We share the disappointment of the Washington Post in a speech Attorney General Ashcroft gave to federal prosecutors this week about the Justice Department's terrorism policies and their effect on civil rights.

"He expressed dismay that secret detentions and "military detentions of unlawful enemy combatants" -- which is to say locking up American citizens without trial or access to lawyers -- might be controversial. And he made clear that criticism will not deter him: "History instructs us that caution and complacency are not defenses of freedom: caution and complacency are a capitulation before freedom's enemies -- the terrorists."

The Post opines that caution and complacency are not the same and while caution is desirable, complacency is a danger.

"But caution in approaching such a diminution of liberty is a virtue. It reflects caution, not complacency, to ask that the Justice Department account honestly to Congress and, as much as possible, to the public about the changes it seeks. It reflects caution to hope that members of Congress deliberate seriously before changing the rules of surveillance and detention. It is not complacency to consider how effective those changes are likely to be relative to their impact on American liberty -- to seek, in other words, a balancing of risks and dangers without having to fear attack from the administration for allegedly endangering security."

"Mr. Ashcroft's disdain for such qualities is troubling. Zeal to fight the forces of evil can be recklessly deployed; it can misfire against the innocent; and it can, in doing so, cause dangerous threats to go undetected."