The horror of Sept. 11th, 2001

America Attacked

brought to you today, in typical fashion by Ticomaya, the guy who starts to cry when shown the facts illustrating that the US is the leading terrorist on the planet.

The horror of September 11th has been used so often, for so many bad reasons, that it colors the reactions one gets when it's emphasized yet again.

There is a skepticism now that I think is natural. The horror can both be genuinely horrible and exploited.

And what's worse, Soz, is that there's never much reflection at all upon the further horrors that this begat.

Assuming that 9-11 was brought upon innocents, consider the price paid by the innocents of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Where are the folks demanding that the criminals who instigated those actions are held to account?

Yes, that's the A#1 bad reason I had in mind. Though it's not the only one.

You probably don't have any idea just how much this comment gave me a warm, fleeting feeling that things just might work out.



I, for one, would absolutely love to hear any of the others that you might feel like sharing.

She wasn't referring to POWs, though. They were US citizens who had never been convicted or even suspected of anything.

Yeah, my boss, japanese american, was in a camp in Wyoming, with his family, when he was a toddler. Which reminds me of my aunt, when we stayed with her when I was a child, hating all 'japs', while living about twenty blocks away from the area in West Los Angeles where many japanese americans were taken from to the camps.

Bit of a tangent to the thread, but not completely.

Way tangent, but I thought Eorl needed a bit of clarification.

I have tried to resist the urge to enter this thread, but I've, obviously, found I cannot.

9/11 was horrific by any definition of the term, and those that try to dimiss it as just another bad day at the office or the self-indulgence of Americans have earned my utter disgust.

This may not mean much to you, but that's to be expected because if you can cavalierly dismiss the fact that hundreds of people not only leaped from the Towers to save themselves from buring to death, but many landed on and in the words of one witness "exploded" first responders, you're not worthy of my regard.

I recall watching an interview on 9/11 with a woman who escaped the Towers. I found the interviewer totally repugnant because it was clear that the women was still in shock and he just wanted a story. Here's the story he got:

The woman, who was obviously in extreme psychological distress, recounted that as she fled down the stairs in a crush of paniced people she saw a pregant woman on the edge of a stairway giving birth.

If this doesn't wrack your guts, you're not human.

Who the hell was that woman to think she was so special when this sort of things happens all the time in the world?

For all of you heartless bastards that want to dismiss 9/11 as the self-indulgence of Americans, never ever cop a sanctimonious attitude about violence or suffering in this forum or I will be there to call you out as the repugnant hypocrites you are.

You disgust me, and if you are Americans I loathe you.

Same same. Some of our Japanese POWs were decendents of pearlers (in Broome to be specific) who had never even been to Japan.

My general point being, let him with the unblemished human rights record cast the first stone.

You think it's in any way different because it's Americans or because you watched it on television, or because it was recent Absolutely its horrific, but for every person killed that day, at least 100 died in the boxing day tsunami. I think your reaction has more to do with a blow to your pride, ego and personal security.
I've cried real tears over 9/11, even in the last few days, so don't minimise my reaction as "another day at the office". I just think you might need some human (as opposed to American) perspective.

Do you think war is any less horrific? Go hear stories about, say, the holocaust.

Who says no one is touched by this finn?
There is a lot of road between acting as if the event just happened, and being cavalier.

What I protest are those who, like the news reporter, insist on getting their pound of flesh.
I protest people who are using this to make money off yet another T-shirt, bumper sticker, etc. Selling them to people, who some of them think they are "doing something" about "it", whatever "it" is.

It's the keeping the wound fresh by constantly hacking at it.

I'm not saying dismiss the day. I don't think anyone has said that.

I watched a news story yesterday myself. About a girl who was 2 at the time and her mother, a police offier I think, maybe an EMS, died that day. The girl is 12 now of course, and when specifically asked said she had no memory of her mother. Only remembers her from the stories she's heard. The same as any other little girl whose mother died when she was 2. The girls not sad. I don't know if she's as well adjusted as she could be, as every year she's trotted out to be put on display, when she just some 12 year old, no different than any other.

That's the type of thing that I protest.

Exactly.

What is missing here, horror aside, is a rational look at what really happened on that fateful day. Within hours, the decison to invade Iraq was stitched up.

Most of the thinking people in Europe know that something stinks about the whole show. But nobody wants to know about the why anymore.

I do.
I said that early on, as have others.

Sorry Chai. I didn't read back on the thread. I used to beat myself up over the inconsistencies in the official story, but gave up on it. Too many naggers and believers to deal with.

In fact, this is not true. After Bush arrived back in Washington, he and many of his staff and executive officers flew out to Camp David to confer. Donald Rumsfeld and Condaleeza Rice were there among others--notes were taken of people's remarks and a transcript made, which was later handed on to the September 11th commission. Paul Wolfowitz attempted to bring up the idea of an invasion of Iraq, and Rumsfeld shut him down, and the discussion moved on without any further mention of Iraq.

Now, someone might allege that the record was fiddled, but that qualifies as conspiracy theory, and anyone making such a charge would have the burden of proof. I find the entire scenario, with that little **** Wolfowitz trying to capitalize and Rumsfeld (for all his faults and slime) basically telling him to pipe down, we have important matters to discuss--to be very plausible.

And Rumsfeld ended up as the fall guy anyway, Setanta?

(CBS) CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.

That's according to notes taken by aides who were with Rumsfeld in the National Military Command Center on Sept. 11 – notes that show exactly where the road toward war with Iraq began, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml

Well, it's a lot more complicated than that. Actually, Scooter Libby ended up as the fall guy. Poodle Blair, although all smooth and plausible, was much more bumbling in terms of practical politics. He got up on his hind legs in front of the Commons and said Hussein had weapons of mass destruction on missiles which could be launched in 45 minutes. That was, of course, bullshit, and it eventually torpedoed Blairs career.

But Bush and his forty thieves of Baghdad were a much more cagey lot, and much smarter in terms of practical politics. Bush did not actually say that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was implicated in September 11th, and only suggested that Hussein was trying to get weapons of mass destruction in his State of the Union address in 2003. For that, he had the "evidence" of a CIA report. However, the report was discredited by the husband of a CIA agent before it was sent off to the National Security Agency (then run by Condaleeza Rice). Not only did Bush have "plausible deniability" about the accuracy of the report, at the time of the State of the Union report, he probably did genuinely believe it was accurate. Even then, he wasn't saying the Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but only implied that he was attempting to acquire them. This was based on the "yellow cake" report.

A CIA operative named Valerie Plame (Valerie Plame Wilson) was married to a former U.S. Ambassador who was very knowledgeable and experienced in African matters. When a story came out that the Iraqis had attempted to get yellow cake uranium in west Africa, her husband, Joseph Wilson, was asked to inquire into the matter. He did, and in March 2002, ten months before the statement in Bush's State of the Union address, he came to the conclusion that there was nothing to the story. But, apparently, someone at NSA (many people think it was Rice) didn't like the answer, and the report was bounced back to Central Intelligence, who took the hint, and reported that Hussein had tried to acquire uranium in Niger. Then Colin Powell (then the Secretary of State) went off with his bullshit to the UN--which in the event didn't do much good.

Three months after the invasion of Iraq, Joseph Wilson published a piece "What I Didn't Find in Africa," and set off a fire storm. So Scooter Libby, right hand man to the Vice President, Dick Cheney, then revealed to a journalist named Novak that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. This was a violation of the law, and was seen as "punishment" for Wilson's published article, as it ended her CIA career. Libby was eventually successfully prosecuted for it. So he was the only fall guy.

At their most egregious, the Bush administration made to formal claims about Hussein and weapons of mass destruction or involvement in September 11th--none which could not fall under "plausible deniability." Bush could always claim that he had spoken in good faith in his State of the Union message--and he may well have done. Cheney went around the country making suggestive remarks, at one time saying "We know what palm tree they're parked under"--but he did so at an event at which he knew he was being audio or video recorded. Plausible deniability, it came down to a he said-he said between him and one reporter.

Blair was much stupider. Bush got re-elected as a "War President," and even though he sank to the lowest low by the end of his presidency, he left office with this skirts clean. He was always able to plausibly deny that he knew the intelligence had been fudged. Even Condaleeza Rice was able to skate, because even it was revealed that administration figures had pressured the CIA to produce a report implicating Iraq, there was no documentation that the administration figure was her. As far as practical politics go, Bush's administration was pretty slick.