Bumps in the Road

When 9/11 rolls around next year, it will not only be the 12^th anniversary of the cowardly attacks by Islamic radicals on the sovereign soil of the US, but it will also be the first anniversary of an equally cowardly attack by Islamic radicals on the US embassy in Libya, which, like every other embassy in the world, rests on soil sovereign to the country it represents. The attack cost the lives of our ambassador, Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and two ex-SEALs, Glen Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods, who were there to provide security.

Stevens was an improbable ambassador even in a country as unsettled as Libya. He hitched a ride to get there aboard a Greek freighter, arriving in country as the regime of Moammar Gadhafi was collapsing but before the dictator had been executed. Once in country, he directed the landing of supplies and vehicles needed to establish a diplomatic American presence representing the US to the rebels fighting Gadhafi forces.

Stevens, who was 52 years old, had served in Morocco as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English.  He was fluent in Arabic and well-traveled throughout the Middle East, which he made the focus of his 20-year State Department career after receiving his law degree. Stevens had served two other assignments in Libya prior to his final one and had diplomatic postings in Israel, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Yet he seemed particularly devoted to the Libyan people, among whom he had many personal friends and with whom he often socialized.

This past June while in Washington, he spoke with a reporter about the rising violence in Libya among Islamists – which included the June bombing of our consulate in Benghazi. Now that Gadhafi was gone, he said, people felt freer to express their opinions about the future of the country. Unfortunately the lack of a strong government to fill the vacuum left by the previous regime and a weak-willed police force were incapable of dealing with trouble-makers whose rhetoric was over the line and designed to incite violence, particularly against Americans.

It should trouble ordinary Americans who care for their country to know that their State Department – and therefore the Obama administration – had 48 hours’ notice that the Benghazi consulate and the Cairo embassy were targets for attacks by Islamic radicals. Nertheless, diplomats there were not warned. A local Libyan militia commander said, after the Benghazi attacks, that he had warned Stevens the security situation was deteriorating and that he was concerned for the 30 or so Americans and embassy staff. There was a nearby “safe house” but Stevens and some others, including the other three killed, stayed in the consulate. Although Stevens was “guarded” by his security detail consisting of two ex-SEALs and friendly local militia, none were armed and the local “security” left the scene when the fighting started. Most importantly: there was no US Marine detachment there – standard operating procedure for consular protection, especially in a country with roaming bands of well-armed militia and unknown agendas.

This tragedy was an intelligence breakdown that would have been excoriated in the press if a Republican administration were in power. Think the 9/11 Commission, Jamie Gorelick, and “connecting the dots” all in the same sentence.

Within 24 hours of the attack, which was known in Washington almost as it was launched, our intelligence experts knew that this was terrorist-motivated. Yet, after the attack – which was launched around 9:30 p.m. from three sides by well-armed militia replete with rocket-propelled grenades – Obama and Hillary Clinton cooked up a story that the attacks were a response to a 15-minute YouTube video that slurred the Prophet Mohammed. The “incendiary” video had been on the web for months with less than a dozen “hits” so anyone who believed what the White House was peddling must also believe that the moon is made of cheese. As Senator John McCain later said, “most people don’t bring rocket-propelled grenades and heavy weapons to a demonstration.”

The White House also tried to deflect criticism that these were hostile, well-planned and coordinated embassy attacks by saying that photos released by Libyans show that they were trying to take Ambassador Stevens to the hospital and that he was alive when they found him. The Libyans, however, had a funny way of transporting our diplomat because anyone can Google “Stevens dragged” and see his dead body being dragged through the streets partially clothed with onlookers taking cell phone photos of him before being dumped. The Obama administration has clamped shut any post-mortem findings, but rumors from the scene suggest that Stevens had been brutalized, including raped, when the attackers set upon him.

With an election six weeks away, there is little wonder why Obama and his handlers would lie to the American people about the treatment of our country’s diplomatic representative on the 11^th anniversary of a horrific attack by Islamic radicals of the same ilk. The last thing a politician up for reelection needs is any evidence that he can’t keep Americans safe from terrorists – both here and abroad. We will likely not learn the truth of what happened in the final days and hours to our embassy in Libya until this mendacious administration is out of office.

It also should trouble ordinary Americans that our sovereign, burned out consulate was left unsecured by the provisional Libyan government which America helped put into power. A strong American president, less concerned that the world like us, would have demanded that our consulate be secured, and if in doubt that his demand would be carried out immediately, would have put an armed force on the ground with air cover and FBI agents sufficient to protect the crime scene. Since that didn’t happen, curious onlookers were able to take what they wanted from the scene, including secrets that every embassy wants kept secret – like the names of locals who help feed intelligence to the ambassador.

The charred remains of Ambassador Stevens’ diary were found among the ruins by a CNN reporter who, in the absence of any CIA agents sent immediately upon news of the attack to prevent it, passed the diary on to CNN headquarters in Atlanta. Despite CNN’s agreement with Stevens’ family to return it to them unread, CNN superstar Anderson Cooper revealed some of its details on his TV program, which masquerades as news. Mr. Cooper’s “diary scoop” caused an eruption at the State Department. Little wonder. It revealed a government totally bumfuzzled with how it should respond to the situation in Libya. More damning, the seven remaining diary pages, written in Stevens’ handwriting, said that he was concerned about the relentless security threats associated with the rise of Islamic extremism in the area, specifically in Benghazi, the growing presence of al-Qaeda in Libya, and knowledge that he was on al-Qaeda’s hit list. As good a diplomat as he was, Stevens would have passed those concerns on to the State Department, whose incompetent Secretary Hillary might have had interest in it, except that she was too busy inviting the anti-American new President of Egypt, a card-carrying member of the Muslim Brotherhood, to come visit the White House and have a spot of tea with Obama – when he wasn’t on the golf course … of course.

Libya lost a friend with the death of Christopher Stevens.  He was the “Lawrence of Arabia” for Libyans, traveling among their ordinary people with minimal presence of personal security with him – and those guards who accompanied him were often out of sight. Stevens wanted to be viewed as if he were Libyan. He would be seen in local shops and coffee cafes where Libyans would come up to him to have their picture taken. On Wednesday, the Libyan president told NBC that the anti-Islam film had “nothing to do with” the attack on the US consulate that killed this popular diplomat.

Sean Smith, also killed in the attack, was an employee of the State Department who managed the IT functions for embassies and consulates. He was an avid online gamer who played under the online pseudonym “Vile Rat.” Many of the people who knew him had never met him except online. But those who knew him offline described him as a “first class nice guy.”

One of the online players who knew Smith personally had gamed with him as he moved from one diplomatic assignment to another. In Baghdad, he recalled, Smith would key stroke that the “incoming” sirens were going off, signaling a strike, and he would disappear for a long while. This would cause the other players to “freak out.” But then Smith would always return after a bit.

On the night before the attack, he messaged:

(12:54:09 PM) vile_rat: assuming we don’t die tonight. We saw one of our “police” that guard the compound taking pictures.

Then later, according to his friend, “this time he said ‘F - - K’ and ‘GUNFIRE’ and then disconnected and never returned.” Only later did the online community learn that he had been killed. Smith, Stevens, and a security guard had retreated to a safe room in the consulate. The attackers broke into the compound, poured diesel fuel around the building, and ignited it. It’s unknown if they were aware that anyone was inside. The security guard made his way out of the burning consulate. Smith and Stevens didn’t.

Sean Smith was married. His wife, Heather, was born and grew up in Roswell, GA before moving to Dulles VA where the two met. They have two small children, Samantha and Nathan, who will grow up without their dad, Vile Rat.

Also killed in the attack was ex-SEAL, Glen Doherty, who worked for a private security firm on contract with the State Department to protect the ambassador. Doherty was an adrenaline junkie who was fearless and, according to his sister, loved two things: being outdoors and being with friends. His closest friends were a group of misfits with whom he’d attended elementary school and he was the glue that kept them all together. He learned to fly after graduating from high school, rode fast motorcycles, guided white water rafting down the Colorado River, and was a Utah ski bum during the winters.

At age 25 he enlisted in SEAL training, and after graduating, became a registered nurse and paramedic as well as a trained sniper, writing a book, The 21st Century Sniper: A Complete Practical Guide. His nursing skills helped him attend to the wounded when his unit was sent to the scene of the suicide bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 and wounded 39 sailors. His sniper skills helped his Special Ops unit to find and rescue Pvt. Jessica Lynch, the wounded Quartermaster Corps trooper who was captured during the attack on Baghdad. Doherty did two tours in Iraq during the 2003 “Iraqi Freedom” Gulf War.

His marriage to his high school sweetheart couldn’t stand the strain of his risky assignments which took him to the corners of the world. His work with the private security firm would keep him on three-month projects after which he would return for one or two months to the states. He bored easily. One friend described him as a person who thought the only thing cooler than doing what he was doing was to leave it in order to do something else.

After the first attack on the consulate, Doherty shepherded 30 embassy staff to a second building and notified the State Department’s operations center in Tripoli to evacuate them.  Apparently some friendly militia arrived to protect the embassy compound. Around 2 a.m. a five minute attack on the second building was launched. First-hand accounts about the evacuation of the embassy staff to the Benghazi airport conflict at this point. More needs to be factually known. But the second attack included mortars launched into the compound. Doherty was killed just outside the compound gate by a mortar blast. He was 41 years old.

Tyrone Woods, known as Rone to friends, was the other ex-SEAL killed in the Benghazi attacks. He had enlisted in the Navy after graduating from high school and volunteered for SEAL training. His career with the SEALs spanned two decades, including tours in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Like Doherty, he was a registered nurse and paramedic.

Previously married, his former brother in law said Woods was the sort of person who was not able to adjust to civilian life. “He was always waiting for that phone to ring” before another high-stakes mission. During the SEAL infamous “Hell Week” – a grueling five and a half days of almost unending training during which a total of three or four hours of sleep is allowed, Woods was injured. His choice after recovery was drop out or repeat Hell Week. He went through it a second time, telling his mother, “I don't want to be just another barnacle scrapping Sailor".

In 2010 he retired from the SEALs and joined a firm providing consulate security services in Central America and the Middle East. He remarried, moved to Henderson NV, and bought a house. His wife gave birth to a son earlier this year, whom he was able to see before leaving for Libya. He and Doherty were probably killed in the same mortar blast.

In this past Sunday’s 60 Minutes interview of the 2012 presidential candidates, Steve Kroft asked Obama if recent events had given him any pause about his support for the “Arab Spring” uprisings. Obama’s response:

I think it was absolutely the right thing for us to do to align ourselves with democracy, universal rights a notion that people have to be able to participate in their own governance, but I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road because, you know, in a lot of these places, the one organizing principle has been Islam …

I guess that’s what the unpardonable attacks on our embassies in Libya and Cairo were … and the deaths of four Americans … Stevens, Smith, Doherty, and Woods … bumps in the road.

Voting God and Israel Out

God and Israel had a tough time of it at the Democrat National Convention a couple of weeks ago. Both were left out of the Democrat platform, which caused a furor requiring Obama’s intervention to get them back in. This launched a floor fight among delegates to the DNC to determine by voice vote if two-thirds of them agreed with their party’s leader – the President. The outcome wasn’t clear. It certainly wasn’t clear to the hapless Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the convention chairman, who looked bewildered when the platform modification voice vote sounded overwhelmingly like a tie, if not a rejection. So the chairman called for the voice vote to be repeated, giving the ayes a second chance. Same results.

The clueless Villaraigosa had that “what do I do now?” look on his face when the convention “rules expert,” parliamentarian Helen McFadden, in essence told him to call for a third vote and then say the “ayes” won. In the third voice vote, ayes and nays were at least tied but to my ear it sounded like the nays won by a considerable margin. Nevertheless, Villaraigosa dutifully complied with McFadden’s instructions, except this time, unlike the previous two votes, he read from the teleprompter. “In the opinion of the chair, two-thirds having voted in the affirmative, the motion is adopted.” The fix was in. Villaraigosa was booed off of the convention stage for ramming through an affirmation of the platform change that its opponents were sure they’d won. The anti-Israel, anti-God sentiment among the Democrats in Charlotte was embarrassingly evident to a national television audience.

Did those DNC delegates represent the sentiments of the Democrat Party? God only knows. (Not a pun.).

But the Pew Research Center’s American Values Survey conducted this summer and the American National Election Studies show that a deep ideological divide between the political Right and the Left has been underway for 20 years. That polarization has changed what it means to be a Democrat or Republican, which helps understand why God and Israel probably lost the DNC vote, the convention chairman’s ruling notwithstanding.

When Ronald Reagan left office religious faith and its practice, according to these surveys, were essentially the same for Republicans and Democrats. Both believed in God and believed that a Day of Judgment would occur in the future when all people, living and dead, would be called to account for their sins. The traditional view of marriage was equally held by self-identified members of both parties. Only a tiny single digit minority of Democrats held non-traditional views in all of these beliefs. But since then, belief in the existence of God, Judgment, and the traditional view of marriage has declined among white Democrats, especially among white liberal Democrats, less than half of whom (44%) now believe in the traditional view of marriage. Among black Democrats, however, all but a single-digit minority still hold “old fashioned” traditional views about God, sin, prayer, and marriage. They were likely the impetus behind the DNC platform change.

In interviews after the convention Sen. Charles “Chuck” Schumer (D-NY) poo-pooed assertions that the Democrat Party clearly had an anti-Israel tilt, but facts lean in the opposite direction. I’ve previously blogged on the subject of the Obama administration’s support for Israel, particularly as Israel increasingly faces the Iran nuclear menace, but even more telling evidence of the Democrat’s anti-Israel stance is Obama’s reluctance to say that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. During a press conference this summer, a reporter asked Jay Carney, the President’s press secretary if Obama believed the capital of Israel was Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Carney wouldn’t answer.

An hilarious exchange went on between a reporter and the State Department press secretary about the capital of Israel a couple of weeks ago. The reporter asked which city the US government recognizes – Jerusalem or Tel Aviv – as the capital and the press secretary answered:

Well, as you know, longstanding Administration policy, both in this Administration and in previous administrations across both parties, is that the status of Jerusalem is an issue that should be resolved in final status negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. So that’s longstanding Administration policy and continues to be so.

Not to be undone by a State Department head fake, the reporter tried again: “[Then] … no city is recognized as [Israel’s] capital?” to which the press secretary repeated, “Again, I just stated our position, and it’s one we’ve said here many times before.”

“That means Jerusalem is not a part of Israel?” the reporter tried again. “What it means is that the status of Jerusalem must be resolved in final status negotiations,” the State Department robot responded.

If you want more of this “Who’s on First” comedy routine, click on the link given above. The point is that Obama and his water carriers aren’t going to be pinned down on their belief that Jerusalem should be an open city – maybe the capital of both the Jews and Palestinians. Or maybe just the Palestinians.

My, my, my – how the Democrat Party has changed during the Obama era. In 2008, when Obama was peddling hope and change, the Party platform said:

Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.

Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel.

Now we find that the 2012 Democrat platform didn’t even mention Jerusalem – until Obama intervened to put it back in. Oddly, the fact that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel has been law since 1995. Yet despite Section 2.14 of the law, the US has failed to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

When the Republicans held their convention, their platform explicitly said:

We support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state with secure, defensible borders; and we envision two democratic states – Israel with Jerusalem as its capital and Palestine – living in peace and security. For that to happen, the Palestinian people must support leaders who reject terror, embrace the institutions and ethos of democracy, and respect the rule of law.

So, what’s the beef in the DNC dispute?

It’s a presidential election year. While Jews aren’t the voting bloc that racial minorities are – there are about 6.6 million American Jews (about 2% of the population) – they are significantly represented in battleground states. Historically, American Jews have been liberal Democrats for many and complex reasons, among them their legacy of persecution and their suspicion of conservatism. Obama probably could win reelection without them if he could hold the rest of his coalition together, but national elections aren’t about publicly alienating voting blocs. Besides, elections are like jury trials – despite the arguments presented to a jury the outcomes can be surprising.

And then there’s God.

The 2008 Democrat Hope and Change platform said:

We need a government that stands up for the hopes, values, and interests of working people, and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.

Hardly a ringing hopeful endorsement of God, but before Obama’s intervention the change in the Democrat platform read:  

We gather to reclaim the basic bargain that built the largest middle class and the most prosperous nation on Earth – the simple principle that in America, hard work should pay off, responsibility should be rewarded, and each one of us should be able to go as far as our talent and drive take us.

No reference to God.

Black Americans are about 12% of the population and Obama got 95% of their vote in 2008. About 90% of blacks hold traditional views about God, sin, and marriage, therefore, the omission of any mention of God was a faux pas that compelled Obama’s intervention.

Let’s admit that political party convention platforms are symbolic. They are not binding on the presidential candidate. And when it comes to platform wording, each party’s activists are the most interested and the most influential in what gets said. What platforms say is less important than what they said in the past but aren’t saying currently. Observers begin attaching meaning to the changes and omissions. The disaffection of the Democrats with Israel and the party’s growing secularization, especially among liberal activists, probably explain the omission of Jerusalem and God. But the departure from historic platforms drew enough attention to cause sputtering, expanding neck veins, red faces – and a presidential intervention.

I doubt that Mitt Romney fully supports the Republican platform notwithstanding its symbolic non-binding nature. But neither did he have to intervene to modify and call national attention to it.

Dick Durbin’s meltdown with Fox News anchor Bret Baier during the DNC bordered on hysteria. Durbin, the Democrat Whip in the senate and the senior senator from Obama’s home town, accused Baier of trying to make the Democrats appear “godless.” Baier simply asked why God and Jerusalem were left out of the platform. He wasn’t trying to make the Democrats godless or God-fearing. Watch the interview for yourself by clicking on the foregoing link. Paraphrasing Shakespeare’s Hamlet, "The senator doth protest too much, methinks."

When Republicans took note of the Jerusalem omission and called it to the attention of the press, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), the co-chair of the DNC, was quoted by reporter Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner as having said, “We know, and I’ve heard no less than Ambassador Michael Oren say this, that what the Republicans are doing is dangerous for Israel.” Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the US protested Wasserman-Schultz’s published assertion, saying “I categorically deny that I ever characterized Republican policies as harmful to Israel. Bipartisan support is a paramount national interest for Israel, and we have great friends on both sides of the aisle.”

Asked to respond to Ambassador Oren’s refutation of her claim, Wasserman-Shultz said, “Unfortunately, that comment was reported by a conservative newspaper. It’s not surprising they would deliberately misquote me.”

Misquote? Hmmm. Unfortunately for Rep. DWS, reporter Klein had taped the interview. Oops.

In the run-up to the DNC, the “voice” of Jewish Democrats released a video to show that Obama is a really good friend of Israel. Entitled “What Do Israelis Think of Obama?” interviewees are extravagant in their praise for Obama. The National Democratic Jewish Council, which sponsored the video, slathered on the panegyrics:

President Barack Obama’s strong support for Israel has been recognized by Israeli leaders such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, as well as many pro-Israel leaders here in the United States. … Today, we’re hearing what Israelis living on the front lines think.

My earlier-mentioned blogs on Obama’s relations with Israel should convince you that I wouldn’t put my bare feet in that statement. But fortunately, a neighbor of the interviewees in Israel saw the video and suspected a rat was in the woodpile (as we say in the south) so he interviewed the interviewees. Sho ‘nuf their anti-Obama comments had been edited to appear to be effusively pro-Obama. Oops again.

The Democrat pretentiousness about their support for the state of Israel is a Potemkin village to hide their true ideology. The DNC platform fumble puts the American Jewish constituency in play for the Republicans, and if that constituency would just examine the historic record, it would have to conclude that American Jews don’t have better friends than the Republicans. To that end, over 80% of the Americans living in Israel, including Democrats, are voting Republican this year.

The Republican Jewish Coalition in the US is running ads in swing state Jewish newspapers, noting that Israel is being abandoned by the Democrat Party:  

At the Democratic Party convention in Charlotte, NC, it's become painfully clear that this Party is no longer the Democratic Party of our parents' generation. This week [of the DNC] has witnessed a shocking series of events. These regrettable incidents reveal a Party that has wandered far from its origins. 

In the 2008 election Obama got 78% of the Jewish vote. The Republican Jewish Coalition is sending representatives and making large ad buys in battleground states to promote “buyer’s remorse” messages among the Jewish voters in those states. Notwithstanding the Democrat anti-Israel policies, the Democrats will probably get the majority of the 2012 Jewish vote. American Jews are not homogenous. There are at least two types – those whose liberalism is rooted in their Judaic religious belief in social justice and those who know Hebrew. Schumer and Wasserman-Schultz fall in the latter category.

But Michael Barone, a very savvy veteran of past election watching, believes that Obama will get a percentage of the Jewish vote in the 2012 election that is close to what he is polling now – about 65% -- significantly down from 78% in 2008. This will cost him about 84,000 votes in Florida, about 42,000 in Pennsylvania, and about 19,000 in Ohio. These aren’t huge numbers, but they could prove very costly to Obama’s reelection if Barone’s models are approximately correct. Keep in mind that George Bush won Florida in the 2000 by less than a thousand votes. Add to those states the loss of about 12,000 Virginia Jewish votes, about 12,000 Colorado votes, about 11,000 Michigan votes, and around 10,000 Nevada votes and Obama’s slam dunk reelection isn’t a slam dunk anymore.

Moreover, Dennis Ross, a Middle East expert, longtime friend and advisor to Bill Clinton, and a campaigner for Obama in the 2008 primaries despite his friendship with the Clintons, recently announced he is going to sit out the 2012 elections. That speaks volumes because Ross is a pro-Israel Democrat. The prestige loss to the Obama campaign is like Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Rush Limbaugh collectively announcing that they will not campaign for or visibly support Romney. Sure, Ross gave a cover story for sitting out 2012, but it’s so thin you could read a newspaper through it.

Finally, more than a minor uprising has occurred among black ministers who are telling their flock to stay home for the 2012 election because Obama came out in favor of same-sex marriage. Their congregations are asking them – the black pastors – how a Christian can vote for a presidential candidate who has taken a stand in opposition to Biblical teachings regarding homosexuals.

However, Romney probably won’t get their vote because blacks question the theology of Mormonism and its former ban on men of African descent for the Mormon ministry. Hopefully, they will learn that this restriction no longer applies. But at any rate, this turn of events could cost Obama important votes, since he got 95% of the black vote in 2008. As Thomas Sowell, a conservative black scholar has noted, if Republicans can woo just 10% of the black vote it would put the presidential campaign in jeopardy for the Democrats.

It’s been said that the two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. There wasn’t a lot of hydrogen present at this year’s DNC.

9/11 Eleven Years Later

Like this year, September 11 occurred on a Tuesday eleven years ago.

I was about to leave for my office on that fateful morning, but before doing so, I went to the computer in my home office to dash off a heated email to Molly Ivins, the acid-ink columnist for the Dallas Times Herald who delighted in poking fun at President Bush’s malapropisms. Before I could build up a head of steam, though, my wife stuck her head in to say that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center and coverage was on television.

My mind flashed back to a similar incident which happened when I was a child – a B-25 light bomber had flown into the Empire State Building during a foggy summer morning in 1945. That was before the days of television (yes, television was not present at the Creation) and our family got its news by radio. It was a topic of family conversation because the pilot’s name was Lt. Col. William Franklin Smith (no relation) and because my dad’s brother was also a WW II B-25 pilot.

By the time I got to the family room television, the second plane had hit the second tower. It was obvious that these were no accidents and the commentators were beginning to speculate that we were being attacked by terrorists. It wasn’t the first time they had tried to bring down the Trade Towers. Terrorists had converted a truck into a bomb and parked it in the building garage in 1993, hoping to cause Tower One to collapse into Tower Two, bringing them both down. It failed to do more than blow a hole through several floors, but it killed a half dozen people and injured about a thousand.

I returned to complete my email to Ivins, telling her that now we were under attack by terrorists, no doubt of Middle Eastern origin, maybe she ought to focus her columns more on what was happening in the world and less on Bushisms like “misunderestimate” and “nuclar.”

After the nation recovered from the initial shock over the suicidal lunatics who turned planes into bombs, the predictable finger-pointing and dot-connecting began. From it we learned just how well-planned this mission of death and destruction was. The two flights departing from Boston were scheduled to Los Angeles, the one leaving Newark was en route to San Francisco, and the Dulles departure was headed to Los Angeles. That meant each of the four planes was loaded with fuel for their coast to coast flights, making sure that their impact would produce an inferno.

Nineteen men, 15 of whom were citizens of our alleged Middle East ally, Saudi Arabia, had been organized into four groups, each led by a hijacker capable of handling the flight controls of the planes. Aside from the “pilot,” the other thugs in the four groups were there to provide the muscle to subdue the passengers.

At 8:46 a.m. American Airlines Flight 11, piloted by a 33-year old Egyptian, Mohamed Atta, plowed into the north tower, known as One World Trade Center, in New York City. Less than a half hour later, United Airline Flight 175 crashed into Two World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m. At 9:25 a.m. the Federal Aviation Administration shut down all domestic airports in the country, but that didn’t prevent American Airline Flight 77 from crashing into the west face of the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. At 9:59 a.m. WTC 2 collapsed, ten minutes later a section of the outer ring of the Pentagon collapsed, and at 10:28 a.m. WTC 1 collapsed. Due to fires started when WTC 1 collapsed, WTC 7 collapsed at 5:21 p.m.

United Airlines Flight 93, which had departed Newark at 8:42 a.m., was about 45 minutes into its flight and over eastern Ohio when the four terrorists took control of the plane. As they began breaking into the cockpit, the quick-thinking pilot put the aircraft on autopilot and switched the radios so that attempts to communicate with passengers via the intercom would be routed to air traffic control. As the terrorists got into the cockpit around 9:30 a.m., the pilot sounded the alarm to air traffic control: “Mayday, mayday.” Another voice, perhaps the co-pilot, repeated the distress call. Once on the flight deck, the terrorists killed or mortally wounded the captain and first officer, and then the hijacker-pilot announced through what he thought was the intercom "Ladies and gentlemen: this is the captain. Please sit down and keep remaining sitting (sic). We have a bomb on board. So sit.” That message went out to air traffic control.

There were 35 GTE air-phone calls and two cell phone calls made by ten passengers and crew during the chaos that prevailed for the half hour that the terrorists controlled the plane. These calls allowed the passengers to learn of the World Trade Tower crashes and they allowed people on the ground to learn what was happening on Flight 93. The fate the passengers were headed for became obvious to them. Passenger Jeremy Glick called his wife and stayed on the line to report what was going on. Passenger Todd Beamer tried to call his wife but was routed to the GTE air-phone operator, Lisa Jefferson. Beamer told Jefferson that several passengers were planning to “jump on” the hijackers, and if they had to, their plan was to crash the plane into the ground. Several passengers voted to join in fighting back, according to Glick. Beamer recited Psalm 23 with Jefferson, who later said she heard him say on the open line, "Are you guys ready? Okay, let's roll.”

From sounds heard on the flight recorder, the passengers may have used a service cart as a battering ram to break open the flight deck door. Convinced that they would succeed breaking into the cockpit, the hijacker pilot rolled the plane into a steep right bank, nose down, and around 10:03 a.m. Flight 93 crashed in an isolated field near Shanksville, PA. The NTSB estimated the plane hit the ground in an inverted attitude at 563 mph at an angle of 40 degrees. It was the last of the hijacked planes to crash.

Four months later in January, Todd Beamer’s wife Lisa gave birth to the couple's third child, daughter Morgan Kay Beamer.

“We've been hijacked," Barbara Olson, whispered into her cell phone as she huddled with other passengers and the crew in the back of American Airline Flight 77, 30 minutes out of Dulles Airport. On the other end of the call was her husband Ted Olson, Solicitor General of the United States who argued cases for President Bush before the Supreme Court. From his Washington office, Olson asked his wife about the location of her plane. Barbara said they were flying over a residential area. That’s when her husband told her about the World Trade crashes. Both probably realized at that moment that she was doomed. They exchanged some personal comments that have not been made public. Moments later, Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon.

The 9/11 death toll was horrendous. Of the 2,753 killed in New York, 343 were firefighters, 23 were police officers, and 37 were Port Authority police. In the Pentagon crash, 125 were killed. Of course all aboard the four planes were killed, which totaled 265 people. Driven by hatred, 19 men had killed over 3,100 innocent people.

Everything within blocks of the World Trade Center looked like post-Vesuvian Pompeii after the buildings collapsed. Cab driver, John Payafestas, upon seeing the second plane hit Tower Two, later said "I busted a U-turn on the West Side Highway. I thought, 'I gotta’ get home now, or I'll never get home again.'"

Relatives and friends of people who were believed killed or injured in the New York carnage walked the streets like zombies carrying signs and placards with names and photos of the missing loved ones. Some, like Edlene LaFrance, periodically gathered at the National Guard Armory where rolls with the known dead and known hospitalized were periodically updated. These searchers sat patiently in rows of chairs as if waiting to renew their driver’s license. Edlene hadn’t been able to find her 48-year husband, Alan, an audio/visual technician who had been in the towers that morning to earn a little extra rent money. She hadn’t heard from him in almost 60 hours, making it almost certain that he was among the casualties. When her name was called, she trudged down the armory stairs where the current lists were kept. An assistant offered to look for Alan among the names of dead and injured. His name wasn’t there.

Like many in major metro cities, Edlene and Alan lived on the margin. He had no life insurance. She was a nurse in “a really bad part of town.” They lived paycheck to paycheck. Since Alan managed the finances, in the days after 9/11 she couldn’t find the checkbook, which likely was on his body at the bottom of the rubble pile. A charitable organization helped her dodge an eviction for non-payment of rent. Despite her tight finances, she continued to pay for Alan’s cell phone, even though it was on his body, so she could call his voice mail and hear his voice. “They never found remains,” she said, “it’s all we have left of him.”

An iron worker volunteered his time and skill to help cut through the mangled remains of what once were the Twin Towers. His second day on the job started with 16 ounces of beer. It was his “breakfast.” After what he saw on his first day, he needed the alcohol. Not only did he cut steel in pieces that could be hauled away, he also filled bags with pieces of bodies as he came upon them. “I filled 25 bags full of parts,” he said of his first day. One belonged to a woman, who tortured what sleep he could get the previous night. He knew it was a woman because the toes were painted. Everything above the thigh was missing. “I don’t want to go back in there,” he says as he dulled his senses with what was left of his beer. But as his eyes misted behind his welding glasses, he set off for the pile. Two of his friends who were firefighters and his cousin who was a paramedic were buried there.

At the Pentagon, FBI technicians were going through the ruins by hand, looking for human remains. Canine police officer Jim Lugaila had been handling cadaver dogs for 25 years for the Washington DC Police Department. His description of the scene was this:

Think of taking a giant blender, filling it with pieces of ceiling, metal, pieces of flesh, pieces of clothing, paper, glass, and putting it on the highest speed possible.  That is what we had to sort through to find something sometimes no bigger than a dime.

I told the FBI, who was in charge, that they were missing a lot with their hand-sorting since cadaver dogs could find human remains the size of a dime or less for DNA purposes.  I was given the job of canine commander after proving the dogs' worth.  King, my German Shepherd that looked like Rin Tin Tin, came across a piece of metal that looked like a pizza pan folded in half.  King went crazy.  After recovering it and opening it up, a piece of a human brain was found inside.  Unfortunately, non-dog people don't believe in the dog until you prove to them that the dogs can recover more.

About a third of the human remains at the Pentagon were recovered by cadaver dogs.

A 9/11 artifact you’d expect to find in Ripley’s Believe It or Not happened last August. Stock broker Randy Scott was working in Tower Two when American Airlines Flight 11 plowed into Tower One. He called his wife’s school, where she taught the first grade, leaving a message in the school office that he was okay. Then United Airlines Flight 175 hit his building. Scott quickly scribbled a note: "84th floor, West Office, 12 people trapped" and dropped it out of a window. The note inexplicably contained his bloody thumbprint.

Randy’s note was found on the ground by someone who gave it to a Federal Reserve guard. The guard went to call it in when the building collapsed, distracting him until he later realized that he had it. The note ultimately ended up at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum and remained there for ten years.

When he couldn’t be located in any of the local hospitals it became apparent to Denise Scott that her husband had been killed – she hoped instantly – when the second plane struck the building near where he worked. But Dr. Barbara Butcher, chief of staff and director of the Forensic Investigations at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York, confirmed by DNA testing last year that the thumbprint was Randy’s, and she contacted Denise in August 2011 – almost ten years after the note was written – to tell her that she had something she believed had been written by Randy Scott. "The minute I saw it I didn't need to see the DNA test," Denise said, "I saw the handwriting. It's Randy's handwriting." The hope that Denise and their daughters had held for ten years that Randy’s death had come quickly was suddenly smashed by a 10-year old call for help.

Each year since the 9/11 tragedy occurred, the 9/11 commemorations held by universities are like none other held around the country. The focus of university recollections is not on the 3,100 innocents killed on that day, including over 400 first responders who were trying to save them. The focus isn’t on the 3,000 or so children who were living that day, or born within the nine months following, who have grown into adolescence or adulthood missing the parent who would have been at their games, school festivities, weddings, or to see grandchildren born. No, what you would see on those college campuses that even make a fuss about 9/11 would convince you that the Muslims were the victims, thanks to the insightful research of Charlotte Allen writing on last year’s remembrances of that modern day of infamy.

Take the commemoration of Trinity University in San Antonio, for example. Last year’s remembrances included a series of lectures which consumed its entire fall semester entitled “A Decade After 9/11: Muhammad in History, Politics, and Memory.” Those who suffered the loss of a loved ones at the hands of hate-filled, suicidal fanatics no doubt found comfort in expositions of “New Views of Muhammad and Early Islam,” “Muhammad the Warrior; Muhammad the Peace-Maker,” “Islam and the Strength of Visual Images,” and “Of Prophetic Ascents and Descents: Muhammad’s Journeys through European Cultural Space.” Now you know why I left university teaching.

Pepperdine University, whose religious roots recognize the reality of evil versus goodness in this world, called their 2010 commemoration “Honoring the Heroes of 9/11.” Now there’s a word you will not have heard used on many college campuses in the ten anniversaries since September 11, 2001.

The post-9/11 investigations concluded that the primary target for Flight 93 was the White House and the secondary target was the US Capitol building. Apparently the mission planners changed the target as the launch date drew near, deciding that the White House would be too difficult to hit. The US Capitol would be their target. But the rebellious passengers made certain the terrorists would not repeat what they had done in New York, forcing the plane to crash near the village of Shanksville, PA.

Within minutes of the crash the local first responders were on the scene. Afterward, hundreds of investigators descended on this small town whose facilities were incapable of supporting them. Only 245 permanent residents lived there. But with true American selflessness, the local people opened their homes, prepared meals, and provided the outsiders help that only a local would know how to provide. “We had to take care of these people,” one resident remembers.

Soon family members began streaming in to see where their loved ones had died. Others came for whatever reason a hallowed site draws people to gaze upon it and contemplate. Tributes of various types began to appear around the crash site, left by those who needed to quietly honor the passengers who thwarted the terrorists in their deadly mission.

Within weeks of the attack, the first memorial to the Shanksville heroes appeared – a makeshift creation that a local woman set up in her front yard. Looking out her window one morning she saw that a bouquet of flowers had been placed next to it during the night or early morning. With it an appreciative survivor of the Shanksville crash had left a card that read, “Thanks for saving our lives – The Capitol Employees.”