Well, this got my attention:

Authorities are evaluating a surge of information related to possible terrorist threats to a number of cities in the United States, including New York City, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., ABCNEWS has learned.

Threat information is coming from intelligence intercepts, interrogation of recent detainees and other methods, sources say.

Sources say the threat to New York City possibly involves a female suicide bomber, but no specific target has been identified and intelligence sources are still evaluating the credibility of this threat. The New York City Police Department released a statement saying it has "no credible intelligence pointing to a specific or imminent terrorist threat" in the city.

In the threats received for other cities, including Los Angeles and Washington, no mode of attack has been identified and no location or specific cells were named....

I'm not really worried -- nothing the feds have warned us about since 9/11 has actually happened, and I think the local police forces in the biggest cities get it -- but this is what's been in the back of my Manhattanite mind since 9/11: small, nasty terrorist attacks.

If these actually come, the polarization in this country is going to get even worse -- lots of people will just rally around Bush (no matter how much chaos there is, if a tough guy's in charge, people who like tough guys will always withhold blame from him), while many of the rest of us will, utterly justifiably, accuse the administration of not doing enough to make us safe (and the accusers will be called traitors, even the ones who've been wounded in attacks).

Remember how the right-wingers said after the fall of Baghdad that it was delusional to suggest that any Iraqi could possibly have been better off under Saddam? Then, as months went by, we saw that, brutal as Saddam had been, his brutality had left some people unaffected, and some of their lives were worse now -- and they themselves said so. Well, soon enough, the unsayable statement of Howard Dean -- that we're no safer than we were when Saddam was in the hole -- might be recognized as self-evidently true. It might even be seen as an understatement. Let's hope not.