Barely a voice was raised to suggest that a secret presidency might not be entirely compatible with the basic principles of American democracy. On the "You're either with us or against us" principle, enunciated by Bush in November 2001, the few liberals who spoke out against the new-style covert administration were condemned out of hand as siding with terrorists.The threat of terrorism yet to come gave the White House an unimpeded freedom to act on its own discretion that most US presidents have probably dreamed of, but is more often exercised by dictators, benevolent and otherwise. Secrecy has its own romantic allure, and in the shaken and frightened mood of America that September, there was reassurance in the idea of the White House going undercover, stealthily prowling on our behalf in Cheney's arena of shadows. It has become the licence for the executive branch to wave at Congress and the judiciary whenever its actions are questioned or censured. On September 18 2001, the delicate balance between the three branches of government, as laid out in the American constitution, was thrown severely out of whack; since that day, one branch, the presidency, has enjoyed an unprecedented primacy over the others, and we've been living with the consequences of AUMF ever since.On the same day that Bush talked of the coming "crusade", Vice-President Dick Cheney told the host of Meet The Press how the new war was going to function "We.. have to work sort of the dark side... We're going to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world.

A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussions... It is a mean, nasty, dangerous, dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena." So it was to be cloak and dagger stuff, top secret, with the administration "working the dark side", out of view of the people. That day, Congress rushed through its Authorisation For Use of Military Force (AUMF), entitling the President, as the nation's commander in chief, to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against "those nations, organisations, or persons" that "he determines" were responsible for the September 11 atrocities, "...in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organisations, or persons." It's the "such" that's the key, the inclusion of nations, organisations, or persons "of that sort", which nicely covers, for instance, the invasion of Iraq, the arrest and detention of most of the prisoners now languishing in Guantanamo Bay, possible future military action against Iran, or Syria, or both, and heaven knows what else, since "such" is a term of potentially limitless capacity to make hitherto unguessed-at likenesses and connections.The sloppily-worded AUMF endowed the administration with unique and wide-ranging powers. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!' The crowd whooped and then the chant began: 'U-S-A, U-S-A.' Bush grabbed a small American flag and waved it high."On the 16th, when Bush spoke of "this crusade, this war on terrorism", the alarming and foolishly inflated language chilled much of the listening world even as, perhaps, it stirred his electoral base of fundamentalist Christians to heroic thoughts of sword and cross, liberating the holy places from Muslim occupation. Presumably unintentionally (unless a Swiftian ironist was at work in some back room in the White House), the phrase echoed Osama bin Laden, who had been calling Americans "Crusaders" in repeated fatwas and speeches since 1998.But September 18 is the real date to circle.

A great people has been moved to defend a great nation." On the 14th, he found a voice and a persona when, dressed in a clerical-grey anorak, he visited the firefighters and rescue workers at the ruins of the World Trade Center. As The Dallas Morning News reported the next day: "When he climbed onto the wreckage of a fire truck to speak through the bullhorn, the workers began complaining: 'George, we can't hear you!'"'I can hear you,' Bush responded 'I can hear you The rest of the world hears you. The death toll - then estimated at 10,000-plus - was horrifying, on the scale of a major earthquake or tsunami, but the globe continued to revolve on its accustomed axis, as it does after even the most devastating seismic killers.On the evening of the 11th, the President of the United States - last seen in a second-grade class at a Florida elementary school, staring numbly at The Pet Goat in Reading Mastery II: Storybook I - read haltingly to camera from a script: "These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat, but they have failed Our country is strong. Now, of course, that headline is remembered only because it is a bitterly sarcastic marker of the enormous distance we've all travelled in the five years since that day. "Since September 11..." we say, as if the attacks were what changed everything.