I, Barry Lank, accept responsibility for letting the terrorists get through on 9/11.

President Bush won’t take responsibility for it, or even allow a smooth investigation of it. President Clinton won’t accept responsibility either. The political risks are too much for both of them.

Only Richard Clarke, a man we did not elect, apologized to us all and bore the burden of his actions. And since you didn’t elect me either, I guess I have the luxury of owning up to the problem.

So. I am sorry that I, too, did not see 9/11 coming. How did I miss it? When it happened, I’d spent five years on the East Coast, covering local politics, drug arrests and riotously long school board meetings. All the clues were there someplace.

And yes, like the president, “had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people.” It was worth it for Bush to say he’d do that and for me to say I would, too, because, who knows? Maybe some people wouldn’t.

Also, Saudi Arabia has never publicly taken responsibility for raising a group of its native sons to hijack our planes and use them to kill as many people as possible. So I’ll jump in and field that one, too:

It’s my fault they don’t have decent opportunities for their young people, and that, in lieu of a future, they’ve fed their next generation a high-fat, low protein diet of paranoid, anti-American, anti-Jewish lies. That’s all me. What was I thinking?

And while I’m here, nobody has laid claim to global warming either, or wants to admit it’s real. So let me just say that it’s really a problem, and it’s all me. As some of you may have heard the chief issue is that too much carbon dioxide has affected the ozone layer. That’s me, exhaling.

I’m really sorry about all this. If I’d known that an angry generation of disenfranchised Arabs were going to attack this country on Sept. 11, 2001, at about 9 a.m., or that the planet’s temperature would increase, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power I could find lying around my apartment to protect the American people. As it stands, someone should apologize for all of it. So yeah, it’s my fault.