Have any of you above lost an actual relative, friend or even acquaintance to terrorism? I have. The same brand of terrorism that struck in the US in 2001 was tried in the US back in 1993, but the towers didn't fall and only 5 people died. It is the same brand that destroyed our embassies in Africa in 1998. It blew my dad to bits in 1983, in Beirut, the first embassy bombing. It blew several planes up in various places in the 1980's when it seemed to be slaughtering Americans wholesale overseas as well as raining down their body parts on unsuspecting other nationalities. Why think it began in 01? It's been a nuisance since those students took over the Tehran embassy in Nov. 1979. After that we all (embassy families) had terrorist training - how to run a roadblock, how to run a car off the road if it was trying to run you off the road, when to leap out of burning buildings and when not to... and it "didn't help one little bit, Barney." The gov't also gave everybody dip passports, even though we weren't diplomatic, so that the next time an embassy was taken over the terrorists couldn't tell the spooks from the rest of us. It's been a nuisance for about 2 decades, in other words. It's a nuisance that it takes hours to get through security instead of minutes, but I'll take the nuisance over the lack of security any day. And in Northern Ireland, Northern Spain, Southern France and elsewhere, anywhere people are fighting against the odds, it's been a nuisance for even longer. What makes Americans think they shouldn't be annoyed (is that the right verb for nuisiance?)?