There's a real danger around with real terrorists killing people - and Bush and his friends are trying to exploit worries about that to get approval to carry out a private war against a country which, while it has a deeply unpleasant ruler, currently poses no significant threat, but which has large reserves of oil which can be used to pay for the war and then some. And in the process get some electoral advantage. At least that is the idea.
And the outcome is likely to be to make the threat of terrorist atrocities around tey world even gtreater - though the cahnces arer thta they won't measure up to the killing that is going to be done on people in Iraq in the course of the war.
And looking for historic parallels here is looking in the wrong direction.