Bush government considered using troops for terror arrests in US: report

Top officials from the administration of former president George W. Bush mulled sending US troops to suburban Buffalo to arrest men suspected of plotting with al Qaeda, The New York Times reported late Friday.
Citing former administration officials, the newspaper said some of the advisers to Bush, including vice president Dick Cheney, argued in 2002 that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants. Five Yemeni Americans suspected of al Qaeda ties were arrested by the FBI in Lackawanna, near Buffalo in September 2002.
The sixth man was arrested nearly simultaneously in Bahrain. A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests would be nearly unprecedented in US history as both the constitution and subsequent laws restrict the use of the military to conduct domestic raids and seize property, the report said.