"9/11" - Revisit, Again
"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
USACE Patrol Boat Hocking heads toward lower Manhattan on 9-11. One of several hundred vessels of all types that headed toward lower Manhattan on that day to rescue 1000's of civilians from the area.
(Image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org), Author: US Army Corps of Engineers from USA) Details Source DMCA
On occasion at this time of year I post a "9/11" column, comprised of excerpts from some of the columns that I have published on the subject over the years, plus some new thoughts about that Day and its sequelae. For one of the most recent previous columns on OpEdNews, Click Here . But in this space, now, let's start at the beginning, for those of us who witnessed the events, at least over television.
On that morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was sitting in my office at my computer when one of colleagues came in and said words to the effect of "are you watching; do you know what is going on?" "No" and "no," I replied, where-upon my college said words to the effect of "you had better come into the other room where we have a television. This is unbelievable." And, like so many others, I watched the second plane hit the second tower, live, and like so many others too I thought, "even though I am seeing it apparently live, on TV, this cannot be happening."
I would not have that kind of thought again until Jan. 6, 2021 when I saw the Trumpsurrection live on TV (being retired, I was at home on that day), and said to myself "this cannot be happening." But, just like the attack on the Towers, it was. Of course, historically the latter event has had and will certainly have in the future even more of an impact on U.S. history than the former, but the "Twin Towers" was, and still is, very meaningful for us as a nation.
On the morning of December 8, 1941, following the surprise attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his famous address to the United States Congress, asking it to authorize a Declaration of War on the Empire of Japan. The most famous words in it, often quoted, describe the day of the attack, Dec. 7th, as "a day that shall live in infamy." (I had just turned 5 years old and I do not remember hearing those words, but I know that I did in fact hear them, for my parents were very focused on "the news," and one can be certain that the radio in our sitting room was on, broadcasting every one of FDR's words, and that my mother made sure that I heard them.)
Of course, there are a few other days in U.S. history which can be characterized in the same way, that is "a day that shall live in infamy." The first one was the to-be-Confederate States of America's surprise attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861, which began the U.S. Civil War. Third, of course, was Sept. 11, 2001, the subject of this column. Fourth, is Jan 6, 2021, and yes it will surely go down in U.S. history as a "day that shall live in infamy" (that is unless the Republo-fascist revolution, currently in its early stages, about which I have written regularly and of course will again, is ultimately successful, over the long term).
I am writing this column on Sept 12, 2023. Last evening, as in my wont during baseball season, I tuned into the broadcast of the New York Mets baseball game, against the Arizona Diamondbacks, which was to be played that evening, in New York City at Citi Field. As it happened, there was a rain delay. And so, the Mets' cable channel played a recording of a summary of the Met's memorial ceremony which took place before the beginning of the first game at the old Shea Stadium after 9/11 that they played, as authorized by Major League Baseball, about ten days after the terrible event.
I had seen the memorial ceremony at the time, but to see it again was very moving. It once again brought home both the horror of the event and the resiliency of our city (and no matter where I have lived physically, I have been a New Yorker from the moment of my birth at the old Sydenham Hospital at 123rd St. and Amsterdam Ave., on Nov. 22, 1936). In defiance of a do-not-do-it mandate from Major League Baseball, at that game the Mets players all wore service caps from the NYC first-responders rather than their regular baseball caps, as they did, this time with full authorization, at the ceremony which is held before every Mets game that is played at home on a Sept. 11. Again, to see that re-play of the first post-9/11 Mets game, with the pre-game remembrance, was a very moving experience.
Turning to the events of that horrible day, many unanswered questions about it and just what happened, remain. Perhaps some of them will never be answered, but it is still worth asking them, while noting a few other salient facts that are not too often referred to, presented here not always in order of importance.
A few days ago, I saw an email which asked "who was Osama bin Laden?" Here is a short answer to that question. He had been labelled as the leader-from-afar of the plot that led to the attack. Here, further, are some of the salient facts about him, not always reviewed. He was one of many children of a wealthy Saudi businessman named Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden. The latter had been a colleague of GHW Bush on the Board of the Saudi Carlyle Group for about 30 yrs. In the 1990s Osama bin Laden was a principal member of the "mujahedin" who, funded by the US, eventually forced the USSR (which among other things for the first time had established Afghani women's rights, expanded education for all Afghanis, and did attempt to curtail opium production, and see also: click here ) out of Afghanistan. Osama was suspected (conveniently fingered[?]) as a/the leader of the 9/11 plot. After the U.S. invasion, he apparently could have been caught in eastern Afghanistan when GW Bush was President, but wasn't. Osama always denied that he had anything to do with "9/11." Osama had been ill with kidney failure for many years. After his capture in Pakistan in 2011, he was assassinated (that is politically murdered --- ironically a word derived from the Arabic) while on a US Navy vessel. My supposition is that the least thing that the Obama Administration wanted to see was Osama on the witness stand in a US court, represented by attorneys, under direct and cross-examination. (See below the list of high-ranking US officials who have doubts about the official version of "what happened" and the note on the exclusion of "the 28 pages" excluded from the referenced Report).
As is well known, about 18 members of the bin Laden family who were in the US at the time of the attack were flown out of the country during the 3-day US-airspace-closure period. I have never seen an official explanation for the exception that was made for these individuals.
Former New York City Mayor Rudolf Giuliani, as any reader of this column will know, has been much in the news lately. In certain news reports about him, in referring to his very visible role in the City right after the disaster when he was called "America's Mayor," there has been phraseology about "how far he has fallen." Not often mentioned, either at the time or in many considerations of the events of the day and their immediate aftermath are the following items about him and his relation to the events of 9/11 and their aftermath.
First, when he was Mayor in the 1990s he proposed moving the "Emergency Management Headquarters" for New York City to the to-become-famous "Building 7" at the World Trade Center. The WTC had already been the target of at least one terrorist attack. Top city, state, and national security officials urged him not to do it, citing "safety of facilities-and-services" concerns. He did it anyway. Bldg. 7 collapsed at abut 5PM on 9/11/01, for reasons that are still in dispute.
Second, in the 1990s, Giuliani refused to spend the money necessary to merge the Police and Fiore Dept. radio systems, which merger had been recommended to him by both Departments. On 9/11, as Building 2 was on fire, just before the final collapse the police were being warned on their radios to vacate the building as fast as they could. At the same time, firemen, who did not receive the same message on their radios, were rushing into the building. 343 firemen died that day, many unnecessarily.
Third on decision-making by Giuliani, this time along with Christie Todd Whitman, at the time the head of the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, he announced that no facial masks would be necessary for any rescuers/rubble-clearing personnel, even though many other public and environmental health experts were immediately recommending that they be mandated (with, of course, high-tech head-and-face coverings for rescue personnel and crash-recovery workers). It was fairly quickly determined that various poisons remained in air at the disaster site for some time afterwards, but the provision of head-coverings was only slowly implemented. For a comprehensive review of the long-term health effects of the disaster see "20 Years After 9/11: What We Know About the Long-Term Health Effects" created in part by that decision to not immediately order them used. One tremendous irony is that as of this time almost as many firemen have died since that day from its aftereffects as died on it.
The list of "important folks" who at the time of the official report's release, or since, "have [or had] doubts" about it (see "9/11 Commission Report") includes: 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton, 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer (who was later very active in urging the release of "The 28 Pages" referenced above), 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland (who resigned from the Commission in disgust over its refusal to delve deeper into possible alternative explanations other than the one that seemed to be pre-destined to be arrived at), 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey, the Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer), Daniel Ellsberg, 27-year CIA veteran Raymond McGovern (who handled National Intelligence Estimates at the time), 29-year CIA veteran, former National Intelligence Officer (NIO) and former Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis, William Bill Christison, CIA Operations Officer Lynne Larkin, decorated 20-year CIA veteran Robert Baer, Division Chief of the CIA's Office of Soviet Affairs Melvin Goodman, Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, Senator Patrick Leahy, former Republican Congressman Ron Paul, former Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Republican Congressman Jason Chafetz, former Democratic Senator Mike Gravel, former Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffee, former U.S. Democratic Congressman Dan Hamburg, and former U.S. Republican Congressman and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, Curt Weldon. All of the above people have over time raised serious questions about the official conspiracy theory, as have many other current and former intelligence and law enforcement operatives.
The 9/11 disaster at the Pentagon, in the official version of which a hollow aluminum tube approximately 16 ft. in diameter (namely a commercial aircraft) crashed through two fortified concrete walls, killing nearly 200 people, has never been formally investigated.
And that's it for now. Of course, if we still have a nation a century-and-a-half from now, doctoral dissertations will still be being written about the event and its aftermath, just as they are still being written about the U.S. Civil War. The events and elements in the list above will form only a small part of what will still be being investigated, of course. But, as I just said, that's it for now.