Terrorist Action 11/9/2001 - Thread 9

The funny thing is that no one I see saying this is actually someone in a country like Palestine, or someone from a country like that that's effected.

While I'm adding fuel to the fire, let's bag on the media too: this article sickens me. I understand this woman's friend is dead. That's NO REASON to call for, apparently, the racial profiling of all Arabs in America.

OK, "daring" I agree with. I would even agree to "brave," "selfless," or "saintly."

But panache? Panache?!?!?!

OK, "daring" I agree with. I would even agree to "bravery," "selflessness," or "saintliness."

But "panache" is a sheerly ridiculous word to use.

Which is why last night I realized nothing would happen in terms of escalation -- consider: the US is now portraying itself as the wholly innocent victim (bear with me, I realize others will think differently). Ergo, in order to retain this moral superiority, they can't just bomb the fuck out of a country or anything.

Shameful admission: When I read this article and got to this part:

The last time I saw Barbara in person was about three weeks ago. She generously praised one of my recent columns and told me I had really found my niche. Ted, she said, had taken to reading my columns aloud to her over breakfast.

I mention that to say three things about Barbara.

*removes nose from yours* Glad you approve.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/12/blowback/ print.html

And the only print/web confirmation I've seen of the theory that the US Air Force shot down the Pittsburgh flight:

http:// www.villagevoice.com/issues/0137/ridgeway2.php

They just pulled out a firefighter alive from the wreckage.

Now I hear that a phone call from a passenger on the 4th jet suggests that the hijackers were "taking it into the ground" and the passengers were "going to do something about it". Perhaps the fight-in-the-cockpit idea has some credence.

Nomination for bad taste coverage: a C4 correspondent taking a trip on a flight simulator, showing just how easy it is to steer a 737 into one of the Twin Towers. Unbelievable.

I don't think many people have done this, Kerry. Not that I've noticed, anyway. Maybe criticism of 'America' as in its foreign policy, but that's not the same at all.

But that doesn't mean innocent people should die.

Subject: FW: US Color Day
Importance: High

Tomorrow is U.S. Color day. Red, White & Blue should be worn in honor of our fellow Americans that died. Jeans worn will be blue. The goal is to get the whole nation to patricipate.

Send this to 10 other people.

In memory of all those who perished; the passengers and the pilots on the United Air and AA flights, the workers in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and all the innocent bystanders. Our prayers go out to the friends and families of the deceased.

Send this to at least 10 people to show your support. DONT BREAK IT!!!!!! God's speed to all those who have lost their lives...GOD BLESS AMERICA and the freedom it represents. Tomorrow is US pride day, everyone wear US colors (jeans are blue, everyone owns a white t-shirt, etc). Try to be wearing as much red white and blue as you can. Send this message to as many other people you know. Lets get the whole country into it.

At least send it to 10 other people

OBL under house arrest

As well the g8 protests in kanasikis have obvioulsy been cancelled .
However The G8 meeting has not been cancelled .
I think we are in a desprate fury for answers. On the left American Foreign Policy post war has givien some semblance of reason, fairly or not.

This comment would surprise and horrify me more if it weren't coming from a woman who's previously advocated stripping women of voting rights.

I don't see what wearing red, white and blue will actually do for anyone, in all honesty. Maybe pay money to charity to wear red white and blue would work?

Did Bush just say the US is going to 'lead the country to victory'? I did not realize we're participants in a sporting event.

I.e., Let's all prove to the world that even though we're the most jingoistic superpower going, we can take it up a notch when necessary. Let's all prove to the world that we're so thoroughly self-absorbed that when we are "attacked" from the outside, we just stare inward.

when i saw the clips of the people dancing in the streets in the middle east, the nearest parallel i could draw was to people celebrating a victory by their local sports teams. neither of these events are going to make your life any better (especially in the case of the former, if things proceed as they seem they will), except when, say, the lakers vanquished their foe, no one died.

One senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some of the military options under consideration by Bush would go beyond the low-risk unmanned cruise missile strikes that have been deployed in past anti-terrorist operations. Among them: bombings from manned aircraft and the deployment of special troops on the ground.

At a briefing, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the administration would mount a "broad and sustained campaign; in retaliation for the attacks. "It's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism," he said.

It's all sounding a bit terrifying.

Although it's not simply a GWB problem, partisan politics meant the expulsion of many Clinton appointees from top U.S. security and defense positions, replacing them with many leaders who had been civilians since the Cold War days. That's eerily reminsicent of the post-McCarthy purge of the State Department prior to Vietnam, leaving a staff with virtually no knowledge of SE Asian culture. I would hope it doesn't turn out to be an accurate analogy, but where was our defense's mentality a week ago? Fucking Star Wars missile shields.

"an American friend at B of A's W-wa office told me that this is getting BIG BIG media play in Poland, where all magazines, newspapers, and TV stations are trying to outdo each other in coverage. Now here's the surprise: the media there have been extremely frank as to how MOST of the Poles working in the WTC were probably working in cleaning & maintenance, and therefore a lot of them were probably illegal. The degree of full disclosure surprises me, since I would have thought they would simply omit that part of the story."

My co-worker described the event as "painful," which could many things.

And guess which answer has a near-majority?

On the other hand, I'm almost glad to see this story, because it draws a clear line between the behaviour of a relatively small group of people and the official, considered response. I.e., evidence of the Authority trying to keep its belligerent elements hidden, even for their own obvious face-saving interests.

I suppose that's nice ... then again, our foreign aid levels are downright stingy compared to the rest of the developed world, and no one really bashes us. Culturally, maybe, but we pay that back tenfold.

lots of nervous loking non whites ( mainly arabs and south asians) going round with starts and stripes pinned to them. south of houston is strage as anyuthng as we were walking back we turned round and saw the smoke turn from white to balck, later we found out more buildings had colapsed.

i won't be wearing red white and blue I have only just changed out of the pair of trousers I was wearing on tuesday and the 99c t shirt I bought yesterday but more than that jingo and nationalism is not what we need now or ever. Grahame Gree said, 'My Nationality is Mankind' This applies now more than ever

did kate get out?

Ally and others if you still want to meet up mail me.

You got that damn right. Black, like Dan suggested, I'm up for. I refuse to distinguish between the dead by national colors.

But how horribly ironic that you mention some have felt it needed to wear those freakin' colors now. Feh.

No-one, not even the sleaziest ambulance-chasing slip-and-fall shyster, makes me more ashamed of my fellow lawyer (well, maybe Ken Starr, but that's another rant). Ann Coulter is a disgrace to our profession. (And no, as obnoxious as she was, I am not happy that Barbara Olson is dead.)

This is bullshit. With the amount of Arabs and Israelis in NYC? This is bullshit. Perhaps true in Europe (might I add the only people in the entire world I've seen online bring up this argument - WE REBUILT YOUR FUCKING UNIVERSE, SIT YOUR ASS DOWN, not to sound patriotic as A.M.Aers can very much vouch for my anti-US policy sentiments), but not in the US. I personally have spent the last three to four months hearing shitloads about Israel - I am MARRYING someone who wants to join the Israeli army. I am GREAT TIGHT FRIENDS with an Israel immigrant formerly a sniper in thier army - this is what I hear about all the time. I feel horrible for those people. THey shouldn't have to live like that. And neither sbould the US- this is my point, none of these motherfucking countries we lay money into to hel pTHEIR causes are doing ANYTYING right now. My people - my fucking people, i only found out today that all my people are accounted for and I'm still convinced I forgot SOMEONE in my Citibank depart ent, moved to the WTC about a month after I quit - they are dead. MY PEOPLE ARE FUCKING DEAD. We lay money into other couuntries when their people are dead - where is our support? I am grateful that most of this board has been very supportive and kind. But it's not everyone and it's certainly not representative of the snetiment I got on the internet.

There' sno fucking need. No one should be pleased or happy by this.

And I think that if GWB, whatever his faults, was going tob e hasty, Afghanistan would not exist by now. So we can take some comfort in the whoel war scenario by that. It'd be gone by now if we were going to be complety hasty.

I am so drunk. I am so shattered. It has all hit me tonight, it has all just fucking hit me today on e I founce my last person i thig me . I am totally out of it, I just dont' know what i'd do if I didn't find everyone.

i ma four miles from this and I cannot help. i cannot help, i need to hep. i need to do something. please someone tell me what i can do. i need to get out of nyc.

Peter Jennings: "It is not our intention to alarm, but we are receiving truly alarming reports from the intelligence community..." While many of the news outlets are concentrating on the human stories right now, ABC is quietly trying to intimate to the public that the terrorist plot might be even bigger than we were initially led to believe, what with the authorities arresting a whole bunch of people in LaGuardia and Kennedy who were trying to board planes, claiming they were pilots, had many fake IDs, plane tickets from Tuesday, pilot certificates from Vero Beach, knives, etc.

I think to myself: if these people are terrorists, how stupid could they be to try the same tactics so close to Tuesday?

The Pentagon is on fire again.

On the busride home, I was surprised and confused to see some sort of mideastern looking 20-something guy walk up to the bus steps, put on some sort of ghetto-tough-guy posture, bobbing his head and then spit on the steps and doorway of the bus, moments before it came to the last stop. I looked at where he spat, as I was sitting closest to the exit door and then looked up at him just clueless. He gave me what was obviously supposed to be a very hard look and then slammed his fist into the metal bar in front of my face. On his hand, less than a foot in front of my face, I shit you not, were 4 big silver rings (tacky) and one was a big skull with a top hat. I looked at his fist, as I was obviously supposed to, and then looked back at him with a blank look. Then I realized, "Oh, this guy's an Arab! He's either afraid and trying to act tough or else he's siding with the terrorists or some shit"

As soon as I realized what was going on, the doors opened and he was the first out. Some people started saying "don't touch the door, he spit on it"..."he was trying to look all hard"..."take that shit back to Afghanastan, motherfucker."

The above are exact quotes. When I got home, my girlfriend told me what she witnessed and then I told her about the bus incident. It's kind of freaky to even go outside if it's going to turn into a warzone.

I just found out from NBC my dad's firm had some offices in Five WTC. I had no idea, none. It looks like there might be some losses.

It seems hard for me to try to mourn for people, so I mourn for things. There was a small park in front of 140 Broadway and to the side of One Liberty Plaza, and had one of these eerie super-realistic sculptures of a circa 1979 businessman sitting on a park bench with his suitcase. If you've ever been there, you'll know what I'm referring to. It magnetized the tourists, who poked at his features in dazed admiration. CNN (I think) showed the sculpture sitting on rubble, apparently wrenched from his seat. At first I thought it was a corpse, though I was still jolted when I realized what exactly what it was.

Fox News is now on some kind of deathwatch for the Millenium Hotel.

I am glad to say that altercations here in my part of the city are almost nonexistant - there are armed police guarding mosques and synagogs but that's it.

My fave corner store is run by a family of middle easteren descent. I stopped by there today and chalked their eager gabbiness to my being in a rush. Only afterwards did I think maybe they were looking for friendly faces.

I doubt this though. Since my neighborhood is primarily illegal Mexicans I don't think there is a strong feeling in the air other than sadness. No patroitism or jingoism