.......................

                     At 4 a.m., I was awakened by the roar of F-16's, once more patrolling.

                     At 8 a.m., I packed khakis and a sweater, because a TV
                     expert was warning that those working near the White House
                     should have a change of clothes in case of a smallpox,
                     anthrax or nerve agent attack.

                     At 12:30 p.m., Dick Cheney canceled his appearance at a
                     dinner honoring Henry Kissinger and hurried back to his
                     Secure Undisclosed Location.

                     At 1:35 p.m., John Ashcroft revealed that Al Qaeda "chatter"
                     was back; the color-coded chart was back, ascending to a
                     "high risk" orange alert; the fear of "dispersion of radiological
                     contaminants" was back; the oxymoronic exhortation to be
                     fearful and fearless was back.

                     At 1:40 p.m., federal workers wheeled "Break glass in case of
                     emergency" gas mask cabinets into a Congressional press gallery.

                     At 2:30 p.m., Representative Billy Tauzin declared he was at
                     the end of his rope with Martha Stewart and the president
                     declared he was at the end of his rope with Saddam Hussein.

                     At 4:26 p.m., Donald Rumsfeld had live ammunition readied
                     for loading into anti-aircraft batteries around Washington.

                     As the East Coast grew more rattled, veering between the
                     sad, endless loop of Al Qaeda's past depredations and the
                     scary, endless loop of Al Qaeda's future machinations, Mr.
                     Bush seemed calm, confident.

                     The first President Bush has told people lately how impressed he is
                     that his son goes to bed every night without a worry in his head.

                     Should the nation really take comfort in this fact?

                     On 9/14/01, Mr. Bush picked up a bullhorn at ground zero
                     and assured rescue workers: "The people who knocked down
                     these buildings are going to hear from all of us."

                     A prodigal son who had spent much of his life unfocused suddenly
                     had sharp focus. A self-indulgent generation suddenly found itself in
                     the middle of its own Pearl Harbor.  How would a president and a
                     country used to easy respond to hard?

                     At first, Mr. Bush was ferocious, spitting cowboy threats
                     about getting Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar "dead or alive."

                     He promised to reinvent the failed alphabet apparatus —
                     F.B.I., C.I.A., N.S.A., I.N.S. — and secure our borders and airports.

                     We liberated Afghanistan, which was good for Afghanistan.
                     But what else had been accomplished?

                     Osama et cetera remain unaccounted for. Al Qaeda has regrouped
                     and is said to be plotting smaller attacks against American targets.

                     It is still startling that not a single head has rolled at the C.I.A. or the F.B.I.
                     George Tenet has escaped the fate of his counterparts at Enron and Arthur Andersen.

                     The Homeland Security Department is bogged down in Congress.
                     Airport security remains risible.

                     After a few months the president shifted his attention from a
                     hard war to an easy war, from an unconventional war with
                     no end or bad guys in sight to a conventional war with a
                     clearly discernible end and bad guy.

                     Administration hawks attempted to justify the easy war by
                     portraying it as a part of the hard war, doing their
                     implausible best to make Saddam and Osama seem like
                     co-conspirators in a single threat.

                     Even as the F.B.I. was persecuting Dr. Stephen Hatfill for the
                     anthrax letters, the vice president was implying on "Meet the
                     Press" Sunday that Saddam might be the culprit.

                     The more Bush officials insisted upon these dubious
                     connections, the less persuaded Americans seemed to be.
                     And the more they showed their hand with insistence that
                     Saddam had to go, the more they made people worry what a
                     psycho dictator with plenty of poison and nothing to lose
                     might do to Israel or the U.S.

                     Even the cautious Bob Graham, the Senate intelligence
                     chairman, told The Times's Carl Hulse that if we wanted to
                     catch terrorists, Iraq was the wrong spot. "Avoid the allure
                     of distractions," he warned, calling Syria and Iran more
                     immediate dangers.

                     If the old Desert Storm warriors want a new desert storm,
                     they should stop condescending to their fellow countrymen,
                     who understand both that Iraq is a threat and that Iraq had
                     nothing to do with the destruction of the World Trade Center.

                     The administration is now in the business of simplification.
                     Those rescue workers at ground zero on 9/14/01 were not
                     cheering for "regime change." They wanted the head of
                     Osama bin Laden. And they still do.