Even within his busy schedule in keeping track of terrorists--unsuccessfully--
Attorney General John Ashcroft (as fanatic a Christian fundamentalist as are some Afghans about their own Muslim fundamentalism) found time to file a suit against Oregon's right-to-die ordinance.

     A million-dollar investigation by independent media about the irregularities of voting in Florida during the turbulent presidential election resulted in findings that asserted ... nothing. What remains clear is that if all ballots (including those with indications that they were intended for Gore) had been counted, Gore would be president. What remains more emphatic is that Gore was elected by a large margin of the popular vote. What remains equally unassailable is that Cheney, from his hiding place (only God and Allah know where he and Bin Laden are) is the real president. (President Clinton--the last elected president--please come back!)

     Polls declared that the approval rating of ex-Governor Bush had soared. Not surprising, since support grows for any president during war, especially among the majority of people who remain initially uninformed and so confuse support of the government with patriotism. It happened during the Vietnam war until the reality of the debacle infiltrated the general consciousness and drove Lyndon Johnson out of office. That shifting of consciousness is increasingly reflected in newspapers by the majority of letters to the editors that question current dangerous trends, abroad and at home.
 
     Whose side is God on?

     Ex-Governor Bush of Texas asserted that the Deity is on our side, members of the Taliban asserted that Allah is on theirs. More chilling "religious" words were uttered: "Our young men love death the way Americans love life," Bin Laden was quoted. A checklist left behind by one of the four hijackers noted: "... remember that this is a battle in the sake of God, which is worth the whole world and all that is in it." A little boy in San Francisco shouted on television: "Kill a thousand of them for one of ours!"

     Amid revelations of ignored years-ago warnings of impending terrorism and germ warfare, squabbling FBI and CIA officials admitted they lacked expertise to deal with further threats, despite millions of dollars spent on a new crime lab and special units for hazardous materials and instruments of mass destruction. Was the FBI overworked in its pursuit of pornographers? Finally a break occurred in the million-dollar hunt for the perpetrator of Anthrax terrorism when the FBI announced: The criminal is "a man, a loner who possibly has a connection to a lab." Now let's go get 'im!
 
     The fifth victim of anthrax, a 94-year old woman, Ottilie W. Lundgren, provided--and even her sweetly benign name contributed to--a metaphor for the whole, grotesque cruelty and indifference of the perpetrator of the mailings, increasingly believed to be a home-grown right-wing maniac.

     What about the four Tommies? Director of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson claimed the first case of anthrax came from a contaminated river. Tommy J. Ridge, head of the Office of Homeland Security, was stunned into silence by direct questions during his first briefing after the disasters; he stuttered, visibly perspiring, through stage-fright. Tommy J. Pickard, the number two man at the FBI, announced an untimely retirement, abandoning the investigation into the anthrax mailings. General Tommy Franks, commander of US troops, granted few briefings and said nothing about casualties of the bombings, nor about the extent of destruction, but he did emphasize: "We are winning." (In current military jargon, dead civilians are called "collateral damage.")

     Though not a Tommy, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield (Donny?) contributed to the unique, evasive performance of ex-Governor Bush's cast of characters. Asked whether certain Taliban forces were dead or running out of Afghanistan, he provided this answer: "Life isn't perfect."
 
     Without the necessary requirement of a declared war, ex-Governor Bush granted military tribunals the right to try and to sentence--and to carry out punishment on, even to execute--those deemed to be war criminals. Consistent with such a robbery of due process, thousands of foreigners have been rounded up (like the Japanese during World War II); they remain incommunicado, even from their families--400 agents, 1200 suspects; and on the airways there is talk of government-condoned torture of the detainees. The FBI admits it has no evidence that any of the confined are connected to the terrorist act. Now it is creating software that, planted secretly via the internet, will record every stroke of a computer.
 
     At the Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills, Walter Cronkite addressed those violations of human rights and intimations of censorship, blaming the federal government and the military: "Americans aren't getting enough information about the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan." He denounced "a violation of everything that we believe in, our rights as citizens of a democracy."

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Original material by John Rechy appears frequently on these pages.