The Islamic militants and Muslim extremists who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States of America are, in a word, scum.

They undertook a vile and despicable act in the name of a religion which by their very acts they have defiled, and they are now paying the ultimate price, not in Allah's paradise, but in the placeless void of eternal damnation.

Did they get some attention for their so-called cause? Absolutely. But at what price? Because now they are being hunted down and methodically exterminated like the human cockroaches that they are. We have 2,996* reasons to keep going until every last one of them is gone, no matter how long it takes.

They succeeded in one stroke in uniting the entire world against their perverted and pointless 'holy war,' which is nothing more than these human gutter scum lashing out at a culture and a people which embrace all of things they find so frightening: freedom – of religion, of thought, of speech; the fundamental right to exist as your own person; and the sacred right of self-determination.

Will they keep trying to use this extreme perversion of their faith to hurt us? Undoubtedly. But will they win?

No.

Because, in the end, the human soul cannot bear to be shackled to extremist dogma and ritualized practices which seek to tear down the very things which make us human beings.

So go ahead and try again, you self-deluded 'children of Allah.' You may win a battle here, a skirmish there.

But you have already lost the war.

* Victim total as of Sept. 11, 2004: New York City, 2,772; Washington, DC, 184; Pennsylvania, 40.