Having read more than one of Noam Chomsky's books, like any open-minded reader I recognize his somewhat consistent themes in regards to turning the tables on the US/ Israeli moral high ground, as it relates to the insight that Western hands are far from free of blood of innocents.

You create three categories in which you then build your hypotheses of crimes, which then include the US and Israel. You wrote, "We can distinguish three categories of crimes: murder with intent, accidental killing and murder with foreknowledge but without specific intent. Israeli and US atrocities typically fall into the third category." Limiting the categories with the presumptive word "criminal," you have forgotten other categories that might be suggestive of a bit more prestige and credibility of the US and Israel.

How about two additional categories?

The fourth category is the murders, assassinations and accidental/incidental deaths that are the actions of recognized nation states. Then the fifth category is the murders/assassinations and accidental/incidental killings deaths that are the actions of recognized terrorist organizations or individual rogue terrorists.

Now compare the title "most-wanted criminal" as it is applied to world-recognized Western powers side by side with world-recognized terrorists like Imad Moughniyeh, a senior commander of Hezbollah. It then might seem at best a creative usage of "most-wanted criminal."

The United States indicted Imad Moughniyeh in the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner that saw the hijackers seize the plane for seventeen days, forcing the pilot to criss-cross the Mediterranean for three of those days before, they summarily killed a US Navy diver on board. Further, the US also accuses him of responsibility for devastating double-suicide truck-bomb attacks on US Marine and French paratrooper barracks in Lebanon in 1983, killing 241 Marines and fifty-eight paratroopers, as well as a prior attack on the US Embassy in Beirut, killing sixty-three, a particularly serious blow because of a meeting there of CIA officials at the time.

Now all murder and warfare can easily be argued morally and philosophically as criminal. But to suggest that the world issue an arrest warrant on the West for the top of the most-wanted criminal list alongside the likes of a top operative of Hezbollah is a bit of a stretch.

There must be some kind of a recognition of a rule of law. The West's version, even if in your eyes a failed attempt, is at least an attempt. This attempt is a lot more than can be said for the likes of the criminal terrorist faction of Hezbollah represented by Mr. Imad Moughniyeh!

Nick Loudani

Boston, MA

I have been an avid reader of Mr. Chomsky's articles and books for a long time now. But to what effect? Where can this all go?

I have resigned myself, being young, Arab, Muslim and male, that this is just not my century. I make a lot of money, have a demanding technical job, beautiful children, wife and home; we are all healthy and safe.

But to what avail? I can move to the West to be "free," only to be shackled by undercurrents of discrimination and also by my thoughts and feelings. Walking away from the Middle East will not solve my dilemma; active involvement in working against the Arab systems (my only hope for the Arabs to achieve freedom from Western domination, since the systems and leaders are pimps for "the world" means risking the quality of life and security of my children; though in the long run doing nothing also risks their quality of life and security...

I cannot but dream, with no chance for realization ever.

So I resign myself and think of ancient Rome and those who lived under its yoke and every other ancient empire that for its own benefit brought benefit to its vassals hand in hand with considerably more disadvantage and oppression to them; and I think, well, if I am living through the cusp of the turning tide, I'll have to wait and see to find out, but if we are still in the middle of this, where the unfairness and injustice inherently constant in the world is all coming me and mine's way, well, that's just it... it's the Arab's turn to be the shafted ones and we have to wait till the turn's over....

Maybe heaven and hell are real, and if I don't see it before I die, I can see justice for the Arabs from some eternal place...

Mohamed Mansour

Cairo, Egypt