…and the eighth anniversary of the heinous attack on our nation by the evil forces of the death cult known as Islam.

Normally, “anniversary” denotes something positive, the date of something wonderful, a first meeting, a marriage, something pleasantly or lovingly memorable.

This anniversary does not.

Eight years.

Americans are almost 3,000 days removed from the Sept. 11 terror attacks that toppled the World Trade Center and killed 3,000 people — nearly the same amount of time it took al Qaeda plotters to regroup from their failed bid to take down the Twin Towers in 1993.

While former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani says not a day goes by that he doesn’t think of Sept. 11, for most Americans, that crisp, sunny morning of horror seems a lifetime ago, and, frankly, something they’d rather forget.

We must not forget, for the threat of repetition, perhaps not via the same method as the last time, not only still exists, but the satanic beast spawned by Islam that perpetrated that horror has grown exponentially, its tentacles multiplying, franchise-style, each with its own autonymous license to commit mass murder in the name of Allah.

Despite counter-terrorism successes and the absence of a major and dramatic attack in the West, the security threat posed by radical Islamists remains real and dynamic, as al-Qaeda mutates into an increasingly unstructured but no less dangerous entity, according to experts monitoring the organization.

As Americans and others around the world mark the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders continue to elude security forces and intelligence services.

But the threat facing the U.S. and its allies goes far beyond the Saudi fugitive and his coterie, to extremists embracing al-Qaeda’s ideology but largely operationally independent, a situation that complicates efforts to anticipate and disrupt plots.

Over the year since the last 9/11 anniversary, such terrorists have killed hundreds of people in attacks including those targeting the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, and luxury hotels in Jakarta.

“Today, the primary terrorist threat to our country’s interests – persons aligned with al-Qaeda – has evolved from different but related groups into a more coherent movement under a common ideology,” Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess said Thursday.

“Top leaders simply announce their priorities, which the group’s members and allies may interpret and execute against targets of their own choice,” he said in an address at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Burgess said these methods enable “a span of terrorist violence across the world that is unprecedented in its unity of vision, regardless of the degree to which the overall command and control is splintered.”

“Hundreds of attacks every year are committed by militants sanctioned by or under the name of al-Qaeda,” he said.

As the Muslim population continues to grow here in the United States, I believe that so does the possibility — hell, probability, of further attacks.

Look at all the other places in the world where the Muslim percentages of the overall populations are high, outside, of course, those countries ruled by Islamic governments.

Almost all of them are hotbeds of terrorist activity, for the Muslims therein realize that their numbers are strong enough to afford them the chance, through their historically bloody methodology, to impose their fascistic brand of religion, politics and social order on the unwilling that constitute the majorities of these places. To force them to submit, which is what Islam means.

The United States has only been spared further attacks due to the diligence of the Bush Administration in preventing them, the efforts of the FBI, our various intelligence agencies and our brave military personnel overseas who fight Islamofascism tooth and nail.

President Obama has vowed the United States “will not falter” in the pursuit of al-Qaida.

Obama has distanced himself from many of the anti-terror policies of former President George W. Bush, but his remarks recalled Bush’s speech to Congress in the immediate aftermath of the attacks: “We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail.”

Right. Barack Hussein Obama has promised all sorts of things he has made transparently plain he has no intention of delivering on, while insisting that he will. We, the People, he believes, are very stupid, indeed.

Let’s just hope that on this one issue, he keeps his word so that we do not have another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and that he is able to “rally the world” to the cause of destroying Islamic terrorism, root and branch, everywhere in the world it rears its head.

That said, my prayers go out to all those who died on 11 September 2001 as victims and as those who sacrificed their lives in the course of their brave, selfless efforts to save others.

My condolences and prayers, also, to the families and friends of those lost on that terrible day in Manhattan, at the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania.