America should go "not abroad in search of monsters to destroy...She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit."
John Quincy Adams...the Fourth of July 1821

This book is for my parents, Meredith and William Mayer, and my grandparents Mary and Allan Nevins, who passed on to me a love of American history and an admiration for those who have fought to fulfill the promise of the country's ideals.

If anyone in America should have been prepared to respond to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it ought to have been Vice President Dick Cheney. For decades before the planes hit the Pentagon and World Trade Center, Cheney had been secretly practicing for doomsday.

As he put it, "Fear and anxiety were exploited by zealots and fools."