BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - SPRINGSTEEN URGES AMERICANS TO FIGHT U.S. DECAY

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN hopes history will portray him as a rocker who stood up for what he believed in the dark days following 9/11. The rocker, whose The Rising album helped many American music fans recover from the heartache of the terrorist attacks, fears his country has become a worse place to live after 9/11 - but he hopes his voice will help his fellow countrymen come to their senses. He tells Rolling Stone magazine, "Many parts of it (America) will be remembered with the same degree of shame as the Japanese internment camps are remembered - illegal wire tapping, rendition, the abuse of prisoners, cutting back our civil rights, no habeas corpus. "I don't think most people thought they'd ever see the country move far enough right to see those things happen here. And I don't believe that those are things that strengthen us. "The moral authority to stand up and say 'We are Americans' is invaluable. It's been deeply damaged, and it's going to take quite a while to repair that damage, if we can. "All I want to do is to be one of those guys that says, 'When that stuff was going down, I threw my hat in the ring and tried to stand on what I felt was the right side of history.'"