Does all this monitoring and second-guessing have an effect on employees? Personal trust is something we rate highly. Talk with someone whose spouse has cheated on them and you will find that emotional pain has little to do with sex but everything to do with loss of trust and doubt that a relationship can ever really survive such a loss. Although secondary to intimate relationships, we would like our coworkers and supervisors to trust us also, as a mark of respect if nothing else.

On other hand, we are aware that world is full of cheaters, those who would break any moral, legal, or ethical code if it gave them an advantage in race for success and financial independence. We want to be trusted to act responsibly and do right thing but we are just a little reluctant to trust others to quite same degree.

Close oversight of everyone gives us a certain sense of security - it levels playing field for us all by rooting out those who would bend rules to get what they want. We tell ourselves that we have nothing to fear because we are innocent and that will protect us.

Then we read about long-convicted prisoners whose innocence has been belatedly proved by newly developed scientific forensics. We miss a familiar face at our favorite casino and finally learn that individual left town after an error-inspired accusation of misconduct resulted in termination and blacklisting from industry.

Where there is cash floating around in generous amounts, there will always be temptations, overzealous suspiciousness, justice and injustice on all sides because truth is not amenable to scientific analysis and every event has multiple explanations and perspectives.

So we keep on watching ourselves and each other. Those of us who loathe concept of big brother and snitching on friends, draw back in disgust as we see need for security invade our lives. We can stay out of gaming world with its cameras and minutely regulated transactions but how do we avoid monitoring threatened with every call for customer service or cookies embedded in our computers to track our wanderings through Internet?

The cheaters, scam artists, swindlers and frauds have won. It is we, innocent, who must dwell in prison cells of continuous third degree scrutiny.

Consider average Iraqi. Three years ago, there may have been a muzzled press and sinister whispers of secret executions and atrocities against minorities, but electricity and water systems worked, there was order in streets, there were uplifting parades or uniformed troops, a leader standing up to might of western world, and a deep pride in being a citizen of arguably strongest Muslin country in world.

Three years later, men stand in line for few paltry jobs available with security forces, well aware of possibility of being blown to bits for only sin of standing in that line.

President Bush is on a crusade (that was his word) to rid world of terrorism and convert entire planet to Western Democracy and his version of freedom (his favorite word).

America will save world. And if there is nothing left when saving is over, can we wring some sense of self-satisfaction from fact that no despots are left standing on windswept, barren plateau that remains?