[ClaireSolt]

"that the break-up of the plot to blow up airliners shows that "it was police work, surveillance, and patient cultivation of sources that broke the airline bombing ring -- not speeches about a state of war."

Actually, it was the effective hard work of NAto and Pakistani militaries puttting pressure on Waziristan that caused the bad guys to make a mistake and one of them get arreste on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border and yield info about the airline bombing. As there are not even any roads in that territory, it is not an area that lends itself to police work.

As for the conclusion, hopefully most people realize that serious problems cannot be solved in tiny soundbites in a 24 hour news cycle.

[HeartlandOfAmerica]

Actually, it was pure luck that a Muslim in Britain alerted police to the plot in the first place.

without that, we'd be wondering what happened to those 9 planes that disappeared somewhere over the Atlantic.

We can't keep depending on luck.