As local anti-war sentiment grows, Ann Arbor's anti-war graffiti is slowly fading away.

The message "Attacking Iraq is Terrorism" that appeared on walls of two local restrooms and a number of sidewalks, now reads "Attacking Iraq is," on a USA Today dispenser and just "Attacking" on a construction truck, both of which displayed the full message two weeks ago.

The original message also appeared on walls of the men's bathroom in the State Street Starbucks and the Borders'and Liberty Street men's bathroom stall, where it has since been washed off, twice on the sidewalk at State Street and North University Avenue.

Though it is now practically invisible, the graffiti could be found on the connecting Maynard Street sidewalk in front of White Market last month.

Both the stencil used to create the outside graffiti and the handwriting in Borders and Starbucks contained two lowercase "t"s sandwiched between two uppercase "A"s in the word "Attacking,"

Alan Hatfield, who sells hot dogs on the corner of State and North University, said the graffiti near the stand appeared on Sept. 11 of this year.

"People just look at it and go about their business," he said.

Education junior Maran Maguran said the anti-war graffiti did not move her one way or the other. "I guess I'm just used to it," she said.

Associate Political Science Prof. Robert Franzese said the anti-war graffiti "may actually get people to tune out and not pay attention, the same way negative campaign ads do."

"I imagine the graffiti writers are drawing a parallel between the inevitable civilian casualties that any military strike would produce and the intentional civilian casualties produced by terrorism, by definition," Franzese said. "Whether that parallel is warranted, is another question," he added.

LSA Senior Joseph Tanniru, a member of Students for Social Equality, said "I don't think that graffiti and the defamation of buildings is a serious response to the tasks required in the building a movement opposing the war. I won't denounce it, but it certainly doesn't help and it is not a practice that we would engage in."

"When the graffiti actually causes physical damage to the buildings, then it is no different really from breaking windows at Citibank or Starbucks - a form of action that substitutes pseudo-radicalism and pseudo-militancy for a real effort to build a movement in the broad masses of the population against war and all forms of oppression," Tanniru said.

"I think that the point of the slogan is to draw attention to the complete hypocrisy of the American government in its talk of 'terrorism,' when the United States acts as the principal force of oppression internationally," Tanniru added.

Linguistics Prof. Noam Chomsky said in his new book, "9/11," published shortly after last years terrorist attacks that "Western powers could never abide by their own official definitions of the term (terrorism)." Calling the U.S. battle a "war on terrorism," Chomsky says, "would at once reveal that the U.S. is a leading terrorist state, as are its clients."