THE taking of Bukaku in eastern Congo by former fighters of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) militia briefly caught the attention of the western media, and we saw a flurry of newspaper articles on the vicious conflict in that has been going on there since 1996.

ON March 20 last year, George W Bush sent his army into Iraq, allegedly in search of weapons of mass destruction, using the catch-cries of ‘human rights,’ ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy.’