Free Republic

American Flag Flies as World Trade Center Smoke and Dust Lingers in Air Tue, Sep 11 02:15 PM Am American flag flies near the base of the destroyed World Trade Center in New York, September 11, 2001. Planes crashed into each of the two towers, causing them to collapse. REUTERS/Peter Morgan (Reuters)

<p>The phone calls started midmorning and continued into the afternoon for Fernandina Beach, Fla., travel agent Barbara Thoney.</p> <p>The voices -- breathless, angry, frightened -- came from travelers who were stranded, canceling reservations or attempting to make new plans in the aftermath of yesterday's brazen airborne terrorists attacks.</p>

<p>It was a perfect fall morning on Capitol Hill. The bright, yellow sun warmed the stark, white pillars of the Capitol and the green grass on the Mall. Only fleecy, white clouds marred a clear, azure sky as Washington began another busy day.</p>

DUSHANBE (Itar-Tass) -- Planes without identification marks intruded Tajikistan's airspace from the territory of neighbouring Afghanistan three times over the past 24 hours. An officer in the press service of the Russian Border Group in Tajikistan told Itar-Tass on Wednesday that the first intruder plane was spotted by border patrols of the Khorog border detachment at 17:15. on Tuesday. The plane was flying along the line of the State border with Afghanistan at an altitude of 3,000 metres and disappeared in the direction of Afghanistan 15 minutes later. At 02:30 on Wednesday, border patrols of the Ishkashim border detachment ...

<p>The terrorist attacks that rocked America yesterday brought out, as one might expect, the worst in some and the best in most. Most men and women immediately came to the aid of their stricken country and fellow Americans.</p> <p>Indeed, within a couple hours of the cowardly strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the heart and soul of America's armed forces, both Washington's Mayor Anthony Williams and Virginia's Gov. James S. Gilmore had declared states of emergency – necessary formalities that helped both officials mobilize law-enforcement, military patrols and other resources.</p>

<p>Victims of yesterday's terrorist attack poured into hospitals in the District and its suburbs throughout the afternoon, while emergency crews worked into the night at the Pentagon, where officials expect to find dozens of casualties in and around the wreckage of an airliner that crashed into the building.</p>

<p>Yesterday, terrorist scum killed more Americans than the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor. Sept. 11 will go down in history just like Dec. 7 did: a date when Americans were killed in cold blood in an attack that was both criminal and unjustifiable by any human measure. After we were knocked down at Pearl Harbor, we got back up, dusted ourselves off and got ready for a real fight. We have to do the same thing now. We are at war. Let there be no quibbling about it. Let there be no talk of "proportional responses" to yesterday's acts of terror that brought death and destruction to America.</p>

<p>In assessing the vicious act of war perpetrated yesterday against the United States, it is worth recalling the immediate reaction of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the wake of the unprovoked, premeditated attack on Pearl Harbor. In an address to Congress seeking a declaration of war, Mr. Roosevelt, noting that the "the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked," asserted that the date of aggression, Dec. 7, 1941, "will live in infamy." So, too, Sept. 11, 2001.</p>

<p>Washington erupted into chaos and then settled into eerie calm yesterday after an airplane carrying 64 persons from Washington Dulles International Airport bound for Los Angeles crashed into the Pentagon about 9:40 a.m.</p> <p>American Airlines Flight 77 was one of four flights that apparently were hijacked and crashed yesterday morning. Two other planes struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, and a third crashed southeast of Pittsburgh.</p>

America: The Good Neighbor. An editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television commentator. "This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States. When France was in danger of collapsing ...

<p>Could we stop calling this a "tragedy"? The hijacking of planes from American and United Airlines by terrorists, who crashed them into the two World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, represent an act of war. It's that simple. Yesterday's carnage may not have been preceded by a hand-delivered notice and a finely worded declaration of war, but such formalities are not the nature of warfare in the 21st century. Come to think of it, no formalities were observed at Pearl Harbor either, which caught the U.S. government equally unprepared. Yesterday was a "day of infamy" no less than Dec. 7, 1941.</p>

On a Day of Terror and Fighter Escorts, Appearances and Answers Were Limited The word came to President Bush in a classroom in Sarasota, Fla., at 9:07 a.m. He had already heard that a plane had crashed into New York's World Trade Center in what appeared to be a terrible accident. Now Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. whispered in his ear that a second plane had hit the complex. Bush's sunny countenance went grim. So began a day for the president and the country's national security apparatus unlike any before it. Bush boarded Air Force One and, escorted ...

<p>The United States of America has been attacked in an act of war that reminds us of the secret and unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor 60 years ago. Except this time, the attack was not by a nation-state.</p> <p>The deliberate and premeditated crash of two commercial airline jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and another plane crash at the Pentagon are more than symbolic. They bring into clear focus the state of war that has existed for some time between America and those who oppose our values and way of life.</p>

They have been predicting this for a long time. They are saying that perhaps China financed this to send us into a tailspin, so that we would be ripe for China next! Not so implausible when looking back. They are talking about Clinton's part in this.

<p>For the first time in a generation, America finds herself at war – and war is the proper term. Once more, this country has been the target of a despicable attack by elements unconcerned with the niceties of civilized human conduct. But the coordinated assaults that began yesterday morning are, perhaps, even more cowardly than the attack 60 years ago at Pearl Harbor. That, at least, was a military installation – and the attacking forces of the Empire of Japan did not use innocent civilians as their shield – unlike those who yesterday hijacked four airliners and used them as missiles against targets in New York City and Washington.</p>

Like many Americans, I am sickened by the day's events. As a former New Yorker with friends and relatives at risk, the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon left me numb for hours. Emotionally drained from the mixture anger and sadness, I called my church to ask if they were planning a memorial mass this evening. After years of absentee Catholicism, I have recently begun to find solace by returning to church, and asking many things from God. Tonight I thought to ask Him Why? And to pray for my country and the victims of today's terrorism. ...

<p>Smoke, ash, sirens, oaths, chaos: Yesterday's appalling terrorist attack presented both nightmare and opportunity to a news media initially faced with high drama and few facts.</p> <p>The first and worst hour unfolded with relentless force, transfixing both press and public.</p>

Follow this link and get physically ill, I refuse to post the image: Scum

WASHINGTON--The acrid and unexpungable odor of terrorism, which has hung over Israel for many years, is now a fact of American life. Tuesday morning Americans were drawn into the world that Israelis live in every day. Just at the moment when American political debate had reached a nadir of frivilousness, with wrangling about nonexistent ``lock boxes'' and the like, the nation's decade-long holiday from history came to a shattering end. After about half a century of war and Cold War, Americans came to feel, understandably, that the world was too much with them, and they turned away from it. ...

This is the end logic of terror. The long age of imperialism bequeathed to this century a world full of questions of who wronged whom, and who stole whose land, and what should be done. Those questions, far from finding resolution in the half-peace of the Cold War's aftermath, roil ever more. Absent the relative stability imposed by the war of the giants, the grievances of those upon whom the giants acted out their territorial ambitions have much more room to grow. In theory, this is not a bad thing. But there are two great problems. The first is ...