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Terror on TT pilots
Posted: Friday, January 2, 2004
Newsday Editorial
IN THEIR paranoid and totally misguided "war on terror," the United States authorities apparently care little about creating terror in the lives of innocent persons on the basis of totally bogus information and flimsy pretex. We have seen what they have done in Iraq, dropping 30,000 bombs and shells on that unfortunate country, slaughtering and maiming thousands of innocent citizens, on the deceitful pretext that they were disarming Saddam Hussein of an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction which was, in reality, a figment of their fervid imagination. Now the US terror tactics have struck the citizens of our little country with the detention last week of two BWIA pilots at Miami and New York on the unfounded and ridiculous suspicion that they are linked to terrorists. Two of TT's most experienced and respected pilots, Captain Anthony Wight and First Officer Rawle Joseph were held by FBI agents on arrival in the US, interrogated for several hours about alleged connections to terrorists and denied permission to return home.
In the case of Joseph, his passport was seized and his travel bags thoroughly searched. The TT pilot, vehemently denying any links to terrorists, pointed out that he actually kept a Bible in his flight bag. One FBI agent during the search declared, "We've got him!" and proceeded to leaf through the Bible page by page. We are tempted to laugh at the stupidity of this action, but since it provides an insight into the absurd over-reaction of the Bush administration to the terrorist threat and the state of paranoia it has artificially whipped up among the American population - another high alert has been declared on the basis of what nobody seems to know - we must regard this humiliation of our pilots with some feeling of outrage. The irony of all this, including the attack on Iraq, is that while innocent persons have been and are being victimised, the Bush administration's so-called war on terrorism, inspite of the billions being spent on it, has proven to be totally cock-eyed since it has failed to capture the primary villain, Osama Bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader who masterminded the September 11, 2001, suicide bombing attack on the United States.
Now, with the destruction of Iraq and the inevitable capture of Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration is crowing about the splendid thing it has done in toppling a brutal dictator and bringing "regime change" to that Middle East country. But here again, one is amazed at hypocrisy and the self-induced historical amnesia of the US President and his White House colleagues since they conveniently choose to ignore the distasteful fact that during the 1980s, while Saddam fought a bitter and destructive eight-year war against the "devilish" Iranians, he was positively befriended by the United States who considered him a strategic partner in an unstable Middle East and actually supplied him with the technology to build chemical and biological weapons. It was during that time that Saddam committed the worst of his atrocities, gassing hordes of his own people, but instead of an outcry of condemnation from US officials, the people in the White House routinely referred to the Saddam and his forces as "the good guys."
In their well documented book, Weapons of Mass Deception, writers Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber expose in detail the scandalous double-speak of the American President and his WH war hawks. Since the US were abettors, the administration now has no credibility or moral authority whatever to condemn the horrors committed by Saddam, far less to launch such an overwhelming assault on his country. But little TT has committed no atrocities, nor do we harbour any terrorists, and yet...
Where, we must ask, is the conscience of this superpower?
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