Bravo, Eric, and bravo Mr. Brooks. While this message will obviously resonate with the choir and infuriate those in the cheap seats, I appreciate it. Your identification of Ashcroft as power-hungry like all residents of the district is undoubtedly accurate, much more accurate than my idle fantasies of him as a child who pulled the legs off of grasshoppers. 8^)

Thanks Phillip, I've done a little better editing job now on this also.

Just because we can explain Ashcroft's efforts in other than conspiratorial, apocalypic terms, doesn't mean we don't have to keep an eye on him, but i think it's important to understand where he is coming from, too.

Eric,

Brooks left out an important category of fantasist. I guess I have to write that part for him:

Then there is the dream palace of the pro-warriors. In this dream palace, lies express a "larger, more important 'truth'," manipulation of the American public by a President is to be ignored because of the President's popularity (which is a product of the manipulation), "preventive war" is a phrase that is never ever ever ever ever ever to be uttered, the strength of the U.S. military is prima facie proof that America cannot do wrong, and anyone who criticizes the motives of our Godlike leaders is a "conspiracy theorist."

In this dream palace, questions of the sort the Founding Fathers (were they alive now) would have begun asking in November 2000 and been screaming by October 2001 are "unpatriotic," every protester in the streets is exactly the same as every other protester and lacks a legitimate motive for demonstrating, and it is obvious that all of the problems facing the globe (which is to say, the U.S.) can be solved with a unilateral war against vaguely defined forces that must be "crushed absolutely, physically destroyed."

In the dream palace of the American pro-warrior, introspection is sedition. In this dream palace, reasons for mass killing do not have to be clear, because any "action" is preferable to "waiting while dangers gather," and it is not a cause for worry that officially stated reasons for a military action are both demonstrably false and easily applicable the world over. In this dream palace, "terrorism" will increasingly mean any violent action by an entity whose destruction would be in the interest of the U.S., but similar actions by strategic allies will not deserve this term. And this "terrorism" is such a threat that there is no limit to the actions the U.S. can justifiably take against it.

In this dream palace, hypocrisy exists only in others, and must never be searched for in U.S. foreign policy. In this dream palace, it is unpatriotic to demand that one's own country support its claim to moral authority with actions instead of words.

Because in this dream palace, the U.S. is automatically, unquestionably right at all times in all actions--and to suggest that it is even possible the U.S. could make a mistake is to be an "appeaser" who deserves to have his arguments ignored, his morality questioned, and his weakness loudly ridiculed.

In this dream palace, this pattern of behavior has never led to the decline and fall of great nations.

Brian, I disagree right down the line, but wouldn't have expected any less an effort from you.

As I have said over and over again, we could look at all the same "facts" and come to the exact opposite conclusions. I'm not sure there is any way around this impasse.

By the way, I am unaware that the administration has ever said Saddam was responsible for 9/11, a false belief often held up as expalining the American's public's support of the war.

You say the administration's popularity is based upon lies - I say it's exactly the opposite: that Americans grasp the central truth of the War on Terror. You can't seem to believe that they would disagree with you if they knew the real "facts."