The photo of the dead bodies of four children with the father wailing in the background published in the newspaper is enough to send shivers down the most hardened of spines. Or maybe, as is becoming clear during these volatile days, some spines are more hardened than others! Whatever the case may be, the fact remains that American bombed these innocent people's home in Kabul and they were murdered - for lack of a more apt term, in cold blood.

Do Afghans, because of who they are, love their children any less than Americans love theirs? Or is this dastardly act overlooked because such things have to be done so that our children (as opposed to, we can presume. theirs) can have a safer future? Well, Mr. Bush, if these children grow up seeing the like of you. They aren't likely to grow up to be very safe' human beings. You see Mr. Bush, for the umpteenth time, dealing with terror is not about whipping out a weighting scale in which you take an eye for an eye and a World Trade innocent for an Afghan innocent. There are the strategic sides, economic sides and God knows what other sides to things through which we estimate their impact. But there is also the human side to things. A side no one has ever been able to estimate, because it is about non-quantifiable things such as lives and relationships. It is something your breed the presidents of the United States, love to mull over and make speeches about, to secure your vote banks. Therefore, looking at the human side of both your tragedy and that of the Afghan people, we see that the innocent dead were both first and foremost human beings. They both had families who loved them and they both, let no one tell you other wise, had nothing to do with The Attack'.

Now it might be stating the obvious, but the cities, or what is left of them, which you have been bombing are not where your new found enemies are hiding. They may be in their caves, or in some underground bombproof chamber, but they would be stupid. So Lord knows when you will track down the cold blooded and very focussed Bin Laden. The question also remains whether you will ever find him. Or even whether he is the one who merits all this attention!

The last because so far, what we have heard sitting at our end of the TV screen is your rhetoric, not his. We have after all only your word on this issue and that of your agencies and quite truthfully, these men do look clueless about all that is related to Afghanistan and the Afghan.

And finally Mr. Bush, as this war is turning into the biggest media event ever then in the just world, that you are fighting so hard for, all this deserves a big, just and palatable reason. But so far the only thing that you have confirmed is not whether Bin Laden is guilty or not (we only have your word for that) but that you certainly are.