Fuck me with a baby formula explosive - an ex-ambassador says the UK bomb plot might be the excrement of the bull

1. The UK Terror plot: What's Really Going On? -- by Craig Murray (British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, August 2002 to October 2004)

I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyze the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.

So this, I believe, is the true story.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year -- like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes -- which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.

The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.

We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six-week-old baby.

For those who don't know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long-term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling University he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer", (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students' Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.

We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the "Loner" profile you would expect -- a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have happy marriages and young children. As they were all under surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity -- that is certainly what we would have done with the IRA.

In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few -- just over two per cent of arrests -- who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do with terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered.

Be skeptical. Be very, very skeptical.


2. The Pols Who Cried Wolf -- by Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas - We have nothing to fear but fear itself, especially since fear is now being fomented and manipulated for political purposes by a bunch of shameless hacks. Who is trying to make you afraid and why? This Karl Rove tactic is getting quite threadbare, in fact, and so much so that it is getting dangerously close to comedy.

My favorite episode, of course, was the Miami terrorists, a fearsome horde of seven described by the FBI’s deputy director as “more aspirational than operational.” That means wannabes. An FBI informant posing as a member of Al Qaeda offered to supply the plotters with material for the jihad, so they asked for boots and uniforms. Every terrorist needs a uniform.

Of course, even a nincompoop can succeed occasionally—but the list of wannabes keeps growing. Seventeen people were arrested in Canada for intending to behead the prime minister. Has anyone in all of history ever cared that much about a Canadian prime minister? Canada’s national motto is “Now, let’s not get excited.”

Of the hundreds of prisoners, alleged terrorists all, who have been held at Guantanamo on the grounds that they were the worst of the worst, only 10 have ever been charged with anything. In the latest episode, shortly after announcement of a British-based plot to blow up airliners, Britain and the United States were airing their differences over when the perpetrators should have been arrested.

The administration has put itself in the position of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. If, God forbid, a serious terrorist conspiracy is uncovered, there will be a tendency to dismiss it in a backlash to these over-hyped “plots.”

I personally have been sleeping more soundly at night knowing that Michael Chertoff is secretary of homeland security. Ever since Chertoff’s agency brought us the stunning news that there are more terrorist targets in Indiana than in New York or Washington, I’ve realized this guy could find a terrorist plot anywhere. Watch out for the Amish—they’ll run right over you with those buggies, and they all have pitchforks, too. I hear they’re connected to Al Qaeda through Saddam Hussein.

Should you be suffering a fear shortage despite the administration’s best efforts, consider the paralyzing news of the defeat of Joe Lieberman. According to none other than our very own Veep Dick Cheney, Lieberman’s defeat helps the terrorists. Yes! How can this be, you ask? Well, you know Joe Lieberman has been supporting Bush’s war in Iraq, and we are at war with Iraq because Saddam Hussein was allied with Al Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction, see? He wasn’t? He didn’t? Gee, maybe that’s why the Democrats were upset with Lieberman!

Lieberman’s unhappy fall in electoral battle touched off a volcano of drivel in the media. Some of it should be written off as the incurable Establishment tendency to defend its own. People who have known Joe Lieberman for 18 years are naturally predisposed in his favor—always happens. On the other hand, what a bunch of codswallop from people who should know better. They’re behaving as though no one had a right to challenge Lieberman, whereas given his record I can’t think of anyone who deserved challenge more.

The pusillanimous punditry announces that these fools in the Democratic Party may make the war in Iraq a major issue! Horrors! I hate to pull the old advantages-of-provincialism trick, but I do think the D.C. press corps and political establishment are painfully out of touch and need to get out into the country more. Indiana, anyone?

(To find out more about Molly Ivins and see works by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website, www.creators.com.)


3. Here We Go Again
As news of the foiled airline plot kicks off another election-season debate about toughness and national security, it's time to set a few things straight.
By Robert Kuttner

Dick Cheney was certainly farsighted when he declared Wednesday that Ned Lamont's victory over Joe Lieberman would comfort "Al Qaeda types."

Voila! Only a day later, Al Qaeda was revealed as plotting to bring down 10 planes!

I thought that was a nice parody line -- until I picked up yesterday's Wall Street Journal . There, editorial page writer Daniel Henninger, in a column headed, "Democrats Knifed Lieberman on Eve of Airliner Plot," goes beyond parody.

Henninger writes, "[G]etting on a U.S. airliner, who would you rather have in the Senate formulating policy towards this threat -- Ned Lamont or Joe Lieberman?"

We will face this story line between now and the November election, and beyond: As the terror threat rises, you can't trust critics of the Bush administration to keep America safe. The war in Iraq, the nuclear designs of Iran, Hezbollah's rocketing of Israel, new diabolical tactics by Al Qaeda, and the general ideological and military menace of militant Islamism, are all jumbled into a single all-purpose word -- waronterror. And if you're against the Bush strategy, you are of course with the terrorists.

"Bipartisan" Democrats such as Lieberman, who help President Bush, are good guys. Those who question Bush's strategy help our enemies and make America less safe. The November elections, and the future of our security, will depend on whether Americans see through this blarney. If the right succeeds in persuading voters that this is all one undifferentiated mess requiring Bush-style bravado, America is in even deeper trouble.

There are really several different policy challenges and debates here. If you disentangle them, it adds up to a stunning indictment of Bush.

Did Al Qaeda have any connection to Saddam Hussein? (No.)

Was Bush's Iraq war a debilitating diversion of attention and resources from the more important ongoing battle against Al Qaeda? (Yes.)

Did Bush spend most of 2001 blowing off warnings about Al Qaeda, shutting out people like national security official Richard Clarke who actually knew something about terrorism, and ignoring escalating warnings of a plot in progress? (Yes.)

Has the Iraq war made America a more effective force for stability and against militant Islamism? (No.)

Did Bush's grand strategy advance the cause of Middle East democracy and civility? (No.)

Does Bush's larger design for the Middle East make Israel more secure? (No.)

Can we have effective levels of surveillance against terrorism and still remain a constitutional democracy with liberties for law-abiding Americans? (Yes -- but this administration is needlessly jeopardizing those liberties, and bungling intelligence operations despite expanded resources.)

Does Bush's contempt for government impede his administration's ability to use government to promote national security? (Yes.)

With hundreds of millions of ordinary Muslims increasingly disgusted and alienated by Bush's policy, can't we just settle this thing once and for all, with an Armageddon to take out Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda, in one fell swoop? (No!)

This argument isn't about who supports terrorists. It's about the right strategy for protecting America. And ever since this president took office, his policies have set back that cause.

Undaunted, the right will be relentlessly pounding one story: Republicans will keep you safe, Democrats won't. Meanwhile, the far right, allied with Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, will be pounding Bush to widen the war and compound the damage.

The administration is now using the London arrests as vindication of extraordinary police and intelligence powers. Supposedly, Democrats' qualms about illegal domestic spying ordered by Bush would disable such counterintelligence. That's nonsense. The USA PATRIOT Act, expanding surveillance, was passed by overwhelming bipartisan majorities. In some circumstances, it requires a secret court to approve surveillance. This approval is virtually always given. The illegal spying explicitly violated what Congress enacted and Bush signed. Many Republicans oppose it.

So, to answer Henninger: Getting on an airplane, I'd much rather have Lamont in the Senate, and either Democrats or traditional foreign-policy Republicans in the Congressional majority and the White House.

After more than five years of Bush's blundering grandiosity, a majority of Americans are increasingly skeptical of his policies. America has never faced anything like the hydra-headed threat of Islamist terrorism. Bush's entire performance, from assumption to execution, has placed America at greater risk. To say that is not to abet terrorism, and Bush's critics should be saying it loud and clear.

(Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect . This column originally appeared in the Boston Globe.)


4. How to Stay One Step Ahead
The jihadists' tactics aren't mysterious. We just need help on the ground
By RON SUSKIND (from Time)

What are we to think, sitting in our living room or stranded on a tarmac, as harrowing details of the latest terrorist plot spill forth? Is this a victory of the spycraft and force on our side adroitly employed to avert disaster? Or is the plot--with its ingenious formula for off-the-shelf explosives--a frightening display of how many ways an invisible army of Islamic radicals might come at us?

What's clear: enemies are out there, as ardent and violent as ever. What's changing is our view of them. We in the easily distracted West may be becoming wiser, little by little. Hard experience will do that, like it or not. We are beginning to embrace--slowly and often against our will--that ancient dictum "Know thine enemy." Investigators rounding up suspects searched for a definitive link to al-Qaeda's leaders. Indeed, two of the would-be bombers seem to have met in Pakistan with an alleged al-Qaeda lieutenant and explosives expert. But a clear link may be beside the point. Osama bin Laden has become an ism--as much ideology as flesh--and al-Qaeda has largely devolved or maybe evolved into a franchise operation. Radical groups in various countries are largely self- activated and self-sustaining, though they may check in with top management before a major assault, as did the Saudi cell that in 2003 plotted hydrogen cyanide attacks in the New York City subways. Al-Qaeda No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called off that scheme, preferring, U.S. officials believed, to prepare for something bigger.

The foiled London plot teaches us that al-Qaeda (or its offspring) sees patience as a virtue. We think in news cycles. Al-Qaeda thinks in years. Even while elected leaders in Washington were taking credit across two elections for there being no second-wave attack after 9/11, a long-standing thought inside the government was that al-Qaeda might have been simply taking its time in mounting the next big hit. At a 2003 meeting of virtually all the top intelligence, foreign-policy and law-enforcement officials in the White House Situation Room, the consensus was that the next attack would be as large as or larger than 9/11. Officials expected a long period of planning and an attack timed to coincide with roiling events--a major assassination, the start of an armed conflict--that would provide synergies of turmoil and create the perception that al-Qaeda was central to a titanic global struggle.

Three years hence, this analysis seems borne out by London. Not only was the attack moving toward execution as Israel and Hizballah ignited the Middle East, but 10 planes exploding over the Atlantic or in U.S. airspace would indeed have created what U.S. experts believe our jihadist opponents desire: an upward arc of terror and dread between a second-wave attack and whatever might follow, five or even 10 years down the road.

Here's another lesson from London. Human intelligence routinely trumps fancy and often legally problematic surveillance techniques. The key to discovering the plot was apparently a citizen from Britain's diverse Islamic community who, in the days after last summer's bombings in London, overheard something troubling. He contacted authorities. An investigation took root. Imagine: a Muslim man sitting across from a British intelligence official at a café, off hours. They have little in common. Some would say they are natural opponents. But a thread of shared interest leads to the passing of information and, a year later, to saving grace.

The U.S. intelligence community is in a poor position to replicate that. Concerned citizens in the Muslim world who are close enough to radicals to see or hear something pertinent seem less inclined than ever to sit down with an American. "They see us right now as an angry, reckless giant supporting the bombing of kids in Lebanon," says a top U.S. terrorism official. "If they were to see something troubling nowadays, they'd be more inclined than ever to simply look the other way. It's their inaction--on a vast scale--that'll kill us."

We talk in America's culture wars about the connection between personal behavior and public morality, a link that launches the country into divisive frenzies over abortion and same-sex marriage. Flip the equation. The angry public posturing of warring nations and messages sent from missile launchers and the turrets of tanks often stand in the way of unlikely human connections, improbable encounters that could save lives.

Good vs. evil? Blood quickening, yes. But it's never that simple. This week's offering from the cafés of London? Coffee--strong coffee--for two. Pull up a chair.

(Suskind is the author of the best-selling book The One Percent Doctrine)


5. A Nation's Fear of Flying
The great shock to the American system is realizing that no fortress is inviolate, no wall tall enough and no place really safe.
By Anna Quindlen (from Newsweek)

Even discussions of architectural esthetics have taken a strange turn. The Bloomberg Tower is now finished, dominating the skyline in one area of midtown Manhattan; love it or hate it, it's quite a building. "I just wish it wasn't so tall," someone lamented at dinner.

The citizens of New York, who live in the spiritual home of the skyscraper, now fear the office tower and the high-rise. In San Francisco they build structures that are earthquakeproof. But there's no structural steel, no reinforced foundation, that can ward off fear. And there are always the aftershocks: the Madrid trains, the London Underground and now news of yet another terrorist plot to blow up American planes. Hair gel may be the new nail clippers, but the sense of peril is just déjà vu all over again.

It's been nearly five years since an area in the southernmost part of Manhattan was renamed Ground Zero. On September 11, 2001, New York became a city of survivors. That's on a sliding scale, of course: it would be an insult to claim otherwise. There are the children who lost their parents when the towers collapsed, and the parents who lost children. There are those people who will always have an empty seat at their table.

There are those like Pat Mazella, who worked in the World Trade Center, got out in time and still wonders why. "We are the ones who are still on a heightened sense of alert—who cannot walk under construction scaffolding," she wrote in an e-mail. "We are the ones who live with the sights and smells and sounds of that day—who still cringe at sirens and want to crawl under the bed during a thunderstorm. Many of us still work in the same area as the Twin Towers, and we have the hole in the ground as a constant reminder. We are the ones who walk the burial ground every day."

And then there are the millions of horrified bystanders who remember the fighter jets overhead, the fire stations with their black draped doors, the fear of being cut off from friends far away, the greater fear for those close by. Our children's schools now send home instructions for cataclysm—families that will shelter students, ways that parents can be in touch. Want to gaslight us? Blow smoke through our heating vents while a dozen ambulances wail by on the street.

Sorry, Oliver Stone, but for New Yorkers, the remembered reality of the day the World Trade Center fell to earth far outweighs anything a director could conjure up on film. Actually, it's the movies of the '80s and '90s that get to me, those stories about making it in the big town. Sooner or later they use one of those panoramic skyline shots as a transition, and there they are, the towers still pointing skyward, ghosts on celluloid, like John F. Kennedy waving from the back of a limousine in Dallas.

There are concrete barriers in front of federal buildings, and most big corporate offices require visitors to proffer a picture ID and send bags through a scanner. That's supposed to make us feel safer. But, unlike the museums, the theater or the shopping, safety is not one of the reasons people choose to come here. New York is a city of locksmiths. We were peering over our shoulders long before a tidal wave of dust was roaring down Church Street.

But we're amateurs compared with those in other parts of the world, the places in which bombs go off all the time, where burial grounds that were once buildings are everywhere. Not coincidentally, those are the countries in which today's children are likely to include tomorrow's terrorists. Why would the sons and daughters of commonplace carnage hesitate to visit it upon others, especially those they've come to associate with their misfortunes and to detest accordingly? The Heathrow plot to blow up planes in midair makes it clear again, if anyone needed a reminder: there are people out there who want us to die.

Instead, we live amid a facsimile of their own troubled world, more than we ever would have believed a mere five years ago, on the day that mass murder by aircraft blew a hole in our naive sense of security. Terrorist attacks that leave mangled bodies amid the rubble, messages of jihad and religious hatred, the threat of random explosives and the fear of yet another bombing at any moment: the Middle East has come to Bloomsbury and Tribeca.

Living with ever-present danger is scarcely new, although we like to make it sound that way. In ancient cultures it was always a constant: danger from the weather, the wild animals, the warring tribes. Part of progress and prosperity lies in insulation from attack; Wall Street, don't forget, is named for a fortification the Dutch built to keep enemies out. The great shock to the American system is realizing that no fortress is inviolate, no wall tall enough and no place really safe. Metal detectors, random searches. No toothpaste in that carry-on. Safety is a useful illusion, as modern—and as vulnerable—as a skyscraper.


6. Fear and Smear – by William Greider (from The Nation)

An evil symbiosis does exist between Muslim terrorists and American politicians, but it is not the one Republicans describe. The jihadists need George W. Bush to sustain their cause. His bloody crusade in the Middle East bolsters their accusation that America is out to destroy Islam. The president has unwittingly made himself the lead recruiter of willing young martyrs.

More to the point, it is equally true that Bush desperately needs the terrorists. They are his last frail hope for political survival. They divert public attention, at least momentarily, from his disastrous war in Iraq and his shameful abuses of the Constitution. The "news" of terror--whether real or fantasized--reduces American politics to its most primitive impulses, the realm of fear-and-smear where George Bush is at his best.

So, once again in the run-up to a national election, we are visited with alarming news. A monstrous plot, red alert, high drama playing on all channels and extreme measures taken to tighten security.

The White House men wear grave faces, but they cannot hide their delight. It's another chance for Bush to protect us from those aliens with funny names, another opportunity to accuse Democrats of aiding and abetting the enemy.

This has worked twice before. It could work again this fall unless gullible Americans snap out of it. Wake up, folks, and recognize how stupid and wimpish you look. I wrote the following two years ago during a similar episode of red alerts: "Bush's ‘war on terrorism' is a political slogan--not a coherent strategy for national defense--and it succeeds brillantly only as politics. For everything else, it is quite illogical."

Where is the famous American skepticism? The loose-jointed ability to laugh at ourselves in anxious moments? Can't people see the campy joke in this docudrama called "Terror in the Sky"? The joke is on them. I have a suspicion that a lot of Americans actually enjoy the occasional fright since they know the alarm bell does actually not toll for them. It's a good, scary movie, but it's a slapstick war.

The other day at the airport in Burlington, Vermont, security guards confiscated liquid containers from two adolescent sisters returning home from vacation. The substance was labeled " Pure Maple Syrup ." I am reminded of the Amish pretzel factory that was put on Pennsylvania's list of targets. Mothers with babes in arms are now told they must take a swiq of their baby formula before they can board the plane. I already feel safer.

The latest plot uncovered by British authorities may be real. Or maybe not. We do not yet know enough to be certain. The early reporting does not reassure or settle anything (though the Brits do sound more convincing than former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who gave "terror alerts" such a bad reputation). Tony Blair is no more trustworthy on these matters than Bush and Cheney. British investigators are as anxious as their American counterparts to prove their vigilance (and support their leaders). The close collaboration with Pakistani authorities doesn't exactly add credibility.

One question to ask is: Why now? The police have had a "mole" inside this operation since late 2005, but have yet to explain why they felt the need to swoop down and arest alleged plotters at this moment (two days after the Connecticut primary produced a triumph for anti-war politics).

The early claim that a massive takedown of a dozen airliners was set for August 16 is "rubbish," according to London authorities. So who decided this case was ripe for its public rollout? Blair consulted Cheney: What did they decide? American economist Jamie Galbraith was on a ten-hour flight from Manchester, England, to Boston on the day the story broke, and has wittily reflected on other weak points in the official story line.

The point is, Americans are not entirely defenseless pawns. They can keep their wits and reserve judgment. They can voice loudly the skepticism that Bush and company have earned by politicizing of the so-called "war" from the very start. Leading Democrats are toughening up. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid uses plain English to explain what the Republicans up to--using genuine concerns of national security "as a political wedge issue. It is disgusting, but not surprising."

Instead of cowering in silence, the opposition party should start explaining this sick joke. Political confusion starts with the ill-conceived definition of a "war" that's best fought by police work, not heavy brigades on a battlefield. Forget the hype, call for common sense and stout hearts.

All we know, for sure, is that Bush and his handlers are not going to back off the fear-and-smear strategy until it loses an election for them. Maybe this will be the year.


7. The Politics of Cowardice -- by Paul Campos

When it comes to terrorism, much of our political leadership appears to have lost both its nerve and its mind. Consider this statement: "I'm worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don't appreciate the seriousness of the threat to American security and the evil of the enemy that faces us - more evil, or as evil, as Nazism, and probably more dangerous than the Soviet communists we fought during the long Cold War."

These words were not uttered by an involuntary resident of a mental hospital, or Mel Gibson after a night of perusing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and drinking single-malt scotch, but by Joseph Lieberman, a man who has been a senator for the past 18 years, and who came within a handful of dangling chads of becoming vice president of the United States.

That a statement like this is treated as a reasonable observation rather than denounced as transparently hysterical nonsense indicates the extent to which hysterical nonsense now passes for clear-eyed statesmanship. And that should be far more frightening to Americans than any terrorist threat.

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union's explicit goal was to establish a global communist dictatorship. In the pursuit of this goal, the Soviets built an army of 6 million men, equipped with, among many other things, 10,000 nuclear weapons, which in a matter of minutes could have wiped the United States off the face of the Earth, while killing perhaps 150 million Americans.

By contrast, Osama bin Laden is a guy hiding in a cave somewhere, armed with an AK-47 and a tape recorder, who commands the uncertain allegiance of a few thousand equally poorly armed fanatics.

As for our current enemies being "more evil" than Nazis, it's hard to imagine what that could even mean. The Nazis managed to murder perhaps 10 million people, while starting a war that killed at least 40 million others. In the universal evil sweepstakes, they set a mark that will be hard to match, although it's worth noting that our current good friend and international banker, the People's Republic of China, made an impressive effort of its own during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

Lieberman and his new best friend Dick Cheney would respond that the enemy isn't just al-Qaida - it's something called "Islamofascism." On this view, despite the enormous political and religious differences that divide them, groups such as al-Qaida, and Hezbollah, and Hamas, and the Iraqi insurgents, and the governments of Iran and Syria, are all part of one big terrifying conspiracy to kill each and every American because They Hate Our Freedoms.

Of course during the Cold War the enemy wasn't just the USSR, or our new best friends the Red Chinese, it was the International Communist Conspiracy. Yet for all the paranoia that marked the Red Scare, fear of the Soviet Union and international communism was far more rational than the current panic over al-Qaida and "Islamofascism."

At this moment Osama bin Laden must be howling with laughter. He's a man with no armies to command or weapons to brandish, except for the most powerful weapon of all: fear. More Americans drown in bathtubs every year than are killed by terrorists - and indeed we've now reached the point where bin Laden doesn't actually have to kill anyone to achieve his goal of promoting military conflict between the Islamic and Western worlds.

Bin Laden and his ilk are merely taking advantage of the politics of cowardice. For example, according to the statement President Bush made on the morning of last week's arrest of terrorist suspects in London, the goal of the war against "Islamic fascists" is to make Americans "completely safe."

That absurdities of this sort still play well in the polls is a sad comment on the state of the nation.

(Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He can be reached at paul.campos@colorado.edu)


8. A Self-Defeating War -- by George Soros

The war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies. Five years after 9/11, a misleading figure of speech applied literally has unleashed a real war fought on several fronts -- Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia -- a war that has killed thousands of innocent civilians and enraged millions around the world. Yet al Qaeda has not been subdued; a plot that could have claimed more victims than 9/11 has just been foiled by the vigilance of British intelligence.

Unfortunately, the "war on terror" metaphor was uncritically accepted by the American public as the obvious response to 9/11. It is now widely admitted that the invasion of Iraq was a blunder. But the war on terror remains the frame into which American policy has to fit. Most Democratic politicians subscribe to it for fear of being tagged as weak on defense.

What makes the war on terror self-defeating?

First, war by its very nature creates innocent victims. A war waged against terrorists is even more likely to claim innocent victims because terrorists tend to keep their whereabouts hidden. The deaths, injuries and humiliation of civilians generate rage and resentment among their families and communities that in turn serves to build support for terrorists.
Second, terrorism is an abstraction. It lumps together all political movements that use terrorist tactics. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Sunni insurrection and the Mahdi army in Iraq are very different forces, but President Bush's global war on terror prevents us from differentiating between them and dealing with them accordingly. It inhibits much-needed negotiations with Iran and Syria because they are states that support terrorist groups.
Third, the war on terror emphasizes military action while most territorial conflicts require political solutions. And, as the British have shown, al Qaeda is best dealt with by good intelligence. The war on terror increases the terrorist threat and makes the task of the intelligence agencies more difficult. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are still at large; we need to focus on finding them, and preventing attacks like the one foiled in England.
Fourth, the war on terror drives a wedge between "us" and "them." We are innocent victims. They are perpetrators. But we fail to notice that we also become perpetrators in the process; the rest of the world, however, does notice. That is how such a wide gap has arisen between America and much of the world.

Taken together, these four factors ensure that the war on terror cannot be won. An endless war waged against an unseen enemy is doing great damage to our power and prestige abroad and to our open society at home. It has led to a dangerous extension of executive powers; it has tarnished our adherence to universal human rights; it has inhibited the critical process that is at the heart of an open society; and it has cost a lot of money. Most importantly, it has diverted attention from other urgent tasks that require American leadership, such as finishing the job we so correctly began in Afghanistan, addressing the looming global energy crisis, and dealing with nuclear proliferation.

With American influence at low ebb, the world is in danger of sliding into a vicious circle of escalating violence. We can escape it only if we Americans repudiate the war on terror as a false metaphor. If we persevere on the wrong course, the situation will continue to deteriorate. It is not our will that is being tested, but our understanding of reality. It is painful to admit that our current predicaments are brought about by our own misconceptions. However, not admitting it is bound to prove even more painful in the long run. The strength of an open society lies in its ability to recognize and correct its mistakes. This is the test that confronts us.

(Mr. Soros, a financier, is author of " The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror ".)