President Bush’s TIPS program – that swell idea for preventing terrorism by having us all spy on each other and tell the government about any suspicious doings – originally was supposed to launch this month. But instead Dubya & Co. have shelved it until at least after the November congressional elections, and maybe forever.

TIPS (the Terrorism Information and Prevention System) not only came under fire from civil libertarians, including some members of Dubya’s own party, but – much worse – it supplied a target for Letterman, Leno et al.

Along with the bewildering system of color-coded homeland security alerts (was chartreuse supposed to mean “high alert” or “moderate alert”?) TIPS was making the War on Terror look like a Marx Brothers production.

So politically, I can understand why Dubya pulled the plug on TIPS.

But personally, I’m ticked off.

I’ve already prepared a long list of probable terrorists, terrorist sympathizers, terrorist supporters and generally bad dudes and was all set to turn it over. Now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about the terrorist menaces that surround me.

For instance, there’s the neighbor of mine who kept running a loud air compressor every evening for about a week as I tried to sit out on my patio and relax with a drink.

(He claimed he was doing it to power-wash his deck – but how do we know he wasn’t building a suitcase nuke out there behind his hot tub?)

We have other neighbors who are always going off on trips. They’re gone anywhere from a couple of days to several weeks. Where do they go? What do they do? Who knows?

Further incriminating evidence: This same couple has a son who attended a FLIGHT SCHOOL in – now get this – FLORIDA. He doesn’t call himself Abdul or wear a beard or a turban; he looks just like a nice, clean-cut American kid. That just shows how devious these evildoers can be.

Speaking of people going off on trips, my wife has a co-worker who’s going away on a “vacation” toward the end of the summer. When asked where she was going she claimed she “didn’t know,” but added that she and her husband might head for … CANADA.

Which, as everybody knows, is part of The Axis of Not Really Evil But They Talk Kind of Funny nations, and is just a hop, skip and jump from Baghdad.

We have another neighbor whose front yard is adorned with garden gnomes, those two-foot-high painted concrete statues of tiny men described in my dictionary as “a fabled race of dwarflike creatures who live underground and guard treasure hoards.”

“Fabled race of dwarflike creatures”? Doesn’t sound like that old-time American religion to me. I wouldn’t be surprised if these characters had a copy of the Koran stashed away somewhere.

Then there’s another neighbor who appears to be a sweet, retired lady. She loves to work in her garden and grows the most beautiful flowers in the neighborhood.

Nothing wrong with that, per se. But should we really trust anybody with such advanced horticultural skills? How do we know she isn’t cooking up biological weapons in her garage?

A few doors down from the sinister gardening lady is another house that seems to be inhabited by 20 or 30 young men in their late teens and early 20s.

Animal House, as I call it, always seems to have about a dozen cars and pickups parked outside, along with a huge powerboat, some lawn furniture and a couple of empty beer kegs. The denizens are coming and going all the time, but as far as I can tell, none of them ever goes to work.

Harmless post-adolescent party animals – or deadly terrorist cell?

Whether the TIPS program is ever implemented or not, it has fundamentally changed my life.

Before, I never was truly aware of the extent to which the menace of terrorism engulfs us. Like most Americans, I cruised through life in blissful ignorance, never realizing how many of the people I met every day – neighbors, friends, the supermarket checkout clerk, the guy who changes my oil – were potential agents of terror determined to destroy Our Sacred American Way of Life.

But my eyes have been opened now. I’ll never be my old naive self again. I’m going to remain vigilant and keep adding to my list, sniffing out evildoers wherever they may lurk.

So watch yourself. And watch each other.

As a great American once said: “Eternal paranoia is the price of liberty.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 11th, 2002 at 7:15 pm and is filed under Bruce on the Loose. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.