And dissent today is not without its own creativity - or humor. In an ironic twist, a delegation of politicians, academics and scientists from abroad recently descended on the U.S. Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland to search for Weapons of Mass Destruction. Across the Atlantic, German relatives of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld castigated his warmongering and publicly disowned him.

But those pushing for war have some creative ideas of their own. Last month, it was big news when ten Central and Eastern European nations issued a statement supporting the Bush drive to attack Iraq. Less well reported, however, was the fact that none other than Bruce Jackson (former U.S. Defense Department official and weapons manufacturer executive) had helped draft the controversial statement and pushed to have it released. And of course, the final pretext for the last Gulf war - reports that Iraqi soldiers had ripped Kuwaiti babies from their incubators and left them to die on hospital floors - was later exposed as a downright lie, fabricated to silence dissent.

As the CIA says, it's the "Mighty Wurlitzer" in action: propaganda repeated so often and by such credible sources it becomes conventional wisdom.