Why Do All the Terror Suspect Cases Fall Apart?

The Times looks at the Detroit case, and it's a legitimate question. Time after time, Ashcroft makes some huge announcement while the closest thing to a terrorist he feels he's come close to is 62-year-old Tommy Chong whom he sent up river.

It's not that the Justice Department isn't doing enough. It's that Ashcroft keeps bringing cases where he decides who's guilty in their hearts and then looks to his people to depend on the passion and fear towards anyone the government brands a terrorist to convict them in the absence of evidence.

John Walker Lind got 20 years. There is no evidence he was involved in any way except for the fact that we wanted blood once we saw a young American man fighting among the Taliban. He was younger than the Bush daughters who exercise extremely poor judgment but we're told to again and again ignore it.

Should terrorists get everything possible thrown at them? Yes. When proven guilty by real evidence. The Bushies are waging war against anyone who doesn't agree with them, and Ashcroft brands anyone who isn't a right-wing nutjob a terrorist sympathizer.

If the cases are good, lying and trying to cook the cases and do everything under a heavy veil of secrecy, with defendants denied due process would never even be considered. But Ashcroft wants you afraid because when you're afraid, you'll agree to do anything to anyone you feel might harm you.

But if we're turning into such a bad empire, somewhere devoid of real justice vs. that any-eye-for-an-eye brutality, a place where free speech means pro-emperor pep rallies, where's the difference between us and the bogey administration's depiction of axis of Evil countries including laughably Cuba?

We're better than this. But we haven't always been recently and we'd better stop letting Washington get away with it. Each time they persecute in the name of keeping you feeling like a scared victim, they take a little more away from us while making it far more likely so-called terrorists will strike. Our friends are getting mighty sick of us so imagine how our enemies feel?