We can’t say for a certainty whether the memory of the media is short or merely selective. But it is amazing how certain salient points can completely vanish when considering federal involvement in past indiscretions.

What sent us meandering on this walk down memory lane was an exhaustive three-part series of articles that ran this Sunday through Tuesday in the New York Times. The topic was Saudi terrorist Osama Bin Ladin and his network of murderers for Mohammed attempting to turn the entire world into a badly scripted, theocratic theme park.

Of course, we all want to live in "Koran Land" where women cannot be educated, where playing cards and watching TV are illegal and men must wear beards, or else.

And consider the inducements that are laid before these culture warriors for Allah. If you die a martyr’s death during a Jihad (Holy War), you are guaranteed a ticket to Muslim heaven and free rein with all the beautiful virgins you could ever want. Even if they can’t spell their last names. Woo-hoo!

No wonder Osama found no lack of willing accomplices ready to blow up a few buildings and sink some ships for the Gipper…or should I say…zipper?

Yes, we clearly see that Mr. Bin Ladin and his merry mujahadeen are neither nice people nor folks to be trifled with.

If anything would justify the existence of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, it would be the suspicion that your new next door neighbor who works nights at the 7-11 might be mixing up a fresh new batch of fuel oil bombs in the basement. Talk about your plunging real estate values!

Now, we get to the selective memory portion of our story. We should all remember the World Trade Center bombing in New York City that took six lives and injured more than a thousand more. The terrorists behind that nightmare were linked by authorities to none other than Osama Bin Ladin. But the latest New York Times series on the history and goals of his radical fringe group completely omits one important truth.

Back in October of 1993, the same New York Times was reporting that one of the Egyptians arrested in connection with the bombing was actually a government informant. Worse, he was the one called upon to mix the chemicals that blew up the building. Worst of all, his government handlers refused his plea that he be allowed to add a chemical to the mixture that would have made the device inert…that is…totally harmless.

The gentleman in question even kept taped copies of the phone conversations with his US government handlers, just in case something were to go wrong, which it quite obviously did…and in a very big way!

While we must admit for the sake of fairness that we may never know all the cases where things went right and massive tragedy was averted through the efforts of our alphabet soup agencies, we must not ignore the cases where events have gone tragically wrong.

All it takes is a World Trade Center or an Oklahoma City every few years for us to wonder whether we could or should be getting more for our tax dollars.

Why did the New York Times lose sight of this most important lesson?

We suspect there are relatives of at least six former New York City residents who will never forget.

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