doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com 9/11

I was at my work place in the Washington DC area and saw the planes crash. I knew immediately who did it....and told colleagues we were at war. Here are a few observations:

First - we were incredibly unprepared....this after 45 years of being ready for 30 minute warning for Armageddon.
1) The "Washington Post" had revealed the Continuity of Government" bunkers maintained during the Cold War about 1996....there was no place to evacuate the government in the event of emergency. We had forgotten the Cold War.
2) The entire cell phone network in the DC area went down. The only commo was by those who had radio phones.
3) The senior levels of nearly every federal agency in the government evacuated their buildings leaving the employees sitting there for several hours with no guidance.
4) The F-16's launched to intercept the one high-jacked plane in the air were not armed.
5) Agencies closed in DC putting their employees on the streets with no way of getting out of DC. George Washington University turned its students out of their dorms.
6) All roads were blocked; it was impossible to go anywhere. They thought maybe truck bombs were headed into the city. The subway system shut down.
7) At my wife's agency by the White House...the senior officers fled the building leaving the employees sitting there with a message on the screen that "the director is evaluating the situation"; finally after a couple of hours the building was to be closed. The security guards received no guidance and were clustered at the front entrance. She got them up to the top floor to go office to office to turn those who refused to leave out of their offices, an individual act.
8) Even at the Pentagon Rumsfeld left his office for an hour or two to "survey the damage" when he should have been running the show.

The incredible reaction of Americans:
1) Americans began walking - women and children first. Strangers offered those on the street their addresses where they could bed for the night,. Shops put TV's out on the sidewalk and offered drinks.
2) Kindness and unity dominated. Flags appeared on every freeway overpass.
3) We recovered. Within 3 days President Bush convened a meeting at Camp David. CIA showed up with an assessment and a complete plan of action and to Rumsfeld's dismay was given OpCom for the Afghan operation. It had men on the ground in the most remote area of Asia in 10 days...and overthrew the Taliban in 75 days after the attack.

After that...in Afghanistan...we lost our way... I can explain this but will forgo that for the moment.

But it was a day that won't be forgotten. My heart turned to stone. Usually there's a busy fly-way down the Potomac going into Reagan-National. For days there was nothing except at night the sounds of fighters jets patrolling the skies.

And by the way there are pictures of rains of people jumping from the towers. They've never been published because they are just too disturbing.

Very interesting, Gene. Point no. 4, in particular, blows me away.

SRH

Destroy ISIS: Yes! Obama made a grave mistake when he pulled all US troops out of Iraq to fulfill a campaign promise.

Destroy Islam: There's a clear difference between Japan and Islam. One is a nation; the other is a religion. Given the 1st amendment, it's problematic to declare war on a religion. And time for a reality check: The vast majority of those fighting Islamist terrorism and dying, or fleeing as refugees, are MUSLIMS. There's a war going on against Islamism WITHIN ISLAM. What we need to do is support those Muslims who oppose the cancer that exists within their religion. If we were to declare war on Islam, that would be playing right into the hands of the Islamists. That's exactly what they want us to do. It'd be a huge propaganda victory for them. We need to support the Afghans who believe their daughters ought to be able to go to school when the Taliban says they can't. Even conservative Muslim nations--like Saudi Arabia . . . and yes, even Iran . . . send their girls to school. The radicals are a minority within the world of Islam.

L: well said...

I appreciate the comments posted. I had a sister working across the street from the Trade Towers and it was days before we heard from her. My family was sweating blood worrying about her. She couldn't live in her apart. for months until the area and her apart. were cleaned.

Argo, I well remember the facts you posted except for what your wife experienced. Someone gave me a DVD showing the poor people jumping from the Towers rather than burn alive. I could only watch it once and it is an indelible memory. A friend of mine witnessed the plane fly into the Pentagon. I burn with rage thinking about those miserable cowards who did this.

L. Brown, we did not fight just nations in WWII. Japan and Germany were run by what can only be described as a religion. The Japanese resurrected Bushido and it became a religious ideology that permeated every level of Japanese society. I have known Germans who grew up under Hitler and believe me, Hitler was worshiped by most Germans. The ones still living still believe in him and his twisted cerebral flatulence. The Americans also de-nazified the Germans trying to expunge the vile religion of Nazism.

The first thing the Moslems do when they come to my area is provide a mosque and a madrassa and teach their children Arabic. This is not assimilation. When my wife's family immigrated from Europe, not one of them went to a school to learn their native language. They knew they were in a much better place and wanted to leave the old life in Europe. Her grandfather joined the National Guard to prove his love for his new country.

Wednesday on Fox, Dana Perino beautifully stated that the effort on flight 93 was the first return strike in the war against terrorism.

That was then. How about now? Western intelligence was in a mess 9/11, and is more perilous today, according to all the evidence. From the way it's going, extreme partisanship, nationalism and populism will turn the West into another authoritarianism as radical as those we despise. No one is talking about democracy in crisis. Xi and Vlad must be pleased.

Why would I want to aid a "Religion" whose goal is to destroy mine?
A lot of people need to realize that Radical Terrorists are the ones actually practicing the teachings of Mohammad. His aim for "HIS" religion was to destroy Judaism & Christianity.

As clear as the memories of 9/11 are to many, you have a clear effort to minimize what happen and who did it. Yesterday the New York Times posted a headline about planes aimed at the towers. Planes don�t aim themselves. And if any American in congress had stood up and stated something happened December 7 at Pearl Harbor by somebody they would not have been able to get off the floor before the sky and roof both fell on them. In 20 years the facts will be So muddied that most will not care and to me that is a sin to be so stupid.

98% of the Muslims in this world are not terrorist's but 98% of the terrorist's in this world are Muslims
a bit over simplistic but yo get the point.

I spent 4 years worth of my life in those two shit holes dealing with that culture. The left embraces their culture. No one talks about the way they treat children. Pedophilia is very common. Rape, abuse, slavery. Parents sell their children into slavery or servitude. Until you have walked that ground, all the books tourist sites and internet knowledge is almost useless to understand what exists there. and then once you see that, you can start to understand what is going on.

Nothing can justify what the Muslim terrorist's did on 9-11; NOTHING!!!
Until the West understands that you must fight any war with them the same way they fight their wars, we are doomed to what we have been doing, fighting a war for a year x 18 years.

Re: Assimilation. I see nothing wrong with immigrants retaining the language they brought with them, and teaching it to their children . . . as long as they also learn English. During WWI, many states had laws that made it illegal to speak German. Apparently no one bothered to consider the fact that maybe--just maybe--having some native speakers of German in the military might come in handy when we capture Hans and Fritz and want to ask them some questions.

As for Muslims and their value to our side in this conflict, I submit the following from Feb 02 and the start of Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan . . . from the viewpoint of our Special Operations forces:

"As they neared the entrance to Peanut valley, their interpreter, an Afghan . . . announced that there were "two Al Qaeda bases up the valley and the AQ were watching them at that time." To the Americans, the locals' ability to determine Al Qaeda at a distance and by location was sometimes uncanny. When Kris asked the Afghan how he could distinguish local Afghans from foreigners like Al Qaeda, he said: "It's easy, and I can tell from one kilometer away by the way they act, look, and walk." This ability was proved time and again, and once saved a Special Forces patrol when he correctly identified, specifically, Chechens and Uzbeks at a distance and prevented them from being ambushed."

That's from a book entitled "Alone at Dawn", which focuses on the Combat Controllers: the Air Force Special Operations personnel who mark targets and call in the close air support our forces (and those of our allies) have counted on to save their lives in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. (And before that, in Southeast Asia.)

That's the value of the "terps" who work with our forces in the Muslim world . . . literally thousands of whom have earned their way to this country under special immigrant visa programs. But are currently stuck in the pipeline--after putting their lives on the line for our men and women in uniform--because of requirements for additional "vetting". The vetting they've already undergone to EARN those special visas is very extensive.

Brian, I appreciate your views. I've also spent significant time in the Muslim world . . . much of it working with Muslims who were reporting intelligence of value to us. Before I went overseas, I was working on Libya from CIA HQ shortly after Qadhafi took over. We had managed to exfiltrate a number of our Libyan agents who were in obvious danger once the government changed hands. We brought them to the states and aided in resettling them. Fortunately, we didn't have to worry about special visas, because CIA has the authority to bring in a certain number of foreign nationals annually without all the red tape. The military credo of leaving no one behind, in my view, should apply equally to those Muslims who've risked their own lives, and those of their families, to help us. If we want allies anywhere in the world--and it's beyond difficult working abroad if you don't speak the language and don't understand the culture--then they need to know that they can count on us. Following the war in Southeast Asia, we brought a large number of Hmongs and Vietnamese to this country. My hometown has a large number of Bosnians (Muslims), who came here after our military intervened to keep them from being slaughtered by their Christian Serb and Croat neighbors. It sometimes turns out that the good guys aren't necessarily those who go to the same church we do. They might well be those who go to a mosque.