1. The politicians don't want to know

Have confidence that the government really doesn't want to know what it is you're getting up to, as long as the effect benefits them. By their very nature, secret police intelligence and espionage organizations operate in secret and often do, "in the national interest", illegal things or stuff which ordinary folk would regard as grossly unethical - things that would embarrass the government if they were to be exposed. If anything goes wrong the politicians want to be able to "plausibly deny" they were involved. This relationship hands enormous, uncontrolled, power to your small, ultra-secretive, self-governing elite clustered at the top of the nation's security "service". Your colleagues are invariably drawn from the upper reaches of the political and economic elite and of course you know better than anybody what's in "the national interest" and you have a God-given right to rule. Breaking ranks and talking isn't in your colleagues' class nature.

2. Keep things on a need-to-know basis

Keep your security organization compartmentalised and discourage specialist sections from talking to each other. You can plausibly plead security reasons for this. Make sure all information gets passed up the line to your small group at the top who compile and "assess" the overall threat and decide when to act. Thus you control the "narrative" and the timing of the scam. The foot soldiers may shake their heads and wonder at some of the things you come up with, but they'll be in no position to contradict you. And if they do, it's a very serious offence. It'll ruin their careers and could land them a very long stretch in gaol.

3. At the right time, get the president or prime minister involved

When you've decided on the optimum time for your security scare and sorted out who your "plotters" will be, it's important to involve the head of the government. He'll want to broadcast to the nation, taking credit for keeping the people safe from the terrible plot. He'll automatically be followed by the leaders of the mainstream opposition parties, all eager to prove their credibility, responsibility and patriotism. As soon as you've made the official line clear, the media and the state apparatus will fall into line.

4. "Prove that we lie"

Always remember: it's breathtakingly easy to claim you've "thwarted" something horrible and almost impossible for sceptics to prove that you haven't. This applies especially if you "thwart" the plot in its early stages. Invariably you're acting against individuals from a group that's already been demonised and will be scared to speak up or fight back. The majority will be inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. Questioning the government in a time of "national emergency" isn't an easy gig.

5. Don't worry, they'll all play their part

Complex conspiracies involving lots of people are entirely unnecessary. All that's needed is for your close knit, unaccountable group to order those lower down the chain to act on "information received". They don't even have to know what the information was. They just have to know the addresses to raid and who to arrest. When they do, they're sure to find some political or religious literature, or something on the hard drives, or some household chemicals that will, under the circumstances you've created, look suspicious. If you're using agents provocateur, they'll be able to plant "evidence" and report suspicious conversations to "sex-up" the case. Of course, details will never be available officially or in a verifiable form, but fragments and hints of purported "evidence" can be leaked to selected journalists (see below).

6. Feed the chickens

Keep information in official news releases to an absolute minimum. There's a plausible excuse for this: more information will harm ongoing investigations and might prejudice the case when it gets to court. In place of any hard attributable facts, provide a steady stream of small leaks "under condition of anonymity" to selected journalists from politically reliable mainstream news organizations. These people are carefully selected for political conservatism and journalistic "responsibility". Even if they weren't, they need a story and they're totally reliant on you for one. It doesn't matter if the leaked details are outrageously illogical. Even if they're suspicious of the story, your contacts will run it rather than lose a scoop. In this way you'll establish an unofficial official narrative that most members of the public will be inclined to accept as something like the truth. They've already been conditioned by the media attack-dogs to thoroughly distrust the group from which your victims come so they'll figure that if the charges are a fit-up the victims are probably guilty of something and it would be prudent to put them away.

7. Politicians who aren't 100 per cent with you are friends of terrorists

No politician enjoys being attacked as "irresponsible" or accused of being unpatriotic or soft on terrorists. Very few will dare question the allegations in case they're proved wrong. Most are venal politics junkies making a very good living doing something they enjoy. It's safer for them to join the chorus condemning terrorism and congratulating you on your vigilance. With any luck, some politicians will show their credentials by loudly criticising you for not acting sooner and more ruthlessly. Those few who are troubled will probably just say nothing.

8. Don't worry about proving links to real terror groups

Once upon a time, not so long ago, it was felt necessary to show that your local "terrorist cell" was recruited by, and in communication with, al-Qaeda, or some group with actual form some time in the not-too-distant past. This requirement brought its own problems, since evidence of the links often failed to convince, or, worse still, unearthed shady figures with a track record of collaboration with the CIA or M16 or Mossad.

It's still a good idea to hint at such links but it isn't de rigueur because the problem disappeared with the happy invention of the "spontaneously-forming, self-activating" (SFSA) terror cell theory in the aftermath of the 7/7 London bombings. According to the SFSA theory, terrorists don't have to be recruited or trained. Wherever any three integrated, happy, and successful young Muslim men get together to discuss politics or religion or even just to play cricket, they spontaneously decide to set up a do-it-yourself terror cell. They scour the internet for recipes for powerful but highly unstable explosives made from sports drinks, peroxide, hair gel, acetone and baby formula. Without outside direction they select targets and decide the day. All you need to "prove" conspiracy was that they met, discussed politics and had in their possession common household chemicals, fizzy drinks and a mobile phone. It doesn't matter if their conversations show nothing explicit. Just say they were talking in code. If you can show at least one of them has travelled overseas, that's a plus. If not, assert that they "investigated" booking airline tickets or showed an interest in travelling overseas.

The SFSA theory not only relieves you of having to prove connections to international terror groups, there's a bonus: it also increases public fear. Any group of young Muslims kicking a ball around in the park is actually planning to blow up trains. Or airliners. Anything you do to these people is likely to be "overlooked", if not vocally supported by patriotic simpletons.

9. It doesn't really matter if a court finds them innocent

Your victims won't get their day in court for months, maybe years, and if you've organised things well, you'll be operating under laws that ensure that the public and your tame media are prevented from reporting key details or even excluded from court altogether. By the time your victims get to court, the scare you used them to create will have done its job. Even if your victims are found innocent, that fact will get little press attention from a media who are embarrassed by their role in such an obvious scam, and anyway, the accused terrorists' acquittal will be lost in the next big scare.

Good luck, and have fun.

Some gave Bush and British officials good marks on the cops-and-robbers part of stopping the plot, but most sharply criticized Bush's broader war-on-terror campaign as severely disjointed and distracted by the decision to go to war in Iraq.

Not only did the war cause Bush to draw time and attention away from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other extremists, it fueled anti-U.S. hatred in the Islamic world that creates a seemingly endless supply of plotters and would-be martyrs, they said.

More than that, several analysts said the sophistication and coordination of the current plot show that far from being out of business as a driving force in terrorism, as Bush would suggest, al-Qaida still has the brains and muscle to mount a major attack.

"We took our eye off that ball when we didn't finish that job in Afghanistan at the outset, and when we decided to add Iraq," said Leslie Gelb, a longtime foreign policy analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations.

Now Gelb sees the United States facing a decades-shaping battle for influence with Muslim extremists, one in which everyday people in the Middle East are deciding whether to cast their lot with America or the terrorists.

And the terrorists are making headway in the battle for public opinion, whether among insurgents in Iraq or with Hezbollah in Lebanon, fighting the U.S. ally Israel.

"This is a time when we would hope Muslims would be turning against extremists in their midst who are killing other Muslims, but that isn't happening," Gelb said.

This debate flared in the political arena yesterday as well, with Democrats like Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid saying the plot shows that Bush's anti-terror fight has failed. Republicans shot back that Reid and others were trying to score political points off the near-tragedy.

And one analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation, James Jay Carafano, scoffed at the notion of yesterday's arrests as anything but a success story for Bush.

But the criticism of Bush's anti-terror fight runs broad and deep in foreign policy circles, particularly because of the Iraq war. Bush calls it the central front in the war on terror and says the administration has separately captured or killed two-thirds of senior al-Qaida leadership.

Many analysts consider the war a distraction from what should be the major focus of U.S. foreign policy -- finding a way to hunt down terror leaders and stop the attacks at their source.

In the Bush administration, insiders acknowledge there is little day-to-day focus on bin Laden, mainly because U.S. officials believe he is no longer in a position to dictate attacks and organize major plots.

"I don't think anybody thinks he has any command and control," said one administration official, referring to this plot. "I don't think anyone thinks he called this in."

But experts insist that any White House comfort over that belief is severely misplaced. They say the fact that al-Qaida appears able to regenerate itself so readily suggests a serious long-term problem -- one allowed to fester and grow as the administration focused on the military aspects of the fight.

"We have rolled up some key guys, no doubt about it, but when we roll up the third, fourth, fifth operations chief of al-Qaida, that's nothing to celebrate," said Tom Sanderson, an expert on terrorist threats at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "That's a signal that good people are taking over as soon as the other guy gets knocked off."

All UK police forces have been told to send firearms officers for the eight-week course because of the heightened terror alert.

The teams will attend the Metropolitan Police's Specialist Training Centre in Gravesend, Kent -one of the best in the world.

They will learn how to tackle hijackers and use firearms in mid-air.

Sky marshals will be issued with Sig Sauer 9mm pistols, with special bullets which do not ricochet and damage the aircraft's fuselage.

Officers will also be taught how to man cockpit controls when the crew have been killed or injured.

Following 9/11, Washington put pressure on European governments to have at least three sky marshals on US-bound flights. Many, notably Sweden, Portugal and Denmark, fiercely opposed the plan, as did the British Airline Pilots' Association.

The UK is thought to have started training undercover air guards in 2002.

In 2004, following speculation that the Government had secretly axed the plan, the Department of Transport said: "We could deploy sky marshals if we wanted to. It's just that we don't talk about it."

They have been in use on US planes for more than 40 years.

The programme was set up in 1961 by US president John F Kennedy amid growing fears over hijacks.

Ronald Reagan boosted their numbers after a Lebanese gun gang seized a TWA jet in Athens in 1985, shot a US passenger and hurled his body on to the tarmac.

American marshals take a seven-week course at a training academy in Artesia, New Mexico. They then have four weeks at a specialist air marshal training centre in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

In December last year, sky marshals killed for the first time when a mentally disturbed airline passenger who pretended that he had a bomb in his bag was shot at Miami airport.

Brazilian Mr Menezes, 27, was gunned down on July 22 last year after officers mistook him for a suicide bomber.

The Crown Prosecution Service says there is "insufficient evidence" to prosecute any individual. But the Met Police will be charged under health and safety laws. An Independent Police Complaints Commission report given to the CPS in January, but not yet made public, is said to be highly critical of the police operation.

Mr Morris denied he had misled the local community but, in the face of criticism, he hastily left the scene. He later returned for a haircut in a nearby barber's shop, but was again surrounded by worshippers at the mosque who claimed they had been the victims of a devious trick.

On Thursday, in the aftermath of the arrests by anti-terrorist police, Mr Morris wrote on his Fox News blog: "Today, officials have uncovered a major terrorist plot to blow up a group of planes on that same route.

"This is America and the world in 2006, and we are getting used to it. This time they got the bad guys, thank God.

"As we move forward as a country in these troubling times, our war must be first and foremost against the ideas that shape the hearts of the Muslim masses."

A spokesman for Fox News was not available for comment.

But on July 29 and 30, and then again on August 1, something else happened that increasing numbers of people believe is of equal importance. On these dates C-SPAN rebroadcast a panel discussion, held originally in late June, sponsored by an organization called the American Scholars' Symposium to discuss what really happened on September 11, 2001. Held in Los Angeles, the meeting lasted two days, and the C-SPAN rebroadcast covered one almost two-hour wrap-up session. The meeting was attended by 1,200 people interested in hearing something other than the official story of 9/11. The TV audience was evidently large enough to spur C-SPAN to broadcast the panel discussion five separate times in four days.

Even a month late, this is a lot of airtime for stories that many people call conspiracy theories -- and for which many others use nastier descriptions. It is possible that the head of C-SPAN, Brian Lamb, so strongly disbelieves the conspiracy theories that he felt giving them ample publicity would discredit them further. It is equally possible, however, that Lamb, who seems honestly to believe in presenting various sides of most issues as fairly as he can (although not always giving every side equal time), tried to do exactly that on the many legitimate questions raised about what actually happened on September 11. In any event, C-SPAN has made a major effort to bring information on the principal theories about 9/11 to the mainstream U.S. media. Lamb cannot be blamed for the coincidence that recent heavy military activity in Gaza and Lebanon is nearly drowning out his efforts.

Let's address the real issues here. Why is it important that we not let the so-called conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 be drowned out? After spending the better part of the last five years treating these theories with utmost skepticism, I have devoted serious time to actually studying them in recent months, and have also carefully watched several videos that are available on the subject. I have come to believe that significant parts of the 9/11 theories are true, and that therefore significant parts of the "official story" put out by the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission are false. I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. The items below highlight the major questions surrounding 9/11 but do not constitute a detailed recounting of the evidence available.

ONE: An airliner almost certainly did not hit The Pentagon. Hard physical evidence supports this conclusion; among other things, the hole in the Pentagon was considerably smaller than an airliner would create. The building was thus presumably hit by something smaller, possibly a missile, or a drone or, less possibly, a smaller manned aircraft. Absolutely no information is available on what happened to the original aircraft (American Airlines Flight 77), the crew, the "hijackers," and the passengers. The "official story," as it appeared in The 9/11 Commission Report simply says, "At 9:37:46, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, traveling at approximately 530 miles per hour. All on board, as well as many civilians and military personnel in the building, were killed." This allows readers to assume that pieces of the aircraft and some bodies of passengers were found in the rubble of the crash, but information so far released by the government does not show that such evidence was in fact found. The story put out by the Pentagon is that the plane and its passengers were incinerated; yet video footage of offices in the Pentagon situated at the edge of the hole clearly shows office furniture undamaged. The size of the hole in the Pentagon wall still remains as valid evidence and so far seems irrefutable.

TWO: The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center almost certainly did not collapse and fall to earth because hijacked aircraft hit them. A plane did not hit Building 7 of the Center, which also collapsed. All three were most probably destroyed by controlled demolition charges placed in the buildings before 9/11. A substantial volume of evidence shows that typical residues and byproducts from such demolition charges were present in the three buildings after they collapsed. The quality of the research done on this subject is quite impressive.

If the judgments made on Points ONE and TWO above are correct, they raise many "Who done it" questions and strongly suggest that some unnamed persons or groups either inside or with ties to the government were actively creating a "Pearl Harbor" event, most likely to gain public support for the aggressive foreign policies that followed -- policies that would, first, "transform" the entire Middle East, and second, expand U.S. global domination.

These first two points provide the strongest evidence available that the "official story" of 9/11 is not true. If the government could prove this evidence false, and its own story on these points correct, all the other data and speculation supporting the conspiracy theories would be undermined. It has provided no such proof and no answers to growing questions.

Other, less important points supporting the theories include the following.

THREE: For at least one hour and 45 minutes after the hijacking of the first aircraft was known, U.S. air defense authorities failed to take meaningful action. This strikes some "conspiracy theorists" as valid evidence that the U.S. Air Force was deliberately restrained from acting. Maybe so, but my own skepticism tells me that the inefficiency of U.S. defense forces is likely to be just as plausible an explanation.

FOUR: Some of the theorists believe that the 19 named hijackers were not actually the hijackers. One claim is that the names of the hijackers were not on the manifests of any of the four aircraft.

FIVE: None of the 19 hijackers' bodies were ever autopsied (since they were allegedly totally destroyed in the crashes, including even the people in the Pennsylvania crash).

SIX: At least five of the alleged hijackers (or persons with identical names) have since turned up alive in the Middle East. Nonetheless, the FBI has never bothered to re-investigate or revise the list of hijackers. Does this suggest that the FBI knows that no one in the administration is interested in reopening any further investigations?

SEVEN: Numerous pilots have allegedly told the theorists that none of the 19 hijackers could have flown the airliners well enough to hit the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon with as much accuracy as was displayed. The debate on this issue simply raises more doubt about the government's charge that the people it has named as hijackers are the real hijackers.

EIGHT: No one, except possibly government investigators who are not talking, has seen the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. Some of the conspiracy theorists suggest that it was deliberately destroyed before it hit the ground; others suggest that the plane actually landed in Cleveland and that passengers then were whisked away to some unknown destination. What happened to them at that point is simply a large question mark that makes it more difficult to believe this particular scenario.

NINE: Machinations in the U.S. stock market in the days before 9/11 suggest that some inside players in the market knew or suspected that United and American Airlines stock would soon drop. Two of the four of the aircraft involved in 9/11 were, or course, United planes and the other two were American Airlines planes.

It should be reemphasized that these items do not make up a complete list of all the charges made by the theorists, but they are a good sample. Anyone interested in perhaps the best summary of these charges should watch the video "Loose Change."

To repeat, points ONE and TWO above are the most important. If something other than an airliner actually did hit the Pentagon on 9/11, and if the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center actually were dropped to the ground by controlled demolitions rather than by anything connected to the hijackings, the untrue stories peddled by The 9/11 Commission Report are clearly susceptible of being turned into major political issues.

A Scripps Howard News Service/Ohio University poll taken from July 6 to 24, 2006 concluded that "more than a third [36 percent] of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them, so that the United States could go to war in the Middle East." The poll also found that "16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed."

A poll done by the Zogby polling organization two months earlier, between May 12 and 16, 2006, and using questions worded somewhat differently, suggested even more strongly that the issue could become a "big one" if aggressively publicized. This poll concluded that 42 percent of Americans believed there had indeed been a cover-up of the true events of 9/11, and an additional 10 percent of Americans were "unsure." The co-author of the poll, W. David Kubiak, stated that, "despite years of relentless media promotion, whitewash, and 9/11 Commission propaganda, the official 9/11 story still can't even muster 50 percent popular support."

Whichever of these polls is closer to the truth, it would seem that there is considerable support for making a major political issue of the subject.

This should be worked on at two different levels. At the first level, the objective should be long-term, centered on making a maximum effort to find out who the individuals and groups are that carried out the attacks in New York and Washington. Then, these people should be tried in an international court and, if possible, convicted and punished for causing so many deaths. Such a trial, accompanied by actual change in U.S. policies, would show that some people on this globe are at least trying to move closer to more just and decent behavior in human relationships around the world.

At the second level, the short term, the task should be to immediately set to work as hard as is humanly possible to defeat in this year's congressional election any candidate who refuses to support a no-holds-barred investigation of 9/11 by the Congress or a high-level international court. No more evidence than is now available is needed in order to begin this process.

A manageable volume of carefully collected and analyzed evidence is already at hand on both items ONE and TWO above. Such evidence should be used right now to buttress charges that elements within the Bush administration, as well as possibly other groups foreign or domestic, were involved in a massive fraud against the American people, a fraud that has led to many thousands of deaths.

This charge of fraud, if proven, involves a much greater crime against the American people and people of the world than any other charges of fraud connected to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It is a charge that we should not sweep under the rug because what is happening in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Syria, and Iran seems more pressing and overwhelming. It is a charge that is more important because it is related to all of the areas just mentioned -- after all, the events of 9/11 have been used by the administration to justify every single aspect of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East since September 11. It is a charge that is more important also because it affects the very core of our entire political system. If proven, it is a conspiracy, so far successful, not only against the people of the United States, but against the entire world. Finally, it is a charge too important to ignore simply because the U.S. government refuses to discuss it. We must force the Bush administration to discuss it.

Discussions aggressively pushed day after day about what really happened on 9/11 will be one of the most important tasks between now and early November. Such discussions can, one hopes, provide progressives with a way to jolt voters out of their apathy and inchoate willingness to support the status quo that they think gives them security -- and encourage more voters to stop supporting Bush, the Republicans, and the wobbly Democratic politicians who might as well be Republicans. A major issue like this, already supported by many voters, may prove particularly important in a congressional election year when new uncertainties in the Middle East, new possibilities of terrorism against the U.S. in retaliation for recent large-scale acts of Israeli/U.S. terrorism in Gaza and Lebanon, and the corrupt almost-single-party U.S. political system combine to make it more likely that supporters of Bush will retain their majority this November.

In terms of electoral impact, it would not matter whether heavy publicity did in fact force the administration to accept a new high-level investigation of the 9/11 events. Initially, the principal goal would be to contribute heavily to the defeat of both Republicans and Democrats who refuse to support wholeheartedly a major new investigation by Congress or an international court. This might result in the defeat of more Republicans than Democrats in November, but ultimately the hoped-for goal should be the end of a system in which Democrats are barely different from Republicans, along with cutbacks in the political power of wealth and the foreign and domestic lobbies paid for by wealth. These are the dominant features of our system today that have practically eliminated meaningful democracy in the U.S. This failure of democracy has happened before in U.S. history, but this time it is likely to last longer -- at least until U.S. policies begin to pay as much attention to the needs of the world as they do to selfish or thoughtless needs of the U.S. and of its military-industrial complex. Attacks on the criminal events surrounding 9/11 might speed this process.

Virtually no members of Congress, Democratic or Republican, will relish calling for a further investigation of 9/11. For right now, in addition to other motives, the issue should be used to go after those political prostitutes among elected office-holders who should also be defeated because they are so easily seduced by money and power to vote for immoral wars against weak enemies.

At the Los Angeles meeting of the American Scholars' Symposium, one of the main speakers, Webster Tarpley, summarized his own views on the events of 9/11. He emphasized that "neocon fascist madmen" had perpetrated the 9/11 "myth." He went on to say, "The most important thing is that the 9/11 myth is the premise and the root of the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War and the coming attack on Iran. ... We must ... deprive [the myth's perpetrators] of the ability to stampede and manipulate hundreds of millions of people [with their] ... cynically planned terrorist events."

Let's give Webster Tarpley and other mistakenly labeled conspiracists who have labored in the wilderness for so long three cheers.

Bill Christison is a former senior official of the CIA. He was a National Intelligence Officer and the Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis before his retirement in 1979. Since then he has written numerous articles on U.S. foreign policies. He can be reached at: kathy.bill@christison-santafe.com.

That draft resolution was approved by a recorded vote of 147 in favour to 1 against (United States), with 2 abstentions (Israel, United Kingdom), as the Committee continued taking action on all draft resolutions and decisions. (For details of the vote, see Annex I.)

The Committee has organized its draft texts into subject "clusters", and this morning it approved texts in its clusters on nuclear weapons, other disarmament measures, and international security.

Explaining her negative vote on the fissile material cut-off treaty draft, the representative of the United States said that, while her country stood behind the idea of such an instrument, its experts had decided that effective verification would not be possible. Since verification was central to the draft at hand, she had therefore been forced to vote in opposition.

Having abstained from the same vote, the speaker from Israel said non-compliance with international treaties and the unchecked dissemination of sensitive materials had become among the most pressing nuclear non-proliferation challenges facing the world today. However, instead of adequately addressing such challenges, a fissile material cut-off treaty could actually complicate them. In that regard, he called for a new effective non-proliferation arrangement pertaining to the nuclear fuel cycle. Focusing on his own region, he added that issues related to nuclear disarmament could only be dealt with after achieving lasting peace and reconciliation.

By two texts approved without a vote this morning, the Assembly would express its appreciation to all parties that had implemented the recommendations made in the United Nations study on disarmament and non-proliferation, and call upon all States to continue to take measures to help prevent conflicts in South-Eastern Europe.

The Committee will meet again at 9:30 a.m. Friday, 5 November, to finish taking action on all draft texts.

Background

The First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) met this morning to continue and possibly conclude action on all draft resolutions and decisions on disarmament and international security. It had before it texts related to clusters dealing with nuclear weapons, disarmament machinery, other disarmament measures, and international security.

Expected to be acted on under cluster 1, which concerns nuclear weapons, is a draft on the Conference on Disarmament decision to establish an ad hoc committee to negotiate a fissile material cut-off treaty. The Committee is also expected to take up three draft resolutions from cluster 7, disarmament machinery. All three deal with improving the effectiveness of the methods of work of the First Committee.

From cluster 8, other disarmament measures, action is expected on a draft resolution on the United Nations study on disarmament and non-proliferation. The Committee is also expected to take action on a draft from cluster 10, which concerns international security. That text concerns the maintenance of international security in South-Eastern Europe.

Draft Summaries

Cluster 1

A draft resolution on the Conference on Disarmament decision to establish an ad hoc committee to negotiate a non-discriminatory, multilateral, internationally verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons (document A/C.1/59/L.34) would have the Assembly urge the Conference to agree on a programme of work that includes the immediate commencement of negotiations on such a treaty, under the conviction that such a treaty would be a significant contribution to nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation.

The draft resolution is sponsored by Algeria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, CzechRepublic, Germany, Grenada, Ireland, Kenya, Luxembourg, Morocco, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, San Marino, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand and Turkey.

Cluster 7

By a draft resolution sponsored by the United States on improving the effectiveness of the methods of work of the First Committee (document A/C.1/59/L.1), the Assembly would decide to adopt seven measures to better the body's operation.

First, the Assembly would limit the number of studies commissioned by the Committee to one per year. Second, it would set a numerical limit on the number of draft resolutions and decisions tabled each year. Third, it would introduce resolutions traditionally adopted by consensus only on a biennial or triennial basis. Fourth, it would institute automatic "sunset" provisions for all the United Nations activities generated by the Committee.

Fifth, the Assembly would consolidate reports initiated by the Committee with other reports on related issues that the Secretariat was required to produce. Sixth, it would elect the Committee's full Bureau one year in advance. Finally, it would work towards improving the accuracy of projections related to the programme budget implications and increasing the advance notice provided to Member States regarding the financial implications of draft resolutions and decisions.

A draft resolution sponsored by Malaysia on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement, also on improving the effectiveness of the methods of work of the First Committee (document A/C.1/59/L.13), would have the Assembly request Member States to elect the Chairman and other members of the Bureau at least three months before the meeting of the session.

By further terms, the Assembly would invite Member States to hold more interactive debates and urge them to submit draft resolutions in a more concise and action-oriented manner. The Assembly would also invite Member States to consider the biennialization or triennialization of the Committee's agenda items, on a voluntary basis, and in particular when no specific action is required to be taken for the implementation of the relevant resolutions.

The Assembly would further recommend that the Committee hold more informal consultations, with the participation of all interested Member States for furthering discussions on draft resolutions. It would also urge the Committee to continue its existing methods of work in clustering its agenda items as a means of facilitating the thematic discussions and action on the draft resolutions.

The draft resolution would also have the Assembly consider that any change in the disarmament agenda and machinery, including the Committee, shall be made in the context of the fourth special session of the General Assembly devoted to disarmament.

A third draft on improving the effectiveness of the methods of work of the First Committee (document A/C.1/59/L.60), sponsored by Indonesia, would have the Assembly invite Member States to consider the biennialization or triennialization of the agenda items discussed in the First Committee, on a voluntary basis, and particularly when no specific action was required to be taken for implementation.

It would also invite Member States to continue to hold interactive debates based on a programme and format elaborated through informal consultations between the Bureau and Member States in advance of each Committee session, and to submit draft resolutions in a more concise, focused and action-oriented manner and, where practical, to consider the possibility of submitting draft decisions.

By a further term, the Assembly would recommend that the respective sponsors of draft resolutions hold informal consultations, both before and during Committee meetings, with the participation of all interested Member States for furthering discussions on draft resolutions already submitted or yet to be submitted to the Committee.

Under a related provision, it would encourage Member States to introduce draft resolutions on related or complementary issues to find commonalities in the language and purpose of those draft resolutions, and invite Member States to consider pursuing mergers of such texts through consultations with all sponsors.

Cluster 8

By the terms of a draft resolution on the United Nations study on disarmament and non-proliferation (document A/C.1/59/L.53/Rev.1) the Assembly would express its appreciation to the Member States, the United Nations and other international and regional organizations, civil society and non-governmental organizations, which, within their purview, implemented the recommendations made in the United Nations study, as discussed in the report of the Secretary-General.

It would also convey, once again, those recommendations to Member States, the United Nations and other international and regional organizations, civil society and non-governmental organizations and encourage them to report to the Secretary-General on steps taken to implement them. In addition, it would request the Secretary-General to prepare a report reviewing the results of the implementation of the recommendations and possible new opportunities for promoting disarmament and non-proliferation education and to submit it to the General Assembly at its sixty-first session.

The draft resolution is sponsored by Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Egypt, Estonia, France, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand and Ukraine.

Cluster 10

According to a draft resolution on the maintenance of international security -- through good-neighbourliness, stability and development -- in South-Eastern Europe (document A/C.1/59/L.55/Rev.2), the Assembly would call upon all States the relevant international organizations and the appropriate organs of the United Nations to respect the principles of territorial integrity and sovereignty of all States and the inviolability of international borders.

The Assembly would also call upon all States to continue to take measures in accordance with the Charter and the commitments of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and through further development of regional arrangements, as appropriate, to eliminate threats to international peace and security and to help to prevent conflicts in South-Eastern Europe, which could lead to the violent disintegration of States.

Under a further term, the Assembly would call upon all participants in the Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe, as well as all concerned international organizations, to continue to support the efforts of the States of South-Eastern Europe towards regional stability and cooperation so as to enable them to pursue sustainable development and integration into European structures, taking also into account trans-Atlantic relations.

The Assembly would also call upon all States and relevant international organizations to contribute to the full implementation of Security Council resolution 1244 (1999), on Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, as well as of Security Council resolutions 1345 (2001) of 21 March 2001 and 1371 (2001) of 26 September 2001, and emphasize the importance of the standards review process, of the implementation of the "Standards for Kosovo" document endorsed by the Security Council in its presidential statement of 12 December 2003, and of the Kosovo Standards Implementation Plan of 31 March 2004.

By additional provisions, the Assembly would reject the use of violence in pursuit of political aims, and stress that only peaceful political solutions could assure a stable and democratic future for South-Eastern Europe. It would also urge the strengthening of relations among the States of South-Eastern Europe on the basis of respect for international law and agreements, in accordance with the principles of good-neighbourliness and mutual respect.

The Assembly would also urge all States to take effective measures against the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons and to help promote the collection and safe destruction of surplus stocks of such arms and light weapons. In addition, it would stress the importance of closer cooperation among States, inter alia, in crime prevention, combating terrorism, trafficking in human beings, organized crime and corruption, drug trafficking and money-laundering.

It would also call on all States to intensify cooperation with and render all necessary assistance to the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia since 1991 to bring all at-large indictees to surrender to the Tribunal in line with Security Council resolutions 1503 (2003) and 1534 (2004).

The draft resolution is sponsored by Algeria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, San Marino, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and United States.

Action on Drafts

The Committee first took up the cluster on nuclear weapons.

The representative of Egypt, in explanation of vote before the vote on the draft resolution on the Conference on Disarmament decision to establish an ad hoc committee to negotiate a non-discriminatory, multilateral, internationally verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, said that his country's support was based on the belief that a convention could be reached and that such a convention would be an instrument to ensure progress toward disarmament. His country supported the draft resolution and the document adopted by the Conference on Disarmament. That document stated that such a convention should deal with nuclear disarmament. That meant that it should extend its scope in order to include fissile materials for nuclear weapons. The reserves with regard to scope covered reserves on stockpiles of fissile materials.

The Committee then took action on the draft resolution on the negotiation of a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons (document A/C.1/59/L.34). The draft resolution was approved by a recorded vote of 147 in favour, to 1 against (United States), with 2 abstentions (Israel, United Kingdom) (Annex I).

Speaking after the vote, the representative of France said he had voted in favour of the draft because he had wished to demonstrate his support for the launch of negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty. However, he regretted that this year's text, which was identical to previous versions, had not taken into account relevant developments. Noting that the draft had always enjoyed consensus in the past, he found it unfortunate that this year the concerns of a number of delegations, which had wished to avoid division in the Committee, had not been taken into account.

The representative of the United Kingdom expressed regret over the fact that he had been forced to abstain from the vote, especially since his delegation had co-sponsored it in previous years. Acknowledging that he was fully committed to a fissile material cut-off treaty, that such a treaty was already an agreed priority of the international community, and that he would continue to support the effective verification of arms control treaties, he lamented that the draft at hand, as currently worded, had divided the international community at a time when progress should be a prime objective.

The representative of Israel also explained his abstention, which had been made in light of both regional and global concerns. In the regional context, issues related to nuclear disarmament could only be dealt with after achieving lasting peace and reconciliation, and he had already explained his country's approach, which had been inspired by other regions, during his explanation of vote on the draft on a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East. In the global arena, non-compliance with international treaties and the unchecked dissemination of sensitive materials had become among the most pressing nuclear non-proliferation challenges. However, instead of adequately addressing such challenges, a fissile material cut-off treaty could actually complicate them, he said. In that regard, he called for a new effective non-proliferation arrangement pertaining to the nuclear fuel cycle.

The representative of the Russian Federation said that his country had voted in favour of the draft resolution on the Conference on Disarmament decision to establish an ad hoc committee to negotiate a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. It was, however, concerned that once again, there had been a need to have a vote on that text. His Government was ready to begin discussion on the production on fissile materials for nuclear weapons at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on the basis of its mandate.

The representative of the United States, also on the draft resolution on the fissile material treaty, said that her country supported negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament on a treaty banning fissile materials for use in nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosives devices. Such a treaty would contribute to disarmament. The United States had, however, concluded that effective verification of such a treaty was not achievable. Since the draft resolution called for effective verification, her country must, as such, vote in opposition.

The Committee then turned to the cluster on disarmament machinery. The Chairman announced that two draft resolutions on improving the effectiveness of the methods of work of the First Committee (documents A/C.1/59/L.1 and A/C.1/59/L.13) had been withdrawn and were being replaced by another draft resolution of the same title (document A/C.1/59/L.60). The Chairman then proposed that the Committee dispense with the 24-hour rule in order to take up the new draft text.

The representative of the United States said that his delegation was not in a position to waive that rule. He added that his country had joined as a co-sponsor of the new draft text.

The Committee decided to take up the draft resolution at its next meeting.

The Committee then took up the draft resolution on the United Nations study on disarmament and non-proliferation education (document A/C.1/59/L.53/Rev.1).

Prior to action, the representative of Mexico introduced an oral amendment to the draft's fourth operative paragraph, which would have the Assembly "request the Secretary-General to utilize electronic means to the fullest extent possible in the dissemination, in as many languages as feasible, of information related to that report and any other information that the Department for Disarmament Affairs gathered on an ongoing basis in regard to the implementation of the recommendations of the United Nations study."

The amendment would add the word "official" before "languages".

The draft as a whole, including the amendment, was approved without a vote.

The representative of Albania, in a general statement on the cluster on international security, said that his country had the intention of co-sponsoring the draft resolution on maintenance of international security through good-neighbourliness, stability and development in South-Eastern Europe, despite its reservations about it. That had, however, not been possible. The main sponsor, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, had not held a single consultation to bring together the most interested parties in the region. Albania had wanted to propose an amendment to the eleventh preambular paragraph in order to improve it. That paragraph was vague and unclear and ran counter to the positive efforts that had been undertaken to counter illicit arms in the region. He hoped that the situation with the current draft resolution would not be the case in future resolutions. Because of his country's reservations, it was not co-sponsoring the draft, but would join the consensus on it.

The Committee then approved without a vote the draft resolution on maintenance of international security through good-neighbourliness, stability and development -- in South-Eastern Europe (document A/C.1/59/L.55/Rev.2).

The representative of Saudi Arabia, said that he had not been present during the voting on the draft resolution on the treaty. His country would have voted in favour of the text.

The representative of Egypt said his country had requested that the Committee consider the amount of resources allocated to servicing the Conference on Disarmament. It had now been able to confirm that that amount was $3.7 million per year. It was regrettable that the Conference on Disarmament had not agreed on a programme of work for seven years. The amount allocated to the Conference was more than the amount allocated to the First Committee. Egypt strongly urged that the Conference agree on a programme of work and hoped that it would meet substantively this year.

ANNEX

Vote on Fissile Material Treaty

The draft resolution on the Conference on Disarmament decision to establish an ad hoc committee to negotiate a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons (document A/C.1/59/L.34) was approved by a recorded vote of 147 in favour to 1 against, with 2 abstentions, as follows:

In favour: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Chile, China, Colombia, Congo, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia and Montenegro, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Against: United States.

Abstain: Israel, United Kingdom.

Absent: Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burundi, Central African Republic, Comoros, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, Honduras, Kiribati, Malawi, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Monaco, Namibia, Nauru, Niger, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu.

"We (the US) worked closely with them (Israel) months before, not necessarily ... knowing when it was going to happen, but when there was an incident they will take advantage of the incident, what I call a fortunate timing'," Hersh said.

"Nobody is suggesting that Israel wouldn't have done what it did without the Americans," he added.

Hezbollah responded to Israel's attacks by firing missiles into Israel to escalate the month-long conflict that killed some 1,200 people on both sides.

A UN-organized cessation of hostilities planned for Monday, it was hoped, could bring an end to the fighting.

In the article Hersh suggests the White House had several reasons for supporting an Israeli bombing campaign in Lebanon.

If Washington wanted to pursue a military attack against Iran over its nuclear program, the United States had to get rid of the weapons Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation against Israel, he writes.

Citing a US government consultant with close ties to Israel, Hersh also reports that before the Hezbollah kidnappings, several Israeli officials visited Washington "to get a green light" for a bombing operation following a Hezbollah provocation, and also "to find out how much the United States would bear".

"The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits," the magazine quotes the consultant as saying. "Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."

US government officials have denied the charges, but Hersh defended his piece Sunday saying he had strong sources for the article which was thoroughly vetted by New Yorker editors.

"This White House will find a way to view what happened with the Israelis against Hezbollah as a victory, and they'll find a way to see it as a positive for any planning that is going towards Iran," he told CNN.

In the magazine Hersh writes that a former senior intelligence official said some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- a council of the president's top military advisors -- remain concerned that the administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should.

"There is no way that (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this," Hersh quotes the former official as saying.

"When the smoke clears, they'll say it was a success, and they'll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran."

If these were normal times, the American view of the conflict in Lebanon might look something like the street scenes that have electrified the suburbs of Detroit for the past four weeks.

In Dearborn, home to the Ford Motor Company and also the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, up to 1000 people have turned out day after day to express their outrage at the Israeli military campaign and mourn the loss of civilian life in Lebanon. At one protest in late July, 15,000 people - almost half of the local Arab American population - showed up in a sea of Lebanese flags, along with anti-Israeli and anti-Bush slogans.

A few miles to the north, in the heavily Jewish suburb of Southfield, meanwhile, the Congregation Shaarey Zedek synagogue has played host to passionate counter-protests in which the US and Israeli national anthems are played back to back and demonstrators have asserted that it is Israel's survival, not Lebanon's, that is at stake here.

Such is the normal exercise of free speech in an open society, one might think. But these are not normal times. The Detroit protests have been tinged with paranoia and justifiable fear on both sides. Several Jewish institutions in the area, including two community centres and several synagogues, have hired private security guards in response to an incident in Seattle at the end of July, in which a mentally unstable 30-year-old Muslim walked into a Jewish Federation building and opened fire, killing one person and injuring five others.

On the Arab American side, many have expressed reluctance to stand up and be counted among the protesters for fear of being tinged by association with Hizbollah, which is on the United States' list of terrorist organisations. (As a result, the voices heard during the protests tend to be the more extreme ones.) They don't like to discuss their political views in any public forum, following the revelation a few months ago that the National Security Agency was wiretapping phone calls and e-mail exchanges as part of the Bush administration's war on terror.

They are even afraid to donate money to help the civilian victims of the war in Lebanon because of the intense scrutiny Islamic and Arab charities have been subjected to since the 9/11 attacks. The Bush administration has denounced 40 charities worldwide as financiers of terrorism, and arrested and deported dozens of people associated with them. Consequently, while Jewish charities such as the United Jewish Communities are busy raising $300m to help families affected by the Katyusha rockets raining down on northern Israel, donations to the Lebanese victims have come in at no more than a trickle.

Outside Detroit and a handful of other cities with sizeable Arab American populations, it is hard to detect that there are two sides to the conflict at all. The Dearborn protests have received almost no attention nationally, and when they have it has usually been to denounce the participants as extremists and apologists for terrorism - either because they have voiced support for Hizbollah or because they have carried banners in which the Star of David at the centre of the Israeli flag has been replaced by a swastika.

The media, more generally, has left little doubt in the minds of a majority of American news consumers that the Israelis are the good guys, the aggrieved victims, while Hizbollah is an incarnation of the same evil responsible for bringing down the World Trade Centre, a heartless and faceless organisation whose destruction is so important it can justify all the damage Israel is inflicting on Lebanon and its civilians.

The point is not that this viewpoint is necessarily wrong. The point - and this is what distinguishes the US from every other Western country in its attitude to the conflict - is that it is presented as a foregone conclusion. Not only is there next to no debate, but debate itself is considered unnecessary and suspect.

The 24-hour cable news stations are the worst offenders. Rupert Murdoch's Fox News has had reporters running around northern Israel chronicling every rocket attack and every Israeli mobilisation, but has shown little or no interest in anything happening on the other side of the border. It is a rarity on any of the cable channels to see any Arab being tapped for expert opinion on the conflict. A startling amount of airtime, meanwhile, is given to the likes of Michael D Evans, an end-of-the-world Biblical "prophet" with no credentials in the complexities of Middle Eastern politics. He has shown up on MSNBC and Fox under the label "Middle East analyst". Fox's default analyst, on this and many other issues, has been the right-wing provocateur and best-selling author Ann Coulter, whose main credential is to have opined, days after 9/11, that what America should do to the Middle East is "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity".

Often, the coverage has been hysterical and distasteful. In the days following the Israeli bombing of Qana, several pro-Israeli bloggers started spreading a hoax story that Hizbollah had engineered the event, or stage-managed it by placing dead babies in the rubble for the purpose of misleading reporters. Oliver North, the Reagan-era orchestrator of the Iran-Contra affair who is now a right-wing television and radio host, and Michelle Malkin, a sharp-tongued Bush administration cheerleader who runs her own weblog, appeared on Fox News to give credence to the hoax - before the Israeli army came forward to take responsibility and brought the matter to at least a partial close.

As the conflict has gone on, the media interpretation of it has only hardened. Essentially, the line touted by cable news hosts and their correspondents - closely adhering to the line adopted by the Bush administration and its neoconservative supporters - is that Hizbollah is part of a giant anti-Israeli and anti-American terror network that also includes Hamas, al-Qa'ida, the governments of Syria and Iran, and the insurgents in Iraq. Little effort is made to distinguish between these groups, or explain what their goals might be. The conflict is presented as a straight fight between good and evil, in which US interests and Israeli interests intersect almost completely. Anyone who suggests otherwise is likely to be pounced on and ripped to shreds.

When John Dingell, a Democratic congressman from Michigan with a large Arab American population in his constituency, gave an interview suggesting it was wrong for the US to take sides instead of pushing for an end to violence, he was quickly - and loudly - accused of being a Hizbollah apologist. Newt Gingrich, the Republican former House speaker, accused him of failing to draw any moral distinction between Hizbollah and Israel. Rush Limbaugh, the popular conservative talk-show host, piled into him, as did the conservative newspaper The Washington Times. The Times was later forced to admit it had quoted Dingell out of context and reprinted his full words, including: " I condemn Hizbollah, as does everyone else, for the violence."

The hysteria has extended into the realm of domestic politics, especially since this is a congressional election year. Republican have sought to depict last week's primary defeat of the Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, one of the loudest cheerleaders for the Iraq war, as some sort of wacko extremist anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli stand that risks undermining national security. Vice-President Dick Cheney said Lieberman's defeat would encourage "al-Qa'ida types" to think they can break the will of Americans. The fact that the man who beat Lieberman, Ned Lamont, is an old-fashioned East Coast Wasp who was a registered Republican for much of his life is something Mr Cheney chose to overlook.

Part of the Republican strategy this year is to attack any media that either attacks them or has the temerity to report facts that contradict the official party line. Thus, when Reuters was forced to withdraw a photograph of Beirut under bombardment because one of its stringers had doctored the image to increase the black smoke, it was a chance to rip into the news agency over its efforts to be even-handed. In a typical riposte, Michelle Malkin denounced Reuters as "a news service that seems to have made its mark rubber-stamping pro-Hizbollah propaganda".

She was not the only one to take that view. Mainstream, even liberal, publications have echoed her line. Tim Rutten, the Los Angeles Times liberal media critic, denounced the "obscenely anti-Israeli tenor of most of the European and world press" in his most recent column.

It is not just the US media which tilts in a pro-Israeli direction. Congress, too, is remarkably unified in its support for the Israeli government, and politicians more generally understand that to criticise Israel is to risk jeopardising their future careers. When Antonio Villaraigosa, the up-and-coming Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles, was first invited to comment on the Middle East crisis, he sounded a note so pro-Israeli that he was forced to apologise to local Muslim and Arab community leaders. There is far less public debate of Israeli policy in the US, in fact, than there is in Israel itself.

This is less a reflection of American Jewish opinion - which is more diverse than is suggested in the media - than it is a commentary on the power of pro-Israeli lobby groups like Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which bankrolls pro-Israeli congressional candidates. That, in turn, is frustrating to liberal Jews like Michael Lerner, a San Francisco rabbi who heads an anti-war community called Tikkun. Rabbi Lerner has tried to argue for years that it is in Israel's best interests to reach a peaceful settlement, and that demonising Arabs as terrorists is counter-productive and against Judaism.

Lerner is probably right to assert that he speaks for a large number of American Jews, only half of whom are affiliated with pro-Israeli lobbying organisations. Certainly, dinner party conversation in heavily Jewish cities like New York suggest misgivings about Israel's strategic aims, even if there is some consensus that Hizbollah cannot be allowed to strike with impunity.

Few, if any, of those misgivings have entered the US media. "There is no major figure in American political life who has been willing to raise the issue of the legitimate needs of the Palestinian people, or even talk about them as human beings," Lerner said. "The organised Jewish community has transformed the image of Judaism into a cheering squad for the Israeli government, whatever its policies are. That is just idolatry, and goes against all the warnings in the Bible about giving too much power to the king or the state."