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It seems that, every several months, you have to expect there is going to be a terrorist incident or that there could be a terrorist incident somewhere. Right away, you're thinking, 'What are the consequences? Is this the first part of a larger attack? Is it coordinated, or a lone wolf?'

Americans rightly asked, if this is the way our government responds to a natural disaster it knew about days in advance, how would it respond to a surprise terrorist attack? How would it respond to an earthquake?

The U.S. has already suffered a devastating attack on September 11, 2001, and may again become a target.

Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy our country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage.

We're told another large-scale terrorist attack is inevitable by those people who have committed so many resources to preventing it. They likely know what they're talking about.

The president's very right about one thing: When you have a disaster of that scale, whether it be natural or a terrorist attack, there's only one part of our entire government, state or local, that is equipped to handle it, and that's the U.S. military.

All of the leading terrorism experts are clear on one thing: that in terms of protecting America, we are almost never going to know a place or a time of an attack.

We have to be mindful that there is the certainty that terrorists will attempt to launch multiple attacks against their enemy, which is us and our allies.

We want to look at how we would respond because, as hard as we work to prevent terrorist attacks here North America, if we have a catastrophic terrorist attack, it is the military that is going to have to go in at the request of civilian authorities.

Terrorists have already attacked our Nation once. There is every reason to believe that they will try again - possibly with a weapon of mass destruction; a weapon that could be smuggled into our ports.