Hi Yus!
            Thanks for your observations. We probably have to agree to disagree on this issue. To nominate George Bush for the Nobel Peace Prize given his record especially with regard to capital punishment and his war-filled and gung-ho attitude during his short tenure as president is truly amazing to me. The "necessary evil" that you refer to is one the US is equally guilty of creating. When that necessary evil was using its evil methods to murder and terrorize others, it was ok by the US and its allies. However, when what goes around comes around, it suddenly becomes the mother of all evils. 
 
The terrorism perpetrated by the US and its allies, cloaked in nice-sounding and refined expression, is sold to the world with such sophistication that all its cruelty is washed away before it reaches us. If any other third world nation does exactly as the US is doing, another pretext would be found to annihilate it. The US attacked Afghanistan without having concrete proof of Bin Laden's involvement in the September 11th. attacks. It is in fact still trying to find concrete proof to link Bin Laden to the attacks. The US' blanket and discriminatory freezing of "terrorist" assets is affecting innocent people and the whole world is powerless to do anything. Because of its desire to avenge its humiliation in Somalia, the freezing of the Barakaat assets is wreaking havoc on many innocent Somalis. The owners of the Barakaat branch in Sweden have been put in limbo since their assets were frozen. The "evidence" used to freeze their assets was made known to their lawyer a few days ago and such "evidence" wouldn't stand even the slightest chance of convicting them in a Swedish court. The majority of the "evidence" is publicly available material. The rest is some overheads and other documents and not a single transaction to prove that they transferred money on behalf of terrorists. The latest on this issue is that after protests from the Swedish government, the US position is that it has a right to pre-empt terrorism by freezing assets of those who might have a link to terrorism. Changing the goal post. Yet these poor Somalis (who are naturalised Swedes) are here labelled as terrorists, their assets frozen and they have to survive on donations organised by some Swedish celebrities whose very act of helping them out with charity was challenged in court. Thank God, the court ruled that the celebrities who were donating money for the Somalis' upkeep were not breaking the sanctions law. How can this be justified?

The wanton disregard for international law with regard to the treatment of the prisoners at Camp X-ray in Cuba is another example. If Saddam Hussein were to keep American, British or other Western prisoners of war at the mercy of the elements in such cages and refuse them their rights under international law, the outcry and the sound of the jets and bombs would be deafening. Yet the rights of these prisoners of war are being violated and no one can do a thing about it. The US comes up with a legal non-term - illegal combatants, to justify the denying of these prisoners of war their rights. "Illegal combatants" does not a mean a thing. Either charge these prisoners as prisoners of war and grant them their rights under the Geneva Convention or charge them as criminals and grant them their rights under the UN, US and other defined human rights conventions and laws. Trying to hide behind legally empty rhetoric to violate these people's human rights would do more harm to the US' proclamation of being the "champion of human rights and democracy" than good. It also sets a dangerous precedent for the world.

The right way for the US to blunt terrorism is to review its foreign policy and stop acting as a bias world police enforcer. Just as the US has its interests, the rest of humanity also has interests. The US cannot sponsor, help perpetrate and perpetuate injustice around the globe all in the name of looking after its interests and expect those whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed in the process to pat it on the back and say "job well done". The US cannot turn a blind eye to the unremitting violations perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians and expect to receive prizes from the Palestinians. The list goes on. For the US to realistically blunt the threat of terrorism, its foreign policy has to be reviewed. Thanks and have a good day.
      Buharry.

<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>

To view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]

<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>