[restornu]

— Four of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept. 11 tried to get government loans to finance their plots, including ringleader Mohamed Atta, who sought $650,000 to modify a crop-duster, a government loan officer told ABCNEWS.

[Cindy]

"Face to Face With a Terrorist- Government Worker Recalls Mohamed Atta Seeking Funds Before Sept. 11" I read the article on the ABC news site. The only nagging question I have now is that I wonder how many other terrorists WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT successfully completed their loan application process. I hope the FBI, CIA and HOMELAND SECURITY are asking themselves this question, too.

[browardchad]

"I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the country that he came from, with all the violence, as compared to the United States," she says. "I was attempting, in every manner I could, to help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I could make it."

Let me get this straight. A government worker, a woman, felt she was obligated to tolerate abusive and threatening speech -- speech for which she could sue her supervisor or fellow employees for in a heartbeat -- from a man here on a temporary visa, "to help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I could make it." She doesn't work for the INS, for the State Department, but she felt obligated to ignore his bizarre behavior in the interests of cultural diversity, even when he returned in a "disguised" identity.

How is any amount of reshuffling of government departments going to change this mentality?

[Twodees]

Ha! I'll bet his loan request was spiked because he was a sexist. If this lady in the Florida SBA office didn't recognize the name of Osama Bin Laden coming from someone who had been sitting there talking about slitting her throat and destroying DC, then she must get all of her info on current events from CBS news.

This makes me suspect that these people were a gang of stumblebums who hadn't a prayer of pulling off what they did unless the people in government who were supposed to guard against them were stmblebums as well.

I guess we should be thankful that Atta didn't get his loan, at least.