Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, an Associated Press poll says we Americans are as fearful of becoming victims of terrorism as we are of losing our jobs or having our homes burglarized. Some of those fears are expressed by our readers on the next page. Since 9/11, security forces have prevented another major attack on U.S. soil, but terrorist attacks from Madrid to Jakarta have made it obscenely clear extremists can strike anywhere in the world. Even if we can never be 100 percent safe, there is still much we can do to make the world safer from terrorist attack.

REMEMBERING 9/11

• How our lives have changed • Security funding builds center here • Citizen involvement is terrorism defense • Al-Qaida video mined for clues • 3 years later, parents to recite names • A list of memorial events EDITORIAL PAGE • Securing the homeland 3 years later • Clinton might have stopped 9/11 attacks • Letters: Are we safer three years later?

Congress needs to authorize 9/11 commission recommendations on restructuring the nation's 15 intelligence agencies, the intelligence director and congressional oversight functions, which are now spread across too many committees. It will take disciplined negotiation to sort out competing bills and the president's proposals. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is co-chairing the Senate task force charged with resolving oversight turf battles on the Senate side. The first meeting begins next week. House leaders have yet to decide how they will look at reorganizing House oversight.

The 9/11 commission identified grave intelligence failures before and after 9/11, and warned that even CIA and FBI reforms, a national intelligence center and a new "intelligence czar" will not succeed if congressional oversight does not also improve. If there was ever a national security issue that deserves a bipartisan, statesmanlike response from Congress, this is it.

President Bush ordered Homeland Security officials to make sure we are prepared for a terrorist attack like the school takeover last week in Beslan, Russia. That's prudent, but terrorists are constantly modifying their methods. To prepare for the next attack rather than the last one, U.S. security teams need to learn to think like terrorists.

Thursday, Vice President Dick Cheney told the Enquirer Editorial Board that after Russia's airplane bombings and the Beslan slaughter, some Europeans are reassessing the assumption that if they stay out of Iraq, they won't get hit. Russia stayed out and got hit anyway. U.S. leaders should capitalize on that growing global recognition, and strengthen bonds with European and Arab nations.

Even Mideast Islamic commentators, repelled by the slaughter of innocents, have begun to challenge fellow Muslims: Where are the fatwas (religious condemnations) against Osama bin Laden? Against the terrorists in Beslan? If we are to build a safer world, it will take all of us, Christians, Jews, Muslims, nonbelievers, to denounce and defeat the common enemy.