The desecration has begun. A ground-breaking ceremony was held at the Shanksville crash site on Saturday. Bulldozers will start reshaping the land this week. Never mind that the only rule for the Flight 93 memorial’s design competition was that the landscape had to be left as it was. In order to complete the full arc of the Crescent of Embrace (now called a broken circle, but still a giant Islamic-shaped crescent), an earthen causeway will have to be built across the wetlands that lie about 50 vertical feet below the crash site.

A contractor posted recently about his decision to turn down work on the memorial, despite economic hard times. Our friend Jeff just could not stomach the idea of helping to build a tribute to the enemy, a sentiment that is easy to understand and much appreciated. To anyone else who might find themselves in this situation, just be aware that there are other options. Someone is going to do the work, and if the pay is lucrative, it could be better for our cause to have that money go to someone who is on our side. Read the rest of this entry »

Sure, left wingers can come up with talking points, and soundbites, but over the past few weeks I’ve noticed that there are 10 core questions that most on the far left cannot seem to answer with any substance. Pass em on, try em out, and enjoy the mindfreak.

1. If all the world hated America because of George W Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq….then why was America attacked on Sept 11, 2001; 2yrs before that invasion?
2. Why has Al Queda been trying to exterminate every American for the past 17yrs?
3. Did you want Bush to fail in Iraq, or did you want America to succeed?
4. Given that Osama left Afghanistan in 2001, and Al Queda was largely destroyed in Afghanistan in 2002, how did the Bush Administration “take its eye off the ball [Afghanistan] by invading Iraq” in 2003?
5. What caused the great recession of 2007?

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3 Provisions of the PATRIOT Act (”Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”) are set to expire at the end of the year.

NYTimes:

WASHINGTON — As Congress prepares to consider extending crucial provisions of the USA Patriot Act, civil liberties groups and some Democratic lawmakers are gearing up to press for sweeping changes to surveillance laws.

Both the House and the Senate are set to hold their first committee hearings this week on whether to reauthorize three sections of the Patriot Act that expire at the end of this year. The provisions expanded the power of the F.B.I. to seize records and to eavesdrop on phone calls in the course of a counterterrorism investigation.

Is this really an “expansion” of power? Or a matter of updating existing powers in order for the F.B.I. to effectively do its job of protecting American lives in wake of 21st century technological advancements?

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Tom Burnett Sr. and his wife Beverly did some 9/11 interviews the last couple of days, remembering their son Tom Jr., who was murdered by Islamic terrorists aboard Flight 93. Mr. Burnett has been trying for several years to stop the Park Service from planting a giant Islamic-shaped crescent on the Flight 93 crash site. In their interview with WSAU radio in Wisconsin, the Burnetts were joined half-way through the hour by Alec Rawls (the author of this blogburst post), who has written a book about the terrorist memorializing Crescent of Embrace design.

Mr. Burnett’s words are always heartfelt, yet marked by a constant scrupulousness. Emotion never carries him to utter a word beyond what he actually has grounds to assert. Highly recommended listening, perhaps especially for those who are better at judging people than facts. Let’s face it, show some people the Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent, and they just aren’t sure what they are looking at. Point out that the central feature of every mosque is a Mecca-direction indicator, and somehow the pieces don’t fall together in their brains: Read the rest of this entry »

To the other authors who have done a stellar job of remembrance today, I say thank you. It was a somber walk thru those times, and a moving memorial.

Yet on this day mourning the loss of loved ones, revisiting the vunerability we felt, and even the anger that still lives in many of us, there is a spot of good news that may give you a small smile.

For the second year running, top jihad sites affiliated with Al Qaeda have mysteriously started exhibiting “technical problems” on the eve of 911, forcing the militants to shut down and lose their cyberspace presence.

A U.S.-based group monitoring militant Web sites said Friday that jihadist forums have been experiencing technical problems on the eve of Sept. 11, finally going offline a day before the 8th anniversary of the al-Qaida attack on the U.S.

The SITE Intelligence Group said the same thing happened last year, promoting consternation in militant circles.

“As happened last year … top jihadist forums affiliated with al-Qaida began experiencing technical problems, culminating in their ultimate closure on September 10, 2009,” the group said in a statement.

According to SITE, members of other jihadist forums expressed annoyance and “confusion” at the inability to access the Web sites and forums where they share updates and messages.

Couldn’t have happened to a lower class of humans…

I sure don’t know who the masked cyber crusader is, and no one is taking public credit for the second anniversary of jihad internet chaos. But this is one hacker to whom I sure would like to say, *thank you!*

This is a repost of my post written three years ago remembering one of the victims of 9/11

I am proud to be a part of The 2996 Project, a blogosphere memorial to every single victim who died that terrible day. Bloggers were randomly linked to a 9-11 hero that they would then memorialize.

I am honored to present my memorial to Aram Iskendarian.

As I’ve spent the last few weeks doing research on this man I came to the realization that I wish I would have known him. He was a natural born leader with a calm exterior and a devoted father and husband to his family. A man I would have looked up to.

Aram was 41 the day he died. He was a vice president at Cantor Fitzgerald, where he headed the global risk management group. That day he would have been working on the 101st floor of building 1.

From the little I have been able to glean about his personal life I’ve learned he was a photobug and apparently always had a camera nearby to take pictures of his wife Sheri and their four children, Meryl, Kara, Alex and Jason.

When I first set out to learn about Aram the first webpage that I came across was this one, in which Sheri leaves a note for her husband: Read the rest of this entry »

Please remember David Reed Gamboa-Brandhorst and his fathers, Daniel and Ron….3 among the 2,996 stolen from us that Tuesday morning, 8 years ago….

From my post, 3 years ago:
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At fifteen seconds after 9:41 a.m., on September 11, 2001, a photographer named Richard Drew took a picture of a man falling through the sky — falling through time as well as through space. The picture went all around the world, and then disappeared, as if we willed it away. One of the most famous photographs in human history became an unmarked grave, and the man buried inside its frame — the Falling Man — became the Unknown Soldier in a war whose end we have not yet seen. Richard Drew’s photograph is all we know of him, and yet all we know of him becomes a measure of what we know of ourselves. The picture is his cenotaph, and like the monuments dedicated to the memory of unknown soldiers everywhere, it asks that we look at it, and make one simple acknowledgment.

That we have known who the Falling Man is all along.

The story of this iconic photograph, and its’ subject are below the fold.
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History-like hindsight-is supposed to be 20:20, but the deliberate partisan, political divide regarding the invasion of Iraq makes that hard.

It’s not a new phenomenon. Long ago it was said that the true story of a war can’t be told until the last of its veterans has passed away, and only a few months ago did the last World War One veteran go to his great reward. For decades after the Civil War (and some would argue even today) the debate raged on, and the healing of Southern Reconstruction didn’t really start culturally until the unity of the Spanish-American War turned foes into brothers-in-arms.

Conspiracy theories-often fueled by politics-still rage over the 911 attacks, the invasion of Iraq, whether or not Roosevelt deliberately allowed the Pearl Harbor attack to happen, whether or not the U.S. Navy knew the U.S.S. Maine had a boiler explosion and wasn’t sunk by a mine. People still think that the Lusitania was set on a suicide mission to get the United States into World War One. These myths will always remain, and it’s good that they do because they spark investigation and a search for understanding of these world changing events. The relationship between the 911 attacks and the invasion of Iraq is interesting in that both have a long list of conspiracy theories attacked to each, and yet the abstract, more indirect relationship between the two events is dismissed out of hand. To that end, even if one believes the relationship between Iraq War and 911 attacks is a conspiracy theory, it’s worthwhile to examine if for no other reason than harvesting a better understanding. Read the rest of this entry »

The sounds of 9/11

Eight years ago, on a beautiful Tuesday morning in September I was in Savannah, Georgia on business.

As the parking garage elevator descended it stopped on one of the floors below. A gentleman who entered the elevator told us that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. He didn’t have any details, just basic information relayed to him by his wife who had called him on his cell phone.

My first thought was that it had to be some horrible accident. A sightseeing plane was my thought. The horrifying possibility that was eventually revealed as reality never entered my mind.
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The September 11th Anniversary is a reminder of a tragic day that we must never forget so that the horror will never be repeated!

What with all the Obama partisans trying to corrupt the meaning and memory of the September 11th attacks for political advantage, it’s more important than ever before that we pause for a time on this anniversary and reflect.

September 11, 2001 is a day that Americans with red blood in their veins will never forget. Nor should we. It’s a reminder of what awful things can happen if we let down our guard in a world
where evil only waits for good men to grow weary of remaining vigilant. It’s also a day to reflect on the heroism and self sacrifice that brought out the best in so many of our citizens.

–Remember the heroes who went into the buildings at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to save lives. Remember the heroes on Flight 93 who saved hundreds or more lives by preventing another attack.

Father Mychal Judge “Father Mike” the “Fireman’s Friar” killed by falling debris at Ground Zero while delivering the last rites to a mortally wounded fireman.

–Remember a great city that will never be the same:
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I made another video, this year, to memorialize the events of 9/11, and honor those who have fallen; those we, as a nation, have lost, then and now:

Mixed into the images from 9/11/2001, are related images from its aftermath: Iraq, Afghanistan, the War on Terror.

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Bold headlines are attention grabbers, and rarely does the substance of their supporting text prove them correct, but this is a rare moment when (albeit supported by my humble prose) the headline is true. Tomorrow night President Barack Obama will address Congress and the nation, and it will be one of the greatest speeches in the history of mankind.

Now, how do I know that? Have I seen the speech? Have I spent the 3-day weekend listening to Churchill, Roosevelt, Kennedy, and re-reading the Gettysburg Address? Was I there were Herodocus debated with Namenicus on the floor of the Roman Senate? No, of course not, but the sheer magnitude and audacity of President Obama means that his speech can be nothing shy of a choir of angels. Thankfully, his one of the greatest orators in modern history, and easily the most inspiring teleprompter-reader of the 21st Century.
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