By: Anthony Amore

Imagine the following nightmarish scenario: Al Qaida operatives cross our border through Canada via the hundreds and hundreds of miles of land not patrolled by US Customs and Border Protection. Over a period of months, teams of operatives work to carry out a diabolical plan: To contaminate waterways by saturating them with dangerous levels of mercury. They decide to start slowly and deliberately. They set a careful schedule to inject mercury into the waters in Connecticut. They choose the New England state because it is not perceived as a major terrorist target (thus a path of least resistance) and because they know that the state features some of the richest neighborhoods in the nation.

Over a period of months, they carry out their plan. However, after six months of contaminating the waters of Connecticut, a State Police officer stumbles upon one of the Al Qaida contamination teams at a rest stop. The plan is exposed, and the rest of the culprits are forced to abandon their plan.

Connecticut state health officials immediately go to work to determine the extent of the damage caused by the terrorists. Their findings shock the nation: Terrorists have completed enough of their plan to make it unsafe for humans to eat any freshwater fish because of the levels of mercury found in the water. Neighboring states examine their waterways and the findings are just as startling. Terrorists have attacked waterways in other states. Most of the fish in the state of New York and all of the fish in the New York City Reservoir system are so contaminated with mercury that they cannot be safely eaten. In all, the fish in 17 states can no longer safely be eaten because of mercury contamination.

Sounds like a nightmare, doesn't it? It strikes real fear into people to consider that the water they and their children drink may be poisoned.

Well, the nightmare is real. And terrorists have poisoned our water to this extent already.

But the terrorists aren't Al Qaida operatives. They don't have foreign names. They aren't neo-Nazis.

These terrorists hate our government, but they use their riches to manipulate it. They are the anti-environmentalists working for the Bush administration. They manipulate the regulatory process to allow energy mega-corporations to pollute our air and water. For example, as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. points out, half of the mercury emissions in our country are coming from coal-burning plants in the Ohio Valley.

How do we define terrorism? A purposeful attack against innocent people for misguided gain does nicely, and it describes the Bush cronies making billions on the backs--and the health--of Americans.

Anthony Amore is a freelance writer and is currently working on a book about the speeches of President Bill Clinton. He lives in Swampscott, Massachusetts