Free Republic

American Airlines Flight 11 to Los Angeles took off on schedule out of the tangle of construction choking Logan International Airport in Boston, right on time at 7:59 Tuesday morning. Capt. John Ogonowski was at the controls, a 50-year-old veteran pilot who lived on a farm north of the city and was looking forward to a family picnic on the weekend. His co-pilot was First Officer Thomas McGuinness, and there were 9 flight attendants and 81 passengers, a seemingly everyday mixture: a television producer, some businessmen, a retired ballet dancer, an actress and photographer, a young man who had ...

Armed Militants in various Islamic countries prepare for an extended WAR with the US and its Allies. US Military personnel have no idea of the caliber of people they will be engaging in the mideast.

Major News Networks Withdraw Footage after Palestinian Threats September 12, 2001 Several major Western news networks have pulled footage of Palestinians celebrating yesterday's terrorist attacks in the United States, after receiving threats. In the autonomous city of Nablus, thousands of Palestinians poured into the streets to celebrate, chanting "God is Great" and distributing candy to passers-by. The largest celebrations took place in Nablus and Ramallah, where Palestinian police and security forces joined in the celebrations, and fired their weapons into the air. Foreign reporters held in hotel during celebrations According to the Jerusalem Post, foreign photojournalists were trapped inside a ...

Rescuers combed mountains of rubble at what had been the World Trade Center yesterday in a grim search for survivors among the thousands presumed dead in its collapse. Investigators meantime cast a worldwide net for those behind the hijackers who slammed jetliners into the twin towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Virginia in the worst terrorist attack in American history. The first clues to the identity of those responsible pointed toward five suspects whose movements appear to have taken them to Boston, Canada and Florida, and suggested that the hijackers may have had Middle Eastern and ...

Restraint in the people is a good thing. It is a sign of the greatness of the American people that there hasn't been any looting or anyone threatening to bomb the Afghan or Iraqi Embassies or any stupidity like that. However, the leadership is showing too much restraint in its response to the act of war against our country that took the lives of 30,000 Americans. We must respond strongly and swiftly. The rhetoric is gerat, but the time for words is gone and the time for action is here. Step up to the plate, Mr. President, Senatros, Representatives. What ...

Transcript of Sept. 12 Press Gaggle by Ari Fleischer U.S. Newswire 12 Sep 11:55 Transcript of Sept. 12 Press Gaggle by Ari Fleischer To: National Desk Contact: White House Press Office, 202-456-2580   WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following is a transcript of today's press gaggle by Ari Fleischer: The James S. Brady Briefing Room 9:57 a.m. EDT MR. FLEISCHER: Good morning. Thank you for allowing me to do this in the Briefing Room under the usual gaggle rules. Let me get into the events of the day. The President arrived in the Oval Office at 7:05 a.m. ...

A total of 350 firefighters, nearly 30 times the number ever lost by the New York City Fire Department in a single incident, are missing or dead, officials said yesterday, as government agencies and private companies began to tally their losses from the terror attack on the World Trade Center. Another agency hit hard by the trade center's collapse was the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which officials said had lost as many as 200 employees. At least 30 of the authority's police officers were still missing. The city itself said that 40 of its police ...

San Francisco Mayor Was Warned - How Come No One Else Was? San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown got a call late Monday "from what he described as his airport security - a full eight hours before yesterday's string of terrorist attacks - advising him that Americans should be cautious about their air travel," the San Francisco Chronicle reported today. Brown had planned to fly to New York on Tuesday morning. The call "didn't come in any alarming fashion, which is why I'm hesitant to make an alarming statement," he said. "It was not an abnormal call. I'm always concerned if ...

ASHINGTON, Sept. 12 — Secretary of State Colin L. Powell marshaled a broad diplomatic effort today, talking to allied governments and sending stern messages to other countries that they can no longer remain neutral in the fight against terrorism. Foreign nations were being given an immediate black and white choice in their relationship with the United States. "You're either with us or against us," was the message that went out today, a senior administration official said. To that end, the administration today began to apply pressure to Pakistan, a country that has been accused of providing support for Osama ...

ASHINGTON, Sept. 12 — The stunning loss of life in Tuesday's terrorist attacks and the sense, expressed by President Bush, that these were "acts of war," have freed the administration to broaden potential retaliation beyond the low-risk, unmanned cruise missile strikes of the past, military and civilian officials said today. Instead, the options under consideration include more powerful, sustained attacks that accept greater risk to American forces, and may include bombing attacks by manned aircraft and landing special forces troops on the ground. "The constraints have been lifted," said one military officer. No decisions on retaliation have been made ...

High temperatures expected to top 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit--with scattered mushroom clouds and very high winds.

ASHINGTON, Sept. 12 — The Congress that reopened today was transformed into a unity government, its bitter divisions erased overnight by the worst act of terrorism on American soil and the widespread sentiment that the nation was at war. Lawmakers and party leaders offered wholehearted support for whatever action President Bush chose to take, and Congress prepared to pour vast new resources into reconstruction, the Pentagon and the battle against terrorism. The Senate voted unanimously to declare a day of "unity and mourning" and to put money into a "war to eradicate terrorism." The House stood ready to follow. ...

ASHINGTON, Sept. 12 — Stung by suggestions that President Bush had hurt himself politically by delaying his return to Washington on Tuesday, the White House asserted today that Mr. Bush had done so because of hard evidence that he was a target of the terrorists who hijacked airliners and slammed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, said this afternoon that officials had "real and credible information" that the White House, not the Pentagon, had been the original target of American Airlines Flight 77, which was hijacked about 45 minutes ...

911 - A Call To Arms. September 11, 2001, is a day that will live in infamy. Less than 48 hours after the worst terrorist attack in history, it almost seems cliched to say it. Not because it isn’t true. Not because it was said of another attack nearly 60 years ago. But, because it fails to fully convey the enormity of the assault. It fails to adequately count the horrors we witnessed that day. And it fails to express the full measure of outrage every American now feels burning in their chest. It was a day of enormous infamy, ...

<p>Whether Osama bin Laden was involved in Tuesday's terrorist assault remains to be seen. Yet if that proves to be so, it is extremely unlikely that he acted on his own. It is far more likely that he operated in conjunction with a state--the state with which the U.S. remains at war, namely Iraq.</p>

ASHINGTON, Sept. 12 — Stung by suggestions that President Bush had hurt himself politically by delaying his return to Washington on Tuesday, the White House asserted today that Mr. Bush had done so because of hard evidence that he was a target of the terrorists who hijacked airliners and slammed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, said this afternoon that officials had "real and credible information" that the White House, not the Pentagon, had been the original target of American Airlines Flight 77, which was hijacked about 45 minutes ...

<p>NEW YORK (CNN) -- Passengers on board the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in rural Pennsylvania Tuesday apparently decided to attack the terrorists who had commandeered the plane, according to family members of one passenger.</p> <p>Passenger Jeremy Glick, flying with his 2-month-old child Emerson, called his wife Liz and in-laws in New York on a cell phone to say the plane had been hijacked.</p>

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange ...

The Assassins "had emerged because of a schism in the Shia Muslim sect and established themselves in northern and eastern Persia by taking and controlling a series of mountain fortifications. Behind their walls they lived a contemplative life, producing beautifully wrought paintings and metalwork, but beyond their retreats they terrorized those civilizations they deemed heretical and so earned the enmity not just of the rest of the Islamic world but eventually of Europe. The local Ismaili leader had done little to enhance their reputation. Rather than confront his enemies in open combat he preferred to sponsor a campaign of ...

<p>Yesterday President Bush issued his sharpest statement yet about Tuesday's assaults on U.S. cities, calling them "more than acts of terror" but "acts of war." If he--and we as a country--really mean that, it's time to start getting serious.</p> <p>As Mr. Bush elaborated, that is going to mean more than anti-terrorist "business as usual" or the moral equivalent of war. It means real war, involving a sustained national mobilization of resources, allies and people. It also means rethinking some of the softer political pieties about our modern, violent world.</p>