Terrorism:
    "Systematic use or violence and intimidation to achieve some goal".
    Collins English Dictionary.

    Poor Americans; in mid February 2003, you are the victims of a major terrorist campaign, and it is being led by your media and by the men and women in power in your nation.
    For the last two weeks, ever since the US Government realized that a large part of the rest of the world would prefer a peaceful solution to the Iraq problem, a significant part of your media - no doubt manipulated by the CIA (and after all, manipulation is one of the C.I.A's main functions) - has been subjecting you to a barrage of intimidation. The violence is verbal, but it is violence.
    Suddenly, although for now there is absolutely no hard proof to justify it, you are being terrorized into believing that there is a major terrorist threat to your great country.
    But did you ever stop to think about it for a moment?
    How convenient it is for George Bush that suddenly, just when he needs to gather support for a new war, and just when Europe has begun to get serious in its opposition, Al Quaeda should suddenly come along with a new terrorist threat. What perfect timing by Al Quaeda! If they had wanted to make George Bush into a national Hero for Americans, they could not have chosen a better moment! (Hey! Surely that's wrong? Al Quaeda guys don't want to help Bush, they hate him!)
    And how kind of Osama Bin Laden. Just two days before the next important meeting at the UN, where America risks not getting the support that it is looking for, up pops your old enemy (almost a friend, this time!) Ozzy B. Laden, brandishing an audiotaped message of death and destruction to all Americans. What perfect timing for George W. Bush! And how lucky of Colin Powell to be able to get hold of a copy of the tape, even before the Al-Jazeera TV station had received it!
    If the CIA had wanted to imagine the best way to drive panic and terror into the hearts of Americans, they would have been hard pressed to find a better scenario than this.
    Which leaves one seriously wondering......
    From George Bush's point of view, this remarkably fortunate timing seems almost too good to be true. And if it seems too good to be true.... might it just be, somehow, not true?
    Of course terrorism from Al Quaeda is a potential threat to us all; that IS true. But is this threat any greater today than it was a month ago? Or are the American people not just being terrorized by their media into supporting Bush's plans for war?
    As for that Bin Laden tape, no one can ever prove its authenticity! No one even knows whether Bin Laden is still alive..... But obviously, it is now much more useful for Washington to have a living Bin Laden, who makes blood-curdling threats against the USA, than a dead Bin Laden who is no longer a menace to anyone. How convenient therefore of Bin to remind the world that he is alive and threatening, just when he was being eclipsed by the monstrous Saddam.
    Every form of extremism that ever was has needed to magnify and multiply the perceived dangers of an enemy. Once the threat to the world was Communists, now it is Islamists and Saddam. Just like for Hitler it was the Jews, or for the extremist Protestants in Northern Ireland, it was the Catholics.

    Of course, even in Europe, few people doubt that Saddam is a brutal dictator, and that Islamic terrorism is a real threat. But in Europe, news of the new Bin Laden tape has met with skepticism, and news of new terrorist threats has not caused a lot of alarm. Public opinion remains solidly opposed to war in Iraq, unless it is proved that this is the only way to avoid a major terrorist attack, and unless the attack is authorized by the UN. Bush's threats of war have been met with considerable alarm and anxiety.
    At the same time, in the USA, George Bush's approval ratings have soared to 90%.
    It would be absolutely wrong to suggest that George Bush is a new Hitler. He is not. Sadly however, the way in which the American public is being terrorized into supporting the logic of war is strikingly similar to the way in which the German people in the early 1930's were terrorized into electing Hitler and his band to power in their country.
    If Germany and France stand shoulder to shoulder in their calls for restraint, perhaps it is that we, in "Old Europe", have learned the lessons of the past, and our people are are less willing to believe the alarmist threats being put up by at least some politicians. Poor Tony Blair, in Britain, has been quite unable to bring the British public round to supporting his line on Iraq.
    Americans, it's a great pity for you and perhaps for the whole world that you have not learned the same lessons.

    And just a little footnote for Americans to reflect on:  The United States insists that it is up to Iraq to prove beyond doubt that it has no weapons of mass destruction. Did anyone in the US administration ever study logic? Maybe not - else they might know that it is impossible, by definition, to prove a negative.

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