The inspector general's report illustrates what happens when the government adopts a "preventive" law enforcement strategy, as Ashcroft has so proudly done since the terrorist attacks. The justice system is generally backward-looking. The presumption of innocence and due process require objective evidence that an individual has actually done something wrong before he can be stuck in a prison cell. Authorities need not wait until the bomb goes off; conspiracy laws permit punishment for crimes discovered in the planning stage. But even conspiracy convictions require proof that an individual has taken some specific acts toward the conspired end.

Ashcroft wants to do more than capture and prosecute individuals who commit or conspire to commit terrorist acts. Understandably, he seeks to prevent the next atrocity from occurring. But the inspector general's report reveals the dangers of Ashcroft's approach. People were picked up on anonymous tips that "too many" Muslims worked in a convenience store, or that a Muslim neighbor kept odd hours, or simply because they were in a place the FBI visited during the investigation into Sept. 11. In the end, the attorney general was shooting in the dark, and virtually every shot missed.

Our government has declared a military victory in Iraq. As a patriot, I will not celebrate. I will mourn the dead--the American GIs, and also the Iraqi dead, of whom there have been many, many more.

I will mourn the Iraqi children, not just those who are dead, but those who have been blinded, crippled, disfigured, or traumatized. We have not been given in the American media (we would need to read the foreign press) a full picture of the human suffering caused by our bombing.

We got precise figures for the American dead, but not for the Iraqis. Recall Colin Powell after the first Gulf War, when he reported the "small" number of U.S. dead, and when asked about the Iraqi dead, replied: "That is really not a matter I am terribly interested in."

As a patriot, contemplating the dead GIs, I could comfort myself (as, understandably, their families do) with the thought: "They died for their country." But I would be lying to myself.

Those who died in this war did not die for their country. They died for their government. They died for Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld. And yes, they died for the greed of the oil cartels, for the expansion of the American empire, for the political ambitions of the President. They died to cover up the theft of the nation's wealth to pay for the machines of death.