From Left Hook!
http://lefthooktheblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/new-york-times-reports-today-that-to\
p.html

A new tale from the Bush administration, as chilling as it is
unsurprising. The New York Times reports today that

"Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the
Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to
arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with al Qaeda, according to
former administration officials."

Such an operation would, of course, be completely illegal. Those who
worked on the report seemed to realize the significance of it:

"A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests has few
precedents in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent
laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and
seize property."

The debate inside the administration grew out of Bush's position that he
had the Stalinist ability to operate entirely outside of constitutional
and legal restraints, as documented in memos released earlier this year.

Among those urging Bush to use the military was Vice President Dick
Cheney. In the Times' reconstruction of the debate, the Justice
Department was concerned that it may have insufficient evidence to
successfully prosecute a legal case against the suspects, so Cheney
advocated sending in the military, on the grounds that "the
administration would need a lower threshold of evidence to declare them
enemy combatants and keep them in military custody." This is the Times
being intentionally obfuscatory; the "enemy combatant" designation
invented by the Bush administration required *no* evidence, and wasn't
subject to *any* oversight. As those in the administration asserted the
power, they could so designate anyone they wanted, and hold them
forever. That Cheney explicitly argued for this approach based on a
concern that there may not be enough evidence to show that the
individuals in question were guilty of anything points directly to why
this Stalinist "power" was explicitly banned by the Constitution and
U.S. law in the first place.

The plan to use the military never went forward; Bush opted to send in
the FBI, and all of the suspects in the case eventually pleaded guilty.
From the Times recounting of the debate, the decision to use the FBI was
made because, on the one hand, the Justice Department, considering such
matters their turf, resented and argued against encroachment into it,
and, on the other, some officials thought it would be bad public
relations to send tanks into an American suburb. There seems to have
been no concern at all with the matter of constitutionality or legality.
If it even came up, no one who described the debate to the Times seems
to have mentioned it.

These days, Cheney is the loudest voice crowing about how Obama's
abandonment of Bush policies would put the country at risk, but, as this
revelation demonstrates yet again, Cheney and his ilk are a far greater
threat to the U.S. than al Qaida could ever be.