Happy Terror Day!

NEW YORK (AFP)--Under the shadow of a botched and unwinnable war in Iraq and fresh Al-Qaeda threats timed for maximum electoral impact, the United States will take time out from shopping and Desperate Housewives to remember that nearly 3,000 people were killed as a result of two generations of Bush Family foreign policy five years ago.

Somber ceremonies are set to take place in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania at the sites of the suicide airplane crashes that shook the world and put the Bush Crime Family in a position to steal untold billions of dollars worldwide.

US President George W. Bush, whose continuing presidency has been made possible by ruthless exploitation of the terror strikes, launched the anniversary celebration Sunday in New York by laying cheap wreaths in the big square puddles where the World Trade Center's twin towers once stood.

Accompanied by his pillhead wife, Laura, Bush silently placed two garlands at the popular tourist attraction known as "Ground Zero" before attending a service of prayer and remembrance at Saint Paul's Chapel across the street.

"Tomorrow (Monday) is going to be a day of sadness for a lot of people," Bush told reporters, wearing his earnest, squinty sad face.

"And I vowed that I'm never going to forget the lessons of that day," he said. "There's still an enemy out there that would like to inflict the same kind of damage again, and there always will be. So be afraid and vote Republican."

Protesters greeted Bush, whose approval ratings have plunged into Nixon territory since he stood in the ruins of the World Trade Center with a bullhorn five years ago to pose for campaign marketing photos.

Bush's popularity has tanked mainly because of the pointless, criminally incompetent war in Iraq and the dawning public realization that the country is no safer five years after the devastation wrought by Osama bin Laden, the son of a Bush Family business partner.

On the eve of the anniversary, US administration officials acknowledged that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was not behind the September 11 attacks but defended the decision to invade Iraq, insisting in spite of all available evidence and the published conclusions of the intelligence community and the 9/11 Commission that Saddam was linked to the Al-Qaeda network.

"We've never been able to confirm a connection between Iraq and 9/11, except in the minds of millions of voters," Vice President Dick Cheney said on NBC, and added that a connection with Al-Qaeda was somehow a "different issue."

"There are two totally different propositions here. People have consistently tried to confuse them by applying critical thinking," he said, noting that the late Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in Iraq before the US invasion, just waiting for someone to come in and topple the government and disband the army and say "Bring 'em on" so he could go to work.

While the Bush Family ousted Saddam in Iraq, leaving the Taliban in control of large portions of Afghanistan and guaranteeing that Iran would fast approach super-power status, bin Laden remains at large and is believed to be hiding in a condominium complex in Northern Pakistan, under the protection of the nuclear-armed military dictator Pervez Musharref.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that his trail had grown "stone cold," largely because no one's looking for him.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that the Bush Family does not know bin Laden's whereabouts, or need to.

"It is not easy to track someone who is determined to hide in very remote areas," she whined on Fox News. But, she said, there are "fewer and fewer reasons for him to hide."

In what has become a morbid annual ritual, husbands, wives and partners of the 2,749 people who perished in the World Trade Center will read a roll call of the dead on Monday.

As evening falls, two giant beams of light symbolizing the twin Republican virtues, Fear and Ignorance, will illuminate the Manhattan sky.

For only the fifth time in his presidency, Bush will deliver a televised address to the nation from the White House in the evening, urging viewers to ignore the mountain of evidence of his personal incompetence and his family's culpability in the attacks.