Spook chief's craven surrender to voices of appeasement? Which means, of course, that he's speaking sense.

I’m not quite sure why Marty Peretz seems so invested in the idea that many New Republic readers believe, as he puts it, “that the notion of an Al Qaeda threat to the West is a hokey fantasy of the Bushies”. Perhaps Mr Peretz’s blog has a cadre of leftist readers who rarely crop up at TNR’s other blogs or on the magazine’s letters page.

Anyway, Peretz then says that everyone should pay attention to what the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, had to say recently. If you don’t believe me, Marty says, perhaps you’ll believe him:

The Post quotes Evans: “Terrorist attacks we have seen against the U.K. are not simply random plots by disparate and fragmented groups….The majority of these attacks, successful or otherwise, have taken place because Al Qaeda has a clear determination to mount terrorist attacks against the United Kingdom.” This “deliberate campaign” against Britain is the “most immediate and acute peacetime threat” to the nation in a century.