The terrorists want us to be one of two things. They either want us to be terrorized all the time and afraid to live our lives, or they want us to be lulled into a false sense of security and believe we are untouchable. Neither is the answer.

The answer to this is to live our lives, but live them while being more alert and aware of our surroundings. Feel safer, but never get the idea that nothing can touch you. Feel protected, set up measures of protection but always remember to not believe they are infallible.

This is a critical bit of understanding. Taking a rational balance between fear and saftey is something that many people fail at. Either they are very afraid, invariably with highly distorted ideas of what they should be afraid of, or they ignore the risks until a disaster happens. Thinking that the government should, or even can, protect us from all risks is as irrational as thinking the government shouldn't protect us from any at all.

The American people are safer since the attacks of 5 years ago. Safer than before, maybe, safer than way back, most certainly. But we're not just safer because the Homeland Security is watching out for us, or because of all the security measures that are now in place. We're safer because we are AWARE that this can happen again, and we are READY for it.

Actually we are probably less safe. The number of global terrorist attacks have been rising the entire time Bush has been in office. His botched invasions and simple minded foreign policy being a big part of the cause of this.

Combine that with the fact that many of the prevenitive measures taken in the US are a waste of money and that integration into the Dept of Homeland Security has weakened much of the existing support structure.

The end result is a rather ugly picture that suggests that the only reason there has not been another big attack in the US is that big attacks are rare.

Jay