Nadia McCaffrey's son Patrick, 34, a member of the Californian National Guard, was killed during an ambush in Iraq in June 2004. She said she had not expected Mr Bush to attend her son's funeral in person but thought the government would send someone.

"It's not just me. Many, many people say the same thing," she said, speaking from her home near San Francisco. "He was my only child, but it was not only that. Patrick did not want anything from the military. He joined up out of patriotism. I would have thought that... somebody could have come. Nobody showed up."

The White House said that as Mr Bush could not attend every funeral, it would be wrong to pick just one. He has met the families of killed soldiers.

But critics say his behaviour gives the impression he is out of touch. The President has also been criticised for refusing to allow the media to photograph soldiers' coffins being flown back from Iraq.

The directive was introduced in early 2003. An official said: "We don't want the remains of our service members who have made the ultimate sacrifice to be the subject of any kind of attention that is unwarranted or undignified."

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

The Associated Press obtained the confidential government video and made it public Wednesday, offering Americans their own inside glimpse into the government's fateful final Katrina preparations after months of fingerpointing and political recriminations.

"My gut tells me ... this is a bad one and a big one," then-federal disaster chief Michael Brown told the final government-wide briefing the day before Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29.

The president didn't ask a single question during the briefing but assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared."

The footage - along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by AP - show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

A top hurricane expert voiced "grave concerns" about the levees and Brown, then the
Federal Emergency Management Agency chief, told the president and
Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff that he feared there weren't enough disaster teams to help evacuees at the Superdome.

"I'm concerned about ... their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe," Brown told his bosses the afternoon before Katrina made landfall.

The White House and Homeland Security Department urged the public Wednesday not to read too much into the footage.

"I hope people don't draw conclusions from the president getting a single briefing," Bush spokesman Trent Duffy said, citing a variety of orders and disaster declarations Bush signed before the storm made landfall. "He received multiple briefings from multiple officials, and he was completely engaged at all times."

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said his department would not release the full set of videotaped briefings, saying most transcripts - though not the videotapes - from the sessions were provided to congressional investigators months ago.

"There's nothing new or insightful on these tapes," Knocke said. "We actively participated in the lessons-learned review and we continue to participate in the Senate's review and are working with them on their recommendation."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, a critic of the administration's Katrina response, had a different take after watching the footage from an AP reporter's camera.

"I have kind a sinking feeling in my gut right now," Nagin said. "I was listening to what people were saying - they didn't know, so therefore it was an issue of a learning curve. You know, from this tape it looks like everybody was fully aware."

Some of the footage and transcripts from briefings Aug. 25-31 conflicts with the defenses that federal, state and local officials have made in trying to deflect blame and minimize the political fallout from the failed Katrina response:

• Homeland Security officials have said the "fog of war" blinded them early on to the magnitude of the disaster. But the video and transcripts show federal and local officials discussed threats clearly, reviewed long-made plans and understood Katrina would wreak devastation of historic proportions. "I'm sure it will be the top 10 or 15 when all is said and done,"
National Hurricane Center's Max Mayfield warned the day Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast.

"I don't buy the `fog of war' defense," Brown told the AP in an interview Wednesday. "It was a fog of bureaucracy."

• Bush declared four days after the storm, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" that gushed deadly flood waters into New Orleans. He later clarified, saying officials believed, wrongly, after the storm passed that the levees had survived. But the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility even before the storm - and Bush was worried too.

White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Brown discussed fears of a levee breach the day the storm hit.

"I talked to the president twice today, once in Crawford and then again on Air Force One," Brown said. "He's obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome, he's asking questions about reports of breaches."

• Louisiana officials angrily blamed the federal government for not being prepared but the transcripts shows they were still praising FEMA as the storm roared toward the Gulf Coast and even two days afterward. "I think a lot of the planning FEMA has done with us the past year has really paid off," Col. Jeff Smith, Louisiana's emergency preparedness deputy director, said during the Aug. 28 briefing.

It wasn't long before Smith and other state officials sounded overwhelmed.

"We appreciate everything that you all are doing for us, and all I would ask is that you realize that what's going on and the sense of urgency needs to be ratcheted up," Smith said Aug. 30.

Mississippi begged for more attention in that same briefing.

"We know that there are tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana that need to be rescued, but we would just ask you, we desperately need to get our share of assets because we'll have people dying - not because of water coming up, but because we can't get them medical treatment in our affected counties," said a Mississippi state official whose name was not mentioned on the tape.

Video footage of the Aug. 28 briefing, the final one before Katrina struck, showed an intense Brown voicing concerns from the government's disaster operation center and imploring colleagues to do whatever was necessary to help victims.

"Go ahead and do it," Brown said. "I'll figure out some way to justify it. ... Just let them yell at me."

Bush appeared from a narrow, windowless room at his vacation ranch in Texas, with his elbows on a table. Hagin was sitting alongside him.

"I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm," the president said.

A relaxed Chertoff, sporting a polo shirt, weighed in from Washington at Homeland Security's operations center. He would later fly to Atlanta, outside of Katrina's reach, for a bird flu event. Officials say he was frequently updated on the road about Katrina.

One snippet captures a missed opportunity on Aug. 28 for the government to have dispatched active-duty military troops to the region to augment the National Guard.

Chertoff: "Are there any DOD assets that might be available? Have we reached out to them?"

Brown: "We have DOD assets over here at EOC (emergency operations center). They are fully engaged. And we are having those discussions with them now."

Chertoff: "Good job."

In fact, active duty troops weren't dispatched until days after the storm. And many states' National Guards had yet to be deployed to the region despite offers of assistance, and it took days before the
Pentagon deployed active-duty personnel to help overwhelmed Guardsmen.

The National Hurricane Center's Mayfield told the final briefing before Katrina struck that storm models predicted minimal flooding inside New Orleans during the hurricane but he expressed concerns that counterclockwise winds and storm surges afterward could cause the levees at Lake Pontchartrain to be overrun.

"I don't think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not but that is obviously a very, very grave concern," Mayfield told the briefing.

Other officials expressed concerns about the large number of New Orleans residents who had not evacuated.

"They're not taking patients out of hospitals, taking prisoners out of prisons and they're leaving hotels open in downtown New Orleans. So I'm very concerned about that," Brown said.

Despite the concerns, it ultimately took days for search and rescue teams to reach some hospitals and nursing homes.

Brown also told colleagues one of his top concerns was whether evacuees who went to the New Orleans Superdome - which became a symbol of the failed Katrina response - would be safe and have adequate medical care.

"The Superdome is about 12 feet below sea level.... I don't know whether the roof is designed to stand, withstand a Category Five hurricane," he said.

Brown also wanted to know whether there were enough federal medical teams in place to treat evacuees and the dead in the Superdome.

"Not to be (missing) kind of gross here," Brown interjected, "but I'm concerned" about the medical and mortuary resources "and their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe."

Every time I push people to see Syriana, the Arab/Texas oil romp, they emerge impressed, yet bewildered. No-one fully understands the plot, probably not even the writer. It's one of Syriana's many virtues. A geopolitical intrigue touching CIA terror, suicide bombers, spoilt princes, feminist mothers and the rise of China is bound to be murky and complex. Holes in the story are true to life. A furtive achievement is its sympathetic insight into the moulding of a suicide bomber, played by Mazhar Munir, whose performance is gripping, though his chance of an Oscar is slim. While the sweep is global, the metaphoric skyline is Iraq, awash with oil, blood and extracted fingernails.

Another big-picture critique of the West is the book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, who feels "weighed down with guilt" for the wreckage he and his colleagues have inflicted on the developing world.
A former Peace Corps activist, Perkins was lured by an executive prostitute into Halliburton Heaven, a vortex of Lear Jets, pillage and dodgy statistics. His inflated forecasts of growth served to increase the indebtedness of client states, adding to the poverty of their people and the profits of his employers. Any odd glitch, such as an elected third world leader with good intentions is dealt with by the CIA. The story is almost too evil to be true, and yet Perkins' case is solid. The book reprints his photo/bio from corporate brochures, names, dates, minutes of meetings, corroborating sources. A veteran hit on the New York Times & Washington Post best-seller lists, this expose was largely ignored by mainstream reviewers. Its revelations make Syriana seem soft.

And yet both works slash away the veils of illusion

And now some Christian groups are undertaking kind of radical truth telling that befits the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. As army chaplains bless the stealth fighter-bombers and anoint the torturers, the US branch of the World Council of Churches has made a public confession to the Assembly of its Global Council: "We acknowledge that we are citizens of a nation that has done much in these years to endanger the human family and to abuse the creation .We lament with special anguish the war in Iraq, launched in deception and violating global norms of justice and human rights. We mourn all who have died or been injured in this war; we acknowledge with shame abuses carried out in our name; we confess that we have failed to raise a prophetic voice loud enough and persistent enough to deter our leaders from this path of preemptive war. Lord, have mercy". WCC members include mainline Protestants, Anglicans and Orthodox churches representing more than 500 million followers.

The confession continues: "Rivers, oceans, lakes, rainforests, and wetlands that sustain us, even the air we breathe continue to be violated, and global warming goes unchecked while we allow God's creation to veer toward destruction. Yet our own country refuses to acknowledge its complicity and rejects multilateral agreements aimed at reversing disastrous trends. Christ have Mercy". And so on.

In both the US and Australia, the moral centre of public life is shifting from the political stage. "Of course we don't condone torture", says the White House; "of course you do", says Amnesty International and other NGO's, posting heaps of evidence. "We treat asylum seekers with respect", claims the Australian Immigration Department. "Oh no you don't", chorus the activists, producing case studies of the victims.

Naqib Ahmed Noori, was falsely imprisoned for six years. When he finally won an appeal against this decision, based on mistaken identity, they held him another 4 months out of spite ("police & security checks"). An Iranian boy, Shayan Badraie, was put into an immigration camp at the age of six, where he was isolated from other children and witnessed repeated acts of brutality. Today, aged 14, Shayan is still in the throes of post-traumatic stress syndrome and may never recover. The immigration bullies have even deported and jailed Australian citizens. And yet as a result of campaigning by respectable citizens on all sides of politics, the Government was forced to soften its stance. The department is still renowned for its "culture of malice" and its sinister former Minister, Philip Ruddock, was "punished" with a promotion to Attorney General, where he is now expunging civil liberties.

Australia is a nation with a split personality. While posing as egalitarians, we produce our fair crop of political and corporate monsters, many of whom feed off the poor. Media magnates Rupert Murdoch and his local rival/friend, the late Kerry Packer, turned tax avoidance into an art form. For this and other acts of deviousness, Packer was rewarded with a State Memorial Service at the Sydney Opera House. It was his first visit. Russell Crowe performed the eulogy, Tom Cruise and his entourage upped the celebrity voltage.

Spoiling the wake was a former employee, Richard Walsh, who pointed out in the press that Packer "had utter contempt for politicians, for the arts, for idealism of any kind, for the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and for those who did not share his world view. His ethics were defined simply as whatever the law allows… In some ways he unfortunately represents all that is wrong with contemporary Australia". .In response to an appreciative email,Walsh, the co-founder of Sydney Oz magazine replied: "I have NEVER had such a tsunami of enthusiasm in all my born days. Clearly I touched a nerve". And that's the nerve that keeps Australia decent.

Am I reading too much into straws? Are we finally watching an awakening in the West? Are Australians, though our swimming pools be full and our global view obscured, becoming aware of an emptiness at heart? Or is it only the emptiness of the landscape that we notice, as featured in the current tourist campaign, SO WHERE THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU? Lost, perhaps. Appreciating the gifts Australia has to offer, but all too aware of the little shop of horrors at the core of Government. Slightly schizoid, we zoom off to forest and beach.

As I write, John Howard is celebrating ten years as our Prime Minister. During the round of lavish banquets - $10,000 a head – he was asked on air whether he had any regrets about sending our troops to Iraq. TV footage from the area makes it hard to imagine that Satan's hell would be worse than Iraq's. Beaming in his dinner suit, Howard looked puzzled. "Regrets? Not al all. We were told Saddam had weapons." Even today there appears to be no-one in the media with the courage to quiz Bush, Blair or Howard on their true feelings about the deaths and maiming of over a 100,000 Iraqis. Howard now lectures the nation on the "perversions of Islam", without a hint of awareness that our deeds in the terror wars are a perversion of Christianity.

As the credits rolled on Syriana, the three of us felt so flat as we trudged for the exit. Why? An overheard remark from a teenager offers a clue: "Syriana shows how fucked up the world is and there's nothing anyone can do about it". It's disconcerting for a work of art to leave you wiser, but feeling so disempowered. For how long? Perhaps the confessions by economists and Christians, the rebirth of satire and the rise of politically savvy blogs and blockbusters, are yet more signs of a shift in the public mood.

"President Bush and his top advisers were informed by the CIA early last August that terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden had discussed the possibility of hijacking airplanes." - The Washington Post, May 16, 2002

The cowboy in every one of us, when confronted by an attack by foreigners on American soil, wants to go "kick some ass". Our first response is to get quick and decisive justice against those who have done us harm. So it is indeed frustrating years after the biggest terrorist attack on U.S. soil, to have no demonstrably guilty person or organization charged in the World Trade Center attack in New York on 9/11/2001. Yes, our administration has been active deposing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, closing Al-Qaeda camps, deposing the Baath regime in Iraq. And yet all these steps, driven by a "lets go kick some ass" attitude toward justice, have yet to reveal the actual organizers behind the attack on 9-11. As Americans, we are taught to rely on our Government to take care of things, while we watch the news for results of our taxes and volunteer military at work.

Some of us join the volunteer force, and risk our lives in the faith that the United States is right and just in its actions throughout the world.

U.S. Intelligence and Pentagon Had Prior Knowledge of 9/11

(1) CIA agents met with and spoke to Osama Bin Laden during his hospital stay in Dubai, July 2001.
(2) FBI agents who pushed for surveillance of suspect Arabs taking flight school backed off under threat of disciplinary measures by their own supervisors.
(3) NORAD and DOD were trained and geared to defend for the use of the domestic airliner as missile. The scenario of hijacked airliners hitting WTC was first written down in the 1980s by a NY state National Guardsman. Exercises to defend against airliner as missile were conducted earlier in 2001, and--most damningly--on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
(4) The 911 Commission failed to investigate one puzzling omission: There was simply no evidence that the "official" list of hijackers, released within a week of 9/11, boarded planes that day. Worse, there was no analysis at all of reports in the public domain that seven of the nineteen hijackers are either alive and well or could not possibly have been on one of the hijacked flights that day.
(5) The Bush Administration released a murky video in which a fat person unlike Osama Bin Laden in almost every way discusses with his cohorts how the mission succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. The Bush Administration has never answered reasonable claims that the video does not prove Bin Laden did it, since Bin Laden is not even in the video.

So, in conclusion, it is safe to assume that the U.S. Government, based on its fabrications and outright lies, allowed or even caused the 9/11 massacre. Every action by this government has been in the nature of a cover-up of its own culpability and criminal nature.

Did Osama bin Laden or the group known as "Al-Qaeda" do it?

Osama bin Laden, originally from Saudia Arabia, moved in 1979 to Afghanistan to join the resistance movement (mujahedeen) against the Soviet Union. With his wealth and connections he created the Al-Qaeda organization to supply logistical and humanitarian aid to the mujahedeen, and returned to Saudi Arabia a hero in 1989 after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan. In 1991 a falling-out with the Saudi monarchy over the alliance with the United States eventually forced bin Laden back to Afghanistan.

There is no evidence in the public domain that bin Laden was behind 9-11; the U.S. government has never charged or even accused him! He is a suspect, but at the same time there are persuasive reasons for his organization to not have been the perpetrators. Typically, a terrorist organization will broadcast its reasons for an attack, and claim responsibility. Such has been Al-Qaeda's track record. From the BBC, Bin Laden himself makes the following statement, "I have already said that I am not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act." In no case has Bin Laden or his organization claimed to have an involvement in 9-11. Bin Laden's bombings were confined to military targets, and designed to drive U.S. forces from the Arabian Peninsula, in the same manner as the ejection of Soviet forces in the 1980s.

Did Saddam Hussein do it?

Saddam is credited for executing "fellow countrymen". Amongst these were members of the militant fundamentalist Islamic sects. Saddam's secular Baathist regime tolerated no inroads on its absolute power, and Bin Laden and his like were sent packing, to Sudan, Algeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan amongst other places. The background of 9-11 hijackers shows that not even one of them was an Iraqi. Given no evidence whatsoever linking Iraq to 9-11, and really no motive at all for this dictatorship to create a public spectacle in New York, Iraq can be assumed to be not complicit in the events of 9-11.

But was Iraq a current terrorist threat, even without 9-11 involvement, which would require invasion under the "War on Terror"? When Iraq possessed and used weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s, the secular regime of Saddam Hussein had the support of the United States as a counter to fundamentalist Iran. Iraq was deliberately removed from the terrorist-nations list, and Hussein's emissaries were assured by Secretary of State Shultz that the use of chemical weapons would not interfere in relations with the United States. With the United States in full awareness that Iraq was using the illegal weapons almost daily against Iranians and Kurds, President Reagan's emissary Donald Rumsfeld in December 1983 made an agreement with Hussein that the United States would assist in building an oil pipeline from Iraq to Aqaba, Jordan. But Hussein's Iraq overstepped its welcome when it invaded Kuwait in 1990, and no longer could be tolerated. U.S. bombing raids destroyed many of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and by 1998 under international pressure Iraq had independently dismantled all remaining programs for their development. Obviously, as a nation which systematically executed or deported terrorists, and which had no weapons of mass destruction, Iraq would not ordinarily be targeted by the United States for invasion.

Perhaps some other Islamic Extremists did it?

Apparently, the month before the 9-11, the attacks were the hot topic in mosques in Egypt. "While on vacation in Cairo last August, Connecticut banker Richard Dennison says a shopkeeper in the bazaar told him in detail about planes that would be flown like bombs into the World Trade Center by Arabs in September or October. Furthermore, according to the shopkeeper, the coming attack was a prime topic of conversation at his mosque." http://www.prisonplanet.com/egyptians_knew_of_planned_911_attacks.htm

"Dennison's unsettling revelations come on the heels of assistant U.S. attorney Kenneth Breen accusing Amr Ibrahim Elgindy, an Egyptian-born stockbroker on trial in San Diego last week, of knowing in advance about 9-11 and capitalizing on insider information by attempting to unload $300,000 worth of shares on Sept. 10, 2001."

"In court Breen charged that on the afternoon of Sept. 10, Elgindy contacted his broker at Salomon Smith Barney and asked him to sell the stock, confiding in the broker that the Dow Jones industrial average, which at the time stood at about 9,600, would soon dive to below 3,000."

The complete list of 9-11 hijackers, complete with photos, which emerged only days after 9-11, was a primarily Saudi-born group. Unfortunately, the source and authenticity of this list which was released to the public is now suspect, since not a single hijacker appears on the passenger manifests, and eight of the nineteen on the list have subsequently identified themselves alive and well in the U.S., Pakistan or Saudi Arabia and unconnected to Al Qaida or other terrorist group.

Lack of Critical Analysis

While the U.S. Government has been active since 9-11, the Bush administration's creation of a "War on Terror" as an appropriate response not only misses the objective of finding and prosecuting the guilty for 9-11, it seems to distract the American people from this goal. The public believes that our government is on top of things, and if we have to invade Iraq, then it must be for the right reasons. History, however, has shown us that a lack of critical analysis of governmental actions yields fewer freedoms both for Americans domestically, and for innocent people abroad.

This chilling interview in 1946 of Herman Goering in his cell during the Nuremberg trials by interviewer Gustave Gilbert reveals the mentality behind an arrogance in those who covet power in government rather than fight to limit government power,

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Is it possible that Americans have ceded their representative democracy to a dictatorship? Do the American people really have their say through the vehicle of their representatives in Congress, or have they given over their power to a non-representative power in government?

Given the actions of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, after Congress gave the administration carte blanche to prosecute war overseas, it seems clear that the American people have no idea what the goals are, but at the same time a have great deal of faith that what the President does will be for the best. As a case in point, any talk against president Bush's "War on Terror" is by definition "denounced" as appeasement of terrorism.

Conclusion

If international justice can be compared to domestic justice, the "War on Terror" is being conducted like a lynching. There is no process for determining guilt other than faith and passion. Like a lynching, those with a particular bias against the accused are heard, whereas there is no public defender with sufficient reason to stick their neck out for the presumed guilty. There is no court, and yet the American public watches the drama trusting its leadership to conduct this international lynching in a morally right and just way. In the end, since someone is being lynched, there is no need to find and bring the real perpetrator to justice.

The real criminals, whoever they may be, remain at large.

George Bush is the quick sand that is pulling the Republican Party underground. If they don't realize that now, they soon will when they do the next poll in their home districts. No party can survive trying to pull up a President so universally disliked (let alone a Vice President that is nearly loathed at an 18% approval rating -- I don't think Pinochet was ever that low and I know Nixon wasn't).

The question the Republicans in Congress have to deal with now is -- do they go down with the ship and risk destroying the party all together or do they finally cut Bush loose like they did with Nixon? Could the Republican Party have survived if they decided to go to the bitter end with Nixon? We never found out because no party has been that suicidal since the Federalists.

I knew they were in trouble when Fox put up the banner: "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" That sounds so pathetically desperate that for the first time I felt sorry for Fox and the Bush administration.

There are some things that are unspinabble. A civil war is one of them.

This long slide downward started with the Terry Schiavo fiasco (politically; policy wise the slide down started when Bush ignored the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States" PDB and stayed on vacation). The downward spiral built up momentum with the abysmal response to Hurricane Katrina. And it culminated in the Port Debacle. The Republican congressional leaders thought this might be a safe issue to distance themselves from the administration without doing too much damage, but when they pulled their finger out of the dam, the flood rushed in and the levees were breached.

It allowed die-hard Republican voters for the first time to feel that it was okay to criticize the President. Once they opened up to that possibility, the whole edifice of party loyalty (for the sake of party loyalty) started to crumble. And then someone pulled the critical card out of the house of cards ... the Iraqi Civil War.

Ronald Reagan once said, "Facts are stubborn things." It turns out they're even more stubborn than Fox News Channel and Karl Rove. It took a long time for facts to wear down spin, but it has, at long last, happened.

Several months ago I said that Bush's poll numbers would never recover and would not go back above fifty percent. Now, I think we are beyond that. At this point, there is a chance that this administration does not make it to 2008. The card has been pulled, this house is coming down. And we might all be surprised at how quickly that comes about.

Cenk Uygur is co-host of The Young Turks, the first liberal radio show to air nationwide.

"I stand by this president's ability, inherent to being commander in chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don't think you need a warrant to do that," Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat.

"Senator," a smiling Gonzales responded, "the president already said we'd be happy to listen to your ideas."

In less paranoid times, Graham's comments might be viewed by many Americans as a Republican trying to have it both ways -- ingratiating himself to an administration of his own party while seeking some credit from Washington centrists for suggesting Congress should have at least a tiny say in how Bush runs the War on Terror.

But recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy. Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush's actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by "news informers," in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Detention centers

Plus, there was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with "an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs," KBR said.

Later, the New York Times reported that "KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space."

Like most news stories on the KBR contract, the Times focused on concerns about Halliburton's reputation for bilking U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for sub-par services. "It's hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars," remarked Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

Less attention centered on the phrase "rapid development of new programs" and what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people. Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to elaborate on what these "new programs" might be.

Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott and Maureen Farrell, have pursued what the Bush administration might actually be thinking.

Scott speculated that the "detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law." He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized Rex-84 "readiness exercise," which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 "refugees," in the event of "uncontrolled population movements" over the Mexican border into the United States.

Farrell pointed out that because "another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the centers would be used for post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than a sudden deluge" of immigrants flooding across the border.

Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said, "Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo."

Labor camps

There also was another little-noticed item posted at the U.S. Army website, about the Pentagon's Civilian Inmate Labor Program. This program "provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations."

The Army document, first drafted in 1997, underwent a "rapid action revision" on Jan. 14, 2005. The revision provides a "template for developing agreements" between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.

On its face, the Army's labor program refers to inmates housed in federal, state and local jails. The Army also cites various federal laws that govern the use of civilian labor and provide for the establishment of prison camps in the United States, including a federal statute that authorizes the attorney general to "establish, equip, and maintain camps upon sites selected by him" and "make available … the services of United States prisoners" to various government departments, including the Department of Defense.

Though the timing of the document's posting -- within the past few weeks -- may just be a coincidence, the reference to a "rapid action revision" and the KBR contract's contemplation of "rapid development of new programs" has raised eyebrows about why this sudden need for urgency.

These developments also are drawing more attention now because of earlier Bush administration policies to involve the Pentagon in "counter-terrorism" operations inside the United States.

Pentagon surveillance

Despite the Posse Comitatus Act's prohibitions against U.S. military personnel engaging in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon has expanded its operations beyond previous boundaries, such as its role in domestic surveillance activities.

The Washington Post has reported that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Defense Department has been creating new agencies that gather and analyze intelligence within the United States.

The White House also is moving to expand the power of the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), created three years ago to consolidate counterintelligence operations. The White House proposal would transform CIFA into an office that has authority to investigate crimes such as treason, terrorist sabotage or economic espionage.

The Pentagon also has pushed legislation in Congress that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies. But some in the Pentagon don't seem to think that new laws are even necessary.

In a 2001 Defense Department memo that surfaced in January 2005, the U.S. Army's top intelligence officer wrote, "Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on [military] intelligence components collecting U.S. person information."

Drawing a distinction between "collecting" information and "receiving" information on U.S. citizens, the memo argued that "MI [military intelligence] may receive information from anyone, anytime."

This receipt of information presumably would include data from the National Security Agency, which has been engaging in surveillance of U.S. citizens without court-approved warrants in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act. Bush approved the program of warrantless wiretaps shortly after 9/11.

There also may be an even more extensive surveillance program. Former NSA employee Russell D. Tice told a congressional committee on Feb. 14 that such a top-secret surveillance program existed, but he said he couldn't discuss the details without breaking classification laws.

Tice added that the "special access" surveillance program may be violating the constitutional rights of millions of Americans. With this expanded surveillance, the government's list of terrorist suspects is rapidly swelling.

The Washington Post reported on Feb. 15 that the National Counterterrorism Center's central repository now holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a fourfold increase since the fall of 2003. Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through the NSA's domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the Post, "Our database includes names of known and suspected international terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA."

Homeland defense

As the administration scoops up more and more names, members of Congress also have questioned the elasticity of Bush's definitions for words like terrorist "affiliates," used to justify wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or entities.

During the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on the wiretap program, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., complained that the House and Senate Intelligence committees "have not been briefed on the scope and nature of the program."

Feinstein added that, therefore, the committees "have not been able to explore what is a link or an affiliate to al-Qaida or what minimization procedures (for purging the names of innocent people) are in place."

The combination of the Bush administration's expansive reading of its own power and its insistence on extraordinary secrecy has raised the alarm of civil libertarians when contemplating how far the Pentagon might go in involving itself in domestic matters.

A Defense Department document, entitled the "Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support," has set out a military strategy against terrorism that envisions an "active, layered defense" both inside and outside U.S. territory. In the document, the Pentagon pledges to "transform U.S. military forces to execute homeland defense missions in the … U.S. homeland."

The Pentagon strategy paper calls for increased military reconnaissance and surveillance to "defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States." The plan "maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would harm us."

But there are concerns over how the Pentagon judges "threats" and who falls under the category "those who would harm us." A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity's TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters.

In December 2005, NBC News revealed the existence of a secret 400-page Pentagon document listing 1,500 "suspicious incidents" over a 10-month period, including dozens of small antiwar demonstrations that were classified as a "threat."

The Defense Department also might be moving toward legitimizing the use of propaganda domestically, as part of its overall war strategy.

A secret Pentagon "Information Operations Roadmap," approved by Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for "full spectrum" information operations and notes that "information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice versa."

"PSYOPS messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," the document states. The Pentagon argues, however, that "the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG [U.S. government] intent rather than information dissemination practices."

It calls for "boundaries" between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but does not outline any corresponding limits on PSYOP campaigns.

Similar to the distinction the Pentagon draws between "collecting" and "receiving" intelligence on U.S. citizens, the Information Operations Roadmap argues that as long as the American public is not intentionally "targeted," any PSYOP propaganda consumed by the American public is acceptable.

The Pentagon plan also includes a strategy for taking over the internet and controlling the flow of information, viewing the web as a potential military adversary. The "roadmap" speaks of "fighting the net," and implies that the internet is the equivalent of "an enemy weapons system."

In a speech on Feb. 17 to the Council on Foreign Relations, Rumsfeld elaborated on the administration's perception that the battle over information would be a crucial front in the War on Terror, or as Rumsfeld calls it, the Long War.

"Let there be no doubt, the longer it takes to put a strategic communication framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by news informers that most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture of what is actually taking place," Rumsfeld said.

The Department of Homeland Security also has demonstrated a tendency to deploy military operatives to deal with domestic crises.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the department dispatched "heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for its work in Iraq, (and had them) openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans," reported journalists Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo on Sept. 10, 2005.

Noting the reputation of the Blackwater mercenaries as "some of the most feared professional killers in the world," Scahill and Crespo said Blackwater's presence in New Orleans "raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here."

U.S. battlefield

In the view of some civil libertarians, a form of martial law already exists in the United States and has been in place since shortly after the 9/11 attacks when Bush issued Military Order No. 1 which empowered him to detain any noncitizen as an international terrorist or enemy combatant.

"The president decided that he was no longer running the country as a civilian president," wrote civil rights attorney Michael Ratner in the book "Guantanamo: What the World Should Know." "He issued a military order giving himself the power to run the country as a general."

For any American citizen suspected of collaborating with terrorists, Bush also revealed what's in store. In May 2002, the FBI arrested U.S. citizen Jose Padilla in Chicago on suspicion that he might be an al-Qaida operative planning an attack.

Rather than bring criminal charges, Bush designated Padilla an "enemy combatant" and had him imprisoned indefinitely without benefit of due process. After three years, the administration finally brought charges against Padilla, in order to avoid a Supreme Court showdown the White House might have lost.

But since the court was not able to rule on the Padilla case, the administration's arguments have not been formally repudiated. Indeed, despite filing charges against Padilla, the White House still asserts the right to detain U.S. citizens without charges as enemy combatants.

This claimed authority is based on the assertion that the United States is at war and the American homeland is part of the battlefield.

"In the war against terrorists of global reach, as the nation learned all too well on Sept. 11, 2001, the territory of the United States is part of the battlefield," Bush's lawyers argued in briefs to the federal courts.

Given Bush's now open assertions that he is using his "plenary" -- or unlimited -- powers as commander in chief for the duration of the indefinite War on Terror, Americans can no longer trust that their constitutional rights protect them from government actions.

As former Vice President Al Gore asked after recounting a litany of sweeping powers that Bush has asserted to fight the War on Terror, "Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is 'yes,' then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited?"

In such extraordinary circumstances, the American people might legitimately ask exactly what the Bush administration means by the "rapid development of new programs," which might require the construction of a new network of detention camps.

Most Americans have never loved George Bush. He comes across as a nice enough guy - well, he CAME across as a nice enough guy, but now is seemingly increasingly arrogant, and worse yet, much more arrogant than is deserved by someone who is kind of dumb and klutzy. Of course, in Bush's case, the klutziness expresses itself in half-baked wars and losing entire American cities.

No one was particularly impressed with Bush the first time around, and they liked him even less in 2004, but again, Al Gore and John Kerry didn't give the voters much of an alternative, so they stuck with Bush, even though by 2004 most certainly, most Americans neither liked the guy nor wanted him to continue in office.

Thus the germ of today's problem for Bush. The majority of Americans now realize that the emperor has no clothes, and that he doesn't have much of a brain either. They were willing to tolerate Bush as a caretaker president of sorts so long as things were going well - in the aftermath of September 11, people wanted comfort, and after initially running and hiding all day, Bush provided that comfort. People wanted revenge, and Bush attacked Afghanistan. Iraq was a bit more nebulous, but people were willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt. But now that Iraq has become a total disaster, in addition to the public realizing they were pretty much lied to - that, coupled with Bush now having lost an entire American city - people are finally fed up.

Or rather than fed up, they're worried.

They finally fully realize that their caretaker isn't up to the job. But what do they do? First, they voted for the guy, and as bad as he is, the public is still a bit defensive about taking responsibility for having elected a failure, so they get testy when challenged directly on their vote. But, they very much realize now that even though Bush has 3 more years in office, he's now proven he can't handle the job and the country is going to go to hell if we have 3 more years of unrestrained George Bush.

Then there's the Congress - traditionally the body that provides a check on the presidency. But in this case, both the US House and the US Senate are run by Republicans, they have the majority. And that means, somewhat understandably, that the Republicans in Congress don't want to beat up on their own guy in the White House, no matter how bad a job he's doing.

Thus the only solution is to get someone in Congress who can provide some checks and balances vis-a-vis the White House - and that means, electing a Democratic majority to the Congress in the fall.

Voting for a Democratic Congress, whether you like it or not, is the only way to put a check on George Bush's power and mishaps. At the same time, if you're not so keen on Democrats, having a Republican in the White House will also provide a check on Democrats in Congress.

But as things currently stand, Republicans control the White House, Supreme Court (7 of 9 judges are Republican), the US Senate and the US House. There is literally no one able and willing to keep George Bush in line, to stop his hair-brained schemes before they turn into more Katrinas and more Iraqs and more Dubai port deals.

The only way to rein George Bush in, to ensure that he doesn't continue to hurt the country more than he already has, is to vote against Republican members of Congress in the coming congressional elections this November. Vote against Republicans, vote for Democrats - it's the only chance we have to put a protective bubble around George Bush so he doesn't hurt anyone else.