The circus has started, the media whipped war fever is underway.

It’s almost inescapable—wafting through the drug store, the frenzied voice of radio DJs hyping the prospect of bombing which will be described the moment it happens so don’t touch that dial, the flow of idiocy on TV that pops up when the VCR is not yet on to play something sensible (Aaron Brown of CNN describing in detail the meaning of an Oval Office photograph as if he were describing a Polaroid of the Last Supper, only to be contradicted by his White House correspondent who says it was taken at an entirely different time with a completely other purpose, and then goes on to describe “riveting details” of the bombing’s beginning, how Our Lord Bush sayeth unto them the historic eloquent holy words, “Let’s go.” Jeez, whatever happened to Let’s roll? So 2001!)

In the meantime a couple of stories from the back pages: telephones in diplomatic offices in a European Union headquarters were bugged, and the U.S. is suspected. A similar charge was made concerning the offices of European officials at the UN.

And, that tape of Bin Laden that Colin Powell made so much of may be a fake. At least, Swiss audio experts cannot confirm that it is authentic. Brendan Koerner, a contributing editor of Wired, reports this as well as contextual evidence that suggests the tape is not authentic, including unusual mentions of U.S. officials Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Had to put yourselves in the story, didn't you guys?

Of course, the antennae on the alien heads of resident Paranoids here at American Samizat twitched immediately when Colin Powell announced the existence of this tape at the UN, and that it had been received at the A Jazeera satellite channel before Al Jazeera actually knew it received it.

But mitigating against it being an American-made fake is that the link it purported to establish between Osama and Iraq was unconvincing. Or considering the quality of disinformation coming from the U.S. and Britain up to now, maybe not.