Forget about such niceties as separation of powers, checks and balances (crucial to the practice of democracy), the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, and open government-these guys are on an autocratic tear. Whenever they've been challenged (all too rarely), they simply shout "war on terror," "commander-in-chief," "support our troops," "executive privilege," "I'm the decider," or some other slam-the-door political phrase designed to silence any opposition. Indeed, opponents are branded "enemies" who must be demonized, personally attacked, and, if possible, destroyed. Bush's find-the-loopholes lawyers assert that a president has the right to lie (even about going to war), to imprison people indefinitely (without charges, lawyers, hearings, courts, or hope), to torture people, to spy on Americans without court or congressional review, to prosecute reporters who dare to report, to rewrite laws on executive whim?and on and on.

Here, we are pleased to give you a sense of the enormity of what Bush & Company are doing under the cloak of war and executive privilege in a handy-dandy poster format.

The War President

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
-George W., August 2004

* Number of Americans killed in Bush's Iraq war as of August 2006: 2577

* What Bush press flack Tony Snow said the day the total number of American dead reached 2,500: "It's a number"

* Number of Americans killed since Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" on May 1, 2003: 2,438

* Number of Americans wounded (a vague term that includes such horrors as brain damage, limb blasted off, eyes blown out, psyche shattered, etc.) in Bush's war:

o Official count: 18,777
o Independent count: up to 48,000

* Estimated number of Iraqi civilians (men, women, and children) killed in Bush's war since Saddam Hussein was ousted: 38,960

* For Iraqis, the bloodiest month of the war so far: June 2006

more than 100 civilians killed per day

* Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmit's advice to Iraqis who see TV reports of innocent civilians being killed by occupying troops: "Change the channel."

* Percent of Iraqis who want American troops to leave: 82

* Stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction found in Iraq since Bush committed Americans to war in 2003 on the basis that Saddam had and was about to use WMDs: 0

* Number of nations in the world: 192

* Number that joined Bush's "Coalition of the Willing" (COW) to invade Iraq: 48
(The list includes such military powers as Angola, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Latvia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Romania, Solomon Islands, and Uganda.)

* Number of COW nations that actually sent any troops to Iraq: 39
(Of these, 32 sent fewer than 1,000 troops. Many sent no fighting units, deploying only engineers, trainers, humanitarian units, and other noncombat personnel.)

* Number of the 39 COW nations contributing troops that have since withdrawn them: 17
(An additional 7 have announced plans to withdraw all or part of their contingents this year.)

* Number of COW troops in Iraq: 150,000

* Number of these that are U.S. troops: 139,000

* Number of White House officials and cabinet members who have any of their immediate family in Bush's war: 0

Follow the Money

We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
-"Howling Paul" Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary, in testimony to Congress, March 2003

* The official White House claim before the invasion of what the war and occupation would cost U.S. taxpayers: $50 billion

* As of July 2006, the total amount appropriated by Congress for Bush's ongoing war and occupation: $295,634,921,248

* Current Pentagon spending per month in Iraq: $8 billion (or $185,185.19 per minute)

* Assuming all troops return home by 2010, the projected "real costs" for the war: More than $1 trillion
(includes veterans' pay and medical costs, interest on the billions Bush has borrowed to pay for his war, etc.)

Bonus Stat!

* Annual salary of Stuart Baker, hired by the Bushites to be the White House "Director for Lessons Learned": $106,641
* Number of lessons that Bush appears to have learned: 0

The Imperial Presidency

"I'm the commander -- see, I don't need to explain -- I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
George W., August, 2002.

Signing Statements

When signing a particular congressional act into law, a few presidents have occasionally issued a "signing statement" to clarify their understanding of what Congress intended. These have not had the force of law and have been used discreetly in the past.

Very quietly, however, Bush has radically increased both the number and reach of these statements, essentially asserting that the president can arbitrarily decide which laws he will obey.

* Number of signing statements issued by Bush as of July 2006: more than 800
(This is more than the combined total of all 42 previous presidents.)

A few examples of congressionally passed laws he has effectively annulled through these extralegal signing statements:

o a ban against torture of prisoners by the U.S. military

o a requirement that the FBI periodically report to Congress on how it is using the Patriot Act to search our homes and secretly seize people's private papers

o a ban against storage in military databases of intelligence about Americans that was obtained illegally

o a directive for the executive branch to transmit scientific information to Congress "uncensored and without delay" when requested

* Provision of the Constitution clearly stating that Congress alone has the power "to make all laws": Article 1, Section 8

* Provision of the Constitution clearly stating that the president "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed": Article 2, Section 3

* Name of the young lawyer in the Reagan administration who wrote a 1986 strategy memo on how to pervert the use of signing statements in order to concentrate more power in the executive branch, as Bush is now doing: Samuel Alito, named to the U.S. Supreme Court by Bush this year

National Security Letters

These are secret executive writs that the infamous 2001 Patriot Act authorizes the FBI to issue to public libraries, internet firms, banks, and others. Upon receiving an NSL, the institution or firm is required to turn over any private records it holds on you, me, or whomever the agents have chosen to search.

Who authorizes the FBI to issue these secret writs? The FBI itself.

* Surely the agents have to get a search warrant, a grand jury subpoena, or a court's approval? No

* But to issue an NSL, an agent must show probable cause that the person being searched has committed some crime, right? No

* Well, don't officials have to inform citizens that their records are being seized so they can defend themselves or protest? No

* Number of NSLs issued by various FBI offices last year alone: 9,254

NSA Eavesdropping

In 2001, Bush issued a secret order for the National Security Agency to begin vacuuming up massive numbers of telephone and internet exchanges by U.S. citizens, illegally seizing this material without any judicial approval or informing Congress, as required by law.

* Number of Americans who have had their phone and internet communications taken by NSA: Just about everyone!
(NSA is tapping into the entire database of long-distance calls and internet messages run through AT&T and probably other companies as well.)

* In May of this year, the Justice Department abruptly halted an internal investigation that was trying to uncover the name of the top officials who had authorized NSA's warrantless, unconstitutional program. Who killed this probe, which was requested by Congress? George W himself! (He directed NSA simply to refuse security clearances for the department's legal investigators.)

* What happened to NSA Director Michael Hayden, who was the key architect of Bush's illegal eavesdropping program and the one who would've formally denied clearances to Justice Department investigators? In May, Bush promoted him to head the CIA.

* This past May, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales warned that journalists who report on NSA's spy program could be prosecuted under the antiquated Espionage Act of 1917.

* Times in U.S. history this act has been used to go after the press: 0

* Margin by which the U.S. House in 1917 voted down an amendment to make the Espionage Act apply to journalists: 184-144

Interesting Fact:

The New York Times reported this June that Bush was running another spy program. This one was snooping through international banking records, including millions of bank transactions done by innocent Americans. George reacted angrily to the exposure, branding the Times report "disgraceful" and declaring that revelation of his spy program "does great harm to the United States." The White House and its right-wing acolytes promptly launched a "Hate-the-Times" political campaign.

Name the guy who was the first to reveal that such a bank-spying program was in the works: George W. Bush! At a September 2001 press conference, he announced that he'd just signed an executive order to monitor all international bank transactions.

Watch Lists

From the Bushites' ill-fated Total Information Awareness program (meant to monitor all of our computerized transactions) to the robust efforts by Rumsfeld's Pentagon to barge into the domestic surveillance game, America under Bush has fast become "The Watched Society."

* Number of data-mining programs being run secretly on us by the federal government: Nearly 200 separate programs at 52 agencies

* Number of "local activity reports" submitted to the Pentagon in 2004 under the "Threat and Local Observation Notice" program (TALON), which directed military officers throughout our country to keep an eye on suspicious activities by civilians: More than 5,000
(They included such "threats" as peace demonstrators and 10 activists protesting outside Halliburton's headquarters.)

* Number of official "watch lists" maintained by the feds: More than a dozen run by 9 different agencies

* Number of Americans on the Transportation Security Administration's "No- Fly" list: That's a secret.
(TSA concedes that it's in the tens of thousands. In 2005 alone, some 30,000 people called TSA to complain that their names were mistakenly on the list.)

* Most famous citizen who is on the No-Fly list and has been repeatedly pulled aside by TSA for additional screenings at airports: Sen. Ted Kennedy

* How can you get your name removed from TSA list? That's a secret.

Name That Guy!

In 1966, a young Republican congressman stood against his party's elders to cosponsor the original Freedom of Information Act, valiantly declaring that public records "are public property." He said that FOIA "will make it considerably more difficult for secrecy-minded bureaucrats to decide arbitrarily that the people should be denied access to information on the conduct of government."

Who was that virtuous lawmaker? Donald Rumsfeld!

Only eight years later, Gerald Ford's chief of staff strongly urged him to veto the continuation of FOIA. Who was that dastardly staffer? Donald Rumsfeld!

Who is now one of the chief "secrecy-minded bureaucrats" who routinely violates OIA's principles? Right, him again!

Regime of Secrecy

"Democracies die behind closed doors."
-- Appeals court judge Damon Keith, ruling in a 2002 case that the Bushites cannot hold deportation hearings in secret

* Increase in the number of government documents marked "secret" between 2001 and 2004: 81 percent

* Number of government documents stamped "secret" in 2001: 8.6 million

* Number of government documents stamped "secret" in 2004: 15.6 million (a new record)

* Cost to taxpayers of classifying and securing documents in 2004: $7.2 billion ($460 per document)

* Number of previously declassified documents that the CIA tried to reclassify as "secret" under a 2001 secret agreement with the National Archives, even though many had already been published and some date back to the Korean War: 25,315

* Number of different "official designations" the government now has to classify nonsecret information so it still is kept out of the public's reach: Between 50 and 60
(They include such stamps as CBU: Controlled But Unclassified, SBU: Sensitive But Unclassified, and LOU: Limited Official Use Only.)

* The only vice-president in history who has claimed that he, like the president, has the inherent authority to mark "secret" on any document he chooses: "Buckshot" Cheney

* Number of documents Cheney has classified: That's a secret.
(He claims he does not have to report this to anyone -- not even the president.)

* Of the 7,045 advisory committee meetings held by the Bushites in 2004, percentage that were completely closed to the public, contrary to the clear intent of the Federal Advisory Committee Act: 64 percent (a new record)

* Number of times from 1953 to1975 (the peak of the Cold War) that presidents invoked the "state secrets" privilege, which grants them unilateral power in extraordinary instances literally to shut down court cases on the grounds they could reveal secrets that the president doesn't want disclosed: 4

* Number of times the same privilege was invoked between 2001 and 2006: At least 24

* Under Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno issued an official memo instructing agencies to release as much information as possible to the public. In October 2001, AG John Ashcroft issued a memo canceling Reno's approach, expressly instructing agencies to look for reasons to deny the public access to information and pledging to support the denials if the agencies were sued.

* 2005 FOIA requests still awaiting a response at year's end: 31 percent
(a one-third increase over the 2004 backlog)

* Median waiting time to get an answer on FOIA request from Bush's justice department: 863 days

Halliburton

"Halliburton is a unique kind of company."
-- Dick Cheney, September 2003

* Total value of contracts given to Halliburton for work in the Bush-Cheney "War on Terror" since 2001: More than $15 billion

* Amount that Halliburton pays to the Third World laborers it imports into Iraq to do the work in its dining facilities, laundries, etc.: $6 per 12-hour day (50 cents an hour)

* Amount that Halliburton bills us taxpayers for each of these workers: $50 a day

* Amount that Halliburton bills U.S. taxpayers for:

o A case of sodas: $45

o Washing a bag of laundry: $100

* Halliburton's campaign contributions in Bush-Cheney election years:

o In 2000: $285,252 (96 percent to Republicans)

o In 2004: $145,500 (89 percent to Republicans)
Plus $365,065 from members of its board of directors (99 percent to Republicans)

* Increase in Halliburton's profits since Bush-Cheney took office in 2000: 379 percent

* Halliburton's 2005 profit: $1.1 billion
(highest in the corporation's 86-year history

"Since leaving Halliburton to become George Bush's vice-president, I've severed all of my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind."
Former CEO Dick Cheney, Meet the Press, September 2003

* Annual payments that Cheney has received from Halliburton since he's been vice-president:

o 2001: $205,298
o 2002: $162,392
o 2003: $178,437
o 2004: $194,852
o 2005: $211,465

* Cash bonus paid to Cheney by Halliburton just before he took office: $1.4 million

* Retirement package he was given in 2000 after only 5 years as CEO: $20 million

* Number of times in the past two years that Republicans have killed Sen. Byron Dorgan's amendment to set up a Truman-style committee on war profiteering to investigate Halliburton: 3

* Naughty word Cheney used during a Senate photo session in 2004 to assail Sen. Patrick Leahy, who had criticized Cheney's ongoing ties to Halliburton: "Go #@!% yourself.

Jim Hightower is the author of "Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush" (Viking Press). He publishes the monthly Hightower Lowdown.

[Editor's Note: The August issue of The Hightower Lowdown contains a poster-sized chart detailing the many grievances, lies and miscues of the Bush Administration. Below is the story in text form, you can also download the full poster from The Hightower Lowdown.]

Lance is an Emmy-winning former reporter-producer for ABC News. His book, "Triple Cross," which will be released in September, accuses law enforcement officials of negligence in tracking down Ali Mohamed, an alleged al-Qaeda agent in the United States for years before Sept. 11. The book says Mohamed was hired by the CIA and worked for the FBI, all the while providing information to the terrorists. The book also contains, according to Lance, "a major new insight" into why the Pentagon killed the Able Danger operation in April 2000.

It involves the discovery by Able Danger operatives that Ali Mohamed was a member of Osama bin Laden's inner circle. Mohamed turned up in FBI surveillance photos as early as 1989, training radical Muslims who would go on to assassinate Jewish militant Meir Kahane and detonate a truck bomb at the World Trade Center. He not only avoided arrest, but managed to become an FBI informant while smuggling bin Laden in and out of Afghanistan, writing most of the al-Qaeda terrorist manual and helping plan attacks on American troops in Somalia and U.S. embassies in Africa. Finally arrested in 1998, Mohamed cut a deal with the Justice Department, and his whereabouts remain shrouded, unknown.

''The FBI allowed the chief spy for al-Qaeda to operate right under their noses,'' Lance said. ''They let him plan the bombings of the embassies in Africa right under their noses. Two hundred twenty-four people were killed and more than 4,000 wounded because of their negligence."

Lance contends that when Pentagon officials realized how embarrassing it would be if it were revealed that bin Laden's spy had stolen top-secret intelligence (including the positions of all Green Beret and SEAL units worldwide), they decided to bury the entire Able Danger program. Lance further states that his book also contains evidence that Patrick Fitzgerald (of later Scooter Libby/Valerie Plame fame) covered up key al-Qaeda intelligence in 1996, when he was then an assistant U.S. attorney in New York. To Lance, Fitzgerald was "one of the principal players in the government's negligence, who engaged in an affirmative coverup of key al-Qaeda-related intelligence in 1996."

Lance believes "Fitzgerald was hopelessly outgunned by Mohamed, a hardened al-Qaeda spy, who was bin Laden's personal security advisor." Despite two face-to-face meetings with Mohamed, whom Fitzgerald called "the most dangerous man I've ever met," he left him on the street, which allowed Mohamed -- who actually planned the surveillance for the African Embassy bombings -- to help pull off that simultaneous act of terror in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998, in which 224 died and more than 4,000 were injured.

There is also a chilling tie-in in the book to the airliner-bombing plot revealed last week by the British intelligence. Much of the key intelligence that Fitzgerald helped to bury in 1996 was directly related to the Bojinka plot, a scheme by original WTC bomber and 9/11 architect Ramzi Yousef to smuggle small improvised explosive devices aboard up to a dozen U.S. bound jumbo jets exiting Asia.

Fitzgerald went on become both U.S. attorney for the northern district of Illinois and special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe. After allowing Ali Mohamed to operate with virtual impunity for years, Fitzgerald finally arrested him post-bombing in 1998. But then he cut a deal with him that allowed Mohamed to enter witness protection and avoid the death penalty.

Lance contends that this was to spare the government from embarrassment, since Ali Mohamed had been an FBI informant since 1992. Yet despite three years in federal custody, Fitzgerald and his elite FBI squad members were unable to extract the 9/11 plot from Mohamed, who was so close to bin Laden that he lived in the Saudi billionaire's house after moving him and his family from Afghanistan to Khartoum in 1992.

The revelations, says Lance, proved "too hot to handle" for the National Geographic Channel, which is two-thirds owned by Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp (which also owns Lance's publisher, HarperCollins). "The Feds have gotten to them, there is no doubt," Lance told me in an interview. "National Geographic has abandoned the truth and acquiesced to pressure from the government."

Television critic Glenn Garvin first reported the flap in a Miami Herald piece that characterized Lance's reaction to the program as a "watered-down whitewash" that was "like doing 'Schindler's List' from Hitler's perspective.''

Able Danger insiders had figured the documentary to be controversial, but no one expected open warfare to break out between Lance and his broadcasters prior to its airing. Lance, who was originally slated to narrate the film, is so angry at what he sees as the program's shift in direction and emphasis that he now refuses to back it at all.

At least one source interviewed for the documentary -- House Armed Services Committee vice chairman Curt Weldon, who has spearheaded congressional efforts to get to the bottom of the Able Danger affair -- has asked to be removed from the program. "We didn't think National Geographic was doing a 100 percent job," says Weldon's chief of staff, Russ Caso. "We felt we weren't looking at an unbiased piece.'' And National Geographic's producers now won't even let Lance see the final cut unless he signs what they call a "nondisparagement agreement.''

The public pissing match between Lance and his putative broadcaster is virtually without precedent. ''It's probably happened before,'' John Ford, executive vice president of programming at National Geographic Channel, told the Herald. "But I can't tell you when. I certainly don't know of a case." Ford strongly denies the documentary is a whitewash and says the network still stands behind it despite Lance's attack. But Lance is having none of it: "They hijacked my work," he says, "The documentary is now skewed so much in favor of the feds that it actually distorts the facts of the story." National Geographic's executive vice president of programming, John Ford, said the film's producers never intended to base the documentary solely on the book -- something Lance hotly disputes.

"Let me set the record straight on the allegations made by John Ford," he says. "First, in the Miami Herald piece, Ford lied to Glenn Garvin when he said that 'Peter wanted us to include accusations and conclusions ... that we could not independently verify, and we weren't willing to do that.'"

"The film is also based on our own independent research," says Ford. He also told United Press International that Lance "wants this show to reflect his own personal conclusions," and that he is "using this controversy to promote his book."

"The second lie is that the documentary 'was never supposed to be based solely' on my book," says Lance. "The truth is that from the beginning Nat Geo hired me to do a documentary exclusively based on my work. This was my show from start to finish. But now we're at a point where a major cable network, reporting on an issue of national importance, is backtracking on proof of how the FBI folded on the road to 9/11. What's worse, in a few days this documentary will air with my name on it!" Lance concludes, "This is a ridiculous lie, since they've cut me out of the process and rolled over in favor of the feds."

Despite Lance's vehement protestations, National Geographic executives like Ford are undeterred and say that the show must and will go on -- especially given the upcoming fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. ''It exposes how different parts of the U.S. national security apparatus failed to connect the dots on Ali Mohamed over a decade and a half,'' Ford said. "It's like a Tom Clancy thriller, but true.''

What's also true is that many questions still remain unanswered about the actual Able Danger program, what it found, and what reaction higher-ups everywhere from Pentagon brass to FBI officials to the 9/11 Commission had when Able Danger operatives attempted to inform them of its findings.

Why, for example, were three planned meetings with the FBI canceled at the last minute, thus preventing the bureau from hearing evidence that may have helped them "connect the dots" before the terror attacks? Why was the guided missile destroyer USS Cole sent to refuel at the port of Aden, Yemen, in October 2000, despite the fact that Able Danger had identified Aden as the location of an active al-Qaeda cell? Why did Special Operation Command chief Peter Schoomaker (now Army chief of staff) apparently do nothing after Able Danger analysts personally briefed him about the danger in Yemen just two days before a suicide bomb attack blew a 40-by-40-foot hole in the side of the Cole, killing 17 crew members and injuring 39 others?

Further, why was veteran intelligence analyst-operative Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer's career derailed and reputation besmirched after he tried to alert an unwilling 9/11 Commission to Able Danger's findings? What has happened to the Department of Defense's own inspector general's investigation into the scapegoating of Shaffer -- originally slated to be completed and made public in May? Whatever happened to Arlen Specter's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Able Danger, originally scheduled for last September and then "postponed for the Jewish holidays?" And why were the entire 2.5 terabytes of Able Danger data destroyed, along with a pre-9/11 link chart that identified four eventual hijackers and even had a photograph of Mohammed Atta?

And what about reports that the Able Danger program was reconstituted after the data purge by a classified Raytheon "skunk works" program in Garland, Texas? Or that the entire data-mining effort was then taken "black," hidden deep inside the intelligence bureaucracy and expanded into what later morphed into Total Information Awareness, NSA warrantless surveillance, and in fact the government's ongoing illegal and unconstitutional spying on huge quantities of domestic telephone calls and emails? Conspiracy ... or something more? The plot ever thickens ...

Filmmaker and journalist Rory O'Connor writes the Media Is A Plural blog.

To justify the war, Bush informed Congress on March 19, 2003 that acting against Iraq was consistent with "continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."

As ThinkProgress has repeatedly documented, Vice President Cheney cited "evidence" cooked up by Douglas Feith and others to claim it was "pretty well confirmed" that Iraq had contacts with 9/11 hijackers.

More generally, in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, the administration encouraged the false impression that Saddam had a role in 9/11. Bush never stated then, as he does now, that Iraq had "nothing" to do with 9/11. Only after the Iraq war began did Bush candidly acknowledge that Iraq was not operationally linked to 9/11.

Full transcript:

BUSH: The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.

QUESTION: What did Iraq have to do with it?

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

QUESTION: The attack on the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing. Except it's part of - and nobody has suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a - Iraq - the lesson of September 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody's ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.

Such were the words given to The Iconoclast by Lieutenant Colonel Jane Crichton after inquiring why SFC Buswell is the focus of an investigation initiated by Colonel Luke S. Green, Chief of Staff at Fifth Army in Ft. Sam Houston.

According to unnamed military sources contacted by The Iconoclast, SFC Buswell "used his Government issued email account to send messages disloyal to the United States ..." Because of these statements, SFC Buswell could soon find himself dishonorably discharged, court marshaled, or worse.

It all started as a simple response to a common, unsolicited mass email, sent to 38 individuals at Ft. Sam Houston on Aug. 2, 2006. The message, as well as Buswell's response, is among documents obtained by The Iconoclast. The sender of the first message is identified as "Anderson, Larry Mr JMC". It reads:

This is being sent more as assurance for what happens when a plane hits a nuclear site more so than in response to that German website alleging a government conspiracy related to the 9/11 Pentagon plane crash (though the website does present an interesting perspective) - LarrySubject: F-4 vs. Concrete Wall

Take a look at this clip [not included] and you'll get a good feel for what happens to an airplane when it hits a concrete wall. Many of you have seen the produced (but not factual), Michael Moore-esque website that asks the question; "If it's true that a Boeing airliner hit the Pentagon, what happened to all the parts of it? Why do we not find more pieces of it?

Where did all that mass GO???" (Therefore, the paranoid loony liberal reasoning, 9-11 must have been a US gov't conspiracy!) Well, for those who question what happened to "all the mass of that airplane".......watch this clip.

It's the old Air Force engineering tests of the concrete barrier that surrounds nuclear reactor domes -tests to see if it will indeed survive an aerial attack. With the hi-speed cameras rolling, they accelerated an F-4 Phantom to 500mph and.........

Recall: "What happens when an 'Unstoppable Force' meets an 'Immovable Object'???" (Remember, as you watch in slow motion as the F-4 turns to vapor, the Phantom was one of the toughest airplanes ever built).

SFC Buswell responded later that day, saying:

Subject: F-4 vs. Concrete Wall Hello,

I receive many unsolicited e-mails daily, this one I chose to respond to. The below mentioned premise that an F4 Phantom fighter jet hitting that hardened concrete barrier is akin to the alleged 757 hitting the Pentagon is like oil and water; they don't mix, and they serve to muddy the issue. The issue is 911 was filled with errors in the 'official report' and 'official story' of that day, and, what happened that day. We all know and saw 2 planes hitting the WTC buildings, we didn't see the 757 hit the Pentagon, nor did we see the plane crash in Shanksville PA. Both the PA and Pentagon 'crashes' don't have clues and tell-tale signs of a jumbo-jet impacting those zones!

The Pentagon would have huge wing impacts in the side of the building; it didn't. Shanksville PA would have had debris, and a large debris field; it didn't.

Getting back to the F4...The Pentagon isn't a nuclear hardened structure, so I can't follow your weak logic that since an F4 vaporized itself in a test impact on a nuclear hardened structure that the alleged 757 hitting the Pentagon should have exhibited the same characteristics!

I say Occums razor is the best way to deduce this 'day of infamy'; if you weigh all options, do some simple studying you will see 911 was clearly not executed by some arabs in caves with cell phones and 3 day old newspapers! I mean how are Arabs benefiting from pulling off 911? They have more war, more death and dismal conditions, so, how did 911 benefit them? Answer: It didn't. So, who benefited from 9-11? The answer is sad, but simple; The Military Industial [sic] Complex.

It's not a paranoid conspiracy to think there are conspiracies out there...and, it's not Liberal Lunacy either, nor is it Conservative Kookiness! People, fellow citizens we've been had! We must demand a new independent investigation into 911 and look at all options of that day, and all plausabilities [sic], even the most incredulous theories must be examined.

Upon returning to his office the next day, Buswell discovered the locks had been changed, his security clearance was revoked, and an investigation had been launched. Buswell's commanding officer, Colonel Luke Green, drafted a letter assigning Major Edwin Escobar to the investigation. According to sources, Colonel Green has asserted that SFC Buswell failed to obey Army regulations when he used his government issued email account to send what have been termed as messages disloyal to the United States with the intent of stirring up disloyalty, in a manner that brings discredit upon the United States Army.

It has been reported that Colonel Green also wrote that SFC Buswell claims to have information proving a conspiracy on the part of the United States Military Industrial Complex to attack targets within the United States, e.g., The Pentagon. Officials have suggested that the email response sent by SFC Buswell may be in violation of CFR 2635.705(a ), DoD-R 5500.7, and Joint Ethics Regulation paragraph 2-301b. These rules SFC Buswell is said to have perhaps violated regulate how soldiers utilize government resources, how they use their off-duty time, and how they use their official time.

The Iconoclast attempted to establish a dialogue with Colonel Green and Major Escobar, but calls were not returned as of press time. SFC Buswell declined to comment on the investigation, but noted that he spoke with his parents about the matter for a period of two days before he was ordered to not disclose any further information.

"My son spoke with me about [the investigation]," said Winthrop Buswell, SFC Buswell's father. "There was an unsolicited email. My son, without divulging anything, without usurping anything, without doing anything to discredit anyone in any way, simply responded to that saying 'Yes, there are what if's. And maybe there is something that is being covered up.' That's all that I know. He responded to it, but it was unsolicited. I think - of course, I'm dad, being very much in love with his son and wanting to praise him - because he is a low man on the totem pole, of course he's of pretty high rank but not quite an officer, that maybe ... Maybe an investigation might be the scapegoat for whomever."

"That is so ridiculous," said Winthrop Buswell. "[To say he is disloyal to the United States] is totally ridiculous. And the discourtesy was, ah, very apparent at that particular time. ... I've always thought the American way is this: to disagree is important. To dissent is important. And my son simply said, without any fanfare, 'Look, let's take a look at the whole picture. If you want to take a look at that, maybe there are a few paragraphs that a Michael Moore might want to emphasize.' That is all that my son has said. Never, however, to at all disparage the country and the patriotism that is so necessary for all of us. But, patriotism, as suggested by FOX News' [Bill O'Reilly], is following the line of George W. Bush and cohorts completely! All my son is saying is, 'Hey, maybe there's a what if.' Never, though, did he get sidetracked from the fact that [he loves his] country."

"What disturbed him more than anything else, I think, was the fact that the Iraqi citizens suffered so much and are suffering so much now," said Winthrop Buswell. "The time that he was injured, there were several Iraqis burning to death in front of him. He tried to put out the fire. It was a traumatic experience for him. ... He spoke about that a number of times, and how terrible that was to see the citizenry being killed and suffering so much."

"One of his heroes is Abraham Lincoln," Winthrop Buswell continued. "And Abraham Lincoln said many things, but one of the things he said - and I'm paraphrasing - was, 'I may disagree with the fellow who's speaking, but I will stand and defend his right to speak.' That's my son's position. He does look at the what if's. But that doesn't take away from his dedication and his patriotism. I don't know a fellow who gets more chills running up and down his spine when he sees the flag flying."

"As a boy, [Donald was] always a very curious fellow," he added. "Very daring, but never risking anything or stepping over the line. He loved motorcycles, but was always very cautious about it, always wearing proper clothing, always wearing a helmet. Also, he was very active in little model racing cars. He was in Cub Scouts. I remember walking to the gymnasium with him and having wonderful conversations with him years ago. His mother and I went through a divorce, and that is never easy for anyone. My son was also very close to his grandfather on his mother's side, and also his grandfather and grandmother on my side. Donald loves railroading, and my father has the best job that anyone could ever have. He's a locomotive engineer, and my son related to that. My son also has a strong belief in a power greater than ourselves."

"But one of the things that stands out ... is his love and his caring," said Winthrop, choking back tears. "He loves children. He's just the greatest guy, as far as I am concerned. He walks into a room with a big smile on his face. ... He's like my dad - he makes you feel like, you know ... I ... I care for you. Ah, he's ... He's my son ..."

The Iconoclast will continue reporting on this story as new details become available.

The flames set nearby woods on fire as the impact sprayed body parts and other debris into the trees and up into the sky, to float to earth as far as eight miles away.

This, then, is the legend of United Airways Flight 93, one that has been vigorously promoted in a stream of books and films, most recently in the £9.6 million Hollywood movie United 93. It is the story of how 33 innocent passengers and seven crew gave their lives to save countless others as their plane flew kamikaze-style towards the White House or the Capitol in Washington.

To a nation still reeling from the attacks on New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon that same September morning, these were men and women every bit as heroic as those who had fought at the Alamo.

Yet my own exhaustive investigations have led me to conclude that the story of Flight 93 is far from being the straightforward account of supreme courage that the authorities would have us believe.

Instead, the real story is mired in cynical manipulation and warmongering propaganda. I am convinced there is evidence to suggest a wholly sinister twist to the tale that already holds pride of place in American folklore. For I believe that Flight 93 may well have been deliberately shot down as a means of stopping it from reaching its ultimate target - even at the expense of the 40 blameless people on board. It is a suspicion that was held even by the FBI, but was swept aside as a shaken America clung on to the official version of selfless sacrifice and raw patriotism.

Today, with the approach of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, some will still say that such speculation only serves to lend comfort to terrorists and does a disservice to the dead.

Others, however, will feel there are too many disquieting circumstances and unanswered questions to simply ignore.

But let us examine the evidence - so that you can come to your own conclusion. The massive impact caused the entire plane to disappear 30ft deep into the earth, telescoping down on itself and crushing everyone and everything inside the fuselage beyond recognition.

Why did the engines go missing?

However, the absence of any significant debris - including tailplane and wings - bewildered witnesses, relatives and, more importantly, some crash experts.

They found it hard to believe that an airliner up to 155ft long, with two engines each weighing more than six tons, could have penetrated the ground so completely as to utterly disappear. Had it, in reality, been blown to pieces in mid-air?

Certainly it is unclear how a single piece of fuselage the size of a dining room table could have been recovered from a marina in Indian Lake, a couple of miles away from the crash site - unless it fell from the sky during an aerial break-up.

But a bigger mystery is why the engines went missing.

Considering their weight, they should have plunged deep into the earth along with the rest of the airliner.

Yet they weren't in the crater and only a one-ton segment of an engine was ever recovered, again more than a mile from the crash site. The FBI said, unconvincingly, that it had 'bounced' there.

The FBI also claimed metal fragments found up to eight miles away could have been carried there by the wind, even though the breeze was very light.

Witnesses said nothing was left at the crash site, yet the FBI belatedly claimed to have made two sensational discoveries - a red bandana and a passport allegedly belonging to the hijackers.

Very conveniently, these turned up as prosecution evidence earlier this year at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the socalled 20th hijacker and only terrorist to be convicted over the 9/11 atrocities.

If flight 93 was shot down, there must have been a fighter jet in the skies to unleash a guided missile.

The U.S. government has admitted that two F-15s were flying above New York City before 9am on September 11 and three F-16s were patrolling over Washington by 9.40am. They could have reached Shanksville in minutes.

According to investigative writer David Ray Griffin, several witnesses saw two F-16s tailing Flight 93 minutes before it went down.

Twelve eyewitnesses state seeing another jet nearby.

They claim they saw an F-16 move closer in and fire what were probably two Sidewinder missiles, one of them catching at least one of the Boeing's huge engines, after which the 'plane dropped like a stone'.

Someone else 'heard a loud bang' and saw the airliner plummet. A Vietnam War veteran said he 'heard a missile', a sound he knew well. It is debatable how seriously we should take these reports. But there are numerous and highly credible witness accounts of a mysterious white jet being seen after Flight 93 went down.

Jim Brant, owner of the Indian Lake marina where debris was found, said he heard the roar of jet engines overhead, then saw a fireball rise into the air. He looked up and noticed a white plane circling the wreckage. 'It reminded me of a fighter jet,' he said.

Another resident, Tom Spinelli, said: 'I saw the white plane. It was flying around all over the place like it was looking for something. I saw it before and after the crash.'

He said it had high tail wings and no markings on it. John Feegle, another witness, said: 'It didn't look like a commercial plane. It had a real goofy tail on it, like a high tail. It circled around, and it was gone.'

Dennis Decker and his friend Rick Chaney were also close to the impact site. 'As soon as we looked up we saw a mid-sized jet flying low and fast,' said Decker.

'It appeared to make a loop or part of a circle, and then it turned fast and headed out.' Decker and Chaney described the jet as white with no markings. Decker added: 'It was a jet plane, and it had to be flying real close when that 757 went down. If I was the FBI, I'd find out who was driving that plane.'

A total of 12 eyewitnesses are on record as having seen the white jet. One witness, Susan McElwain, complained that the FBI told her there was no plane and did not note down her account.

However, amid the growing furore over the sightings, the FBI was forced to offer an explanation, which again many found unconvincing.

It claimed the jet was a passing civilian Fairchild Falcon 20 that was asked to descend to 5,000ft some minutes after the crash to give co-ordinates for the site. The plane and pilot have never been produced or identified.

The military's role in 9/11 is a mystery.

One commentator pointed out: 'The reason why this seems so implausible is that, first, by 10.06am on September 11, all non-military aircraft in U.S. airspace had received orders more than half an hour earlier to land at the nearest airport.

'Second, such was the density of emergency phone calls from people on the ground in the Shanksville area as to the location of the crash site, that aerial co-ordinates would have been completely unnecessary.

'Third, with F-16s supposedly in the vicinity, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that, at a time when no one knew for sure whether there might be any more hijacked aircraft still in the sky, the military would ask a civilian aircraft that just happened to be in the area for help.'

The military's role in 9/11 is shrouded in confusion, ambiguity and inconsistency.

A news report on September 20, 2001, said: 'America's defence establishment has disclosed that it ordered its fighter jets to intercept all the passenger aircraft hijacked in last week's attacks on New York and Washington.'

The report also stated that military intelligence was aware of the hijackings before any of the aircraft had hit their targets.

Three years later, however, the military said it hadn't heard about Flight 93 until after the plane had crashed - a line accepted by the official 9/11 Commission, which published its findings in July 2004.

The official inquiry said the Federal Aviation Authority - responsible for the security and safety of U.S. civilian aviation - had been incompetent in failing to alert the U.S. Air Force.

But the FAA had already acted quickly in ordering more than 4,000 aircraft to land at the nearest airstrip to avoid any more hijacks. And the military would have learned of Flight 93's hijack via teleconferences set up by the FAA, the White House and the U.S. Defence Department as events began to unfold on September 11. Richard Clarke, who ran the White House video conference, stated that at 9.27am, the FAA informed both Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, Chief of Defence Staff, of a number of 'potential hijacks' including 'United 93 over Pennsylvania'. Therefore, more than 25 minutes before Flight 93 went down, both Rumsfeld and Myers knew all about it. No wonder the military's claim to have learned about Flight 93 only after it crashed is dismissed by many as a bare-faced lie.

The FBI was in charge of the investigation.

In other air crashes, information from the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder - the black box recorders - were dealt with in an open manner, with crash investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board discussing the progress of their inquiries with reporters. But in the case of Flight 93, the Transportation Safety Board was not in charge of the investigation - the FBI was.

The black box recorders were reportedly found buried 25ft deep inside the crater. But a threeminute discrepancy in the crash time led to suspicions of foul play.

Seismic records, consolidated from four seismology stations in the region, originally pegged the impact time at 10.06am. It was only later that the Pentagon and the 9/11 Commission decreed that the correct impact time to have been at 10.03am.

But Terry Wallace, who heads the Southern Arizona Seismic Observatory and is considered the leading expert on the seismology of man-made events, was puzzled.

He complained: 'The seismic signals are consistent with impact at 10.06am and five seconds plus or minus two seconds. I don't know where the 10.03 time comes from.' So there were two crash times.

Sceptics note that a lot could happen in three minutes - minutes that could be removed from the end of a flight-deck recording to delete evidence of an attack by U.S. jets.

The FBI kept the contents of the voice recorder secret until it was forced by bereaved relatives to play the tape under heavy security at a hotel in April 2002.

The family members later reported they heard sounds of an on-board struggle beginning at 9.58am, with a final 'rushing sound' at 10.03am, when the tape fell silent. Could the 'rushing sound' have been made by the plane being holed? And what of the moment when the plane hit the ground?

'There is no sound of the impact,' said Kenneth Nacke, whose brother Lou had been on Flight 93. There is a further twist. In 2006, when the judge at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui ordered a transcript of the cockpit voice recorder, it ended with the sound of the hijackers shouting praises to Allah.

Just where had those praises been in 2002 when the tape was first played to relatives? For many, their sudden appearance confirmed suspicions of tape tampering.

At first, the FBI was keen to show it was keeping an open mind over the fate of Flight 93.

Within days of the crash, Reuters reported from Shanksville: 'Federal investigators said they could not rule out the possibility that the United Airlines jetliner that crashed in rural western Pennsylvania during this week's attacks on New York and the Pentagon was shot down.' 'We have not ruled out that,' FBI agent Bill Crowley told a news conference when asked about reports that a U.S. fighter jet may have fired on the hijacked Boeing 757. 'We haven't ruled out anything yet.'

Why did Crowley later retract his statement - and on the same day as the U.S. Air Force issued its official denial of any involvement?

At the crux of the legend of Flight 93 are the phones calls passengers are said to have made to their loved ones after the hijackers took control.

These are said to have alerted the passengers to the fact that they were victims of no ordinary hijacking, but a co-ordinated mission by fanatics to strike at the heart of America in New York and Washington. At the same time, a number of passengers allegedly told relatives of their resolve to fight back. Interestingly, phone contact from passengers on the two hijacked planes that hit the Twin Towers and a third jet which crashed into the Pentagon that same morning was scarce to non-existent.

Yet officially there were 35 calls made among the 40 passengers and crew on Flight 93, with callers using either mobile phones or GTE Airfones fitted into the backs of the aircraft seats.

The use of mobile phones is suspect anyway because telecommunications experts say that - given the technology of 2001 - calls at an altitude of six miles could have only occurred by fluke at best. Just as baffling, the FBI insisted there were 13 mobile phone calls - of which there were no billing records - yet reduced this number to just two at the trial this year of Zacarias Moussaoui when the evidence risked being exposed to the harsh light of law.

Why had the FBI failed to put the record straight over the previous four-and-a-half years?

One answer is that it suited the heroism legend to keep silent as the Pentagon banged the drum for war in Iraq.

Mrs Beamer only learned of her husband's final call four days later.

The 9/11 Commission claimed that five of the calls described the intent of the passengers and crew to revolt against the hijackers. One caller, the Commission said, ended her message with the words: 'Everyone's running up to first class. I've got to go. Bye.' But all this begs the question: why did the hijackers allow such a free-for-all of phone calls as they attempted to terrify their hostages?

After all, the hijackers would have realised that experts would have been able to locate the lost aircraft if people were using their mobles.

The most intriguing of the calls is the one said to have been made by Flight 93's most famous passenger Todd Beamer, whose 'Let's roll!' phrase became a byword for the victims' heroism and patriotism.

Beamer's call was said to have been taken by a telephone supervisor working for the Verizon Corporation, owners of GTE Airfones, the gadgets on the airplane seats.

At the time, Verizon had a contract worth £750million for installing a high-security telecoms package across U.S. government departments, including the Pentagon.

One of its supervisors, Lisa Jefferson, an evangelical Christian like Beamer himself, retains a vivid recollection of her 15-minute conversation with him.

After discovering that she shared her first name with Beamer's wife, they apparently talked about his two little boys and the new baby on the way, Beamer's fear that he might not make it home, and his faith.

Faced with the awful prospect of dying on board Flight 93, Beamer supposedly recited the Lord's Prayer and Psalm 23 with Mrs Jefferson. He also asked her to promise to call his wife. Mrs Jefferson received a Verizon Excellence Award from her bosses for her handling of the call. To some this may have seemed inappropriate.

She had not taken a recording of it, contrary to convention. She had not gone through the routine questions in her distress-call manual. She had not connected this agitated man to his wife waiting anxiously at home. Nor had she informed his wife subsequently of the call as promised.

Mrs Beamer only learned of her husband's final call four days later, when a representative of United Airlines got in touch.

She says the United Airlines representative told her: 'The FBI had been keeping the information private until they've had the opportunity to review the material. But now they've released it, I have a written summary of the call.'

But later Mrs Beamer learned that the FBI had not kept the call so secret after all. Her husband's boss at his computer company had already spun the story of Beamer the hero aboard Flight 93 before anyone else knew of his phone call.

As for Lisa Jefferson's evidence, it was single-sourced, unsubstantiated hearsay of which there was no record. For spooks inside a sprawling empire of wires like Verizon, rigging up a phone call to Lisa Jefferson's headset would have been simple.

'Let's roll!' became the war on terror's recruitment slogan.

She had no idea what Beamer's voice sounded like, and she would never hear it again to judge whether he had actually been speaking to her. This year, Lisa Jefferson published a book entitled Called - the story of seeing 'her life transformed, simply by answering Todd Beamer's call'.

The blurb added: 'Jefferson sends a stirring challenge to all of us whether it comes during quiet obscurity or international adversity, we must be prepared to answer God's call.'

Evangelical Christians throughout America rallied to that call. But one puzzle remains: Todd Beamer's wife later said she had never before heard of his reciting the Lord's Prayer in pressure situations. Nor, she added, was Psalm 23 something he often recited.

Todd Beamer's 'Let's roll!' phrase became the war on terror's recruitment slogan.

President Bush had launched the legend in a speech on September 20, 2001 as he declared his unprecedented 'war on terror'. Beamer's story of selfless patriotism, according to the President, was a 'defining moment' in American history. Alongside President Bush on this occasion was Todd Beamer's wife Lisa.

Nobody, of course, would begrudge Mrs Beamer her celebrity, given her tragic circumstances. But her presence undoubtedly helped President Bush's cause.

The President again invoked her evangelical Christian husband's courage in another speech a month later.

'We will no doubt face new challenges,' said the man widely regarded as having taken office fully intending to attack Iraq. 'But we have our marching orders. My fellow Americans... let's roll!'

Such a phrase couldn't fail to chime with the President's gung-ho admirers - nor with the 40 million evangelical Christians in the so-called 'red' states where the Bush regime had its most fervent support.

Later U.S. Navy personnel would spell out the words 9/11 LET'S ROLL by forming themselves on the deck of a warship bound for Iraq.

Lisa Beamer, always a staunch ally of the White House and its war on terror, had herself photographed unveiling a 'Let's Roll' logo on the side of a U.S. Air Force F-16.

She even sought to have 'Let's Roll' trademarked and signed a six-figure book deal which, along with her seven-figure compensation cheque, made her a rich woman. And in August 2002, just in time for the first 9/11 anniversary, she published her memoir entitled - predictably - Let's Roll!

The front cover showed the author with the Stars and Stripes and the publisher issued a staggering one million copies in hardback.

Secrecy is the first instinct of any war.

Truly, the Let's Roll slogan had become a call to arms - just at a time the White House needed it most.

Bush administration not admit its guilt? It could surely have argued that the poor souls lost in the airliner were a tragic but necessary sacrifice in order to prevent horror and destruction on a larger scale in at the Capitol Washington.

Air Force scrambles had been frequent enough in the past. One report said there had been 129 within the U.S. during 2000.

But secrecy is the first instinct of any war department, especially amid reports flooding in of a passenger revolt on the plane.

Any admission of a shooting down must have been ruled out politically because those brave passengers just might have retrieved the controls from fanatical hijackers.

For the U.S. military to have snatched victory from their grasp was unthinkable.

There are countless theories and areas of evidence to examine. There is even a theory that the plane could have blown up because of a bomb on board.

Air traffic controllers on the ground reportedly heard an anonymous voice in the cockpit announce: 'Ladies and gentleman. Here is the captain. Please sit down and keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board. So sit.'

But if Flight 93 had been blown up by a bomb at cruising altitude, its debris area would have covered at least 20 miles, as in the Lockerbie crash.

The 9/11 Commission speculated that the rogue pilot jolted the plane violently in the minutes before the impact to disrupt a passenger revolt.

This in turn led to claims that he might have succeeded in tearing a wing off, or otherwise wrecking the aircraft in mid-air, causing it to crash.

Boeing has refused to discuss this possibility. Such movements, however, could easily have been caused by the pilot attempting to avoid an approaching heatseeking missile homing in on its engines.

EYEWITNESS reports differed from the official story. Along the plane's route, people confirmed that the Boeing came in from the north-west, but they said it was not nose-diving. Instead it was flying low.

Bob Blair and Linda Shepley saw the plane when it dropped to 2,500ft. Rodney Peterson and Brandon Leventry noticed it at 2,000ft. Terry Butler saw it at about 500ft. Eric Peterson saw the plane at 'maybe 300ft'.

Lee Purbaugh, a scrap metal worker, was the closest. He told reporters: 'I heard this real loud noise coming over my head. I looked up and it was Flight 93, barely 50ft above me.

'It was coming down at 45 degrees and rocking from side to side. Then the nose suddenly dipped and it just crashed into the ground. There was this big fireball and then a huge cloud of smoke.'

Purbaugh's account was perhaps the nearest of all the witness testimony to the official version of the story. Except for one important element.

Not once did Purbaugh mention the plane being upside down, as the 9/11 Commission, the FBI and the Pentagon all maintained it was.

With such a huge airplane roaring over his head, he could hardly have failed to notice which way up it was.

To some, this cast doubt on the credibility of his reported evidence. To others, it was merely another piece of the Flight 93 jigsaw that failed to fit.

- ADAPTED from Flight 93: What Really Happened On The Heroic 9/11 'Let's Roll' Flight by Rowland Morgan, published by Constable & Robinson on August 24 at £7.99. © Rowland Morgan 2006

You see, I was born in a golden era [June 30, 1974]. Classmates from well-off families had fallout shelters at home where they kept the ping-pong table. On Sundays we played sirens during practice alerts. The fear of the Third World War was as close at hand and manageable as a well-sorted broom closet. There were good guys and evil guys, as is the case in every good story.

The good ones included all of those who thought of themselves as democrats. The evil ones were everyone else. Democrats, we learned in school, never conduct wars of aggression, but employ peaceful means of cooperation and diplomacy. Also, they don't distinguish between people of different ancestry. To the contrary: discrimination by race or religion is constitutionally forbidden. Never in his life would a democrat consider staring suspiciously at an Asian-looking person in the subway.

In democracies there is no propaganda, no incitement of hysteria against certain groups of citizens by the press or politicians. A democratic country protects innocent citizens. It doesn't take away his nail clippers, doesn't listen to his phone or read his e-mail. A democratic state controls its secret services, doesn't deploy the army in its own borders, takes fingerprints exclusively from criminals, and doesn't use cameras at tollbooths to film harmless vehicles on the highway.

Because a democracy trusts its citizens, it knows that it relies on the consent of its citizenry, because otherwise it doesn't deserve to be called a democracy. If a crime occurs, however dreadful, a democratic state turns all of its resources to fighting that crime without labeling it a "war." For "war" is a dreadful concept. War directs itself not against the individual criminal, but holds entire regions, entire countries, entire areas of the globe responsible for a few inhabitants.

That's not just what was explained to me: that's what I believed. Contrary to the concepts of God, family and native country, the democratic ideal had direct significance to me. No one would have dared insist that this was just a fair-weather opinion that darkened whenever a cloud crossed the sun. No one called democracy an ideology that showed its true face only when it was attacked from outside.

Do you suspect, from what I've said so far, that I over-dramatize? You believe it hysterically negative when people say that our democracies are endangered from within? Then you don't know that childhood disappointment can also happen to adults. Then you don't know that even in this country there are true patriots who, without fuss and flag-waving, are proud, not of their Germanness, but of their democratic convictions. Gentle, blind fools, who, trapped in their childish pipe dreams, stumbling but persistent, seek the good. Candy-asses, goofballs, those who sympathize with Islam, who don't hear the shooting and just don't want to know when it's time for the next culture war.

Without that historic day in September 2001, I would still believe that I was in possession of divided convictions. I would imagine that the government that I supported shared, in general, all the above-named concepts that it taught me during the 1980s. It would have seemed obvious that European countries would not be drawn into wars contrary to international law. I would not have thought that democracy was just as phony, ideologically covered up and hypocritical as all other ideals upon which governments are based. I would bask in the illusion of being part of a government-imparted value system. I could feel less alone, and would thus be further caught up in that self-inflicted immaturity that muddles the precise employment of reason. But that would be terrible.

No? What is that you say? It strikes you as tasteless to regard a terrorist attack as enlightening? You don't want to hear that time and again, it has been Lucifer, the "Lightbringer," who shines the harsh spotlight of recognition on the world? And doesn't it interest you that knowledge - in the biblical paradise - is synonymous with the onset of catastrophe? And you're annoyed by the bitter irony with which late bloomers like me dismiss the ideals of their youth and become cynical contemplatives? I'll tell you something: it bothers me too.

We do allow ourselves the notion that the world, in the sense of peace, love, and understanding, would have been much better without September 11. Let's just read the other articles on this subject and forget what's been said here. If that doesn't make you feel better, that suggests a connection as simple as it is fateful: there are many paths that lead to understanding, but none that can turn back the clock.