COST OF TERROR TO A FREE SOCIETY

Tuesday's horrendous events have produced immediate devastation
unprecedented in our short history of domestic terrorism. Tens of
thousands of lives may have been snuffed out. As hard as it may be to
contemplate, these losses were probably not the primary goal of the
terrorists. More likely they were merely bloody stepping stones along
which to prod the U.S. toward becoming, irretrievably, a police state.
Those who truly hate America will be most interested in watching our
government pull the plug on our Bill of Rights--already in critical
condition as "collateral damage" in the war on drugs and the war for
votes. The sweetest revenge against America will be watching the "land
of the free and the home of the brave" become, by our own hand, the
"land of papers, please, and the home of staying home."

Kent Van Cleave

Bedford, Ind.