If you were thinking about transporting contraband into the U.S. through Canada, you better think again. The borders are about to become increasingly populated with government agents:

....federal officials on Friday opened the first of five planned bases for regular flights to look for drug runners and others crossing illegally by air or land. The base of operations, called the Bellingham Air Marine Branch, is to have a staff of nearly 70, two helicopters, an airplane and a high-speed boat by year's end. Similar bases have policed the Mexican border for three decades, but the facility here is the first on the Canadian border.

Five new bases, which will dot the border from Washington to upstate New York, are a response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as well as smuggling of illegal immigrants and drugs, including British Columbia's potent strains of marijuana.

A response to terrorism? Bush and Ashcroft will do anything to avoid going after the real terrorists. That's why they are going to convince you that terrorists and drugs go hand in hand like milk and cookies. They want to fill you with dread of "narco-terrorists" who smuggle "narco-dollars" out of the country with which they will build biological and radioactive missiles and bombs and then launch unspeakable attacks on our cities and power plants and schools.

They are planning on creating new criminal laws punishing drug offenses as terrorist crimes. They think if they make you very afraid you will forget they haven't found Osama or cracked al-Qaeda.