Threat Matrix: Daily Terror Threat

Five Years Later, We're Still Not Safe
-Full Story-

In the five years since terrorists flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Americans have accepted inconvenience, sacrificed personal liberties and paid billions of dollars for a security clampdown that touches virtually every aspect of their lives.

And we're still not safe.

A close examination of the federal government's homeland security effort shows that there have been major accomplishments since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. But it also reveals how vulnerable the nation remains to catastrophe.

	Hunt for bin Laden Is Chasing Shadows and Raising Tensions
	Homegrown Terror Suspects Raise Concern
	New Video Coming from al Zawahri and American al Qa'ida
	> Adam Yahiye Gadahn

Thread Forty

Previous | TM Index

TM Terrorism Handbook

TM 'Be on the Lookout'

Godzilla's Summaries

Invaluable Tips

Preparedness

Search: News | Images

Threat Matrix HTML designed by: Ian Livingston

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0906/090106nj1.htm
September 1, 2006

"Five years after 9/11, question is: Could it happen again?"
By Shane Harris, National Journal

===
===

The following post is a quote:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1696839/posts

Remembering 9/11 one victim at a time (Freeper-written tribute to BCM & BKO)
Freeport Ink (Illinois) | 7 September 06 | Me

Posted on 09/06/2006 8:52:24 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback

In the next few days you’ll hear a lot about the nearly 3,000 people killed on September 11, 2001. I’d like to tell you about just two of them, two people whose names I look for every time I see a list of the casualties. Let me tell you about Ted’s wife and Ryan and Dylan’s dad.

Barbara Olson started out as a ballerina and ended up as a famous lawyer. She danced with the San Francisco Ballet and the Harkness Ballet in New York City, then moved on to Hollywood because working as an assistant producer would allow her to save up for law school. She worked for Stacy Keach’s production company and HBO before going to Yeshiva University. She eventually served as an Assistant U.S. attorney and as chief investigative counsel for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, where she looked into Travelgate and Filegate. After the publication of her bestseller “Hell to Pay” she became a frequent guest on TV political shows to represent the conservative point of view.

Her husband Ted said she was a popular guest because she was “very direct” but at the same time “very pleasant.” She could disagree without a trace of rancor, a sunny smile on her beautiful face. But she wasn’t just a talking head. “She was always full of energy, sparkling all the time,” her husband told Newsday, adding that “his three small granddaughters would follow her around ‘like little ducks’” and “thought she was the best thing in the world.”

Barbara was on Flight 77 because she had shifted her schedule to spend more time with Ted for his birthday. He talked to her just before she died. Ted Olson was the Solicitor General at the time, and she called to tell him they’d been hijacked, asking him what she should tell the pilot. They had time to discuss personal matters and reassure each other, and then, he said, “the connection was broken.” Not long after that, Flight 77 struck the Pentagon.

John Moran also had an ambition to be a lawyer and held a law degree from Fordham University. But firefighting was the family business and more suited to his personality, so he joined the FDNY. In an irony that must be especially painful for her, John met his wife Kim on September 11, 1990. His fire station was across the street from her apartment. “I just fell in love with him instantly,” she said a few days after his death, while she and their sons, 7 year old Ryan and 4 year old Dylan, were still hoping he’d come home.

John didn’t have to be in the World Trade Center that day. A Battalion Chief with 22 years of service, he was part of the department’s Special Operations Command, which oversees special rescue companies, fireboats, hazmat units and major incidents. He had just finished a shift, but when the call came in, he “jumped in the truck and away they went,” Kim said.

John’s funeral was conducted by his uncle, Father Paul Moran. John was lost he said, on “a mission of love.” Mayor Giuliani asked for the mourners to give John a standing ovation and said he wanted the Moran boys “to understand for their entire life that their father is a great man.” His brother Michael, a firefighter who survived serving at the Trade Center—and later became famous for defiantly telling Osama bin-Laden to come to Rockaway and kiss his “royal Irish ass”—said “I didn't see him there that day, but now I see him all the time.”

But the best eulogy a man could ask for was what his relatives told Newsday just a few days after his death. Kim Moran said, “He's the love of my life…a wonderful father, a great husband. There's nobody more generous than John.” His cousin, Democrat Congressman Joe Crowley described him as “a Viking Irishman who has calves thicker than my thighs, the heart of lion and touch of a teddy bear.”

I picked John and Barbara because they were both members of Free Republic, an internet forum I’ve posted to for years, but I didn’t know either of them. I didn’t even cross paths with them and “know” them in the online sense, as far as I remember. But that’s irrelevant. I could have picked any of those we lost that day and found something glorious or generous or beautiful about them that would have amazed you the way John’s bravery and Barbara’s joy and determination amaze me.

We didn’t lose almost 3,000 people that day. We lost one wonderful person at a time, almost 3,000 times.

In a sense, Giuliani was right on that bright September afternoon when he said that we had lost “more than we can bear.”

TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Free Republic; News/Current Events; US: Illinois; US: New York; US: Virginia; War on Terror; Click to Add Topic
KEYWORDS: BCM; BKO; SILVERBACK; Click to Add Keyword
[ Report Abuse | Bookmark ]

For those who don't know, Barbara and John were Freepers BKO and BCM respectively. Both represented what's great about FR and conservatism. Both went out fighting. I think of them, and people like them, often.

Air Force woman missing from Kyrgyzstan mall

My note: Prayers please!

Snip: A U.S. Air Force officer is missing after a trip to a shopping mall in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, a U.S. military statement said Wednesday.

Maj. Jill Metzger, with the 376th Air Expeditionary Wing, was last seen shopping at the Zum Shopping Center with others from the Manas Air Base when she disappeared Tuesday, the statement said.

"Major Metzger was last seen wearing a green sweater and blue jeans," the statement said. "She has blonde hair and blue eyes. She is in excellent athletic condition."

A task force made up of U.S. military personnel, U.S. Embassy personnel and local officials are trying to find her, the statement said.

"We will not rest until we find Maj. Metzger," said Col. Joel "Scott" Reese, the 376 AEW commander. "She is an extremely valuable member of our war-fighting team, and we are doing everything in our power to locate and return her to safety."

Footage from a mall store's security cameras showed Metzger spending only 10 minutes inside the store, Bishkek's police chief Moldomusa Kongantiyev told The Associated Press. She later made two calls from her cell phone to a local number and turned off her phone at 9 p.m., Kongantiyev said.

She had been expected to return to the United States in three days, Kongantiyev told AP.

He was here last year (when he had the vision of the aura surrounding him as he addressed a transfixed audience of world leaders supposedly immobilized by the power of his message).

Either he is returning because:

1) He is really serious about sandbagging President Bush into a debate at the UN and is about to come all the way over here to dare him in New York since he hasn't taken him up on the offer so far or . . .

2) He is aware of something that will make his trip a moot point, but has to maintain appearances by announcing a return trip to New York week after next.

First is much more likely. Threw in the second possibility because he has been targeting the UN Security Council in his speeches lately - - making the case that, like Israel, it is an illegitimate creation of the World War II victors - - a Zionist creation (the UN) in the heart of "World Zionism" (NYC has the largest Jewish population of any city on earth with the possible exception of Tel Aviv).

So why he would want to come address the UN, an "illegitimate Zionist creation" that is "controlled" by the US and UK, for a second year in a row, right when they may be about to sanction Iran, is beyond me . . . unless it is because it is the only excuse he has to come to the U.S. so he can then dare the President once again to debate him, but this time on his "home turf". Or because he knows something is brewing (a second strike against the center of "World Zionism") and is playing his cards close to the vest by brazenly announcing a return to New York (lethal sandbagging).

Wyoming: Two with tularemia

Snip: A woman in Baggs who was bitten by a cat and a boy in Lovell who recently skinned a rabbit are both believed to have contracted the disease, according to a department news release Tuesday.

In addition, three cats, one foal and one cottontail rabbit have tested positive for the disease at the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory

E-coli found in Cambridge - causes death of 2 year old

Snip: A 2-year old girl is now dead and health department officials said she tested posted for E. Coli bacteria. Officials at the Guernsey County Health Department said four family members from Cambridge all were ill with the bacteria. They said the area should not be overly concerned about the bacteria because it seems to be an isolated family event rather than an area epidemic. Officials are investigating where the bacteria came from but they do not have a conclusive result.

Extreme drug resistant TB poised to become global pandemic

Snippets: The head of the World Health Organization's tuberculosis resistance team, Dr. Paul Nunn, announced yesterday that new strains of the disease that are immune to modern drug treatments are cropping up across the globe.

"This is raising the specter of something that we have been worried might happen for a decade - the possibility of virtually untreatable TB," Nunn said. It is particularly worrisome, Nunn added, that the disease is very transmittable, especially in small spaces such as airplane cabins.

Rabies found in Springer-Labrador mix puppy

Snip: SIOUX FALLS - Rabies vaccinations have been given to 12 Beresford area people after rabies was found in a Beresford family's puppy on Thursday. Puppies from a 3-month-old litter of 10 Springer-Labrador cross puppies were given away to people in Lincoln, Turner, Union and Yankton counties. Authorities said they have tracked down the puppies.

4 cases of tick paralysis in Colorado

Snip: Over a period of 6 days in May of this year, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment received accounts of four cases of tick paralysis -- a rare but serious disease that can occur with prolonged exposure to a biting tick.

The four individuals all resided in or had recently visited within 20 miles of each other in the mountains of north central Colorado, according to an article in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The patients were a 6-year-old girl, a 78-year-old woman, and two men, ages 58 and 86. Initial symptoms included difficulty walking because of lower extremity weakness and tingling sensations.

Map of Chronic Wasting Disease in North America - for hunters

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.