Abetting our enemy's allies: if America aids and abets China and Russia, and China and Russia aid and abet terrorist regimes like Iraq and Syria, then why are we threatening war against Saddam Hussein? (Foreign Quarrels).

During the Vietnam War, massive amounts of aid and trade flowed from the United States to the Soviet Union and her Eastern European satellites, the actual suppliers of Communist North Vietnam. The John Birch Society cogently asked: "Why fight 'em in Vietnam and help 'em everywhere else?"

Today a similar question could be asked: "Why fight 'em in Iraq and help 'em everywhere else? There is no doubt that Iraq under Saddam Hussein is a despicable regime. But if terrorism is the enemy, why oppose it in Iraq while supporting it elsewhere? Yet the U.S. continues to aid regimes and organizations supporting terrorism. Consider:

* The United Nations, the supposed headquarters for the international war against terrorism, serves as Iraq's banker for its oil transactions. The Wall Street Journal reported on September 26th that Saddam Hussein's oil revenues end up in accounts controlled by the UN. The UN approves his purchases of needed goods worldwide, and the UN Security Council winks at the arrangement. The UN even earns a commission on deals in which it participates.

* Vladimir Putin's Russia, our supposed ally in the war against terrorism and the recipient of numerous favors from the U.S., is currently finalizing a $40 billion trade agreement with Iraq. Already Baghdad's largest trading partner, Russia purchases the lion's share of Iraq's oil and has recently been detected sending oil-drilling equipment and technicians to Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

* On September 25th, the Bush administration announced it will send a diplomatic team to North Korea, identified by President Bush (along with Iran and Iraq) as a spoke in the "axis of evil." Economic assistance for Pyongyang's repressive government will be on the agenda. North Korea's involvement in supplying terrorist regimes with military equipment is undeniable.

* Last December, the U.S. State and Justice Departments formally asked for dismissal of a lawsuit filed against Iran by American hostages held in Teheran for 444 days beginning in 1979. A federal judge had found Iran liable for damages, but the Bush administration wants the ruling overturned.

If space permitted, many other examples could be cited. But the full significance of such a list could be lost if not enough detail is provided to unmask the true face of the terrorist beneficiaries of U.S. friendship and assistance. To bring the point home, this writer has decided to focus on a single example -- the People's Republic of China, a supposed U.S. ally continuing to supply military technology and hardware to all three Bush-identified "axis of evil" regimes.

Biting the Hand That Feeds It

Iraq is now being singled out for its potential to acquire nuclear weapons. But China not only possesses such weapons, it has openly boasted of aiming them at America. In 1995, former U.S. Defense Department official Charles Freeman visited China. A senior Chinese official told him that China doesn't worry about possible U.S. retaliation should it act militarily against Taiwan because Americans "care more about Los Angeles than they do about Taiwan."

On September 18, 1997, Dr. Michael Pillsbury of our nation's National Defense University testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He told the senators that Chinese military officials "are developing military capabilities to make war on the United States." A Chinese scholar, Dr. Pillsbury reads and speaks their language, has visited China on numerous occasions, and has assembled his translations of scores of Chinese military documents into a 400-page book entitled Chinese Views of Future Warfare. He termed Chinese intentions "alarming."

In a newer study compiled early in 2000, Dr. Pillsbury quoted Chinese General Pan Junfeng, who termed our nation "the enemy." In March 2000, the Haowangjao Weekly, supported by China's People's Liberation Army (PLA), described a plan to subjugate Taiwan, including using neutron bombs. This publication said China doesn't really fear that the U.S. will defend Taiwan because, repeating what other Chinese officials have stated, China has the capability of targeting the western United States with its long-range multiple-warhead missiles. The Communist journal put the matter rather bluntly: "The United States will not sacrifice 200 million Americans for 20 million Taiwanese."

There is no doubt about China's attitude toward our nation, and there is no reason to believe that the Beijing regime has altered any of its plans. Earlier in 2002, a Pentagon report stated that Chinese military exercises "increasingly focus on the United States as an adversary." And the congressionally appointed bipartisan U.S.-China Security Commission has recently expressed grave concern about China's military modernization and her willingness to go to war against the U.S.

The Beijing regime has nuclear weapons; its top militarists boast of aiming them at the United States; and spokesmen for the regime openly term our nation "the enemy." Yet Mr. Bush included in his "axis of evil" only Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.

The war drums are beating for an attack on Iraq because, among other reasons, of "repression of its own people." Doesn't China also repress "its own people"? China's notorious one-child per family policy has resulted in countless forced abortions, sterilizations, and murders of unwelcome babies. Clergymen of unapproved religions are jailed, innocent Tibet remains occupied, and the peaceful Falun Gong sect has been outlawed and its followers arrested. Today's Chinese leaders are the descendants of the Mao/Chou tyranny that murdered as many as 60 million innocent Chinese. And many of today's leaders in Beijing are responsible for the bloody massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

The source of China's military prowess is what likens the current situation to the Vietnam betrayal. Prior to his reelection in 1996, President Clinton arranged for granting export licenses for missile technology and equipment to Chinese firms connected to the PLA. He did so while ignoring opposition from the State Department, Defense Department, CIA, and National Security Agency. Consequently, China's ability to improve the accuracy of its missile launches soared.

Meanwhile, according to the June 21, 2002 Washington Times, "China's military provided training for Afghanistan's Taliban militia and its al Qaeda supporters." Soon after U.S. troops attacked the Taliban forces in Afghanistan, the Times reported, Army Special Forces discovered "30 Chinese-made SA-7s surface-to-air missiles in southeastern Afghanistan."

China Celebrates 9-11

In 1999, China's PLA published Unrestricted Warfare, a document detailing ways to defeat the United States. Authors Colonel Qiao Liang and Colonel Wang Xiangsui suggested that terrorism such as "a major explosion at the World Trade Center, or a bombing attack by bin Laden" could be employed to wage a new type of unrestricted war against America. This appeared more than two years before September 11th.

In his foreword to a 2002 English-language copy of Unrestricted Warfare, congressional intelligence specialist Al Santoli wrote:

Though decent people around the world recoiled in horror as they witnessed the video of two civilian airliners crashing purposefully into the Twin Towers, in China the [acts of the] terrorists were greeted with applause by the official state media.

Soon after September 11th, London's Telegraph reported that "the Chinese state-run propaganda machine is cashing in on the terrorist attacks ... producing books, films and video games glorifying the attacks as a humbling blow against an arrogant nation."

The Telegraph quoted Communist Party officials as saying that "President Jiang Zemin has obsessively watched and re-watched pictures of the aircraft crashing into the World Trade Center."

Jiang's fascination with and glee over the attacks may be explained by the narration in a documentary produced by Beijing Television entitled Attack America. The narrator tells the Chinese people, as video shows the jets crashing into the buildings: "This is the America the whole world has wanted to see...."

The Bush administration recently sent Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Rodman to Beijing to solidify what Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz termed "our military-to-military relationship." But former defense department official Stephen Bryen commented: "The military exchanges with China are a one-way street. We give away stuff and the Chinese promise to behave, and these exchanges are being organized in the middle of a Chinese missile buildup that threatens Taiwan and the U.S. fleet."

Much of China's ability to build a military establishment can be traced to profits from the scores of billions it earns annually with sales in America of a huge variety of the products from its slave-labor empire.

Why, we ask again, fight the terrorist threat in Iraq while helping the sponsors of terrorism elsewhere? If President Bush were truly opposed to terrorism, he would sever relations with all of its sponsors -- including China and Russia -- and join the campaign to withdraw our nation from the terrorist-coddling United Nations.