If the U.S. responds in rage and similar violence then I fear we are no more ethical than the inhuman cowards that have committed this attack.

I tend to disagrree. Oh, I agree, to act in hot blinding rage is probably bad, but it would be justified - if we find the right targets.

I think this very incident is exactly the kind of thing that might happen when you have a whacked foreign policy. Remember when a bozo in the White House ordered a bomb strike against the wrong targets? Remember when Clinton bombed that asprin factory to take national attention off the Lewinski scandal? Yeah, bombing is an acceptable instrument of foreign policy (although you can argue he should have gotten Congressional approval), but he got it wrong. I can see a lot of unfortunately justifiable rage over that one incident alone.

I'd bet, whatever other provocation whoever did this may perceive, it's the truly cosmically dufoid incidents like those that provided the final suicidal spark. Because it was a suicide attack, one almost assumes an Islamic origin - but we don't know.

What we need to do is find out who did it and maul them mercilessly - whether done in rage or with a grim sense of justice is almost immaterial. But we need to get it right. One of my biggest fears is that a month will go by, and then, all the evidence having been obliterated in the various crashes, they'll find a fall guy (bin Ladin is sure convenient) and take erroneous action. Thus further fueling the cycle.