To the editor:

I watch, astonished, as John Ashcroft asks that more civil liberties be violated in order to stop terrorism. Given the performance of this administration as it claimed absolute proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that still come up missing, as it destroyed lives (American, British and Iraqi) in the name of those claims, how can we trust that any information will be used honestly and well?

The biggest enemy of truth is wishful thinking — wishful thinking on the part of politicians puts our country at grave risk. I don’t care how much information our intelligence services have; if they are forced to distort it in order to satisfy a political agenda, it does us no good and, in fact, does us grave harm. We need to speak out vigorously and often to demand truth from our leaders and to let them know that we know when they distort the evidence, when they convince themselves too easily and when they, in fact if not in purpose, lie.

Judith Roitman,

Lawrence