You wonder what kind of threat there is which would warrant this. Or are the Bushies purely power-mad, driven by dictatorial ambitions? It seems so.

"Public awareness of the US military's information operations is low, but it's growing - thanks to some operational clumsiness.

"Late last year, it emerged that the Pentagon had paid a private company, the Lincoln Group, to plant hundreds of stories in Iraqi newspapers. The stories - all supportive of US policy - were written by military personnel and then placed in Iraqi publications

"And websites that appeared to be information sites on the politics of Africa and the Balkans were found to be run by the Pentagon.

"But the true extent of the Pentagon's information operations, how they work, who they're aimed at, and at what point they turn from informing the public to influencing populations, is far from clear."

"And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum".

"US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum".

"Consider that for a moment.

"The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.

"Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandising bureaucrats? Or are they real?

"The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon.

"And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched only by the US military's ambitions for it."