Monday - September 12, 2005

Progress Report

A short installment from Michael Yon

Battle for Mosul: Progress Report
“Bad timing,” explained LTC Erik Kurilla, lying in his hospital bed at the Madigan Army Hospital in Fort Lewis, Washington, recovering from gunshot wounds suffered in combat in Mosul on 19 Aug, 2005. Titanium replaces part of his shattered femur, while the wounds in his other leg and arm are healing quickly. Kurilla, whose warrior stature on the battlefield is fast becoming legendary, is expected to make a full recovery with no limitations. He will return to his command of 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment (better known as “Deuce Four") when they return from Iraq in late September. “I wanted to be there with my soldiers until the end, keeping our boot on the enemy’s neck and pushing his back up against a wall, right until the very last minute,” Kurilla said.

Yon continues to document this war in ways few other have been able to, in my opinion.  Read the rest for an update on the Duece-Four and how Mosul has fared under LTC Kurilla’s battle plan.

It’s A Start

Muslim Groups Help Hurricane Victims
Houston, TX (AP)

About 2,000 Muslim volunteers helped victims of Hurricane Katrina at the city’s downtown convention center Sunday, the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Muslim leaders from around the country who were in Houston for the volunteer effort said the anniversary was coincidental. But they welcomed the opportunity to highlight their faith’s true meaning.

“We’re not trying to prove anything, other than what our faith requires us to do,” said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Muslim American Society. “What goes with our faith is to help others, to respond and show compassion when people need it, and I’m glad we can do it.”

Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the board of the nonprofit Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Muslim leaders viewed Sunday’s volunteer opportunity as another chance to show that the Sept. 11 attacks were carried out by Islamic extremists who do not represent the true meaning of their faith. Religious and community groups who volunteered to help at shelters picked through a random drawing what day they would work. Houston’s Muslim community got Sunday.

“If today not only happens to be a day where we are feeding people and helping people and doing our Islamic duties ... but at the same time it also presents an opportunity to dispel myths about Islam and terrorism, then so be it,” Ahmed said. CAIR, along with other Muslim groups such as Islamic Relief and the Muslim American Society, are part of the Muslim Hurricane Relief Task Force, which is raising $10 million for victims of Katrina. Ahmed said the groups so far have raised between $3 million and $4 million.

Anwar Ali, a computer consultant from Dallas, began his volunteer shift at 4 a.m. Sunday and was still working by mid-afternoon. He had brought carts filled with food to the cafeteria area and helped elderly people walk from one part of the convention center to another. “You find people of different faiths coming together, working together, feeding the poor. It’s amazing. It’s a wonderful feeling,” said Ali, 38, who already was scheduled to be in Houston this week on a work-related project but came to town late Saturday so he could volunteer.

NEWS FLASH!

! ATTENTION !
! FLASH !

! 9,803 PEOPLE IN NEW ORLEANS ARE NOT DEAD !

Dire predictions by the media of 10,000 dead in New Orleans found to be total hogwash. Official death toll at 197. Chicken Little could not be reached for comment, however spokesmen for the fowl freak said, “It’s Bush’s fault. We were given wrong figures!”. Film at 11:00.

Mississippi Forgotten

Coastal Cities of Mississippi in the Shadows
Gulfport, MS - (NY TIMES)

Past the razor wire that has been rolled out along the unusable railroad tracks separating the heavily damaged neighborhoods from the destroyed neighborhoods lies the port that gave this city its name. Put generously, it is a mess. The cargo containers are scattered for miles, the poultry freezers are destroyed and 7,300 jobs are in limbo. In the middle of one of the major terminals sits a casino, the Copa, one of a fleet of floating gambling houses that had revitalized the Gulf Coast, pumping taxes into city, county and state governments and providing jobs to some 15,000 people.

Now officials say 8 of the 12 floating casinos appear to be damaged beyond repair, including the Copa, which is slumped onshore, a big pink box with its guts exposed. If the levees had held in New Orleans, the destruction wrought on the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina would have been the most astonishing storm story of a generation. Whole towns have been laid flat, thousands of houses washed away and, statewide, the storm has been blamed for the deaths of 211 people, a toll far higher than those from Hurricanes Andrew, Hugo and Ivan.

But as it is, Mississippi - like the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 - is coping with an almost unimaginable catastrophe, largely overshadowed in the news media’s attention and the national consciousness, in this case by the disaster in New Orleans. On Sunday night, President Bush began his third visit to the region since the storm hit. Two weeks since the hurricane, Gulfport and the neighboring city of Biloxi are no longer fighting for mere survival. Power has been restored to everyone who can receive it, gasoline is flowing at the stations and water is gradually beginning to trickle from faucets, though it is still undrinkable. There is even a man in a pizza costume enticing customers to a local Papa John’s.

But, as the community breathes a collective sigh of relief, the tougher question is beginning to arise: now what? “It looks like we’re going to have to build an economy from the ground up” said Connie Rockco, one of the five supervisors of Harrison County, where Gulfport and Biloxi are located. The casinos employed thousands of people but city and county officials said that just as many were employed in businesses directly related to the casinos, like spas, high-end restaurants, martini bars and pawn shops. About 30,000 people, they estimated, were dependent on the crowds that came to gamble.

“What are they going to do?” Ms. Rockco said. “I mean, they’re done.” In Biloxi, where most of the gambling business was located, individual casinos were 7 of the top 10 local taxpayers in 2004, pumping $11.6 million into the city’s general fund, and an additional $11.6 million into local school and public safety departments.

City revenues for Gulfport and Biloxi are also heavily dependent on the sales tax and property tax, neither of which is going to be pouring in while tourists are absent, residents are struggling to find money for basic needs and thousands of homes are gone. Harrison County officials estimated that anywhere from a quarter to a third of the county’s people are now homeless. Most of the homeowners did not have flood insurance, federal data has shown.

Before the first floating casino opened in 1992, both Biloxi and Gulfport were cities in decline. The seafood industry had been hurting for years because of cheaper foreign imports, and the completion of Interstate 10 across southern Mississippi made it easier for tourists to bypass the Mississippi Coast for the Florida beaches. By the end of the 1980’s, Biloxi was actually losing people.

But in 1990 the State Legislature voted to allow riverboat gambling and the coastal economy became addicted, quickly. Tourists began flocking to the area, hotels began sprouting and the retail economy boomed. The towns of Long Beach and Pass Christian - both of which were leveled by Hurricane Katrina - were flourishing as bedroom communities for Gulfport and New Orleans. Recently, as coastal real estate has grown scarcer in Florida, a condominium boom had been barreling toward Mississippi’s coast. There were more than 50 condominium projects awaiting permits before the hurricane hit, potentially representing thousands of new residents, Harrison County officials said.

The projects had been coming in so fast that several coastal towns had adopted building moratoriums, buying time to figure out how to handle the influx. Now, of course, a surplus of housing is not a problem. “All the things people came to see us for are in disarray,” said Pam Ulrich, the Harrison County administrator.

Burning Down The House

Palestinians Set Fire to Empty Synagogues
NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip (AP)

Flames shot skyward from four abandoned synagogues in the Gaza Strip on Monday, as thousands of celebrating Palestinians thronged through former Jewish settlements and headed straight for the only buildings left standing. At Neve Dekalim, gunman from several militant factions stormed through after Israeli soldiers left Monday morning, completing the Gaza pullout. Some Palestinians planted a flag from the ruling Fatah movement on the roof of a rabbinical college for Jewish settlers, as others set a fire inside.

The synagogue in the isolated settlement of Morag in southern Gaza was set ablaze minutes after hundreds of Palestinians stormed in. “They (Israelis) destroyed our homes and our mosques,” said a man who gave his name only as Abu Ahmed. “Today it is our turn to destroy theirs.” The synagogues were a focus of Palestinian anger after 38 years of Israeli occupation, primarily because they were among the only buildings left standing. Shortly after removing the last of the settlers two weeks ago, Israel sent in bulldozers to level the houses, leaving only a few public buildings and the synagogues.

In Netzarim, the synagogue was on fire before dawn, with bright orange flames leaping through the roof and the walls. Helpless Palestinian police stood by and watched, admitting they were outnumbered by the crowds and had little motivation to stop them. An officer who refused to give his name said: “The people have the right to do what they are doing.” Israel TV said crowds of Palestinians entered Kfar Darom in central Gaza and set several fires, including in the synagogue.

As they left their homes last month, the settlers took the sacred Torah scrolls from their synagogues, as well as prayer books and other holy items—symbolizing the end of the use of the buildings as houses of prayer. Last year Israel’s Cabinet ruled the buildings would be torn down. Since the evacuation of the settlers, however, rabbis mounted a high-profile campaign to save the buildings, demanding the government see to it that they would be protected by the Palestinians or by international organizations. On Sunday, the Israeli Cabinet reversed itself, voting not to destroy the synagogue buildings.

The Palestinians refused to protect them, saying they wanted nothing that symbolized the occupation to remain. Early Monday, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said the structures would be dismantled like all the others. “They left empty buildings that used to be temples, but they removed all the religious symbols, and they are no longer religious places,” he said. The United States issued a statement criticizing the Israeli change of policy, complaining that it put the Palestinians in a position “where it may be criticized for whatever it does.”

Advise And Condemn

Senate To Start Roberts Hearings
(WASHINGTON POST)

The Senate convenes the first confirmation hearing for a chief justice nominee in nearly two decades today, starting a week of admonitions and questions for John G. Roberts Jr. certain to probe deeply into the conservative views of a man who could shape the court’s direction for decades to come. The Judiciary Committee’s 10 Republicans and eight Democrats will focus on Roberts, 50, an appellate court judge and President Bush’s choice to succeed the late William H. Rehnquist, starting at noon with opening statements in the historic Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Analysts from both parties say the Judiciary Committee’s toughest questions—and Roberts’s likeliest risk of a slip—will center on a few issues that have dominated liberal-conservative judicial debates for years. Many will touch on the balance of power between Congress, the executive branch and the courts. Others will resonate more viscerally with ordinary people: abortion rights, voting rights and questions of balancing environmental protections against jobs and property development.

And in the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, concerns about the treatment of poor people and minorities could heavily influence the thrust of some of the questioning. Roberts has been practicing for the hearings for weeks in front of panels of colleagues posing as committee members. But in many ways, friends say, he has been preparing for this week his entire life: dazzling his classmates at Harvard Law School, enthusiastically toiling as a government lawyer under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and serving since 2003 as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Many Senate Democrats privately predict he will win confirmation comfortably, barring an unforeseen bombshell.

But the ride won’t be free. In his years as a young lawyer in the Justice Department, White House and solicitor general’s office, Roberts advocated conservative judicial philosophies in hundreds of memos and letters. Many, but not all, of those memos have been released, providing insights into his thinking and beliefs.

Same Game - DIfferent Day

_{Graeme MacKay, Ontario, Canada, The Hamilton Spectator}

   Sunday - September 11, 2005

Open Letter

To: All those who died on September 11, 2001
Subject: Situation Report
Date: Four years later

First of all, I want to apologize to all of you for not having completed the job ... yet. Second, your families and loved ones have been taken care of by a grieving nation to the absolute best of our ability. Millions were paid out to make sure their lives went on as comfortably as possible under the circumstances. Thirdly, we are making good progress in ridding the world of the evil that took your lives. We are far from finished thanks to a resourceful enemy and weak, misguided individuals within our own country. For that latter, I can only offer my regrets and say that those people have always been with us and always will be. Their lack of any moral clarity of vision will not deter us though. Here is where we stand four years later ...

• We have taken the fight to the enemy around the world. The enemy’s main base in Afghanistan has been freed from the tyranny imposed upon that country by Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Thousands of radical Muslim terrorists, warlords and their mindless minions have been destroyed on the battlefields in Afghanistan and their organization decimated and dispersed. Their leader, Osama Bin Laden is a man on the run, hiding out in caves and always on the move from US forces hunting him down. They will not rest until he or his body is found. His lieutenants have all been captured or killed one by one. Hundreds of his “jihadist” sycophants have been jailed in Guantanamo and interrogations have resulted in millions of dollars in Al-Qaeda’s funds being frozen worldwide and leading to more infiltrations into that organization of madmen. There is a democratically elected government in Afghanistan today and peace is finally starting to settle on that war-shattered country. People there are starting to rebuild their lives, children are laughing again and schools and hospitals are open for all people, including women.


• We have also finally removed a severe thorn in everyone’s side by occupying Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein from power. Yes, it is something we should have done a long time ago but other administrations and the United Nations (which was making a nice profit from selling Iraqi oil) decided to let the monster continue to massacre his people, threaten the entire region and defy every international request for cooperation. That has been fixed. Saddam Hussein is now in jail awaiting trial and his two murderous offspring are dead. The remnants of Al-Qaeda have all rushed to Iraq with aid from Syria and Iran to attack our troops and destabilize the democracy that is trying to be born there. These madmen hope to abort the birth of liberty and freedom in the heart of the Arab world because they know it would spell the end for the radicals who play on the poverty of the people in the Middle East to encourage war with the West. They too will fail. We are fighting them there and destroying them by the thousands. That has the added advantage of keeping them busy over there engaged with our outstanding and dedicated military. Yes, we have lost troops in battle but it is only a small percentage of what the enemy has lost in fighters and materiel. The jihadists are being decimated and scattered even as I speak.


• Elsewhere around the world, you will be pleased to know that our friends overseas have stuck by us. Britain, Italy, Poland, Australia, Israel and many more countries have sent troops and aid in the war to end the terrorism that took your lives. There have been some, like Spain, who were intimidated into dropping out of the war. There have been others, like France and Germany, who got in the way to protect their own interests but are really nothing more than a nuisance, as they have always been. Some, like Russia, have had to contend with their own terrorist attacks. I’m sure you witnessed the massacre at the school in Beslan where over 330 teachers and children were murdered by Muslim terrorists from Chechnya. And I know you saw the horror of the subway bombings in London in recent months. The terrorists are spreading their murderous evil all over the world but they will not succeed as long as good people are willing to stand against them. It is a long, slow process but so far we are doing what we need to do.


• Most importantly, countries in the Middle East are starting to wise up. Saudi Arabia has finally started a major crackdown on radical Muslim priests and has captured or killed hundreds of radical terrorists within their borders. Colonel Khaddafi in Libya saw the light and renounced a nuclear program and has agreed to pay the UN mandated indemnities for his country’s participation in the terrorist attack that brought down flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed 270 people. There are free elections going on in Egypt this week for the first time in half a century. These are just first signs but it appears the Arab world is starting to wake up and smell the coffee. These kings, princes, dictators and demagogues are starting to realize that their day is over. Their people want freedom, liberty, happiness and most importantly, a life free from enslavement and hatred of others. They want to raise families and run businesses. They want to play with their grandchildren. The ideology of hatred is burning out and we’re doing our best to hasten that bonfire.

So there you have it. We are making progress. The task isn’t complete yet though. We still have a ways to go before we can rest easy in the conforting knowledge that we did our best to make sure no more need to die like you had to. In closing, I want to publicly apologize for those people who have said that your deaths were invited by America’s richness and uncaring attitude toward the poor Muslims in the Middle East. They do not speak for me or most Americans I know and their argument is deranged, at best. I apologize for those who have called you names like “little Eichmanns”, claiming you were somehow complicit in causing your deaths by exploiting peoples of the Third world. Nothing could be farther from the truth. They also are wrong as well as being borderline psychotics. There are some who just hate the present administration, George Bush and Republicans in general. Their hatred has nothing to do with you. Don’t take it personal. Most of them have been on anti-depressants since November, 2000.

There are also those who are just against war, in any form at any time. Theirs is a noble goal but one that is frankly unreachable given the present state of humanity around the world. For now, the only guarantee of peace is the destruction of the enemy and an example given to the rest of the world that America will never get down on its knees before murderers and thugs, whether they be Nazis or radical Muslims. The message remains the same as it has always been: leave us alone and we promise not to rain death and destruction down on your heads - mess with us at your own peril.

I hope you approve of everything we have done so far. You are never far from our thoughts, day and night. May God bless you and keep you until we come to join you one day. Until then, we are holding up our end by not waging a war of vengeance but are instead fighting a war of liberation. Liberation from tyranny first and foremost but finally ... liberation from the evil ideas that infect the minds of too many in the Muslim world.

Sincerely,
The Skipper
09-11-2005

Never Forget

Remember
<sub>(Click Here For Video)



Credits: Thanks to GCS Distributing for creating this video, Mark W. (Ronald Reagan’s Ghost) for helping me create the popup windows and figure out the Macromedia Flash loader and especially .... to all of you: friends, fellow Americans and allies overseas. GOD BLESS YOU ALL AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!</sub>

The Day The Music Died

The following is a reprint of the award-winning essay from our “Memories Of 9/11 Essay Contest” held in the Spring of 2004. The author is Dawn Gale Prince and our readers here decided her essay best described how we all felt on that day, four long years ago ....

“The End Of The Innocence”

The summer of 2001 has just ended, and fall hangs thickly in the air threatening to take away the innocence of the summer which is still clinging to September. This Tuesday morning begins like any other day. It is September 11 and, it holds no particular meaning for me. Nothing’s marked on my calendar. I open up the supermarket and greet the odd customer on this bright, unimposing morning. The Toronto radio station plays that top 40 morning repetitious easy listening music. I groan at hearing yet another Celine Dion or Mariah Carey song--what ever is the hit of the moment. We are carrying out the mundane morning duties of readying for the day’s business when a customer walks in and says that a plane has hit the World Trade Center in New York. “It is probably nothing-you know the media…” he says on his way out. It is just after nine o’clock.

His words are barely cold in the air when the song on the radio is interrupted with a bulletin that confirms the skeptical customer’s news. There isn’t much detail. I think that maybe a small plane has veered off course. It is then confirmed that it is a passenger plane, and my mind reacts like the terrified flyer that I am--wondering about what must have gone through the passengers’ minds as they crashed. Those poor people, their family. Last minute calls. These things happen. It is still that ordinary everyday reaction you have when you hear of a plane crash. Again, the music ends abruptly: another plane has crashed into the Trade Center . The mood in the supermarket goes from nonchalant to tense. The queasy feeling that something horrible is unfolding begins to form in the pit of my stomach. I say horrible, but I don’t know what it is. I think mad men or high-jackers. We hang onto every word from the radio. Planes are missing--high-jacked in the air; airspace being locked down. The news keeps coming in like that…piling pieces of the puzzle into the jumble faster than one has a chance to catch his breath. It is now evident that the simple plane crash theory is something more urgent. Something more sinister is in the air.

It has to be personal. The World Trade Center--a symbol of America--as much as Lady Liberty--attacked on its own turf. Presumptuous and pointed. World War III comes to mind. Some crazy bastard must have pushed the button somewhere and some kind of war has started. Something big is happening, and I feel immobilized because the reasons for the catastrophe are unknown. The play by play on the radio is flat because what the DJ is saying just seems so unbelievable. I can’t paint a picture in my head because her words seem unremarkable as she describes in this monotone radio voice about the havoc and chaos that is taking place in the American airspace. She relates what she sees on television and it sounds spectacular…110 story inferno...the way they used that word spectacular to describe a horrible inferno on the television. I always thought that it was an odd word to use…the kind of word you would use to describe a sporting event. But, what she is saying cannot be described in any other way, but spectacular. The estimation that there may be as many as 50,000 people in the tower is a blow to my senses. I can’t imagine that. I can’t compute or comprehend those numbers that represents somebody’s life.

People pour into the supermarket like they have to get out of the house and tell someone the horror they have just witnessed to make it real for them. It is like a movie, they keep saying. Just when I am getting over the shock of the crashing planes, news of the first Trade Center tower collapse blindsides me like a blow to the gut. I imagine a 110 story tower collapsing with over 50, 000 people inside. I lose all track of time as it all seems muddled in no particular order. My mind can’t separate any of it. I can’t isolate the horror and make it real for my mind. My head is full of warbled words--words that don’t quite form the pictures because they are so outlandish. I think this is what it may have been like during World Wars I and II where people sat around listening to the radio--waiting for news--hearing gossip, innuendos. But, the radio alone can’t make it real for my brain. I have to see it for myself. I live across the street from the supermarket and so, I take my break.

Inside my apartment, the sun illuminates the dust that’s settled on my television screen. I think: I have to dust, and turn on NBC just in time to see the second tower crumble like a block of Leggo’s. It stuns my brain. My hand goes over my mouth in an audible gasp. I think I am going to have an asthma attack. Quietly, the tears come and seep through closed fingers as I try to catch my breath. I want to tell somebody, but I am frozen, glued to the floor in my summer sandals…and watch in slow-motion as New York disintegrates into nothingness right before my eyes. It looks like an implosion that is deliberately calculated. I am ringing my hands and wailing, “oh, my God, oh my God” in rasping breath as I watch the replay of the second tower collapse. I imagine frantic calls to loved ones before the towers were pushed to their deaths swallowing innocent lives in its gaping belly. I imagine claustrophobic breathing in crowded stairwells. I imagine trains of thought of the desperate--their life and times flashing before their eyes--finally coming to terms that this may be the end. I imagine the end.

This is surreal. Torrid waves of emotions shake my body. I feel scared, horror, shock, helpless, sad and then angry. I cry for all those people. I am angry at no one in particular, but at man’s inhumanity to man. My heart is broken. In my innocence, I somehow, naively, expect more from human beings. My knees shake. I am terrified. The workers from the tall buildings in downtown Toronto are being sent home, and there is fear of Canada being attacked. With the uncertainty of what is going on and who is behind it, this fear is real for me. Television makes it real for us. You don’t have to be in New York to experience the terror or the anger. It isn’t only America ‘s tragedy, but a universal feeling of sadness and anger. Damn them for making us realize our vulnerability. Damn them for sneaking up on us and blindsiding us. Damn them for not looking us in the eye when they stole our innocence. But, who is “them”?

And maybe it is naiveté or innocence on my part--our part, but the idea of terrorism never enters my mind. Terrorism in the broader sense--the foreign concept of suicide bombers is so outrageous in this part of the world. And yet, terrorism on American soil is not foreign. Timothy Mcveigh is home grown terrorism. To be honest, the Trade Center bombing in 1993 has faded from my memory. How many people know that five suspects were each given 240 years for that first attack that killed six people? Our innocence and complacency would not let us believe that that kind of thing can happens in these parts. That happens in somebody else’s backyard. Not on the streets of New York . Not on an ordinary Tuesday morning.

But terrorism has come home. New York looks like a war zone. The towers collapse and explode in a burst of white dust--a mushroom cloud of dust that seem to chase terrified people as they try to outrun it to safe ground. It looks like they are racing against a twister. Unrecognizable ghost-like faces and hair aged eerily white with dust and debris. They look like zombies stumbling around--ghosts of themselves roaming the once bustling streets of New York City--a skeletal city full of holes and broken down people. The white dust makes it all eerie. It looks like a make-believe movie set with extras playing the part of feigned horror as they run through the streets. Only no one could write or feign that kind of horror. It reminds of some goddamn Godzilla attacking America movie or some inferno move where Roger Ebert gives the special effects a thumb’s up. This is bigger than a 20 million dollar production. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a test. People are fleeing the city in droves--like survivors of war--the mushroom cloud of dust eerily reminiscent of a nuclear cloud. The frame of thousands walking in quiet stupor as they make their way over that bridge on their way out of New York isolates the numbness of this day.

It is all surreal, and amidst all the jagged juxtapositions of whirring sounds and surreal sights--I see unscarred sheets of office paper floating in the midst of disaster--soaring above the dust that rises from the ashes of a city to land ever so gently, in a whisper-- in the rubble of what used to be. Confetti falling--raining down on the streets of New York--the fleeing throng leaving trampled foot prints on perfect paper. Then, the camera pulls back; replaying, rewinding to the moments before the second tower tumbles down, and a small figure tumbles out a window--and another. Maybe, my eyes are playing tricks…all this is television special effects. But, then the voice over says people are jumping out of buildings to their deaths. I imagine terrified hearts and quiet, desperate goodbyes. Frantic telephone calls to loved ones. Terrified of heights, I imagine the horror of having to make that decision. And, I think about the perfect white paper floating and landing ever so gently in a whisper--not with a thud like those flailing, falling bodies--clawing their way at nothingness--trying to hold onto something to save themselves from the confines of the towering inferno. I stand open-mouthed, wondering about the thud the bodies make when they make contact with the cement. The sound in my ear is deafening, but it is all I can hear in my mind--the thud of the bodies as the paper lands ever so gently.

As day fades, I remember the events in frames--frozen moments in time--etched in my mind like faded dog-eared memories. Sounds...whirring desperate sounds. Faces. Father Michael F. Judge--a chaplain with the City of New York Fire Department at the scene and then hearing he has died in the second tower collapse. It brings home the abruptness of what has happened. He is there one minute, and then he is gone just like the buildings are there and then gone--leaving gaping holes in the skyline--as if somebody has erased the buildings. This day is not something you can erase. The skyline is missing a piece of its glitter when night envelopes New York City. Night casts an ugly shadow on this devastated city. And you think about the people on the planes, and in the towers as you make contact with your loved ones. Night makes you remember those who aren’t coming home, and those who are waiting eagerly for word on those who did not come home.

By night fall, the reality of the day sinks in as we know more than when this ordinary Tuesday began. The Pentagon has been attacked, the final plane crashes in Philadelphia , and we are all shaking our heads at the carnage left behind. After watching in numb awe, hours and hours of repetitious footage of the most unbelievable spectacular event I have ever witnessed, I allow myself to turn out the lights. I think about how the world has changed in a split second--how the innocence was stolen from under our noses by men with hatred in their hearts. Laying in the dark, I think about the summer. It is comforting thinking about the warm summer. I think about the summer that we are just leaving behind along with our innocence. The day has been emotionally exhausting and sleep comes before the tears dry on my cheeks.

Dawn breaks and the nightmare is real. The line in the American national anthem comes to mind: “Oh, say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming.” At the twilights last gleaming--before the devastation-- New York City stood proudly, her towers soaring. Now, it looks like a ghost town--full of holes--void of any sort of life--it is as if New York is obliterated and the streets have an eerie air of abandonment. It looks defeated, deflated, devastated. The quiet is deafening, and in your head you can hear echoes of hollow voices and clapping footsteps, but it is only what you remember of New York . Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes. The smoke from the burning collapsed towers is still smoldering--rising up slowly--phoenix rising from the ashes--symbolic of a nation that will slowly rise up--tears falling on tired cheeks; teeth gritting; fists pumping; flag waving; the American might a little tattered, but still unwavering as they regroup in resounding echoes of:

“...’Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and home of the brave!”

And, over the next few days, we become familiar with the names of ordinary men and women who are held up as heroes. People helping their fellow man. Corporate America working along side the blue collar regular guy: firefighters, emergency workers. Over the next few days, the human spirit rises up and reclaims man’s natural humanity towards man. New Yorkers rise up and take back their city in memory of their fallen angels--all 3000 of them. And, we become familiar with the evil that exists in the hearts of men. We learn names like Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. We become familiar with a new world. The page has turned to a new chapter in history.

But, it isn’t only America’s soul that is attacked on Tuesday September 11, 2001, but the psyche of an entire world. It isn’t only America’s sorrow, but a world in mourning. A world in mourning of wasted life--of somebody’s brother, somebody mother, somebody’s sister, somebody’s neighbour--somebody who simply went to work on an ordinary Tuesday morning and didn’t come home. It isn’t only America’s innocence that is stolen on a September morning that begins so ordinarily. Collectively--all of our souls die a little, and maybe, we are still waiting for the rebirth of ourselves.

_{Copyright © 2004. DGALEP. All rights reserved}

   Saturday - September 10, 2005

Jeb Bush Says LA & MS Disaster Planning Sucked

Lack of Plan Hurt Katrina-hit States’ Response
(PALM BEACH POST - Tallahassee)

One thing Florida knows is hurricanes. Florida emergency planners criticized and even rebuked their counterparts—or what passes for emergency planners—in those states for their handling of Hurricane Katrina. Gov. Jeb Bush, the head of Florida AHCA and the head of Florida wildlife (which is responsible for all search and rescue) all said they made offers of aid to Mississippi and Louisiana the day before Katrina hit but were rebuffed. After the storm, they said they’ve had to not only help provide people to those states but also have had to develop search and rescue plans for them. “They were completely unprepared—as bad off as we were before Andrew,” one Florida official said.

And how Louisiana and Mississippi officials have handled Hurricane Katrina is a far cry from what emergency managers here would have done. Mississippi was in the middle of rewriting its disaster plan when Katrina struck. Officials there were still analyzing what went wrong during Hurricane Dennis earlier this year when Katrina overtook them. Search teams from Florida were rescuing Mississippi victims before law enforcement officers there were even aware of the magnitude of the disaster. Louisiana also lacked an adequate plan to evacuate New Orleans, despite years of research that predicted a disaster equal to or worse than Katrina. Even after a disaster test run last year exposed weaknesses in evacuation and recovery, officials failed to come up with solutions.

“They’re where we were in 1992, exactly,” said Col. Julie Jones, director of law enforcement for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, in a reference to Florida’s state of emergency preparedness before Hurricane Andrew devastated southern Miami-Dade County. Since then, Florida has created what many consider a model emergency management system, initially developed by the late Gov. Lawton Chiles in response to Andrew and beefed up considerably by Gov. Jeb Bush in response to more than a dozen storms that have hit the state since he took office in 1998, including a record four hurricanes last year. The state, under Bush, has learned even from storms that did not hit here. Bush was mortified by the long, stalled lines of cars fleeing from Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and ordered a study of evacuation alternatives that led to the state’s current plan to convert certain highways to northern-only routes.

Meanwhile, Florida’s western neighbors haven’t faced as many storms, and their emergency preparedness apparently has not evolved as Florida’s has. Local and state officials in Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as federal officials, simply weren’t prepared to deal with a disaster of Katrina’s magnitude, according to observers, citizens and national experts on the scene after Hurricane Katrina wreaked catastrophic damage on the Gulf Coast. One of the biggest differences between how Florida and other states handle natural disasters lies in the degree of cooperation between cities, counties and the state. In Florida, they are in constant communication with one another as storms advance and during the recovery phase. Not so elsewhere, as first responders from Florida discovered at dawn the day after Katrina made landfall. Search and rescue crews from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission were poised in Pensacola on Sunday night in anticipation of Katrina’s landfall Monday.

After scouting the Panhandle and determining it was OK Monday morning, Jones said she called Mississippi officials to see if they needed help. “They said, ‘We don’t know,’ “ she said. “Monday night, Mississippi said ‘We still have not been able to evaluate the damage, so please go.’ So Monday night, we were at the border ready to go, and we were in Mississippi by 6 a.m. Tuesday. So before Mississippi could wake up and say, ‘OK, we have to start doing assessments,’ Florida was in those two counties, in Jackson and Harrison.”

Jones’ crews made the first rescue in Mississippi at dawn the day after Katrina made landfall, and they spent a week in the area, ferrying Mississippi Marine Patrol officers whose vessels were destroyed by Katrina. Florida law enforcement officials in each county hold monthly conference calls to discuss disaster coordination, but it wasn’t until after the storm hit that these Mississippi officials were making a plan of what to do. “The biggest frustration for us was sitting down and trying to get all the emergency managers in a county to sit down in their emergency operations centers and talk about a plan,” Jones said.

Part of the problem was that Mississippi officials were in the process of rewriting their state emergency plan when Katrina hit, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Lea Stokes said. They hadn’t yet evaluated post-Dennis hurricane response surveys when the Category 4 storm and its 20- to 30-foot surge wiped out 75 miles of coastline. Stokes and other Mississippi officials also blame problems responding to Katrina on its size and impact on telephone services. Land lines, cellphones and even satellite phones were useless, Stokes said.

“It was not so much a communications breakdown as it was a communication device breakdown,” said Biloxi spokesman Vincent Creel. “So if we’d have had carrier pigeons, we’d have been using them. We’d have used smoke signals, but we didn’t have water.” Florida’s emergency management chief, Craig Fugate, said just having any old plan isn’t enough. It has to be adequate and a state needs an experienced organization well-versed in putting it into effect. “I’ve heard comments made in other disasters that the first thing they did was throw the plan away because the plan was worthless,” Fugate said. “A plan should not be some requirement. It should truly reflect what your real needs are, and what your real resources are.” Louisiana’s plan doesn’t do either.

Kickoff!

Are you ready for some football? No, not the steroid-enhanced, overpaid crap on Sundays. I’m talking the real deal! College football is starting up and I want to recommend to any fans out there what is probably the finest piece of software ever invented. It’s called Collegio Football and is in about it’s tenth season. I’ve been upgrading ($19.95) every year since 1998. First time buyers price is $29.95. There is nothing this program doesn’t tell you or keep track of. Each week, new datafiles are released for download that contain all the updated statistics on every football team in the NCAA. It’s simple to use and lets you keep track of your favorite team as well as conference rivals (Auburn sucks!). You can download a trial version that is limited to the Big East just to see if you like it. The software is available for download right now and the first datafile will be available next Thusday, 9/15. Get ready .... hike!

(Click here to download)


Here is a screenshot from the program ....



Note: The software is for Windows users only, no Macintosh version yet. However, you might want to send , the program’s author, an e-mail to request a version for Mac weenies. He’s a nice young fellow down in Hot-lanta so be nice.

Batty’s Long Lost Relative

We have just been informed by Batty that he has been contacted by a long lost relative from the “kosher” branch of the family. Batye Ben-Zion sent Batty this picture of himself from an undisclosed location in Gaza. Batye and his friends refuse to leave Gaza and promise to bite any Paleswinian who comes near them on the ass. Their reasoning is that biting them there is the shortest route to the idjits’ brains. To Batty’s cousin Batye, we extend a hearty MAZEL TOV!

Dirty Rice

WASHINGTON, DC. - Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) wrote a letter to Speaker Hastert, urging him to direct federal hurricane relief aid through channels other than Louisiana public officials. Citing incompetence and a history of corruption, Tancredo said a bipartisan select committee of the House should administer the aid and provide accountability for the $52 billion requested. The letter is reprinted below:

Dear Mr. Speaker,

Given the abysmal failure of state and local officials in Louisiana to plan adequately for or respond to the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the city of New Orleans, and given the long history of public corruption in Louisiana, I hope the House will refrain from directly appropriating any funds from the public treasury to either the state of Louisiana or the city of New Orleans. Instead, reconstruction and relief funds dedicated to the people of New Orleans should be administered by a private organization or a select committee similar to the historic Truman Commission.

Public corruption is a well known problem in Louisiana. The head of the FBI in New Orleans just this past year described the state´s public corruption as “epidemic, endemic, and entrenched. No branch of government is exempt.” Over the last thirty years, a long list of Louisiana politicians have been convicted of crimes; the list includes a governor, an attorney general, an elections commissioner, an agriculture commissioner, three successive insurance commissioners, a congressman, a federal judge, a State Senate president, six other state legislators, and a host of appointed officials, local sheriffs, city councilmen, and parish police jurors.  Given the documented public corruption in the state, I am not confident that Louisiana officials can be trusted to administer federal relief aid.

Clearly the federal response from FEMA in the aftermath of the hurricane was hampered by bureaucratic ineptitude. Making matters worse, the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana have demonstrated mind-boggling incompetence in their lack of planning for and response to this disaster.  According to one recent media report, “A year ago, as Hurricane Ivan approached, New Orleans ordered an evacuation but did not use city or school buses to help people evacuate. As a result many of the poorest citizens were unable to evacuate. Fortunately, the hurricane changed course and did not hit New Orleans, but both Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin acknowledged the need for a better evacuation plan...[but] did not take corrective actions. In 1998, during a threat by Hurricane George, 14,000 people were sent to the Superdome and theft and vandalism were rampant due to inadequate security. Again, these problems were not corrected.”

The city of New York, by comparison, had no advance warning of 9/11.  Yet Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki displayed tremendous leadership in managing a chaotic situation in the city.  Their leadership inspired confidence in their ability to manage the emergency and coordinate federal aid In contrast, despite knowing days in advance about the coming hurricane, Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin seem to have done little beyond encouraging residents to leave the city or gather at the Superdome.  City school and transit buses could have carried 12,000 persons per run out of the city, yet they sat idle in parking lots under water - while both the Mayor and Governor criticized the federal response.

In the coming days, tens of billions of dollars will likely flood Louisiana to address the costs of rescue, clean up, and rebuilding.  The question is not whether Congress should provide for those in need, but whether state and local officials who have been derelict in their duty should be trusted with that money.  Their record during Hurricane Katrina and the long history of public corruption in Louisiana convinces me that that they should not.

Sincerely,

Tom Tancredo, MC.

Anyone who doesn’t believe Congressman Tancredo’s analysis is invited to read this news article from CNN. Like Boudreux and the other cajuns and coonasses down on de bayou always say, “we likes our politicians jes’ like our rice .... dirty.”

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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.

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