How will the President of the United States make millions, if not billions, from the war on terrorism? He'll probably inherit it, according to this collection of reports on the Carlyle Group, a secretive $12 billion private equity firm based in Washington that has parlayed a roster of former top-level government officials, largely from the Bush and Reagan administrations, into a moneymaking machine. Its members include prominent world leaders such as George Bush, Sr.

After the Taliban fled Kabul, BBC reporter John Simpson inspected an abandoned building where he claimed to find instructions for assembling a nuclear weapon. Actually, the document he filmed was a 1979 spoof from the Journal of Irreproducible Results, which publishes humorous parodies of scientific writing. If terrorists used this document to build a weapon, they're in worse trouble than they realize.

Like the United States, Britain is using the specter of terrorism to write new laws that erode domestic civil liberties. The House of Commons this week began considering a bill submitted by Prime Minister Tony Blair. According to the Guardian, "policy-makers have dusted down several of their more regressive proposals that have already been rebuffed once, to give them another run in the new coercive climate. ... The most serious infringement of civil rights ...