I don't know. Are we safer? Did Ellen Goodman die screaming, holding her child in her arms as psychotic Islamists slammed an airplane she was riding in into a building? Did she die of anthrax?

How the hell do you track attacks that have been deterred? Goodman's column is not as polemic as some, but what exactly does she want? What is she looking for?

Wesley Clark said that if he'd been president, "we'd have had Osama bin Laden dead or alive two years ago, and the world would have been a lot safer."

And just how would you have done this, Clark? As with most of the people crapping on Bush, I suspect this blithering idiot has no answer to this. And does anyone really think al Qaeda would fold up like a stack of cards when Osama is taken out? Logic suggests he died quite a while ago, and I don't see al Qaeda giving up, do you?

BTW, it's hilarious to see all the people still saying "where is Osama?" like this is the major failure of the Bush administration. These same people in many cases responded to the capture of Saddam was a large yawn.

In the same sense, what exactly would Dean do to neutralize international terror? So far, I haven't seen anything either specific or constructive. Shaking your fist and announcing that he would "make the world safer" is not a policy. It's as meaningless as a policitian saying he believes in "a good education for all children."

And the same people pissing about all the alerts on shoe boxes and cancelled flights were howling to high heaven about how the CIA and FBI failed to stop the 9/11 attacks by not taking actions that would have made little sense to the public back then. Had the terrorists been hauled in (for what? Taking flight lessons? Being in the country illegally, which the Left currently considers a human right?) would the authorities have gotten any credit for stopping an attack that never occurred?

No attacks have occured in America since 9/11. Are we safer now than when our skyscrapers were falling in ruins? How do you measure?