Tag Archives: 9/11

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Security breach? Do you think?

San Jose, Calif., airport officials are seeking some answers to a vexing — and terribly embarrassing — question: How did that youngster get past security to stow himself away on an outbound flight to Hawaii?

We know the story.

A 15-year-old boy got past security, walked onto the tarmac at San Jose International Airport, climbed into a wheel well of a Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 767 and flew across the Pacific Ocean.

http://news.yahoo.com/teen-stowed-away-flight-hawaii-remains-hospitalized-212826541–finance.html

The most remarkable aspect of the story really isn’t the security breach. It’s the fact that the kid didn’t freeze to death at 38,000 feet above the water, where temperatures plummeted to 40 below zero. What’s more, the compartment wasn’t pressurized, meaning he had precious little oxygen to breath at that altitude.

The kid huddled in there for — what? — five hours.

Airport security in this country is supposed to be air tight in this post-9/11 world. San Jose is a fairly busy air terminal to be sure. A lone youngster, though, just isn’t supposed to walk undetected across a vast expanse of open space, climb into a jetliner compartment and then take off as a stowaway.

I see a very serious wakeup call in he making here.

San Jose is bound to deploy a lot more eyes and ears on everyone who ventures onto the airport site.

As for the youngster, who remains hospitalized from the ordeal, he’ll get to explain eventually just how he pulled off this amazing stunt. Someone will need to ask him what, if anything, he did just to stay alive.

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Terror group won't die

Al-Qaida is “stronger than ever,” says the Republican chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee.

Interesting, eh?

The infamous terrorist group has been seen in a large gathering in Yemen, apparently getting past U.S. intelligence officials whose job is to ensure that these gatherings don’t occur.

Chairman Mike Rogers is alarmed, as he and all of us should be.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/mike-rogers-al-qaeda-105722.html?hp=r4

It never has been assumed that al-Qaida would wither and die the moment those U.S. Navy SEALs gunned down 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011. You kill one leader, and others would surface to succeed him. That’s been the thought all along.

The troubling part of this is that al-Qaida seemingly is strong enough to appear to be plotting major attacks against the United States. The video of the Yemen meeting shows terrorist group leaders meeting in the open in plain view. Others’ faces are blurred, but the meeting is large and is occurring right under the nose of U.S. drone aircraft supposedly on the hunt for these very types of terror group gatherings.

The fight will go on, regardless of whether our troops are fighting in Afghanistan; that military engagement is scheduled to conclude at the end of the year.

However, our “war on terror” must continue vigorously — and with vengeance and extreme prejudice.

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Opening Day tradition lives on

There can be nothing in all of American sports quite like Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season.

Daytona 500? Indy 500? Super Bowl? Forget about it.

Opening Day has a place all its own. It usually features a presidential first pitch.

God Bless Opening Day

Some presidents, well, have better arms than others. John F. Kennedy had a pretty good arm. So did Dwight Eisenhower.

But the standard for presidential first pitches still belongs to George W. Bush. Allow me this one caveat, though: He didn’t set the standard on Opening Day. He set it instead on the first game at Yankee Stadium during the 2001 World Series, the one that had been delayed by the events of 9/11.

Baseball fans everywhere remember that night. The president strode the mound wearing a New York Fire Department jacket. The crowd roared.

Then the president took the baseball, rubbed it in his hand and from the top of the mound — not in front of it as some presidents do — he wound up and threw a perfect strike.

The crowd noise that greeted the president’s arrival on the mound? It turned into an absolute din as 56,000-plus fans erupted. The pitch symbolized the perfect tonic for a nation that had been grieving, had become enraged at the dastardly deed done to it and sought relief from the anguish.

President Bush, with a simple pitch from a baseball stadium mound, delivered the goods.

There can be nothing like it anywhere else in the world of sports.

Play ball!

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No conspiracy theories, please

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Call me a non-conspiracy theorist.

I believe, for example, that:

* Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in murdering President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

* Men actually landed on the moon, beginning with Neil Armstrong’s “one small step … one giant leap” on July 20, 1969.

* Barack H. Obama was born in Hawaii — the 50th state to enter the Union — in August 1961 and, thus, is fully qualified to serve as president of the United States.

* Islamic madmen flew airplanes into the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and sought to fly a jetliner into the Capitol Building before they were thwarted by passengers on 9/11.

* Adolf Hitler killed himself in the Berlin bunker in April 1945 as the Red Army was closing in on his location.

* Elvis Presley actually died on Aug. 16, 1977 of a drug overdose in his Memphis, Tenn., bathroom.

I mention all these things because of the nutty theories being bandied about — to this day — about the fate of Malaysian Air Flight MH 370. I won’t repeat the goofy notions here.

My strong belief all along has been that something happened aboard that airplane to cause it to turn sharply off course on March 8. Its remains now are lying at the bottom of the southern Indian Ocean, along with the remains of the 239 people on board.

Our hearts break for those who are awaiting official word of their fate.

I just wish society, fed by social media and goofball Internet “sources,” would cease with the crazy talk. Let the searchers do their job, let them find the flight recorder, retrieve it and let its contents reveal the truth without all the mindless second-guessing.

Enough already.

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Cancel Olympics? You must be joking

U.S. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul says he’s open to canceling the Winter Olympics in Russia because of security concerns.

Someone needs to throw some cold water on that Texan’s face. Snap out of it, Mr. Chairman.

http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/russia/196442-house-homeland-security-chairman-terrorist-threat-on-olympics

Yes, there’s a threat to the Olympics. Ever since 9/11, there’s been security concern at every international event as large as the Olympics, winter or summer. It goes with the territory, in my view.

Canceling the games because terror organizations are making threats? What’s new about that?

The Salt Lake City Olympics of 2002 went off without a hitch, even though it had been beset by financial worries and incompetence. Two years later, the Athens Olympics were considered threatened. The Greeks mobilized their entire military establishment and, with the help of U.S. and other intelligence services, pulled off a stunning event. The 2006 Olympics in Japan came and went. The 2008 Olympics in Beijing were spectacular, even with the pollution that threatened athletes’ health. The Canadians’ biggest worry in 2010 was whether there would be enough snow in Vancouver; there was and those games were staged beautifully. The London Olympics of 2012 had similar security concerns, but the Brits did what they had to do to protect the athletes and the thousands of spectators who watched the events.

The Russians are pulling out all the stops to ensure the Sochi Olympics will be carried off. The Russians have deployed 100,000 troops into what’s being called a “ring of steel” around the Olympic village. If any military force knows how to clamp down on security, it would seem to be the Russians.

Past and present Olympians are urging organizers to ensure the games proceed. Yes, the threats are real. However, they were real in advance of prior Olympics — and they became a reality as far back as 1972, when Palestinian terrorists killed those Israeli athletes in Munich.

I am not dismissing the threat. I do not believe they pose a sufficient threat to cancel an entire Olympic Games. Doing so would give terrorists precisely what they want.

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Politics might keep Hasan alive

U.S. Army officials are pondering whether a military court should sentence Nidal Hasan to death or life in prison for the 2011 murder of 13 people in that horrific Fort Hood massacre.

I’ve declared already my desire to sentence Hasan to life. A death sentence would give the Army major his wish, to be martyred as a practicing Muslim.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/27/20204916-on-military-death-row-execution-is-anything-but-guaranteed?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=2

The military hasn’t executed anyone since 1961, when it hanged an Army private first class for the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old girl. Seems the military has trouble carrying out death sentences because, as NBC reports, the high command gets cold feet.

Politics will play a big part in Hasan’s sentence. He killed those people at Fort Hood to protest U.S. war efforts in Afghanistan.

Think for a moment of what would happen if the U.S. executes Hasan.

Fellow Muslim extremists around the world would shout praises to Allah for his death. They would declare it as some sort of moral victory over the Great Satan. They would hail Hasan as a hero; he won’t hear the cheers, but they wouldn’t be for his ears.

I keep thinking back to when U.S. commandos killed Osama bin Laden in that daring May 2011 raid in Pakistan. They took his body quickly out of the compound, flew his corpse offshore to the Navy nuclear aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. Then they conducted a brief ceremony and tossed bin Laden’s remains into the Indian Ocean. They had this plan all worked out in advance of the order to launch the raid and kill bin Laden.

Why did they do it? To prevent the creation of a shrine for Islamic extremists to worship their terrorist hero.

Keeping Nidal Hasan among the living would accomplish the same thing.