I believe 9-11 cost our economy a one day hit of 2 Trillion, financially speaking.
Exerpted from the Asia Times, 2 Feb 05:
The Homeland Security State
Asia Times | February 2, 2005
By Nick Turse
THE MILITARY HALF
If you're in the United States and reading this on the Internet, the Federal Bureau of Information (FBI)may be spying on you at this very moment.
Under provisions of the USA Patriot (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act, the Department of Justice has been collecting e-mail and IP (Internet protocol, a computer's unique numeric identifier) addresses, without a warrant, using trap-and-trace surveillance devices ("pen-traps"). Now, the FBI, Justice's principle investigative arm, may be monitoring the web-surfing habits of Internet users - also without a search warrant - that is, spying on you with no probable cause whatsoever.
In the wake of September 11, 2001, with the announcement of a potentially never-ending "war on terror" and in the name of "national security", the administration of President George W Bush embarked on a global campaign that left behind it two war-ravaged states (with up to 100,000 civilian dead in just one of them); an offshore "archipelago of injustice" replete with "ghost jails", and a seemingly endless series of cases of torture, abuse and the cold-blooded murder of prisoners. That was abroad. In the US, too, things have changed as America became "the Homeland" and an already powerful and bloated national security state developed a civilian corollary fed by fear-mongering, partisan politics, and an insatiable desire for governmental power, turf and budget.
A host of disturbing and mutually reinforcing patterns have emerged in the resulting new Homeland Security State - among them: a virtually unopposed increase in the intrusion of military, intelligence, and "security" agencies into the civilian sector of US society; federal-government abridgment of basic rights; denials of civil liberties on flimsy or previously illegal premises; warrantless sneak-and-peak searches; the wholesale undermining of privacy safeguards (including government access to library circulation records, bank records, and records of Internet activity); the greater empowerment of secret intelligence courts (such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court) that threaten civil liberties; and heavy-handed federal and local law-enforcement tactics designed to chill, squelch, or silence dissent.
While it's true that most Americans have yet to feel the brunt of such policies, select groups, including Muslims, Arab immigrants, Arab-Americans and anti-war protesters have served as test subjects for a potential Homeland Security juggernaut that, if not stopped, will only expand....