By Cathy Breen
Voices in the Wilderness
Baghdad

Dear Friends,

I must say I am not sad to miss the September 11th commemoration events in the U.S. today. Quite the contrary. To keep fear alive and continue to fan the fires of the war on terrorism in the states and around the world is, I believe, our government’s main objective presently.

An example of this is President Bush’s request for 87 billion dollars, more than all 50 states need to finance their own budget shortfalls. In an article on 9/9/03 in a Nashville paper, Mike Allen (a Washington Post staff writer) writes: “A day after using a prime-time television address to reveal his $87 billion budget for the war on terrorism next year, Bush and his aides said the stakes in Iraq are so grave that they should dwarf any diplomatic disagreements or skepticism about the costs…Def. Secty. Donald H. Rumsfeld warned that to oppose the plan would be to coddle terrorists.” Allen continues that in a fundraiser in Nashville Bush said “Terrorists declared war on the United States in America, and war is what they’ve got….The enemies of freedom are not idle, and neither is America.”

Here in Baghdad a not uncommon viewpoint expressed among Iraqis is that the U.S. doesn’t want Iraq to have security. Moreover, some believe that it is the U.S. that is sowing division here in thiscountry.