Many e-mails from readers in response to my earlier posting about Richard

Clarke’s Atlantic piece. Some are just shocked that I should be agreeing

with Richard Clarke about anything. Well, as I indicated, I was somewhat

surprised myself, but even Clarke’s entitled to be right once in a while.

All these readers said that Clarke & Derb are totally wrong; that we would

not retreat into a more defensive posture after a 2nd wave of attacks, that

we’d “get serious,” that we’d “go to war for real” (against whom?)

Hey, I have no problem with “getting serious.” If it were me making the

decisions, I’d have got a lot more serious than the admin. has been, long

ago.

What Clarke/Derb are talking about, however, is not Derb’s reaction, or NRO

readers’s reaction, but the American public’s reaction. You know, that

public 57,288,974 of whom voted for John Kerry. That public who are content

(apparently) with Norm Mineta in charge of our transportation issues. That

public who think that the Abu Ghraib hi jinks amounted to “torture.” That

public.