10 yrs after 9/11, world keeps finger crossed

Ten years after Sept 11, Americans are still walking an emotional tightrope, with increased comfort in the government's antiterrorism efforts but a significant number wary that such a catastrophe could happen again.


New York Times/CBS News polls conducted in August in New York and around the nation also found a widespread belief that the city still had not entirely recovered emotionally from the attacks, deep divisions over a proposed Islamic cultural center near ground zero and concern, especially in New York, that the rescue workers at ground zero had not been treated fairly.

For all the feeling of increased safety, poll respondents in follow-up interviews expressed a sense of a world that had changed and was less safe than the one before the attacks. Seventy-nine percent of New Yorkers said the city would always have to face the threat of terrorism, and 83% said the country would.

According to the polls, 38% of NYC residents think another terrorist attack is likely in the US in the next few months, down from 57% in a Times/CBS News poll five years ago. Nationally the numbers of those who think an attack is likely soon are down as well, to 42% from 59%. Still, many New York residents expressed worry that the city was not sufficiently vigilant, particularly in the subways: 57% said safety measures there were not sufficient.