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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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How easy it is to disturb the peace of people, to destroy years of trust and the habits of millions and to turn their everyday ordinary and happy life into a nightmare. We see how easy it is. There are no tanks, no armies fighting each other, no bombs, no collapsing skyscrapers and even no anthrax letters. And still there is a fear. A fear of filling gas at the gas station, a fear of sending children to school. They fear to go outside because it's dangerous and also the fear to remain inside home because nobody will see how you're dying.

I'm surprised that even after the 9th shooting nobody has called this a terrorism. As a matter of fact this is the only name that can be attributed to these acts. To make millions feel fear for their lives everyday, to count the victims and to pray for God to see the next sunset, this is a terror. I don't want to say that the gunman is a Muslim or Arab by origin, instructed in Osama bin Laden training camps to hate and kill Americans. I mean that even if this killer is trained as a sniper in American forces, he or she is a terrorist, a real threat for the national security because he or she makes millions to feel unsecured.

Media call the Beltway gunman mad, but does a crazy being act like this? This killer does his or her monstrous job with lots of patience without many emotions. Madness implies acting under the influence of emotions. There are so many people killing under such influences that express a sorrow after the first blood. Not is this case. Our killer acts like a machine, no sorrow, nothing personal, just a job. And the next victim that we hear about in the news bulletin.

A country that has no match for its military power in the world can't find the right way to capture one person that terrorizes the national capital. And if this killer were more than one? The task would seem almost impossible to accomplish. A year ago most probably another lonely terrorist sent a handful of poisoned letters that shocked the whole country. The anthrax-sender hasn't been found so far and I'm afraid that this time history could repeat itself. The killings might stop suddenly as they began and nobody would have a clue to find the killer. The society will be left in peace until the next lonely killer use another way to terrorize the whole country.

I saw some excerpts from the new US national security doctrine for the 21st century. There were so many words about the foreign threats, about the armies, nuclear and chemical dangers. That's good, but I didn't see anything, not a single word about what to do in cases like the present one. What if Saddam or someone like him decides not to make nuclear bombs, which are very expensive weapons, but instead decides to train a hundred or so snipers and send them into the US. If only one killer can make all this mess, just imagine what can do hundreds of trained snipers, operating in tens of major American cities. There will be no quiet life whatsoever and the material and human casualties will equal those inflicted by a limited military conflict.

America has to look for threats to its national security not only abroad but also within its borders. Don't forget that on its own territory a handful of Arab terrorists learned how exactly to pilot the planes that crashed at the Twin Towers in NYC on 9/11. Without such look at the potential gaps in the national security inside the country all efforts to contain the foreign threats around the borders will fail.