"Bob Avakian: Yeah, well, as you said, in that supplement "The New Situation And The Great Challenges," I did try to analyze both some of the main features of what's going on and also some of the underlying factors, but to touch on a few things, I think one of the most important things to recognize is what they're doing with what we call a whole juggernaut--a whole rolling force of war and repression--is not in response to what happened, or not essentially in response to what happened, on September 11, despite the fact that they seized on that situation to proclaim this "War on Terrorism." But the fact is that, for example, if you look at Iraq, which you just mentioned, there has been no serious effort even to establish that Iraq was somehow involved in or behind what happened on September 11, and the fact is with whatever they may try to do to cook up some kind of conspiracy theory involving Iraq and so on, they have been talking about the need to "take out" Saddam Hussein long before September 11, and since September 11 they've been talking about taking out Saddam Hussein in a context different than claiming that he's behind the September 11 attacks. In other words, they basically have said, we have to get him out of there. Partly they claim it's on the basis that he's trying to develop weapons of mass destruction, when as we know they themselves are the ones who developed these on a much more massive scale and have used them"
