Dick Cheney's Favorite Day of the Year

Huh. I wanted to post the video of Cheney celebrating 9/11 by buying gifts for all his friends and family, but apparently it's disappeared from the internet.

Too bad. People need to remember what an evil fuck he is, and I still hope someday he's prosecuted for war crimes.

Change.org wrote:

In the years following September 11, 2001, the grieving process for the families affected by that day has not become any easier. It is a day of mourning from such tragedies that the United States will forever remember and be affected by. The families of the workers and First Responders should be able to take that day for mourning.

September 11th should be a mental health day, to give our nation a break to remember their loved ones that they lost. We have memorial day for fallen soldiers, but what about the fallen civilians and responders?

This is important to me because I went to school to be a EMT and Firefighter. During my time in the class we went to visit Ground Zero and the Flight 93 memorial. Although I personally did not have family in those terrorist attacks, those memorials were so emotional. Just thinking about the innocent people who lost their lives breaks my heart.

I'm of two minds about this. 9/11 was a tragedy, a tragedy that still affects lives today and informs decisions and opinions. But it was man-made.

In fact, to some extent it was preventable.

And certainly, certain people USED the occasion for their own purposes. Therefore making a national holiday out of 9/11 would unfortunately advance the agendas of some people who want 9/11 to mean more than it really does. Or should.

I agree.

It was not an attack on "Muslims vs. Christians" as some portray it.

It was an attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  It was an attack on globalization and militarization.  On poor people being used as pawns for large multi-national corporations making huge profits selling war as a product.

That message -- tragically -- has gotten lost in all the right-wing pro-MIC spin.

I went to a fair amount of trouble figuring out to comment on the petition at Change.org, and there were only two other comments (including the guy who started the petition) out of over 10,000 signers.  I laid out my disagreement with the national holiday idea, and hit send.

On re-reading it, I changed my mind and deleted it.

People feel strongly about this kind of shit, and I've got nothing to gain by sounding off. If I can't post anonymously, I don't want to bring haters out of the woodwork.

Sadly, this is the world we live in now.  Civil discourse is limited by uncivil zealots.

Dick Cheney's favorite day of the year is tomorrow.  He'll be out buying gifts for everybody all day today.

But he no longer holds the record for mass murder of Americans on our soil (2,977) or overseas (6,858).  Trump has trumped him by 186,175 dead civilians.

Another year, another "Dick Cheney's Favorite Day of the Year."

And Trump's body count is now over 200 times higher than Cheney's.

9/11 should have led to a criminal investigation, not a war

Quote :

...when bin Laden was assassinated, the US found an annotated list of al-Qaeda members dated from 2002. There were only 170 names. He had identified 20 who were dead – only seven had achieved the bizarre goal of being “martyred” – 11 had been detained by the authorities, and 19 had simply left – some to join a more doctrinaire group, some to study, but most just to go home.

Bin Laden had been working on his terror project for several years, and with the list of devoted adherents standing only at 120, he elected to pad it out with five of his sons. Al-Qaeda members, therefore, included Omar bin Laden, who had left the organisation in 2000 and has long lived peacefully in Normandy, married to Jane Felix-Browne, a former parish councillor from Cheshire in the UK.

Whether this was the sum total of al-Qaeda or not, it was representative of a paltry enemy faced by the US on September 10, 2001.

Last night Mrs NoCo reminded me of her personal connection to 9/11.  Her sister, brother-in-law, niece, and the BIL's mother were all at Sea-Tac Airport that morning, waiting to board their flight to New York.  The flight was canceled moments before boarding.

They actually had tickets to fly out a day earlier, September 10th, but at the last minute the niece couldn't get that day off work, so they had to rebook.

Their first stop Tuesday morning, after arrival, would have been the WTC, where they had breakfast reservations at Windows on the World, atop the North Tower.

I've probably mentioned it before, but my base office at the time was in a building across the street from 2 World Trade. Ordinarily, I would have been arriving from the subway and heading into the office at about 8:40 or 8:45, which was, I think, about the time the first plane hit. In actuality, I was supposed to give a demo to AT&T at our New Jersey office that day, so at that time I was on the NJ Turnpike, speeding safely away from the towers. All our employees at the NY office got away safely, but two people in the building were killed when they took the elevator instead of walking down the stairs - they got trapped.

Fun fact: the somewhat iconic TV sequence of a street crowd fleeing the dust and debris as the towers collapsed includes my boss. He was in the crowd.