Tag Archives: World Trade Center

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.

 

 

Rudy wraps himself in 9/11 tragedy

Rudy Guiliani is becoming more shameless by the hour.

After saying that President Barack Obama doesn’t love America, the former New York City mayor has essentially doubled down on that criticism by telling right-wing talk show host Sean Hannity that Obama “didn’t live through 9/11; I did.”

http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/02/19/rudy-giuliani-invokes-911-to-reinforce-his-clai/202583

So, what is the former mayor suggesting? It might be that he’s glorifying his involvement in a crisis that was thrust upon him by those terrorists who flew the planes into the World Trade Center.

No one with any memory of that terrible day would begrudge the mayor for the role he played in rallying his city and, thus, the country in the wake of horrifying tragedy. I certainly get it. His Honor stood tall, along with President Bush.

But why bring that up now as he criticizes President Obama — wrongly, in my view?

He’s suggesting the president doesn’t take international terrorism seriously enough. He posited the ridiculous notion that Obama doesn’t love the country.

Now he says he’s justified in criticizing the president because he was mayor of New York on the morning that the terrorists stunned the world with their brazen attack on the United States of America.

No, Mr. Mayor. You were in the wrong place at the right time. That’s all. Yes, you responded heroically — but your actions — by themselves — don’t give you the right to question the president’s love of country.

 

Let's stick to the singular 'war'

A Huffington Post headline contains a word that requires a correction.

It says, “Jeb Bush won’t talk about wars his brother started.”

The operative word here is “wars.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/14/jeb-bush-iraq-afghanistan_n_6683970.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

The Huffington Post is no friend of Jeb Bush or of his brother, former President George W. Bush. Having stipulated the obvious, I now shall make a crucial point.

The “wars” referenced in the article are the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. I hereby submit that George W. Bush didn’t start the Afghan War. The first shot — if you want to call it that — was fired on 9/11 when two jetliners crashed into the World Trade Center, another one plowed into the Pentagon and a fourth plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field as passengers fought to retake the aircraft that had been hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists.

Nearly 3,000 innocent victims died on that terrible day.

President Bush responded to an act of war against the United States. The war began because terrorists headquartered in the Afghan wilderness plotted the dastardly deed and were plotting to do even more damage to this country and to others around the world.

Our military response was in retaliation for what the monstrous murderers did on 9/11.

As for the Iraq War, yes, Bush started that war. The Bush administration relied on bad intelligence — or perhaps fabricated a weapons of mass destruction scenario to justify a military invasion of a sovereign country. Whatever the cause, the Iraq War was ill-conceived and then sold to the public dishonestly as a relatively simple mission.

The world would then learn that Iraq didn’t possess WMD, which only worsened the public perception that President Bush was out to settle a score with the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

That is the war the former president’s brother, Jeb — who’s considering a presidential campaign in 2016 — should keep hidden in the closet for as long as he can.

The Afghan War? That one was justified.

It’s an open question about whether the effort in Afghanistan was worth it. The U.S. combat mission there is over and the Afghans will be left to defend their country against the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists who are seeking to retake the country.

Jeb Bush, though, will have his hands full trying to justify the Iraq War and whether the cost of that bloody conflict — more than 4,400 American lives — was worth the fight.

Revenge on tap? Who knew?

This is the nature of the enemy with which the United States and other nations are at war.

Al-Qaeda officials vow “revenge” for the air strikes that have hammered Islamic State positions in Syria and Iraq. And why are we striking those targets? Because of terrorist acts against innocent civilians.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/al-qaida-leader-syria-warns-revenge-airstrikes-n213636

Al-Qaeda started this fight 13 years ago when terrorists hijacked those airplanes and flew them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. The United States, led by two presidents, have sought to finish the fight they started.

There’s no end game in sight yet. President Bush declared our intention to root out the Taliban in Afghanistan. President Obama has followed through.

ISIL has emerged as an offshoot of al-Qaeda and has executed innocents, some of whom in a horrific way.

And now these terrorists are vowing revenge?

Someone will have to explain to me how this makes any sense.

We are not engaging in a religious war

The Values Summit is underway in Washington, D.C., and the usual cavalcade of kooks is drumming up something akin to a religious war.

The international war on terror, they imply strongly, is a war between Christians and Jews against Muslims.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/ted-cruz-values-voter-conference-111363.html?hp=f2

Let’s hold on here.

It is a war pitting civilized human beings against cult followers.

Michelle Bachmann, the lame-duck Minnesota congresswoman, kept harping on what she called “Islamic terrorists.” So did lame-duck Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and a roundtable of “experts” who contend that Muslims pose an existential threat to our way of life.

Give me a break.

Another conservative American president, George W. Bush, was quite astute back when this war began immediately after 9/11 to declare that America is not waging war against Islam. He singled out the terrorists who have perverted a great religion to suit their insane political cause. Does anyone remember when President Bush visited a mosque in New York immediately after touring the wreckage of where the World Trade Center stood?

The Islamic State is not a religious organization. It is a cult. It is a cabal of sociopathic murderers who seek to use religion as a pretext to commit heinous acts of terrorism on innocent people.

They are the enemy. The do not represent Islam any more than, say, the crackpots at Westboro Baptist “Church” in Topeka, Kan., represent Christianity.

The task now is to persuade the goofballs on the right to quit trying to make this a religious war.

It is no such thing.

9/11 videos get tougher to watch

There’s a lot of remembering occurring today.

Where were we when we heard the news about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. 2001? What did we feel? What went through our minds?

I remember where I was and what I was doing. I was at my job, working at the Amarillo Globe-News. A colleague stuck his head in my office and asked, “Did you hear? Someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center?” My response: “What’s the weather like in New York?” “Beautiful,” he said. “What kind of moron would do that?” I asked in disgust.

I turned on the TV and watched the second plane fly into the second WTC tower.

The rest is history.

Today I’ve been watching MSNBC replay the events of that terrible day. I cannot watch any more video of the towers burning. I know what comes next. They crash to the ground. My anger boils up all over again.

On this 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I am filled once again with the dread that filled me that day. It is fear that someone will hit us again. We’ve been saying it ever since the 9/11 attacks: It’s not a matter of “if,” but “when.”

So far so good. We haven’t been hit like that since.

But watching the video of that horrific moment just gets harder with each passing year.

It might be the realization that the terrorists were destined to pull this kind of attack on us all along. Our national security team knew it was possible. The terrorists just have elevated that concern to the top of our national consciousness. It’s still there, which is where it belongs.

And as long as the threat remains at the top of our minds, we’ll remain ever-vigilant.

That’s my hope, at least.

When did ISIL become such a threat?

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant dominated the Sunday talk shows.

Why not? ISIL has been on everyone’s mind these days.

Whether it’s ISIL or ISIS — po-tay -to, po-tah-to … whatever — the group has burst into our national consciousness in a way not seen since, oh, al-Qaeda did on Sept. 11, 2001.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/216871-obama-to-detail-nation-on-isis-threat

I’m left with this question: How does a terror organization operate under our noses and under our radar for as long as ISIL apparently has without there being some kind of forewarning?

I am quite sure I’m missing something here, but I pose the question because ISIL now has become the stuff of presidential addresses to the nation.

President Obama is going to speak to us Wednesday night and will detail a strategy for how he intends to destroy the terror organization. In a Meet the Press interview broadcast today, the president also said he will offer details on the specific threat he believes ISIL poses to Americans.

We’ve been operating in an ISIL-free environment ever since the war on terror began immediately after the 9/11 attacks. How can that have happened.

ISIL didn’t just emerge from a genie bottle overnight. It’s well-funded, well-organized, media-savvy and dedicated to the proposition that it intends to bring harm to Americans. No group just pops up from under the rocks without anyone knowing of its existence.

The same might be said of al-Qaeda. Yes, U.S. intelligence officials reportedly knew about that group before the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda was responsible for the suicide attack on the USS Cole in 2000. It was known to have been involved in a bombing at the World Trade Center in 1993. President Clinton sought to kill Osama bin Laden but failed.

Did John Q. Public know about al-Qaeda then?

No. It took that horrific attack on New York and Washington to make us aware of who these monsters are what they are capable of doing.

Now it’s ISIL, the latest national threat. It’s good that ISIL is on our radar. It’s even better that it’s on the commander in chief’s radar.

I hope now that at his next news conference, someone in the White House press corps will ask: Mr. President, when did we know about ISIL and why are we only now getting revved up to fight this monstrous mob of murderers?

 

Pentagon strikes hard at al-Qaida

Something tells me the Pentagon brass is embarrassed enough to take some serious action against the world’s pre-eminent terrorist organization.

A video surfaced a few days ago in Yemen that showed a large crowd of al-Qaida thugs rallying in broad daylight; they were chanting, cheering and carrying on as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

You remember al-Qaida, yes? They’re the murderers responsible for the 9/11 attacks, not to mention countless other acts of bloody terrorism before and since that heinous act more than a dozen years ago.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/21/world/meast/yemen-drone-strike/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Well, the video suggests that al-Qaida is growing yet again. The group is brazen enough to prance around in the open, apparently right under the noses of U.S. and Middle East intelligence-gatherers.

Over the weekend, drone strikes and special operations forces began a concerted effort to wipe out a number of these terrorist leaders. Pentagon officials called it a massive operation conducted in cooperation with Yemeni government operatives and commandos. News of the strikes was announced late Sunday and early Monday it was revealed that the strikes are continuing.

This is the nature of war these days. The war on terror that President Bush declared after the 9/11 attacks is continuing. My hunch is that it will continue for as long as terrorists lurk among us anywhere on the planet. Osama bin Laden is dead, but others have surfaced to take his place.

Al-Qaida got our attention in a serious way when its henchmen flew those jetliners into the New York skyscrapers and into the Pentagon. All that dancing and prancing just made us angry all over again.

Atheists picking senseless fight

One can find religious symbols virtually everywhere. The cloud that spreads sunlight from the heavens? How about spectacular sunrises or sunsets? Rock formations that resemble, say, the Star of David or perhaps an oversized Buddha?

Well, a group calling itself American Atheists has argued before a federal appeals court that a piece of I-beam in the shape of a crucifix that was taken from the World Trade Center wreckage in the wake of the 9/11 attacks should not be placed in a private museum.

Give … me … a … break.

http://www.today.com/news/world-trade-center-cross-fight-continues-athiest-group-appeals-ruling-2D79328902?ocid=msnhp&pos=4

There are religious symbols and then there are those things that transcend pure religion. The crucifix-shaped metal fits the latter description. As an appellate judge ruled earlier in allowing the article to be displayed, it “demonstrate(s) how those at Ground Zero coped with the devastation they witnessed.”

Thus, the symbol has become far more than some religious symbol, although I personally see nothing wrong with it symbolizing the faith of millions of Americans — and a billion or so people around the world.

American Atheists filed suit in July 2011 to prevent the display at the museum, which was built on land leased from the federal government.

The cross-shaped beam was discovered in the wreckage as crews sought to clear debris after terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center and killed about 3,000 people, most of the Americans.

It’s become a symbol of strength, resolve and courage — all of which have been demonstrated amply by those who toiled in the rubble left by the terrorist attacks on that horrifying day.

American Atheists are entitled to express their opinion on the suitability of religious icons.

On this one, though, they’ve missed the mark by a mile.

Let’s hope the Second Court of Appeals sees this issue correctly.

The 9/11 National Museum is set to open in May. Here’s hoping the cross-shaped beam is on display in all its glory.