An Afghan man cries over the body of his child, who was killed along with other civilians in U.S. air raids on Kabul, October 28, 2001. A Saudi newspaper accused the U.S. October 29 of 'mass annihilation' of Afghan civilians, saying Washington had strayed from its goal of combating terrorism. (Sayed Salahuddin/Reuters)

Monday October 29 4:21 AM ET Saudi Paper Says U.S. 'Annihilating' Afghans DUBAI (Reuters) - A Saudi newspaper accused the United States on Monday of ``mass annihilation'' of Afghan civilians, saying Washington had strayed from its goal of combating terrorism. ``The air strikes on Afghanistan have taken on grave destructive dimensions to reach the level of mass annihilation of civilians,'' the al-Bilad newspaper said in an editorial. ``For almost a month, tens of missiles and thousands of tons of massive bombs have been ravaging Afghan cities, destroying villages, claiming residents and burying entire families.'' ``No matter how long this war will be and no matter how thoughtless it becomes, it will not be able, on its own, ...to strike the strongholds of terrorism,'' the Saudi paper said.

Hidden Agenda Behind War on Terror
by John Pilger, Former Mirror chief foreign correspondent
excerpted from the October 29, 2001 Mirror/UK

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 and face 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.

Nothing justified the killing of innocent people in America on September 11, and nothing justifies the killing of innocent people anywhere else. By killing innocents in Afghanistan, Blair and Bush stoop to the level of the criminal outrage in New York. Once you cluster bomb, "mistakes" and "blunders" are a pretence. Murder is murder, regardless of whether you crash a plane into a building or order and collude with it from the Oval Office and Downing Street.