A University of Colorado professor defended his essay comparing victims of the September eleventh World Trade Center attacks to Nazis, during his speech at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Tuesday night.

Ward Churchill says he wrote it from his gut the afternoon of the attacks in an attempt to examine the attackers' motives.

He says he was spurred to write the essay after television networks on the morning of the attacks "spu"' them as senseless, and government officials label the attackers as evil freedom-haters.

He says he didn't say the attacks were justified.

Churchill was talking to a crowd of about 300 people at Tuesday night's speech.

He also launched into a litany list of policies that may have played into Al-Qaeda's motives.

That includes sanctions against Iraq in the 1990's, which Churchill says left more than 500,000 Iraqi children dead, and the killings of Palestinian
children for throwing stones at Israelis.

The UW-Whitewater became the latest stage for Churchill. Some colleges have canceled his appearances because of protests to his
controversial essay.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)