Having donated more blood than victims need, having wallpapered their towns with flags and having little choice but to stew over TV reruns of terror in their homeland, more than a few Americans are beginning to obsess about how to get even.
Phil Beckwith, a retired truck driver, announced his modest proposal for avenging the attacks on New York and Washington in the editorial offices of The Ranger, a newspaper that serves Fremont County, Wyoming, one of the largest and emptiest counties in the nation. He had gone to the paper to buy a classified ad.
"I know just what to do with these Arab people," he proclaimed Wednesday to the newspaper staff. "We have to find them, kill them, wrap them in a pig skin and bury them. That way they will never go to heaven. Now, I would like to buy an ad to rent my house."
In a phone interview Thursday, Beckwith, 63, a former chief petty officer in the Navy, said that he had spent many angry hours in front of the television before hitting on his plan for striking terrorists in a way that he believes would hurt them the most.
"Bury Osama bin Laden with a pigskin, donate blood for the people in New York and God bless this great country," he said.
Eager to do something, anything, that might relieve their frustration, Americans on Thursday bought guns and ammunition, made inquiries about military service, planned patriotic celebrations for the weekend and let their anger run loose in conversation.
"Attempting to parse this situation with the sort of legality you might find during a rape trial is not appropriate here," said Paul D. Danish, a county commissioner in Boulder, Colorado. He said the US should order a handful of Arab nations, including Afghanistan and Iraq, to hand over the responsible parties.
"If they do not comply, we should declare war," he said. "My interest is only in seeing them change their behavior or in seeing their destruction."
Serious talk of war, which could be heard Thursday coming from President Bush in the White House, as well as from young men in rural gun shops, also alarmed many Americans.
"When I heard the president use the war word, I just got sick and my stomach fell down to my feet," said Mag Seaman, 75, a retired teacher.
Carrying a sign that said "We Are All Members of The Life Form Called Human," she joined about 100 other people on the steps of the Colorado capitol Thursday to protest the possibility of military retaliation.
"We must resist the urge to demonize and scapegoat -- in our communities and around the world," said Larry Legman-Miller, the local director of the American Friends Service Committee, also known as the Quakers. "A violent response will not bring back loved ones, bring justice or increase our safety and may increase the likelihood of more terrorist acts."
Other members of the spiritual community disagreed.
"I don't like the word `revenge,"' said Jim Willhoit, 58, pastor of the First Church of Christ in Highland, Indiana. "The word `retaliate' means much the same thing. But I believe there needs to be some retaliation. But I also believe we need to retaliate to the person who did it.
"Who signed the order, so to speak?" Willhoit continued. "I talked to a friend yesterday and he said, `I want to get bin Laden and his parents and his two kids and the people who live down the block.' He said, `Let's just make glass out of Afghanistan.' I said `Nah, I don't feel that way.' But I do feel like the person who did this campaign, no question, he's got to pay."
In Ogden, Illinois, population 500, similar sentiments were expressed.
"If I could get my hands on bin Laden, I'd skin him alive and pour salt on him," said Bruce Cristina, 45, a worker at Ogden Metalworking. "Nothing would be cruel enough."
Cristina spoke at lunch with three co-workers and his boss at the Pink House Restaurant and Bar.
"Level the country that's harboring them," Cristina said. "The whole country. Let the world know that we're not going to put up with terrorism of any magnitude. Go in there and do the job. Hit them with whatever we've got."
At Panhandle Gunslingers, a gun shop and firing range in Amarillo, Texas, similar sentiments were expressed. "I'll be honest with you," said Burnie Stokes, the shop's owner. "I see somebody that's Arabic, Pakistani or Indian, I'm looking at him like, `What the hell do you have under your coat?' Everybody is scaring me to death right now." His gun range had photocopies of Osama bin Laden's image next to a sign that said "Free Targets."
So far, at least, Tuesday's attacks have had "minimal impact" on the number of people volunteering to serve in the armed forces, said Douglas Smith, spokesman for the US Army Recruiting Command in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
But Smith said that recruiting stations around the country had received a higher than usual number of calls from veterans who wanted to know if they could do anything.
At an enlistment center in the Aurora Mall in the Denver suburbs, Jason Stuart, 24, was one of the few young people to respond to this week's events by trying to join the Army.
"I thought, `Somebody's got to pay for this,'" he said. "I felt there had to be something, I don't know, something I had to do."
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