Terrorism News

9/11/01 To 9/11/11

10:18 am EST September 11th, 2011 | History | 3 Comments

FDNY 9/11It’s hard to believe that its been a whole ten years since the world flipped upside down.

It seems like it was just yesterday, and often when I see images or sounds of 9/11 all the feelings come back and I get a lump in my throat. All of those people, right here in the heart of America.

I don’t personally know anyone who died on 9/11, but they were our friends and neighbors. Struck down at random, the only “reason” they died because they were Americans.

Even though we have avenged them in a very concrete way – killing Bin Laden and disrupting the Al Qaeda network – they are all gone forever. Their families never saw them come home the way they left, smiling faces and love in their hearts. No military action can change that.

Time and politics have made us less unified than we were on that day and the subsequent weeks as we collectively mourned. But we have a spirit that still lies right below the surface. When push comes to shove, Americans can and will stand together.

We must honor those who died, remembering how it happened and never let the memory fade. Two giant towers were collapsed, the heart of our military was pierced, and a field in Pennsylvania was shaken to its core.

But America prevails, lives on, fights, and remembers.

September 11, 2011.

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Bush Let Bin Laden Get Away, Tries To Take Credit For His Death

11:33 am EST September 9th, 2011 | National Security | 62 Comments

George W. Bush allowed Osama Bin Laden to slip away at Tora Bora because he was focused on invading Iraq for no good reason in an action that killed thousands of Americans. From 2001-2009, under Bush, Bin Laden evaded kill and capture. The murderer of thousands of Americans, Kenyans, and other innocent people got away — on Bush’s watch.

On May 2, 2011, on direct orders from President Obama, Bin Laden was executed. Shot. In the face. Dead.

And now Bush is trying to take some credit for it, claiming that “The work that was done by intelligence communities during my presidency was part of putting together the puzzle that enabled us to see the full picture of how bin Laden was communicating and eventually where he was hiding.”

If that was the case, how come the capture/kill of Bin Laden didn’t occur until George W. Bush was back to being a private citizen? And while he was President, Bush told us that Bin Laden didn’t concern him that much?

Every time you stray from the notion that Bush may not have been our worst President ever, his legacy rears its head.

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9/11 Was Never Theirs, But It Really Isn’t Anymore

2:28 pm EST May 4th, 2011 | History | 22 Comments

The Republican party believes that they, and only they, have rights to 9/11. Take, for instance, this pro-Bush ad run by an outside group with extensive ties to the administration back in 2004:

The height of all this was the 2004 election, when the GOP essentially ran a campaign that all but accused Democrats of working hand-in-hand with Al Qaeda, an extension of the 2002 affair. They believed they owned this issue, and acted accordingly.

They never really did. Al Qaeda didn’t just attack Republicans, after all. But they behaved as if only their opinions mattered, only their strategies were worth pursuing in a global war against terrorism. Even when they made mistakes that led to the deaths of thousands and the escape of Bin Laden, they presented themselves as the party of 9/11 (even when Rudy Giuliani attempted to disappear the attack while smearing President Obama).

But now, thanks to history, they’ve lost it. Bin Laden was killed not on the orders of their “popular wartime president” but rather the signal to shoot Bin Laden in the eye was given by the “socialist” “muslim”. It drives them batty.

That’s why they push crazy, nonsensical theories.

They’ve lost the control of 9/11 they envisioned in their minds. It was never theirs to begin with.

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Yes, We Were Right To Kill Bin Laden. Yes, We Should Celebrate It.

10:09 am EST May 3rd, 2011 | Liberals | 43 Comments

Things like this are why I often can’t stand liberals. Or, to be more precise, a very narrow, tiny sliver of liberalism that always has its head up its own rear. Since the killing of Bin Laden has been revealed, there have been two ridiculous reactions to it from people on that shelf of ice floating way off the coast of mainstream liberalism in America.

First, the bedwetting over whether we had the right to kill Bin Laden, as detailed in this article. Of course we did. Bin Laden was an international criminal, wanted for crimes against multiple states (the US for 9/11, England for 7/7 and Kenya for the embassy bombings). This isn’t the kind of man you just let go. You find him, you kill him. This is black and white morality 101.

Secondly, should we rejoice at his death? Yes. A million times yes. This is the man directly responsible for the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. 2,977 innocent lives were lost. In addition, Americans lost a sense of security that we’ve had, the idea that our two oceans could protect us. It wasn’t a loss of innocence, but it was something taken away from our collective psyche.

When the man directly responsible for this is killed, it is a moment to rejoice. The serially stupid David Sirota, writing in Salon, compared this to those who cheered on the September 11 terrorists (unsurprisingly, Glenn Greenwald similarly spent a whole lot of overwritten paragraphs expressing a similar sentiment). In addition to just blatantly whoring for traffic, Sirota’s moral equivalence smells to high heaven. Those people were cheering on the killing of innocent people. Sunday night, Americans were celebrating a mass murderer’s moment with justice. The two are not remotely equivalent. Not even close.

This has been another edition of “that was stupid, quit it” with Oliver Willis.

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Bin Laden Death Vindicates National Security Democrats

9:34 am EST May 2nd, 2011 | Democrats, National Security | 160 Comments

“Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“So that there can be no possible misunderstanding, both Germany and Japan can be certain, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that America will continue the fight for freedom until no vestige of resistance remains!” – Harry Truman

“When I ordered our armed forces into combat, we had three clear goals: to enable the Kosovar people, the victims of some of the most vicious atrocities in Europe since the Second World War, to return to their homes with safety and self-government; to require Serbian forces responsible for those atrocities to leave Kosovo; and to deploy an international security force, with NATO at its core, to protect all the people of that troubled land, Serbs and Albanians alike.

Those goals will be achieved. Unnecessary conflict has been brought to a just and honorable conclusion.” – Bill Clinton

“Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.” – Barack Obama

When the 2000 election was underway, national security wasn’t much of an issue. National security didn’t come up as a major issue until the 9/11 attacks, after which we were told – by the right and the media – that we should count our lucky stars that it was Bush, not Gore, who would be facing these challenges.

Bush proceeded to miserably fail at this most important of presidential tasks. His leadership allowed Bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora, and the wrongheaded invasion of Iraq was botched from its beginning. Thousands of people died as a result. And still, we were told, Democrats are soft on terrorism. Remember when Karl Rove said Democrats “offer therapy and understanding for our attackers”? That wasn’t a coincidence.

Nor was the 9/11 focused convention by the GOP in 2004. The message was hammered home time and time again: Democrats can’t be trusted to fight terrorism.

But they were wrong. Democrats have a very strong tradition of being the party that gets things done on national security. Including FDR and Truman in World War 2, or Clinton in Kosovo.

When Obama was elected, we were told time and again that he was too weak, that he would be the worst of liberal pacifism, that he was too “other”, too liberal to really take the fight to those who threaten us.

Those of us who prioritize national security on the progressive side knew those arguments were bunk. We knew Democrats have what it takes to be commander-in-chief. We know Democrats can take the 3AM call without a second thought.

We were right. Bin Laden is dead. He is dead as a result of the hard work of our men in the field who took the butcher down. He is dead because the commander-in-chief, Barack Hussein Obama – a member and the current leader of the Democratic party – made the final order.

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VIDEO: 9/11 Attack As Seen From A NYPD Police Helicopter

8:42 am EST March 7th, 2011 | History | Comments Off

The website Cryptome has released the following video from a NYPD police helicopter that was hovering over the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks:

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Dear American Media:

5:19 pm EST September 11th, 2010 | Media, Religion | 27 Comments

Every time you shove a camera in the face of some one-off nutjob kook who wants to deface a holy book you’re helping to pull the trigger on the next terrorist bomb or gun that kills a US serviceman/woman or innocent civilian.

Yes, you’re in a competitive new world and the standards have been thrown out the window, but is it really worth a few extra viewers or pageviews to have people’s blood on your hands?

This is not the way back to profits. This isn’t providing insight, it isn’t adding to the store of learned knowledge, and hell, it isn’t even entertaining.

Please, stop.

A Concerned Citizen.

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Yes, Let’s Go There

8:34 am EST May 5th, 2010 | History, National Security, Republicans | 12 Comments

Erick Erickson, of Red State and CNN fame, links to some stories of the attempted terrorist caught by law enforcement under Obama and juxtaposes it with a comment from Majority Leader Steny Hoyer discussing Democratic toughness and performance on fighting terrorism. Hoyer says “we’ve been more successful”, and Erickson asks “Does Hoyer really want to go there?”.

Sure, why not.

The worst terrorist attack in U.S. history was presided over by a Republican president. 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch, he responded to the attack by going to war in an unrelated nation, Iraq. Thousands of Americans died via terrorism under a Republican president. More than we have ever lost.

Sure, let’s go there.

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Mohammed al Modadi Identified As Alleged Shoe Bomber On United 663 (UPDATE: No Explosives?)

10:40 pm EST April 7th, 2010 | News | 7 Comments

ABC:

The suspect was identified by authorities as a diplomat in the Qatar embassy in Washington, Mohammed al Modadi. The FBI said the man had full diplomat immunity as the 3rd secretary and vice-consul.

UPDATE: NBC reports that there appear to have been no explosives.

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United 663: Apparent Shoe Bomber Stopped On DC-Denver Flight

10:27 pm EST April 7th, 2010 | News | Comments Off

NBC News reports:

A passenger attempted to light an explosive device but was subdued by a federal air marshal aboard an airliner flying from Washington to Denver on Wednesday night, sources close to the House Homeland Security Committee told NBC News.

United Flight 663, a Boeing 757 with 157 passengers and six crew members aboard, landed safely at Denver International Airport, airline and airport officials said.

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