In yesterday's letter, ("anti-President is not anti-American"), Mr. Gabris makes a quite important point -- disagreeing with President Bush is not tantamount to anti-Americanism.

It is a legitimate cause for alarm when dissent is attacked in such a manner.

The bedrock of American political culture is healthy political debate -- even if that debate is critical of current policy.

However, Mr. Gabris' criticism of a letter that called Kris Ankarlo's column un-American is not accurate.

Mr. Ankarlo's column was not merely critical of the President's foreign policy, it was anti- American.

Mr. Ankarlo said that Americans "love to see dead people," and "Eat up [war propaganda] like the fast food that they crave all day," and are "sitting on-edge waiting for the next Hollywood one-liner from their esteemed leader."

He characterizes America as a nation that "is quickly becoming the global haven for fear and hypocrisy," and that "proclaims itself as the land of the brave, [but] is in fact the land of the scared."

Mr. Ankarlo also categorizes America as a country which undertakes, as a policy, all sorts of war, including "... the war on simply living and breathing. Blow everything up and ask questions later."

If these statements, and the general portrayal of Americans as blood-thirsty warmongers who undertake to kill thousands merely to satisfy their bloodlust does not qualify as anti-American, I don't know what does.

Even by the strictest and narrowest definition of what could constitute anti- Americanism, Mr. Ankarlo's column makes the final cut.