U.S. officials say the most preposterous things. For example, the statement that the bombed El-Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries factory in Khartoum was part of Sudan's "military/industrial complex" stands out as being the fabrication of minds that have lost all touch with reality. Paul Spike, reporter for The Independent in London, describes Sudan's "military/industrial complex" as an army mired in a long-running civil war in the south of the country, while teenage boys with broken walkie-talkies guard a mud fortress that passes for Sudan's presidential palace in Khartoum.

Sudan is the one of the poorest nations in the world. This year alone, famine will kill an estimated 2.6 million Sudanese (10% of its population), with the potential for a worse famine to come in 1999.

The Sudanese deceptions deployed by Bill Clinton and his spokesmen, in the hours following the attack, have been systematically revealed in the last two weeks to be untrue. Bin Laden did not own the factory, which was not a "nerve gas plant," and not located in an isolated, industrial area "near" the city (and yes, there were casualties). There was certainly no evidence that the plant was part of further, imminent terrorist attacks. And the "irrefutable" evidence of chemical weapon activity at the plant turned out to be not only refutable, but at best circumstantial and at worst so preposterous that it calls into question U.S. motives, the role (if any) of the bombed Afghan sites in terrorist acts, and even the culpability of the rather unsympathetic bin Laden himself.

It took several days for the U.S. government's "evidence" to leak out in the press, and it consisted of the following:

Osama bin Laden had once lived in Sudan.

Sudan is listed as a terrorist nation by the U.S. State Department.

The factory makes pharmaceuticals for Iraq (who desperately needs them, after we destroyed their pharmaceutical plants during the Gulf War).

Iraqi chemists have visited the factory in Sudan.

Someone from the Sudanese opposition living in the U.S. said the factory really makes VX nerve agent.

And then there's the tainted soil sample supposedly taken from an area outside the factory. Irrefutable evidence, right?

Hah. Let's analyze the soil sample, tainted with EMPTA, a so-called "precursor" chemical for the VX nerve agent. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the group that supervises the international treaty barring chemical weapons, told the New York Times last Thursday that this substance could have been the byproduct of commercial chemical manufacturing. Aside from VX, EMPTA could be used in limited quantities when making fungicides and anti-microbial agents--which is what the factory was supposed to be making.

The factory itself is owned by a Sudanese businessman living in London, who is neither a supporter of the Sudanese government nor a member of the Sudanese opposition (although his lawyer is a prominent opposition member). As it turns out, pharmaceuticals are the main export product of Sudan; two Sudanese plants make drugs to treat malaria, cholera, and other illnesses that are ignored by western drug companies intent on inventing new penis pills. Destroying this one factory has cut Sudan's export earnings by about 50%; certainly it has given support to Sudan's claim that the U.S. is trying to bring down the Sudanese government.

The plant itself produced 60% of Sudan's pharmaceuticals. It had also been cleared by the UN Sanctions Committee to send a shipment of antibiotics to help alleviate Iraqi suffering. Destroying the plant effectively condemns thousands, from Sudan to Iraq, to die. Furthermore, the US continues to withhold relief aid to the WFP and UNICEF in Sudan. But the US was willing to spend over $75 million dollars in its cruise missile attacks against Sudan and Afghanistan.

In 1995 Sudan arrested and extradited Carlos the Jackal to stand trial in France. In 1996, they kicked Osama bin Laden out of the country, at the request of the U.S. government. Yet U.S. diplomatic relations with Sudan ended shortly thereafter. In 1993, when the State Dept. first put Sudan on the list of nations that support international terrorism, it admitted in its report: "There is no evidence that the government of Sudan conducted or sponsored a specific terrorist attack in the past year, and the government denies supporting any form of terrorism activity."

The U.S. response to terrorism must be more sophisticated--and civilized, and legal--and must broadly encompass everything from disarmament to fair trade. And our response to terrorism must be a cooperative effort within the world community.

Sudan remains a target for U.S. hostility, for no other reason than that its legal and economic system follows Islamic sharia law. And it also happens to share a border with Egypt, who is busy fighting a war against its own radical Muslim population. Neither of these have anything to do with fighting terrorism.

Instead, it appears that the Sudanese factory was selected as a target, more or less randomly, as part of a "message" the U.S. wished to send, a message that singled out no particular country or group, but warned that all would be subject to random acts of U.S. violence when it suited American needs. That is, in itself, the very definition of terrorism. And the Clinton administration's justifications for it--faithfully bleated by domestic media, but scorned in most of the world--is a series of lies far more lethal than the sex stories they obscured.