In a forceful preview of the Bush administration's expansionist military policies in this election year, Vice President Dick Cheney Wednesday painted a grim picture of what he said was the growing threat of a catastrophic terrorist attack in the United States and warned that the battle, like the Cold War, could last generations.

If a newspaper could have a soundtrack, you might expect to hear a bear growling on a windy, stormy night, with a wolf or two howling from the hills in the distance. Every few minutes, the rumble of an incoming mortar attack. And in between, the uncomortable silence of the things you can't hear.

Cheney's grim vision: decades of war