2000s In The United States

"Unlike Arafat's dictatorship, where he can do anything he wants and he calls the shots. And unfortunately, they are lethal shots. But you asked me principally about air power. Look at this country. Look at this country. It used F-16's -- and rightly so -- against Saddam's aggression against another country, Kuwait. It used F-16's against another dictatorship, Milosevic. And it bombed a lot of targets. And by the way, I think that America did the right thing. They did absolutely the right thing. But America's cities weren't targeted. Nobody was bombing Washington or New York. You didn't have just bombardments of Times Square or Macy's. You didn't have shoppers being blown up."

"I am certain that I speak on behalf of my entire nation when I say, today we are all Americans. In grief, as in defiance."

"There's something that I don't understand. I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 while Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda are setting up basecamps in safe haven to train terrorists to attack us? That was Senator McCain judgement, it's wrong judgement, when Senator McCain was cheerleading the president to going into Iraq, he suggested 'it is going to be quick and easy,' we'll be 'great liberator' and that's the wrong judgement and it's been costly to us."

"Thank God for 9/11. Thank God that, five years ago, the wrath of God was poured out upon this evil nation. America, land of the sodomite damned... The deadly events of 9/11 were direct outpourings of divine retribution, the immediate visitation of God's wrath and vengeance and punishment for America's horrendous sodomite sins."

"I bow my head to the victims of terrorism. I am highly impressed of the courage of New York residents. The great city and the great American nation are to win!"

"None of us need anniversaries to remind us of what we cannot forget. So it’s no more than co-incidence that I happen to be here, on American soil, in September – this month of dreadful anniversaries. Uppermost on everybody’s mind of course, particularly here in America, is the horror of what has come to be known as 9/11. Nearly three thousand civilians lost their lives in that lethal terrorist strike. The grief is still deep. The rage still sharp. The tears have not dried. And a strange, deadly war is raging around the world. Yet, each person who has lost a loved one surely knows secretly, deeply, that no war, no act of revenge, no daisy-cutters dropped on someone else’s loved ones or someone else’s children, will blunt the edges of their pain or bring their own loved ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War is only a brutal desecration of their memory."

"To fuel yet another war – this time against Iraq – by cynically manipulating people’s grief, by packaging it for TV specials sponsored by corporations selling detergent and running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain it of meaning. What we are seeing now is a vulgar display of the business of grief, the commerce of grief, the pillaging of even the most private human feelings for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent thing for a State to do to its people."

"Twenty-nine years ago, in Chile, on the 11th of September 1973, General Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in a CIA-backed coup. “Chile should not be allowed to go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible,” said Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Laureate, then the U.S. Secretary of State... Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, El Salvador, Mexico and Colombia – they’ve all been the playground for covert – and overt – operations by the CIA. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been killed, tortured or have simply disappeared under the despotic regimes that were propped up in their countries... September 11th has a tragic resonance in the Middle East, too. On the 11th of September 1922, ignoring Arab outrage, the British government proclaimed a mandate in Palestine, a follow-up to the 1917 Balfour Declaration which imperial Britain issued, with its army massed outside the gates of Gaza. The Balfour Declaration promised European Zionists a national home for Jewish people. (At the time, the Empire on which the Sun Never Set was free to snatch and bequeath national homes like a school bully distributes marbles.)"

"Some might ask, how in the world could the Secretary of Defense attack the Pentagon in front of its people? To them I reply, Today, I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself."

"Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk was on the mark... in November 2002, he wrote, “Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 11 September. If the United States invades Iraq, we should remember that.” On many psychological levels, the Bush team was able to manipulate post-9/11 emotions well beyond the phantom of Iraqi involvement in that crime against humanity. The dramatic changes in political climate after 9/11 included a drastic upward spike in the attitude—fervently stoked by the likes of Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and the president—that our military should be willing to attack potential enemies before they might attack us. Few politicians or pundits were willing to confront the reality that this was a formula for perpetual war, and for the creation of vast numbers of new foes who would see a reciprocal logic in embracing such a credo themselves. President Bush’s national security adviser “felt the administration had little choice with Hussein,” reporter Bob Woodward recounted in mid-November 2002. A quote from Condoleezza Rice summed up the approach. “Take care of threats early.” Determining exactly what constitutes a threat—and how to “take care” of it—would be up to the eye of the beholder in the Oval Office."

"What Rand Paul did today on the Senate was outrageous He is a guy that put us in hundreds of billions of dollars in debt.... And now he’s going to tell us that a billion dollars a year over 10 years is just too much for us to handle? You know, there are some things that they have no trouble putting on the credit card, but somehow when it comes to the 9/11 first responder community—the cops, the firefighters, the construction workers, the volunteers, the survivors—all of a sudden, man, we’ve got to go through this."

"We now realize that the destruction of the Bamian Buddhas itself was a loud warning signal to the world of far greater devastation that was on the way."

"Not only were the media bombarding us all the time with talk about the terrorist threat; this threat was also obviously libidinally invested — just remember the series of movies from Escape from New York to Independence Day. That is the rationale of the often-mounted association of the attacks with Hollywood disaster movies: the unthinkable which happened was the object of fantasy, so that, in a way, America got what it fantasized about, and that was the biggest surprise."

"The world that was behind me when I went into school that morning was gone forever, and the new one waiting for me that afternoon was wildly different."

"Downtown Manhattan that day looked like exactly what it was, a war zone."

"A layer of ash covered the streets and a cacophony of alarms refused to cease. I remember the 60 block walk home up the middle of 6th Avenue which was completely void of all traffic, except for sporadic rescue vehicles from neighboring counties with unfamiliar demarcations rushing downtown, their sirens piercing the eerie silence. Crowds of people gathered outside any establishment with a television, standing like statues in anesthetized silence."

"From all points in Manhattan one could look to the South and see a huge plume of smoke hovering over the rubble where two towers once stood, two majestic American symbols representing both commerce in the free world and Democracy. Buildings that transcended width and height, real estate value and a prestigious office address. These towers spelled America, they spelled your name and mine."

"The air was exceptionally thick with the smell of pungent smoke from smoldering rubble."

"... there was no discerning morning from afternoon, day from night. Just knowing that I was there to serve, I was there to show my gratitude, I was there to say yes, I believe."

"I’ll never forget the acrid smell, the fearful and numbed look on people’s faces, the sounds and the sour taste in my mouth.""

"That morning terrorists gave their lives to cause those attacks. So here we stand, six years later, prepared to give ours to prevent further ones."

"The story of what happened in that room, and when, has never been fully told, but is arguably more important in terms of understanding America's military capabilities that day than anything happening simultaneously on Air Force One or in the Pentagon, the White House, or norad's impregnable headquarters, deep within Cheyenne Mountain, in Colorado. It's a story that was intentionally obscured, some members of the 9/11 commission believe, by military higher-ups and members of the Bush administration who spoke to the press, and later the commission itself, in order to downplay the extent of the confusion and miscommunication flying through the ranks of the government."

"For the neads crew, 9/11 was not a story of four hijacked airplanes, but one of a heated chase after more than a dozen potential hijackings—some real, some phantom—that emerged from the turbulence of misinformation that spiked in the first 100 minutes of the attack and continued well into the afternoon and evening. At one point, in the span of a single mad minute, one hears Nasypany struggling to parse reports of four separate hijackings at once. What emerges from the barrage of what Nasypany dubs "bad poop" flying at his troops from all directions is a picture of remarkable composure. Snap decisions more often than not turn out to be the right ones as commanders kick-start the dormant military machine. It is the fog and friction of war live—the authentic military history of 9/11."

"Powell's question—"Is this real-world or exercise?"—is heard nearly verbatim over and over on the tapes as troops funnel onto the ops floor and are briefed about the hijacking. Powell, like almost everyone in the room, first assumes the phone call is from the simulations team on hand to send "inputs"—simulated scenarios—into play for the day's training exercise. Boston's request for fighter jets is not as prescient as it might seem. Standard hijack protocol calls for fighters to be launched—"scrambled"—merely to establish a presence in the air. The pilots are trained to trail the hijacked plane at a distance of about five miles, out of sight, following it until, presumably, it lands. If necessary, they can show themselves, flying up close to establish visual contact, and, if the situation demands, maneuver to force the plane to land. At this point, certainly, the notion of actually firing anything at a passenger jet hasn't crossed anyone's mind."

"Incredibly, Marr has only four armed fighters at his disposal to defend about a quarter of the continental United States. Massive cutbacks at the close of the Cold War reduced NORAD's arsenal of fighters from some 60 battle-ready jets to just 14 across the entire country. (Under different commands, the military generally maintains several hundred unarmed fighter jets for training in the continental U.S.) Only four of norad's planes belong to neads and are thus anywhere close to Manhattan—the two from Otis, now circling above the ocean off Long Island, and the two in Virginia at Langley. Nasypany starts walking up and down the floor, asking all his section heads and weapons techs if they are prepared to shoot down a civilian airliner if need be, but he's jumping the gun: he doesn't have the authority to order a shootdown, nor does Marr or Arnold, or Vice President Cheney, for that matter. The order will need to come from President Bush, who has only just learned of the attack at a photo op in Florida."

"It was the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, 2003, and the hearing room in the Hart Senate Office Building, in Washington, was half empty as the group of mostly retired military brass arranged themselves at the witness table before the 9/11 commission. The story the norad officers had come to tell before the commission was a relatively humbling one, a point underscored by the questions commission chairman Thomas Kean introduced during his opening remarks: How did the hijackers defeat the system, and why couldn't we stop them? These were important questions. Nearly two years after the attack, the Internet was rife with questions and conspiracy theories about 9/11—in particular, where were the fighters? Could they have physically gotten to any of the hijacked planes? And did they shoot down the final flight, United 93, which ended up in a Pennsylvania field?"

"A former senior executive at the F.A.A., speaking to me on the condition that I not identify him by name, tried to explain. "Our whole procedures prior to 9/11 were that you turned everything [regarding a hijacking] over to the F.B.I.," he said, reiterating that hijackers had never actually flown airplanes; it was expected that they'd land and make demands. "There were absolutely no shootdown protocols at all. The F.A.A. had nothing to do with whether they were going to shoot anybody down. We had no protocols or rules of engagement.""

"Cheney echoed, "The significance of saying to a pilot that you are authorized to shoot down a plane full of Americans is, a, you know, it's an order that had never been given before." And it wasn't on 9/11, either. President Bush would finally grant commanders the authority to give that order at 10:18, which—though no one knew it at the time—was 15 minutes after the attack was over."

"We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you will be okay. We are returning to the airport. Nobody move, everything will be okay. If you try to make any moves you'll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet."

"Nobody move please, we are going back to the airport, don't try to make any stupid moves."

"Hello? We're looking in... We're overlooking the Financial Center. Three of us. Two broken windows. OH GOD! OH! —"

"We may have a hijack. We have some problems over here right now."

"Something is wrong. We are in a rapid descent... we are all over the place. … I see water. I see buildings. We are flying low. We are flying very, very low. We are flying way too low. … Oh my God, we are way too low... Oh my God, we're —"

"What do I tell the pilots to do?"

"Holy shit, man. That's the other building. That's terrorists! That's terrorists, bro! That's fucking terrorists!"

"Are you guys ready? Let's roll."

"They're coming."

"NASYPANY: Okay, Foxy. Plug in. I want to make sure this is on tape.… This is what—this is what I foresee that we probably need to do. We need to talk to F.A.A. We need to tell 'em if this stuff's gonna keep on going, we need to take those fighters on and then put 'em over Manhattan, O.K.? That's the best thing. That's the best play right now. So, coordinate with the F.A.A. Tell 'em if there's more out there, which we don't know, let's get 'em over Manhattan. At least we got some kinda play."

"NASYPANY: My recommendation, if we have to take anybody out, large aircraft, we use AIM-9s in the face.… If need be."

"It was nearly ten years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history. The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory—hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground, black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction. And yet we know the worse images were those that were unseen to the world. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of child's embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a hole in our hearts."

"On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together. We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country. On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family. We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice. We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda — an organization headed by Osama bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocents in our country and around the globe. And so we went to war against al Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies."

"Ten years have passed since a perfect blue sky morning turned into the blackest of nights. Since then, we've lived in sunshine and in shadow, and although we can never unsee what happened here, we can also see that children who lost their parents have grown into young adults, grandchildren have been born and good works and public service have taken root to honor those we loved and lost."

"Never before in our history has America asked so much over such a sustained period of an all-volunteer force. So I can say without fear of contradiction or being accused of exaggeration, the 9/11 generation ranks among the greatest our nation has ever produced, and it was born — it was born — it was born right here on 9/11."

"These past 10 years underscore the bonds between all Americans. We have not succumbed to suspicion and mistrust. It will be said of us that we kept that faith; that we took a painful blow, and emerged stronger."

"America has always been very visible... I'm still proud to be from the country that I'm from, I still love the country that I'm from. I'm still able to achieve great things here and I'm doing my best to do so. But, it's amazing. When we came together like that, when we put our differences aside and we declared war on the people that harmed us... When we got together to help the people and the families of the people that died on 9/11 it made me feel amazing. It made me feel patriotic, it made me feel strong, it made me love this country in a way that in all my years I'd never really loved it. You know? Because that's the America we all dream of. That's the America that we all want, this America that's strong, and powerful and strikes back when necessary. The sleeping giant that we were taught about in our history books, ready to just to just be the super-power that we need to be and having the best army in the world and wow. Wow. A congress and a president that'll work together, and what have we become? Eleven years later? Eleven years later we don't have those answers that we wanted from 9/11. We have most. We know who did it, we know why they did it. We know how they did it. There's conspiracy theories abound; the proof is pretty much there. But, we've done so much to gut ourselves. We've done so much to gut our freedoms... At the end of the day, the America that we could have been had we stayed on that path, the America that we could have been had we stayed together, had we worked hard to rebuild, to be better to be stronger, is a dream again. You know, and that's really sad... We're more divided than we've ever been, and that? That breaks my heart... You? If you're under the age of eighteen, you've never lived in an America like ours. You know? You've lived in a good country, don't get me wrong. You've lived in a fantastic country, one that's ailing right now, there's no arguing that. But, so close and yet? So far... I remember that American dream, and I just wonder. I wonder if America can ever be the same again. We'll see."

"There is a long list of ways America was transformed by the terrorist attacks that destroyed the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001. But the question of how TV itself was changed – particularly in ways still relevant today – is more complicated. CNBC anchor Shepard Smith, who covered the attack and its aftermath when he worked at Fox News Channel, points to a small but impactful TV innovation: the constant presence of an onscreen news ticker, scrolling through headlines, on cable news channels. It may not sound like much today, given how so many of us now juggle multiple screens at once. But in 2001, the idea of crowding TV screens with changing bursts of information was relatively new – required by the deluge of data pouring into newsrooms regarding the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil."

"Arguably, [9/11 news coverage] was one of the last examples of a common news culture, where the country was knit together by these horrendous attacks... united by a common enemy," says Andrew Heyward, who was president of CBS News during 9/11 — noting that broadcast networks shifted into cable news mode, offering continuous coverage, with no commercials, from the attack on a Tuesday through to Saturday. Aaron Brown, who anchored CNN's 9/11 coverage that day from a rooftop, says the disaster also helped cement the idea that TV news – especially cable news channels – were expected to offer continuous coverage of major news events more often. Brown notes, instead of spending 24 hours covering a wide range of subjects, major American cable news channels excelled when they had one big, highly emotional story to cover that the audience wouldn't dare turn away from. "The lesson of 9/11 was that you need one great story," he adds, noting that cable news channels still tend to cover a narrow range of popular stories each day. "You feel like a schmuck if you say, [after covering a huge tragedy], 'Let me tell you about the weather.'"

""If the FBI and the CIA and 14 other intelligence agencies had been talking to each other, most of us feel that the attack would have been prevented." Thomas Kean, chair of the 9/11 Commission."

"Countless investigations have examined why the United States didn’t see 9/11 coming, and the explanations are many. But one factor these assessments don’t fully capture is that some analysts did know that such an attack could happen, and that many of the earliest, most tenacious, and most perceptive of them were female, in an institution that had long underestimated women and their work."

"When the World Trade towers fell on September 11, 2001, there was one refrain I heard over and over again, a common response that was both automatic and indicting: “It looked like something out of a Michael Bay movie.” More specifically, the explosions and citywide carnage resembled Armageddon, the Bay-directed action vehicle that had come out four summers prior and contained scenes of epic metropolitan mayhem that were still something of a cinematic novelty at the time. We pray that nothing on the scale of 9/11 will ever happen again, but if something actually did, we’d now have a sickening number of summer movies to compare it to. This weekend’s Man of Steel is only the latest film this year to exploit familiar 9/11 imagery in ways that are far more extreme and blatant than anything we’ve seen on the big screen before, as though Hollywood feels the need to out-9/11 itself. It’s lazy, it’s cheap, it’s deadening, and it needs to stop."