Bush had to beat the drums of war for a year, and failed to convince key parties who had no problem with Afghanistan.

Of course they had no problem with Afghanistan.

Unlike with Afghanistan, a lot of the nations and organizations opposing the war with Iraq were raking in billions of dollars from Saddam's regime, and owed billions more besides. While I'm not saying this was the only motivation behind the positions of the U.N., France, Russia, and others, it cannot be overlooked. God knows if an American corporation that was doing business in Iraq had opposed the war, the Left would have trumpeted that connection to the skies.

Here's another dark thought to disturb your sleep: Terrorists know that we intercept their communications. Might they have figured out that it's far more cost-effective to pretend to talk about upcoming attacks on cheap disposable cell phones, or anonymous email accounts, than to actualy mount an attack? Our fear has given them a lever: Ridge obligingly raises the alert color, troops and police are deployed, access to public places is restricted, travel is impeded. False alarms aren't "flashy", but a steady stream of them can wear us down with the steady drip, drip, drip of anxiety and inconvenience and small hits to the economy and to our liberties.

Not only is this plausible, I personally believe some of the captured terrorists were pulling exactly this gag last year. I remember a number of alarms raised on the basis of something some prisoner had said, and the same thoughts about yelling "fire" in a crowded theater occured to me. I have noticed that these alarms seem to have largely died down. Whether it is because we have a tighter security grip on the terrorists, or just because we don't believe every dumb thing they say anymore, is anyone's guess.