MY PRAYERS AND LOVE TO THE FAMILIES, FRIENDS AND LOVED ONES OF THE VICTIMS OF 9/11 and all of the terrorst attacks of the past 5 years. YOU WILL ALL BE FOREVER IN MY HEART

In the year leading up to 9/11 2001, Osama Bin Laden was interviewed by media outlets around the world (including the USA) and released several videotapes.

In them he said the following:

-We are going to fight the U.S. to get them out of Saudi Arabia

-We are going to fight the U.S. until they stop meddling in Middle Eastern affairs (propping up corrupt and criminal regimes in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, The Gulf States et. al)

-We are going to do something to the U.S. that will ensure life there will never be the same again

-We are going to strike so that we can start a worldwide conflict with the U.S. on several fronts, eventually draining them of their fortune and will

And yet Condi Rice still went on TV and said "we could have never imagined this."

On that morning four years ago today I stood mere blocks away and watched as the planes hit, the towers fell and the images that once only existed in movies became the cinema of my life. I walked almost the length of Manhattan to get home that night, one of lucky ones who still could walk home that night, and breathed in the fumes of death and destruction that while I lay in bed shaking.

I waded through the dust and debris to help were I could in the following weeks and where have we come to since then?

Since then, the U.S. is virtually out of Saudi Arabia, the U.S. is involved in a long and bloody war of attrition in Iraq (just the type of war OBL won against the Russians in Afghanistan) the U.S. has NOT been the same since 9/11 and terrorist attacks worldwide this year were the highest number ever in history.

On the world stage are the US's clear limitations, its folly, its weaknesses and its misguided ideological bent.

From today's New York Times Magazine:

"Terrorists have staged spectacular attacks, killing thousands, in Tunisia, Bali, Mombasa, Riyadh, Istanbul, Casablanca, Jakarta, Madrid, Sharm el Sheik and London, to name only the best known. Last year, they mounted 651 "significant terrorist attacks," triple the year before and the highest since the State Department started gathering figures two decades ago.

We have managed to show ourselves, our friends and most of all our enemies the limits of American power. Instead of fighting the real war that was thrust upon us on that incomprehensible morning four years ago, we stubbornly insisted on fighting a war of the imagination, an ideological struggle that we defined not by frankly appraising the real enemy before us but by focusing on the mirror of our own obsessions. And we have finished - as the escalating numbers of terrorist attacks, the grinding Iraq insurgency, the overstretched American military and the increasing political dissatisfaction at home show - by fighting precisely the kind of war they wanted us to fight."

So, is Osama Bin Ladin winning his war against America, I am not sure a definitive answer can be given now, but it sure seems like he is.

While we have spent $300 billion on the war in Iraq, China and India have spent $300 billion on infrastructure and education. While we have committed our troops to Iraq, our country is falling apart and unprotected at home, while we talk of "freedom", real freedoms are further curtailed here every day. While we fight what is really an intelligence war with guns, the rest of the world is catching up to the U.S. economically, educationally, militarily and culturally.

While the government has failed us on the economy, in foreign policy and in protecting the homeland, Americans shrug because they are more interested in winning the cultural and social wars (and the conservative are winning it big time,

If the U.S wakes up one day to find itself a defeated power, it will only have to look back to its irrational, myopic and self destructive "War on Terror" to understand what happened.

And for this, we can put the full responsibility and blame on the neoconservatie movement headed by the Bush administration.

God help us all.