After 11 September 2001, the Administration of George W. Bush dismissed any criminal-justice model, put forth by various voices at home and abroad, for understanding and combating terrorism. This was ‘war’, the President insisted on 17 September, as he did repeatedly – directly, implicitly, and by analogy – in his 20 September address to Congress and on many later occasions, with American war in Afghanistan and later Iraq making that claim true. The criminal-justice model persisted, however, not least in Bush’s more colourful rhetoric. As he commented on the 17th regarding Osama bin Laden, ‘There’s an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, ‘‘Wanted: Dead or Alive” ’. On the 20th came his odd analogy, ‘Al Qaeda is to terror what the mafia is to crime’. On 11 October, drawing on crime-fighters’ lingo, he announced a ‘Most Wanted Terrorist list’ as part of his effort to ‘round up’ – both cowboy and cop words – ‘the evildoers’. In word and action, he kept blurring the neat line between war and crime he asserted.