In times of war, the rule of law must occasionally give way to the necessities of national security. But, what if the "time of war" was perpetual, never-ending even.
The federal government in general, and the Bush administration in particular, has continually harped on that "the war on terror will be long, and arduous" but we will eventually prevail. So, we all initially accepted that some suspension of civil liberties (e.g. intensified background checks at the airport or for would-be purchasers of a hand-gun) might be necessary in order for the U.S. to "prevail" in our national "war" on terror.
But what if the decision to characterize U.S. national security efforts as "war" was made entirely to justify the use of "war-time" emergency powers for non-war uses. Take the recent revelation that Bush has unilaterally been authorizing domestic spying on American citizens. Our government is arranged under the Constitution so that ANY government action requires two branches of the government in order to be carried out. Not so, says the current, pathetic commander in chief: requiring the executive to obtain a warrant from the judicial branch before engaging in domestic spying would "interfere" too much with the "war" on terror, and place our national security at risk. Nevermind that FISA has only denied 5 of 17,000 requests for a search warrant in it's 20-some odd year history. Nevermind that the "enemy" is amorphous and uncapable of explicit identification. Nevermind that, since the inception of our "war" on terror, more than ten times the number of civilians killed on 9/11 have been killed by the U.S. military.
By turning American efforts against terrorism into a "war", the current administration has fooled the American public and enabled an expansion of the powers of the president in a historically unprecedented manner. It is now high time for the impeachment process to begin.