MarkSilverberg

With all our attention focused on the millions of illegal, undocumented Mexican immigrants pouring over our southern border each year, we have paid scant attention to those who have chosen to hide in their midst; those who seek entry into the U.S. not to pursue the American dream…….but to destroy it.

Earlier this month, USA Today revealed that since 9/11, the National Security Agency (NSA) has been secretly assembling a massive database containing trillions of anonymous domestic telephone numbers voluntarily provided to it by three U.S. telecommunications giants - ATT, Verizon, and BellSouth. The program was designed to determine mathematical patterns that could pre-empt future terrorist attacks in America. The operation involved the collection of records of incoming and outgoing phone numbers that had been stripped of any identifying information or content.1 In short, the NSA program sought to use the phone call patterns of known terrorist suspects to locate others who were suspected of being part of a larger network seeking to harm Americans or American interests.

Whether or not Zacharias Moussauoi receives the death penalty for his involvement in 9/11, his guilty plea precludes a trial that would bring forth embarrassing facts that would place our legal, security, intelligence and immigration services into disrepute.

The tragedies of 9/11 are just two years old and already we are beginning to forget what happened and why. 9/11 should have been a wake-up call to the Western world that there were dangerous stirrings developing in the Middle East that, if left unattended, would come knocking on our door.

According to Richard Haass of the State Departmentís Policy Planning Staff, "in a world in which borders count for less and less, it should come as little surprise that terrorism has come to America. Our cities are the new battlefields, and we are the combatants."

Alan Jackson, a songwriter, recently penned an eloquent poem describing how each of us felt on 9/11 – that sense of personal loss, that need to hold someone that we loved, that urge to cry out in fear, despair, anguish and anger when the world stopped turning that September day.

On a large church, just north of what used to be the World Trade Center, a large floodlight, and a long dusty banner hung from a church steeple. It read… “Follow the Light…Home” extolling weary New Yorkers, numb from the shock of the devastation, to make their way through the dust and destruction to come to the church for shelter, food, medicine and consolation as the long hours of waiting dragged on.