REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Thursday, January 31, 2002

THE last day of January 2002 was a big news day, both for the Gold Coast and internationally.

On the Gold Coast, a woman’s tall story about being abducted at gunpoint sparked a police hunt involving 30 heavily armed officers for more than nine hours.

Police from both Queensland and NSW, sporting camouflage gear, shotguns and military grade assault rifles, were involved in the search, which also used two helicopters and the dog squad.

Stretching from Tugun to the NSW village of Burringbar, it cost taxpayers more than $250,000.

The woman had reported an attempted abduction at a Tugun minimart at 8.45am.

The 21-year-old was summonsed to appear in Southport Magistrates Court charged with making a false statement to police. The Gold Coast Bulletin warned that, if found guilty, she would be forced to repay the cost of the police operation.

Meanwhile, just four months after the September 11 terrorist attacks, US President George W Bush laid out his plans for the future of the successful October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.

In his 2002 State of the Union address, given unusual front-page prominence in the Bulletin, Bush made his famous declaration that Iraq, Iran and North Korea were the “axis of evil”. The phrase, coined by Bush’s speech writer, became synonymous with the War on Terror.

The “tough-talking” speech also declared that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction, something which was determined to be untrue following the 2003 US-led invasion of the nation.

Now, 16 years later North Korea remains a major foreign policy issue in the US.