It is impossible to return to New York, where I lived from 1989-1994, and not think about its vulnerabilities. We know that it is a target, yet it has somehow escaped terror since 9/11/01. Is it doing something right? Is the crack team from Homeland Security, backed by the full financial resources of the United States, holding the fort together? Or is it simply lucky, and the honeymoon of false security may soon be ending?

I asked my friend “Katrina” about how well the largest city in the US could survive and respond to a nuclear attack or even a coordinated bunch of suicide bombings. She really didn’t have an answer. A dirty bomb in Times Square, a bus exploding in the Lincoln Tunnel, even a suicide martyr in Macy’s…all horrific and amplified by the media and our own dismal imaginations.

In reality, New York is still run extremely poorly. For example, I had to take a train from Northern NJ to Penn Station and transfer at the new Secaucus station. I walked off the first leg, which stopped at Secaucus, into a public hall where there was not a single sign directing me to the “Penn Station” inbound train. When I finally found the train, and boarded it, it went to Penn Station but never announced that we had arrived. If this had been an emergency, the speakers would not have functioned.

The highways around New York City, the Cross Bronx, the Deegan, the NJ Routes 3, 17, 80, 46…are among the most decripit, dangerous and overcrowded in the nation. Would they function well in a mass evacuation?

The subways are again covered in graffiti..are we to believe that they can detect explosives when they can’t even stop vandals?

At the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, two young policeman are eyeballing incoming trucks. Is this our version of the “Green Zone” or is it visible evidence of the appalling lack of security in New York City? Maybe Oz is watching us from behind the curtain, and we should feel OK. Or maybe Toto is a terrorist and knows the truth about our anemic domestic defenses.

When Bush allowed the Dubai company to potentially run the port, Senator Schumer (D-NY) and others immediately jumped to fight the deal. Maybe they are right, that the ports are unprotected and security woeful. But are they doing enough to right the eternal wrongs that plague the physical condition of New York City?

The hourglass is running of sand and we are really in the eleventh hour, and all the other cliches we can think of are quite true and absolutely damning.