OK, I've been thinking about this (the "IED in the States" threat), and have decided that it is total bullshit. I mean, sure there's always the possibility that bombs can be easily set and short-term attacks can work. However, placing IEDs takes the agreement--or at least apathy--of the local population. In Iraq, everyone in a villages knows that the bombs are being planted; when the villages are won over only then do the bombs stop. A few bombs are one thing, but we'll never see the type of IED campaign in the States that we have seen in Iraq without the same time of social network.

In fact it's thinking like this--focusing on the weapon to the exclusion of the much larger system behind it, symptoms for the disease--that was the military's largest mistake throughout the early ears of the Iraq insurgency in the first place. So what's their game?