I couldn't have written a better op-ed myself on the overblown "war on terror." Zbigniew Brzezinski gets it right:

The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. ...

Government at every level has stimulated the paranoia. Consider, for example, the electronic billboards over interstate highways urging motorists to "Report Suspicious Activity" (drivers in turbans?). Some mass media have made their own contribution. The cable channels and some print media have found that horror scenarios attract audiences, while terror "experts" as "consultants" provide authenticity for the apocalyptic visions fed to the American public. ...

Where is the U.S. leader ready to say, "Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia"?

Parallel to that: two new reports of paranoia-gone-wild: the Times reports that the NYPD spied massively on peaceful protesters and dissenters before the 2004 GOP convention in New York, a theme that I've written about many times, including several investigative articles on police spying [see here, here, and here], and the Post carries a report that more than 400,000 people are in the anti-terror data base with little or no quality control.