Thinking Of The 9/11 Tragedy. With Pride.

It’s been nine years.  But most Americans remember where they were when they first learned that a hijacked passenger jumbo jet had just slammed into the World Trade Center.

We also remember how we felt: the incomprehension, the shock, the fear and the anger.

A few moments stand out for me that give me pride to this day.

The Events That Took Place In the Skies Above Pennsylvania:

United Airlines flight 93 was a Boeing 757 on a morning Newark-to-San Francisco route. On 11 Sep 2001 the plane was hijacked by a four man hijacking team. Evidence suggests that the hijacking was apparently thwarted by the efforts of the plane’s passengers and flight attendants. The plane crashed southeast of Pittsburgh in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. The plan  was carrying 37 passengers and 7 crew members. There were no survivors.  Todd Beamer, a passenger, tried to place a credit card call but was routed to a customer service representative instead, who passed him on to supervisor Lisa Jefferson. She called the FBI. Beamer reported that one passenger was dead.  He asked if together they could pray the Lord’s prayer, which they did.  Later, he told the operator that some of the plane’s passengers were planning “to jump” the hijackers. The last words Ms. Jefferson heard from the plane were “Are you ready guys? Let’s roll.”  The plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 10:03 AM, killing all aboard.  It is believed that this aircraft was intended to be crashed into the United States Capitol building in Washington, DC, Congress was in session at the time.

A shiver goes up my spine every time I try to visualize the raw courage of Todd Beamer and the beyond-heroic men and women who assisted him in taking back the plane so that it could not be used as a weapon against other Americans.  Even as they likely knew that they would surely die themselves.

I think particularly of Todd Beamer asking to pray with an operator whom he would never see in this life, and afterward that operator being able to recollect his last words, spoken to other passengers: “Are you ready guys?  Let’s roll.”

I feel pride.  and I pray, and hope, that I would have been like those heroes had I been on board that flight.

The Events Of The 343 Firefighters, Paramedics, And Police Officers:

As thousands of workers in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center desperately fled down the stairs, there were heroes laboring their way up carrying their heavy gear.  Laboring up floor after floor, trying to make their way up to render aid when everyone around them was trying to make their way to safety.

Few if any of those men knew that they were climbing to their deaths.  But you know what?  I have a feeling that many of them would have kept on climbing even if they did know.  It was just who they were.

And on this day, I honor them.  And I’m proud of their sacrifice.

The Events On The Top Floors Of The World Trade Center:

One of the most vivid images in my mind was the footage of people in the top floors of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center throwing themselves out of windows to their deaths to escape the raging inferno within that dying skyscraper.  We can only imagine their horrific and terrorized desperation in facing the nightmare choice of a certain death by fire, or a certain death by fall.

In the months afterward, I watched a program putting these events into a spiritual context.  If my memory serves, it was R.C. Sproul who had the made the most memorable impression in my soul.

He spoke of 9/11 representing both the greatest evil and the greatest good in the world, of the evil of the terrorists, and of the love exhibited by those who perished as a result of their evil.

He described how he imagined the final moments of those who had been in the top floors, unable to escape the inferno.  He focused on the image of many of those who threw themselves out of the building: how they leaped to their deaths holding hands with their fellow workers.

I can imagine a crying, terrorized secretary, afraid to jump, but even more terrified of the terrible heat and smoke, and the approaching roaring flames.  And I imagine someone telling her, “Come with me.  Hold my hand.  We’ll go together.”

And amidst all that evil, they leaped.  Holding hands.

What love.

The image brings tears of sorrow, that so many such anonymous, but such wonderful, people, died that day.  But it also brings pride.

What would you do in that situation?  I hope if I had to go out like that, someone would be holding my hand.

The Events Of The President’s Visit To The Ground Zero Site:

Another vivid memory for me was President George Bush’s so-called “bullhorn moment” on September 14, 2001 as he visited Ground Zero following the attack.

I had joined my brother and his family and my parents in a restaurant which had a giant screen television.  And that’s where I saw Bush step up – literally – and say a very few, but now very famous, words:

As described by eyewitness and participant Karl Rove, who documented the scene in his book, Courage and Consequence:

Bush was hearing and seeing the rescue workers up close.  They were not shy about sharing their feelings.  These men were working on adrenaline and passion and, after three days and increasingly less frequent good news about survivors, they were nearly spent.  Pataki was right; the presidential visit was energizing for many of the people we met.  Bush later told me what he felt from the workers was deep, almost overwhelming anger, even hatred. […]

There was a tug on my sleave.  It was Nina Bishop, a White House advance woman working the event.  She pointed to the chanting workers and said, “They want to hear from their president.”  No one had prepared remarks, but she was exactly right…

I pointed at the battered fire truck.  Andy [Card] made a beeline to the president.  Nina had commandeered a bullhorn from a man who worked for Con Ed and met me at the fire truck with it.  The bullhorn’s batteries weren’t that good, but it was all we had…

The president took the bullhorn and reached his hand up to the rescue worker, a retired sixty-nine-year-old firefighter named Bob Beckwith.  Beckwith looked down into the scrum below him, saw the outstretched hand, grasped, and pulled.  In an instant, Bush was sharing the top of the truck with Beckwith, who suddenly realized he’d helped up the president of the United States.  Beckwith tried to crawl down but the president asked, “Where are you going?”  Bob said he was getting down.  Bush said, “No, no, you stay right here.”

The cheers and chanting subsided and the president started to speak into the bullhorn.  With the National Cathedral prayer service still fresh on his mind, Bush began by saying, “I want you all to know that America today is on bended knee in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here, for the workers who work here, for the families who mourn.  This nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens.”  Someone yelled, “Go get ’em, George!”  Someone else yelled, “George, we can’t hear you!” and others echoed this complaint.  Bush paused and then responded in a voice now fully magnified by the bullhorn, “I can hear you.”  The crowd went nuts – and he knew what to do from there.  “The rest of the world hears you,” he went on, “and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”  The crowd broke into defiant, even bitter, chants of “U.S.A.!  U.S.A.!”  Bush handed the bullhorn off and he climbed down.

In an iconic moment, George Bush was very much alone with an enormous responsibility.  The nation wanted reassurance; it wanted to know it had a leader who understood the mission America now faced.  No speechwriters, no aides, no advisers were involved in Bush’s response.  It was an authentic moment that connected with the public in a strong, deep way.  Without assistance and in an instant, George Bush gave voice to America’s desires.

Seeing President Bush hop up on that busted truck and stand shoulder to shoulder with a weary firefighter is a sight forever etched in my mind, and for many it remains one of the most inspiring scenes from the terrible events of 9/11.  Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley’s assessment of Bush’s visit to Ground Zero was prophetic: “We can’t just judge him as President Bush anymore, but we’re going to soon be judging him as commander-in-chief.”

Karl Rove, Courage and Consequence, pp 277-279

President George Bush was at his finest moment when the country needed him the most.

The Events Of Our Very Greatest Americans: The Congressional Medal Of Honor Recipients:

Our soldiers are all heroes, these days.  You don’t volunteer to serve in today’s military without realizing that you may very well be called upon to serve in a combat zone.  And with terrorism and the tactics used by terrorist fighters, anyone can suddenly find himself or herself on the front lines.

I’ve marveled at our soldiers and Marines since the first footage showed them ready to go into battle.  And from those first days to the present, they have been magnificent.

I am so proud of them, so proud of what they have accomplished, and so proud that these incredible men and women wear the flag that I cherish.

I obviously can’t name them all, and tell all of their stories.  But here are the stories of the greatest of the great: our Congressional Medal of Honor recipients:

• Salvatore Giunta, Staff Sergeant, B Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Infantry Brigade (Airborne), US Army

• Robert James Miller, Staff Sergeant, A Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne), US Army

• Jared C. Monti, Sgt 1st Class, 3rd Squadron, 71st Cavalry, 10th Mountain Division, US Army

• Michael P. Murphy, Lieutenant, Alpha Platoon, SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team ONE (SDVT-1), US Navy

• Jason Dunham, Corporal, 4th Platoon, Company K, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment (3/7), 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, USMC

• Ross A. McGinnis, Specialist,1st Platoon, C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, US Army

• Michael A. Monsoor, Petty Officer 2nd Class, Delta Platoon, SEAL Team 3, US Navy

• Paul R. Smith, Sgt 1st Class, B Company, 11th Engineer Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division, US Army

These men, in receiving this the highest award for valor, have transcended themselves, and rightly epitomize the greatest attributes of not just soldiers, sailors, and Marines, but of human beings.  I think of the words of Jesus, “Greater love has no one than this, than that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

On this 9/11, I remember that the United States was attacked by men who had murdered their very own humanity in the name of a rabid religious ideology before they murdered nearly 3,000 Americans.  I remember that we are at war, whether all of us recognize it or not.  And I remember that we must hold the same steely resolve to fight against an adversary who practices no rules, has no compassion, and stops at no moral or rational limits.

But most of all, I remember the men and women who gave us the greatest possible example of love, of courage, of sacrifice, and of both the human and American spirit.

And I’m proud to be an American, because I am surrounded by such a cloud of magnificent heroes.

Thank you, Lord, for producing these magnificent men and women.

And Lord, please make more of them and keep them coming.  For we surely need others like them.

Danger, Democrats At Work: Obama Twists Into Pretzel, Reid Distances Himself, Pelosi Demands Investigation

Barack Obama – desperately wanting to divert attention away from his failed policies and the terrible economy those failed policies have produced – poured gasoline onto the mosque being planned near Ground Zero and then lit the match.

The White House went from “deeming [the mosque] a local issue that local politicians can and should deal with,” to “endorsing” it, to waffling away from his endorsement to the point of lunacy.

In light of Obama’s pretzel-twisting flip-flopping cowardice, comedian Jon Stewart proposes Obama adopt a new campaign slogan: “Yes we can . . . But should we?”

Harry Reid came out in opposition to Obama’s endorsement, which Obama walked back into a non-endorsing endorsement:

“The First Amendment protects freedom of religion,” said Reid’s spokesman in a statement. “Senator Reid respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built someplace else.”

Which is exactly the position of the right-wing of the Republican Party:

U.S. House Republican leader John Boehner called Obama’s “endorsement” of the center’s construction near Ground Zero troubling.

“The fact that someone has the right to do something doesn’t necessarily make it the right thing to do,” Boehner said in a statement. “This is not an issue of law, whether religious freedom or local zoning. This is a basic issue of respect for a tragic moment in our history.”

Harry Reid is in a fight for his political life, and that may be why he had to actually honestly represent the clear will of 70% of the American people for a change.

Enter Nancy Pelosi, who demands an investigation of those who oppose the mosque her Messiah voted for before he voted against it:

Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) today called for an investigation of those opposing the mosque being planned for construction a block away from the site of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York City that toppled the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center complex in lower Manhatten and killed nearly 3000 people.

Speaking to reporters in San Francisco, Pelosi at first deferred to New Yorkers on the mosque, calling it an “urban development question” for them to decide.

“I think everybody respects the right of people in our country to express their religious beliefs on their property. The decision though as to how to go forward in New York is up to New York,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi reiterated that New Yorkers should decide in response to a follow-up question about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) differing with President Barack Obama on the construction of the mosque, but then launched into a brief tirade against being questioned on the mosque and demanded an investigation be made into the opposition to the mosque.

“There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded. How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we’ve been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we go forward to an election about the future of our country and two of the first three questions are about a zoning issue in New York City,” hissed Pelosi.

Audio of Pelosi’s comments was posted by KCBS-AM-FM which ignored Pelosi’s call to investigate the opposition to the mosque in its summary of her remarks–likewise for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Audio of Pelosi calling for an investigation into the opponents of the mosque, and how they are being funded.

Mind you, she’s not calling upon an investigation as to how the mosque is going to be funded, and which possibly hostile and jihadist foreign sources might be involved with the funding.

She’s not looking into these questions:

The Cordoba Initiative has reported less than $20,000 in assets. Where the $100 million for his project would come from is anybody’s guess. Furthermore, it’s fair to ask why, exactly, Imam Rauf has insisted on building the mosque so close to ground zero, and why he wants to unveil it on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. This not an issue of religious freedom, but rather, a question of safety and security.

Here’s another question: the Governor of New York has offered to provide another site for the community center.  And been ignored.  Why won’t the Muslims budge on demanding that they build right next to Ground Zero?

No.  The Speaker of the House of Representatives is demanding that the people representing the 70% of the American people who oppose the mosque should be investigated.

The mosque would be built less than 600 feet from Ground Zero.  On a site that is technically very much a part of Ground Zero, given the fact that it was hit in the 9/11 attack by the landing gear of the plane that slammed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center.

If this mosque is built, our worst enemies overseas will rejoice over their victory.  By Islamic tradition, you commemorate a great victory by building a mosque on the site of that victory.

There are over 3,000 mosques in the United States.  Many have been recently built, and many more are presently under construction.  How easy is it to build a Christian church today in an Islamic country?  Try, “impossible.” And that’s even if we don’t try to build one within 600 feet of Mecca.

You want to investigate someone, Nancy?  Investigate Harry Reid.  Investigate the Democrats who are backing away from Obama and from the Ground Zero mosque that he endorsed.  Hell, investigate the voters who decided to elect such a remarkably stupid and evil woman to be the Speaker of the House in the first place.

I find it amazing that Nancy Pelosi felt so free to falsely and maliciously demagogue and demonize Tea Party protesters who were clearly acting within their rights as American citizens, only to now demand an investigation into those who are STILL acting within their rights to oppose an ill-considered mosque being built too close to Ground Zero.

She denounces those who make the mosque a political issue EVEN AS SHE MAKES THE DAMN MOSQUE A POLITICAL ISSUE.

It’s long-passed time we vote these hypocrite fools out of office.

On the “bright side,” at least liberals have finally found a religion that they want to defend and not relentlessly attack.  Nancy and Barry Hussein will fight to the last Democrat to defend Sharia law which cuts off the nose and ears of a Muslim girl for fleeing a pre-arranged marriage.  But where are they with Christian churches, where liberal commissions routinely deny them the right to build right here in the USA? More.  Where are they with St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which was destroyed in the 9/11 attack, and STILL not allowed to rebuild?

Why is it the tolerant thing to build a mosque near Ground Zero when Muslims created the horror of Ground Zero to begin with?  Why isn’t it tolerant to first rebuild the church that was destroyed by Muslims?  Why are we supposed to passively allow Muslims to lecture us about our “intolerance” when Islam is far and away the most intolerant religion and culture on the face of the earth?

Why don’t we investigate why Nancy Pelosi and Democrats undermine Christianity as a matter of routine, and bow (literally) and scrape before Islam?

Another Milestone Day For Obama: The Monstrous Mistake Of Trying Foreign Terrorists Like U.S. Citizens

I didn’t used to believe in anything special about “Friday the 13th.”  It was just another day.  Turns out I was wrong.

Obama has brought about yet another “change.”

Friday the 13th now features a new monster – the President of the United States of America – as the Creature Who Made Terrorists Feel Right At Home.  I know the name doesn’t sound as scary as “Jason Voorhees,” the hockey-masked hacker-slasher, but believe me, this is a monster that can kill more Americans than Jason Voorhees ever did.

Under Obama, we’re undermining our CIA.  We’re mirandizing terrorists captured on foreign battlefields.  And now we’re trying mass-murdering terrorists like American citizens in our justice system.

And, of course, when a terrorists actually guns down more than two score unarmed soldiers on a military base, he denies the man is even a terrorist in a rush to whitewash lest the revelation somehow undermine our “diversity.”

Hope you terrorist-murderers feel at home.  If there’s anything else we can do for you, please let us know.  Our president will go to any lengths to make you as comfortable as possible.

And don’t you mind that whole “slaughtering” thing.  We’re really like sheeple now; we don’t mind.  Murder 3,000 of us, or 3,000,000; we’re fine with it.  Really.

Why are we going to put the 9/11 mastermind and four of his fellow murderers on trial in civilian court?  Because Barack Obama is more righteous and wonderful than our despicable presidents of the past – such as Abraham Lincoln and the admittedly less-righteous FDR – have ever been.  Honest Abe was actually DIShonest Abe because he had military tribunals.

NYC trial of 9/11 suspects poses legal risks

By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer Devlin Barrett, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 33 mins ago

WASHINGTON – In the biggest trial for the age of terrorism, the professed 9/11 mastermind and four alleged henchmen will be hauled before a civilian court on American soil, barely a thousand yards from the site of the World Trade Center’s twin towers they are accused of destroying.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced the decision Friday to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to trial at a lower Manhattan courthouse.

It’s a risky move. Trying the men in civilian court will bar evidence obtained under duress and complicate a case where anything short of slam-dunk convictions will empower President Barack Obama’s critics.

The case is likely to force the federal court to confront a host of difficult issues, including rough treatment of detainees, sensitive intelligence-gathering and the potential spectacle of defiant terrorists disrupting proceedings. U.S. civilian courts prohibit evidence obtained through coercion, and a number of detainees were questioned using harsh methods some call torture.

Holder insisted both the court system and the untainted evidence against the five men are strong enough to deliver a guilty verdict and the penalty he expects to seek: a death sentence for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people who were killed when four hijacked jetliners slammed into the towers, the Pentagon and a field in western Pennsylvania.

“After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September the 11th will finally face justice. They will be brought to New York — to New York,” Holder repeated for emphasis — “to answer for their alleged crimes in a courthouse just blocks away from where the twin towers once stood.”

Holder said he decided to bring Mohammed and the other four before a civilian court rather than a military commission because of the nature of the undisclosed evidence against them, because the 9/11 victims were mostly civilians and because the attacks took place on U.S. soil. Institutionally, the Justice Department, where Holder has spent most of his career, has long wanted to reassert the ability of federal courts to handle terrorism cases.

Lawyers for the accused will almost certainly try to have charges thrown out based on the rough treatment of the detainees at the hands of U.S. interrogators, including the repeated waterboarding, or simulated drowning, of Mohammed.

The question has been raised as to whether the government can make its case without using coerced confessions.

That may not matter, said Pat Rowan, a former Justice Department official.

“When you consider everything that’s come out in the proceedings at Gitmo, either from the mouth of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others or from their written statements submitted to the court, it seems clear that they won’t need to use any coerced confessions in order to demonstrate their guilt,” said Rowan.

Held at Guantanamo since September 2006, Mohammed said in military proceedings there that he wanted to plead guilty and be executed to achieve what he views as martyrdom. In a letter from him released by the war crimes court, he referred to the attacks as a “noble victory” and urged U.S. authorities to “pass your sentence on me and give me no respite.”

Holder insisted the case is on firm legal footing, but he acknowledged the political ground may be more shaky when it comes to bringing feared al-Qaida terrorists to U.S. soil.

“To the extent that there are political consequences, I’ll just have to take my lumps,” he said. But any political consequences will reach beyond Holder to his boss, Obama.

Bringing such notorious suspects to U.S. soil to face trial is a key step in Obama’s plan to close the military-run detention center in Cuba. Obama initially planned to close the prison by next Jan. 22, but the administration is no longer expected to meet that deadline.

Obama said he is “absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people will insist on it and my administration will insist on it.”

After the announcement, political criticism and praise for the decision divided mostly along party lines.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said bringing the terrorism suspects into the U.S. “is a step backwards for the security of our country and puts Americans unnecessarily at risk.”

Former President George W. Bush’s last attorney general, Michael Mukasey, a former federal judge in New York, also objected that federal courts were not well-suited to this task. “The plan seems to be to abandon the view that we are at war,” Mukasey told a conference of conservative lawyers. He said trial in open court “creates a cornucopia of intelligence for those still at large and a circus for those being tried,” and he advocated military tribunals instead.

But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the federal courts are capable of trying high-profile terrorism cases.

“By trying them in our federal courts, we demonstrate to the world that the most powerful nation on earth also trusts its judicial system — a system respected around the world,” Leahy said.

Family members of Sept. 11 victims were also divided.

“We have a president who doesn’t know we’re at war,” said Debra Burlingame, whose brother, Charles Burlingame, had been the pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon. She said she was sickened by “the prospect of these barbarians being turned into victims by their attorneys.”

From McClatchey:

Congressional Republicans, however, promptly accused the Obama administration of trying to return to a pre-Sept. 11 mentality of criminalizing the war on terrorism.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas warned that “bringing these dangerous individuals onto U.S. soil needlessly compromises the safety of all Americans.”

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said the possibility that the accused terrorists “could be found not guilty due to some legal technicality just blocks from Ground Zero should give every American pause.”

Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder – who actually has a track record for PARDONING AND FREEING TERRORISTS had this to say:

A big obstacle could be whether an impartial jury can be impaneled so close to where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood.

Holder said that a careful jury selection process should dispel those concerns.

“I would not have authorized the bringing of these prosecutions unless I thought that the outcome … would ultimately be successful,” he said. “I will say that I have access to information that has not been publicly released that gives me great confidence that we will be successful in federal court.”

But what happens if you thought wrong, Holder?  What happens then?

What happens if these guys are found not guilty?  Are we supposed to just let them go?

What happens if the five terrorists draw a liberal activist judge who wants to make “torture” and issue, rather than “terrorism” and “3,000 murdered Americans”?  Is Obama and his Justice Department at work to circumvent the system relating to the assigning of judges to particular cases and guarantee that “the right” judge hears the case?  Wouldn’t that be tantamount to the very worst that Obama has claimed he wants to avoid in the first place?  Wouldn’t that amount to a show trial?

Obama is either taking a giant chance, a literal roll of the dice, or he’s already stacked the deck.

What happens if a Muslim is on the jury pool?  That one’s kind of interesting.  A single juror can hang the jury and lead to a mistrial.  Do we want to take a chance that a sympathizer throw a monkey wrench into the system?  Is the Obama team that so values “diversity” going to try to prevent Muslims from serving on the jury?

What about a change of venue?  Surely a judge would HAVE to grant such an obvious petition, given the fact that the attacks occurred in New York, virtually every adult was impacted, and “New York” is hardly the best place to find an untainted jury pool for the 9/11 attack on the “World Trade Center attack in New York”?  And yet New York has this mulit-million dollar high tech courthouse complex to deal with them.

I mean, again, if you grant the change of venue, people will justifiably become enraged.  And if you DON’T grant the change of venue, people will justifiably think that the fix is in.

A military tribunal of KSM and his terrorist buddies at Gitmo would have been a ho-hum affair.  A civilian trial in a lower Manhattan courthouse with the press swarming over every detail like cockroaches would be the trial of the century.

Propaganda forum?  You bet.  Journalists will cover every remark that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his merry band of mass murderers offers.  Including the words of solidarity with other jihadist murderers.  Including words of encouragement to any who would murder Americans anywhere on the planet.  This is hardly the message that the American media should be broadcasting, but rest assured we’ll be broadcasting every word of it.

Terrorists are different from jewel thieves and even from gang bangers: every single thing they do is directed toward spreading a message.

These terrorists want a big stage.  And Barack Obama and Eric Holder want to make sure they have that stage.

And what happens if the trial – whether it’s held in New York or somewhere else – stimulates more terrorist attacks?  It’s one thing if terrorists try to attack Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, quite another if they launch an attack in New York, Los Angeles, or wherever else.

And assuming (no guarantee anymore) that these terrorist monsters go to prison, you can bet in the age of Gitmo (which is actually a model prison) being shut down under Obama that these guys will end up in the U.S. civilian system.  And they will be welcomed like rock stars.

Authorities are becoming increasingly alarmed over the radicalized Muslim population coming out of the U.S. prison system:

“Over the past 30 years, Islam has become a powerful force in the U.S. prison system, with some estimates that up to 20% of the inmate population is now Muslim.  Terrorism experts are increasingly concerned that disaffected inmates drawn to radical Islam could become a source of homegrown terrorist activity.”

Authorities are seeing more and more “homegrown jihadists” coming out of the prison system.  Just two weeks ago, federal authorities were confronted by radicalized Muslims coming out of the U.S. prison system and organizing a cell that was claiming “that the government was the enemy and they must be willing to take on the FBI — even if it meant death.”  And thanks to this brain dead decision by Barack Hussein, we’re going to start seeing a lot more of this.  Putting these terrorists into the U.S. prison system is tantamount to putting crack cocaine in the hands of addicts.  It will not end well.

This is a truly stupid idea on every level imaginable.

My question is, what are we gaining from taking what Obama’s Justice Department ADMITS is a risk?  That we were “open”?

There’s the obvious question, “You know what?  This thing could backfire.  I mean these guys could be acquitted.”  And MSNBC Justice Department Correspondent Pete Williams has this to say, based on his sources:

“No.  They’ve got a drawer full of other charges that they could bring against these defendants.  There are already indictments pending against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for other crimes, so they will just re-arrest them and charge them with something else.”

The thing about a fair game is that either team could actually win.  This isn’t a fair game.  And everyone in the world is going to know that, no matter where it is held.  Contrary to what the White House might think, the inhabitants of the rest of the world are not as stupid and gullible and willing to believe propagandist drivel as Democrats are.  This isn’t going to be any kind of demonstration about how “open” we are.  People who didn’t believe it before won’t start believing it now – unless and possibly even including that we allow the five terrorists to walk out of court free men.

A National Review article entitled, “Holder’s Hidden Agenda,” reminds us of how Obama’s people just ripped into the CIA and started pulling out every wire and diode they could.  They demanded an investigation and just plain released all kinds of previously classified information that made the US and the CIA look as bad as they possibly could.  To what end?

This summer, I theorized that Attorney General Eric Holder — and his boss — had a hidden agenda in ordering a re-investigation of the CIA for six-year-old alleged interrogation excesses that had already been scrutinized by non-partisan DOJ prosecutors who had found no basis for prosecution. The continuing investigations of Bush-era counterterrorism policies (i.e., the policies that kept us safe from more domestic terror attacks), coupled with the Holder Justice Department’s obsession to disclose classified national-defense information from that period, enable Holder to give the hard Left the “reckoning” that he and Obama promised during the 2008 campaign. […]

So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda’s case against America. Since that will be their “defense,” the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America’s defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.

Like I said.  The new Friday the 13th monsters revealed today as Barack Obama and his AG Eric Holder are far more dangerous to Americans than Jason Voorhees ever was.

Update, November 14: TEN jihadists terrorists are coming to the U.S. to stand trial in civilian court, rather than the five that Obama and Holder claimed.

Update, November 14: Barack Obama, on September 27, 2006, in the debate concerning “The Military Commissions Act of 2006,” assured America that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and those like him would face MILITARY justice, and that he would NOT get “all kinds of rights.”  Obama is, as usual, a documented liar.

On Keith Olbermann’s Deceitful and Depraved Attack of Dick Cheney

I remember exactly what I was doing the morning of September 11, 2001.  I was a grad student at the time, getting ready for my first class with the television running in the background.  Just before the first large passenger plane crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center something caught my attention just in time to see it happen live.  [Note: please see the update at the conclusion for a correction].

And the day froze into shock, numbness, dismay, terror, and a rising anger.

The broadcasters were talking to themselves about whether this was an accident, or an intentional attack.  I didn’t need them to tell me what it was: like many other Americans, I knew exactly what had just happened.

And then the second plane struck the second tower.  And shortly afterward the cameras began to catch specks falling out of the towers that turned out to be Americans throwing themselves out of top story windows to their deaths in order to avoid the even more agonizing death by burning.

President George Bush had been President for just over six months.  But I would have felt EXACTLY the same sense of horror and outrage whether Bill Clinton, or Al Gore, or George Bush was President.

It wasn’t about being a member of a political party, or who was President or what party he was from; it was about being an American whose country had just been attacked.

That’s just no longer the case, though.  I no longer feel that way.

Barack Obama’s constant unrelenting blaming of the Bush administration for virtually every problem under the sun was bad enough; Obama’s description of Bush “torture” and his releasing of CIA memos intended to politically hurt the Bush administration at the expense of informing our enemies exactly how we would and would not interrogate them was bad enough; House Speaker Nancy Peolosi’s demagoguery of the Bush administration over its “torture” and her subsequent lies that she herself had been informed about such “torture” and done nothing was bad enough; but it just never seems to end.

But the following example of Bush Derangement Syndrome finally sent me over the top:

Transcript of Keith Olbermann’s remarks on MSNBC:

The delusional claims he has made this day could be proved by documentation and firsthand testimony to be the literal and absolute truth, and he still, himself, would be wrong because the America he sought to impose upon the world and upon its own citizens, the dark, hateful place of Dick Cheney`s own soul, the place he to this hour defends, and to this day prefers, is a repudiation of all that our ancestors, all that for which our brave troops of two years ago and two minutes ago, have sacrificed and fought.

Olbermann acknowledges that EVEN if Dick Cheney is telling the truth and his own liberal allies are lying, it doesn’t matter.  Because he thinks Cheney and his vision for America are evil.  So truth be damned.  That is the warped mind of the true ideologue.

And he then uses a rhetorical flourish to indicate that our troops have suffered for Cheney’s hateful vision.

What Olbermann, evil liar that he truly is, fails to mention is that our “brave troops” who “have sacrificed and fought” actually think JUST LIKE Cheney and DON’T THINK like Olbermann.

I can cite the political polls of our soldiers to show that they overwhelmingly supported the conservative agenda and opposed the liberal one.  We find that 68% of active duty military personnel supported John McCain, versus only 23% for Barack Obama.  But it’s better to simply let you see another story that features a video as to how our Marines felt about George Bush versus how they felt about Barack Obama.

Another example occurred just this morning on The View, with two veterans who lost legs to roadside bombs answering Barbara Walters’ “was it worth it” question by saying without hesitation that they would both return to the fight if they could.  Barbara Walters was clearly stunned by their answer, and didn’t say another word.  Our veterans are NOT victims of Bush or Cheney or anyone else; and every attempt to portray them as such is a contemptible lie.

If Keith Olbermann had even a shred of personal honesty, integrity, character, or virtue, he would not have dragged American soldiers into his hateful polemic given that they themselves are on the very side that Olbermann so utterly despises.  But Olbermann doesn’t have any honesty, integrity, character, or virtue.

So he warps the men and women who supported George Bush and Dick Cheney so overwhelmingly into victims.

Olbermann says:

Gee, thanks for being motivated by the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans to go so far as to take a serious second look. And thank you, sir, for admitting, obviously inadvertently, that you did not take a serious first look in the seven months and 23 days between your inauguration and 9/11. For that attack, sir, you are culpable, morally, ethically. At best, you are guilty of malfeasance and eternally lasting stupidity. At worst, sir, in the deaths of 9/11, you are negligent.

Again, if Keith Olbermann had so much as a shred of personal or professional honesty, he wouldn’t say something like this.

Let’s review the list: 1) In 1993 Bill Clinton ran from Somalia after a battle with Islamic insurgents that left 18 American servicemen dead; 2) Also in 1993 the US suffered a terrorist attack in the form of the first World Trade Center bombing that killed 6 and wounded more than 1000 Americans; 3) In 1995 the US suffered its first domestic terrorist attack at the Oklahoma Federal Building that left 168 Americans dead; 4) In 1996 19 American servicemen were killed in a Saudi Arabian terrorist bombing of the US military Khobar Towers barracks; 5) In 1998 there was a simultaneous terrorist bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people; 6) In 2000 the USS Cole was attacked by terrorists, leaving 17 American servicemen dead.

There may well have been more, but that is all I can remember.

Most of these attacks were revealed to have clearly been done under the direction of Osama bin Laden by his al Qaeda terrorist organization.  In spite of this fact, President Clinto repeatedly passed up on opportunities to take bin Laden into custody even when Somalia literally offered his head on a platter.

How can Keith Olberman in good conscience so blame Bush and Cheney for 9/11 when the Clinton administration had never taken terrorism seriously themselves?  But Olbermann doesn’t have a good conscience.  He is a truly depraved human being.

Bill Clinton failed to take 9/11 seriously for the same reason George Bush failed to take it seriously in the six months of his administration preceding the 9/11 attack: because we hadn’t been hit hard enough yet.  Clinton should have learned from the attacks America suffered throughout his entire presidency; and Bush should have paid attention to Clinton’s disastrous track record.

Olbermann said:

You saved no one, sir. If the classified documents you seek released really did detail plots other than those manufactured by drowning men in order to get it to stop, or if they truly did know plans beyond the laughable ones you and President Bush have already revealed, hijackers without passports, targeting a building whose name Mr. Bush could not remember, clowns who thought they could destroy airports by dropping matches in fuel pipelines 30 miles away, men who planned to attack a military base dressed as pizza delivery boys, forgetting that every man there was armed, and today, the four would-be synagogue bombers, one of whom turns out to keep bottles of urine in his apartment, and is on schizophrenia medicine.

Olbermann is simply lying here.  CIA director George Tenent – who was appointed to his position by Bill Clinton – said that the enhanced interrogations by themselves were “Worth more than the FBI, CIA and NSA put together.” Career intelligence professional and CIA Director General Michael Hayden said, “fully half of the government’s knowledge about the structure and activities of al Qaeda came from those [harsh] interrogations.” In fact, President Obama’s very own Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Blair, put it this way: “High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al-Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.” A Justice Department memo of May 30, 2005 notes that “the CIA believes ‘the intelligence acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al Qaeda has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since 11 September 2001.’ . . . In particular, the CIA believes that it would have been unable to obtain critical information from numerous detainees, including [Khalid Sheik Mohammed] and Abu Zubaydah, without these enhanced techniques.”

So the man popping schizophrenia medicine and washing it down with his own bottled urine is none other than Keith Olbermann and everyone at MSNBC and everyone who watches the network.  It certainly isn’t Dick Cheney.

Olbermann saves his ugliest and most hateful remarks for last:

You saved no one, Mr. Cheney. All you did was help kill Americans. You were negligent before 9/11. Your response to your complicity by omission on 9/11 was panic and shame and insanity, and lying this country into a war that did nothing but kill 4,299 more of us. We will take no further instructions from you, sir. And let me again quote Oliver Cromwell to you, Mr. Cheney. “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of god, go.”

I’ve written about other things that Keith Olbermann and his “guests” have said.  Only very recently Janeane Garofalo said:

This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. And there is no way around that. And you know, you can tell these type of right wingers anything and they’ll believe it, except the truth. You tell them the truth and they become — it’s like showing Frankenstein’s monster fire. They become confused, and angry and highly volatile. That guy, causing them feelings they don’t know, because their limbic brain, we’ve discussed this before, the limbic brain inside a right-winger or Republican or conservative or your average white power activist, the limbic brain is much larger in their head space than in a reasonable person, and it’s pushing against the frontal lobe. So their synapses are misfiring. Is Bernie Goldberg listening?

And there was Keith Olbermann and Michael Musto engaging in about as hateful of an attack as one can possibly imagine against Miss California Carrie Prejean for the simple reason that they despise her right to express her own views about an issue that most Californians and most Americans agree with her over.

Keith Olbermann is a vain, petty, vindictive, vicious, hateful, and truly ugly human being.  And MSNBC would do far better broadcasting in place of pro-terrorist al Jazeera than it is doing here.  Both networks run basically the same message.

But Keith Olbermann’s rant against Dick Cheney and every conservative who agrees with him rose to such a level of hatred, such a level of vicious, bitter, ugly, deceitful, and frankly evil rhetoric, that it transcends anything I have ever heard.

Right now, liberals like Keith Olbermann are teeing off on conservatives for waterboarding when we now learn that liberals like Nancy Pelosi and many other Democrats were fully briefed on “enhanced interrogation techniques that had been employed,” and neither said or did anything to prevent such techniques.  And even the very liberal new CIA Director under Obam0, Leon Panetta, essentially says Pelosi is lying.  How are their attacks now anything but partisan demagoguery?

And right now, liberals including Barack Obama himself are deceitfully claiming the moral high ground even as the new liberal administration takes many of the same positions that it hypocritically and demagogically found so hateful on the campaign trail.  As many policies as Obama has undone that will make this country less safe, there have been almost as many that he once demonized, only to follow himself once in office.

For instance, President Obama has reserved unto himself the right to order the use of enhanced interrogation should he deem it appropriate.  Given that President Bush used the technique against only three individuals shortly after the worst disaster in US history, how is Obama any different?  In fact he’s worse, because Bush and Cheney never demagogued the issue as Obama has repeatedly done.

Obama demonized Bush over the Bush policy on rendition.  But now this demagogue is quietly continuing to carry out the same rendition policy – abducting terrorist suspects and sending them to countries that will use harsh interrogation methods – even as he congratulates himself in front of a fawning media for his being better than Bush.  But Obama isn’t better than Bush and Cheney; he’s worse.  Because he’s a hypocrite and a demagogue.

In the words of the New York Times, military commissions was “a concept he criticized bitterly as a presidential candidate.”  But now the hypocrite and demagogue is going to quietly use them himself.

And Obama has indicated that he likewise reserves the right to continue to hold some prisoners without trial indefinitely – a position he demonized during the campaign.  How can such a man who so hypocritically employed such demagoguery only to come to the same position as the man he demagogued claim any semblance of moral high ground?  Obama is lower than Bush in his character, not higher.  Bush and Cheney didn’t self-righteously demagogue; only Obama did.

Obama decided against the release of the remainder of the infamous Abu Ghraib photos.  But only because he had to bow to the reality of the massive resitance against his decision to release them and the consequences such a stupid and depraved act would have had both for our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and for Democrats at home.  In electing not to release them, Obama took the SAME position that Bush/Cheney had taken.  Obama is not better than Bush or Cheney; he’s worse.  They didn’t waiver and pander before going back on their decision out of the selfish interests of political survival.  They were consistent in their determination to do the right thing.

Obama has idiotically promised he would close Gitmo, but even his own party now realizes how foolish that would be and has twice denied him funding to do so until he come up with a plan that makes some kind of sense.  Obama wrapped himself up in puffed-up, posturing self-righteousness, but the reality is that Bush was forced to confront the same unsolvable dilemmas.  The only difference was that Bush was wiser than Barack Obama in recognizing the problems that made a closure of Gitmo nearly impossible; and that Bush – unlike Obama – was never a pandering demagogue.

Again, Obama isn’t one iota better than Bush or Cheney.  He’s worse.

Not that any of these FACTS matter to liberals.  Because far too many of them are exactly like Keith Olbermann: even if the facts support conservatives, it doesn’t matter.  Such liberals are completely false, vile people who routinely treat the truth with as much contempt as Olbermann does.

I said earlier that I no longer feel the same way about my country that I did following 9/11.  I wish it were not true, but the constant unrelenting barrage of lies, hypocristy, demonization, and demagoguery from the left – particularly on national security issues – have left me with an increasingly bitter taste in my mouth.  And following so many years of such hateful tactics, I fear that if we are attacked again, that I will react politically, rather than patriotically.  I wish it weren’t true, but there it is.

Update: I have since realized that the first attack was not covered live, and film footage of the first airplane was not made available until later.  What I would have seen was video footage of smoke billowing out of the World Trade Center shortly following the first attack, finally followed by live footage of the 2nd plane strike.  I attempted to describe from memory what I had seen 8 years ago, and it turns out that my memory was not perfect.

Obama Air Force One Terrorist Route Fly-By Example Of His Hypocrisy And His Pre-9/11 Mindset

Today terror struck thousands of New Yorkers.  A large passenger jet, taking much the same route that terrorist hijackers used to strike the twin towers of the World Trade Center on 9/11, flew over them at extremely low altitude.

Video:

Just not the kind of thing you want to see if you endured the horror of 9/11.

Why on earth did this happen?

Updated, 5:52 p.m. | An Air Force One lookalike, the backup plane for the one regularly used by the president, flew low over parts of New York and New Jersey on Monday morning, accompanied by two F-16 fighters, so Air Force photographers could take pictures high above the New York harbor.

But the exercise — conducted without any notification to the public — caused momentary panic in some quarters and led to the evacuation of several buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City. By the afternoon, the situation had turned into a political fuse box, with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg saying that he was “furious” that he had not been told in advance about the flyover.

At 4:39 p.m. Monday, the White House issued an apology for the flyover.

This is a mindset of “Grecian columns”-style  arrogance.  You can almost hear the words, “So let it be written.  So let it be done” uttered with all the self-worshiping imperiousness of Yul Brynner as Pharaoh.

And of course, we learn:

When President Obama learned of the episode on Monday afternoon, aides said, he, too, was furious. Senior administration officials conveyed the president’s anger in a meeting with Mr. Caldera on Monday afternoon.

So resign, Barry.  You’ve blamed George Bush for everything that happened under his administration and then continued to blame him for everything that has happened in yours.  Take a little responsibility for your own damn mess for once in your life.  This is YOUR team screwing up, and using YOUR damn plane to do it.  Is this fiasco supposed to be Bush’s fault, too?

Some in the crowd were undoubtedly terrified of a terrorist attack because they didn’t know that it was actually Air Force One flying around for a photo op.  But I wonder how many Americans looked up and saw Barry Hussein’s jet  barreling down on them and thought, “I knew it!”

This IS the guy who just released memos showing terrorists how to resist future interrogations, after all.

Now, one thing this incident shows is Obama’s blatant hypocrisy.  His administration could have easily photoshopped Obama’s fancy new jet against the Manhattan skyline, and nobody would have been the wiser.  But no.  Instead, the people who perennially lecture the rest of us on energy consumption and greenhouse gasses spend several hundred thousand dollars on jet fuel that dumped dozens of tons of greenhouse  gasses into the atmosphere for a stupid photo op.  Kind of like the one Obama took when he flew to Iowa so he could stand in front of a damn windmill on earth day.

Apparently, the worst thing that can happen to our environment is for Barack Obama and Al Gore to preach about the threat of global warming doing their version of “the midnight ride of Paul Revere” from carbon-spewing jets.

Keep that in mind the next time you hear a finger-wagging lecture.  Make Obama buy his own damn cap-and-trade carbon credits.  With his own damn money.

But, far more, this is a case study in a PRE-9/11 mentality.  Nobody at the Obama White House is thinking about a terror attack.  It won’t happen; no one would DARE attack the messiah’s country, after all.  The world is wonderful again because that evil Bush is gone and Obama is leading the world into freedom and happiness.  So we can bare our collective throats knowing that the terrorists would NEVER saw our heads off while Obama is president.

I think it is safe to say that absolutely nobody in their right mind would even contemplate flying a passenger jet at low altitude over New York if they were even remotely thinking about 9/11.

I guess the administration had ONE thing right with all its politically correct euphemisms: Obama’s fly-by wasn’t a “terrorist attack”; it was a “man-caused disaster.”

World Trade Center Lives On As Instrument Of American Retribution

I got an email that made my heart skip a beat.

The World Trade Center lives!

I think we all knew where we were when we first heard that terrorists had flown 747s into the World Trade Center.

I vividly remember the footage of people jumping from the top floors to avoid the flames. In the face of such inhuman evil, the image of Americans holding hands with one another as they leaped to their deaths still touches me as the ultimate picture of community and love in the face of inhumanity and hatred.

The World Trade Center lives! And I hope the victims of 9/11 are serving as the angels protecting this special ship.

Here’s the story that Snopes rated as “True” back in 2006:

With a year to go before it even touches the water, the Navy’s amphibious assault ship, USS New York, has already made history. It was built with 24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center. It is the fifth in a new class of warship — designed for missions that include special operations against terrorists. It will carry a crew of 360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft. Steel from the World Trade Center was melted down in a foundry in Amite, La., to cast the ship’s bow section.

When it was poured into the molds on Sept. 9, 2003, “those big rough steelworkers treated it with total reverence,” recalled Navy Capt. Kevin Wensing, who was there.

“It was a spiritual moment for everybody there.” Junior Chavers, foundry operations manager, said that when the trade center steel first arrived, he touched it with his hand and the “hair on my neck stood up.”

“It had a big meaning to it for all of us,” he said. “They knocked us down. They can’t keep us down. We’re going to be back.”

The ship’s motto? — ‘Never Forget’

The ship has since launched (Dec 2007), but has not yet been officially commissioned. The event will occur in New York with great fanfare.

Another story comes from May 2008 from the New York Daily News.

Here is a picture of the big girl at her christening:

She’s beautiful – may she go out and do unto terrorists what they did unto the World Trade Center.

You go, girl.