By Kimball Cariou

The post-9/11 manipulation of public opinion is running into an increasingly distrustful mindset across the world, even inside the United States. But this has not stopped the war machine and the mass media (closely linked through tight corporate connections) from resorting to tried and true methods of pacifying the population, such as various forms of weapons threats.

The emergence of weapons of mass destruction, going back to the invention of the gatling gun, changed the very concept of warfare. Combat between opposing military forces has gradually given way to forcing enemy civilians into submission. Given the horrors associated with this shift, the populations of warring countries must somehow be convinced to accept the crimes committed on their behalf.

Take the nuclear bomb as an example. Atomic weapons were dropped on Japan in August 1945, supposedly to avoid as many as one million U.S. casualties projected during any invasion of the islands. Japan did indeed surrender days after suffering over 200,000 killed in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But the historical evidence shows that Japan was already considering surrender, since its main land forces were being defeated by the Soviet Red Army on the Asian mainland. In this case, nuclear bombs served to ensure that Japan was occupied exclusively by U.S. troops, and to warn the USSR and other challengers to U.S. supremacy that they could be next to face the nuclear fire. On many occasions since, the United States has threatened or hinted at the possible use of nuclear weapons, most often against the non-white populations of countries such as Korea, China and Vietnam.

At the same time, the Soviet nuclear arsenal became a key prop for the Cold War brainwashing of the U.S. population, reaching a hysterical peak in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Conform to our foreign policy goals and ideology, U.S. citizens were warned, or else the Soviets will become powerful enough to launch nuclear war against us.

Mass opposition to this madness became a defining feature of the 1980s, as people refused to be held hostage to nuclear weapons any longer. But these weapons retain much of their power to threaten other countries.

As a matter of policy, the Pentagon always refuses to reject the "first strike" nuclear option. Since Sept. 11, various scenarios have looked at the use of so-called "battlefield nukes" against Taliban forces. Surveys have found that as many as one-quarter of U.S. citizens would support the use of nuclear weapons in Afghanistan; one news report quoted a woman agreeing that such weapons should be used "as long as children weren't hurt."

Such "intelligent" nukes are impossible, of course. In fact, as Chernobyl and other nuclear accidents have shown, the release of relatively small amounts of nuclear radiation has deeply negative consequences far beyond the point of origin. No doubt this is one reason why the nuclear option has so far not been used.

But today, the only military power which has bombed civilians is also busy terrifying its own citizens with the latest nuclear threat. Osama bin Laden, we are told, intends to explode the bomb on U.S. soil.

This is the same Osama who was supposedly responsible for the anthrax mailings, now widely seen as the work of U.S. far-right terrorists. Could Al Qaeda have workable nuclear bombs? Most scientists and weapons experts agree this is highly unlikely. Merely gaining possession of some weapons-grade plutonium or missile parts from poverty-stricken Russian researchers or sympathetic Pakistani scientists is not the same as putting together a functioning nuclear bomb. But the badly-shaken U.S. population is being told a different story.

Colin Powell recently said that Sept. 11 has given the United States an opportunity to expand its influence around the globe. The double-edged threat of nuclear or bio-chemical attacks will no doubt remain a potent political weapon as this tragedy continues to unfold.