WHAT a relief, amid all the hype and war talk, to read P. Kaiserman's exhortation that bombing is not the answer (Yours Truly, Sept 20).

More than two weeks has elapsed since that horrific act, a period of grieving, condolences and understandable cries for revenge against someone.

There have, however, been two perceptions with which I disagree.The first is that the USA is just an innocent victim and the second is that September 11 was a day that changed the world.

There has been only one day that changed the world and that was August 6, 1945 when it was demonstrated that not only had a state the most horrendous weapon the world had ever known but that it was prepared to use it in an act of mass genocide. The world certainly changed then and not for the better. As to recent changes, the massive Third World debts are still there; globalisation is still there; and the threat of a Federal European State is still there, hastened by the fact that the attack on the USA is being used to create an easier acceptance of the European army and police together with harmonisation of laws which have already been agreed with Corpus Juris. The World Trade Organisation is still there, as is the International Monetary Fund and, despite its uselessness on this occasion, the threat of the NMD capability is still with us.

There seems to be no change in American foreign policy which has already resulted in the bombing of Libya, the Sudan and Afghanistan, killing innocent people in retaliation. And now, having supported the Taliban and armed and trained Osama Bin Laden against the Soviet Union, they are depriving 5.5 million victims of that regime of the aid agencies necessary for their survival with the threatened bombing of Afghnistan again.

Cuba is still blockaded, Palestine is still illegally occupied and the only change has been the American's certainty of invulnerability on their own soil. It's a tragedy that this was brought about by such an obscene act but it would be a far greater tragedy if it brought about millions more deaths in revenge,

In 1945 the U.N. was created to deal with this kind of situation. It's about time this was used again or does UN stand for UNuseable?

JIM HOMEWOOD