EDITORIAL RELIVING 9-11 WILL WE BE BETTER PREPARED NEXT TIME AROUND?

ASIDE from the horror, for most of us, the dominant emotion associated with 9-11 is shock. But over the past three years, as life returned to ``normal,'' that shock gradually dissipated.

Until last Thursday, that is.

The memories of that awful event - and that excruciating sense of shock - returned in full force when the 9-11 Commission released its harrowing account of exactly what happened that day.

Each of us remembers where we were when the news first broke, how clueless and helpless we felt with each dreadful news update. Little did we know that officials at the highest levels of government - with access to armies, bureaucracies and classified intelligence - were every bit as clueless and helpless as the rest of us.

At the Federal Aviation Administration, controllers were unable to keep track of where the planes were, let alone which ones had been hijacked.

At NORAD, the nation's air-defense experts were unable to scramble jets on time to shoot down any of the hijacked airliners before they met their targets.

Even the White House was receiving false information, with Vice President Dick Cheney believing that two of the planes had been shot down on his orders.

The commission avoided assigning specific blame, and it's easy to see why. The errors, the lack of communication, the slow-footedness, were systemic, afflicting all of our government.

We simply weren't prepared - not even close.

To quote the commission's report: ``On the morning of 9-11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen. What ensued was the hurried attempt to create an improvised defense by officials who had never encountered or trained against the situation they faced.''

And the improvised defense wasn't up to the task at hand.

That was part of the shock. Whether through arrogance or optimism, incompetence or naivete, few Americans - even those paid to anticipate such things - ever imagined the country being attacked in this way.

But that was then.

No one can still be so arrogant or optimistic to believe that America is not at risk. No one can still be so naive, and there's no longer any room for such incompetence.

Washington was unprepared for 9-11, but how is it doing now?

Will the government be ready if - or when - the next attack hits?

Having done its job exposing what went wrong, the commission's work now must give work to our elected officials, who must demonstrate that they've done and continue to do all they can to make America safer.

There can be no higher priority for our local, state and national governments at this time. Reliving the shock of 9-11 ought to make that clear.