WHY BUSH MUST NOT BE RE-ELECTED

Elaine Cassel at Civil Liberties Watch reports on some frightening abuses of police power, courtesy of John Ashcroft. Maher Arar, one of the people Cassel's story covers, describes his ordeal here. I know Counterpunch might be a little too left for some people's tastes, so here are additional stories from The Washington Post.

The United States used to be the country that everyone looked to as a model of fairness and equality under the law. Now we're shipping people off to places like Syria to be tortured.

Plenty of folks will refer to 9/11 and say that vigilence is needed in a dangerous world. Sorry, but I don't buy that. More and more, it is becoming clear that Al Qaeda all but left a voice mail message regarding their horrific act in New York, but Team Bush was so busy vacationing that they wouldn't bother to do anything more significant than put Ashcroft on charter flights--which they did beginning in June of 2001. It would have been nice if they'd announced it to the public, along with the reason why.

Our police and FBI agents in the field were gathering quite a bit of evidence prior to September 2001 that indicated a major act was in the works. Intercepted Al Qaeda communications provided even more warnings, although many of these intercepts were not translated, much less interpreted, prior to the bombing. Massouai was already in jail.

No, additional draconian measures are NOT needed. Our existing laws will protect us, provided that our leadership isn't asleep at the wheel.

Speaking of asleep at the wheel. I do not wish to denigrate in any way the tragedy suffered by the 3,000 people on 9/11, but if we truly value human life, we should likewise feel upset and outraged over the fact that nearly 43,000 people lost their lives in automobile crashes last year. That's a 9/11 and more every month....