[rmnunez]

And all this time I thought it was blowback . . .

I'm glad you've been enlightened, but am more interested in what made you think US foreign policy had somehow provoked terrorism. I realize this is what everyone says, but foreign policy is such a broad thing and US foreign policy includes lots of good things besides military intervention and support for Israel.

The US chaired the High Commission for Human Rights for decades incessantly calling for their respect and defending victims of oppression. The US has been, and remains, by far the most generous purveyor of development assistance to third world countries. Vital legal international frameworks for everything from commercial arbitration to patent protections have advanced through US foreign policy initiatives. US foreign policy has produced benefits for humanity; defeat of the Nazis and Imperialist Japan, Soviet containment, enhanced trade, development, medical, educational improvements around the world, all flow from US foreign policy.

have we reached the point that the Right-Wing is claiming that anyone our government accuses of being a terrorist is a member of a new sub-species.

I think this statement is mistaken on 2 counts; there is no pursuit of people merely accused of being terrorists, and no atribution of less than human characteristics in terrorists.

We have this formality with the presumption of innocence, but don't think suspects are rounded up on unsubstantiated allegations and tenuous suspicion. Having held them for some time and often subjected them to degrading treatment or torture, by now I'd expect the united statians know which are not actually terrorists. These should be let go, as some have been already. But the genuine article has to stay, they should be prosecuted, and as long as the sentence they get is longer than the time served it seems no harm will result.

I know this is supposed to be done more expeditiously, there are supposed to be defense counsel, evidence, testimony, witnesses, magistrates and complicated procedures to be followed in prosecution. I also realize that all of these could result in some of the accused getting off, despite their guilt. I suppose some of this could result in an innocent bystander getting exonerated too, but don't expect this would often be the case as I anticipate the suspects have been properly identified and are reasonably suspected of.

Critical lefties should lose this phobia the Bush administration as after them, the only thing Critical lefties and Islamic fundamentalist-inspired terrorists share is opposition to Bush, this alone does not make critical lefties terrorists.