My wife and I were on our honeymoon in Hawaii when the Twin Towers were hit. I was surprised by the US government's response - for days and days they did nothing, the "President" said nothing, while the public fear and hysteria built. Having lived in London when IRA bombs were going off on Tube Station trains every other week, I couldn't help comparing this with Margaret Thatcher's response (not that I liked HER!) when the IRA exploded a toilet she had just visited in a Brighton Beach hotel. She called a press conference, went straight into makeup and came out a few minutes later telling everybody to "Carry on as usual". The Bush administration's response appears to have been very calculated, very carefully orchestrated, and incredibly selfish. I think he will go down in history as a far, far greater evil than Nixon ever was, an ignominious turning point in the hisory of the USA.

The great pity is that, with the end of the Cold War, just a few years ago, America had an incredible opportunity to build a wondrous new future for the entire planet. But the America people were asleep to what was going on in the world. In their name, political and economic interests controlled the direction of the most powerful military and economic behometh the world has ever known, and THEIR interests have taken precedence over the US public's (busy watching Jerry Springer) and the protests from the rest of the civilised world.