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One of the great intellectual failures of the American intelligence community, and especially the counterterrorism community, is to assume if someone hasn't attacked us, it's because he can't or because we've defeated him.

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.

Islamic terrorists do not need an excuse to attack the United States. To attack us is what they do; they attack us for what we are.

The surest way to empower the new terrorist gangs would be to withdraw from U.S. diplomatic missions.

Once the attacks occur, as we learned on Sept. 11, it is too late. It makes little sense to deprive ourselves of an important, and legal, means to detect and prevent terrorist attacks while we are still in the middle of a fight to the death with al Qaeda.

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

Terrorism is escalating to the point that Americans soon may have to choose between civil liberties and more intrusive means of protection.

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.

I never know what I'm going to do for the Post next. Two weeks ago I had a piece on Homeland Security. This is one of my pig ongoing projects. How unprepared we are for a terrorist attack.

We cannot win this war on terror if people are undercutting us. And one way to undercut us is to empower Iran.