Of course these days you'd never get within 1000 yards of a Bush/Cheney rally and would have to undergo a loyalty oath, lie detector test, and full cavity search to be let in.

I've been hearing more stories all the time of perfectly respectable overseas visitors having to undress, unzip their flies - something along the lines of the 'full cavity search'. None of them had the faintest idea what could have provoked any suspicion. Hey - they didn't even LOOK Arabic. Maybe they just looked in a bad mood after a very long flight from somewhere else?

For instance: my first cousin is one of the most respected and honoured molecular geneticists in this country (no, I'm not exaggerating, or breastbeating). He has been continuously visiting and working in the US since the 1980s, when he did his postdoc as Stanford. Surely everything about him has long been known to all and any relevant authorities.

On his first visit after 2001, he was pulled aside on entry and given the 3rd degree, quite unpleasantly from what I hear. But we are sympathetic, so he understood the mentality and probably even approved of the super-cautious vigilance.

The same for his second visit after 9/11 - hey, it's the first time you guys were attacked on home ground, right? So forgive and forget.

By the third time, I think his patience was being tried and tested .. We now believe that the reason for the paranoia is that, after a long and tiring flight from Australia, his stubble makes his dark complexion look even darker, somewhat swarthy, possibly Mediterranean.

And hey - Mediterranean, Arabic, what's the diff? They're all dangerous wogs anyway, right?

In fact: we're of Central European background. LOL: So much for the racial profiling of possible terrorists!

Vigilance is one thing; idiotic and primitive paranoia something else, namely quite offensive to decent respectable people.