9/11/01- NY Times Interview With Bill Ayers, Obama's Pal

On 9/11/01 The New York Times ran an interview with Bill Ayers, unrepentant terrorist. In the intervening years, much fodder has been made of this article because of the mystery of Senator Obama's relationship with the murderer. Ayers helped get Obama's political career started with a political fundraiser in his house.

According to Senator Barack Obama, the American terrorist Bill Ayers is just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” and “not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.” For his part, Ayers refuses to discuss his relationship with Obama. It a strange position, since it was Ayers who help start Obama on his to political office with a fund raising gathering in his home.

Before Obama ran for office he was appointed chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation that was founded by Ayers that guy with whom he doesn't exchange ideas with on a regular basis.

This being 9/11 the anniversary of the multi-pronged terrorist attack on US soil, AND the anniversary of this interview being published in the NY Times, allow me to suggest that a re-reading of the Ayers interview is appropriate especially because of his "relationship" with Barack Obama. Therefore I post it in its entirety below:


No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen By DINITIA SMITH

''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.'' Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago. The long curly locks in his Wanted poster are shorn, though he wears earrings. He still has tattooed on his neck the rainbow-and-lightning Weathermen logo that appeared on letters taking responsibility for bombings. And he still has the ebullient, ingratiating manner, the apparently intense interest in other people, that made him a charismatic figure in the radical student movement.

Now he has written a book, ''Fugitive Days'' (Beacon Press, September). Mr. Ayers, who is 56, calls it a memoir, somewhat coyly perhaps, since he also says some of it is fiction. He writes that he participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972. But Mr. Ayers also seems to want to have it both ways, taking responsibility for daring acts in his youth, then deflecting it.

''Is this, then, the truth?,'' he writes. ''Not exactly. Although it feels entirely honest to me.''

But why would someone want to read a memoir parts of which are admittedly not true? Mr. Ayers was asked.

''Obviously, the point is it's a reflection on memory,'' he answered. ''It's true as I remember it.''

Mr. Ayers is probably safe from prosecution anyway. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said there was a five-year statute of limitations on Federal crimes except in cases of murder or when a person has been indicted.

Mr. Ayers, who in 1970 was said to have summed up the Weatherman philosophy as: ''Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at,'' is today distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And he says he doesn't actually remember suggesting that rich people be killed or that people kill their parents, but ''it's been quoted so many times I'm beginning to think I did,'' he said. ''It was a joke about the distribution of wealth.''

He went underground in 1970, after his girlfriend, Diana Oughton, and two other people were killed when bombs they were making exploded in a Greenwich Village town house. With him in the Weather Underground was Bernardine Dohrn, who was put on the F.B.I.'s 10 Most Wanted List. J. Edgar Hoover called her ''the most dangerous woman in America'' and ''la Pasionara of the Lunatic Left.'' Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn later married.

In his book Mr. Ayers describes the Weathermen descending into a ''whirlpool of violence.''

''Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon,'' he writes. But then comes a disclaimer: ''Even though I didn't actually bomb the Pentagon -- we bombed it, in the sense that Weathermen organized it and claimed it.'' He goes on to provide details about the manufacture of the bomb and how a woman he calls Anna placed the bomb in a restroom. No one was killed or injured, though damage was extensive.

Between 1970 and 1974 the Weathermen took responsibility for 12 bombings, Mr. Ayers writes, and also helped spring Timothy Leary (sentenced on marijuana charges) from jail.

Today, Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn, 59, who is director of the Legal Clinic's Children and Family Justice Center of Northwestern University, seem like typical baby boomers, caring for aging parents, suffering the empty-nest syndrome. Their son, Malik, 21, is at the University of California, San Diego; Zayd, 24, teaches at Boston University. They have also brought up Chesa Boudin, 21, the son of David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, who are serving prison terms for a 1981 robbery of a Brinks truck in Rockland County, N.Y., that left four people dead. Last month, Ms. Boudin's application for parole was rejected.

So, would Mr. Ayers do it all again, he is asked? ''I don't want to discount the possibility,'' he said.

''I don't think you can understand a single thing we did without understanding the violence of the Vietnam War,'' he said, and the fact that ''the enduring scar of racism was fully in flower.'' Mr. Ayers pointed to Bob Kerrey, former Democratic Senator from Nebraska, who has admitted leading a raid in 1969 in which Vietnamese women and children were killed. ''He committed an act of terrorism,'' Mr. Ayers said. ''I didn't kill innocent people.''

Mr. Ayers has always been known as a ''rich kid radical.'' His father, Thomas, now 86, was chairman and chief executive officer of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago, chairman of Northwestern University and of the Chicago Symphony. When someone mentions his father's prominence, Mr. Ayers is quick to say that his father did not become wealthy until the son was a teenager. He says that he got some of his interest in social activism from his father. He notes that his father promoted racial equality in Chicago and was acceptable as a mediator to Mayor Richard Daley and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966 when King marched in Cicero, Ill., to protest housing segregation.

All in all, Mr. Ayers had ''a golden childhood,'' he said, though he did have a love affair with explosives. On July 4, he writes, ''my brothers and I loved everything about the wild displays of noise and color, the flares, the surprising candle bombs, but we trembled mostly for the Big Ones, the loud concussions.''

The love affair seems to have continued into adulthood. Even today, he finds ''a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance,'' he writes.

He attended Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Ill., then the University of Michigan but dropped out to join Students for a Democratic Society.

In 1967 he met Ms. Dohrn in Ann Arbor, Mich. She had a law degree from the University of Chicago and was a magnetic speaker who often wore thigh-high boots and miniskirts. In 1969, after the Manson family murders in Beverly Hills, Ms. Dohrn told an S.D.S. audience: ''Dig it! Manson killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into a victim's stomach.''

In Chicago recently, Ms. Dohrn said of her remarks: ''It was a joke. We were mocking violence in America. Even in my most inflamed moment I never supported a racist mass murderer.''

Ms. Dohrn, Mr. Ayers and others eventually broke with S.D.S. to form the more radical Weathermen, and in 1969 Ms. Dohrn was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer during the Days of Rage protests against the trial of the Chicago Eight -- antiwar militants accused of conspiracy to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

In 1970 came the town house explosion in Greenwich Village. Ms. Dohrn failed to appear in court in the Days of Rage case, and she and Mr. Ayers went underground, though there were no charges against Mr. Ayers. Later that spring the couple were indicted along with others in Federal Court for crossing state lines to incite a riot during the Days of Rage, and following that for ''conspiracy to bomb police stations and government buildings.'' Those charges were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.

During his fugitive years, Mr. Ayers said, he lived in 15 states, taking names of dead babies in cemeteries who were born in the same year as he. He describes the typical safe house: there were usually books by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara's picture in the bedroom; fermented Vietnamese fish sauce in the refrigerator, and live sourdough starter donated by a Native American that was reputed to have passed from hand to hand over a century.

He also writes about the Weathermen's sexual experimentation as they tried to ''smash monogamy.'' The Weathermen were ''an army of lovers,'' he says, and describes having had different sexual partners, including his best male friend.

''Fugitive Days'' does have moments of self-mockery, for instance when Mr. Ayers describes watching ''Underground,'' Emile De Antonio's 1976 documentary about the Weathermen. He was ''embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way,'' he writes. ''The rigidity and the narcissism.''

In the mid-1970's the Weathermen began quarreling. One faction, including Ms. Boudin, wanted to join the Black Liberation Army. Others, including Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers, favored surrendering. Ms. Boudin and Ms. Dohrn had had an intense friendship but broke apart. Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn were purged from the group.

Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers had a son, Zayd, in 1977. After the birth of Malik, in 1980, they decided to surface. Ms. Dohrn pleaded guilty to the original Days of Rage charge, received three years probation and was fined $1,500. The Federal charges against Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn had already been dropped.

Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn tried to persuade Ms. Boudin to surrender because she was pregnant. But she refused, and went on to participate in the Brink's robbery. When she was arrested, Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers volunteered to care for Chesa, then 14 months old, and became his legal guardians.

A few months later Ms. Dohrn was called to testify about the robbery. Ms. Dohrn had not seen Ms. Boudin for a year, she said, and knew nothing of it. Ms. Dohrn was asked to give a handwriting sample, and refused, she said, because the F.B.I. already had one in its possession. ''I felt grand juries were illegal and coercive,'' she said. For refusing to testify, she was jailed for seven months, and she and Mr. Ayers married during a furlough.

Once again, Chesa was without a mother. ''It was one of the hardest things I did,'' said Ms. Dohrn of going to jail.

In the interview, Mr. Ayers called Chesa ''a very damaged kid.'' ''He had real serious emotional problems,'' he said. But after extensive therapy, ''became a brilliant and wonderful human being.'' .

After the couple surfaced, Ms. Dohrn tried to practice law, taking the bar exam in New York. But she was turned down by the Bar Association's character committee because of her political activities.

Ms. Dohrn said she was aware of the contradictions between her radical past and the comforts of her present existence. ''This is where we raised our kids and are taking care of our aging parents,'' she said. ''We could live much more simply, and well we might.''

And as for settling into marriage after efforts to smash monogamy, Ms. Dohrn said, ''You're always trying to balance your understanding of who you are and what you need, and your longing and imaginings of freedom.''

''Happily for me, Billy keeps me laughing, he keeps me growing,'' she said.

Mr. Ayers said he had some of the same conflicts about marriage. ''We have to learn how to be committed,'' he said, ''and hold out the possibility of endless reinventions.''

As Mr. Ayers mellows into middle age, he finds himself thinking about truth and reconciliation, he said. He would like to see a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about Vietnam, he said, like South Africa's. He can imagine Mr. Kerrey and Ms. Boudin taking part.

And if there were another Vietnam, he is asked, would he participate again in the Weathermen bombings?

By way of an answer, Mr. Ayers quoted from ''The Cure at Troy,'' Seamus Heaney's retelling of Sophocles' ''Philoctetes:'' '' 'Human beings suffer,/ They torture one another./ They get hurt and get hard.' ''

He continued to recite:

History says, Don't hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up

And hope and history rhyme.

Thinking back on his life , Mr. Ayers said, ''I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire. And hope and history rhymed.''

Jackie Mason On Obama, the Jews and Reverend Wright

Jackie Mason is a very very funny guy. Beyond that, he is part of a growing minority in the United States a Right-wing leaning Jew who feels that Barack Obama is such a big liar that he makes Bill Clinton look honest. And that the reason so many Jews support Obama is, what else, Jewish guilt but the best part of the interview is his take on Obama and Reverend Wright:

Like this pastor thing [Obama's former outspoken pastor Jeremiah Wright]. First thing he says this guy is his mentor, his teacher his philosopher, I learned everything for him. Then they ask, did you ever listen to him? Never. I was in the church but I never heard him. He was talking, but I didn't know I should be listening. And besides, whatever he said he didn't say it on the days that I was there. He said it on Tuesday. I came on Thursdays. Then when he saw his polls started to go down a little he said: he was always my mentor but he wasn't a close mentor. I saw him, but not very often. I heard him, but only maybe once in a while. Then he said: I never even liked him. I never got involved with him. Then he said: whatever he said was disgusting to me and if I knew he was saying these things, I would have hated him a long time ago. And he sounded like he just found out about him 20 years later when he wasn't in the church. He was in the church 20 years, and he never heard anything. Now that he's out of the church for a year, he suddenly found out what he said in church when he wasn't actually there.

Read more of the interview below and when you are done, watch the You Tube video at the end of Mason trying to figure out why anyone would NOT vote for McCain:

Comedian Jackie Mason on Obama and Jews
by Ari Abramowitz and Jeremy Gimpel

(IsraelNN.com) Jackie Mason is no stranger to controversy. The Jewish-American comedian is known for his stand-up act which he started in the 1960s in his fast paced, thick Brooklyn, New York Jewish accent. He has acted in several movies and TV shows. His most recent work is a video blog and CD called The Ultimate Jew in which he comments on current events.

The veteran Jewish-American comedian spoke recently on IsraelNationalRadio's A Light Unto the Nations with Ari Abramowitz and Jeremy Gimpel. The discussion included the United State presidential elections and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Jackie Mason: I'll tell you the truth. Barack Obama isn't only fooling the Jews. He's fooling all the people of America. Right now, people are determined to prove they can vote for a Black person because they were told they're racists all their lives. White men are walking around feeling guilty thinking if they don't vote for Barack Obama, they're racists.

But as far as the Jews are concerned, they are still wedded to the Democratic party, when the Democratic party is not interested in Israel. The Democratic party has voted very often against Israel on major issues. The Republican party is determined to help Israel almost more than the Jews are. Even the Hassidic Jews. I don't care how religious you are. They're not as willing to fight for Israel as the Evangelical Goyim. But since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Jews have been told that the Republicans are for big business and not for the underdog. The Jews feel the Democrats are helping the struggling people. And they still believe it. The Jews are more willing to feel guilty for not helping a poor person than anybody else is. Because a Jew has to feel that he's always compassionate and always helping the underdog.

Ari Abramowitz: I don't understand this guilt. Aren't Jews aware that Israel is the only country that imported Blacks to be brothers and not to be slaves? Where is this white guilt? We're not the white people in the South. We were in the shtetles.

Jackie Mason: The white man's guilt is not so much the reason for the Jews' guilt. But the Jews have a big complex about Democrats because the Jews have this sickness that somehow the Republicans are the selfish party and the Democrats are the compassionate party. They've bought it since Roosevelt because at one time it was true. In the days of Roosevelt, the Republicans really were the big business party and Roosevelt came and revolutionized this country with a great compassionate concern for the underdog. He supposedly cared about the helpless and fought somehow to protect people who aren't doing so hot and the minorities. In retrospect when you look back at history, Roosevelt himself was an anti-Semite.

Ari Abramowitz: He turned away the Jews.

Jackie Mason: He not only turned away the Jews when they had 900 Jews get killed on that ship [the S.S. St. Louis in 1939], but he didn't care about the Jewish plight in Germany. Every time he was reminded to do something about it, he either ignored it or got mad if you mentioned it. Not
only did he not care, I think subconsciously he was hoping the Jews get wiped out.
Ari Abramowitz: So what would it look like if Obama was elected? Would he be Jimmy Carter Part II? Israel is the apartheid state?

Jackie Mason: They talk about how much money McCain is raising versus Obama. Its a pitance compared to the huge amount of press publicity he gets. He's a fraud. Like this pastor thing [Obama's former outspoken pastor Jeremiah Wright]. First thing he says this guy is his mentor, his teacher his philosopher, I learned everything for him. Then they ask, did you ever listen to him? Never. I was in the church but I never heard him. He was talking, but I didn't know I should be listening. And besides, whatever he said he didn't say it on the days that I was there. He said it on Tuesday. I came on Thursdays. Then when he saw his polls started to go down a little he said: he was always my mentor but he wasn't a close mentor. I saw him, but not very often. I heard him, but only maybe once in a while. Then he said: I never even liked him. I never got involved with him. Then he said: whatever he said was disgusting to me and if I knew he was saying these things, I would have hated him a long time ago. And he sounded like he just found out about him 20 years later when he wasn't in the church. He was in the church 20 years, and he never heard anything. Now that he's out of the church for a year, he suddenly found out what he said in church when he wasn't actually there.

Have We Forgotten ?

Have you forgotten how it felt that day
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away?
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside
Going through a living hell
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout Bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

One of the most incredible thing about the aftermath of the horrible tragedy of September 11th, is how People all across the country came together. How the attacks made patriotism fashionable once again. I remember reading all the stories about Wal-Mart being sold out of American Flags. I remember the evening of 9/11 when people started quietly streaming into my synagogue for evening services. Instead of the usual 20 people there were more than 100. God became "fashionable" again after 9/11.

However it only took a little while for that feeling to start disappearing. Well at least in the metropolitan areas.

One of my most vivid memories happened the the day after the attack. Tuned in to my usual fare WFAN a sports radio station, I listened in shock as two afternoon sports hosts, Mike Francesca and Chris Russo blamed the tragedy on the United States' support of Israel. Russo went even further suggesting that Jews in the U.S. needed to take a loyalty oath to decide between America and Israel.

The two sports jocks were only the start of a movement to start discrediting America, and finding rationale for the horrible attacks on the pentagon, the trade towers and the amazing bravery of the folks on flight 93 which crashed in Pennsylvania .

Seven years later we are still fighting politIcal correctness, Congress and the ACLU to keep our children safe. Below Victor Davis Hanson, takes a look at what has happened and what HASN'T happened during the last seven years:

The Other 9/11 Story
What has and hasn't happened in the seven years since September 11, 2001.

By Victor Davis Hanson

Seven years ago we suffered the worst attack on the American homeland in our history. The material damage proved far greater than the 1814 British burning of Washington, the human losses more grievous than the almost 2,400 Americans lost at Pearl Harbor.

Years later, we tend to forget all the dimensions of that sinister homicidal bombing of our institutions. Radical Islam brazenly signaled that it need not have missiles or sophisticated bombers to burn 16 acres in the heart of Manhattan and set the Pentagon afire. Instead, it could turn from the inside out our own technology against us, in a manner that we were scarcely aware of — and in an iconic fashion at the heart of our greatest cities, ensuring collective psychological trauma that trumped even the terrible loss in blood and treasure.

Some bewildered Americans offered apologies that either the attacks were tit-for-tat payback for America’s overreaching global presence, or — more preposterously still — that our record against Muslims incited such hatred. And so yet another cultural war broke out over the “causes” of 9/11. Only with difficulty were the American people reminded that we had, in fact, helped Muslims in Bosnia, and in Kosovo against European Christian Serbia, and in Somalia against gangs and thugs, and in Afghanistan against the Russians, and in Kuwait against Saddam, and that the record of the Chinese, or Indians, or Russians using force against Muslims was far more frequent and cruel than our own.

Only with difficulty was the case made that the jihadists had no legitimate cause, but rather hated modernism, globalization, and Westernization — and were either abetted in their fury by illegitimate Middle East dictatorships to deflect public unrest, or even bought off by such dictators to turn their furor westward.

We forget now, seven years later, just how many scolded us, alleging (from the Right) that our liberalism and decadence, and our falling away from God, or (from the Left) our help to Israel, our overseas bases, and our need for oil caused 9/11, rather than the devilish hatred of bin Laden and the sick mind of Mohammed Atta and his ilk — emboldened by the hunch that America, as in the past, either could not or would not retaliate in serious fashion to serial terrorists attacks against its people and property.

The cruel irony of the terrorists’ methods was not limited to inversion of our modern technology: in reaction to Mohamed Atta’s breezy walk through our American airport security, tens of millions of Americans, billions of times over, were stalled in security lines, taking off their shoes, and, in humiliating fashion, undoing their belts and emptying their purses.

Yet given the nature of the postmodern liberal West, the more we checked immigrants from the Middle East to ensure that there were no more wolves in sheep’s clothing, and the more we monitored charities and mosques that had at times sponsored fringe Islamic hate groups, all the more we were pilloried as illiberal, as extremist on the defensive as the terrorists had been on the offensive. Thousands of hours were wasted refuting empty charges that a Timothy McVeigh’s isolated terrorist attack in Oklahoma City was the moral or factual equivalent of years of constant Islamic terrorism, worldwide, that had killed thousands of innocents.

The more we sought to prevent “another 9/11” through increased security, and the more therein we found success in preventing another attack, so too the more we faced yet another paradox: renewed security prompted a sense of complacence which in turn questioned the need for increased security in the first place.


In short order, civil libertarians — enjoying the unforeseen hiatus from the promised repeated attacks — accused the administration of unduly terrifying the nation. And if they could not precisely explain to the American people how their daily lives were now stripped of constitutional protection, they nevertheless were able to charge, as the peace here at home continued, that our government police needed more policing than did Bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Critics demanded an end to wiretaps, FISA protocols, Guantánamo, and the Patriot Act. Yet when a Democratic majority took over the Congress, there was a strange unwillingness to repeal such measures — almost as if the louder they charged homeland security agencies with unconstitutional transgressions, all the more they paused, sought no legislative repeal, and suspected that the American people at least felt that through such despised protocols they had thereby in part been kept safe.

The question arose: Against whom, and when, and where, and how to hit back? Voices of doom answered that the Taliban’s Afghanistan was not the al-Qaeda perpetrator, but rather the graveyard of both British and Russian imperial troops, given its peaks, snow, warlords, and tribal badlands. Yet within five months following 9/11, the Taliban and al-Qaeda alike were routed to Pakistan and a constitutional government was in place. And while the effort to pacify Afghanistan still continues, so does the constitutional government in Kabul, which is rebuilding the country rather than hiding out in the caves of Waziristan.

It would be cruel to relate by name all those prominent Americans — including politicians, think-tankers, pundits, and military analysts — who felt once, and vehemently so, that the rogue and genocidal regime of Saddam Hussein — in violation of UN accords and 1991 armistice agreements, and the object of 12 years of no-fly zones — was an impediment to the need to change the conditions that had fostered 9/11. Yet suffice it to say that, when Iraq went from a brilliant three-week victory to someone else’s flawed and bloody five-year occupation, almost no prior supporter of the need to remove Saddam could be found. It was not just that most changed their minds as the pulse of the battlefield changed; but rather that many prior supporters insidiously convinced themselves that in the now distant past they had never advocated such a supposedly preposterous war in the first place.

Seven years later, hundreds of billions of dollars have been expended; over 4,000 Americans have been lost in Iraq and Afghanistan; and America’s preexisting cultural wounds have had their thin scabs torn off by acrimony over warring abroad and security at home. And yet herein lies the greatest paradox of all that followed from September 11. If no one on September 12, 2001 thought it possible that the United States would not be hit again by a terrorist attack of similar magnitude, here we are still free from a major terrorist assault over 2,500 days later.

Bin Laden and Dr. Zawahiri are still hiding out in the caves of tribal Pakistan, in fear of daylight sorties by deadly American drones, but counting on safety from coalition ground attack through the auspices of their wink-and-nod — and nuclear — Islamic Pakistani hosts. The top cadres of al-Qaeda, nonetheless, are now either mostly dead, captured, or in hiding. When al-Qaeda now whines in its infomercials, the complaint is about Shiite Iran who supposedly helped the infidel Americans, not the Americans themselves who alone sent them to the caves of Pakistan and defeated them in, and routed them from, Iraq.

In response, polls reveal that Middle Eastern support for bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the tactic of suicide bombing are at an all-time low. Constitutional governments remain in power in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Al-Qaeda has suffered a terrible material and public-relations defeat in the heart of the ancient caliphate.


While many rightly point to lapses in the conduct of the Iraq war, faulty intelligence, and wrongheaded emphasis on supposed arsenals of WMDs rather than the casus belli outlined in the 23 writs authorized by the Congress, few can answer a more existential question: Had we not met, defeated, and humiliated tens of thousands of jihadists on the battlefields of Iraq, where else might we have inflicted such a terrible defeat on our enemies — given the nuclear sanctuary of Pakistan, the bellicose governments of Iran and Syria, and the duplicity of the Gulf monarchies? And if we had not killed, captured, scattered, and turned our enemies abroad, how then might we have prevented them from coming back here to attack us at home? And are the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, as in the past, aiding anti-American terrorists, or helping to hunt them down?

The truth is, we chased al-Qaeda from Iraq and Afghanistan and it is now in lunatic fashion chasing Danish cartoonists, European novelists, and opera producers as it cuts the fingers off smokers, tries to cover up the genitalia of animals, and looks for the mentally ill to strap on suicide belts.

Long after Jacques Chirac, Michael Moore, Gerhard Schroeder, and Cindy Sheehan have come, gone, and nearly disappeared, a General David Petraeus and thousands of American soldiers and diplomats like him remain. George W. Bush is reviled, in part because of an inability to articulate what the war against terror was, and what it was for. But Bush hatred has been reduced to a sort of politically correct trinket, worn around the neck of the clannish critics as a reminder of the President’s ineptness in expression or supposedly dangerous views — without examining what others might have done to achieve the same results of achieving freedom from further attack.

But in years to come it may well be said that the president kept us safe for years when none thought he could, and removed the two most odious regimes in the Middle East and replaced them with the two best — and confronted a confident and ascendant radical Islam and left it demoralized and discredited among its own host Arab and Muslim constituents.

In the present toxic environment, all of that is not to be spoken — but all that has nevertheless happened since September 11.

9/11/01 -The Horrors Remembered

Everyone remembers where they were when they found out about the attacks on 9/11. I was sitting in my office working on 2002 projections when I received an IM from my brother "hey Sammy some idiot just flew into one of the trade center towers.

I was working for one of the Cable TV networks at the time so I had a TV in my office. I turned on the TV to see the second tower impact--I thought it was an instant replay of the first one. Much of the rest of the morning is a blur, my staff crowded into my office where we watched in horror as people jumped off a tower to their deaths. Then again as each tower collapsed.

At twelve noon there was an announcement that the east river crossings were once again open. I raced for the garage and began a 40 mile drive that took way over four hours.

I worked near Times Square about two miles from the now smoldering ruins of the towers. I can still feel the air. As I breathed it felt like I was inhaling particles along with the oxygen.

I remember the surreal visions from my car as I drove home that day. The shocked people who were crowding the street, struggling to get off that tiny island as soon as possible, fearing another attack any second. There was impenetrable curtain of black over the East River that I saw out the car window as I went over the 59th Street Bridge. A curtain that replaced the view of the Twin Towers that were usually there.
I was confronted with a noxious burning smell seeping in through the car vents.

September 11 was not the first terrorist attack on the United States. That attack was foreshadowed by incidents such as the first trade center bombing and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.

Those earlier acts were treated by the United States as crimes, each perpetuated by small group of terrorist operators. It was only after 9/11 that this country realized that there was a worldwide network of people willing to kill themselves to bring down our way of life.

Only after 9/11 did we stop searching for "criminals" and begin a war against terrorism.

These are some of the sights of 9/11/01. The Horrors, the Heroes. May we never forget the day our lives changed. May we always honor those heroes. May the memories of the dead always be for a blessing. And may God Bless these United States of America.


Click Here for a tribute the Policemen Who Died at the Towers

Click Here for a tribute to the Firemen Who Died at the Towers

Each person who died that day was an individual with their own story, In order to recognize them as individuals, many bloggers have picked one victim and tells their story. Smoothstone tells the story of Welles Remy Crowther.

Rove On Palin's Greatest Achievement: Getting Inside Obama's Head

Mentioned here yesterday, perhaps Governor Palin's greatest achievement, has nothing to do with firming up the Republican base, nor does it have anything to do with attracting middle-class Americans to the McCain/Palin ticket. Palins greatest achievement is getting inside senator Obama's Head. Senator Obama, cannot handle the fact that someone swiped his adoration. He is no longer the only center of attention in the campaign.

This is why he is making stupid mistakes like the lipstick line, she is making him absolutely crazy. And evey day that Obama and Biden spend their day trying to bash Governor Palin is a day closer to the presidency for John McCain. Karl Rove agrees, you can read his take on the situation below:

Obama Can't Win
Against Palin By KARL ROVE

Of all the advantages Gov. Sarah Palin has brought to the GOP ticket, the most important may be that she has gotten into Barack Obama's head. How else to explain Sen. Obama's decision to go one-on-one against "Sarah Barracuda," captain of the Wasilla High state basketball champs?

It's a matchup he'll lose. If Mr. Obama wants to win, he needs to remember he's running against John McCain for president, not Mrs. Palin for vice president.

Michael Dukakis spent the last months of the 1988 campaign calling his opponent's running mate, Dan Quayle, a risky choice and even ran a TV ad blasting Mr. Quayle. The Bush/Quayle ticket carried 40 states.

Adlai Stevenson spent the fall of 1952 bashing Dwight Eisenhower's running mate, Richard Nixon, calling him "the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, and then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation." The Republican ticket carried 39 of 48 states.

If Mr. Obama keeps attacking Mrs. Palin, he could suffer the fate of his Democratic predecessors. These assaults highlight his own tissue-thin résumé, waste precious time better spent reassuring voters he is up for the job, and diminish him -- not her.

Consider Mr. Obama's response to CNN's Anderson Cooper, who asked him about Republican claims that Mrs. Palin beats him on executive experience. Mr. Obama responded by comparing Wasilla's 50 city workers with his campaign's 2,500 employees and dismissed its budget of about $12 million a year by saying "we have a budget of about three times that just for the month." He claimed his campaign "made clear" his "ability to manage large systems and to execute."

Of course, this ignores the fact that Mrs. Palin is now governor. She manages an $11 billion operating budget, a $1.7 billion capital expenditure budget, and nearly 29,000 full- and part-time state employees. In two years as governor, she's vetoed over $499 million from Alaska's capital budget -- more money than Mr. Obama is likely to spend on his entire campaign.

And Mr. Obama is not running his campaign's day-to-day operation. His manager, David Plouffe, assisted by others, makes the decisions about the $335 million the campaign has spent. Even if Mr. Obama is his own campaign manager, does that qualify him for president?

A debate between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Palin over executive experience also isn't smart politics for Democrats. As Mr. Obama talks down Mrs. Palin's record, voters may start comparing backgrounds. He won't come off well.

Then there was Mr. Obama's blast Saturday about Mrs. Palin's record on earmarks. He went at her personally, saying, "you been taking all these earmarks when it is convenient and then suddenly you are the champion anti-earmark person."

It's true. Mrs. Palin did seek earmarks as Wasilla's mayor. But as governor, she ratcheted down the state's requests for federal dollars, telling the legislature last year Alaska "cannot and must not rely so heavily on federal government earmarks." Her budget chief directed state agencies to reduce earmark requests to only "the most compelling needs" with "a strong national purpose," explaining to reporters "we really want to skinny it down."

Mr. Obama has again started a debate he can't win. As senator, he has requested nearly $936 million in earmarks, ratcheting up his requests each year he's been in the Senate. If voters dislike earmarks -- and they do -- they may conclude Mrs. Palin cut them, while Mr. Obama grabs for more each year.

Mr. Obama may also pay a price for his "lipstick on a pig" comment. The last time the word "lipstick" showed up in this campaign was during Mrs. Palin's memorable ad-lib in her acceptance speech. Mr. Obama says he didn't mean to aim the comment at Mrs. Palin, but he deserves all the negative flashback he gets from the snarky aside.

Sen. Joe Biden has now joined the attack on Mrs. Palin, saying this week that her views on issues show she's "obviously a backwards step for women." This is a mistake. Mr. Obama is already finding it difficult to win over independent women and Hillary Clinton voters. If it looks like he's going out of his way to attack Mrs. Palin, these voters may conclude it's because he has a problem with strong women.

In Denver two weeks ago, Mr. Obama said, "If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from." That's what he's trying to do, only the object of his painting is Sarah Palin, not John McCain.

In Mrs. Palin, Mr. Obama faces a political phenomenon who has altered the election's dynamics. Americans have rarely seen someone who immediately connects with large numbers of voters at such a visceral level. Mrs. Palin may be the first vice presidential candidate since Lyndon B. Johnson to change an election's outcome. If Mr. Obama keeps attacking her, the odds of Gov. Palin becoming Vice President Palin increase significantly.

Why is Obama Covering Up his Past ?

I think it incredible that in the almost three weeks since Sarah Palin was named John McCain's running-mate, I have learned more about her than in the two years that Barack Obama has been running for president. The media has been complaining about the "non-vetting" of the Alaska governor, but the head of the Democratic ticket has Never been questioned about his past. For some reason Senator Obama is hiding a lot of things about his past, and the biased media isn't trying to find out. Below is a look at the parts of Obama's life that we still don't know about.

Obama covers his tracks Ed Lasky
Barack Obama apparently wishes his two autobiographies to be the definitive record of his past. He has blocked efforts by others who wish to independently examine his past.

He won't allow his transcript from his undergraduate days at Columbia University to be released.

He "lost" his thesis on Soviet nuclear policy (see "Where in the World is Obama's Missing Thesis" which might provide insight regarding his seeming lack of knowledge about Soviet policy during the Kennedy years).

He won't answer questions about his days at Harvard Law School.

He "lost" his Illinois Senate records.

He will only release a simple one-page letter from his doctor on his medical condition.

He won't release his application to the state bar, which, as National Review's Jim Geraghty notes raises questions about whether he told the truth about parking tickets and drug use, among other issues.

He won't disclose list of his clients from his law firm days or the nature of the work he did for them as a lawyer (his clients include the indicted political fixer Tony Rezko).

He walks away from uncomfortable questions about Rezko at a news conference.

His cultists try to shut down inquiry into his stewardship of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge by sliming a journalist investigating his days at the helm of that group, which blew through $100 million dollars with no discernible benefit for the schools and students that it was putatively designed to help (what does the constitutional law lecturer say to the chilling of free speech by his acolytes?).

He tries to muddle his long-standing ties with Pastor Wright by producing a version of his attendance record at Trinity Church that is sharply at variance with previous versions he has given ("Obama Re-invents his Trinity Church History").

The Wall Street Journal joins the battle over Obama's past in today's editorial ("Obama's Lost Years"):

The Columbia years are a hole in the sprawling Obama hagiography. In his two published memoirs, the 47-year-old Democratic nominee barely mentions his experience there. He refuses to answer questions about Columbia and New York -- which, in this media age, serves only to raise more of them. Why not release his Columbia transcript? Why has his senior essay gone missing? [....]

Voters and the media are now exercising due diligence before Election Day, and they are meeting resistance from Mr. Obama in checking his past. Earlier this year, the AP tracked down Mr. Obama's New York-era roommate, "Sadik," in Seattle after the campaign refused to reveal his name. Sohale Siddiqi, his real name, confirmed Mr. Obama's account that he turned serious in New York and "stopped getting high." "We were both very lost," Mr. Siddiqi said. "We were both alienated, although he might not put it that way. He arrived disheveled and without a place to stay." For some reason the Obama camp wanted this to stay out of public view.

What can be said with some certainty is that Mr. Obama lived off campus while at Columbia in 1981-83 and made few friends. Fox News contacted some 400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him.

Barack Obama is the least-examined Presidential candidate in American history. Partly this may be due to the fact that he has a paper-thin resume and few accomplishments. However, he does have a record and past (he is, after all, approaching 50 years old). An informed electorate is the foundation of American democracy -- a principle which Senator Obama has ignored. The mainstream media -- with a few courageous exceptions (the pages of National Review, Weekly Standard, ABC News correspondent Jake Tapper) -- have aided and abetted Barack Obama's quest to change history retroactively by immunizing him from any serious examination. Meanwhile they send the journalistic equivalent of the dogs of war to create their own history of Governor Sarah Palin (notably by pulling journalists off the terrorism "beat" to cover Palin's record in Alaska).

He accuses people who scrutiny his record of being engaged in distractions or pulls the race card out and slurs them as racists. At times, he has all but accused people who inquire about his record as being stupid. He imperiously declares some areas of his life as being "off limits".

For a man who constantly trumpeted the importance of transparency he seems to be adverse from applying that principle to his own life. He owes the voters a clear accounting of his past.

Why have journalists allowed Barack Obama to avoid scrutiny? The media has been called the Fourth Estate for its crucial role in ensuring that democracy thrives. When journalists abdicate their role, we all suffer. What is Barack Obama afraid of regarding his past? What do journalist fear to find?

When they rely on Barack Obama's version of his life to become their stories they become nothing more than campaign workers laboring away for free.

Come to think of it, this does not seem so far from the truth.

Obama vs. McCain=9/10 vs. 9/11

For Many of us, our lives are split into two parts, life before 9/11 and life after 9/11. One of the MAJOR differences between Senator Obama (and I dare say the Democrats in general) and Senator McCain is which side of that 9/11 divide that they reside on.

Despite the fact that we are are living in a post 9/11 world, the Senator from Illinois still has a 9/10 mindset. Obama does not recognize that we are fighting a global war on terror against a group of Islamic Extremists. Senator Obama believes that the our treatment of world affairs at least partly justify the terrorists actions. Senator Obama believes that the terrorists can be "bought" off their goal, that they would trade money for their religious fervor. Senator Obama, is dangerously wrong for America:

THE LESSONS OF 9/11 By AMIR TAHERI September 11, 2008 --

TODAY's joint visit to Ground Zero may give the impression that John McCain and Barack Obama share a common analysis of the causes of 9/11 and how to deal with its legacy. They don't.

The divide starts with the question: Why was America attacked?

McCain's answer is simple (or, as Obama might suggest, simplistic): The United States was attacked because a resurgent Islam has produced a radicalism that dreams of world conquest and sees America as the enemy.

In different shapes and sizes and under a range of labels, that radical streak of Islam has waged war on America since 1979, when Khomeinists seized the US embassy in Tehran and held its diplomats hostage for 444 days.

The killing of 241 Marines in Beirut in 1983, the first World Trade Center attack in 1993 and a host of other operations that claimed more American lives were episodes in a war - the reality of which the United States faced only after 9/11.

McCain doesn't hesitate to acknowledge that his country is engaged in a Global War on Terror. He doesn't believe that 9/11 might've been prompted by some wrong America did to others. To him, the nation was an innocent victim of "Islamic terrorism."

McCain asserts, "America faces a dedicated, focused and intelligent foe in the War on Terrorism. This enemy will probe to find America's weaknesses and strike against them. The United States cannot afford to be complacent about the threat, naive about terrorist intentions, unrealistic about their capabilities, or ignorant to our national vulnerabilities."

He'd pursue and fight these "enemies" wherever they are - including, especially, in Iraq. "If we run away," he says, "they are going to follow us home."

OBAMA, by contrast, doesn't use terms such as "the Global War on Terror" or "Islamic terrorism." Nor does he claim that America was simply an innocent victim.

In one speech, he used the image of a US helicopter flying over the poor countries in Africa and Asia, where it's seen as a symbol of oppression. He says his objective is to turn that helicopter into a symbol of American aid to the downtrodden.

For Obama, the threat comes not from terrorists but from "extremists" and their "program of hate." He never uses such terms as "jihadist," judging them hurtful to Muslims. He speaks of "violent extremists who are a small minority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims."

In one speech, he claimed that the Islamists aim only at "creating a repressive caliphate." He seemingly hasn't heard of jihadist movements whose declared aim is to destroy the United States in the name of Islam.

For McCain, the War on Terror is a "just war" in which Americans fight for their security and their allies'. Obama rejects the concept of "just war." He dismisses the Iraq war as both "unnecessary and unjust" - though the struggle in Afghanistan is "a necessary war."

ONE constant Obama theme is the claim that poverty and economic factors breed terrorism; this echoes the analysis of Jimmy Carter back in the '70s. Strengthening that impression is Obama's pick of Sen. Joseph Biden as running mate.

Biden denies there's a War on Terror in the first place or that the United States even knows whom it's fighting. He has declared that "terrorism is a means, not an end, and very different groups and countries are using it toward very different goals. If we can't even identify the enemy or describe the war we're fighting, it's difficult to see how we will win."

While McCain puts the emphasis on hard power - that is, on meeting and defeating the enemy on the battlefield - Obama, echoing Carter and Bill Clinton, promises a greater use of soft power.

He plans to double US foreign aid to $50 billion a year, allocate a further $20 billion to offering "alternatives to madrassa education" in Muslim countries, provide Afghanistan with another $1 billion a year in support and spend $5 billion on a "Shared Security Partnership Program" with foreign governments.

And he promises to "bolster our ability to speak different languages and understand different cultures" - as if America's unique cultural spectrum didn't already include large numbers of speakers of every living language, with millions of immigrants each year. Sorry: The nation was not attacked because Americans don't speak Arabic or don't understand Saudi or Egyptian cultures.

Obama also says he'll open "America Houses" in Muslim capitals. These would be community centers with libraries, Internet cafes and English-language classes. Has he considered the possibility that these might become prime targets for terrorists?

Plus, he'd set up an "America's Voice Corps," which would recruit and train thousands of young Americans to go to Muslim countries to explain "American values" and, in return, "listen to Islamic voices."

More important, perhaps, Obama promises to attend "a significant Islamic forum" (presumably, the summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference) within his first 100 days in the White House. He believes that the magic of his eloquence might do what America's hard power has failed to achieve. In an early version of this idea, Obama wanted to invite all Muslim heads of state to a Washington summit. He doesn't realize that this would endorse the claim that Islam merits a special treatment even in international relations.

ONE might expect Obama to be more convincing on Afghani stan, his pet war. Yet all we get is a promise to increase aid - despite the fact that the Afghan economy hasn't been able to absorb the $20 billion pledged since 2002. He would also send in two more combat brigades - precisely the number that other NATO allies were supposed to supply by next January. (President Bush just announced that, from now until January, he'll be sending an even larger reinforcement to Afghanistan.)

The Democratic platform's section on foreign policy contains several references to "restoring American leadership." When it comes to tough issues, however, we're told that "the world must do" this or that.

An example: "The world must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons." What if that abstract entity, "the world," of which Obama once claimed to be a citizen, fails to do so? Obama's answer is "tougher sanctions and aggressive, principled and direct high-level diplomacy without preconditions."

He promises to talk to all the "bad guys," including the Khomeinist leaders in Tehran. He ignores the fact that successive US administrations, from Carter to George W. Bush, have talked to the mullahs - so far to no avail. He also forgets that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell traveled to Syria and was rewarded with a series of political murders of US friends in Lebanon.

The platform's Middle East section promises to "stand with allies and pursue diplomacy." Apart from Israel, however, we're never told who those "allies" are.

While Bush fixed the creation of two states, a Palestinian one besides Israel, as the aim of his strategy, Obama takes a step back by claiming merely that the US should "lead the efforts to build the road to a secure and lasting peace."

HE also abandons Bush's mes sage of democratization in the Middle East as the long-term weapon against terrorism and strengthens the fiction that the Palestinian issue is the region's main, if not the sole, problem.

In fact, despotism may be the more important issue. Yet Obama sneers at the elections held in Iraq, Afghanistan and several other Muslim nations thanks to US encouragement and pressure. He would leave America without a core message in the Middle East.

McCain believes that America is at war; Obama doesn't. McCain believes the United States can win on the battlefield; Obama doesn't.

For Obama, the problem is one of effective law enforcement. His model is the way Clinton handled the first attack on World Trade Center in 1993. Obama says: "We are able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial." This means the United States reacting after being attacked.

McCain, however, doesn't fear the politically incorrect term "pre-emption" - hitting the enemy before he hits you.

WHEN all is said and done, this election may well have only one big issue: the existential threat that Islamist terrorism poses to America's safety. Since McCain and Obama offer radically different policies for facing that threat, American voters do have a real choice.