President Bush is not going to assume responsibility for the World Trade Center catastrophe. His political allies blame former President Bill Clinton (as they are blaming him three years later for the current recession). Moreover, Bush continues to stonewall attempts to set up an independent investigation of what went wrong, and continues to sit on the 900-page report prepared by a bipartisan congressional committee.

The White House excuse for this cover-up is that discussion about what went wrong in the months before the destruction of the World Trade Center would interfere with the ''war on terrorism.'' There are several things wrong with this argument. First, if there is not something to hide, why not release the report? Second, FDR and JFK had real wars to fight--the former against imperial Japan, the latter a cold war against world communism. Third, the ''war on terrorism'' is a metaphor (just like the ''war on drugs,'' the ''war on AIDS,'' the ''war on hunger,'' the ''war on poverty'') for a struggle against international criminals. It is a useful political label for a president who wants to be re-elected as a wartime leader and to land on an aircraft carrier dressed in flight gear (even though he was in effect AWOL for at least a year during the Vietnam War). The metaphor conceals what is different in the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism when compared to the war against imperial Japan. Admitting the mistakes the administration made in July and August 2001 will not give aid and comfort to anyone, and certainly not to al-Qaida.

Instead, the president continues to respond to terror with his cowboy rhetoric: We will get Osama bin Laden. We will get the Mullah Omar. We will get the terrorists who blew the hole in the USS Cole. We will get the anthrax killer. We will get Saddam Hussein and his sons. Most recently, we will get the killers who attacked the compounds in Saudi Arabia.

The latter will be quite a trick since the killers were suicide bombers, and Bush will have to bring them back from the dead to haul them into court.

The American people unfortunately are used to political shading, spin, and the usual chicanery they hear from public officials.  They patiently tolerate it up to a point.  But there is a line.  It may seem to be drawn in invisible ink for a time, but eventually it will appear in dark colors, tinged with anger.  When it comes to shedding American blood - - when it comes to wreaking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women, and children, callous dissembling is not acceptable.  Nothing is worth that kind of lie - - not oil, not revenge, not reelection, not somebody's grand pipedream of a democratic domino theory.

And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which we see so often of late by the "powers that be" will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for just so long.  Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge.  And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall.