"We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance," John Kerry told The New York Times Magazine

* "We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance," John Kerry told The New York Times Magazine. "As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling.

But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life." Kerry's Republican critics have seized on the word "nuisance," with Bush arguing that terrorism could not be reduced "to some acceptable level of nuisance." Others have criticized Kerry's analogies, and quite rightly: Given that "escort services" advertise in most cities' yellow pages, the analogies are not hopeful ones. But the most revealing phrase in Kerry's remark may have been his opening words: We have to get back to the place we were. In the 1990s, we may not have felt we had to pay much attention to terrorists. But they were paying attention to us. If we go back to a September 10 mindset, we almost guarantee repetition of September 11.

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