As I understand it Bin Laden was a graduate of the Middle East version of the School of the Americas. Not such a good idea.

The word terrorism gets thrown around very loosely. Often its used just to refer to all the activities of insurgent or paramilitary organisations - these are termed terrorists, and therefore anything they do is a type of terrorism.

I think it is better to use it to describe certain types of activity, including brutality intended to coerce and terrorise people into submitting, and the killing of random civilians as a means of achieving this. And described in that way it is fairly obvious that it is part of the repertoire of governments every bit as much. In fact, when it comes to body counts, much more.

And terrorism as so defined is never acceptable, and is in the long run self defeating. Using such methods against Al Qaida will guarantee that atrocities such as September 11th will sooner or later be repeated, because they will have the effect of ensuring a harvest of people willing to carry them out.