After the tragedy of Sept. 11, many Americans, filled with grief and rage, were calling for revenge. For an administration that had been trying to get a pipeline put down in a county controlled by unwilling Taliban, Sept. 11 provided the excuse necessary to make war on a war-torn country. Afghanistan was attacked.

That there was no connection between Osama bin Laden and the 3,500 Afghan civilians who died does not seem to have mattered. That many of the dead women and children never heard the name bin Laden was of no consequence.

For an administration that did not care about the civilian deaths in Afghanistan, waging war on more innocent civilians to obtain wealthy oil fields and lay the groundwork for capitalism would not be difficult either. A frequently repeated slogan about WMD would increase the already well manipulated fear to such a pitch that people would parley the sacrifice of our own young men and women as well as more innocent civilians.

The terrible irony is that Iraq did not have WMD. But we do. And we used them.

CNN reported that we used napalm in northern Iraq. We used cluster bombs in the midst of Baghdad. We used the world’s biggest bombs, according to a June story in Scotland’s Sunday Herald.

These were special bombs because they were made with depleted uranium, a radioactive substance that when exploded becomes a radioactive dust which causes radiation damage to all who breathe it – including American troops.

Jenny Orr, West Paris

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