Now Bush seeks to top this class act with his great "security reorganization," which unaccountably leaves out the agencies -- like the FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Agency -- which failed to protect the security of those expendable saps, the American people. In fact, just last week we learned that the NSA -- the Pentagon spy shop -- had actually been tracking alleged Sept. 11 ringleader Mohammed Atta in the months before the attack, recording his conversations with al-Qaida honchos, the Miami Herald reports. Trusting souls, the NSA kept this information to itself and let Atta enter the United States, where he lived -- and plotted -- in perfect safety.

At least they protected his security.

So as Bush begins his upgrade of Truman's travesty, it's worth remembering what Senator Arthur Vandenburg said when he saw Harry's plan for a permanent war machine combining global military reach with unprecedented political repression at home: "You're going to have to scare the hell out of the American people to get all that."

False Note

And that's where the second prong comes in. The Regime put on a master class in hell-scaring this week with the story of the alleged thwarting of an alleged al-Qaeda attack with radioactive "dirty bombs."

First came a wave of dramatic announcements to grab the headlines: "U.S. Foils Nuclear Attack by bin Laden!" Fortuitous timing for an outfit reamed by weeks of bad press about its criminal dereliction of duty.

But once the main spin was established, the truth -- or something like it -- began dribbling out. Quietly. Suddenly we're told by top officials that there "was no actual plan;" the suspect didn't have a bomb; he didn't have the materials to build a bomb; he was, at most, carrying out an alleged "reconnaissance" for potential future missions of an unspecified nature.

That's not quite as good a headline, is it? "Chicago Man With Alleged Ties to Al-Qaeda Arrested Last Month While Re-Entering the Country With 'No Actual Plan' to Commit Terrorism, Officials Say." Doesn't really sing, does it?

No, terror always trumps the truth. It sings. It pays. Just ask Bush. And look at the headlines.

Clarification

Last week in these pages, we reported on the admission by an American soldier that he and his comrades had been ordered to kill women and children during "Operation Anaconda" in Afghanistan earlier this year. "We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them," Army Private Matt Guckenheimer told the Ithaca Journal last month.

Guckenheimer has since qualified this disturbing revelation. Perhaps shaken at seeing his words in cold print (or shaken by someone who saw his words in cold print), Guckenheimer wrote a letter to the Journal modifying his remarks. He now says the soldiers were ordered to kill only those women and children who showed unspecified manifestations of "hostile intent."

The orders did note that even "very young children" (of unspecified age) were being trained as soldiers by the heathen Mohammedans, and so could not be "just dismissed as noncombatants," said Guckenheimer. "But this does not mean we were ordered to kill noncombatants such as babies."

Well, thank God for that. It is indeed a saving grace that U.S. ground forces were actually not ordered to kill babies. That would be a very serious breach of military protocol -- everyone knows the killing of babies and other innocent parties is reserved for the launchers of "smart bombs," "daisy cutters," B-52s, CIA drones and other purveyors of faceless, long-range death.