At 04:38 PM 8/27/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Chomsky List Members:
>
>Who do we believe and why?

Who:  The Sudanese, English, and other international witnesses who have
said that the plant was a pharmaceuticals plant.

Why:  The US has no credibility in foreign relations - as our mate Noam
points out, they've essentially been full of shit for years.  I don't trust
a source which continually appears to be false.  It's just the way I am.

As an aside on terrorism, my favourite definition is:

---- Bob Black - Lying in State - and Elsewhere -----

A pristine and exemplary Big Lie is, for instance, built into almost every
public reference to "terrorism". Properly the word refers to the use of
violence against non-combatants for political purposes. The Central
American death squads or the Soviet airdrops of explosive "toys" for Afghan
children to maim themselves with are examples. The idea is to impose one's
will, not by direct coercion but by instilling fear in them, i.e.,
"terror". No harm in having a word for an activity which, whatever its pros
and cons, differs in some respect from war, crime, civil disorder, etc.

It is precisely these distinctions that the politicians and their academic
and journalistic camp followers use the word to obscure. To them, all
political violence, vandalism, or even mere tumult is "terrorism" unless
the terrorists wear uniforms. Governments therefore cannot engage in
terrorism, no matter what they do, whereas anti-state violence is always
terrorism even if it consists of attacks by one military force against
another. The massacres conducted by America's Salvadorean native
auxiliaries; Isreali bombings of Palestinian refugee camps or kidnapping of
Lebanese hostages; even the Cambodian and Afghan holocausts, so
sanctimoniously bewailed, or South African jailhouse killings are, because
they are state-sanctified slaughters, not terrorist. Terrorism is not so
much a matter of mayhem and murder as it is of sartorial correctness.
Soldiers are terrorists who were careful to dress for success. That is
enough to let the managers of public opinion sleep soundly, if not
neccesarily for as long as the President did when, despite the blowing-up
of Grenadan mental patients and the gunning-down of Cuban construction
workers, he reported that, as usual, he slept well.

It is remarkable how well this ploy works. The otherwise abused Sandinistas
were terrorists until the magic moment they supplanted (as later they
planted) Somoza. President Robert Mugabe was a black "ter" until his
transubstantiation into a Zimbabwean statesman. When Shi'ites take American
hostages they are terrorists. When Israelis take Shi'ite hostages it is - a
violation of international law, perhaps, or cause for restrained
criticsism, but not by any means terrorism. Despite its hypocritical
crudity, the terrorism hoax has gone over well.