1. The Bush Administration has been an abject failure not only in the realm of the battle against Al-Qaeda, but in its non-Imperial management of the banking/finance system of the economy.

2. Fein's article is obsessed with the alleged Constitutional abuses of the administration connected to its characterization of the very real battle against Al-Qaeda as a "War on Terrorism," the operative word being "war." The use of this word by presidents has been common since LBJ's declaration of the War on Poverty, followed by Nixon's (?) War on Drugs. The word is used by pols to convey seriousness of purpose rather than its literal meaning.

3. Fein seems to focus his concern on the throat-slashing, beheading-live-humans terrorists than and their lack of the right to assemble "dream team" defense ensembles and do battle in our flawless criminal justice system--a la OJ and others-- than on the victims, us, of their atrocities.

Bush & Co. are confronted with an enemy. Even Fein concedes this point. This enemy "loves to die as much as Americans love to live." They murder British and Spaniard commuters in trains on their way to work and dream of blowing up the Lexington Ave. Express one morning in NYC. These are our adversaries today. To squawk about them not having rights equivalent to those of US citizens makes one wonder what goes on in Fein's mind.

US citizens, be they accused murderers, rapists, torturers or whatever, have inalienable rights, period. These have been elucidated over centuries of jurisprudence and retreat on those rights is inexcusable, by this or any other administration.

But the use of brutal treatment, short of torture, the definition of which is ambiguous at best, against non-US persons committing and proudly publicizing acts of incomprehensible cruelty against other (arguably innocent) human beings ipso facto disqualifies those persons from protections enjoyed by citizens of our country. Should we saw their heads off, as they do others? No. Has even Bush been accused of ordering any actions remotely approaching the barbarity of these Islamic radicals? No.

Fein, it seems, would dress these enemies in Brooks Brothers suits, appoint Sullivan & Cromwell to defend them--at public expense, of course--and hope they find a sympathetic jury that acquits them.

If any presidential candidate were to adopt the whimpering, weak-kneed liberal suggestions of Fein as his or her platform, one would not need Gallup to predict that candidate's chances of winning.

{Note: Though I obvious disagree with the bulk of Fein's suggestions, I do agree that G.W. Bush is destined, alongside Jimmy Carter, to be historically evaluated as among the worst presidents in our history, and certainly as the most intellectually unqualified one.}

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