Who can forget that video of Osama bin Laden that emerged in November 2001 and showed the mastermind of the attacks on America chortling with other conspirators about his surprise that the Twin Towers fell down? Who can forget their glee at the unexpected success of their maniacal jihad against our country? Now some readers have angrily complained that the planners of the International Freedom Center, which would look out on the memorial at ground zero, are proposing exhibits on slavery and the Holocaust and have forgotten what 9/11 is all about.

The other day I called Richard Tofel, president and chief operating officer of the Freedom Center, who said the rumors are false. The Freedom Center, he said, is designed to inspire people to put an end to hatred and intolerance. He referred me to its Web site, http://www.ifcwtc.org, for its mission statement:

“The IFC’s highest aims are to inspire people and engage them in service. It will tell the stories of Nazism – but also of the Greatest Generation that defeated it; of the Soviet gulag – but also of the courageous dissidents who helped bring it down; of Jim Crow segregation – but also Martin Luther King, who helped stamp it out. Inspiring people through these stories to do freedom’s work today is our best long-run defense against more 9/11s.”

When I told Mr. Tofel that some of my correspondents suspect the center will somehow be an instrument to blame America for the attacks of September 11, he said: “That’s complete nonsense.” He explained that the center plans to show that “America is the shining light in the global history of freedom.”

While Mr. Tofel may have dispelled my concern about the International Freedom Center, I’ve always felt the Twin Towers should be rebuilt. That bin Laden video – the transcript is available on the CNN Web site – reveals the enemy we’re still facing.

Said Al Qaeda’s leader: “We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all…. Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for.”

So Osama bin Laden wasn’t quite the engineering genius that some of his left-wing admirers have touted him to be. He is merely a madman consumed with hatred for all those who are not true believers in his kind of Islam. Make no mistake: He hates all of us. Here’s more of his rant:

“I heard someone on Islamic radio who owns a school in America say: ‘We don’t have time to keep up with the demands of those who are asking about Islamic books to learn about Islam.”

So Islamic schools in America consider 9/11 quite a coup? One of the sheikhs in the room with Osama bin Laden quoted another cleric as saying that this is jihad and the victims at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon “were not innocent people.”

“He swore to Allah. … Thank Allah America came out of its caves,” the sheikh said. “We hit her the first hit and the next one will hit her with the hands of the believers, the good believers, the strong believers.”

The next one? For those fanatics, attacks like that on the World Trade Center are sources of pride. September 11 is a day to rejoice. In 2002, in a London conference, a Muslim leader, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, was quoted as saying: “The people at this conference look at September 11 like a battle, as a great achievement by the mujahideen against the evil superpower.”

How satisfying it must be to these jihadists to see ground zero become a memorial shrine to their feat of madness. I say, rebuild the Twin Towers bigger and stronger. September 11 struck at the heart of our entire nation. It’s taking much too long to repair that wound.

Every time the Staten Island Ferry approaches Manhattan, our wounded skyline haunts me. It’s nearly four years and I still cannot look at a jet plane flying near the city without remembering that day and waiting for the next shoe to drop.