NOTE: This is a re-print of an entry I wrote on 9/11/03. Since it continues to reflect my feelings about this grave date (although I no longer live overlooking the ocean), I decided to run it again in its entirety on this the 7th anniversary of that awful day.

It is pouring outside today. The sky is flat, gray, heavy, its lifelessness mirrored on the dull ocean in front of my house. The horizon hides behind a veil of mist. It is as if the weather is directing me to remember, to honor this day by remaining focused on my home, my family, and the memories we share from having lived through this day together.

My big decision this morning has been whether to treat this as any other day: whether to blog as I usually do and run errands that need to be run, or whether I should spend it wrapped in sorrow, contemplation, a sad 24 hours that might somehow honor those whose lives were taken from them.

But why?

I do not need a day on the calendar to make me mourn. I do not need TV programs and sad-faced announcers garbed in black to recall those who fell on this date, or those who came before them - or since - in this fight for freedom. I need no magazine covers inciting my anger, no dusty poems dragged out from college textbooks to express this strange mingled sense of loss and rage. I live with those feelings every day: they are a part of my soul now, a part of our national soul. We are no longer innocent. We are no longer carefree. We are remarkable for making this sadness a part of us, and yet defiantly and exuberantly carrying on.

Note: I did not say “move on.” Quite the opposite, in fact. I want us to stay here, in this moment, filled with the rage which makes us recognize so very clearly the irrational foe who seeks our destruction. I want us to somberly reflect on the effects of our blind “tolerance,” our misguided sympathies for “root causes” and our decades of ignoring that this very same battle is waged constantly across the globe, this battle between freedom and fanatics, only we no longer have the smug comfort of believing it will never touch us. I want us to contain this knowledge within us every day, and to go on with our lives while holding it close in our hearts.

I do not want a calendar or a clock telling me when to remember and when to tuck my memories away until the next time the day rolls around, year after year, ad infinitum. This horror, this anger, this outrage is part of my life now. It is part of every day, and it will be as long as there is something over which I should be so inflamed.

My life was changed two years ago. Admitting that fact is not “letting the terrorists win” - it is telling them that I remember what they did and yet I can blog, I can run errands, I can swim in the sad-colored water and enjoy the feel of it on my skin, I can laugh with my husband and play on the floor with my son. I can live this day as if it were any other, even as they continue their threats, their promises of greater evil and more life-shattering deeds. But they will not change my life. I will keep living because I have seen what they are capable of, I have seen the worst they’ve been able to do, and the horror makes freedom taste that much sweeter.

If there is a “message to the world” to be read in the blazing skies on September 11, 2001, it is this: that pride will always overcome terror, that joy will always survive despair, and that freedom is not encased in walls of cement and steel but in the hearts of those who can smile even as their faces are covered in ashes.

Remember.

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Members of China’s armed police demonstrate a rapid deployment during an anti-terrorist drill held in Jinan, capital of east China’s Shandong Province July 2, 2008, roughly one month ahead of the Beijing Olympics.(Xinhua/Fan Changguo Photo)

What, like terrorists can’t afford a box of nails?

Mariane Pearl, widow of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, has dropped her lawsuit against al Qaeda in New York.

The lawsuit, which sought an unspecified amount of damages for Daniel’s beheading, had named as defendants “those terrorists, terrorist organizations and the supporting charitable and banking organizations for the senseless kidnapping, torture and murder of Daniel Pearl.”

The banking organizations included Habib Bank Limited, one of Pakistan’s largest banks. Pearl’s attorneys claimed the bank was funding various “charities” which served as fronts for terrorist organizations. The bank had denied the claim.

Back in March another defendant — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the force behind the 9/11 attacks — had claimed responsibility for Pearl’s murder.

Attorneys for Mariane Pearl state that she voluntarily dismissed the suit for “personal reasons” which have nothing to do with the merits of the suit.

Frankly, I’m truly disappointed in this move. The “Mighty Heart” movie about Mariane Pearl’s life, starring Angelina Jolie, had done quite a bit to remind folks of the travesty behind Daniel Pearls’s death, and how actual justice has not yet been meted out.

Gitmo detainees are just sitting around in their cells, unfairly deprived and mentally withering, right? That, at least, is what the liberal U.S. media would have us believe. Odd they left out the introduction of vegetable gardening and “film nights”.

The steps, though limited, mark a change of tack for the American military after months of seeking to toughen discipline at the facility after unrest in one of its sections - Camp 4 - erupted last year with a brief riot and the suicides of three inmates.

It is in Camp 4, which is reserved for the most compliant of the prisoners, that the first changes are being brought in. Its roughly 45 detainees - out of a total of 375 still at Guantanamo - have already been allowed to tend a vegetable garden and watch television shows selected by officers. Among them is a documentary show about deep sea fishing off Alaska called The Deadliest Catch. The idea is to provide the inmates, most of whom are accused of ties with al-Qa’ida or the Taliban, with “increased mental stimulation,” Navy Rear Admiral Mark Buzby said this week. Another innovation is the expansion of language classes, both Arabic and English, for detainees who must nonetheless sit in classrooms with one ankle chained to the floor.

Now we just need to introduce “Weenie Roast” night — with all-pork hot dogs, of course — and teach them all to sing Kum By Yah. That’ll teach them not to mess with us.

Note to organizers of interfaith events designed to help Christians understand Islam: you might want to pick speakers who don’t dismiss a murder as an “aberration” and who consider it rational for riots to break out over a cartoon.

But if you do choose such speakers, don’t be surprised if Anwyn calls them on the carpet.

I have done it. I have finally figured out the “root causes of terrorism.” Not merely the ones the Democrats prattle on about, but the true, quintessential causes of the terrorist acts waged by Islamic extremists throughout the world. Quite simply, the answer is thus: a life without bacon is not worth living. And, as we all know, I’m not entirely convinced that a life without the occasional martini is all that worthwhile, either.

So, could this be the next big thing in anti-terrorist tactics?

Found on Flickr.

TV evangelist Pat Robertson apparently can’t stand being out of the national news for more than a month at a time. This time, continuing his tradition of making dire predictions, Robertson is claiming that God has warned him there will be a major terrorist attack in the U.S. some time after September.

In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in “mass killing” late in 2007.

“I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” he said during his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”

Robertson said God told him during a recent prayer retreat that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.

One wonders why Robertson can’t see that baselessly predicting a mass terrorist attack can be criminal itself. And lest someone argue that Robertson is justified in making this “prediction” because God told him to do so, consider Robertson’s own appraisal of his earlier hit-and-miss predictions:

“I have a relatively good track record,” he said. “Sometimes I miss.”

ThirdWaveDave points to a blog-based effort to demonstrate support for US Airways’ actions in response to the Flying Imams.

Currently, five out of six of those imams want US Airway to pay them off a monetary settlement. The imams are being legally represented by the Council on American Islamic Relations.

I’m not sure whether it’ll make any difference sending supportive email to US Airways, but Radio Patriot seems to think it will.

UPDATE: Dean’s World has more on the Imam Imbroglio ™.

Ed Lasky at The American Thinker points to radical Islam’s two-faced attitude toward women. We’re chattle on the one hand, but perfectly suitable for blowing ourselves — and others — up.

Muslims have a perfect double bind for us infidels: if women wearing what amount to masks and loose clothes are not searched, they are a perfect vehicle for murder. And “vehicle” is all they are, as their humanity means nothing to those using them.

Nothing like a good ol’ double standard.

WaPo reports that earlier this month Homeland Security acknowledged a program under which all travellers crossing U.S. borders — citizens and foreigners alike — are assigned a score based on their perceived threat risk.

The Automated Targeting System (ATS) program was initially created to prevent drug traffic from entering the U.S. with cargo. DHS now seeks to expand its coverage from cargo and foot traffic to include air and sea travel. Evidently, the Department has already been using the program in this regard for four years but only recently disclosed that fact in fine print within the Federal Register. That disclosure also reveals that the scores cannot be appealed by travellers and will remain on record for forty years.

That’s right: forty years.

Meanwhile, in other air-travel news, six Muslim clerics are outraged after being removed from a US Airways flight in Minneapolis last week. The Imams claim they were singled out because they prayed quietly in a group prior to boarding the flight, and they demand an investigation.

U.S. Air Marshalls removed the clerics at the pilot’s request. The decision was made in response to passenger and flight personnel observations:

• A note from a passenger to a flight attendant reported that the clerics had been “cursing” America’s role in the Iraq war and chanting the name of Allah prior to the flight.

• A gate agent observed that the men were praying loudly prior to boarding the plane.

• Other passengers, including a travelling off-duty flight attendant, saw the men changing their seat assignments so that two sat in first class, two in the middle, and two in the rear. That arrangement paralleled the grouping on one of the planes used in the 9/11 attacks.

• One Imam seated toward the front of the plane made two trips back to speak to his colleagues in the rear.

• Three clerics requested seat belt extenders despite not physically needing — or using — them. The extenders are made of a belt with a metal buckle which could be used as a weapon. They were found on the floor, unused.

There’s no word on the Imam’s score under the Automated Tracking System.

UPDATE: One Imam denies the accounts of the passengers and Marshalls. He also denies that the WTC attacks were carried out by Muslims and insists that he’d previously cut ties to an organization being investigated for its involvement in terrorist activity.

UPDATE: More on this at Wizbang!

A new drinking game to try: chug your preferred shot every time al Zawahiri says in the soon-to-be-released video that Americans are ‘infidels’ or that faithful Muslims should kill Westerners in the name of the ‘religion of peace.’ But don’t blame me for your hangover.

Just when I thought the world could not possibly get any more strange, I find out that Osama bin Laden has the hots for Whitney Houston in a big way, at least according to a woman who claims she was once OBL’s sex slave. (Found via ISOU.)

“He explained to me that to possess Whitney he would be willing to break his colour rule and make her one of his wives.

“Whitney Houston’s name was the one that would be mention constantly.

“How beautiful she was, what a nice smile she has, how truly Islamic she is but is just brainwashed by American culture and by her husband Bobby Brown, whom Osama talked about having killed, as if it were normal to have women’s husbands killed.”

Obviously, an incisive intellect isn’t required in the sex slave business or that whole 9/11 thing might’ve rung a bell with her.

But, seriously: Whitney Houston??!

Hey, I’m 100% in favor of shipping her over to him. Anyone else?

*Department of Dumbasses

Like everyone else, I woke up to reports of a planned terror attack against the U.S. Evidently we’ve beefed up security enough to make hijacking a plane unfeasible for the terrorists. Nope, this time they planned to take advantage of an all-but-ignored soft spot: liquids.

The sports drink could be combined with a peroxide-based paste to form a potent “explosive cocktail,” if properly done, said a U.S. counterterrorism official.

“There are strong reasons to believe the materials in a beverage like that could have been part of the formula,” the official said. (Source: CNN)

Yep, since the terrorists intending to swap explosive liquids with the contents of their Gatorade bottles and ignite them with an iPod or cell phone, the rest of us get to pay for their plans. No more carrying a Venti Carmel Mocchiato from Starbucks on flights. No more juice boxes for the kiddies or even a bottle of vodka to sneak sips from whenever the turbulence gets too bad. No deodorant for those last-minute fixes before arrival. Hell, women can’t even bring makeup or perfume in their carry-on baggage.

No makeup! No perfume?!

Welcome to hyper-security where airports are guaranteed to be filled with smelly, grumpy, tired people… even more so than they are now.

And the result is this:

Photo: AP

Now, wait a second. I thought the threat involved potentially explosive liquids. So why the hell are we hoarding big piles of them inside the airport?!

UPDATE: In light of Scotland Yard’s belief that the suspects who remain at large may have instructions on what to do if the plot was thwarted, shouldn’t there be a guard at these dump sites at the very least? It only takes one tossed laptop landing square in a bin like that, ya know?

While sitting here watching the 5 o’clock news I got an email from Magen David Adom. Were I not all too well-acquainted with the media’s tendency to report only one side of the story — the one most likely to incite those quick to anger and slow to think — I would’ve thought the two were wholly unrelated.

Exhibit One:

Neighborhood Bombing ‘Against Humanitarian Law’:

Israel’s bombing of a crowded Beirut neighbourhood where Hezbollah had its headquarters has breached humanitarian law, a senior UN official has said, as reports emerged of heavy fighting on Lebanon’s southern border.

Exhibit Two:

MDA Statistics: July 12th to July 24th, 2006

Hezbollah rockets hit northern Israel: 2,200
Qassam rockets launched from Gaza since June 25th: 193
Israelis in bomb shelters: 1,000,000
MDA ambulances deployed in north: 750
Number wounded, treated by MDA: 823
Israeli civilians killed: 17
Wounded today (July 24): 49

I know who my friends are, and I believe my friends.

In an ideal world, I’d have something witty to say right about now. But I don’t, so:

[insert your best anti-Osama crack here].

Once again acknowledging its presence in Iraq, Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the murders of two more diplomats:

Al Qaeda in Iraq says it has killed two Algerian diplomats kidnapped last week, according to a website statement.

The statement was posted on a site often used by the group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al Zarqawi.

It said: “The head of the Algerian mission Ali Belaroussi and the diplomat Azzedine Belkadi, whose government is ruling in violation of God’s will, were killed.”

It claimed the envoys had been killed because of the Algerian government’s repression of Muslims in their north African country.

“We won’t forget what Algeria did to Muslims, by killings, destruction and spilling their blood,” it said. (Source: Sky News)

Meanwhile, the al Qaeda-backed Iraqi insurgence has killed twelve Muslim factory laborers just trying to get home from work.

Terrorists are back at it, setting off 4 more bombs targeting commuters.

“We know that we have four explosions or attempts of explosions, and it is still pretty unclear as to what has happened,”‘ Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair said outside Scotland Yard.

“At the moment the casualty numbers appear to be very low…the bombs appear to be smaller” than those detonated July 7, he said. (Source: Guardian).

Frankly, it sounds like a copy-cat incident.

There’s up-to-the-minute coverage at Command Post.

The FBI has added the names of 10 more Chinese nationals to the list of “persons of interest” believed to be connected to a dirty bomb attack that allegedly targets Boston.

Two law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, said the names were part of the same anonymous tip that led authorities on Wednesday to announce that they are seeking to question four other Chinese and two Iraqis.

The officials said the tip remains uncorroborated and there is no credible evidence that such a plot exists.

It was unclear why all the names were not announced at the same time. The officials said there was no new information that led to the addition of the 10 names.

Federal authorities say they are no more worried now than they were later.

Still, I have to wonder if any of these 10 names were connected to the Chinese stowaways found in a cargo ship at the Port of Los Angeles last week. Or is that just a coincidence?

Maybe Europeans aren’t paranoid after all. Maybe we really are out to get them. Or, maybe we’ll just wait and let them do themselves in. It’ll only take 15 years or so, according to the CIA.

I wonder which ad company the Sauds hired for this one:

Saudi Arabia has begun a radio advertising campaign in 19 U.S. cities citing the Sept. 11 Commission report as proof that it has been a loyal ally in the fight against al-Qaeda.

The two advertisements quote the commission’s conclusion that the Saudi government did not fund al-Qaeda. One ad cites the report’s finding that Saudi Arabia stopped a 1998 plot to attack U.S. troops; the other cites a finding that Saudis were not flown out of the United States right after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

A Saudi embassy spokesman, Nail al-Jubeir said the ads tell Americans “these are the facts that your own independent commission has said about Saudi Arabia. You make up your mind.”

I made up my mind on Sept. 12 and no amount of advertising is going to change it. As much as it pains me to agree with Michael Moore on anything, methinks the Sauds doth protest too much.