Open Thread Friday

Have you forgotten? I haven't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdznv9Q6o9s

My local excuse for a newspaper (Knoxville News Sentinel) had an editorial this morning that ended with "citizens of this great nation can perhaps best honor the memory {of those who died) if, eight years from now, we can say we helped fight terrorism by not fighting so much with each other." The editorial hinted fighting wars on foreign soil might not be as effective as good intelligence and detective work.

They never bothered to make that call during the last administration.

It's seems our president is now once again fighting a 9-10 investigation on terrorism.

FBI first. And another Gorelik wall.

There was a line in Wouk's "Winds of War" that haunts me to this day. It was after Pearl Harbor and one of the characters remarked, "now the two yellow races will have to fight."

It was the first time I realized America is the kind of nation that won't stick up for itself unless absolutely forced to.

On 9-11, the radical Islamofascists blew up two symbols of America, our Pentagon and would have hit the capitol or the WH had the brave people on United not brought down the plane. Our retaliation was a "conventional type" war in AFghanistan and Iran making every effort not to hurt anyone. Hell, our Democrats and other enemies of the country even want us to forgive the ones we captured and have in Gitmo.

What should we have done? We should have taken out THEIR symbols: Mecca and Medina.

I was at work in Clearwater, FL. when all hell broke loose. We were stuck trying to get news from one radio. We had no TV. None of our cell phones could get through to anyone. When I got home, I hit the news. I taped what I saw, afraid that we would forget, or, more correctly, be helped into forgetting by someone's politics. I'll watch the tape again tonight, like I try to do each anniversary to remember the smoke, the flying office paperwork like tickertape in a parade from hell; the jumpers clasping hands, the gray dust and the firetrucks and Father Judge and Shanksville, the legislators acting with unity and now proud to sing our national anthem. I'll recall how I wondered how long it would be before the divisions and partisanship returned. (Six months was the answer.)

I was living in England at the time. I turned on the News a minute before the second plane hit the second tower. My baby was 1 year old. My eldest 3yrs. We watched events unfold all day in a confused haze.

It was so hard not being near my fellow Americans in the aftermath of 9-11. There was a void in my life; a feeling in the pit of my stomach; a sadness that I am sure lasted 2 years. It felt like the murder of a friend. It felt like grief.

What a tragic, tragic day. God Bless all those who lost their lives.

We can not stop this from happening again by apologizing.

thank you
i hadn't ever seen this

I will never forget that day. I remember it like it was yesterday.

I was a Sergeant on Sept 11th 2001. I was with a slice element of C Co. 8-101st AVN REGT that was preparing to go on a Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) rotation at Ft. Polk, LA the following month. The soldiers I was with that day all seemed to have the same feeling:

Send us. We’re 90% packed and ready. We’re the lucky ones in this country. We get to go do something about this.

Two of my soldiers were directly affected by the attack. One’s father was a Command Sergeant Major at the Pentagon. He wound up in the hospital, but lived. The other had a brother-in-law that was at the World Trade Center. He didn’t.

I went home late that night and told my wife that if I had the opportunity I was going to volunteer to go.

That's beautiful. I am going to add it to my blog. Thank you for sharing that.

Thank you.

A truly tragic day for America.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9AL4BC85...

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9AL4HDG0...

And we have a person in the White House that has a schedule so busy he hasn't time to visit Ground Zero, so sends the VP instead.
Must be afraid of offending his Muslim 'friends'.

Was working on Madison and 55th that day – our entire office was in shock, then crying; at about 11am, 3 of us left the office for Queens where we lived – no trains, just a will to get home and be out of Manhattan. As we got to 2nd Ave. & the 59th St. Bridge we saw thousands of people walking uptown, as we crossed the bridge so many stopped to look downtown at the smoke – oh my Lord! We found a bus and fought through huge crowds to get on to get into the heart of Queens (not really knowing where we were going) – most were in shock-as we're driving the irony of seeing a poster with the Towers was just too much. Finally, we ended up deep in Queens; called my best friend to ask her husband to pick us up to drive us home; asked her if she knew how her brother-in-law, Carl, was (a fireman in Manhattan) and said he was ok; got home to Jamaica Estates (and for the next few days all you could smell was smoke and taste ash – it was awful); found out a few days later that my friend's brother-in-law, Carl, was missing – apparently as soon as he heard about the attack he headed towards the scene, as so many first responders did, and was one of those who tried to help, never to be heard from again. I realized so many of us have horrific stories of those who perished. I did not know Carl that well, but I know his family and friends will miss him so very much – what gallantry and honor they all had in NYC, PA and DC. I write this in his memory and the memory of all who died that day in this horrible event. God Bless us America – thanks for letting me vent on this day of remembrance!

We must stay on the watch. And remember we cannot make "nice" with the devil. We are hated because we are free.

I am proud to be an American. And I am thankful for the sacrifices made to keep us the United States of America.

Yeah. I remember, too. I was on staff with NSWG4 at Little Creek. We went on 72-hr standby with Group 2. We were a bit disappointed when we didn't go – chomping at the bit. Others went first. I got to go (yes, "got to go" is the right terminology – I count it a privilege to have done so) in 2003 for the invasion of Iraq and then to one of the SpecWar task forces in Afghanistan a bit later. Went again to Iraq in '04. I was a chaplain, so didn't get into the thickest part of it, but I am grateful to God for the opportunity to do my part.

Even more, I am grateful to God for people like you and for families like yours who continue to take the fight to the enemy.

God bless, stay safe, and, as I used to tell my Marines, kill one for Jesus.

Amen!

I had just started at FSU (sorry, Gator fans) and we were waiting to get into a classroom to take a math test when one girl walked in and said, "A plane just hit the World Trace Center." I didn't think anything of it at the time – "Must've been a small private plane off-course or something," I thought. "Hopefully no one got hurt."

After the test, I stopped by the computer lab in the student union. I had my own laptop in my dorm – I simply had nothing better to do and I was in no rush to go back to my room. On Yahoo!'s front page, there was a news story re: the WTC but I didn't have time to let it all sink in since a woman came in and said the lab (and the school) was closing for the day.

I went back to my dorm room where I was soon joined by a friend. We just watched the news all day. It was so surreal. My mom called me to ask how things were going – I don't remember what I said but I'm sure the word "hectic" came up. I went with another friend to go donate blood but we were turned away – I guess they were all stocked up or something.

I'm tentatively planning on moving to NY sometime in the next six months. I've never been to Ground Zero but it's on the agenda. It's the least I can do to pay my respects.

Received this in an e-mail from someone in DC after 9/11:

Dear family and friends:

I am sorry I haven't written earlier. This is going to be a bit long, because the most important thing is for you to pray for the souls and the families of the men who saved my life. Men I never met, who never knew me, but whose courage in bringing down United Flight 93 kept it from crashing into the Capitol.

Jeremy Glick had a wife and three month old son. Tom Burnett had three kids. Mark Bingham was a young rugby player. All three called their loved ones, told them goodbye, and then rushed the terrorists controlling the plane and brought the plane down. They did this because, in Glick's first call to his wife, they learned about the World Trade Towers, and they were determined there would not be a second disaster if they could stop it. They knew this meant they would die.

Because of their bravery, Tuesday was actually an inconvenience rather than a disaster. We have the TV on non-stop during session, so we heard about the WTC bombing just a little after 9 am. We sent my boss over to the Senate for a meeting he had, and then we heard about the Pentagon bombing. At first, we were hearing the plane didn't actually penetrate the building, but afterwords it was obvious the building had been hit. (I left a message for mom at that point, figuring the phones would get jammed up.) It was the west side of the Pentagon, by the heliport, corridors 4/5/6, E and D ring. The roof caved in, and the jet fuel was impossible to put out. (The Pentagon kept burning until late Wens night). Fortunately, this section was very lightly occupied, having been renovated recently. This morning (Thursday) they were putting the casualties from the Pentagon itself (excluding the plane) at about 100. After the Pentagon was hit, the Capitol itself started to be evacuated but not the surronding Hill office buildings.

Dana owns a townhouse on Capitol Hill (about three blocks away) so he invited us all over there. We went over there and basically sat and watched TV for several hours. Other congressmen own homes on those streets, so it started to resemble a big block party after awhile, without the laughter. We went by St. Peters, the Catholic Church right across from the Library of Congress, after the noon mass and it had been packed with members and their staff praying for the country.

Eventually they told us we could get our cars. The capitol police literally walked us one by one to our cars. Driving past the Pentagon was the first time I cried that day. It looked like a scene from a science fiction film — it looked like Oklahoma City, the walls caved in and black with soot, the smoke billowing up into the sky and flames visible inside the building. Another hero you should know about: Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He jumped right in and started rescuing people, his personal security team flipped out and hauled him away bodily from the scene.

The clueless administration and their enablers are not doing the kinds of things to keep another 9/11 from occurring, period… and their dismissal of the War on Terror as some quaint irrelevancy from the Bush era is sheer insanity.

When it comes to doing the right thing vs shameful appeasement he mistakenly believes will soothe our enemies, it's not a call that this opportunist coward Obama has to think about for five seconds.

Their disdainful treatment of the heroes, victims, and lessons of 9/11 will surely come back to bite this country.

And Israel, you'll be on your own for a while…

http://reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com

Here's a very sad, very horrific, first hand account of the attacks on the WTC on 9/11.

Be warned, this is not for the faint of heart. It will rattle you. But its also a story that has to be told. Never forget.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/27004_Til...

Thank you so much.

We're also dealing with a mentality totally foreign to modern, Western way of thinking. The Islamists are not into instant gratification, short of a martyrdom trip to paradise. They don't care if it takes 50 years, 500 years, or 1000 years…they will keep it up until they win for they are very, very patient. We don't understand striving for a goal that we will never see reached in our lifetimes.

The lesson I was taught on 9/11 was that our fight for freedom is never over, which is something the liberals can't seem to fathom. Many thought wars became unnecessary after WWII. Some believe war became unnecessary after the Civil War. Hell, if left up to some moonbats (i.e., Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and yes, Michael Moore and Sean Penn), the American Revolution would have never happened. The U.S. would have never even existed if these men were the Founders…or a better word…the Cowards. Our Founders probably would have wanted us to remain neutral in most worldly conflict, but I be damned if George Washington, Thomas Jefferson or even Abraham Lincoln would have negotiated with blood-thirsty Islamofascists. Our Founders understood that freedom is fragile…a message echoed by The Great Ronald Reagan two centuries later….which is why it must be protected and defended, sometimes by force.

First off, I would like to thank all the heroes on 9/11, including all the fallen members of the NYPD and the FDNY. Second, I would like to thank volunteer members of the United States Army, United States Navy, United States Air Force, United States Marine Corps, and the United States Coast Guard for protecting all of us as we sleep at night and giving us the freedom of speech, press, religion, voting rights, free markets, and allowing us to live our lives the way we want to.

Thirdly, I would like to thank President George W. Bush. While he wasn't perfect (far from it), he was a man who deeply loves this country and made a dedication on 9/11 to protect the United States of America. It was the oath he took and he did it for 7 1/2 years. While already facing a hostile Left for "stealing the 2000 election," and only after 8 months in the office, the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor came to pass. Throughout this time, he helped protect this country despite massive protests and anti-war demonstrations, a hostile press, a Democratic leadership favoring defeat, a Hollywood corps making movies undermining him while traveling overseas bashing him and the U.S. in general, groups assembled specifically whose goal was overthrowing him, members of his own party ditching him and bashing him, and impeachment talks. On top of all that, he had to worry about terrorist attacks and fighting two wars in which the enemy was aimed at killing Americans.

And not once did he complain. In my view, that's truly great character. And great leadership. So thanks to President Bush and God bless…and may history treat you better than we ever did.

We've strayed too far away and we have forgotten too much about what 9/11 means. No it doesn't mean that we are the aggressors…the years of the 90's should have taught us that much. What it taught us is that freedom will always have an enemy in tyranny. There are too many crackpots and vicious monsters in the world (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-Il, Hugo Chavez, and the Castro Bros.) to think that they will leave us alone if we lay down our weapons and adopt "peace." People like that just wait for us to do that permanently, so they can use their forces to take us down. This lesson has been taught to us time and time again…especially in the Neville Chamberlain/Adolf Hitler peace talks. Why do tyrants do the things they do? I don't know and I don't care. All I know is that if freedom is to live, tyrants need to be destroyed. Period!

May the fallen at WTC and the Pentagon teach us the lesson once and for all that freedom must be defended. Rest in Peace all of those who lost their lives in the attacks and those who have lost their lives defending the United States.

I want to close with a quote from a Democrat that President Barack Obama can hopefully learn from.

"Carry the battle to them. Don't let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive and don't ever apologize for anything."
–Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States

God bless you all, and may God continue to bless the United States of America. Oh and by the way, I recently joined the United States Navy as a hospital corpsman so wish me luck. Thanks.

Amen.

In memory of Father Mychal Judge.

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/sept11/features/537...

Kid, don't worry about the "luck". I have always been impressed as to how the Navy trains the hell out of its people, then trains them a little bit more…

Just one thing, medic to medic…

You may be the only thing standing between a patient and the Void one day, and you will be scared absolutely to death. The pit in your gut will dwarf the Grand Canyon. Your mind will alternate between racing like an Indy car to so slow you could see single grains of sand being poured from a pail.

Take a deep breath. Breathe. Just keep breathing.

You have most of the best training available on this planet. Let it center you. Airway, Breathing, Circulation. Focus on it.

Put that screaming mimi in your skull away in a box. You have the ability. Use what you know. Give a little talk to Jesus, He's listening.

Do everything you can. Try your very best.

And remember; sometimes it won't be enough. That wasn't because you failed. If you did everything you could, you did everything you could. Some people just have to go see God.

And yeah, good luck.

I can't even imagine. I'm so glad she was alright, but so sorry about the colleague of your husband's, and his wife and children.

God bless you and all those in the military.

The one thing I remember very vividly about that day was that, just like in New York, it was a gorgeous day outside, both then and yesterday, temperature perfect, not a cloud in the sky, just that beautiful blue all around, and I remember thinking, "This is our Kennedy assassination. We're never going back to like it was yesterday." That was the day when I started reading about politics and the world in general with a vengeance, and realized that no one should ever ignore the events occurring around them. I thank God for news and opinion outlets like this, because as long as they and the people who care about them exist, there will never be a complete tyranny in America, either from within or without.

Sounds like a shill for Obamacare.

The empty space where the World Trade Center used to be is a fitting metaphor for the paralysis that has overtaken us. On 9/11 thousands of U.S. citizens were killed by hostile powers and now, eight years later, we still can't agree on something as simple as a fitting memorial. But maybe that's as it should be. My own rather grim view is that the terrorists have won. They didn't intend to win in the way that they did but they have won all the same. Their actions on 9/11 eventually led to the conscious decision of the Left to embrace the "Blame America First" revisionist viewpoint and rally it's forces around a feral hatred for President Bush. This has led to the installment of an administration and Congress that fully embraces the view that the U.S. has no business protecting itself against potential threats and is more than glad to embrace "progressive" one-party strongmen of a type we had hoped were consigned to the ash heap of history. I say leave the WTC site just the way it is. A memorial to the final attainment of the progressive dream; national impotemce.

It's a disgrace that the Abu Ghraib pictures are still being often displayed, but images of the 9/11 tragedy disappeared from the MSM as soon as they thought they could get away with it. The reason? They like to publish images that make foreigners think worse of the US, but they don't want to publish any images that might make Americans feel less than kindly toward others outside our shores. You've got to think of the higher cause of world peace, you know!

I was in my studio apartment in San Francisco getting ready to go to work and I logged onto my old computer. And it wouldn't open the news pages. I thought 'damn, this computer is so old. I have to get another one." Then I went across the street to the dry cleaners to drop off my blouse and he looks at me as I walk in with this look of stunned 'what are YOU doing here?' That's when he cried out that both the World Trade Centers had fallen, the Pentagon was in flames and the whole East Coast had shut down. I thought he'd taken leave of his senses. Then I realized he was serious. I stumbled out on the sidewalk and my next door neighbor called me to me from her car to not go to work. She hauled me back into my apartment, I turned on the television and the FIRST shot was the second plane flying into the World Trade Center. And when the orange ball of fire came out, I saw the black lines around the edges and thought – 'wow, those news people can sure do CGI awfully fast." Because it didn't look real. It couldn't have been real. But it was.

Everyone who lives in the east has a story or knows someone directly or indirectly affected by this American tragedy.

It changed America and it irks me royal that we have not had our justice or revenge.

Well since we can't jump in a time machine and go back to that time, then we better just stay divided?

We have to start working together someday. (Just don't tell Limbaugh, it will affect his income.)

God Bless the USA

I drove to Fairfax and watched TV (worked for retail computer store) – finally had the visual to go with the events, started having the reality set in. We lived 7 miles from the Pentagon / Pentagon City – it took my husband 6 hours to drive home after they evacuated everyone from the area. I worked with a couple of kids (19-20) whose dads worked in the Pentagon. We sent them home to wait and hear from their parents. Then, it all starts blurring together…
We spent the next several days discussing moving back to TX, but we stayed on.
I had forgotten about the rumors that were flying around about bombs in DC. It was crazy trying to get info.
But I remember the feeling of "all in it together". Whatever happened to that moment???

My brother had just (in July) gotten out of the USMC, and was still in Maryland. He doesn't really talk about that day. He knew guys on duty in DC.
He got called back up later, but had messed up his shoulder too much.

We were at the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago the Tuesday before Sept. 11th nightmare..
Can't imagine jumping out of it to our death.
Can you, Obama?

I will never forget it. It was the day I learned I was helpless to protect my little baby girl from fanatics. Its also the day politics stopped being a interesting game to watch and crack jokes about, and instead, became deadly serious.

You know, one benefit of no longer being a modern liberal, is no longer having to pretend history began yesterday morning.

When Bush's poll numbers were astronomical, the democrats and liberals were falling all over each other to get a piece of his action. They couldn't come out strong enough in support of America and Bush.

Then I spent the next 6 years watching exactly what the left defines as "working together." The left defines protest as despising everything and anything their political opponents stand for. And they define working together as their political opponents as just shutting the fuck up and doing what ever the left demands of them.

I will not be lectured to by any modern liberal, democrat or lefty on what I should do for my country. I've had a front row seat to see exactly what they consider working together. And since I'm no longer a modern liberal, I don't have to pretend none of that happened. It's the truth. I saw it. I was there. I lived through it.

There is no compromise with people like that. There is no working together. All there is are outrageous lies, propaganda, bias, hatred.

Amen brother, Amen.

I wish you the best luck the US military can provide. People who volunteer for the military just blow me a way. To think, a perfect stranger who I'll probably never meet, is willing to put his life on the line to help protect my wife and daughter, words fail me.

Please, keep your head down, stay as safe as you can doing your job, and come back home safely to your family and friends.

God Bless you!

A co-worker of mine checked out of the Marriott hotel at the WTC on September 10.

It's not just those in the east. Out here in Utah, I know a lady that used to work with one of the companies in the South Tower, and she knew over 100 people that died that day, and knew them very well. That day broke her for a long time.

That made me cry. Thank you.

I had just started at FSU (sorry, Gator fans) and we were waiting to get into a classroom to take a math test when one girl walked in and said, "A plane just hit the World Trade Center." I didn't think anything of it at the time – "Must've been a small private plane off-course or something," I thought. "Hopefully no one got hurt."

After the test, I stopped by the computer lab in the student union. I had my own laptop in the dorm – I simply had nothing better to do and I was in no rush to go back to my room. On Yahoo!'s front page, there was a news story re: the WTC but I didn't have time to let it all sink in since a woman came in and said the lab (and the school) was closing for the day.

I went back to my dorm room where I was soon joined by a friend. We just watched the news all day. It was so surreal. For the life of me, I cannot recall the moment when it hit me – that our country was attacked. Like something out of a movie. My mom called me to ask how things were going – I don't remember what I said but I'm sure the word "hectic" came up. I went with another friend to go donate blood but we were turned away – I guess they were all stocked up or something.

I'm tentatively planning on moving to NY sometime in the next six months. I've never been to Ground Zero but it's on the agenda. It's the least I can do to pay my respects.

P.S. As for rebuilding, I've seen various artistic renderings but at the end of the day, I have to agree with some of my fellow posters – rebuild the towers. By all means, have a memorial and a museum and everything… but restore the skyline to what it once was. That's just me.

"U.S. Marines: When it absolutely positively has to be destroyed over night."

Fantastic! Saving it and looking for a place to use it.