This is ridiculous.......and a bit scary.

From today's Guardian......which tends to have better US news than the US......


Civil liberties fear as US terror suspect list rises to 325,000

Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday February 16, 2006
The Guardian
Civil liberties organisations expressed outrage yesterday after it was reported that the database of terrorist suspects kept by the US authorities now holds 325,000 names, a fourfold increase in two and a half years.
The list, maintained by the National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC), includes different spellings of the same person's names as well as aliases, but the Washington Post quoted NCTC officials as saying that at least 200,000 individuals are on it. They said that "only a very, very small fraction" of that number were US citizens, but that insistence did little to defuse the reaction.
Timothy Sparapani, an expert on privacy rights at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the ACLU's response was one of incredulity, and alarm that many people are likely to be on the list by mistake, with serious impact on their lives and few, if any, means of getting themselves off it.
"The numbers continue to grow by leaps and bounds," Mr Sparapani said. He had no idea what methods were being used to add names to the database, but added: "I have to say we're probably adding names faster than we can figure out how to deal with them ... We worry greatly about the potential stain to anyone's life who ends up on this list."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1710756,00.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2109965

and yes, it's a disturbing story. . .

to prove that you're not . . . the flip side of "innocent until proven guilty" . . .

We really are not going to let a country from the Middle East run our Ports are we? I have lived in Saudi and do you know that they can not even get a parking lot in some type order? People park like they wish and that means every one parks at the store's door. I have even seen a herd of goats go right through the lots. These people do not dirty their hands by doing and running things. They are bosses and figure heads.The USA runs the oil Co. I watched them remove a phone service from a compound because the 'big' guy wanted it and left about a Million gal. of water sit in a place with no phone for the man running the place to work with.Please say this is not so. We are going to let them run New Orleans and New York Ports? Must be a Bush plan? Right?

Don't say you weren't warned.