Mr. Bush is now browbeating the US Congress to grant immunity from prosecution to various private wireless telephone companies that he and his ruling Cabal have forced into setting up wireless wiretaps to do their bidding. Any way you cut it, a grant of immunity would now enable Mr. Bush to use these companies to keep spying on his own citizens.

However, what he and his minions continually (and conveniently) fail to also mention in these proceedings is that if what they were forcing these private companies to do wasn't so blatantly unconstitutional in the first place, there wouldn't be any need to grant them "immunity" from prosecution.

Fortunately, the shrill cries we are now hearing from Mr. Bush over such issues (and the Congress' steadfast refusal to grant him Carte Blanche in the matter) are yet another indication that his grand strategy for world domination is starting to crash down around his ears. More and more true patriots…like his once proud Secretary of State, General Colin Powell…are no longer buying into such "Gestapo-like" tactics and are now speaking out against him in public. For a senior, retired military man with such solid, patriotic credentials and proud record of service to now do so speaks volumes.

In light of this most recent (and breathtaking) grab at our guaranteed constitutional freedoms, Mr. Bush's attempts to also re-write the precepts of habeas corpus (not to mention the Geneva Conventions) are not at all surprising. In fact, they are right in line with his assertion that the US Constitution is just a "godddamed piece of paper". That is, if losing our moral high ground is now "flawed logic" then all that right to privacy and right to due process under law stuff for all those in our custody under our Constitution is probably "flawed logic" as well.

Freedom of the press USED to also be guaranteed by our Bill or Rights. The first amendment to that document clearly states, in part that, "Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Clearly, such unbounded freedom and unfettered access to the inner workings of government is an absolute anathema to despots and dictators. So, why is anyone surprised that our "Prevaricator-in-Chief" is now increasingly barring access to reporters (and feeding them half-truths) when they attempt to report the truth on such matters?

Certainly, our founding fathers never dreamed of the world we now live in and the challenges we now face when they wrote our Constitution. I'm sure those same founding fathers (many of whom previously signed the Declaration of Independence) were also considered "terrorists" to the King of England. But we've now been taught to believe that our "terrorists" of that day were somehow different. To us, they were "patriots". But, just like many of the so-called "terrorists" we now face, our own founding fathers back then were also trying to rid their homeland of an occupying army.

Unfortunately the REAL reason Mr. Bush feels the need to tap all of our telephones without a warrant (and also has squadrons of fighter aircraft standing at the ready to shoot down airliners full of civilians over our homeland) is because his (and by association, your and my) collective actions on the world stage have now fomented a burning hatred toward our country among many other peoples of the world.

Or, to put it another way, these people don't hate us for who we are, they hate us for what we do.

As a result, we now have little choice but to abandon our long-sacred precepts of personal privacy and due process under law to "homeland security". And, unfortunately, by doing so, Mr. Bush and his ilk have also now turned our once free nation into an armed camp.

I'm firmly convinced that if the United States hadn't been gallivanting all around the world in the last few decades to invade and then occupy other sovereign nations at will to "further our national interests" (at the obvious expense of theirs) then there might now be little or no need for their citizens to resort to terrorism to try and get us to leave. And there would also be absolutely no need for our government to spy on our own citizens to find (and then illegally detain) those among us who advocate such things.

The people whom we now loosely label "terrorists" usually have no standing armies. They have no squadrons of fighter planes, or tanks or howitzers or aircraft carriers or atomic weapons. So, quite naturally, they are now resorting to the only weapon (terrorism) they currently have at their disposal that, in their minds at least, has even a remote chance of being effective in forcing us to leave their homelands.

All too often we (and those governments we underwrite in the region, such as the Government of Israel) are viewed illegal occupiers of what a large segment of the world's population now firmly believe are other nation's sovereign territories. And, it would now appear that, at least for the moment (and despite all of the high-tech hardware that we are throwing into the fray to "secure" such places as Iraq and Afghanistan) these "terrorists" (patriots?) seem to at least be holding their own against us.

Yes, Mr. President, I agree that we ARE in a different world! But, sadly, I believe it is a world that, to a large extent, our (and your) own imperial ambitions have largely created.

We have apparently not yet learned that invading another's sovereign territory to force our own style of "Christian democracy" down people's throats with a gun pointed at their head simply doesn’t work. And then we have the audacity to compound the problem by arrogantly wondering why such people then feel the need to fight back to get us to leave.

Terrorism is a symptom. Imperialism is the problem…OUR imperialism. Pogo was absolutely right…. we HAVE "met the enemy and he is us".

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