Saturday, 29 September 2001

Friday, 28 September 2001

If they can't figure it out, then they should call one of two people -- call El Al and say, "we don't have the competency to provide security, can you get this thing, reopen it in 24 hours?" The Israeli airline. Or call Rudy Giuliani, get him to reopen it.

Thursday, 27 September 2001

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is today releasing 19 photographs of individuals believed to be the hijackers of the four airliners that crashed on September 11, 2001, into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon, and in Stony Creek Township, Pennsylvania. The FBI requests the public's assistance in obtaining more information about these individuals.

It should be noted that attempts to confirm the true identities of these individuals are still under way.

Wednesday, 26 September 2001

"I don't care how holy somebody claims to be," God said. "If a person tells you it's My will that they kill someone, they're wrong. Got it? I don't care what religion you are, or who you think your enemy is, here it is one more time: No killing, in My name or anyone else's, ever again."

"Why would you think I'd want anything else? Humans don't need religion or God as an excuse to kill each other -- you've been doing that without any help from Me since you were freaking apes!" God said. "The whole point of believing in God is to have a higher standard of behavior. How obvious can you get?"

According to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), the congressional move enables the president to declare war, "to the extent that war can realistically be declared on, like, maybe three or four Egyptian guys, an Algerian, and this other guy who kind of looks Lebanese but could be Syrian. Or whoever else it might have been. Because it might not have been them."

"...we know that the mastermind has the approximate personality of a terrorist," Gramm said. "Also, he is senseless. New data is emerging all the time."

As your child may or may not know, much of modern Islamic fundamentalism has its roots in the writings of Sayyid Qutb, whose two-year sojourn to the U.S. in the late 1940s convinced him that Western society and non-Islamic ideologies were flawed and corrupt. Over the course of the next several decades, his writings became increasingly popular throughout the Arab world, including Afghanistan.

Tuesday, 25 September 2001

And then I see the second plane; the instant it is in view it's clear this is not an accident. The plane is moving toward the second tower counterintuitively; rather than avoiding the tower, it is determinedly bearing down, picking up speed.

I see the plane, and I see the plane crash into the building. I see the buildings burn, and I see the buildings fall down. I see imagery that until now did not exist in reality, only in the fiction of film. Seeing it with your own eye, in real time -- not on a screen, not protected by the frame of the television set, not in the communal darkness of movie theater -- seeing it like this is irreconcilable, like a hallucination, a psychotic break.

There is no place to put this experience, no folder in the mental hard drive that says "catastrophe." It is not something you want to remember, not something you want to forget.

He has been overwhelmed with feelings of guilt.

Not on the list are three groups -- Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad -- that are frequently denounced by the United States. Still, they receive support from countries seen as potential members of the coalition Bush is trying to build against bin Laden.

Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said yesterday that the administration cannot present its full case "without revealing some sources and methods that we would not want to reveal." // Still, Goss and other officials with access to highly classified intelligence reporting said they were confident that even a "white paper" based solely on unclassified information could make a persuasive case against bin Laden and his terrorist network, al Qaeda. // What is known publicly about possible links between the 19 hijackers and bin Laden, however, falls well short of that mark...

One administration official said the disagreement over what should and should not be revealed by the government "is why this thing is not done." But another official who reviewed a working draft of the document, consisting of several dozen pages, predicted that it would be completed and released in several days. // "I think there are a lot of people, myself included, who believe it's an important piece in this war to present credible evidence," the official said. "But it's very much a work in progress."

While even highly sensitive intelligence is sometimes shared with such friendly countries as Britain, the official said, many governments may not need much convincing. // "They are coming to the same conclusion themselves, based on their own investigations," the official said.

Monday, 24 September 2001

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
-- Benjamin Franklin

I do not relinquish, nor should any of you, the right to criticize, even as we support, our government. This is still a democracy, and they're still politicians ... Political correctness itself is something we can no longer afford. Feelings are gonna get hurt so that actual people won't, and that will be a good thing.
-- Bill Maher

President Bush signed an executive order Monday freezing the assets of 27 individuals and organizations.

"They include terrorist organizations, individuals, terrorist leaders, a corporation that serves as a front for terrorism and several nonprofit organizations," the president said in a Rose Garden appearance.

"This is the most information-intensive war you can imagine...

    WE'RE GOING TO LIE ABOUT THINGS,"

said a military officer involved in the planning. "If it is an information war, certainly the bad guys will lie."

Retired Air Force Gen. Perry M. Smith said the administration's approach is justified. "Rumsfeld's trying to clamp down on everything and, at least for the moment, he's been very successful," Smith said. "In Kosovo and the Gulf War, keeping secrets wasn't all that important because everyone knew the bombing campaign was coming. Now, with a lot of special operations stuff and going into dangerous countries, if you telegraph what you're going to do, it might cause a lot of deaths."

Sunday, 23 September 2001