"Kath Noble" has taken serious exception to my comparison, in a recent issue of the Sunday Island, of Musaveni in Uganda and Rajapakse in Sri Lanka. The length of his/her "rebuttal," seems to invite a lengthy response with a lot of "he said, she said" thrown in. However, I will not waste the time of any reader who might have followed all of this by taking them all over hell’s (African) half acre once again, or fall into the trap of responding to insult and invective in similar vein.

Suffice it to say that "Kath Noble" has not even tried to disprove my contention that Musaveni (successfully) sought a negotiated settlement of the strife in Uganda while dealing with an adversary whose bestial conduct might even have put the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to shame, while Rajapakse, his siblings, and the General commanding his army have made no secret of their intention of annihilating the entirety of the LTTE. Perhaps, "Kath Noble" can tell anyone still interested in this debate how one negotiates with someone who has been annihilated.

I do not pretend to the erudition that "Kath Noble" seeks to display, and, while I am not a member of Yoweri Musaveni’s cheering squad, I do claim friendship with people of varying political hues from Uganda and with a number of Dinkas closely connected to the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army as well as Sudanese from other tribal groups. While these connections have provided many informative and interesting conversations, I am sure they do not provide anything of value compared to Kath Noble’s exposition of recent African history. However, I don’t think that bafflegab of his kind can conceal the fact that it does nothing to disprove the simple statements made in the original article.