WASHINGTON: In natural science circles, two theories are frequently used to explain extinction: over-hunting and the inability to adapt to environmental changes.

With US Special Forces now on horseback chasing terrorists in Afghanistan, the hunt theory pretty much sums up the Taliban’s demise.

But in this post-Sept 11 world, there have been some pretty inane attempts to adapt to the changing environment, suggesting that survival for the rest of us is in no way guaranteed.

Russia and the US, for instance, while supposedly united in the global war on terrorism, remain at odds about the use of their own most terrifying weapons of mass destruction.

And instead of destroying its stored samples of smallpox, as once planned, the US has decided to hold on to them for a while longer - for research, of course.

While progress is being claimed in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and members of Al Qaeda abroad, the threat posed by what appears to be a homegrown madman with a supply of anthrax continues on US soil.

Add to that insanity the Bush administration’s discounting of civil liberties, and what we have is an America that is becoming a little less American each day.

Attorney General John Ashcroft, in his war on terrorism, has allowed eavesdropping on conversations between imprisoned inmates and their attorneys.

President Bush has authorized the use of ”military justice,” which means that people can be rounded up, detained and tried in secret.

As far as we know, more than 1,000 people are being detained indefinitely without being charged with a crime. Moreover, the Justice Department is seeking more than 5,000 foreign men in the United States, most of Middle Eastern descent, for “voluntary interviews.”

Civil rights proponents have noted that rounding up such men makes about as much sense as rounding up all white men from the Midwest in the wake of Timothy McVeigh’s terrorist attack in Oklahoma City.—Dawn/LAT-AP News Service (c) The Washington Post.