. aid. And I would have told the Arabs: "While we'll deal with the Iraqi threat, we have no imperial designs on your countries. We are not on a crusade — but we will not sit idle if you tolerate extremists in your midst who imperil our democracy."

At the very same moment the father was pushing peace, the son was treating the war as a fait accompli. At the American Enterprise Institute, he finally coughed up the real reason for war: trickle-down democracy.

Unable to handcuff Osama and Saddam, he soft-pedaled his previous cry for a war of retribution for 9/11. Now he was being more forthright, calling for a war of re-engineering.

"A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region," he said, adding: "Success in Iraq could also begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace, and set in motion progress towards a truly democratic Palestinian state."

Conservatives began drawing up steroid-fueled plans to reorder the world a decade ago, imperial blueprints fantastical enough to make "Star Wars" look achievable.

In 1992, Dick Cheney, the defense secretary for Bush 41, and his aides, Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby, drafted a document asserting that America should prepare to cast off formal alliances and throw its military weight around to prevent the rise of any "potential future global competitor" and to preclude the spread of nuclear weapons.

The solipsistic grandiosity of the plan was offputting to 41, who loved nothing better than chatting up the other members of the global club. To Poppy and Colin Powell, this looked like voodoo foreign policy, and they splashed cold water on it.

In 1996, Richard Perle, now a Pentagon adviser, and Douglas Feith, now a Rumsfeld aide, helped write a report about how Israel could transcend the problems with the Palestinians by changing the "balance of power" in the Middle East, and by replacing Saddam.

The hawks saw their big chance after 9/11, but they feared that it would be hard to sell a eschatological scheme to stomp out Islamic terrorism by recreating the Arab world. So they found Saddam guilty of a crime he could commit later: helping Osama unleash hell on us.