WTC flag sent to Kandahar

Worldnetdaily ^ | 27 Nov 01

[rightwingextremist1776]

A US flag, signed by the relatives and friends of victims of terrorist strikes that levelled the World Trade Centre in New York, will soon be flying high at a camp of Marines now in Afghanistan.

Traumatised by the worst terrorist attacks ever perpetrated on US soil, and carried away in a wave of patriotism, Americans have found a means of expression for their pain by flying the flags in the wake of the September 11 attacks that left around 4,300 dead and missing.

The star-spangled banner, which will be sent to Afghanistan on Thursday, was entrusted to the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit by officers of the New York Police Department, New York spokesman for the Marines, Captain Jaret Heil said.

"Some of their people that went down with the building were former Marines," Heil said of the police officers. "They wanted us to have it because the Marines Corps is the first one" into Afghanistan.

"They wanted this flag to be with the people that are paying back for September 11, and that's the Marines Corps," he said.

The US-led war on Afghanistan's Taliban militia was launched in response to their harbouring of Osama bin Laden, the suspected international terrorist believed to have carried out the attacks.

The names of 27 police officers lost in the wreckage of the World Trade Center were the first to be inscribed in black felt pen on the flag, which was tied to a rescue command post at Ground Zero, the site of the flattened twin towers.

As visits were slowly allowed at Ground Zero, the piece of material became an outlet for the grief and rage felt by victims' family members in response to the attacks.

Vincent Danz wrote of his brother, a former Marine dead in the attacks aged 38, "My brother is on the pile."

"For my sons ... they gave their lives doing what they loved - helped others," wrote the mother or father of Joseph Viagiano, a 34-year-old policeman, and John Viagiano, 36, a fire fighter at the scene on the day of the strikes. "God bless them and all their 'brothers.'"

Other messages are more aggressive.

Policeman Bill Dinkelacker wrote: "Those colours don't run! For all the victims of terrorists attacks: give them hell!"

Tom Whalen, another police officer, writes directly to Osama bin Laden. "Benny, may the last breath you take be spent looking at this flag."

The flag is going to a base set up at the weekend by Marines, near an airstrip at Kandahar, the only city in southern Afghanistan still controlled by the Taliban. WTC flag sent to Kandahar

"This flag is going to the guys on the ground. Eventually it's gonna come back: the NYPD wants this flag back, after they're done in Afghanistan," says Heil. "The NYPD want to set it up in some type of memorial."

Another flag sent from the ruins of the World Trade Centre has been flying at the stern of a US warship in the Arabian Gulf.

[ChemistCat]

Sigh. I have these visions of the Liberty Bell touring the country with an engraving tool. Spray paint cans being sold openly on the Mall in D.C. Murals being painted over the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial. Southwestern Bell, Microsoft, and Penthouse Magazine bidding for the right to have their corporate name and logo airbrushed onto Lincoln's coat in the Lincoln Memorial. Bill Clinton winning some unFReeped online poll and getting his head chiseled into Mount Rushmore.

I'm sorry, nobody should have taken a pen to any US flag. The WTC event was profoundly important to our nation's history, but it doesn't trump the rest of it.

[spycatcher]

Exactly. In our "advanced" TV culture, the flag wasn't good enough and needed something extra to compete with the AIDS quilts, etc. I got the sense that some signers were over-excited to be part of history themselves. Some of the markings were ugly paragraphs in large letters.

"Too many John Hancocks spoil the flag"

[Question_Assumptions]

While I don't think the flag should have been written on, I'm sure it was well intentioned. It isn't any worse than what was done to THE Star Spangled Banner that was embroidered on and chopped up to give to people. And that still hangs in the Smithsonian.