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 that day. 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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While “the measure does not allow those convicted to be imprisoned in the US nor permit those cleared to stay”, the U.S. Supreme Court is about to have a show down with the administration over detention of individuals the courts do not consider threats.

So, what’s an administration to do? Here’s my prediction: DOJ lawyers will file charges then drag out the trials as long as possible to keep suspected terrorists imprisoned. And where will they be held? Here in the US, of course. Oh, wait… that’s already happening!

Sen. Dick Durbin justifies the decision by saying that Gitmo has “become a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda”. Considering how long criminal trials tend to drag out (see above), all that Congress has accomplished is relocating al-Qaeda’s recruiting tool onto U.S. soil where, let’s face it, their activities will be cloaked under claims of rights to free association and speech.

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It just so happens that the DB is just a few miles from my house. I live in the town of Leavenworth. My husband works on Ft. Leavenworth’s installation. This is our home, and we don’t want to share it with detainees or those they’d draw here.

If you’ve never been to Leavenworth, it’s easy to imagine that the Disciplinary Barracks are behind massive walls, safely tucked away from polite society. A threat to no one. But that’s only if you haven’t been here. Those who’ve visited our town know better.

If you’ve actually driven on post — something which only requires showing the guards your driver’s license and proof of insurance — you know that, for all of its security, there’s no real separation between the DB and the community of Ft. Leavenworth.

Last year, for instance, I took a wrong turn en route to picking up my son at his summer day camp on post and almost wound up in the prison’s parking lot. It’s a scary building, as it should be, but until now it’s only been frightening for what it contains: the worst of the worst among the military.

With Gitmo closing, the DB just got more scary. Not because of what’s contained within it, but because filling it with terrorists and/or detainees brings an external threat: that, along with the military installation of Ft. Leavenworth, the sleepy little town surrounding it will itself become a target as well.

The enormity of that risk cannot be understated. The Command and General General Staff College (CGSC) located at Ft. Leavenworth is filled, at any given time, with 1,000+ U.S. and foreign military officers. The expansion of the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) adds to their number, as does the Battle Command Training Center.

In addition to military personnel, Ft. Leavenworth is home to thousands of families. Within jogging distance of the DB are three elementary schools and the high school that educate the children of personnel assigned to Ft. Leavenworth. In between are nestled the Commissary and P/X, the library, hospital, veterinary clinic, Post Office and chapel. Cars slowly drive along the streets on post all day. In other words, although it’s unlikely someone would escape from the DB, it’s even more unlikely they could escape unnoticed.

But it’s not escapees that are the big worry if Gitmo inmates are transferred to the DB on Ft. Leavenworth. It’s those who’d be interested in helping them escape, and the lengths to which they might be willing to go, particularly if such efforts would involve taking out a number of Americans.

The town of Leavenworth is separated from the Fort only by a patrolled chain link fence and manned through gates. To one side flows the Missouri river, a sluggish and wide expanse that draws campers to its banks along with bored fishermen. In the summer, the River Front Festival brings most of the town’s occupants to the shore for fireworks and festivities. And several times a year we’re down there sandbagging the thing to keep it within its bounds.

Crossing that river from the Missouri side brings drivers to Metropolitan Avenue, the main street passing Ft. Leavenworth. You can’t help noticing the post as you drive along Metropolitan, although the buffalo roaming in the field nearby seem rather incongruous. The rest of the town flows south from that street which is lined with gas stations, convenience stores and a rather popular steak house from which you can see the old DB’s guard tower.

In the small, 1950s-style roadside diner where I like to have breakfast on occasion, the subject has usurped Michael Vick as the topic of interest. In between cups of bitter coffee and plates of fried eggs with hashbrowns, Gitmo rules the day.

One man, whose house is across the street from Ft. Leavenworth, says he’d never be able to feel safe in his own home knowing that just across the way were the kind of folks responsible for 9/11. Yes, he says, he supposes they’re innocent until proven guilty. But — and he pauses here to take a swig of coffee for emphasis — is a belief in their innocence going to make it any less likely terrorists would try to liberate them?

A college student, amply decorated with what I’ll kindly refer to as “body art”, shakes his head. There’s no proof terrorists tried breaking out detainees from Gitmo, he argues. Around him, heads shake slowly and shoulders shrug. Is it really crazy to worry that housing detainees in the midst of a small Kansas town would make escape attempts more likely?

A voice clears. The conversation pauses. A grizzled old man whose winter work jumpsuit appears embedded with grease that’s older than the rest of us speaks up. He’s lived here all of his 73 years, he says. His parents moved here after his father retired because it’s a sane place for people interested in simple living. After his own military service he retired here, too, for the very same reason.

Like most senior citizens, he remembers a day when people didn’t lock their doors and windows. Those days may be gone, he says, but this is still a town where you can walk safely down the streets any time, day or night. It’s safe, he says, because our police force has kept pace with our population. Add a couple of hundred detainees — and any family members visiting to be near them — and that balance changes. And then what?

That, ultimately, is the question that haunts us all as we ponder an influx of what we’ve been told are the worst of the worst outside the military, these alleged terrorists: and then what?

Oh, sure, we’re all aware that the soldiers incarcerated within the DB are the military’s dregs but, horrifying though some may be, there is one comfort to be had: they’re still Americans. They’re criminals, to be sure, but they’ve not pledged the annihilation of our citizens, our way of life, our government.

This town is at the heart of the nation’s heartland. This is Americana at its finest. This is the kind of town that television and movies portray when they want to evoke feelings of patriotism and nostalgia. Whether it’s the flags lining every street on Memorial Day, or our Veteran’s Day parade in which everyone from the VFW to the Cub Scouts march, the carnival that happens every summer in Wal-Mart’s parking lot or the pancake breakfast with Santa every December down at City Hall, this is where Main Street USA really exists.

So know this, President Obama: if you put Gitmo detainees here, you aren’t just putting a target on the military installation that trains the majors of the combined services in leadership and then prepares their finest for battalion command at the School for Advanced Military Studies. You aren’t just making the Battle Command Training Cente and the post where the Center for Army Lessons Learned even more attractive to those who’d benefit most from wiping them out.

You put Gitmo detainees here amid in this sleepy little Kansas town which so perfectly represents everything America stands for, and you’re making a target of everyone who lives here. Oh, sure, the the Geneva Convention would call us non-combatants — innocents, even — but somehow, I don’t think terrorists and their pals give a hoot about such designations.

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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.

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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.

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

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

Found on Flickr.

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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.”

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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 ™.

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