Free Republic

It was around the time of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, that memorials stopped being remembrances of virtue, and became therapy sessions. The old statues of determined men gave way to empty spaces to represent loss. Their lessons of courage and sacrifice, were replaced by architecture as therapy session, clean geometrical shapes, reflective pools and open areas in which to feel grief at what was lost and then let go of it. September 11 memorials have inevitably followed this same pattern, empty spaces, still pools of water groves and names tastefully inscribed in row after row. How do you tell the...

My wife joined me on a business trip to New York City in 2004. I took an afternoon off to give her tour of my old neighborhood – Battery Park City in lower Manhattan. It looked a lot different than I remembered. That’s because there was a giant crater across the West Side Highway from where I used to live and work. It was the 16-acre site where the World Trade Center once stood, before its twin towers were reduced to scrap metal and rubble by Islamic jihadists using fuel-laden jetliners as weapons of mass destruction. As I toured what...

Since we'll all be glued to Florida hurricane coverage on Sunday and Monday, I've reordered the News Playlist today to emphasize the 9/11 news. Because we can't ever forget.

I've edited out small pieces from what I recorded after 9/11 and the pieces are in a News Playlist on YouTube.

You could still see his mouth and his chin, but only the right side of his face from the nose up. The rest of the photo and the document on which it was printed -- except for the man's first and last name and a broken series of numbers -- was charred or burnt away. Investigators searching the area in Pennsylvania where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, found this telltale piece of evidence. It was the tourist visa that let Ziad Jarrah enter the United States from Germany. On the face of it, Jarrah was a...

Mohammed Zammar, the al Qaeda operative responsible for recruiting the suicide-hijack pilots for the 9/11 attacks, has reportedly been freed inside Syria. Zammar's freedom was reported by Zaid Benjamin, the Washington correspondent for Radio Sawa, on his Twitter feed on Mar. 2. Writing for Al-Monitor, John Rosenthal cited multiple sources confirming Zammar's freedom in an account published on Mar. 10. Zammar was captured in Morocco in late 2001. Unlike most of the 9/11 co-conspirators who were captured, however, Zammar was not transferred to US custody. Instead, he was sent to Syria, where he was imprisoned by Bashar al Assad's regime....

A rogue nation targeted a multinational corporation and won.  North Korea has almost certainly ordered the massive cyber-attack on Sony Pictures, stealing and publicly dumping enough data to make a dent in the company’s stock price. North Korea cannot challenge the United States militarily, despite what movies have portrayed.  Regardless of their saber-rattling, and America’s reduced presence on the Korean peninsula, a real attack of any substance against our ally South Korea (or Japan for that matter) would bring a suicidal level of retribution on the North, and they know it.  But they’ve found a vein where they can draw...

The disclosure that Jamie Gorelick, a member of the September 11 commission, was personally responsible for instituting a key obstacle to cooperation between law enforcement and intelligence operations before the terrorist attacks raises disturbing questions about the integrity of the commission itself. Ms. Gorelick should not be cross-examining witnesses; instead, she should be required to testify about her own behavior under oath. Specifically, commission members need to ask her about a 1995 directive she wrote that made it more difficult for the FBI to locate two of the September 11 hijackers who had already entered the country by the summer...

I lived in the closest residence to the World Trade Center (Gateway Plaza), which was immediately deemed a crime scene after the terrorist attack. An entire wall was blown off my workplace high-rise building. I ran for my life, jumped onto a Coast Guard rescue ferry and made my way to the home of strangers in New Jersey, who were kind enough to take me in. I was homeless for two months. My office was closed and displaced for eight months. It took years to recover from the trauma of 9/11, and yet, I was one of the more fortunate...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president of the United States of America, told Breitbart News that America is “less safe” than it was 15 years ago before the deadly 9/11 terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

As America looks back on the September 11 terrorist attack that changed the nation, the direction of education in the country seems on track to ensure that U.S. students either forget that day entirely or view it as a result of America’s own failure to be open and accepting of other cultures. Signs of the promotion of a “borderless” country that fosters unfettered multiculturalism could be seen decades ago in progressive school textbooks read daily by American students. “Culture war” commentator Stanley Kurtz tells Breitbart News that the situation is likely only to grow worse with the left-leaning Advanced Placement...

At a community college in California last week, a student group was denied permission to hold a 9-11 commemoration because it would make some students “uncomfortable.” We shake our heads in bewilderment at such extremes of political correctness. And yet, the rest of the country is not far behind in towing the line.

Avery Williamson, a starting linebacker for the Tennessee team, hoped to wear a pair of specially-designed cleats at his team’s home opener Sunday against the Minnesota Vikings on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, but he backed off when a league rep vowed to fine him for violating the league’s uniform code. The left cleat says 9-11-01, with the 11 in the outline of the Twin Towers, while the right one says Never Forget. “I don’t want to draw negative attention, so I’m just going to focus on playing the game,” Williamson told the Tennessean newspaper, on Friday. The...

On September 11, 2001, I watched from the other side of the world as our nation came under attack. My husband and I were living in Romania at the time, working as missionaries to provide food and medical supplies to impoverished children there. As we watched the attacks unfold on the one American TV channel available there, we felt helpless from so far away and unsure if we would ever see our country again. But our nation was resilient, and we all witnessed selflessness and bravery and patriotism in everyday Americans. When I set foot on American soil again, I...

On June 12, 2016, 49 innocent lives were taken at the hands of an ISIS extremist. This marks the most harrowing domestic terrorist attack since 9/11, as well as the deadliest mass shooting in United States history.

Repeating the Democratic mantra that President George W. Bush, barely eight months into his presidency on September 11, 2001, was responsible for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers, Donald Trump says his immigration stance would have prevented the atrocity. On Monday, the mouth that roars told “Fox and Friends that his policies would have made it more difficult for the 9/11 hijackers to obtain visas and challenged presidential rival Jeb. Bush’s assertion that his brother, President George W. Bush “kept us safe”:

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. Senate has introduced legislation that would facilitate terror victims to sue foreign governments and private-sector financiers for support of terrorism. The bill, aimed chiefly at the Saudi regime and individual Persian Gulf terrorism funders in nations such as Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia, has been backed by victims and families of victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They have been fighting a lengthy legal battle to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its support of Jihadist terror groups. The Senate passed an identical bill unanimously last December, but the John Boehner-led...

O Lord our God, Who art Thyself, the Hope of the hopeless, the Help of the helpless, the Savior of the storm-tossed, the Haven of the voyager, the Physician of the sick; be all things to our land which fourteen years ago on this date was devastated by the cowardly and hateful acts of false martyrs; who imitated wicked Herod in his slaughter of the 14,000 innocents. To those who lost loved ones, grant the comfort thou didst impart to Mary and Martha before Thou didst raise their brother Lazarus from the dead, and care for them as Thou didst...

In a vote of 269-162, the House of Representatives rejected the approval of the White House’s nuclear agreement with Iran. Every Republican except one voted against it, while they managed to get 25 Democrats on board as well. House votes 269-162 with one Present against approving the Iran nuclear deal pic.twitter.com/cluWKTroPQ— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) September 11, 2015 Today's vote may prove to be just a temporary setback for the Obama administration. Thursday night, the Senate voted to reject a GOP-led disapproval resolution. Even if it had passed, the president has enough votes to use his veto power. Several House members have...

Fourteen years have gone by, and what have we learned? Almost immediately, we learned that Islam was a religion of peace. We learned that, despite the explicit statements of the 9/11 hijackers and plotters explaining and justifying their actions by reference to the Qur’an and Muhammad’s example, those hijackers and plotters were not actually motivated by Islamic texts and teachings, which are entirely benign and, indeed, beneficial for mankind.