The Bush regime's "terrorist" protection schemes have reached the height of total incompetence and utter absurdity. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, a private organization that defends the U.S. Constitution that inattentive Americans neglect, there are now 1 million names on the "terrorist" watch list.

One of them is that of former Assistant U.S. Attorney General Jim Robinson, whose top security clearances are current. Every time Robinson flies away on business, he is delayed by a totally incompetent "terrorist" protection racket that cannot tell a person named Jim Robinson who served in the highest echelons of the U.S. government from a Muslim terrorist.

What confidence can we have in a regime that is incapable of differentiating an assistant U.S. attorney general from a terrorist?

Robinson said: "If I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it, but I doubt it. I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list and find themselves inconvenienced."

"Hundreds of thousands of people" on a watch list that they have no business being on?

Yes. "Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters,' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

And this is America, not Nazi Germany?

How can airport "security" possibly protect anyone when the idiots cannot differentiate a high-level American government official from a terrorist?

Do you really believe there are 1 million terrorists and nothing has blown up in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001 (assuming you believe the government's account of that episode)?

How can there possibly be 1,000,000 terrorists and America still be in one piece? If there were 1,000,000 terrorists, America would be in ruins. According to the Bush regime's line, it only took a handful of terrorists to destroy America's tallest skyscrapers and a section of the Pentagon, and to send the president of the United States scurrying to a hiding place.

One million terrorists could bring America to its knees, and they wouldn't need to fly on airplanes to accomplish this.

What we are witnessing with the 1 million person "watch list" is bureaucracy run amok. One million terrorists makes the danger seem overwhelming. Such overwhelming danger rationalizes the aggressive behavior of the bullies and thugs attracted by the power of confiscating your toothpaste and bottled water, and riffling your belongings in your luggage.

Show your ID. Take off your shoes.

Take off your belt. Take off your jacket.

Empty your pockets.

Don't complain about being searched without a warrant, or you will miss your flight. You might be arrested, handcuffed, kicked and otherwise abused — the fate of many American citizens.

The morons who comprise the U.S. government call the "watch list" one of the government's "most effective tools in the fight against terrorism."

What an effective tool it is! It cannot tell the difference between Jim Robinson and a Muslim terrorist.

The "watch list" has not apprehended a single terrorist, but thousands of American citizens have been inconvenienced and arrested.

The ACLU says that "putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning."

It is worse than that. What the "watch list" or "no-fly list" is doing is training Americans to submit to warrantless searches, to abandon their constitutional rights, and to submit to humiliation by thugs and bullies. A Gestapo is being trained to have no qualms about searching and intimidating fellow citizens, using any excuse to delay or arrest them. Americans are being taught to use arbitrary power and to submit to arbitrary power. In the false name of "safety from terrorists," Americans are being made the least safe people on earth.

To find out more about Paul Craig Roberts, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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