Posted on 09/13/2001 6:52:52 AM PDT by TLBSHOW
Barbara Olson kept her cool. In the hysteria and terror of hijackers herding passengers to the rear of the plane, she retrieved her cell phone and called her husband, Ted, the solicitor general of the United States. She informed him that he had better call the FBI (news - web sites) -- the plane had been hijacked. According to reports, Barbara was still on the phone with Ted when her plane plunged in a fiery explosion directly into the Pentagon (news - web sites).
Barbara risked having her neck slit to warn the country of a terrorist attack. She was a patriot to the very end.
This is not to engage in the media's typical hallucinatory overstatement about anyone who is the victim of a horrible tragedy. The furtive cell phone call was an act of incredible daring and panache. If it were not, we'd be hearing reports of a hundred more cell phone calls. (Even people who swear to hate cell phones carry them for commercial air travel.)
The last time I saw Barbara in person was about three weeks ago. She generously praised one of my recent columns and told me I had really found my niche. Ted, she said, had taken to reading my columns aloud to her over breakfast.
I mention that to say three things about Barbara. First, she was really nice. A lot of people on TV seem nice, but aren't. (And some who don't seem nice, are.) But Barbara was always her charming, graceful, ebullient self. "Nice" is an amazingly rare quality among writers. In the opinion business, bitter, jealous hatred is the norm. Barbara had reason to be secure.
Second, it was actually easy to imagine Ted reading political columns aloud to Barbara at the breakfast table. Theirs was a relationship that could only be cheaply imitated by Bill and Hillary -- the latter being a subject of Barbara's appropriately biting best seller, "Hell to Pay."
Hillary claimed preposterously in the Talk magazine interview that she discussed policy with Bill while cutting his grapefruit in the morning. Ted and Barbara really did talk politics -- and really did have breakfast together.
It's "Ted and Barbara" just like it's Fred and Ginger, and George and Gracie. They were so perfect together, so obvious, that their friends were as happy they were on their wedding day. This is more than the death of a great person and patriotic American. It's a human amputation.
Third, since Barbara's compliment, I've been writing my columns for Ted and Barbara. I'm always writing to someone in my head. Now I don't know who to write to. Ted and Barbara were a good muse.
Apart from hearing that this beautiful light has been extinguished from the world, only one other news flash broke beyond the numbingly omnipresent horror of the entire day. That evening, CNN reported that bombs were dropping in Afghanistan (news - web sites) -- and then updated the report to say they weren't our bombs.
They should have been ours. I want them to be ours.
This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack. Those responsible include anyone anywhere in the world who smiled in response to the annihilation of patriots like Barbara Olson.
We don't need long investigations of the forensic evidence to determine with scientific accuracy the person or persons who ordered this specific attack. We don't need an "international coalition." We don't need a study on "terrorism." We certainly didn't need a congressional resolution condemning the attack this week.
The nation has been invaded by a fanatical, murderous cult. And we welcome them. We are so good and so pure we would never engage in discriminatory racial or "religious" profiling.
People who want our country destroyed live here, work for our airlines, and are submitted to the exact same airport shakedown as a lumberman from Idaho. This would be like having the Wehrmacht immigrate to America and work for our airlines during World War II. Except the Wehrmacht was not so bloodthirsty.
"All of our lives" don't need to change, as they keep prattling on TV. Every single time there is a terrorist attack -- or a plane crashes because of pilot error -- Americans allow their rights to be contracted for no purpose whatsoever.
The airport kabuki theater of magnetometers, asinine questions about whether passengers "packed their own bags," and the hostile, lumpen mesomorphs ripping open our luggage somehow allowed over a dozen armed hijackers to board four American planes almost simultaneously on Bloody Tuesday. (Did those fabulous security procedures stop a single hijacker anyplace in America that day?)
Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.
Lot's of former security people will be looking for new jobs.
I'm so proud to have met her, tickled still that she liked my screen name and knew it. Ann Coulter said Barbara was nice, and I'm proof of it. She made my day when she said she knew me from FreeRepublic.com. I don't care if she was just being "nice". I love her for saying it.
AMEN!
BS!
When Mohammedans take over a country they pull down crosses because they think by doing so they show Christians that Jesus is no real god since He can't protect His shrines. Since they think this way, would it be logical to suppose that they would, if allah's holy places were torn down, think that allah is no god?
Cordially,
I tried watching CSPAN for a few minutes yesterday and almost threw up. WHO CARES about your precious speeches? Congress, it's time for action - vote IMMEDIATELY to declare war or at least give Pres Bush the War Powers Act/whatever, or go home. Just don't politicize this, of all things. Make yourself useful and go feed a pilot who's about to bomb these *astards back to Allah...
I am not speaking of her other "Hell To Pay" but a new one...I hope her untimely passing does not prevent this book from being released. Maybe it wasn't finished....But in any case if not finished, it should be released as "The Unfinished Work of Barbara Olsen" LONG LIVE FREEDOM andd the rule of Law which she so valiantly fought for.... And never let up on the liberals who would destroy our religions, our freedoms, our morals, and our children...GOD BLESS AMERICA Stretch, in Apple Valley, California
I am not speaking of her other "Hell To Pay" but a new one...I hope her untimely passing does not prevent this book from being released. Maybe it wasn't finished....But in any case if not finished, it should be released as "The Unfinished Work of Barbara Olsen" LONG LIVE FREEDOM andd the rule of Law which she so valiantly fought for.... And never let up on the liberals who would destroy our religions, our freedoms, our morals, and our children...GOD BLESS AMERICA Stretch, in Apple Valley, California
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