Post-London Crystal Ball

Bush will get amazing mileage out of this attack. This is as good for his retaliatory campaign as 9/11.

Americans already shaken up by terror alerts, marauding child snatchers and BTK will relinquish the last shreds of the constitution to Bush's protective wisdom.

Security moms will be deputized to watch every corner of public space not covered by surveillance cameras.

Children will earn merit badges for informing on suspected enemies.

Lots and lots of innocent people will die from American bombs dropped from planes and foreign bombs carried in backpacks or planted in cars. (The ol' warplanes-and-baskets analogy from The Battle of Algiers.)

More prisons, more "security," more privatization, more environmental disaster, more misery for poor people around the world (despite the sacks of wheat dumped on Africa for photo-ops).

Europe will be cowed into obeying Bush's directives automatically. He was "right" after all. Look at Madrid and London.

A Europe/U.S./Israel Axis will storm the Third World, rooting out "terror" wherever it chooses to find it. Pillage and occupation. Something resembling genocide will ensue, and no one of any international influence will do anything about it.

The 2012 Olympics will either be Munich Redux or so heavily fortified as to resemble Thunderdome.