Tags: 911, World Trade Center, Twin Towers,
Ground Zero, 757-jet airliner, Pittsburgh, Jeremy Glick, Pentagon, White House, Washington
Monument, Stock Market, George W Bush, Laura Bush, Andrew Card, Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, Air Force One, Ari Fleischer, John McCain, Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Ayman
Zawahiri, President Bill Clinton, Mansoor Ijaz, Egypt, Council of Foreign Relations, Omar
Hassan Ahmed Bashir, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Saif Adel, Samuel R.
Berger, Sudan, Kenya, Rudolph Giuliani, Muslim
Dropping
the Ball
With the 21st century well on the way,
it appeared that America would continue on in relative peace. With the Cold War over, it
looked like that this great nation would continue on, unopposed with no real enemies to be
concerned about. George W. Bush and the rest of the country were busily fussing over
domestic issues such as the economy, education, the fate of Social Security, medical and
the like.
Then with the advent of September 11,
2001 the unthinkable happened. The warnings were already there. Osama bin-Laden had
already attempted to take out the World Trade Center once. Though his efforts were largely
unsuccessful, one had to believe that he would persist in his efforts. He did successfully
attack the USS Cole killing a multitude of sailors.
All of this occurred during the Clinton
administration, but nothing was done to arrest the problem. President Clinton, though he
had several opportunities to arrest the world-renown terrorist, consistently turned the
offers down.
According to Mansoor Ijaz, a member of
the Council on Foreign Relations, as reported in the LA Times on December 5, 2001,
“President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to
capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year.
“I know because I negotiated more
than one of the opportunities.
“From 1996 to 1998, I opened
unofficial channels between Sudan and the Clinton administration. I met with officials in
both countries, including Clinton, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R.
‘Sandy’ Berger and Sudan's president and intelligence chief. President Omar
Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered the
arrest and extradition of Bin Laden and detailed intelligence data about the global
networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.
“Among those in the networks were
the two hijackers who piloted commercial airliners into the World Trade Center.
“The silence of the Clinton
administration in responding to these offers was deafening.
“. . . Realizing the growing
problem with Bin Laden, Bashir sent key intelligence officials to the U.S. in February
1996.
“The Sudanese offered to arrest Bin
Laden and extradite him to Saudi Arabia or, barring that, to "baby-sit"
him--monitoring all his activities and associates.
“But Saudi officials didn't want
their home-grown terrorist back where he might plot to overthrow them.
‘In May 1996, the Sudanese
capitulated to U.S. pressure and asked Bin Laden to leave, despite their feeling that he
could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere.
“Bin Laden left for Afghanistan,
taking with him Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the U.S. to be the chief planner of the
Sept. 11 attacks; Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who traveled frequently to Germany to obtain
electronic equipment for Al Qaeda; Wadih El-Hage, Bin Laden's personal secretary and
roving emissary, now serving a life sentence in the U.S. for his role in the 1998 U.S.
embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saif Adel, also
accused of carrying out the embassy attacks.
“Some of these men are now among
the FBI's 22 most-wanted terrorists.
“The two men who allegedly piloted
the planes into the twin towers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, prayed in the same Hamburg
mosque as did Salim and Mamoun Darkazanli, a Syrian trader who managed Salim's bank
accounts and whose assets are frozen.
“Important data on each had been
compiled by the Sudanese.
“But U.S. authorities repeatedly
turned the data away, first in February 1996; then again that August, when at my
suggestion Sudan's religious ideologue, Hassan Turabi, wrote directly to Clinton; then
again in April 1997, when I persuaded Bashir to invite the FBI to come to Sudan and view
the data; and finally in February 1998, when Sudan's intelligence chief, Gutbi al-Mahdi,
wrote directly to the FBI.
“Gutbi had shown me some of Sudan's
data during a three-hour meeting in Khartoum in October 1996. When I returned to Washington,
I told Berger and his specialist for East Africa, Susan Rice, about the data available.
They said they'd get back to me. They never did. Neither did they respond when Bashir made
the offer directly. I believe they never had any intention to engage Muslim
countries--ally or not. Radical Islam, for the administration, was a convenient national
security threat.
“And that was not the end of it. In
July 2000--three months before the deadly attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen--I brought
the White House another plausible offer to deal with Bin Laden, by then known to be
involved in the embassy bombings. A senior counter-terrorism official from one of the
United States' closest Arab allies--an ally whose name I am not free to
divulge--approached me with the proposal after telling me he was fed up with the antics
and arrogance of U.S. counter-terrorism officials.
“The offer, which would have
brought Bin Laden to the Arab country as the first step of an extradition process that
would eventually deliver him to the U.S., required only that Clinton make a state visit
there to personally request Bin Laden's extradition. But senior Clinton officials
sabotaged the offer, letting it get caught up in internal politics within the ruling
family--Clintonian diplomacy at its best.
“Clinton's failure to grasp the
opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's
assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most
serious foreign policy failures in American history.”
So, on 9/11/01 America paid the price.
Because of their undaunted allegiance to President Clinton the lives of 3000 innocent
people in the Twin Towers were lost. Indeed, if President Clinton had captured bin Laden
and his band of cohorts when he had the opportunity, 911 would never have happened.
Therefore, Clinton played a direct role in the decimation of the Twin Towers and the
countless lives and extraordinary amounts of money spent in retaliation. And the people of
America played a direct role in the affair by twice voting in an unscrupulous president
simply because they believed character didn't matter. Well, character does matter.
Be not deceived; God is not mocked:
for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. (Gal 6:7) Clearly the
destruction of the Twin Towers represented an act of God that was related to His divine
judgment. But would America repent of its sins?
Disaster
Strikes
On that fatefull day of 911, two
hijacked airliners crashed into the Twin World Trade Center Towers and both collapsed. The
first strike was at 8:45 AM as the airliners crashed into the North Tower. Then, 18
minutes later, another plane crashed into the second tower.
“I just heard the building
rock,” recalled Peter Dicerbo, a bank employee on the 47th floor. It knocked me on
the floor. It sounded like a big roar, then the building started swaying. That’s what
really scared me.”
“All this stuff started falling and
all this smoke was coming through. People were screaming, falling, and jumping out of
windows,” Jennifer Brickhouse added.
“One minute everyone was casually
walking, then there was this huge surge,” Mark DeAndrea, who worked in an office
beside the Trade Center stated. “It seemed like 10,000 people were rushing towards
us, running like a herd of gazelles, crying, ‘Get out, get out!’” Mark then
joined the herd heading back to the ferries to New Jersey. At Pier 11 he added,
“Boats were just filling up, taking everyone. Some people were threatening to jump
into the water if they couldn’t get on.”
Others from the Trade Center wandered Lower
Manhattan in a daze in ash 2 inches deep with air filled with smoke. Donald Burs testified
after seeing burned victims, “I tried to help them but they didn’t want anyone
to touch them. The fire had melted their skin. Their clothes were tattered.”
Trade Center employees stumbled down
scores of flights with their clothing torn and lungs filled with smoke and dust. Fire
fighters rushed into the building to rescue as many as they could. But hundreds of
firefighters lost their lives as well as the building collapsed on everyone who could not
escape in time.
Then another jet plummeted into the
Pentagon at 9:30 AM, killing hundreds. One side of the building collapsed as smoke
billowed over the Potomac River. Smoke swelled from the military headquarters so thick at
times that it obscured the Washington Monument. The attack left a gaping hole in the
building. It was eventually revealed on September 12 that there was “real and
credible evidence” that this jet airliner was actually headed towards the White
House.
In spite of the severity of the attack,
the Pentagon was not shut down. Defiantly Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted,
“It’s an indication that the U.S. government is functioning in the face of this
terrible act against our country. The Pentagon is functioning. We will be in business
tomorrow.
The jet was bound for Los Angeles and
carried 58 passengers, including commentator Barbara Olson, wife of US Solicitor General
Theodore Olson. She died in the crash.
“The plane came in at an incredibly
steep angle with incredibly high speed,” recalled law student Rick Renzi who was
driving by at the time. He added that the impact created a huge yellow and orange
fireball.
A half- hour later a 757-jet airliner
crashed about 80 miles from Pittsburgh. This plane presumably was headed towards another US
target, perhaps Air Force One. However, the bravery of the passengers was revealed when
they overcame the hijackers, thus crashing the jet before it could complete its mission.
On the day following the attack, new
evidence began to unfold regarding the heroism of the people aboard the airliner that
crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside. According to Tom Crowley, an Atlanta resident
whose niece was married to Jeremy Glick, who was on the plane, “Although the plane
crashed with the loss of all souls on board, we believe Jeremy Glick and the other
patriotic heroes saved the lives of many people who would have died if the terrorists had
been able to complete their mission.”
Glick had called his wife, Liz, from the
plane: “He was on the phone and kept saying, ‘We can take them.’”
Glick apparently joined several other passengers who rushed the hijackers in order to
retake the plane. Crowley continued, “He left the phone without hanging up and after
some shouts and other noise there was just silence.”
The fact that Air Force One was a
target, according to White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer on September 12, was
“one of the reasons why Air Force One did not come back to Andrews (Air Force Base, Md.)
where some people may have thought it would.” In addition, there were several plans
that had not been accounted for. Apparently the whole thing was a presidential
assassination plot that went awry.
These events of September 11 sent Navy
ships to New York and Washington to assist with air defense and medical needs. For his and
the nation’s security, President Bush, flying from Florida in emptied skies, put off
his return to the White House. He flew to military installations in Louisiana and Nebraska
before heading back to Washington later in the day.
Congressional leaders, some
administration officials and first lady Laura Bush were whisked to a place or places
undisclosed. Congressional leaders went to a secure facility 75 miles west of Washington.
This was the sort of veil meant for nuclear war.
The methodology of the hijackers was
simple. They hijacked the airplanes while brandishing box cutters. After taking over the
plane, one of them, trained in America’s own flight schools, simply rammed the
airplanes full of fuel into their targets.
All of the planes were headed for California
and loaded with fuel. They were missiles ready to destroy. And destroy they did. And as
they exploded in a devastating fashion, America suddenly and without warning had just
sustained a day of infamy far more terrible than Pearl Harbor. It was to become the most
overwhelming attack upon Americans on US soil in American history.
“How could they pull this
off?” Joyce Jackson and AT&T security expert in Washington asked. “This
country is supposed to be able to protect against something like this.”
John Croom, a retired Army staff
sergeant, while watching smoke billowing out of the Pentagon agreed: “I don’t
understand how they could do this. They flew so low. I was in the military for 20 years. I
thought Washington was protected.”
“”New York is crying,”
declared police officer Tyrone Dux. . . It’s like nighttime there. I didn’t hear
any screaming. . . Dark frightening.” Indeed, New York had been turned into a war
zone.
As about 120 doctors and others with
medical training gathered around the Trade Center waiting for survivors to assist,
paramedic Brian Stark revealed that all were told, “Once the smoke clears, it’s
going to be massive bodies.”
“Everyone was screaming, crying,
running – cops firefighters, everyone,” fire marshal Mike Smith detailed.
It was a harrowing day for the president
who was a specific target of the attacks. At the time, he was sitting in a second-grade
classroom in Saratosa, Florida. His eyes and smile were fixed on a room full of 7year-olds
who were showing off their reading skills. At 9:05 AM, White House Chief of Staff Andrew
Card stepped into the classroom and whispered into President Bush’s right ear,
“As second plane hit the other tower, and America’s under attack.”
With calm composure, the president
stayed put. While arching his eyebrows to the kids he calmly stated, “Really good
readers, whew. This must be sixth grade.”
Minutes later a squad of Secret Service
agents exploded into Vice President Cheney’s office while grabbing his arms shoulders
and belt. As one witness revealed as Cheney was whisked off to a safe location, “They
literally propelled him out of his office.”
Minutes after his meeting with the kids,
the president and his agents ran back to Air Force One. The airliner then hastily departed
Sarasota at 9:55. No one on board the plane claimed to know the plane’s destination.
By then, the airliner originally headed for the White House had taken out a portion of the
Pentagon.
Moments after he was in the skies,
President Bush opened a line to Cheney and kept it open. “That’s what we are
paid for,” he explained to the vice president. “We are going to take care of
this. When we find out who did this, they are not going to like me as president. Somebody
is going to pay.”
By 10:30, a call had come to the White
House that “Air Force One is next.” “To get bound into the secure facility
and hear the code name for Air Force One, there’s something headed for Air Force One
– I don’t think you can underestimate, at that moment, that you’re sorting
lots of information and you’re trying to deal with the consequences,” revealed
national security advisor Condoleezza Rice.
At 10:41 Air Force One was headed to Jacksonville
to meet jets scrambled to give the presidential jet cover. Cheney was urging President
Bush to avoid Washington. So, at 11:45 the plane landed at Shreveport, LA for an
intermediate stop. The president briefly appeared before reporters to state, “Freedom
itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward.”
In spite of the fact that the Secret
Service had the president on the run, President Bush told his aides, “I want to go
back home as soon as possible. I don’t want whoever this is holding me outside of Washington.”
But Cheney and the Secret Service
responded, “Let’s let the dust settle.”
At the time, administration officials
were indicating that there had been two reports of unaccounted-for international flights.
Also two domestic flights were still viewed as threats. “That’s a potential of
four missiles in the air, and we were concerned that if Air Force One landed in a
predictable place, one of those planes could hit it on the ground,” a senior
administration official commented. He continued that the hijackers had shown that
“they had the capacity to fly planes into still objects.”
From Louisiana, Air Force One flew to
Offutt. President Bush disappeared into a small cinderblock bunker that led down to an
underground facility. This is where he convened his first meeting of his National Security
Council via teleconference.
Rice recalled the president saying,
“And we’re going to go after it, and we’re not going to lose focus. And
we’re going to minister to the country and deal with the horrors that people are
experiencing and the consequences, and we’re going to get through our period of
mourning. But we’re not going to lose focus and resolve on what happened here and
what this means for the United States of America, in its leadership role, to mobilize the
world, now, to deal with the scourge.”
Republicans back in Washington, however,
were getting a bit antsy because the president had not returned to Washington. Finally,
President Bush did arrive back at the White House at around 7:00 PM. In the upcoming days,
the president would be transformed into a president at the helm of a White House and
nation in crisis.
Today
Our Nation Saw Evil
At about 8:30 he addressed the nation,
saying, “None of us will forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all
that is good and just in our world.”
“Today our nation saw evil,”
President Bush declared in his address to the nation. Thousands of lives were
“suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. . . Freedom itself was attacked
this morning and I assure you freedom will be defended. . . make no mistake. The United
States will hunt down and pursue those responsible for these cowardly actions.”
Vice President Cheney revealed later on
September 16 that after the suicide hijackers slammed their planes into the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon, Bush ordered the military to shoot down any commercial aircraft that
disobeyed orders to turn away from Washington’s restricted airspace.
Admiral Robert J. Natter, commander of
the US Atlantic Fleet stated on the day of the attack, “We have been attacked like we
haven’t been since Pearl Harbor.
“America is forever changed,”
said Sen. Chuck Hagel. “America is in for a long fight.”
“This has the capacity to change
the way we live our lives in this country,” Sen. Ted Strictland revealed. “I
don’t think we will ever feel as secure as we have in the past.”
“I think any military response will
be major,” Sen. Charles Grassley promised. “We’ve got to send the signal
that we are not going to tolerate this attack on our nation.
Rep. Patrick Kennedy agreed: “America’s
enemies should know that even an attack of this magnitude will not bring our country to
its knees.”
“There are no words to describe
adequately the enormity of these attacks on the United States or the depravity of these
attacks on the United States or the depravity of those who are responsible for them,”
Sen. John McCain added.
“These unspeakable acts of
brutality strike at the heart of our free society,” said the Rev. Bill Graham.
“I call upon all Americans to pray especially for our President and for all the
people who advise him.”
“You expect these kinds of things,
these pictures, to come from another country, not from a country like this,” Rep.
Solomon Ortiz lamented.
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
immediately stepped up to the plate. While visibly distraught he assured, “The number
of casualties will be more than most of us can bear.” The mayor was going to play a
very vital role in bringing the city of New York through this horrific ordeal.
Nobody took responsibility for the
highly coordinated attacks, but all fingers pointed to Osama bin Laden who was currently
hiding out in Afghanistan after being stripped of his Saudi citizenship and disowned by
his family. The ruling party of that country, the Taliban, had given him asylum and his
terrorist organization, al-Qaida, freely operated within the borders of that desolate
country.
“This apparently was well-planned
over a number of years, planned by real pros and experts,” Sen. Orrin Hatch revealed.
“Their belief is, at least initially, that this looks like Osama bin Laden’s
signature. . . They have an intercept of some information that included people associated
with bin Laden who acknowledged a couple of targets were hit.”
Osama’s followers had warned the
Al-Qusa al-Arabi newspaper that a “huge and unprecedented attack” was on the
horizon.
According to terrorist expert Anthony
Cordesman, “There is a level of sophistication and coordination that no counter
terrorism expert had ever previously anticipated, and we don’t have a group that we
can immediately identify that has this kind of capability.” That is, other than Osama
who the State Department called “one of the most significant sponsors of Islamic
extremist activities in the world.”
Osama had repeatedly called on all
Muslims to join in a jihad, or holy war, against America: “I am fighting so I can die
a martyr and go to heaven to meet God. Our fight now is against the Americans.”
In the previous May at a Muslim
convention in Afghanistan, the terrorist declared, “Issue a call to the young
generation to get ready for the holy war and to prepare for that in Afghanistan because
jihad in this time of crisis for Muslims is an obligation of all Muslims.”
The damage was immense. Many were
concerned about the number of businesses that were headquartered in the Twin Towers and
what impact that would have on the already beleaguered economy. The Stock Market closed.
The FAA shut down all commercial flights. The future of the airline industry was suddenly
in serious jeopardy.
About the Author
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About the Author
Don Wigton
is a graduate of the prestigious music department at CSULB where he studied under Frank
Pooler, lyricist of Merry Christmas Darling, and sang in Pooler’s world renown
University Choir alongside Karen and Richard Carpenter. During this time Don was also the
lead composer of the band, Clovis Putney, that won the celebrated Hollywood Battle of the
Bands. After giving his life to God, Don began attending Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa to
study under some of the most prominent early Maranatha! musicians. Subsequently he toured
the Western United States with Jedidiah in association with Myrrh Records.
Eventually
Don served as a pastor at Calvary Chapel Bakersfield to witness thousands of salvations
through that ministry. As the music/concert director, Don worked for seven years with most
major Christian artist of that time while producing evangelical concerts attended by
thousands of young people seeking after God. Don’s Calvary Chapel Praise Choir
released the album Let All Who Hath Breath Praise the Lord on the Maranatha! label.
The next
years of Don’s life were spent as the praise leader of First Baptist Church in Bakersfield
during a time of unprecedented church renewal. Don teamed with the leadership to
successfully meld the old with the new through a period of tremendous church growth.
During this exciting time, Don’s praise team, Selah, produced the CD Stop and
Think About It.
Today Don is
the leading force behind Wigtune Company. This
webbased project located at www.praisesong.net has provided several million downloads of
Don’s music and hymn arrangements to tens of thousands of Christian organizations
throughout the world. More music can be found at Don's Southern
Cross Band website at www.socrossband.com.
The book Holy
Wars represents Don’s most recent effort to bless the church with biblical
instruction and direction in praise and worship. This heartfelt volume is an offering not
only to God’s people, but also to God Himself.
Connect With Don Online
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was formed as a service to the body of Christ to encourage scriptural
worship. To accomplish this goal Wigtune Company offers free contemporary Christian praise
and worship music, contemporary Christian rock and hymn mp3 and chart material along with
a free on-line worship study book for personal devotions, Bible study groups, Sunday
schools, pastors, music ministers and ministry training. In order to bridge the gap
between the old and the new the worship study book gives solid theological and
historical support to the use of traditional Christian hymn-singing in conjunction with
praise chorus singing. 
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