Tag Archives: 9/11

national news, political news

‘Middle Easterners’ in the caravan mix?

Donald J. “Fearmonger in Chief” Trump is at it again.

He said the “caravan” of refugees heading for our nation’s southern border contains “criminals” and “unknown Middle Easterners.” Does the president have any evidence of it?

Of course not! He never produces evidence of anything when he makes these bellicose assertions. It makes his crowds cheer. It fires him up. He speaks the language that his “base” understands and to which it is drawn.

The unknown Middle East component, of course, harkens back to 9/11 and the view being promoted by those on the far right that the Middle East is populated by millions of Muslims who “hate America” and will do whatever they can to do harm to Americans.

So now, according to Trump, they’re slipping into the crowd of Latin American refugees and are heading toward our soft underbelly.

I wish I had an answer to what we should do when that “caravan” arrives along our Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California borders. I don’t.

I do not believe the president is helping quell the fear of many Americans by suggesting — without attribution — the notion that the refugees are full of criminals and “Middle Easterners.”

No. Donald Trump is stoking the fear. That’s what he does. It is how he rolls.

International news

Waiting for some expression of horror from POTUS

Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who lived in the United States and worked for the Washington Post, died a gruesome death in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

His captors began cutting him apart as he screamed for his life. They dismembered his body and took it … somewhere.

A U.S. journalist dies at the hands of murderers from a country ruled by a mega-rich family. And the president of the United States cannot find the words to declare his abject horror at what happened to this man?

Donald J. Trump continues to sidle up to authoritarians. We have Russia. There is North Korea. Or the Philippines. Trump cannot condemn these rulers for the hideous acts that occur under their rule? So it is now with Saudi Arabia, an ostensible ally of the United States of America.

Let’s remember, though, that 15 of the 19 terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia.

Sure, Trump has declared the “event” in the consulate to be “awful” and “unacceptable,” but then he buys into the Saudi government’s lame explanation that Khashoggi died in a fistfight with his captors.

Are we to believe that these monsters then dumped his body somewhere, anywhere after a fistfight?

How the U.S. president can accept this phony explanation is stupidly mind-numbing in the extreme.

Sickening.

International news

Reporter died in a ‘fight’? Then gets disemembered?

A hideous event that resulted in the dismemberment and death of a journalist who lived in the United States has taken the strangest turn possible.

Saudi Arabia government officials have confirmed that Jamal Khashoggi is dead. He died in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. He reportedly was cut into pieces while he was still alive by Saudi agents.

But now the Saudi government says he died in a fight at the consulate. With whom? Why? Do we now believe that Khashoggi died because he got into a tussle?

What happened to his body?

Saudi officials say they have arrested 18 individuals. One of the suspects reportedly died in an automobile accident. The Saudis have fired five men linked to the tragic event in Istanbul.

It needs to be said that Saudi Arabia is an ostensible ally of the United States of America. The Saudis are about to make a major arms purchase from this country. Donald Trump hasn’t yet condemned the attack, other than to say “it’s a bad thing,” and other words to that effect.

Khashoggi wrote for The Washington Post. He lived in Virginia and had been a U.S. resident for many years. His gruesome murder has shocked and repelled many Americans.

As for the Saudi relationship with this country, it needs also to be said that of the 19 terrorists who attacked this country on 9/11, 15 of them were Saudis. Yet the Saudi government said at the time that the attack was the work of Israeli intelligence agents, that it was an inside job meant to implicate Arab nations. What horse manure!

The president of the United States needs to turn the heat up full blast under the backsides of the Saudi royal family, which also has been implicated in this matter. He should do so on behalf of a journalist and his grief-stricken family.

I don’t believe for an instant the Saudi “explanation” that Jamal Khashoggi died in a fight.

national news

Hey, Mr. POTUS, what about the rest of the country?

It has become an established fact that Donald John Trump Sr. loves talking exclusively to those who support him no matter what.

He speaks their language; they adhere to his message.

The latest so-called “dog whistle” was blasted out today when the president fired off a Twitter message in which — and this is really rich — he actually denied that nearly 3,000 Americans died from the wrath brought to Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria.

He blames the death toll on Democrats who are intent on making him look bad. That’s it! The Puerto Rico territorial government’s death toll, revised way upward from a formerly official count of 64 fatalities, is a plot, a conspiracy.

He made this astonishing, idiotic and utterly baseless claim as Hurricane Florence bears down on the Carolina coast, threatening to bring even more havoc to the Eastern Seaboard.

Let’s talk, briefly, about his Puerto Rico remarks.

It’s easy to say that the president doesn’t know what he’s talking about. However, he knows precisely what he’s saying. He is speaking to his “base,” the 35 or so percent of voting-age Americans who are behind him to the very end. The base doesn’t care about the truth. It doesn’t care about reality. It cares only that Trump stands up to the so-called “mainstream media,” those who oppose him.

Trump himself declared during the 2016 campaign that he could “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes.” Americans were aghast in the moment when Trump said it. That boast doesn’t seem quite so ridiculous now.

So he continues to talk to the base. He continues to make assertions without a scintilla of evidence to back them up. Democrats are to blame for the deaths of all those U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico? Millions of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016? He watched “thousands of Muslims” cheering the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11? Barack Hussein Obama was born in Kenya and was ineligible to run for president?

That’s what I call “fake news.”

national news

Fist pumps? Really, to commemorate 9/11 tragedy?

I’ve noted this before, but it came back in a big way this week as Donald J. Trump sought to commemorate the worst attack on U.S. soil in our nation’s history.

The president and first lady Melania Trump flew to Shanksville, Pa., to honor the memory of the airline passengers who battled the terrorists who hijacked the jetliners and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. United Flight 93 passengers fought the terrorists and crashed the plane in a field, saving possibly hundreds more lives.

It’s a tragic event. It is worthy of somber, quiet and dignified commemoration. The president’s arrival? It featured fist pumps and outward behavior that reminded observers of a political rally.

Hmm. I don’t quite know how to react to all of that.

Fist pumps at this event?

It’s been commented on since he became president that Donald Trump seems to lack the gene that compels presidents to serve as pastor in chief, comforter in chief. Trump doesn’t have it. He doesn’t rise to the occasion. His first and final instinct is to treat these kinds of events as political rallies.

Yes, he spoke seriously and somberly about the heroism exhibited on 9/11 aboard United Flight 93.

However, that was a moment in time. The event should have been treated the way one would expect a president to treat it: with solemnity and sadness.

It just makes me wonder whether this man, the president, is capable of comforting a nation in mourning.

national news

Remembering 9/11 … with false praise

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Donald J. Trump chose to remember 9/11 in a most curious — and shameful — manner.

Yes, he went to Shanksville, Pa., and delivered some moving remarks paying tribute to the passengers who fought the hijackers intent on crashing United 93 into the U.S. Capitol.

Then he returned to the Oval Office and boasted about how “great” the government performed a year ago when Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. The response, he said, was the best in history.

Oh, but wait! The death toll in Puerto Rico has been, um, adjusted. Instead of 64 deaths, we now know that 2,975 Americans died from the wrath of the storm that ravaged the island territory.

It took a year to restore power. Food and water was painfully slow to arrive.

So, on the day supposedly dedicated to remembering the heroes and victims of 9/11, the president decided to lie — yet again — about the government’s response to a human tragedy in Puerto Rico.

Donald Trump’s penchant for self-aggrandizement continues to amaze many Americans. Sure, he has those who support him. They’ll cheer him on. Not me.

The president’s inability to set aside the false narrative about the government’s response to a tragic event demonstrates yet again the president’s ignorance about the complex nation he was elected to govern.

local news, media news

Recalling profound tragedy’s impact on us all

9/11 is seared into our memory. Most of us likely recall where we were when we heard the news.

I was at work the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 at the Amarillo (Texas) Globe-News. A colleague came to work, stuck his head in my office and asked, “Did you hear the news? Someone flew an airplane into the World Trade Center?”

My first reaction? “What’s the weather like?” My colleague said it was clear and sunny in New York. “What kind of idiot would fly into a skyscraper?” I asked, rhetorically.

I turned on the TV. I watched the coverage of the burning WTC tower. Then the second plane plowed into the neighboring tower.

That … changed everything.

The entire nation knew at that moment we were under attack.

All of this occurred, of course, before the media were declared to be the “enemy of the people.” We all did what we do. We started gathering information, making phone calls to local sources to try to chronicle the events and their impact on our communities. We did that in Amarillo.

I won’t equate our efforts with those who ran into the burning buildings, but our attempt to keep our community informed of the events of the day were critical (a) to those who consume the news and (b) to those who seek to explain it.

I was proud to help provide some commentary, context and wishes of solidarity to the nation that was under siege from forces we hadn’t yet identified fully in the moment.

It was one of those days one never forgets.

national news

Today we honor the heroes

Heroes never seek to achieve their special status. Events are thrust upon them.

Seventeen years ago today, on a bright Tuesday morning, events occurred in this country that created heroes who were reacting instinctively. They sought to protect others’ lives against the harm that had arrived without warning.

Terrorists commandeered jetliners. They flew two of them into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, another one into the Pentagon, and a fourth jetliner crashed in Shanksville, Pa., after a titanic in-flight struggle between heroic passengers and the monsters who sought to crash that aircraft into the U.S. Capitol Building.

The date is now known simply as 9/11. You say “9/11” and everyone knows the date, what they were doing when they heard the horrific news.

I want to honor the heroes along with the victims today. The victims, nearly 3,000 of them, were simply going about their day. They were at work, they were in school, they were being cared for in day-care centers.

Terrorists acting in the name of some perversion of a great religion sought to strike at this nation. They awakened the fighting spirit of a proud people.

They produced heroes. They were the firefighters, police officers and medical personnel who ran into the burning buildings. They taught us the lessons of tried-and-true heroism.

Their legacy lives on to this day. It will live forever. Our nation should be grateful for all of eternity that they answered the call to their duty to serve the public.

national news

‘You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard’

Of all the words written in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attack, which struck us 17 years ago, one essay stands out.

I want to share it here. It came from Leonard Pitts Jr., a columnist for the Miami Herald.

I was proud to publish it in real time on the pages of the Amarillo (Texas) Globe-News, where I was working on that day in 2001.

I feel the need to show it to you once again. Pitts captured fully our sense of rage, fear, pain once it became known that terrorists had plunged the weapon deeply in our national heart.

Read the essay here.

The war against international terrorism continues. Yes, we were able to “bring justice” to the mastermind, Osama bin Laden, thanks to the bravery and immense skill and precision of the SEALs and the CIA commandos who carried out the dangerous mission in May 2011. More evil men have stepped up.

I hope you get as much from Pitts’s essay as I did then … and as I continue to do to this day.

national news

17 years later, the war goes on and on

It was a Tuesday morning. Jetliners flew into the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. Another one plowed into the Pentagon. A fourth jetliner crashed in a rural Pennsylvania field as passengers struggled valiantly against those who hijacked it.

The date was Sept. 11, 2001, now known colloquially as 9/11.

About a month later, President Bush — just months on the job — launched the war against the monsters who did the terrible deed.

And the war continues. It is the most unconventional of conflicts. We cannot declare victory and go home. The terrorists will lurk likely forever, for as long as human beings inhabit Earth.

The president stood on the rubble at Ground Zero, bullhorn in hand. He summoned the nation to unite in this struggle. For a time, we did.

The war will go on. It’s already the longest conflict in our nation’s history. Sure, we killed the mastermind behind the 9/11 attack, Osama bin Laden. We’ve killed many terror leaders and thousands of their minions. Others have emerged to take their place. We knew that would happen.

Our nation will recall the 9/11 tragedy on Tuesday. They’ll read the names of the victims who died when the Twin Towers burst into flames and fell. They’ll read the names of those who died in the Pentagon and in that Pennsylvania field. We’ll remember and honor the heroes who ran into the inferno to save others’ lives.

We also will honor and salute the men and women who have answered the call to duty as President Bush took us to war against a ruthless, cunning and elusive enemy.

None of us knows when this fight will end. We don’t even know if it will end … ever! We hear brave talk about how we’re going to destroy the enemy. However, it is just talk. I remain dubious as to whether we’ll ever rid the planet of every single terrorist or organization intend on sowing the seeds of fear.

I am one who supports the on-going war against terror. Yes, the cost of this war is terrible. However, as the president said when he launched the campaign against the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other terrorists in Afghanistan, it is far better to fight them there than to fight them here.

Seventeen years later, the war goes on.