Halliday: Iraqi People Facing Humanitarian Crisis
'In my view the pre-emptive strike that was 9-11in New York City was the beginning of a process and to respond with the sort of violence that Mr. Bush responded with in Afghanistan and now very falsely in my view linking al Qaeda to Iraq -- and now with the Iraq war -- is of course exactly the wrong way to go about it. This is a guarantee of recruitment of many into terrorist organizations, if that's the way it works with al Qaeda or others. It's exactly the way to maintain the frustration, anger and poverty and the neglect and interference that so upsets the Arab community as represented by the people who think like bin Laden, and of course, most Arabs do not, happily.

'But that sort of thinking, which is very comparable to Mr. Bush himself, you know good and evil, black and white -- it's a very simplistic sort of messianic way of going about things. I think it's terribly dangerous and I think we're helping, sadly, the process of more terrorist involvement because we are perpetuating the presence of our Christian, western ideals, our corruption of their culture and Islamic values in the Middle East. And you know, what on earth are we doing there? Haven't we learned from the colonial past in this part of the world that we have no competence and no place in the Middle East?'

Halliday: Iraqi People Facing Humanitarian Crisis
'In my view the pre-emptive strike that was 9-11in New York City was the beginning of a process and to respond with the sort of violence that Mr. Bush responded with in Afghanistan and now very falsely in my view linking al Qaeda to Iraq -- and now with the Iraq war -- is of course exactly the wrong way to go about it. This is a guarantee of recruitment of many into terrorist organizations, if that's the way it works with al Qaeda or others. It's exactly the way to maintain the frustration, anger and poverty and the neglect and interference that so upsets the Arab community as represented by the people who think like bin Laden, and of course, most Arabs do not, happily.

'But that sort of thinking, which is very comparable to Mr. Bush himself, you know good and evil, black and white -- it's a very simplistic sort of messianic way of going about things. I think it's terribly dangerous and I think we're helping, sadly, the process of more terrorist involvement because we are perpetuating the presence of our Christian, western ideals, our corruption of their culture and Islamic values in the Middle East. And you know, what on earth are we doing there? Haven't we learned from the colonial past in this part of the world that we have no competence and no place in the Middle East?'