Bretagne, the last known 9/11 search and rescue dog, was laid to rest. Firefighters lined up along a Houston area sidewalk to honor the canine as she took her final steps. Bretagne served our nation from trying to find survivors at the World Trade Center buildings to searching for victims during Hurricane Katrina. After Bretagne retired at 10, she became a member of a local Texas fire department. Bretagne was 16-years-old.
Sixteen years later, look where we are. For years, public schools didn’t each talk about 9/11. Now they do. The lessons “emphasize the good that grew out of the “tragedy,” In the UK, teachers “scared” to teach about 9/11 for fear of being labeled “Islamophobic.” Terror-tied groups like the Muslim Student Association are holding a celebratory cake sale at Hunter College today.
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SEPTEMBER 11TH
On the morning of September 11, 2001, the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history took place when four commercial airliners were hijacked by Muslim terrorists. The first two planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, were flown into the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. A third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, hit the western side of the Pentagon, just outside Washington, D.C. The fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed down in a field in rural Pennsylvania, never reaching its intended target because its crew and passengers fought back against the terrorists. Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives during the 9/11 attacks, a number that would almost certainly have been significantly higher if not for the actions of those aboard Flight 93.
It’s a day the left would rather we ignore. It’s a day that Islamic supremacists secretly and not so secretly celebrate. It’s a day the elites call a day of service. In service to whom? The attackers? The simpering soft selling and apologetics is a deliberate distraction and a diversion from discussing the enemy and their ideology.
September 11th is national day of mourning. Period.
At 8:45 am on September 11, 2001, Muslim terrorists hijacked American Airlines Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel and crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City, instantly killing hundreds of people and trapping hundreds more on the building’s higher floors.
Eighteen minutes later at 9:03 am, a second hijacked airliner, United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston, turned sharply toward the World Trade Center and sliced into the south tower and explodes.
At 9:45 the jihadis struck the nerve center of the U.S. military, Flight 77 slams into the Pentagon.
10:05 a.m.: The south tower of the World Trade Center collapses, plummeting into the streets below. A massive cloud of dust and debris forms and slowly drifts away from the building.
10:10 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 93, also hijacked. crashed down in a field in rural Pennsylvania, never reaching its intended target because its crew and passengers fought back against the terrorists. The hijackers were targeting the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland or several nuclear power plants along the Eastern seaboard.
After a brief discussion, a vote was taken and the passengers decided to fight back against their hijackers, informing several people on the ground of their plans. One of the passengers, Thomas Burnett Jr., told his wife over the phone, “I know we’re all going to die. There’s three of us who are going to do something about it. I love you, honey.” Another passenger, Todd Beamer, was heard over an open line saying, “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.” Sandy Bradshaw, a flight attendant, called her husband and explained that she had slipped into a galley and was filling pitchers with boiling water. Her last words to him were: “Everyone’s running to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.” (History)
10:28 a.m.: The World Trade Center’s north tower collapses from the top down as if it were being peeled apart, releasing a tremendous cloud of debris and smoke.
11:18 a.m.: American Airlines reports it has lost two aircraft. American Flight 11, a Boeing 767 flying from Boston to Los Angeles, had 81 passengers and 11 crew aboard. Flight 77, a Boeing 757 en route from Washington’s Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles, had 58 passengers and six crew members aboard. Flight 11 slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.
An aerial view of the damage at the Pentagon two days after Sept. 11, 2001
Two women hold each other as they watch the World Trade Center burn following a terrorist attack on the twin skyscrapers in New York City on September 11, 2001. #
AP Photo/Ernesto Mora
11:26 a.m.: United Airlines reports that United Flight 93, en route from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, California, has crashed in Pennsylvania. The airline also says that it is “deeply concerned” about United Flight 175.
11:59 a.m.: United Airlines confirms that Flight 175, from Boston to Los Angeles, has crashed with 56 passengers and nine crew members aboard. It hit the World Trade Center’s south tower.
On a beautiful, bright blue sunny morning, a perfect day in mid-September. Nothing was ever the same.
My life changed on that one day, in one moment.
The World Trade Center was burning.
The Pentagon was burning.
The World Trade Center was a city all its own. It had it’s own zip code, 10048. It was populated by 50,000 people at the height of the day, and 200,000 more people visited it every day.
The building was an architectural marvel.
When those gleaming towers were attacked, I stood in front of my TV, paralyzed. And when the Towers came down in a blinding cloud of flesh, bone, paper, steel — shreds of life — I wept.
I didn’t know who we were at war with. But I did know that life as we knew was was over, dead. It had become history, a memory, on that morning. War had come came to America.
The horror and death was on a scale that was unimaginable in America. People, who just hours earlier, had their morning joe, kissed their wives or husbands, took their children to school, maybe grabbed a McMuffin and hurried into the city to get to their desks, were faced with the most shocking, horrific imminent death. Men and women waving shirts or jackets stood on the gashed edge of a gaping wound at the top floors of the towers. No one could get to them. No one could help them. The heat from the flames of the airplane turned into a fireball that left people with no choice. Burn to death or jump. Hundreds jumped to their deaths. “It looked like they were blinded by smoke… they just walked to the edge and fell out.”
When they hit the pavement, their bodies were not so much broken as obliterated.
Eyewitnesses talked of a couple who held hands as they fell.
One woman, in a final act of modesty, appeared to be holding down her skirt. Others tried to make parachutes out of curtains or tablecloths, only to have them wrenched from their grip by the force of their descent.
The fall was said to take about ten seconds. If someone fell head down with their body straight, as if in a dive, it could be 200mph. When they hit the pavement, their bodies were not so much broken as obliterated.
The sound of the bodies hitting the pavement was deafening. I did not hear them at the time — but in the beginning, in the news reports, before all the news regarding the jumpers were censored and scrubbed, I heard the sound then. Years later, when I was editing my Ground Zero Mosque movie, I included that footage in the film, and that sound is horrifying.
I thought about John Florio, that big brave firefighter who worked out at my gym. He would come in every morning with a tiny infant and leave her in the windowed childcare center. I wondered if he had rushed to Manhattan when he heard about the attack, to help out.
John Florio had, and he had died there.
The memories are vivid still.
The jihadis came to conquer America and looking back sixteen years later, they have had a good measure of success. The media, universities, schools, culture, etc has submitted to a good measure of islamization. Those who oppose jihad and sharia are demonized and smeared by hate groups like the SPLC and terror-tied CAIR. Our names are dragged through the mud. Our reputations are ruined.
Sixteen years later, look where we are. For years, public schools didn’t each talk about 9/11. Now they do. The lessons “emphasize the good that grew out of the “tragedy,” In the UK, teachers “scared” to teach about 9/11 for fear of being labeled “Islamophobic.” Terror-tied groups like the Muslim Student Association are holding a celebratory cake sale at Hunter College today.
In one of the most celebrated plays in recent memory, Disgraced, the lead character, Muslim-American Amir Kapoor, admits he felt a “blush of pride” on September 11th. The play received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Joseph Jefferson Award for New Work – Play or Musical and a 2013 Obie Award for Playwriting. But cartoonists, writers, poets, journalists, are targeted for death for opposing the most brutal and extreme ideology on the planet. We can’t talk about this.
Millions of Americans have, without even realizing it, internalized the idea that it is “racist” and “bigoted” to resist jihad terror. People are used to granting Muslims special accommodations in the workplace. On campuses nationwide, Muslims are presented as victims of the American “Islamophobic” war machine. Movies studiously avoid depicting jihadis as villains.
Our public schools proselytize for Islam, teaching our children the shahada and the five pillars of Islam. American university have become unsafe for Jews because of harassment and intimidation from Muslim groups. But there are no school lessons about 9/11 – the largest terrorist attack on American soil. School children know nothing about it. They know more about the attack on Pearl Harbor, a military installation, than they do about the multiple 9/11 attacks on the homeland. It’s unfathomable. But that is how deeply the fear of insulting Islam has crippled the nation.
The cultural adherence to the blasphemy laws under the sharia (under the guise of speech) in the media, movies, music mirrors the oppression rampant in totalitarian socialites. Social media giants like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Twitter exact stiff and swift penalties on those who dare criticize Islam. The Geller Report’s article and posts have been scrubbed from Google search. Google has changed its search results for terms such as “jihad” and “sharia” to show “only positive explanations of Islamic concepts” and conceal criticism of Islam. Google Adsense has banned my account and websites like mine. Google search is blacklisting and has admitted to working with alt-left smear groups to silence opposition. And it’s not just me, it’s all criticism of jihad and sharia. Vice President of Facebook Joel Kaplan traveled to Pakistan and met with Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan to assure Pakistan that it will remove “hateful and provocative material.”
All this while the global jihad rages. There have been 31, 714 deadly Islamic attacks since 9/11. Appeasement, submission and accommodation is not working. On the contrary, it has emboldened the enemy. Terrorism works.
We have our work cut out for us.
The 9/11 Muslim terrorists extolled Allah no less than 90 times in their last letters.
Read al-Tawba and Anfal [traditional war chapters from the Qur’an] and reflect on their meanings and remember all of the things Allah has promised for the martyrs.
The aftermath in Washington of the terrorist attack on the Pentagon, Sept. 11, 2001. . Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Robert Houlihan
While waging war against the “apostate” rulers was not likely to engender widespread support, no “two people” would “disagree” with the necessity of fighting “the Jews and Christians.”
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Sometime before his death in a US drone strike in June 2015, Nasir al Wuhayshi recorded an insider’s account of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. As the aide-de-camp to Osama bin Laden prior to the hijackings, Wuhayshi was well-placed to know such details. And al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which Wuhayshi led until his demise, has now published a version of his “untold story.”
A transcript of Wuhayshi’s discussion of the 9/11 plot was included in two editions of AQAP’s Al Masra newsletter. The first part was posted online on Jan. 31 and the second on Feb. 9. The summary below is based on the first half of Wuhayshi’s account.
Wuhayshi began by explaining al Qaeda’s rationale for attacking America. Prior to 9/11, the jihadists’ cause was not supported by the Muslim people, because the mujahideen’s “goals” were not widely understood. The jihadists were divided into many groups and fought “tit-for-tat” conflicts “with the tyrants.” (The “tyrants” were the dictators who ruled over many Muslim-majority countries.)
While the mujahideen had some successes, according to Wuhayshi, they were “besieged” by the tyrants until they found some breathing room in Afghanistan. The “sheikhs” studied this situation in meetings held in Kabul and Kandahar, because they wanted to understand why the jihadists were not victorious. And bin Laden concluded they should fight “the more manifest infidel enemy rather than the crueler infidel enemy,” according to a translation obtained by The Long War Journal. Wuhayshi explained that the former was the “Crusader-Zionist movement” and the latter were the “apostates” ruling over Muslims.
While waging war against the “apostate” rulers was not likely to engender widespread support, no “two people” would “disagree” with the necessity of fighting “the Jews and Christians.” If you fight the “apostate governments in your land,” Wuhayshi elaborated, then everyone – the Muslim people, Islamic movements, and even jihadists – would be against you because they all have their own “priorities.” Divisions within the jihadists’ ranks only exacerbated the crisis, as even the mujahideen in their home countries could refuse to fight.
Wuhayshi then cited Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi, a prominent pro-al Qaeda ideologue, who warned that the “capability” to wage “combat” in Muslim-majority countries did “not yet exist.” So, for instance, if al Qaeda launched a “jihad against the House of Saud,” then “many jihadist movements” would oppose this decision. Al Qaeda’s fellow travelers would protest that they were “incapable” of defeating the Saudi government. And these jihadists would complain they did not want to “wage the battle prematurely,” or become entangled “in a difficult situation.”
For these reasons and more, according to Wuhayshi, bin Laden decided to “battle the more manifest enemy,” because “the people” would agree that the US “is an enemy” and this approach would not sow “discord and suspicion among the people.” Bin Laden believed that the “Islamic movement” would stand with al Qaeda “against the infidels.”
Wuhayshi’s explanation of bin Laden’s reasoning confirms that attacking the US was not al Qaeda’s end goal. It was a tactic, or a step, that bin Laden believed could unite the jihadists behind a common purpose and garner more popular support from “the people.”
Not all jihadists agreed with bin Laden’s strategy. In February 1998, bin Laden launched a “Global Islamic Front for Waging Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders.” Wuhayshi claimed that a “majority of the groups agreed to” the initiative, but some, like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), opposed it. (However, some senior LIFG members were folded into al Qaeda.)
Gamaa Islamiya (IG), an Egyptian group, initially agreed to join the venture, but ultimately rejected it. As did other groups in the Arab Magreb, according to Wuhayshi. (Some senior IG leaders remained close to al Qaeda and eventually joined the organization.)
Although Wuhayshi claimed that a “majority” of jihadist organizations agreed with bin Laden’s proposal, only three ideologues joined bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri in signing the front’s infamous first fatwa.
In August 1998, just months after the “Global Islamic Front” was established, al Qaeda struck the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. According to Wuhayshi, bin Laden held a series of meetings around this time, as he sought to convince as many people as possible that attacking America was the right course. Some jihadists objected, believing it would ensnare them in a trap. But bin Laden pressed forward, telling those who didn’t agree that they wanted to fight “lackeys” without confronting “the father of the lackeys.” Al Qaeda’s path “will lead to a welcome conclusion,” Wuhayshi quoted bin Laden as saying.
The “initiative against the Crusaders continued” after the US Embassy bombings, Wuhayshi said, and the number of people who supported it increased “dramatically.” During this period, the “Global Islamic Front” launched operations against the “Crusaders” on the ground and at sea, but the idea to strike “from the air with planes” had not yet been conceived.
The origins of the 9/11 plot
Wuhayshi traced the genesis of the 9/11 plot to both Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who would come to be known as the “mastermind” of the operation.
But he also credited Abdullah Azzam for popularizing the concept of martyrdom in the first place. Azzam was killed in 1989, but is still revered as the godfather of modern jihadism. After the mujahideen had defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan, they considered “hitting the Americans,” Wuhayshi claimed. Azzam “spoke harshly about the Western military camp.” Azzam also “introduced” the jihadists to a “new tactic.” Wuhayshi recommended that people listen to Azzam’s “final speech,” in which he reportedly said: “God gave me life in order to transform you into bombs.”
Years later, on Oct. 31, 1999, bin Laden watched as the co-pilot of EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed the jet into the Atlantic Ocean, killing more than 200 people on board. Bin Laden, according to Wuhayshi, wondered why the co-pilot didn’t fly the plane into buildings. After this, Wuhayshi claimed, the basic idea for 9/11 had been planted in bin Laden’s mind.
In reality, the EgyptAir crash came after the outline of the 9/11 plot had been already sketched. For instance, the 9/11 Commission found that KSM “presented a proposal for an operation that would involve training pilots who would crash planes into buildings in the United States” as early as 1996. “This proposal eventually would become the 9/11 operation.” In March or April 1999, according to the Commission’s final report, bin Laden “summoned KSM to Kandahar…to tell him that al Qaeda would support his proposal,” which was referred to as the “planes operation.”
Indeed, Wuhayshi recounted how KSM and his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, plotted to attack multiple airliners in the mid-1990s. In the so-called Bojinka plot, KSM and Yousef even conceived a plan to blow up as many as one dozen airliners. Wuhayshi recalled how Yousef placed a bomb on board one jet as part of a test run. Their plot failed and Yousef was later captured in Pakistan. Yousef has been incarcerated for two decades after being convicted by an American court for his role in Bojinka and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Wuhayshi prayed for his release.
Wuhayshi told a story that, if true, means KSM had dreamed of attacking the US since his youth. When he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait, KSM wrote a play in which a character “ponders how to down an American aircraft.” Wuhayshi claimed to have searched for this play online, but he and another “brother” failed to find it.
Still, Wuhayshi insisted that KSM wrote the play, showing he was already thinking of ways to strike America as a young man.
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