George Bush and His

Laden. Even now, almost a year after the attacks, thousands of bodies and one virtually indestructible flight recorder have not been found. Yet the US government claim a small paper passport survived 2 high speed airplane collisions, 2 huge fireballs and raging fires, 2 massive building collapses and a few other smaller building collapses and has been found unscathed? This is highly dubious to say the least. So we now have an accusation that cannot be backed up, yet Bush still decides to launch an attack on Afghanistan. The attack is widely regarded as a failure though Bush will not admit it. In Afghanistan the US army used a policy of 'blanket bombing', which was basically: bomb everything in sight, and you're bound to hit something. This 'something' was 1 nursing home, 2 Red Cross hospitals, 1 school and hundreds of homes. They did manage, with the help of the anti-Taliban group in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance, to find some arms caches and 'eliminate' some Taliban members. Once people realized that the operation in Afghanistan was a failure, Bush tried to regain his popularity by announcing yet another controversial move; plans to attack Iraq. During the 1990's Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq invaded Kuwait, the worlds biggest oil producer, and the US and UN stepped in to defend it. This was known as the gulf war and was a big success for the US, although they did not manage to get rid of Hussein. Many people now believe that Bush is now trying to pick up where his predecessor, Bill Clinton, left off and rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his oppression forever. This is all fine and well, but they are completely unprovoked and have absolutely no reason to attack: Iraq has kept themselves to themselves since the end of the gulf war. An assault on Iraq would, as the assault on Afghanistan showed, result in: loss of civilian lives in Iraq, loss of lives in the US army, and a possible counter-attack by Iraq on the US which would result in the deaths of many US civilians. On the other hand, Bin Laden was a prime suspect in that he had declared jihad, or holy war, against the USA and was implicated in several earlier terrorist attacks against the US in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania and Yemen. He had already attempted to bring down the World Trade Centre in 1994 with a car bomb, killing 7 people and injuring dozens more. Bushes operation in Afghanistan was slightly successful, in recovering arms caches etc. but they still haven't found bin Laden have they? A war on Iraq is a war of imperialism against an oppressed, formerly colonized people. It is a war for Big Oil against a country that dared to nationalize its oil fields and tried to use the profits from that oil to help Iraq emerge as an independent modernizing regional power in the Persian/Arabian Gulf -- an area that contains two-thirds of the world's known oil reserves. The U.S. reserves for itself the right to be the only regional power in this oil-rich area. You may have noticed the rise in the speeches that the White House has given recently, stating why it's a good idea to attack Iraq. Its just propaganda aimed at justifying aggression against Iraq. Washington supports dictatorial monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It sends $15 million a day to Israel while that government has invaded Lebanon, occupied the Palestinian territories and created a large, illegal arsenal of nuclear weapons, which is even larger than the one that Bush claims Iraq hold. In conclusion, Bush failed in his operation in Afghanistan. It cost him millions of dollars in the military and the lives of about a dozen soldiers. Since the war in Afghanistan, nothing has been heard from Afghanistan, and that's the way Bush likes it. Now America has shown that she can fail: in Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s and Afghanistan. Vietnam was America's bloodiest war. If they go to Iraq and start a war there, the costs will be great, if they fail, they will be greater. If they decide, by some miracle not to start the war, then Iraq still hold masses of nuclear arms capability, which UN inspectors are unable to regulate and thus creating the further possibility of attacks on America. Personally, I think that Bush should seriously consider a diplomatic solution to this 'problem' after all is Diplomacy not a cornerstone of the American way of life? I also believe that George W Bush is a bloodthirsty and ruthless man, much like his father. He is determined to make his mark on American society any way that he can. The way that he has chosen is a rocky path: he could be remembered as the person who led the way in removing terrorism from the world: Which is highly unlikely. He is much more likely to be remembered as the man who tried to take on the world, but failed and as a result ended up causing a lot of pain and bloodshed to the American society and the societies of his various 'Allies'. As for the war against terrorism, I believe that this is not a war against terrorism - if it was, efforts would have already been made to shut down terrorism elsewhere in the world - especially in Africa, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union, Asia and South America. The reason it hasn't happened is that the US has been the chief initiator of state-sponsored terrorism outside the communist block since WWII through coups, assassinations, and illegal wars - the US even violently resisted basic civil rights for its own citizens until the 1960s and then only did so reluctantly. On the surface, this is a war against Iraq, al-Qaida and the Taliban government of Afghanistan; deeper down this is a war against everyone opposed to the US for its past and present abuses of human rights, either by its government or its corporations. Ed Horrocks 10SSB Mrs. Zachary