watch what you think, they can read your mind

It has become way to common for me to be reading a story online, and I find myself dumbfounded that what I'm reading is a news story and not some crazy dystopian science fiction tale.

Fresh off Bush's signing of a directive that would give him nearly unlimited powers in the case of a "catastrophic emergency," it has been announced that the Department of Homeland Security has contracted Halliburton's former engineering division to construct detention facilities inside the United States in case of a national emergency. The purpose of the these camps would be to house civilians in the case of a massive terrorist attack or natural disaster. Apparently the official excuse to build these camps is blame illegal immigrants: ' "The idea of the KBR contract is to support the Army Corp of Engineers in case we experienced a sudden mass immigration and we had to respond quickly," she said. "We would need immediate detention facilities in the form of temporary housing that would enable us to determine if the large numbers of illegal immigrants were political or economically motivated, or if they were criminals or terrorists." ' Once again, my information is from a conservative source, not a liberal one.

Have "illegal immigrants" become our nations' Jews? They seem to be a popular scapegoat right now. My guess is that these new concentration camps (that's exactly what they sound like) would make a perfect place to stick any dissenters that they round up once we experience some kind of terrorist attack (one either created by the powers that be or one that they have foreknowledge about and allow to happen) and the powers of that new presidential directive are enacted.

I hope I'm wrong. I pray I'm being paranoid. This all sounds absurd, but each day there is more and more evidence that makes the absurd seem believable.

edit: From some other things I've read, I'm not sure that this is actually a brand new development, but even if the contract is a few months old, its no less alarming.