The State Department yesterday issued a report accusing seven nations of “sponsoring terrorism.” These included Cuba, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Iran, North Korea and Iraq. The annual report also noted that so-called terrorist attacks claimed a record number of lives in 2001. September 11th was responsible for 90 percent of them.

The articles about the report do not explain how its authors determined what is a terrorist attack and what is not. But it seems clear from the tallies that the thousands killed in the bombing of Afghanistan do not count as victims of terrorism. Nor do those killed in Palestine by Israeli soldiers wielding US weapons. American crimes are simply not considered crimes.

Well, we are going to turn now to a speech by scholar Noam Chomsky on the long and bloody history of US-sponsored terrorism. He gave the speech at Stanford University in mid-march, just days after the 6-month anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

Tape:

• Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is a leading scholar and critic of US foreign policy and the author of many books, including ??9-11, recently published by Seven Stories Press.