(via Jane Galt)  VodkaPundit has a great post titled "The Only thing to Fear is Failure Itself"  And is full of little gems like:

...If there is another attack on American soil, I dread to think what other indignities we might accept. And not only accept, but demand.

Fearful people often make bad decisions. And the government is happy to oblige them.

That’s not to say that we’re stupid or the government is evil. It’s simply human nature to require some minimal amount of personal safety, and it’s the nature of democratic government to give the people what they want.

VodkaPundit has a key point here.    I'm personally disgusted by how often the "government is a bunch of ****-ing idiots who can't protect us from 4 airplanes" is the same crowd as the "Ashcroft is a fascist" one.   They don't see the underlying linkage between the 2 statements.   Don't get me wrong, I'm scared crapless about the 2K-odd people who were held in secrecy, without fair trials, etc. and I wish the ACLU et. al. every bit of luck in securing due process for these folks.  A recent Jane Galt post puts it quite eloquently:

I think that these things should be subjected to national debate. And they should be undertaken with the knowlege that they are not our ideal, but an imperfect action in an imperfect world. And our resolve to make things better where we can, so that such things do not need to happen any more. But while I am cognizant of the slippery slope, I think it's silly to say that every less-than-ideal action is a nail in the coffin of liberty.

VodkaPundit continues:

...A nuclear-armed Saddam doesn’t actually have to level Los Angeles or New York to put National Guardsmen on every street corner. He doesn’t actually have to spray us with smallpox to bring our economy to a halt. He doesn’t actually have to lob Sarin missiles into Israel to blow apart our foreign policy.

Saddam only has to demonstrate that he can. Then we become a very fearful people again, much worse than we were on September 12.

The question isn't, can we deter Saddam, it's "what happens if Saddam can start to deter us?"  He concludes with:

Most civil libertarians fear what will happen to us if we attack Saddam. I fear what will happen if we don’t.

Bravo VodkaPundit.   Our choices are simple, pay a little now, or pay a lot later.   Either way, we have to pay something.