"The war with Iraq has increased the risk of a terrorist attack on America, said former Sen. Gary Hart, who now is co-chairman of the Commission on National Security for the 21st Century. 'Don't be surprised if in the coming hours or days we go to Code Red,' Hart said this morning in Washington. 'It is almost inevitable.' [Hart's] commission predicted in 1999 that America would suffer a major terrorist attack, and Hart was predicting such an attack as late as early September 2001. He said the present administration wasted valuable time in setting up a homeland security agency, which the commission recommended in January 2001. The Sept. 11 attacks 'were not Pearl Harbor,' he said. 'America was warned.' Despite the attention to terrorism since then, 'the country is not today prepared for retaliatory terrorist attacks.'" So reports Government Computer News.

"Until we discover ways to eradicate evil from the hearts of those who wish us ill, those who accept the duty of standing that post will risk, and tragically lose, their lives so that we here may enjoy our freedom. Somewhere in the Persian Gulf there is a young sailor who is someone's daughter, a combat pilot who is someone's husband, a young Marine ready to go ashore who is someone's son. For the American nation, they are all our sons and daughters. War is not an instrument of policy; it is a failure of policy. We cannot here today discuss the use of military power as an instrument of national policy without recognition that it is the lives of our sons and daughters that are most immediately at stake. We all must now earn our rights by performance of our duties. And our duty to our sons and daughters requires our policy makers to hold their lives in sacred trust. Only then will our national security be just as well as strong and only then can we be truly proud of who we are."