[GAsux]

Zbu,
Thank you for providing me with a lead in to another point I wanted to make in your own unintelligible, meaningless opinion sort of way. I appreciate it.

The existence of a color coded threat matrix is not evidence that federal agencies AREN'T paying attention. Thanks for playing though.

The other point I wanted to get to, to play devil's advocate a bit I suppose, is that you can't measure deterrence. The bad thing is, when deterrence fails, everyone knows. When it succeeds, we'll never see it.

When federal agencies upgrade to "orange" and initiate the things they do (stricter security at ports of entry, increased surveillance, blah blah blah) you'll never know if it worked. If it failed, we'll all know when the bomb goes off.

What I'm getting at is that the most difficult part for the administration, in my opinion, of proving the success of the war on terror, particularly at home, is finding some way to demonstrate how successful it's been. I think there is little doubt that increased security measures at home coupled with military action in Afghanistan and economic disruption in terms of funding have had an impact on Al Qeada.

How many attacks have been PREVENTED by those measures? It may be 0, and it may be 100s. Like I said, there is no way to quantify the success rate of deterrence.