The war against terrorism is a fraud. After three weeks' bombing, not a single terrorist
implicated in the attacks on America has been caught or killed in Afghanistan. Instead, one of
the poorest, most stricken nations has been terrorised by the most powerful - to the point
where American pilots have run out of dubious "military" targets and are now destroying mud
houses, a hospital, Red Cross warehouses, lorries carrying refugees. Unlike the relentless
pictures from New York, we are seeing almost nothing of this. Tony Blair has yet to tell us
what the violent death of children - seven in one family - has to do with Osama bin Laden.

And why are cluster bombs being used? The British public should know about these bombs, which
the RAF also uses. They spray hundreds of bomblets that have only one purpose; to kill and
maim people. Those that do not explode lie on the ground like landmines, waiting for people to
step on them. If ever a weapon was designed specifically for acts of terrorism, this is it. I
have seen the victims of American cluster weapons in other countries,such as the Laotian
toddler who picked one up and had her right leg andface blown off. Be assured this is now
happening in Afghanistan, in your name. None of those directly involved in the September 11
atrocity was Afghani. Most were Saudis, who apparently did their planning and training in
Germany and the United States. The camps which the Taliban allowed bin Laden to use were
emptied weeks ago.

Moreover, the Taliban itself is a creation of the Americans and the British. In the 1980s, the
tribal army that produced them was funded by the CIA and trained by the SAS to fight the
Russians. The hypocrisy does not stop there. When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, Washington
said nothing. Why? Because Taliban leaders were soon on their way to Houston, Texas, to be
entertained by executives of the oil company, Unocal. With secret US government approval, the
company offered them a generous cut of the profits of the oil and gas pumped through a
pipeline that the Americans wanted to build from Soviet central Asia through Afghanistan. A US
diplomat said: "The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did." He explained that
Afghanistan would become an American oil colony, there would be huge profits for the West, no
democracy and the legal persecution of women. "We can live with that," he said. Although the
deal fell through, it remains an urgent priority of the administration of George W. Bush,
which is steeped in the oil industry.

Bush's concealed agenda is to exploit the oil and gas reserves in the Caspian basin, the
greatest source of untapped fossil fuel on earth and enough, according to one estimate, to
meet America's voracious energy needs for a generation. Only if the pipeline runs through
Afghanistan can the Americans hope to control it. So, not surprisingly, US Secretary of State
Colin Powell is now referring to "moderate" Taliban, who will join an American-sponsored
"loose federation" to run Afghanistan. The "war on terrorism" is a cover for this: a means of
achieving American strategic aims that lie behind the flag-waving facade of great power. The
Royal Marines, who will do the real dirty work, will be little more than mercenaries for
Washington's imperial ambitions, not to mention the extraordinary pretensions of Blair
himself.

Having made Britain a target for terrorism with his bellicose "shoulder to shoulder" with Bush
nonsense, he is now prepared to send troops to a battlefield where the goals are so uncertain
that even the Chief of the Defence Staff says the conflict "could last 50 years". The
irresponsibility of this is breathtaking; the pressure on Pakistan alone could ignite an
unprecedented crisis across the Indian sub-continent. Having reported many wars, I am always
struck by the absurdity of effete politicians eager to wave farewell to young soldiers, but
who themselves would not say boo to a Taliban goose.

There are signs that Washington is about to extend its current "war" to Iraq; yet unknown to
most of us, almost every day RAF and American aircraft already bomb Iraq. There are no
headlines. There is nothing on the TV news. This terror is the longest-running Anglo-American
bombing campaign since World War Two. The Wall Street Journal reported that the US and Britain
faced a "dilemma" in Iraq, because "few targets remain". "We're down to the last outhouse,"
said a US official. That was two years ago, and they're still bombing.

The cost to the British taxpayer? £800 million so far. According to an internal UN report,
covering a five-month period, 41 per cent of the casualties are civilians. In northern Iraq, I
met a woman whose husband and four children were among the deaths listed in the report. He was
a shepherd, who was tending his sheep with his elderly father and his children when two planes
attacked them, each making a sweep. It was an open valley; there were no military targets
nearby. "I want to see the pilot who did this," said the widow at the graveside of her entire
family. For them, there was no service in St Paul's Cathedral with the Queen in attendance; no
rock concert with Paul McCartney.

There is no war on terrorism. If there was, the Royal Marines and the SAS would be storming
the beaches of Florida, where more CIA-funded terrorists, ex-Latin American dictators and
torturers, are given refuge than anywhere on earth. There is, however, a continuing war of the
powerful against the powerless, with new excuses, new hidden agendas, new lies.

More at http://www.johnpilger.com