US sends world mixed messages

THE Jekyll and Hyde nature of America’s dangerous balancing act on the world stage was plain to see yesterday as US troops targeted members of the media covering the war in Baghdad while in Belfast President George W Bush was giving out a strong message of support for lasting peace in Northern Ireland.

No doubt both sides in the war on Iraq will deny it, but it is clear from yesterday’s attack on a hotel used by the media that journalists are now being targeted.

So far, In what is now being described as a ‘war of liberation, and not of conquest’, hundreds of civilians have been killed. So too have a dozen reporters and media staff while two others are missing and many more have been injured in the three-week-old conflict.