Friends,

Vikram B. Sundar is a Canadian living in Orangeville, just north of Toronto. In this piece published in the Toronto Star today, he very succinctly establishes the fact that if there is a rogue nation on earth today, it is the US.

Read and reflect.

Tarek Fatah
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Dec. 30, 2002. 01:00 AM

U.S. is the rogue nation

It assassinates nationalist leaders, bombs cars and illegally holds 600 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

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CIA using harsh tactics on captives
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Your news item made terrifying reading. This story is yet another illustration of how the U.S. has degenerated into a rogue nation, whose foreign policy is replete with hypocrisy, barbarism and dishonesty. The U.S. government is using its military power and the CIA and FBI to indulge in blatant acts of murder throughout the world.

The CIA is known to have masterminded the assassinations of several nationalist leaders in their own countries and on their own soil just because their ideologies did not suit American interests. Presently the CIA is plotting the assassination of several nationalist leaders in Afghanistan who are opposed to American occupation.

The recent bombing of a car in Yemen is only one of the glaring examples of American barbarism. What right does the CIA have to fire a hellfire missile from an unmanned aircraft and blow up a car in another country? And what right does the U.S. have to intercept a ship carrying a contractual consignment of arms from North Korea?

The following list is an itemized illustration of the U.S. government's hypocrisy and hidden agendas:

1. The U.S. claims it is against oppressive regimes and wants to replace dictatorial regimes with democratic regimes. However, the U.S. actually supports oppressive regimes, like Saudi Arabia, in order to promote selfish interests in oil and military reach.

2. The U.S claims that it attacked Afghanistan in order to capture Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar and oust the oppressive Taliban regime. The truth is that the U.S. wanted to spread its military reach to the east with a pure interest in oil and logistics for its pipeline. Neither bin Laden nor Omar were captured, and Afghanistan remains in much the same condition.

3. The U.S. claims it is opposed to state-sponsored terrorism. The truth is that the U.S. actually encourages state-sponsored terrorism by Israel in Palestine. The U.S. continues to supply arms, aircraft and equipment to Israel for exclusive use against the Palestinian people in order to subdue them into accepting Israeli rule.

4. The U.S. claims it is opposed to weapons of mass destruction. The truth is that the U.S. has the largest number of privately-owned arms and weapons manufacturing companies with global interests, and the largest stockpile of the deadliest weapons.

5. The U.S. claims it is against torture and the illegal detention of world citizens. The truth is that the CIA is indulging in criminal acts of torture, murder and assassinations of captives who have no voice and no access to legal processes. The U.S. is illegally holding more than 600 prisoners of the Afghan war in its naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a gross violation of the Geneva Convention.

All these instances of hypocrisy, barbarism, brutality, immorality and dishonesty of the U.S. government only go to show the underlying character of a nation that is, unfortunately, the world's most powerful nation today.

-- Vikram B. Sundar, Orangeville