THE WEIRS TIMES, Thursday, September 16, 2010
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NORTH from 8 the horrible events of that morning, some of those initial accounts turned out to be inaccurate, but when I showed you my pager, I said, ‘Oh, dear God, I think America is under attack.’ Other pas- sengers -- having recog- nized you at the boarding gate and aboard the flight -- inquired what was going on. That’s how we -- and most of them -- learned what had happened.” Shor t ly af t e r Tom showed me the electronic messages, the captain addressed the passengers from the cockpit. He in- formed us that multiple terror attacks had taken place while we were en route to Washington and that when we landed at Dulles, we were to im- mediately exit the aircraft and be escorted out of the closed airport terminal. Outside, there was a
palpable sense of anx- ious calm and coopera- tion among thousands of stranded passengers. Americans who barely knew one another shared cabs. Locals offered over- night accommodations to those marooned in an unfamiliar city. Cell phones -- less ubiquitous then than they are to- day -- were shared easily. Like millions of our fellow countrymen, we had to dial dozens of times to let family members and other loved ones know we were safe.
Tom and I got separated
in the crowd. He walked two miles to the Freedom Alliance offices. I grabbed a cab and -- after offering a significant tip -- per- suaded the driver to try to take me to the Fox News bureau on Capitol Hill, even though Washington was being evacuated. With the help of the Virginia State Police and a Metro- politan Police Department officer, I got there and confirmed what most of the world already knew:
American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, both hijacked from Boston’s Logan Air- port, had been turned into flaming kamikazes, slam- ming into the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center. American Flight 77, outbound from Dulles to Los Angeles, had struck the west side of the Pen- tagon, and United Flight 93 -- from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco -- had crashed into a field in Somerset County, Pa. We soon learned this horrific carnage was per- petrated by 19 radical Islamists dispatched by Osama bin Laden’s al- Qaida. We know that de- spite extraordinary cour- age and compassion dis- played by first respond- ers, 3,023 innocent men, women and children were killed or died of injuries. Most Americans never will forget what happened that terrible day. But not all. This week,
the flight I took from Cali- fornia was full of young people headed for college in Washington, D.C. I asked several how much they remembered of the events of 9/11. They all recalled seeing the second plane hit the World Trade Center on television. Some recollected Todd Beamer’s leading the rebellion on Flight 93. Only one of them knew we went to war in Afghanistan less than a month later. All the rest thought we went to war in Iraq first. Apparently, a good num-
ber of our elected and ap- pointed leaders think we have forgotten what really happened on Sept. 11, 2001 -- and the radical Islamists who started this war. That’s why they feel free to endorse the erec- tion of a mosque just a few hundred feet from ground zero in Manhattan. And that’s why they ignored this week’s indictment by the International Atom- ic Energy Agency that “international sanctions” have failed to prevent the radical Islamist regime in Iran from building nuclear weapons. Those who think we
have forgotten 9/11 are wrong. And on Nov. 2, just 52 days after this year’s anniversary of that awful event, they will see just how well many of us remember.
Oliver North is the host
of “War Stories” on Fox News Channel, the found- er and honorary chairman of Freedom Alliance, and the author of “American Heroes.” To find out more about Oliver North and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators. com.
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