THE WARTIME PRESIDENCY.

It's a different kind of war, Bush and Cheney say, therefore new and extraordinary actions must be taken. If it's so completely different from what we've fought before, why are they running a World War II-style security and secrecy system, from a time when we were under threat of attack and infiltration from frighteningly competent, stunningly well-organized countries. Almost nothing about this War on Terrorism remotely resembles World War II, when the U.S. economy was transformed to a weapons machine, right down to the recycling of tin cans and the rationing of butter and gasoline--America was a different place for those four years. And, significantly, it was united. Today, only Americans directly related to members of the military stand to sacrifice for our cause. How did we let this go on long enough for Messrs. Bush and Cheney to be working on their memorial libraries? How small these libraries will necessarily be; their contents will almost certainly be classified.