Interesting history of the breaking of the siege of Vienna, by a Polish King determined to fight back the Islamic conquerers.

Thanks to Larwyn.

Posted by: Ace at 08:56 AM | Comments (13)
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Don't Hire Deb is asking.

"Hosedragger" has a comment about hearing the sounds of dying firemen:

As they began to show footage from people that were at GZ during and immediately after the Towers collapsed, we heard it. It is a sound all firemen know and all firemen dread hearing. I was asked if I heard all the car alarms going off. In the dead silence that followed the collapse, you heard it piercing through the smoke and dust.

Those were not car alarms you hear in the videos my friends. Those are what we call P.A.S.S. alarms. They are what is activated on a downed fireman. You can activate them on your own or after you have not moved for over 30 seconds. They are mounted on the SCOTT S.C.B.A. breathing apparatuses.

Each and every one of those tweeting sounds you hear on those tapes is a downed, and more than likely, dead fireman. That is the sound that pierces my very soul. There were alot of them going off."

Posted by: Ace at 06:53 AM | Comments (13)
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It's because of men like this that we remember 9/11, and resolve again that they will never win.

By LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writer

34 minutes ago

CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden's deputy warned that Persian Gulf countries and Israel would be al-Qaida's next targets, according to a new videotape aired by Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera on Monday, the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Ayman al-Zawahri also accused the governments of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia of supporting Israel's war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Addressing the West, the al-Qaida No. 2 said, "You should not waste your time in reinforcing your troops in Iraq and Afghanistan because their fate is doomed ... Instead, you have to reinforce your troops in two regions. First is the Gulf, where you would be thrown out ... and second is Israel."

Al-Zawahri: Gulf, Israel next targets

Posted by: Ace at 06:27 AM | Comments (29)
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Five years later, they're still dicking around. May be the wrong day for this, but The Onion nails the stupidity:

NEW YORK—Days before the fifth anniversary of the destruction of New York's World Trade Center by terrorists, city officials gathered on the site where the Twin Towers once stood to dedicate the newly completed 9/11 Memorial Hole.

"From the wreckage and ashes of the World Trade Center, we have created a recess in the ground befitting the American spirit," said New York Governor George Pataki from a cinderblock-and-plastic-bucket-supported plywood platform near the Hole's precipice. "This vast chasm, dug at the very spot where the gleaming Twin Towers once rose to the sky, is a symbol of what we can accomplish if we work together."

Pataki then cut a ceremonial ribbon to release a giant blue plastic tarpaulin, reportedly the largest of its kind, which fluttered and snapped while slowly settling into the detritus and mud at the bottom of the 70-foot Hole, drawing a long, tired sigh of resignation from the estimated crowd of 50,000 who had assembled to watch and shake their heads.

Begun only days after the 2001 attacks, the Hole covers almost the entire footprint of the original World Trade Center, contains over 16 acres of empty space, and is visible as far away as Hoboken, NJ. Over $175 million has been spent on the Hole's development, and thousands of pages of proposals and designs concerning the site in which the Hole was excavated were reviewed in over 2,800 hours of meetings. Work crews comprising more than 7,500 welders, equipment operators, excavators, and other construction specialists spent long, often unpaid shifts in its depths.

"These five years have been admittedly difficult," Pataki said. "Inevitably, we heard from the naysayers who said we would never accomplish anything on this site. To those people, I invite them to gaze down at this magnificent pit if they want proof of New Yorkers' dedication to this project."

The Hole contains several symbolic features: A massive reinforced-concrete foundation known before 9/11 as the "Bathtub" now serves as the renamed "Remembrance Facing." According to official memorial literature, a gently declining plane into the heart of the memorial stands for the gradual but steady passage of time, and permits construction vehicles to enter and exit the site. Chain-link fences symbolize the present but nonetheless scalable barriers between different cultures. Lastly, the "Eternal Puddle," perhaps the Hole's most notable and arresting, as well as bottommost, feature, allows visitors to reflect on the tragedy, while the rainwater-and-seepage-fed Puddle itself reflects muddy swirls and oil slicks.

Officials did not immediately explain the significance of the ubiquitous yellow "Keep Back" tape present at the site.

Rebuild the Towers.

The Aftermath: Pictures from September 13, 2001.

Via Larwyn.

Posted by: Ace at 05:47 AM | Comments (23)
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A side-by-side comparison.

Enough's in the edited version that I mistook it for the unedited version and wondered what thet might be cutting out.

It really was stupid for ABC to juice this up into a boots-on-the-ground scene.

The clip still shows Berger refusing to give the order.

Missing, however: A statement that the man being hunted is Osama bin Ladin himself. The way it's left it's vague.

Nightline's Attempt To Spin... Doesn't seem very effective to me. (Video at end of post.)

Clarke blames Tenet. I think Tenet deserves a lot of blame, but it's annoying that ABC is willing to help shift so much to him. Does Clarke know that the President he served/spins for technically outranked Tenet?

I guess he doesn't. Neither does ABCNews, it seems.

In Four-Box Form: Putting Clinton's anti-terrorism efforts into context.

Good Piece On Clinton's Hamlet Act: To kill, or not to kill? That is the question.

The answer was "let someone else take care of it."

Thanks to MikeG, Larwyn.

Posted by: Ace at 05:07 AM | Comments (29)
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The Pentagon looks like this tonight.

Posted by: Ace at 08:55 PM | Comments (26)
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Anybody remember this Mark Steyn article? It opens with this line:

WHAT would happen if "al-Qaeda" (for want of an easier shorthand) produced a Yasser Arafat figure?

Seems nuts, right? I mean, nobody's going to let these guys go mainstream, are they?

You can see where I'm going with this; we may be about to find out. From the Guardian:

Tony Blair yesterday offered a spur to the deadlocked Middle East peace process by offering to recognise a future Palestinian power-sharing government, even if it includes ministers from Hamas.

Oh good.

Several times on the visit Downing St has drawn parallels with the Northern Ireland peace process, which it believes shows how progress can be made in unlikely circumstances. Mr Blair's spokesman drew a comparison between Hamas and Sinn Féin, which he said had not yet recognised Northern Ireland as a separate entity: "The time to judge the importance of this trip will not be next week, it will be in the weeks and months to come."

Remember that, because it's going to become the new excuse for legitimizing these guys. Granted, the jihad has considerably less modest aims than the IRA ever did, but let's not ruin the fever. The peace fever.

Here's my question: When Al-Qaeda-backed candidates start getting elected somewhere, does Britain recognize them too? And if you say "no", then why not? If they're craven enough to regard Hamas as equals, why would they stop there?

I think we've been looking at the whole Middle East "peace process" all wrong. It's not like beating a dead horse; it's like cracking open a pinata. A pretty, colorful pinata filled to the brim with fresh fruit and more kinds of candy than you can count.

You just have to let all the dead Jews and such fall out first.

Posted by: AndrewR at 07:44 PM | Comments (12)
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I'll admit it. I didn't.

But, despite not having watched it, I am interested in hearing the reactions of those who may have. Was the first part of the series obviously edited? Was it fair? Was it unfair? Was it historically accurate?

You tell me what you thought of it.

Just consider this a new "open comment thread" for those who wish to discuss the miniseries. I know it's been a topic of a lot of discussion around here, so I'm trying to give y'all a centralized place to follow your discussions.

Posted by: Ace at 07:30 PM | Comments (84)
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It was a Tuesday morning.

I heard something in a breakroom about a plane flying into the World Trade Center.

I immediately thought "small plane, private, goof up".

Until I saw the images at CNN.com.

I admit I was bewildered, as it progressed. Until the second plane. Until the Pentagon.

It was so strange to watch the sky over the next 4 days and see nothing.

We were getting people home, wondering what would happen next. Trying to understand what was happening.

The reality sank in. And the uncertainty. Because we weren't sure how many had perished.

We tried to understand it. But we could not. It was death and destruction, murder, on a scale we had not experienced in our lifetimes.

UPDATE: Many commenters are posting their accounts of where they were and what they were doing that morning, and what they thought. When I wrote this last night I was just kind of pondering that myself, and I suppose that was my intent, to encourage you to do the same.

There are some really great comments, and some amazing stuff too (check out Stephanie's comment at 1:26 this morning... wow).

Memorials remind us of the importance of the event. They say time heals all wounds, but what they really mean (whoever "they" are) is that intense emotions and feelings fade as time passes. We're fragile creatures, and it's hard to sustain intense feelings.

It's important for us to remember though... those remembrances increase our resolve.

So if you feel so inclined, please continue. Where were you, what were you doing that Tuesday morning?

Posted by: Ace at 07:12 PM | Comments (45)
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I'll admit; I haven't paid the slightest bit of attention to the whole "Loose Change" phenomenon, beyond being aware that

a) there is a video called "Loose Change", and

b) it is ridiculous.

Until now, anyway. See, there's this guy, David Wong, who runs a humor website called Pointless Waste of Time (which I originally found here-thanks, Ace!), where he spends most of his time putting up video game reviews and articles on Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

Every man has his breaking point, though, he seems to have reached it. The result is a great takedown of 9/11 conspiracy theorists in general; it's readable, concise, and impossible to argue with.

Now, before I throw out the link, a warning:

It's a humor website, so the article contains a few jokes. They make fun of the conspiracy-mongerers, not the victims (with whom he obviously sympathizes), but still: I know tomorrow is the anniversary and that it's an emotional subject, so please don't click the link if this sort of thing bothers you.

Also, it's me, so there's some mild NSFW language.

If this isn't all old news to you and you're still interested, here it is.

Update: I haven't spent as much time at the site as I should have, but a good place to go if this sort of thing interests you is Screw Loose Change. I know it's been linked here before, but they deserve as much attention as they can get.

Also: I haven't checked them out, but I'll bet the other places Wong mentions at the end of his article are good too.

Thanks to Max for getting me off my butt on that one.

Posted by: AndrewR at 05:41 PM | Comments (24)
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