NEW TERRORISM TARGET -- AMERICA'S KIDS

Did you know you are harboring terrorists in your furnished basement? To
the terrible trio of Iran, Iraq and North Korea, we've now got to add
millions of American kids. At least that's the cock and bull story the
commander in chief is peddling with a slick new $10 million ad campaign
that is one of the most offensive displays of drug war propaganda ever. And
that's saying something.

The TV spots, which for maximum impact premiered during the Super Bowl,
promote the twisted reasoning that, since drug profits have found their way
into the pockets of terrorists, any young Americans who use drugs are
therefore guilty of aiding and abetting the enemy.

In one particularly odious ad, a series of fresh-faced young people are
shown copping to a host of terrorist atrocities: "I helped kids learn how
to kill;" "I helped murder families in Colombia;" "I helped blow up buildings."

Apparently, in The World According to George W. Bush and his drug czar,
John Walters, the kid smoking a joint at a party is the moral equivalent of
Osama bin Laden or Mohammed Atta.

In the single largest ad buy the federal government has ever made, the
White House spent nearly $3.5 million to get these commercials on the Super
Bowl -- $3.5 million spent not on treatment but on demonizing America's
young people. Our tax dollars at work.

And that's just a minute portion of the $180 million dollars a year the
drug office spends on ads. But they've really upped the ante this time.
It's one thing to drop an egg into a frying pan to demonstrate that drugs
are bad for you, and quite another to link drug users to bloodthirsty
murderers.

These ads make it seem like the next logical step in the war on terrorism
is dropping Daisy Cutters on America's high schools and shipping teen-age
drug users off to Guantanamo Bay. With 54 percent of high school seniors
admitting they"ve used illicit drugs, it's going to get awfully crowded
down in Cuba.

In addition to setting new standards for illogic, the ads are also
exercises in highly selective finger-pointing. We know, for instance, that
bin Laden and al-Qaida used tens of millions of dollars in profits from the
diamond industry to fund their operations. So how come we didn't see a
commercial with a woman, say, a senator's wife, fingering the diamonds on
her sparkling tennis bracelet and admitting: "I helped kids learn how to
kill"? And, given the fact that 15 out of the 19 hijackers -- and most of
the detainees in Cuba -- came from Saudi Arabia, why no taxpayer-funded ad
showing a soccer mom filling up her SUV and saying: "I helped blow up
buildings"?

Simple. Linking diamonds or oil to terror doesn't fit the Bush agenda.
Conflating the war on drugs with the war on terrorism does. These ads are
nothing more than a lame-brained attempt to give the drug war a desperately
needed makeover -- turning it from a dismal, multibillion dollar failure
into a vital front in America's war against the Evil Ones. "Just Say No"
repackaged as "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

You can almost hear the wheels turning inside the heads of the White House
spinmeisters: "The War on Drugs is a loser, but the War on Terror's got
big-time legs. So all we've got to do is blend the two of them together
and, bingo, no more pesky people asking if the $20 billion a year we keep
throwing at the drug war is worth it."

It's hardly a coincidence that just one day after the Super Bowl ads aired,
the White House released a new foreign aid budget that escalates U.S.
military assistance to Colombian troops battling drug traffickers.

At the end of the movie "Traffic," Michael Douglas" dispirited drug czar
crystallizes the madness of the drug war: "If there is a war on drugs, then
many of our family members are the enemy. And I don't know how you wage war
on your own family." Clearly the Bush administration has no such misgivings.