Atrios comments:

It's fairly obvious, 4 years later, that we as a national collectively crapped our pants and went quite a bit nuts after 9/11. That's certainly understandable, though it's a shame that there are quite a few of us never really recovered. What's rather more annoying is just how desperate our media is for the UK to have the same experience.

This isn't about "London holding up better than America" or anything, the scale and method of attacks in the US as well as the now completely forgotten post-9/11 Anthrax (haven't caught that one, either, by the way) attacks certainly gave us a lot more reason to crap our pants and go a little nuts. It's just rather disgusting that CNN is desperate to tell one story - PANIC! TERROR! FEAR! - which just isn't there.

But Britain has had its years of panic --- the years of the terror campaign of the IRA, when goverment imposed absolutely restrictions on the press in the name of security which became utterly comic (IRA spokesmens' voices could not be broadcast on the air, leading to quick money for actors that could imitate their voices), and civil rights did go out the window for anyone of a suspect ethnic group --- with consequences that they later came to regret. If they're not going crazy now, that's at least in part because -- regrettably -- they've been there before.

It'll be no consolation to the Guilford Four that they did themselves no lasting damage because the panic stayed in their own borders. But it's true nonetheless...