The White House is using Osama bin Laden's latest message to sell an attack on Iraq . Maureen Dowd notes that "the president and his secretary of state had been huffing and puffing to prove a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. ... And then who but Osama himself should pop up on an audio tape, calling on Muslims to fight the U.S. if the 'infidels' attack 'our brothers in Iraq.' Osama's disdain for Saddam still gleamed through. ... Still, the administration pounced on the tape... Mr.

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. ... Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness, " George Orwell wrote fifty-five years ago in his essay "Politics and the English Language." In this month's Ecologist, Paul Kingsnorth points out the relevance of Orwell's words today.

"President George W. Bush and his foreign-policy team have systematically and knowingly deceived the American people in order to gain support for an unprovoked attack on Iraq," writes writer and college communications instructor Dennis Hans, who tallies 15 "techniques of deceit" that Bush has used "to deceive the very people most inclined to trust him."