Donald Rumsfeld: For those who lost loved ones to terrorism

Chicago Tribune ^ | September 11, 2005 | Donald Rumsfeld

[Puzzleman]

For those who lost loved ones to terrorism

Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense Published September 11, 2005

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is scheduled to deliver these remarks Sunday during a wreath-laying ceremony in observance of Sept. 11, 2001, at Arlington National Cemetery.

Chaplain James May. Families and friends of those we are here to honor.

We gather here, in this place of remembrance, to reflect on a day when terrorists--extremists--struck at the heart of a free people. A day when Americans lost mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters and friends and colleagues.

[Puzzleman]

Words that needed to be said today.

[Maceman]

This is Juliana McCourt (age 4) and her mom, Ruth Clifford McCourt. They both died on Flight 175.

This is Ruth Clifford McCourt and her friend Paige Farley Hackel (left). Paige died on Flight 11.

I knew both of these women. Ruth had been my wife's boss in the 1980s, and Paige was a friend of my wife's family.

I can't say I knew either of those women well, although I had seen them both socially many times. And I never met Ruth's little girl Juliana, who was a year older than my own daughter.

But even now, hardly a day goes by that I don't think of them and their horrible fate. Especially that beautiful little girl.

I just thought they should be acknowledged here on the anniversay of their deaths.

[tet68]

Great words by Rumsfield.

You just know they had to put an ACLU ad against the
Patriot Act right next to it. Scum.