Tag Archives: 9/11

International news

Rooting out potential danger remains most challenging

atta

Surely you remember this guy, but if not, here’s the answer.

His name was Mohammad Atta. He hailed from Egypt. But in the spring or early summer of 2001 he made his way to the United States. He then received lessons from instructors who taught him how to fly a commercial jetliner.

Atta didn’t receive any instruction on takeoff or landing; just how to control a massive airplane in mid-flight.

Then on Sept. 11, 2001, he and about 18 other men hijacked four jetliners. Atta seized control of one of them and flew it into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City. Another jet crashed into the second tower, the third jet crashed into a Pennsylvania field while passengers fought with hijackers. The fourth jetliner crashed into the Pentagon.

You know what happened after that.

What’s the point?

We’ve grown anxious about how we can find terrorists before they commit terrible deeds. Mohammad Atta and his gang of merciless thugs managed 14 years ago to slip undetected through U.S. security systems. Atta received and several of his fellow monsters received flying lessons of the nature I described here — without causing anyone to raise a red flag of alarm!

Making sure we detect evil among us is difficult and tedious work. Do we overreact and ban everyone who seeks to flee repression and bloodshed, which many thousands of them are doing at this moment in Syria?

Yes, we’ve long needed to secure ourselves against those committed to evil deeds. This need pre-dates by a very long time the events of just the past few days, weeks or months.

Indeed, the threat has existed all along.

Still, we have welcomed refugees who seek deliverance from misery. Check out this blog post from Texas Monthly. It speaks to a long-standing Texas tradition.

Why haven’t we panicked long ago?

Mohammad Atta gave us ample reason, didn’t he?

 

International news

Blair apologizes for Iraq War … more or less

<> on April 7, 2015 in Sedgefield, England.

Tony Blair had me going there for a little while.

I thought the former British prime minister actually was going to say he was sorry for joining the parade into war with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Then he backed away.

Blair tempered his apology by saying it was not a mistake to get rid of Saddam, but then said he regrets following the faulty intelligence that persuaded his country and the United States that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.

You know how it turned out. We invaded Iraq, tossed Saddam out, captured him, tried him, hanged him … all the while scouring Iraq for those WMD.

They weren’t there.

Am I glad Saddam Hussein is gone? Of course I am! The price we paid in thousands of American lives lost, however, was too great.

Blair’s almost-apology, though, does go a lot farther than President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ever have done — or likely ever will do.

If only the U.S. brass would acknowledge the mistake. If only it acknowledge the war’s impact on the enabling of the Islamic State, the Sunni militant group that is waging war against the Shia government in Iraq.

That won’t happen. Instead, we hear from Cheney (mostly) about how they were right and how others, namely the Obama administration, have squandered all the progress we made in Iraq.

Well, the Iraq War was a war of choice.

Saddam Hussein was being contained within Iraq. He posed barely a fraction of the threat that he was said to pose.

And, oh yes. Let’s not forget that Saddam Hussein and his Baath party had nothing — zero — to do with the 9/11 attacks, which was another pretext that the Bush administration used to justify our invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

I don’t expect an apology from the Bush administration. I was hoping one might be forthcoming from our allies across The Pond.

It came. Sort of …

 

Intgernational news, national news, political news

Bush seeks to dodge 9/11 responsibility

attack

CNN’s Jake Tapper might have asked the most incisive and insightful question of the 2016 president campaign.

Over the weekend on “State of the Union,” Tapper asked former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush the following question: “Obviously Al Qaeda was responsible for the terrorist attack of 9/11, but how do you respond to critics who ask, if your brother and his administration bear no responsibility at all, how do you then make the jump that President Obama and Secretary Clinton are responsible for what happened at Benghazi?”

Gov. Bush answered this way: “Well I — the question on Benghazi which, is hopefully we’ll now finally get the truth to, is was the place secure? They had a responsibility, the Department of State, to have proper security. There were calls for security, it looks like they didn’t get it. And how was the response in the aftermath of the attack, was there a chance that these four American lives could have been saved? That’s what the investigation is about, it’s not a political issue. It’s not about the broad policy issue, is were we doing the job of protecting our embassies and our consulates and during the period, those hours after the attack started, could they have been saved?”

Did you follow the former governor’s answer? I had trouble getting the connection.

Bush once was thought to be the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination next year. He’s no longer the front runner, based in part on the stumble-bum answers he’s given to questions regarding whether President Bush — Jeb’s big brother — was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Gov. Bush said his brother “kept us safe” during his presidency. Hmmm. The loved ones of the 3,000 or so Americans who died on that terrible day might disagree with that view.

The attack occurred nine months into Bush’s presidency. He had been briefed by national security advisers about the threat that al-Qaeda posed. He was warned in advance about the possibility of an attack. The massive intelligence apparatus that we employed did not do its job in protecting the nation.

Is that the president’s responsibility? Well, gosh, it seems that the commander in chief ought to be held accountable. However, Gov. Bush chooses to avoid holding his brother accountable for that breakdown.

As for Tapper’s question, it still requires some clarity in the answer.

If George W. Bush doesn’t deserve blame for the tragedy that befell us on 9/11, how can Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama be held responsible for the Benghazi attack that occurred 11 years later to the day?

Is there a double-standard being applied?

 

national news, political news

GW Bush kept us safe? Umm, not entirely

President_George_W__Bush_discussing_Social_Security

Jeb Bush took up for his big brother, the 43rd president of the United States.

He said tonight: “When it comes to my brother, there’s one thing I know for sure — he kept us safe.”

Let me think about that for a minute.

OK. Actually, he didn’t.

What about 9/11?

Unless, of course, you don’t count the 9/11 terrorist attacks that occurred about nine months in George W. Bush’s presidency.

Hey, I get that the former Florida governor wants to stick up for his brother. Family ties are unbreakable in most instances.

However, the record shows in graphic detail that the worst single hostile act to occur on American soil took place on President Bush’s watch.

Was he to blame personally for the immense national security failure that resulted in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? No. However, he did assemble a national security team that he charged with keeping the nation alert to signs of trouble.

But if the president is to assume responsibility for protecting the nation against those who intend to do us harm, well … then he must be held responsible when harm arrives.

Which it surely did on Sept. 11, 2001.

 

military news

Troop levels to drop; U.S. is still No. 1

U.S. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry is worried about reductions in the number of men and women serving in the U.S. Army.

The Pentagon plans to cut the troop strength to 450,000 by September 2017. Thornberry suggested recently that the reduction is part of an on-going strategy to slash defense spending that’s been enacted since the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency.

He’s concerned about it. So, too, are some in the media, such as the Amarillo Globe-News, which opined on Friday that the troop reduction “is bad news.” It cited “ongoing issues related to Russia and Iran, to name but a couple.”

Then the paper decided to take a cheap shot by noting that “the federal government only spends more than $70 billion a year on food stamps.”

I think a broader question ought to be this: Are we still the world’s No. 1 military power? Yes … by a country mile.

Let us also ponder: Does a reduction in the troop levels make us less able to defend ourselves against terrorists? Given tremendous advances in technology, the use of drones (which this week killed another leading Islamic State officer), our immense intelligence capability and the tremendous skill that our troops employ in the field, we absolutely are able to defend ourselves.

Thornberry wrote: “I have consistently warned about the size and pace of reductions in both end strength and defense spending and the negative impact on our country’s national security.”

Does the presence of more men and women in uniform deter terrorists from striking at us? Do the Islamic State and al-Qaeda leaders really consider the United States defense establishment — taken in its entirety — to be less capable of defending the world’s strongest nation than it was, say, when the 9/11 attacks occurred more than a dozen years ago?

The United States remains by far the pre-eminent military power on the planet.

If we are going to seek some sort of fiscal responsibility, which Thornberry and others in Congress keep insisting we should, then we must look at all aspects of the federal budget.

The day we cannot strike hard at those who seek to do us harm is the day I’ll join the doomsday chorus that includes Chairman Thornberry. We aren’t at that point. Nor do I expect us to get there.

International news, military news, national news, political news

Sen. Graham ‘ready’ … to take U.S. back into war

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham says he’s “ready” to run for president, and to be president.

He’s also ready, it sounds to me, as if he’s ready to send Americans back to the Middle East, to fight radical Islamic terrorists face to face.

Haven’t we been there, already? Haven’t we lost sufficient numbers of American lives in the fight against Islamic terrorists?

Apparently not, says Graham.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/im-ready-lindsey-graham-officially-enters-2016-race/ar-BBktaAk

The South Carolina Republican jumped into the GOP nomination fight today, vowing to ratchet up our military posture abroad. Interesting, yes? We did that during the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks. We went after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, as we should have done. Then we decided — wrongly, it turned out — to take the fight into Iraq. We flexed our military might quite nicely in that country, then kept fighting and fighting and fighting as resistance rose up and the Islamic State became a serious force with which we’re still trying to reckon.

Graham’s campaign speech makes it sound as if we’ve rolled over. We have done nothing of the sort.

Someone needs to slip him a note with these words: “We killed bin Laden.”

Other terrorist leaders have been killed. ISIL remains a serious threat, but the United States is striking hard at that outfit as well.

Do we really want to re-enter the ground war in Iraq, or in Yemen, or in Syria? Do we really want to re-engage an enemy face to face? Graham seems to think it’s all right. I disagree with him. The Associated Press reported: “Graham is a prominent Senate voice in seeking a more muscular foreign policy and one who casts the threats facing the United States in particularly dark terms.”

Our foreign policy is muscular enough.

International news

No, senator: Obama didn't 'create' ISIS

It’s time to correct a misstatement uttered by one of the probable Republican candidates for president in 2016.

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said that the Islamic State is the creation of Barack Obama.

The creation? Yes. He said that.

Check out the link here. The statement comes at about the 2:30 mark of the 3-minute video.

http://www.msnbc.com/way-too-early/watch/is-the-us-winning-the-fight-against-isis–449161795946?cid=sm_fb_msnbc_native

I believe the more accurate assessment is that the Islamic State is the creation of the failed Iraq War that was launched in March 2003 by President Bush.

ISIL comprises Sunni extremist militants — monstrous terrorists, at that — who are fighting to get rid of the Shiite government in Baghdad. Why are the Shiites in power, and not the Sunnis? Because we removed the Sunni in chief, Saddam Hussein, after we invaded his country on the false premises that (a) he possessed chemical weapons and was developing a nuclear bomb and that (b) he was complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

President Obama did not “create” the Islamic State. He inherited its creation from a mistaken notion that overthrowing the Iraqi government and then remaking Iraq in our image would produce a nation that stands as a bastion for the freedom and liberty we all cherish.

So, let’s cut the crap, Sen. Santorum.

 

International news

Bin Laden's death foiled huge plot against U.S.

What’s this? You mean Osama bin Laden was planning another spectacular terror attack on the United States before those SEALs blew him away in May 2011?

That might be the least surprising news to come out of the declassification and release of information from documents seized from the scene of bin Laden’s death.

It’s welcome news to know the order to kill bin Laden saved potentially more American lives.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/bin-laden-bent-on-spectacular-us-attack-until-the-end-files/ar-BBk06oq

According to AFP: “Documents that were declassified on Wednesday shed new light on the mindset of Al-Qaeda’s founder, his debates over tactics, his anxiety over Western spying and his fixation with the group’s media image. ‘The focus should be on killing and fighting the American people and their representatives,’ the late Al-Qaeda figurehead wrote.”

So, he wanted to keep taking the fight to the United States.

What his followers should understand — but likely won’t ever get — is that attacks such as what occurred on 9/11 only steel Americans’ resolve. Yes, our nation was wounded seriously by the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But it took a mere nanosecond in time for us to collect our emotions and set about the task of taking the fight straight to the terrorists who fired the first shots.

This might be a war without end. Most folks now understand that as well. Will we ever be able to kill or capture every terrorist in the world who seeks to do us harm? It’s highly unlikely.

Bin Laden and his minions only awakened us.

 

 

national news

Terrorists come in domestic forms, too

Americans have been focused intently since 9/11 on the dangers of foreign-born terrorists, or those who were born here but then renounced our country to take up arms against us.

We’ve managed to eradicate many of them. Others remain in the fight and we need to hunt them down, too.

Terror, though, can visit us at any moment, and it come from any source. Even home-grown, corn-fed, garden-variety Americans who have a particularly evil streak in their heart can bring untold sorrow and fear to their fellow Americans.

Remember the name Timothy McVeigh?

He decided 20 years ago — on April 19, 1995 — to blow up a federal office building in Oklahoma City. He killed 167 innocent people, including more than a dozen children who were enrolled in a day-care center at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Children died at the hands of this monster.

Two decades ago Sunday, McVeigh parked a rental truck in front of the building, walked away and then listen to the blast that tore the front of the building away. He fled in a car, only to be captured by a sharp-eyed police officer several miles away.

Why the Murrah building? Why in Oklahoma City, in the nation’s heartland? McVeigh sympathies with the Branch Davidian cult members who died two years to the day prior in Waco. He wanted revenge against the federal agents that destroyed the cult’s compound.

McVeigh was tried in a Denver federal courtroom and convicted of murder. He then was executed for his crime.

He’s gone. Not forgotten.

The loved ones of those who died or who were injured seriously remember him. They loathe his memory. Heck, even those of us who only heard or read about the act loathe this terrorist.

This blog post I guess is just an excuse for me to vent my continuing rage at those Americans who would commit such evil acts. They are every bit as despicable as the foreigners with whom we are fighting. There are times when I wish that our military could use the same brute force on the homegrown terrorists as it does while waging war overseas.

Then my sense of citizenship kicks in, remembering that we must protect the civil liberties of all citizens, even those who spit in our faces by committing these heinous atrocities.

Timothy McVeigh received the ultimate punishment for his act of terror against his country. It was delivered by a justice system that we sometimes think is flawed. Maybe it is at some level.

However, it wasn’t on the day that McVeigh was convicted and sentenced for committing the most heinous act of domestic terrorism in our nation’s history.

So, as we look out there for those who would do us harm, let’s not forget to look over our shoulder and be vigilant against our fellow Americans who harbor hatred that goes beyond our understanding.

 

International news

Yes, we need more flight regulations

S.E. Cupp never has struck me as being a wacky conservative.

Yet the commentator and pundit has written a piece that suggests the Germanwings air tragedy caused by the suicidal co-pilot does not require airline companies and governments to tighten regulations aboard these flights.

Umm, yes it does.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2015/04/no-lessons-about-regulation-from-the-germanwings-crash-think-again-s-e-cupp.html/

U.S. air carriers operate under much stricter rules than foreign carriers, as evidenced by the Germanwings tragedy that occurred when co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked the pilot out of the flight deck and then crashed the airplane into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board.

As Dallas Morning News blogger Tod Robberson writes: “Ever since the 9/11 attacks, the United States has led the world in measures to tighten airline security measures — often to the point that we’ve been ridiculed by the rest of the world for overregulating. U.S. regulations established the annoying procedures that require passengers to partially disrobe before they can enter airline gate areas. U.S. regulations banned the use of sharp metal objects like knives used for airline meals. U.S. regulations required the redesign and reinforcement of cockpit doors to prevent anyone from breaking in and taking over the plane and flying it into skyscrapers.”

Robberson’s blog post attached to this item is worth your time.

More regulations? Sure. Do they annoy us? Yes. Are they necessary to help prevent tragedies such as the Germanwings disaster? Absolutely.