Once again, it seems that United States’ solution to the problem of so-called terrorism is killing more lives thanit’s saving.

According to sources along the Afghan-Pakistan border, at least 40 people were killed and 60 wounded yesterday whenU.S. jets bombed Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika province. Witnesses to the attack said that the bombs rained down soheavily that it was difficult to identify some of the dead. They also added that they did not understand why theirhomes had been targeted, since no members of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda militant network were in the area.

The report of the attack comes just a week after U.S planes hit what is believed to have been a convoy of triballeaders en route to the inauguration Hamid Karzai. An estimated 65 civilians were killed in that raid. Washington,however, continues to insist that the convoy was carrying Al Qaeda leaders and their Taliban protectors.

Though there has been no official count offered by the US government of Afghan civilian casualties, independentresearchers like Professor Marc W. Herold ­ whom DN!x spoke to earlier this month ­ have been vigilantly trackingcasualties since the bombing began on October 7. It is now widely believed that more Afghans have been killed in USair strikes than people were killed in the attacks of September 11.

We turn now to a speech delivered by author and scholar, Michael Parenti, on the origins and solutions to so-calledacts of terrorism. Parenti gave the speech on September 14, just three days after the attacks on the World TradeCenter and Pentagon and some three weeks before the US began bombing Afghanistan.

Tape:

• Michael Parenti, author, scholar, lecturer. Books: ??History as Mystery and ??Democracy for theFew.

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