THE terror attacks in the United States that reduced New York’s landmark World Trade Center to flaming rubble and set the Pentagon ablaze were a ”lesson for all tyrants and oppressors”, an official Iraqi newspaper said on Wednesday. Under the headline ”America burns”, Al-Iraq said that ”what happened in the United States yesterday is a lesson for all tyrants, oppressors and criminals.” The paper continued: ”US leaders must expect such a lesson because they have shown insupportable cruelty towards people and that ended by blowing up in their face, destroying their symbols and making Americans weep bitter tears”. ”It is the prestige, arrogance and institutions of America that burn,” it charged. ”Brutal America, suffering from illusions of grandeur, has inflicted humiliation, famine and terrorism on all of the world’s countries and today it reaps the fruits of its arrogant and stupid policy. Whichever party committed these attacks, it has dragged the dignity of the US government into the mud and unveiled its vain arrogance. A state cannot be powerful if it is incapable of defending itself domestically.” The paper said the ”myth of America was destroyed with the World Trade Center in New York. The great power that once sowed terror throughout the world was yesterday terrified, thrown into a panic and humiliated.” Overnight an official Iraqi statement said, ”The American cowboys are reaping the fruit of their crimes against humanity.” Iraq was defeated by a US-led coalition in the 1991 Gulf War following its occupation of Kuwait, and Washington has continued to be its strongest foe. – Sapa-AFP