http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story...?storyID=443279

Loss of privacy more threatening than Saddam

First published: Wednesday, January 25, 2006

The Jan. 1 letter by Don Edwards reflects a very scary mentality that many have about the Iraq war: that it is unpatriotic to question the president when we're at war.
This President decided to attack Iraq without sufficient allies and against world opinion, and has provided several inaccurate reasons to justify it.

The Iraq war is a civil war between Shiite and Sunni Muslims and has already cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars and our good standing in the world community.

The U.S. is not considered a liberator. There were neither weapons of mass destruction, nor yellow cake uranium from Niger. There was torture of Abu Ghraib prisoners, and Iraqi oil is not going to pay the bill.

Now we find out that Bush is justifying all sorts of privacy abuses under the "we're at war" mantra. The latest NSA eavesdropping, sneak and peek warrantless searches, secret files on peace demonstrators, secret prisons in Eastern Europe and Africa, kidnapping people to put in these prisons ("rendition"), labeling citizens enemy combatants and stripping them of all rights: Why would any of us accept this?

To lose our privacy in the name of the unwinnable war on terror is far more threatening than Saddam ever was.

This administration must be held accountable for the expensive mess it created in Iraq. The money is now gone for making permanent the tax cuts for the wealthy.

JAMES MURRAY