You see, I need to be reminded all the time or I begin to slip into some sort of reality dimension that makes you face the world without illusion — or delusion, for that matter.

Just when I’m about to start screaming because of how matter-of-factly the day’s death count in Iraq is announced in the news, I listen to our politicians who reassure me that if it weren’t for our actions in Iraq the world would be more dangerous and we would likely be facing another 9/11 attack, five years after the first one.

Just when I’m about to start crying because another American soldier was killed in Iraq, leaving a tearful family to stand around his flag-draped casket, I am calmed by Donald Rumsfeld, who assures me that it is our way of life at stake here and those 2,600 men and women have not died in vain.

Just when I’m about to run to the golf course to forget how we blew our chance to make the world a better place after those horrific attacks of 2001, I am frozen by the government’s latest rhetoric — this time about Islamic fascism being the real enemy.

What about Osama bin Laden and his gang, I ask. They are the planners of 9/11 and they are still out there five years later, drafting more attacks. Ask your government why, after five years, it still didn’t get the top dog.

A month after 9/11, we bombed and invaded Afghanistan because its government was allegedly allowing al Qaida to run terrorist training camps. We deposed the rulers and installed pro-U.S. ones. Now, nearly half a decade later, there are still terrorists training there, there’s an active insurgency and poppy/opium production is at record levels.

Then, rather than focusing most of our attention on terrorists, we became obsessed with Saddam Hussein and Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. And even the reason the government used to justify the invasion, those weapons of mass destruction, turned out to be a lie.

It made so little sense, under the rubric of a 9/11 response, to attack Iraq that many Americans to this day believe that Saddam must have had something to do with the events of that infamous day.

Three and a half years after the invasion, we’re still bogged down in a civil war of our own making with dozens of Iraqis being killed daily and our own death count still mounting. So much for freedom and democracy.

Most Americans have begun to understand that Iraq was a deadly and costly mistake, and even many of the lawmakers who four years ago handed the president the power and the blank check to invade are saying they’ve seen enough and want out.

It must be Rumsfeld’s fault, they charge, still clinging to the idea that the war was justified, after the fact, as part of the fight against the global network of terrorism, but just not fought correctly.

But the blame goes right to the top. Rumsfeld answers to the president, who is out giving lip-service to his failed policies because so many Republican hawks are facing re-election battles.

On Tuesday, Bush made the embarrassing mistake of bringing up bin Laden, and made the inane remark that a withdrawal from Iraq would propel the terrorist into the mold of another Hitler.

Bin Laden had no idea we would invade Iraq when he was in the midst of 9/11 planning. The fundamentalist terrorist didn’t like Saddam, who is secular. The president is groping at nonsense in his attempts to justify a war that is beyond reason and obviously has no connection to 9/11.

If the president today believes bin Laden continues to be such a dangerous threat, then why haven’t we "got ’em," as he promised in the days following 9/11.

As we approach the fifth anniversary of those horrendous terrorists attacks of 9/11, Americans should pause to reflect on the innocent people who died that day and how the course of American and world history has changed as a result.

But they also should think back to the months before 9/11 and seriously question if the U.S. has done what it could to quell the spread of terrorism and make the world a safer place.

And just when I’m about to think that maybe we’ve done our best, I get so angry because I realize our government has failed us on both counts.

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Cary Brunswick, managing editor of The Daily Star, can be reached at (607) 432-1000, ext. 217, or cary@thedailystar.com.