Posted on 10/30/2001 8:47:37 AM PST by Jean S
Her smiling face stared up at me from the obituary page. She was a dark-haired 34-year-old named Jennifer. She and her husband were eagerly anticipating the arrival of their first child.
Jennifer was a professional woman who recently had been promoted from vice president to director in the insurance company where she worked. Unfortunately, her office was on the 92nd floor, 2 World Trade Center. She and her unborn child perished there on September 11, 2001, along with six thousand others.
As I looked at her picture among the memorials in my local paper, I thought about the six thousand faces that will never be seen again. Six thousand faces that will never again behold loved ones. Six thousand faces that have disappeared along with the twin towers. Imagine the image of six thousand faces, and then add the image of the faces of those who loved those six thousand.
If the eyes reveal the soul, then the face identifies the character. It is how we recognize someone, even after years of absence. We don't know one another by our knees, hands or elbows. We know each other by the tender looks, the twinkling eyes or the disapproving countenance. It's the faces.
America has become a place of instant gratification. We become irritated if we have to spend more than three minutes in the fast food drive-through line. If the channel we are watching bores us, we can change it to one of a hundred others.
And we have come to believe the last thing we saw.
Many times, the last thing we saw was the face of an Afghan child, wrapped in bandages, lying on a filthy cot in a God-forsaken "hospital." He is in pain. He is helpless. And somehow, it is your fault because he was hurt by one of our bombs. This is the message we are being spoon-fed by left-wing media, especially CNN, long known for its ability to propagandize on behalf of our enemies.
For the first few days after 9-11, we were inundated with video footage of the bombings. These horrible images became seared into our consciousness, just as surely as those planes burned their way into the World Trade Center and brought its towers crumbling to the ground. There was talk that perhaps Americans were "overdosing" on those images, so the networks, including CNN, switched to the stories of those who had escaped. We heard from them briefly, then they were gone, and the images began to fade.
Now, with the war raging on two fronts, at home and abroad, the faces we are being shown are not the faces of the Americans who lost their lives, either on September 11th or since. They are not the images of family members who ache to hold a husband or wife, a son or daughter, but will never do so again. Yet, these are the images we need to see, not the pathetic faces of Afghan civilians whose homes happen to be damaged by one of our bombs. At the risk of sounding cold and calloused, we should not care about the collateral damage we inflict in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else we decide to attack. War is a horrible thing, but we will not win it by wringing our hands over every dead or wounded Afghan civilian. And we must win it.
When the United States dropped the atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the faces of tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children disappeared forever. Thousands more died an even worse death from radiation. Yet, it would take an actuary to calculate the number of lives that were saved. A million is the estimate, just in that generation. What about ours? Many in my generation, myself included, are probably alive today as a direct result of those attacks. If the war had raged in the Pacific beyond the summer of 1945, my father, along with many others who had survived the war in Europe, would surely have been sent to invade the Japanese mainland, a battle that would have dwarfed any the world had ever seen.
Show us the faces of our countrymen who have died. Show us the faces of their loved ones. Show us the faces of our brave soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen who daily put their lives on the line to defend freedom. Show us the face of America, and leave the propaganda to the liars and the tyrants.
During DESERT STORM the Iraqi press kept talking about civilian bomb casualties that were 30 miles from the closest targets and the damages shown were obviously caused by a falling SAM.
I'm sure that this same thing is happening in Afghanastan.
The best information we have about the number of dead is a range from 2500 to 3600. Why would you inflate the number, and then tell us to leave the propaganda to the liars?
(Long load, but well worth it.)
This makes 3 of a kind *bump*
Don't pause too long to mourn the collateral damage in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq, 'cause the demons running those countries are killing more of their own people than we will accidentally kill with our war on the terrorists and the governments that harbor them. And besides, every time CNN or Newsweek, or the alphabet networks raise the specter of foreign collateral damage, I shout at the TV, "What about Americans murdered by the terrorists' purposeful collateral slaughter? Get a clue or get out of the way, damn you leftists bastards!"
Oh, and the best way to punish the sycophants of liberalism is to vote their heroes out --the criminal enterprise democrats, replacing them with some pubbies, some constitutional party folks and libertarians ... anything but democrats! God save US from liberal democrats!
The NY Times did not have as complete of a set of information as the City Does and I would not put much credence in their estimates. If you don’t think these people died or that they are exaggerated phantom bodies, I suggest you pay a visit to the Great Kills Landfill where there are currently over 20,000 body parts in storage that were over looked by the rescuers at the WTC site. Or maybe you could explain to my son why his basketball had to be canceled so that the Gym at the church could be used for funerals and memorial services? Maybe you could also explain to my daughter why her preschool had to be delayed so that her school building could be used for the same purpose at a different parish? Or maybe you would like to go to either of my kids’ schools and explain to the children with dead and missing parents that they aren’t really dead? Maybe you can explain to me why I have been stuck in traffic for funerals or memorial services at least 4 times a week since September 11th?
My own personal scorecard is this:
25 Dead or Missing from my Parish
28 Dead or Missing from the neighboring Parish
1 Wife’s Cousin’s Husband w/2 surviving children under 3
2 Ex-coworkers at Cantor Fitzgerald with 6 surviving children and 2 spouses
2 Ex-coworkers sons at Cantor Fitzgerald (that I trained as interns) both with surviving wives and 2 children under three each.
Many more in and around me every day.
Just for something that is a little official for you taste; here is FEMA’s report from 10/1/2001. Keep in mind that many are still in area hospitals.
World Trade Center Update
En Español
New York City and state officials have revised the total number of missing from the WTC disaster to 5,219, down from 5,641 listed previously. According to New York City officials, some of the names had been double counted due to multiple reports. The confirmed dead has risen to 314, the city also announced. The death toll is likely to rise as some injured survivors are still fighting for life in area hospitals. The New York Presbyterian Hospital's burn center has nine victims that are expected to die in the next few weeks.
Hospitals in New York and New Jersey treated nearly 7,300 patients in the aftermath of the attack, and 561 patients had injuries serious enough to be admitted to some 162 hospitals, according to local hospital associations. Many of these patients are burn patients.
The Urban Search and Rescue effort is winding down with only one FEMA USAR task force, California TF-4, assigned to New York this morning. Three task forces, Nevada-1, Colorado-1 and Nebraska-1 are scheduled to depart for their home bases today.
California-4 is scheduled to support the New York Fire Department until October 6. The Incident Support Team is likely to remain beyond October 6 to continue to support the New York recovery operations.
According to news media reports, the attack on the WTC is expected to cost the New York economy $60 billion dollars before all is said and done. The insurance industry has set the total loss in the city at $40 billion to $60 billion, the equivalent of the annual gross domestic product of the country of Hungary. Insurance payouts are expected to exceed $25 billion, which will top the previous record of $19 billion paid in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. (Manhattan DFO, FEMA HQ, news media)
New York city officials say 4,964 are dead or missing but none of the lists maintained by others comes near to that. One compiled by the New York Times puts the toll at about 2,950; another, by USA Today, the nation's biggest-selling newspaper, stops at 2,680; and that maintained by the Associated Press news agency goes no further than 2,625.
The American Red Cross, which has received $500m in donations, had expected to be contacted by the families of most victims but has dealt with only 2,563 cases six weeks after the attacks.
"Where are those people?" asked Luis Garcia, the Red Cross official in charge of allocating grants to them.
The huge discrepancy became evident only a day after the New York police department unit responsible for keeping a count said that it was edging closer to a reliable number for the dead and missing, partly by matching body parts to DNA from victims' toothbrushes and hairbrushes.
Anthony De Barros, a computer database editor at USA Today, said: "It has seemed to be odd.
"I don't want to discount the possibility that there were large numbers of people who were just visiting or working in the building that day, or people like carpenters or electricians. But still, even so, it is hard to understand where they are going to come from to reach the numbers the city is reporting."
Numbers have fallen after the initial fear that up to 10,000 people might have been killed, and again after the same names were found to have appeared on more than one list as information poured in from numerous sources. But still the city's total has fallen by only about 500 over the past three weeks.
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