Noam Chomsky (Pics)

Tim O'Connor wrote:

This rebuff sums it up nicely:

http://www.zmag.org/casey.htm

No it doesn't. Better to hear from Chomsky himself where it's clear he was taken out of context:

QUESTION: ...[Hitchens] singles out a particular argument of yours, accuses you of seeking moral equivalence in the 1998 bombing of the Sudan when the U.S. destroyed a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, mistaking it for a chemical weapons plant. You've been dragged through the fire on that one. Would you be kind enough to give us your point-of-view? Was it morally equivalent?

CHOMSKY: Well, you can just look at what I said. Actually, he's talking about a response to journalists on the first few days, a brief response -- there were tons of inquiries, I couldn't respond individually in detail as I did later -- so I wrote a very brief response to journalists in which I have one sentence mentioning the Sudan. The sentence says just what you did: the United States bombed a pharmaceutical plant destroying half the pharmaceutical supplies of the Sudan and leading to, causing the deaths of probably more people than were killed at the World Trade Center. In contrast, I described the [attack on] the World Trade Center in the same short statement as horrendous atrocities carried out with "wicked and awesome cruelty" -- happens to be a quote from Fisk, and so on...

...Now, that leaves us with a factual question: what were the consequences of the bombing of the pharmaceutical factory? And here, when I was asked -- I've discussed it in the past but in this connection I didn't, as I say, I just mentioned it -- but if you look into it, that turns out to be correct. That's a factually accurate remark. We don't have any detailed information, as I pointed out, the numbers are unknown -- it's unknown because nobody in the West was much interested in finding out -- but there have been some [reports]. So, for example, the regional director of the Near East Foundation -- that's an old, venerable, highly respectable foundation with connections to the State Department and charities and so on -- their regional director, who has field experience in the Sudan, wrote a report which was published in the Boston Globe, it's not obscure, prominently published. He wrote a report on the first anniversary of the bombing in which he estimated, from field experience, that tens of thousands of people had suffered and died as a result, by that time. And there are other reports indicating the same thing. We don't know for sure because there hasn't been a careful examination ...

QUESTION: Well, more than that, there was an attempt by the U.N. to hold an inquiry into the incident which I understand was blocked by the U.S.

CHOMSKY: Well, yes. ... The Sudan did request an inquiry right away but that was not [an inquiry] into the consequences 'cause it was too early for there to be any consequences. It was an inquiry into how the target was chosen. But the U.S. did block that. And there was no effort to carry out a further investigation...

Full interview here:

http://www.robert-fisk.com/chomsky_interview7_oct18_2001.htm