TEHRAN (Tasnim) � A former US State Department official said the ongoing crises in the Middle East have their origins in the US interventionist policy toward the region.





�Much of what we are seeing now in the Middle East is a consequence of decades of American backed coups, American backed dictatorships, American military interventions, American backed wars, unlimited American support for Israel, American arms sales and the American formation of religiously inspired cadres to fight the Soviet Union in the 1980s, one of which famously became al-Qaeda,� Matthew Hoh told the Habilian Association in an interview published on Tuesday.

He further took a swipe at the policies of former US President George W. Bush during his tenure and said, �I would (like to) ask him why can he not be humble and admit his policies were wrong and counter-productive. I would not be asking him to say the terror of 9/11 was not horrific and I am not asking him to compare himself with Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda, but to simply recognize that the wars he launched and the wars that are still ongoing have made the world worse and not better.�

Elsewhere in the interview, Hoh pointed to the role of US media outlets in spreading terrorism unrelentingly across the country and said that the media hype surrounding the terrorism show that they do not pay heed to people�s feelings and that money talks here.

�Terrorism scares and angers people and fear and anger make for good audiences for the US media. The media in the US depends on ratings for advertising revenue (US media is privately funded) and so stories about terrorism get people�s attention causing more people to watch, listen or read, which brings in more money for the media.�

In 2003, Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq under the pretext that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. In October 2004, however, a CIA report revealed that Saddam did not have any active WMD program at the time of the invasion.

By Tasnim News Agency