Redstate

More comment in diary: http://blackhedd.redstate.org/story/2005/9/10/105740/607

Let us honor the courage and selflessness of the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of the innocent and the victims of 9-11.

One of our nation's greatest tragedies, and at the same time one of our nation's finest examples of courage and unity, must never be allowed to fade from our collective consciousness.

Did they make the "ultimate sacrifice" for the victims of 9/11 or for the wrong-headed folly of their leaders?

I think a case could be made that the 9/11 Commission's refusal to play the so-called "blame game" and assign responsibility and demand accountability for the failures which helped bring it about, in the interest of unanimous report and "bi-partisanship" and "consensus," has been at least a contributory factor to the disasterously mismanaged response to Katrina. We are now, as Katrina demonstrated for the world to see, highly vulnerable to terrorist attack and the billions we've spent since 9/11 to supposedly make us less vulnerable have been largely wasted.

In any business, when someone makes a major mistake, they are either fired, demoted or reprimanded.  Good management demands it in business and good government demands it in politics.

Does anyone have a picture from the same spot taken this year?

"Why does our culture seek to suppress the memory of that day? I don't know."

In all fairness, our 'culture' does not seek to suppress the memory of 9-11.

That said, the democrat/media does seek to suppress the memory of that day.  It reminds the American people of the true face of our enemy (not President George W Bush) and undermines the credibility of the democrat/media on issues of national security.

As long as the memories of 9-11 remain near the top of our collective consciousness, the democrats will continue to suffer increased electoral losses, ie. 2002 and 2004.

ever forget.

It sometimes seems as there are some who would like us to forget.

I have never quite understood why the media thinks we should be spared the images of the plane flying into the building-considering they don't self censor too many other images.

That picture was taken directly in front of my apartment building.  I could probably re-create it.

Go to the Union Square subway station about a mile north of the old WTC site.

In the south side exit tunnel, wrapped around a corner on the left, are laminated letters from family and friends --- to their dead.

If you're not looking for it, or you're in a hurry, it looks like graffiti.

If you get drawn in, you won't leave that corner of the subway station for half an hour, minimum.

People do remember.

Since Democrats are asking why we still haven't caught Osama bin Laden.  As I wrote below, this picture was taken directly in front of my apartment building in New Jersey.  I work about a hundred yards from the World Trade Center and did in Sept., 2001.  People here are wondering, why haven't we captured bin Laden?

Why haven't we?

It's been four years.

Newark?

reason we never caught Hitler.

I am not feeling particularly charitable today and if you or anyone else goes down the path of "where's bin Laden" or anything even vaguely similar you are gone.

Jersey City.

I ain't asking for charity ...

But when I come here and see a picture taken from in front of my home of an event that had a terrible personal impact on my life, what I realize is that those culpable for this act have not been brought to justice.

That's all I think about.

I can't imagine what you could be thinking about.

And you can be absolutely sure that images from Hurricane Katrina will be ubiquitous from now on. It's disgusting to play politics with the lives of innocent victims. And it's worse when the agenda is to attenuate our nation's response to those who are plotting the next terrorist attack.

I still remember the graffiti I saw on the Upper West Side- in NYC!- several months after 9/11: BUSH, STOP THE KILLING IN AFGHANISTAN. The rejoinder is so blindingly obvious: don't you feel lucky that YOU weren't in the Towers that day?

I've had many of those moments since. If Pearl Harbor were to happen now, we'd let it go.

responsible have been captured or killed.  Several of them are at Gitmo right now.

The guy at the top hasn't been captured, but at some point he will be.  

Removal of Bin Laden alone, wouldn't have stopped this stuff, but destroying the organization will.  That takes time.

One PATH stop away from the action, huh?

thinking that you can't read.

You can continue to post here or not but if you want to get the last word in here, let me assure you with 100% certainty that your next post along those lines will be your last on this site.

By its very nature, the openness of our society will always leave us highly vulnerable to terrorist attacks.  Our only option is to defeat this uncompromising enemy on the battlefield.

The problem with the 9-11 Commission is the same with any independent commission: It is accountable only to itself, and it is only as honest and competent as its members.

In defense of FEMA and the federal response to Katrina, one would logically expect Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin to follow Louisiana's published hurricane evacuation plan.

http://www.cityofno.com/SystemModules/PrintPage.aspx?portal=46&tabid=26

Thanks Leon for the link above.

That's not Journal Square ...

It's Paulus Hook.

Journal Square is inland a mile or so, maybe more.  And it's three PATH stops in.  Paulus Hook is served by Exchange Place.

Oh, the tangled geography of Hudson County, New Jersey.

My office is about 100 yards south of the World Trade Center site.

This was just a terrible day for all of us in the city and I can't really look at the images now without going into a state of post-traumatic shock.  It's like being shot in the head.

It's disgusting to play politics with the lives of innocent victims.

. . . we can all agree on.

the media thinks we should be spared the images of the plane flying into the building

But is there a real policy of not showing this video?

I've changed so much since then. Those attacks happened during my first couple of weeks in college, because I just finished high school. I thought I was an adult, but now I see that I still had a lot of growing up to do. I didn't vote during the election that previous November even though I was old enough, because I just didn't care, and in fact I even hated politics all together. I remember telling my uncle that I hate America and that if there were ever a draft that I would dodge it by running away to Canada, and wouldn't care at all if this country were taken over or invaded by another country. I was very annoyed at the time about how everyone just would not shut up about how "tragic" and "horrible" the event was. I always thought: "why do you care? You don't even know those people."

Yeah. I finished High School, I was old enough to vote, but I was still a whiny, selfish, immature, childish juvenile. Since then I have matured a little and I CAN'T BELIEVE the feelings I had only four years ago. How could I have been so heartless, so cold-blooded? I now wish I had cared more, that I had donated blood when they needed it, or had spent my money on helping out the victims instead of buying a Playstation 2 and a Gamecube. Now we have a much larger disaster on our hands, and it really hits home to me because this time, I've learned to love strangers and I mourn there suffering and I wish to help. This disaster also seems more real to me and hits me especially hard because, unlike New York, I KNOW this city. I've been to it many times. I know people there, and I've met a lot of the refugees in person. This is because I live in East Baton Rouge Parish. This time I am not making the same mistake. In fact, I'm working doubly hard to make up for last time. Ever since the disaster hit, I've been broke all the time. Literally. My wallet is always empty, an so is my bank account. Any money I don't need goes to those homeless people. At first I even donated some of my time to go down there and help out with my own two hands, since LSU cancelled it's classes for a week so that I had more time. Now I am back to having tons of studying to do all of the time, but hopefully I will be able to have a break from this every once in a while to do my part.

To anyone reading this, if you want to help, you don't have to go through the trouble of paying Red Cross with a credit or debit card over the phone or anything. All you have to do is, next time you go to the store, spend a little extra on food, clothing, toys, pillows and blankets, or medicine, and on your way home from the store stop by your local fire station and give it all to them and let them know who's it for. It's so easy.

the democrat/media does seek to suppress the memory of that day.

. . . the local public radio station (WNYC) has pre-empted their schedule to provide live coverage of the reading of the names of the victims and family members.

... he killed himself shortly before he was caught?

seems to me the only evidence ever produced was that the Russians said they had recovered the burned remains and some skull fragments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitlers_death

Of course as with anything on Wikipedia, it should only be used as a jumping off point to followup research with. I've spent time following up what's up there and it all looks pretty legit.

Since none of us were actually there we have to take people's word for it, but in 1993 the Russians released lots more documents that shed a lot more light on what went down and the circumstances that led to so much confusion over the recovery of his body.

Of course, it took the immenent fall of Berlin to finally get him to end it all. Osama has no "It's over" defnining point since there isn't any central location to spread from. A person in his shoes could work from anywhere and rebuild from zero everytime if absolutely necessary. Hitler never would have had that option.

The only indisputable facts are 1) we never got him and 2) you have to believe the USSR's documents, 3) there has been no independent forensic analysis of the alleged fragments.

But this is not an Osama got a way thread.

For al-Qaeda, it was meant to be a big Hollywood-style disaster special-effects moment that would break our spirits, turning we "paper tiger" Americans into isolationists once again, but it did just the opposite. From al-Qaeda's myopic (Hollywood-inspired?) view of Americans--the world's most powerful and overwhelming "infidel" culture--they thought this was the best way to finally get our attention. They were right about that part--they finally got our attention.

with that particular radio station or their prior coverage of the events during and following the attacks on 9-11-01.

I commend WNYC for honoring the innocent victims who died in the attacks and those first-responders who died trying to save lives on that tragic day.

That said, the coverage by most of MSM in the subsequent years following the terrorist attacks, if aired at all, has been slanted to promote victimization, ie. the Jersey Girls.

Victimization is not what I take from the image above, and I dare say, neither does the majority of the American people.

To me, that image cries out for action.

If a picture from the same spot could be taken today, it would be... edifying... to put the pictures side-by-side.

Just speculation on my part, but perhaps we don't want to see him martyred at this particular point in time.

Or, we don't wish to forceably remove Osama from the tribal area of Pakistan, where he continues to receive considerable support and enjoys the protection of the tribal leaders, thereby placing President Musharif in the untenable position of having to defend against wholesale riots and risk the probability that Pakistan's nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of terrorists should his regime fall.  

section of Pakistan, which the Pakistani government doesn't fully control, and which is virtually impossible for outsiders to enter.

This explanation has been given. And given. And given. And given.  Your side is not listening.

If you can get Captain Kirk to beam Security into Waziristan and pick up Bin Laden, please do so.  If you can show us on your tricorder which cave/small town he's hiding in, please do so.

Otherwise, spare us your ignorant straw man arguing.

single story on 9-11 in its A section today-nothing on the front page, and nothing on any of the other pages.

There was a photograph of a person reading a plaque at the Pentagon honoring those killed there in another section.

Basically, my local paper all but has ignored the 4 year anniversery of the day.

I commend WNYC for honoring the innocent victims who died in the attacks and those first-responders who died trying to save lives on that tragic day.

That said, the coverage by most of MSM in the subsequent years following the terrorist attacks, if aired at all, has been slanted to promote victimization, ie. the Jersey Girls.

following this argument.  How is "honoring the innocent victims" different from "promoting victimization"?  And what is "promoting victimization", anyway?

We certainly get plenty of coverage on 9/11, it's aftermath, and the victims in New York.  That coverage follows a number of different political factions within the community of survivors and family members of survivors, from those pressing for an investigation of the failures leading up to 9/11 to those who are pressing for veto authority over the architecture and planning for the buildings that will eventually replace the World Trade Center.

The general tone of the coverage is never harsh, but rather respectful, to the victims -- is that what you mean by "promoting victimization"?  Or are you concerned that the coverage includes aspects of the survivor's political activities since 9/11?

The question of whether it's appropriate to suppress images of the dead and dying also came up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. U.S. media restricted images of the New York attacks to a plane hitting the World Trade Center tower, panic on the streets below and a few distant shots of people falling from the Twin Towers. The reality of dead and dying bodies was deemed too traumatic for an already traumatized public.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03271/226452.stm

Also the debate was revisited on the various anniverseries.

I was getting ready for work, as most Americans were that morning here in the midwest were, but the hour time difference between here and NYC made an important difference, because when the first plane hit, I had just come out of the shower and the television was on in the living room.

I saw the first televised pictures of the plane hitting and the confusion and inexplicability of what I was seeing was echoed by the first anchor I heard (Peter Jennings):  it must have been an accident.  I stood in place, wrapped in a towel and dripping wet, and immediately realized that it was no accident:  the central placement of the plane's impact, in clear air and with unlimited visibility, stood out immediately to me:  that plane was aimed at the building.  Then the second one hit.

I stood transfixed in my living room for almost 45 minutes, unable to move; I'd been in both buildings of the WTC personally, stood on the observation decks, I'd visited them shortly after their construction finished as a child.  I could only imagine what was going on inside those buildings.  Then they fell, one after the other.

I couldn't stay put any longer and wrapped myself in some clothes and amazingly, took the el downtown where the office building that I worked in was being preemptively evacuated.  People were milling around in the streets, sitting on benches, flagging taxicabs and streaming toward the train stations: the authorities had told them it was a bomb threat, and most people had no idea what had happened in New York.  The truth was only gradually filtering in through cellphones and slowly diffusing through the crowds of people who had been listening in their cars or who, for one reason or another, had a television in their offices.  

Of course I wasn't allowed into the building, and not knowing what to do, I turned around and headed back to the train station to get home in anticipation of the telephone calls and to begin to prepare for what I believed at that moment was going to become an even more catastrophic disaster.  As I turned around a woman I knew, an assistant professor of law, happened to be facing me through a few people streaming along the sidewalk:  she recognized me but was completely unaware of what had actually happened in New York.  I grabbed her by the arm and moved over to a mailbox alongside Wabash street and explained it to her in the bluntest terms possible:

"The United States has been attacked.  Colin Powell is returning from his South American trip.  The President is in the air, the Pentagon has been struck by an airliner, and the World Trade Center buildings in New York have been wiped off the map."

A look of the most abject and total apoplexy and incomprehension came over her face -- she went pale, right there on the street and I thought she was going to faint.  We stood there for a few seconds and I said:  "Get home.  Don't stay downtown.  Will you be OK?"  She nodded, regained her composure, and we both turned and started walking toward different train stations.

The ride home on the train was as silent as a mortuary.  Not a word.  Not a single ring from a cellphone.  People were staring into space, absolutely dumbstruck by what had happened.

The enormity of that event changed my life forever.

I remember we hadn't been living in NH very long, and my two oldest had just started school.

I remember the boys were watching some kiddie show, and my mom called and told me to put on the news.  I changed channels and just a few minutes later the second plane hit.

I remember being totally shocked.  I remember having to explain to my kids what had happened-it was hard to even think of the words to use.

I think the image of that day could be banned for all time, but I wouldn't forget it.

that the local market stations in New York would have a different perspective concerning the events surrounding 9-11.  Not so, nationally.

One needed only to watch a White House press conference with Ari Fleisher to be convinced that MSM was agenda driven then, and watch a recent White House press briefing with Scott McClellan to be convinced they are agenda driven now.  The only difference between then and now is - Ari was better at it.

...because our best chance ever to do so was when Clinton's CIA had binny in a Predator Drone's gunsights but backed off pulling the trigger on a Hellfire because of "concerns about killing innocent women and children, as well as legal disagreements within the administration.".

So close.

You kosnuts really want to go down the memory hole with me?

Given a miraculous second chance, this a live bin Laden remanded to us back-channel by the Sudanese, the Clinton administration again demurred.  They feared legal complications of detention, didn't want the political heat of holding a kidnapped fugitive, hoped the Saudis would take him for us and then have him "die in custody, etc. etc.,  but finally were satisfied with having him merely expelled from Sudan.

So close, again.

Now, thanks to the fecklessness of Sandy Berger, Richard Clarke, et al, we have to do it the hard way, valley-by-valley, cave-by-cave, with boots on the ground over as vast, alien and inhospitable terrain as American soldiers have every fought.

Linked citations provided for your convenenience.

Beautiful shot! I just walked in  my front door, having been remarking about how striking the twin towers of light are out on the street, and what a touching symbol. Then I hop onto RedState, and there they are again. Thanks.

9/11 dominates political discourse to this day.

The Bush Administration has used a very vague "9/11 changes everything" mantra to justify some very fine plans (the War in Afghanistan), some very ill-implemented plans (the War in Iraq -- I was going to say ill-conceived, but the idea of hitting a known trouble-maker before he hits us is a reasonably good one, we just should have waited until more of our troops were freed up from Afghanistan, or just sponsered a nice coup), and some very disturbing plans (the government wants to hold citizens as enemy combatants, without any judicial review or findings of fact).

And for the most part, the Democrats have gone along with it.

We've had a non-stop War On Terror (TM) since 9/11. And you better believe that comparisons to 9/11 will keep cropping up in the investigations into the solidly-mediocre response to Katrina, with questions as to how ready FEMA is to respond to the next terrorist attack, if they did such a poor job with hurricane (which is the most important line of questioning, in my opinion, since it may help us in the future).

What does seem to be finding its way down the memory hole, however, is the Anthrax attacks that immediately followed 9/11. You don't hear nuttin' 'bout that.

As an aside, the two towers of light that dominated the Manhattan skyline at night were truly one of the most moving sights I have ever seen.

A few months ago Joe Biden floated up a trial balloon to wealthy supporters about intervening in Pakistan's Waziristan Province to kill bin Laden at the cost of a thousand US casualties and possible War with PAkistan.

To a MAN they all wanted to pretend we didn't know where he was.

There is NO political support in the Democratic Party, which is the Party of Unilateral disarmament and peace, see Cindy Sheehan, for getting bin Laden. None zero nada zilch.

Want to raise a whole new Army, double the Navy, Air Force, Marines and just get bin Laden? I'm with you. Raise taxes too if you have to in order to pay for it. Whatever it takes.

Unfortunately the Democratic Party opposes War in any form, and leading sections want immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan (Sheehan, Fonda, Dean, Kos, Soros, Moore etc). The Party simply is unwilling in all instances to use Military Force or risk WAR to destroy Al Qaeda decisively.

This is simply obvious.

Or whatever his real Islamic Name is now (Abdullah Al Muhajeer I think), he was caught in the US as a US Citizen. However, what the court of appeals opinion says is:

Appellee Jose Padilla, a United States citizen, associated with forces hostile to the United States in Afghanistan and took up arms against United States forces in that country in our war against al Qaeda. Upon his escape to Pakistan from the battlefield in Afghanistan, Padilla was recruited, trained, funded, and equipped by al Qaeda leaders to continue prosecution of the war in the United States by blowing up apartment buildings in this country. Padilla flew to the United States on May 8, 2002, to begin carrying out his assignment, but was arrested by civilian law enforcement authorities upon his arrival at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.

Sounds about right to me. WWII Analogy is the US Citizens recruited by the Nazis, sent on a Sub to NJ, to conduct sabotage/murder operations. As I recall reading, they were mostly hung. Sounds about right there too.

Law Enforcement and legalisms have their limits. In a real war which we are involved in, involving many hostile and semi-hostile states, the idea we can conduct ourselves like an episode of Law and Order is irresponsible and ridiculous. Common sense measures with judicial review should not be thrown out for some utopian standard for perfection that will just get a lot of folks killed.

For growing up.  Many never do. We need all the adults we can get in this country.

Sounds like you became one sometime in the last 4 years. Great post. Welcome to our world.