
As usual, you dash off to extremisms. Was the United States, during WWII, a police state? Were we the equivalent of a facist government? During WWII, people like Cindy Sheehan were arrested as seditionists for doing what she's doing. You might recall that we won that war, but there was a tremendous amount of suppression and filtering of information going to and coming from the US. It was a cost of winning the war that needed to be paid. Are we now the worse for it? I don't think so. Was all of the censoring of personal mail during WWII a violation of free speech? Yes, but operational security was deemed more important than personal freedom. Now we have electonic comminications that far eclipse the communications of the 1940s. During WWII we were concerned about someone discussing military operations or our intentions in a letter that might fall into enemy hands, now we have the ability to spoon-feed this information direct to a TV in the office of any enemy leader courtesy of CNN International and Sky News.
We are dealing with an enemy that places great importance on symbolism. When inclement weather marred a meeting between Jimmy Carter and the Shah of Iran, Muslim fundamentalists took that as a sign from Allah to move against the Shah. Can you imagine how they take the vision of Murtha saying we need to quit fighting, or thousands of protesters marching in the streets? These folks don't see the thousands of Americans who support the war and who are against them, they only see what the news is showing them, and the message they get day in and day out is that they are winning.
We have lots of people (mostly Democrats) whining about how no one is making a sacrifice for this war, how this isn't really a war because no one is making a sacrifice, etc. Well, sacrifice during war time means more than rationing gas and driving less... it also means giving up the ability to encourage your enemy by exercising your right to free speech in front of satellite television.
Like I said... if you want to put freedom of speech ahead of operational security, if you want to put the ability to be a vocal "loyal opposition" ahead of denying the enemy intelligence on our intentions, that's just fine. Just don't whine about casualties or the length of the war because your priorities are enablers for those issues. You can't have it both ways.