What greater reward, what more inspiring end could come to these creeps than to be executed by the USA? You’re handing them a victory! Martyrdom is not a deterrence – how do you not get that?! Killing them will only excite our enemies while making Americans appear as cruel captors to the rest of the world. No good will come from their executions.

The greater deterrent is indefinite captivity. Lock them up forever if they’re guilty. It’s the only move that will both punish them and silence their followers.

Dear Mr. Worthington:

Sadly, the courts are no match for a hard-charging executive. Not only are they easily intimidated; they have no power to enforce their decisions, if ignored.

Congress is in the same straits, legally and politically. Monies Congress refuses to appropriate will be spent anyway. Impeachment resolutions will be met by anthrax or other attacks, thereby adjourning Congress. And for our ultimate humiliation, Bush and Cheney will refuse to leave office on one pretext of another–or without any pretext!

Who will make them leave? Are the Constitution’s provisions fixing terms of office more sacred than the many other provisions already violated? What could be more common in law than a holdover tenant?

Historians like yourself (living abroad) will likely debate the tipping point, after which the recovery of constitutional government here became impossible. Some folks–sensibly I think–fix the point at Mr. Bush’s installation as president. I would go even earlier–with the decision to MAKE Messrs. Bush and Cheney president and vice-president (or allow it to happen, which amounts to the same thing). Once a Bush administration became a certainty, the die was cast; and it was all over for America. Who really knows when that occurred?

Respectfully,

BRUCE TYLER WICK