It always amazes me how particularly US politicians forget when they want to. Recently I was furnished with the following list of quotations which are eye-opening to say the least as we Stateside approach a new election and some stark choices, notably in terms of national security.

Politicians will always be opportunists. Do Americans really want to play roulette with national security? Windsock politicians do not make for good long-term strategists - the kind of long-term strategy the US and the world is begging for in the security sphere.

With President Bush-bashing still a national pastime, it's notable how much international terrorism has been forgotten, and how little credit the president has received for keeping Americans safe.

This is a difficult issue for me. I didn't vote for President Bush – twice. And as a human-rights law professor, the events at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, along with various elements of the Patriot Act and the National Security Agency's wiretapping of Americans, are all greatly troubling to me.

Yet I live in Manhattan and I was present on Sept. 11, 2001 – admittedly 100 blocks from the murder scene, but I was here, trembling along with the rest of America. Remember those days?