"[D]efeating terrorism must remain one of our intelligence community's core objectives, as widely dispersed terrorist networks will present one of the most serious challenges to US national security interests at home and abroad.".

             DCI Porter Goss, testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence--.

             February 16, 2005.

             Nine days after the horrendous bombing of the Trade Towers on September 11, 2001, President George Bush addressed the Joint Session of Congress and the American People told the watching public that "we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom.  Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution.  Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it.  I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people.".

             As a result of this war on terrorism, the United States government created the Department of Homeland Security, the most comprehensive reorganization of the Federal government in a half-century. It consolidates 22 agencies and 180,000 employees in a single agency dedicated to protecting America from terrorism. The question remains: Can even this many agencies and employees protect America from a terrorist war? The answer is questionable: as educator Noam Chomsky stated: . "terrorism works. It doesn't fail. It works. Violence usually works. That's world history.".

             The attacks of September 11 forever ended the idea that the United States could somehow be different from the rest of the earth and be unscathed. Americans can no longer foster the illusion that what happens to the rest of the world cannot affect them as well.

             The bottom line, says Michael Scheuer, a CIA analyst who wrote the book Imperial Hubris under the name "anonymous," "While the 11 September attack was a human-economic calamity, Washington's failure to have its military ready for a crippling next-day attack on al-Qaeda turned it into catastrophe.