In Baghdad, Barwiz Muhammad Mahmoud al-Merani was shot to death along with his son. Al-Merani was slated to serve on the tribunal that will prosecute Saddam Hussein. In Chicago, federal judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow came home to find her husband and mother dead from gun shot wounds.

Assassinations in Iraq aren’t terribly surprising. Foreign armies are beginning their third year of occupation in that country and have killed and detained thousands. That sort of thing always incites violence.

There is no war on American soil. We don’t expect that a judge’s relatives will be slain execution style. We think we are different but perhaps we should not be so sanguine.

There may not be a war in this country but there are thousands of haters who would love to become killers. Sometimes they emerge from the shadows and act out their sick fantasies. That is what Benjamin Smith did in 1999.

He went on a shooting spree in Illinois and Indiana killing a black man and an Asian man and wounding nine others. Smith was a protégée of Matthew Hale, leader of World Church of the Creator, a group that espouses Racial Holy War.

No one has been arrested for killing Judge Lefkow’s family, but followers of Matthew Hale are logical suspects.  Last year Hale was convicted of soliciting an under cover FBI agent to have Lefkow killed. If it can be said that good deeds are in fact punished, Lefkow is a tragic example.

In 2002 Lefkow decided in Hale’s favor in a trademark infringement case. Hale had been sued by an Oregon based group that also called itself World Church of the Creator. Lefkow’s decision in favor of Hale was overturned on appeal, but when he ignored the verdict from the higher court she fined him $1,000 for every day that he continued to use the disputed name.

Furious with Lefkow and incorrectly assuming her to be Jewish, Hale was taped soliciting her murder. After he was charged his white supremacist brethren openly advocated her murder.

Hal Turner is a case in point. Turner is a former radio talk show host who two years ago said that Lefkow was “worthy of being killed.” Turner recently defended that statement. "If I say some politician should be assassinated, that's an opinion. If I say, `Let's go kill so-and-so,' that's solicitation of murder. It's a very fine line, and sometimes people can't distinguish."

Matthew Hale, Hal Turner and their ilk are usually referred to as “white supremacists.” The description certainly fits, but how about the word “terrorists?”  The media in this country are loath to use that word when Americans kill or advocating killing. Timothy McVeigh murdered 168 people and was described as being anti-government, but was rarely called a terrorist.  It seems that being white and American is enough to preclude being thought of as a terrorist, no matter how horrible the statements or actions of the individuals involved.

George W. Bush is on a rampage around the globe in an effort to wage what he calls the war on terror. It is a phony war. Its true goal is to make America dominant. The fight against terror in the United States is always a pretext for keeping the public frightened and distracted from threats to their well being that emanate from the supposed terror warriors.

Bushmen propaganda always rears its ugly head when they are on the defensive. It is not a coincidence that national security and the war on terror re-emerge as the issues of the day when the public expresses a lack of enthusiasm for doing away with the Social Security safety net.

Omar Ahmed Abu Ali is an American citizen from Virginia. While in custody in Saudi Arabia he allegedly confessed to a participating in a plot to kill President Bush. Ali had no access to an attorney and was never charged with a crime. His attorneys also allege that he was tortured while in Saudi custody.

Even John Ashcroft didn’t prosecute Ali. Thinking people must ask themselves two questions. Why is Ali being prosecuted and why is he being prosecuted now. The answer is that Ali was kept on the back burner until he was needed. Ali is now being placed front and center lest we forget ourselves and start questioning anything that the Bush clique is trying to put over on us.

Judge Lefkow and her family were never threatened by Osama bin Laden, Islamic extremists or an al-Qaeda cell. They were threatened by Americans with the same skin color who called themselves Christians. Hopefully the identity of the killers will soon be discovered and we will know that the terror threatening us all has been eased. Not permanently of course, just for a little while and just in one place. Bush is right about one thing. The war on terror must never end.  

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in   Ms. Kimberley is a freelance writer living in New York City.  She can be reached via e-Mail at [email protected]. You can read more of Ms. Kimberley's writings at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com/

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