After 9/11: The Folly and the Glory

After 9/11: The Folly and the Glory

On the morning of September 11, 2002, I was crossing Midtown Manhattan as the clock neared the moment, one year earlier, when the first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Along the way, I watched construction workers slowly put down their tools and join pedestrians lining the sidewalks. By 8:46 am, I had reached Grand Central Terminal. In its great hall, where hundreds of people are normally in constant motion, travelers stopped and stood silently beneath the massive domed ceiling. The familiar buzz of Manhattan vanished. The stillness lasted only a few moments before people began moving again, as New Yorkers always do.

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New videos of man in 9/11 lawsuit reveal extremist links

New videos of man in 9/11 lawsuit reveal extremist links

The man at the heart of a $1 trillion (£733bn) lawsuit brought by 9/11 families had extensive links to Saudi government officials and went paintballing with one of al-Qaeda’s future leaders, video obtained by the BBC reveals.

The footage, which the FBI had within days of the 2001 attacks, stands in stark contrast to Omar al-Bayoumi’s 25 years of denials that he was an extremist and a Saudi spy.

Bayoumi, who claimed to be a student when he was in the United States, is seen in one clip embracing Anwar al-Awlaki, who would go on to lead al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In another, Bayoumi and Awlaki are paintballing near San Diego with an official from Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs.

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September 11’s Long and Bloody Geopolitical Road

September 11’s Long and Bloody Geopolitical Road

For those of us who live in the Washington, D.C., area, the atrocities of September 11, 2001, were profoundly personal. I drove my children to see the scarred face of the Pentagon. I wanted them to remember that there was a cost to being American and that our way of life had been purchased in the blood of courageous men and women. Gazing at the wreckage, already draped in a huge flag, I felt a terrible sadness but great anger as well. That mix of emotions would shape our politics for years afterward.

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Did America Win the War on Terror?

Did America Win the War on Terror?

Anyone over 40 remembers the Global War on Terror. As announced by President George W. Bush, it was a multipronged effort on five continents to eradicate the networks that had inspired and supported the attacks of September 11, 2001, along with the jihadi Muslim extremist movement that had murdered not only nearly 3,000 people that day but thousands more around the world, including in Europe and Israel, over five decades.

By one (admittedly biased) estimate, calculated 20 years after the attacks, the war on terror had cost $8 trillion, including hundreds of billions spent to bring about regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan, where over 7,000 American military personnel lost their lives and 52,143 were maimed and injured.

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Twenty-five years after 9/11, unchecked mass migration makes terror threats greater than ever

Twenty-five years after 9/11, unchecked mass migration makes terror threats greater than ever

The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks – which killed nearly 3,000 Americans (and other nationalities) – may seem like yesterday’s news to some, but their impact remains today.

Indeed, 9/11 was a serious warning to America and the entire West of how terrorists and other bad actors wishing us harm can easily exploit our immigration systems.

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Judge Throws Out 9/11 Mastermind Confession Because He Wasn’t Told About ‘Right to Remain Silent’

Judge Throws Out 9/11 Mastermind Confession Because He Wasn’t Told About ‘Right to Remain Silent’

Using the Article III system to try Al Qaeda terrorists was a reasonable solution, the trouble is that military tribunal personnel in this century look nothing like the guys who took a smoke break and sentenced Nazi saboteurs to death during WWII. Their ideal is A Few Good Men, they’re liberals if not outright leftists, and they’re far more likely to be on the side of the terrorists than to be on our side.

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The 9-11 Lessons We Have Forgotten

One of the reasons George Santayana’s famous line about forgetting the past resonates is because humans can be so bad at remembering. That’s especially true about the past 25 years of liberal Western democracy. The twenty-first century brand of progressivism that’s corrupted so much Western thinking is all about moving on from a past inevitably deemed regressive. To someone like me, who lived through 9-11 in Manhattan and spent years writing about what we learned from it, the extent to which we have forgotten the lessons of that day and discarded so many of the principles we developed to defend ourselves is shocking.

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U.S. ATTACKED; HIJACKED JETS DESTROY TWIN TOWERS AND HIT PENTAGON IN DAY OF TERROR

It kept getting worse.

The horror arrived in episodic bursts of chilling disbelief, signified first by trembling floors, sharp eruptions, cracked windows. There was the actual unfathomable realization of a gaping, flaming hole in first one of the tall towers, and then the same thing all over again in its twin. There was the merciless sight of bodies helplessly tumbling out, some of them in flames.

Finally, the mighty towers themselves were reduced to nothing. Dense plumes of smoke raced through the downtown avenues, coursing between the buildings, shaped like tornadoes on their sides.


This is the NYTimes piece from Sept 12 2001.

Never forget.

My late great wife. Kathy was moved to tears earlier that morning at the 10th anniversary of 911. Yes she really did try to trip a Westboro church member as they stained a sacred day.

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Revealed after 24 years, how UK was forced to free 9/11 ‘plotter’

Omar al-Bayoumi was arrested in Birmingham days after the atrocity. But police were never given crucial evidence by the FBI

Scotland Yard was forced to release an alleged Saudi intelligence officer who provided financial backing and support to the 9/11 hijackers after the FBI failed to share crucial evidence.

The Sunday Times can today reveal that counterterrorism officers who interviewed Omar al-Bayoumi after he was arrested in Birmingham — ten days after two aircraft crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York — were never given a potentially damning document and video linking him to the attacks.

Very strange revelation. Someone wanted this hidden.

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FBI Helped Cover Up Saudi Role in 9/11

As the anniversary of September 11 approaches, a lawsuit filed by the families of the victims of the Islamic terrorist attacks against the Saudis has been granted permission to move forward.

Saudi Arabia along with Qatar and Iran were the three Islamic terrorist states seen as most complicit in September 11.

One of the big missing pieces of the puzzle is the complicity of the FBI in covering up the role of Saudi Arabia.

h/t kiki9

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Botched Plea Deals with 9/11 Plotters Get Worse for Biden Administration

By attempting to renege on the deals, the administration may have taken the death penalty off the table for some of the plotters.

The botched plea deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 terrorists is a signature Biden-Harris administration moment: a scheme, apparently double-wrapped in incompetence, to spare the Democrats’ presidential candidate — first the senescent one, then the vacuous one — from an unpopular political decision.

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September 11, 2024

That dreadful day is back again; it will always be 9/11, both on the calendar and in our memories. It will forever be remembered as the 21st century’s Day of Infamy.

Islamic Jihad had pierced a huge hole in history. None of us will–or should–ever be the same.

On September 11, 2001, at about 11am, I walked over to my computer and typed the sentence: “Now we are all Israelis.” Afterwards, Osama bin Laden called the assault on America “blessed attacks” against the infidel…the new Christian-Jewish crusade.” He explained that the Twin Towers had fallen because of American support for Israel.

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