It isn't the near universal belief in the government's version of the OBL saga that concerns me. What I find more worrying is that the moral framework is believed in. In former times we had things like 'innocent until proven guilty' - a moral code. Then some office blocks get brought down by some crazy civilians on some civilian airliners in a couple of the larger U.S. cities and then, as if by magic, quaint ideas like 'innocent until proven guilty' get to be completely forgotten. Recently some Labour politician was 'lynched' by the media for suggesting that OBL deserved a fair trial. A fair trial - e.g. court of law rather than government assassination - should be de-facto, yet it isn't, and anyone who steps out of line with that might as well write 'terrorist' on their forehead.
That was the real effect of 9/11 attacks, and this is the goal of actual terrorism. The Two Towers were only a tool, the death toll was so small it doesn't really matter. The US gets several WTC worth of deaths anually in traffic accidents alone.
What the 9/11 attack did is damage the core of Western principles and send the entire population of US into state of paranoia. The massive overreaction of US killed orders of magnitude more people than died in the attack and it is us, not terrorists, who are danger to our own freedoms.
Innocent until proven guilty is for accused citizens acting and bound by an existing legal framework. It does't extend to anyone who may pick up arms against you. You don't set up a trial for every enemy soldier on the battlefield just to make sure he's really the one that shot your comrade and tried to shoot you; you kill them first. Assassinations against military leaders engaged in active war is an extension in time and space of this concept.
