All the members of the Bush Administration have been ordered to defend the invasion of Iraq in their contacts with the media and the public, and to play down the differences with the European allies and other countries such as Russia, China and the Arab world.

At the end of January 2003, the Prime Ministers of the UK, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic are publishing an open letter in the Times of London and the US Wall Street Journal supporting the USA in relation to their policy towards Iraq. Germany and France were not even asked to sign, while others refused. And Saddam Hussein goes on saying that he can defeat the USA and their allies. Nobody is convinced.

The USA is broadcasting propaganda over Iraq by radio called Radio Tikrit. Tikrit is the town where Saddam Hussein comes from; the use of the town's name for propaganda -psychological warfare- is a joke. At the same time Turkey is still bargaining for more money to let the Americans use their bases there, as well as the air space, to invade Iraq from the north. This would help the Americans quite a lot, so they are ready to pay whatever the Turks ask. The Turkish parliament must approve the deal, but the amount could be such that, Islamic or not, they will sell themselves to the US.

Just to make Blair look more important, President Bush agreed on March 2, 2003, that 2,000 US Marines would be put under British command. This seems to be in contradiction with the US Constitution that states that US soldiers must always be under the US president command. In fact, the British commander will be under an US general!! This decision is just a show without any real effect.

Donald Rumsfelt, in an interview with David Dimbleby of the BBC1 on March 4, 2003, said that more countries will support the USA in its invasion of Iraq than the 33-strong coalition in the 1991 Gulf War, and this if the UN Security Council back it or not. And in Britain, Gordon Brown is ready to spend what is required, without limit, to fight Iraq. The NHS, schools, infrastructure, etc will have to wait.

On March 10 2003, several hundred soldiers belonging to an Iranian-based Iraqi militia are said to have entered northern Iraq where they have established a few military camps inside the Kurdish-controlled territory near the village of Banibee. Their leader is Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, a senior Iraqi opposition Shia cleric who spent 20 years in exile in Iran. His organisation, funded and supported by the Islamic regime in Teheran, is known as the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI); it claims to represent 60% of the Shia population, the majority in Iraq. It is expected that about 5,000 soldiers of this organisation will move soon to Iraq.

And now on March 16, 2003, we are told that Iraq has a spy network in Britain, with informants and active agents. And guess who is at the base of this revelation? The Iraqi defectors living in Britain, of course. How convenient to disclose this information just now.

As the US fights an uphill battle to win support from its allies, Baghdad has been looking for sympathisers and has found quite a few. Its foreign minister, Naji Sabri, visited many countries willing to receive him such as Jordan, Iran, Algeria and Syria. Even Saudi Arabia, that financed most of the cost of the 1991 Gulf War, is now closer to Iraq that to the US.

Saddam Hussein is playing a very efficient propaganda war; exactly what the US has not been able to do up to now. Saddam, one day, tells a visitor that the UN arm inspectors can come back to Iraq, and the next day, one of his ministers or general, says exactly the opposite.

Around September 20, 2002, the media is wondering if Saddam Hussein can really rely on his military forces. In particular, according to some sources, Saddam cannot trust his Republican Guards to protect him and he is keeping them out of Baghdad by fear that they could overthrow the regime with their tanks and heavy artillery.

Now, as the war is imminent, the personal biography of Saddam Hussein appears in most newspapers. His story, presented like an obituary, is not very nice. Saddam is responsible for the death of many people at home, and in other countries. But he has been in power for about 30 years; nobody complained most of the time, and especially the USA because, at time, he was useful to them like during the Iraq/Iran war when the US gave him money, arms as well as chemical and biological weapons. Now he is not useful anymore, so he is transform from a friend of the US' interests into a mortal enemy.