While indulging in the guilty pleasure of reading a paperback murder mystery written in 1999, I was struck by two references to New York City that demonstrated how much has happened in the past six years. The first was when a character went to a restaurant’s bar to smoke a cigarette. The second stopped my reading cold: The main protagonist met her agent for dinner at Windows on the World.

I went to the doomed restaurant atop the World Trade Center only once, as an employee of the Vista Hotel, when I was treated to lunch as a winner of an art contest. I can’t help but wonder how many of the waiters, bus personnel, and cooks catering to the diners that day were also there the morning of September 11, 2001. All 73 employees on duty that morning were killed.

Last week, former Windows employees opened their own restaurant, Colors, on Lafayette Street. The owners have opted not to display reminders of their former place of employment and instead are concentrating on offering fare from the 22 countries members of the staff come from.

In my senior moments, I may forget names and faces, but I will never forget that awful September 11. The same cannot be said of so many reporters, columnists, and publishers in the left-wing press who demonstrate daily an amnesia that boggles the mind.

I think it’s time to refresh their memories of what happened to our city that beautiful late summer day. It’s time to break out the photographs of the workers holding hands and leaping to their deaths from the blazing towers. It’s time for them to listen to the audio of the bodies hitting the pavement one after another.

I wonder if any of these forgetful scribes remember the smell of decaying flesh emanating from the twisted metal rubble of the fallen towers. The weeks and months that followed were one of disbelief at the barbarism of an enemy that targeted innocent workers simply because they could. We were united at that point in recognizing that we were facing an evil unparalleled in our nation’s history. We also knew at the time who our enemy was. For some strange reason, the liberal establishment in the press and Hollywood has now decided that our enemy is President Bush.

It seems outlandish, but these Bush-haters consider our president more evil than a dictator responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of his fellow Iraqis. These liberals consider Mr. Bush more deadly than Osama bin Ladin. They have more respect for the so-called insurgents than for the brave men and women in our military fighting in the war zones.

I suggest they take a good look at the Daniel Pearl video showing the journalist being beheaded by these “insurgents.” They should also take a look at what the insurgents did to Nicholas Berg, a man who sympathized with their cause. They should note one thing about the kidnappers that is evident in these disgusting videos: They are all cowards.

I’d like to know where in the Koran it specifically says that in slaying the “infidels” one must wear a black mask to conceal one’s identity. There they are, though, hiding behind the black cloths while they pose with their assault weapons and butcher knives. Cowards.

Not one of these cravenly murderers measures even minutely up to Fabrizio Quattrocchi, an Italian hostage who refused to kneel as ordered by the captors who held a gun to his head. He stood and tried to remove the hood covering his head, saying, “I’ll show you how an Italian dies,” before the cowards shot him in the head. Needless to say that video was not widely broadcast on Al Jazeera.

It has become predictable to read the articles published in the New York Times, which is unfailingly critical of the president and the administration. This would be perfectly fine if the articles weren’t deliberately distorted to undermine any positive news of this administration. Bloggers have been exposing the journalistic bias of the Gray Lady for years, but in the last year this newspaper headed by Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. is being accused of actions bordering on treason. Revealing classified national security information deleterious to our wartime strategy is a serious charge and the Justice Department is finally looking into who’s responsible for the leaks. Here’s an even better question: “Whose side is the New York Times on?”

Bernard Goldberg ranks Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger as no. 2, right behind Michael Moore, in his book “100 People Who Are Screwing Up America.” Mr. Sulzberger “has probably done more than anyone to destroy the confidence of millions of ordinary Americans in the fairness and basic integrity of the so-called mainstream media,” Mr. Goldberg writes.

Those who choose to forget the past do so at their own peril.