United States: President George W Bush has claimed that the United States has learned the lessons of the attacks on September 11th, 2001, plugging security gaps, improving the co-ordination between anti-terrorist agencies and making America safer.
In his third speech on terrorism in as many days, Mr Bush told an audience in Atlanta, Georgia, that controversial measures such as the Patriot Act and a domestic surveillance programme had helped to prevent further attacks.
"Over the past five years, we have waged an unprecedented campaign against terrorism at home and abroad and that campaign has succeeded in protecting the homeland," he said.
The domestic surveillance programme has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal court but Mr Bush wants Congress to give it legal backing.
A bipartisan group of senators this week expressed concerns about the proposed legislation, which would authorise eavesdropping on calls made by terrorist suspects overseas to individuals in the US.
Republicans are also divided over proposed new rules for trying "enemy combatants" held at Guantanamo Bay, who were joined this week by 14 terrorist suspects transferred from secret CIA prisons overseas.
The administration's proposal would not allow evidence obtained via torture but leave it to the presiding military judge to decide whether to bar other evidence when "the circumstances under which the statement was made render it unreliable or lacking in probative value."
The administration proposal would also allow military judges to prevent detainees from having access to classified evidence.
Republican senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham and John Warner are working on an alternative proposal, which would offer more safeguards to detainees and could be less vulnerable to a challenge in the courts.
Mr Graham said he was concerned about including evidence provisions that might leave military commissions vulnerable to challenges in the Supreme Court and invite enemies who capture US troops to deny them due process.
"I wouldn't want one of our guys tried in some foreign land based on evidence they never saw and couldn't confront. It's not necessary. You don't need to do that to win these cases," he said.
Acknowledging the existence of the CIA prisons for the first time this week, the administration said that "fewer than 100" suspected terrorists had been held in the facilities, which Mr Bush authorised within days of the September 11th attacks.
The transfer of 14 prisoners to Guantanamo this week means that no detainees are currently in CIA custody but the administration says that the overseas detention operation has not been discontinued.
Mr Bush and congressional Republicans will continue to focus on the "war on terror" as the fifth anniversary of September 11th approaches next week. Republicans hope that popular approval of Mr Bush's handling of national security will boost their prospects in November's mid-term elections.
Democratic leaders warned yesterday that they would not be "Swift-boated" on terrorism, a reference to the campaign against former presidential candidate John Kerry by Vietnam Swift Boat veterans in 2004.
Senior officials of the Clinton administration have complained that an ABC-TV "docudrama" on September 11th to be broadcast on Sunday and Monday includes invented scenes depicting them as undermining attempts to kill Osama bin Laden.
Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright described one scene involving her "false and defamatory" and former national security adviser Samuel "Sandy" Berger said the film "flagrantly misrepresents my personal actions."
