The Gruesome Details

They're here,along with speculation here that this might have been intended as "the big one." According to left wing thought, the answer is confined to simply building better walls and employing better airport screening. Defensive measures alone, we're told, can do the job. But that's a failure of imagination, as well as of intellect.

For there will always be new methods of terror -- for instance, the best mechanized screening in the world wouldn't have been able to detect the combination of chemical explosives that were in play for the thwarted attack. Instead, there had to be spying, perhaps phone tapping, asset tracing, and other methods that liberals have from time to time criticized as violations of "privacy." It's worth noting that we may have been lucky that the attack was being planned in Britain -- where there are substantially fewer impediments to robust investigation of suspected criminals.

In fact, when one realizes all the intelligence measures that had to be brought to bear to foil the attack, it makes it clearer than ever why Democrats -- the party of radical civil libertarians, frequently hostile to foreign intelligence gathering -- simply can't be trusted with national security.