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"Asymmetrical threat" is right. This is a very new kind of enemy, and they have so far taken full advantage of our free society to wiggle in and blow the h*ll out of us.

The main problem is that the cretins here and in the media look at this wild-eyed goobers like Lindh or Padilla or Moussaoui, and just don't see the threat. To them, they're just small-time gangsters so why are we "suspending the Constitution" just to handle them?

I know that Mr. Bush has a BOATLOAD of competent advisers, legal and otherwise, helping him negotiate the minefield, and I am confident that in the end their view will prevail.

Meanwhile, those who equate a group of people who've already proven they don't mind snuffing 3,000 of our citizens at one whack, with "unpopular" political dissent within our own country are just deluded beyond my ability to comprehend.

The evidence Bush and his team do grasp the "new threat" is his West Point speech.It will drive the isolationsist bonkers, but how else will the threats be diminished unless the US is proactive in increasing the intensity of its efforst to match the terrorists?They have rightly warned about a "next strike", which is to be expected in this new type of warfare, but prudently ignored the conventional advice of the establishment and will take the fight to those societies that create and nurture the factories of death that threaten us all.

Regime changes and nation building HAVE to be the new Pax Americana under the new asymmetric threat parameters, and some are grasping this, like Musharraf in Pakistan.Either they change, or the US will do it, and be right for doing it, so we can all have a safer world.I would think the Saudis and the Egyptians have got the word as well.

Is there any doubt that we are in for a LONG, protracted conflict that will take up all Bush's considerable abilities? It's truly a new world today and old thinking has to be discarded.Not much else matters to me but seeing that we WIN.

On the other hand, Lincoln and FDR did what they had to to. It wasn't politically correct (suspending habeus corpus; interning Japanese Americans) but it was a necessary evil at the time, to save the Union and to save the world. The rights were returned when the war was won. There is ample room for different viewpoints on this. But whoever said, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact" has a very good point. The Constitution does grant more rights to citizens than to non-citizens when it comes to security. Non-citizens are here as a privilege. They have a right to stay if they do not harm us and obey the laws; they also have the right to go home if they don't like America. They do not have the right to kill thousands of our citizens and plot our nation's downfall.