In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

 26 American Soil It was known as the “1 Percent Doctrine,” a hallmark of the Bush administration’s war on terror, a way of emphasizing the magnitude of the threat facing the United States. “To protect our country, we have to be right 100 percent of the time,” President Bush said in the summer of 2005. “To hurt us, the terrorists have to be right only once. So we’re working to answer that challenge every day, and we’re making good progress toward securing the homeland.”1 It was June 9, and Bush was back in Ohio. He had come to the highway patrol academy at the state fairgrounds complex on the city’s north side. He was there to talk about a cornerstone of the war on terror, the 2001 Patriot Act, now up for renewal. What better place to campaign for the nation’s premier antiterrorism law than the Midwest, which recent events had shown was as allegedly vulnerable to enemy infiltration as New York or Washington? “As we wage the war on terror overseas, we’ll remember where the war began—right here on American soil,” Bush began. “In our free and open society, there is no such thing as perfect security.” The president continued by bringing the nature of the challenge home more directly. “Federal, state, and local law enforcement have used the Patriot Act to break up terror cells in New York and Oregon and Virginia and in Florida,” Bush said. “We’ve prosecuted terrorist operatives and supporters in California, in Texas, in New Jersey, in Illinois, and North Carolina and Ohio.” Tellingly, the president said, these efforts have not always made headlines—referring, presumably, to attacks thwarted without publicity . The Patriot Act had done what it was supposed to do: made average American communities safer, protected American liberty, saved American lives. To do that, the president said, it was important to share information across bureaucratic lines in a way that was not  hatred at home possible before the Patriot Act, thus enabling law enforcement to communicate with intelligence officials. And there was no better example of the benefits of information sharing than right here in Columbus. “For several years,” Bush told the audience, a friendly gathering of law enforcement officials, “Iyman Faris posed as a law-abiding resident of Columbus. But in 2000, he traveled to Afghanistan and met Osama bin Laden at an al Qaeda training camp.” The value of the Patriot Act kicked in after Faris returned to the United States, Bush explained, as federal investigators used the law to piece together details about his time in Afghanistan and his plan to launch an attack on the United States. The case against Faris was so strong, the president said, that after investigators confronted him with their evidence in 2003, he chose to cooperate and spent weeks explaining his al-Qaida connections. And then the high note: “And today, instead of planning terror attacks against the American people, Iyman Faris is sitting in an American prison.” Bush pressed ahead, hammering home the value of the Patriot Act in apprehending Faris. “The agents and prosecutors who used the Patriot Act to put Faris behind bars did superb work, and they know whatadifferenceinformation-sharingmade,”thepresidentsaid.“Here is what one FBI agent said—he said, ‘The Faris case would not have happened without sharing information.’” According to Bush, another investigator said, “We never would have had the lead to begin with.” The gist was clear: teamwork was critical to protecting the United States. For the sake of national security, the president said, Congress must not rebuild a wall between law enforcement and intelligence. Bush used the rest of the speech to tick off elements of the Patriot Act that needed to be renewed. One key provision was roving wiretaps, which allow investigators to seek a warrant covering multiple cell phones used by an individual who switches phones frequently to thwart tracking. Another controversial provision granted Internet providers immunity from lawsuits over divulging information to investigators about threatening e-mails. (The anecdote that Bush chose to illustrate this aspect of the law cleverly shifted the perspective of the war on terror: the FBI had used information from an Internet provider to arrest a man in El Paso, Texas, who had e-mailed a mosque threatening to burn it down.) Finally, Bush said, with a nod to his critics, aspects of the Patriot Act that protected civil liberties must also be renewed. [18.119.131.178] Project...

Share