Bring 'em on

Appropriately (and about time), the 9/11 "mastermind" will be brought to justice where the trial belongs, in New York City.

New York City has been different. In March, for example, when the administration prepared to bring Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a suspect in the 1998 bombings of United States embassies in Africa that killed 224 people, to face trial there, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the city was well-accustomed to handling high-profile terror suspects.

“Bottom line is we have had terrorists housed in New York before,” Mr. Schumer said at a March news conference at the Capitol with other Democratic leaders. “They’ve been housed safely.”

Mr. Schumer at the time pointed to the “blind sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted on terrorism-related charges in New York. “The main concern is bringing these terrorists to justice and making sure the public is safe,” Mr. Schumer said. “I have faith that the administration will do both.”

September 11

There has been much talk about how we haven't been attacked since that terrifying, confusing, awful day in lower Manhattan and Washington seven years ago.

Never mind the similarly terrifying anthrax incidents later that same year, but in fact, the attacks masterminded by al Qaeda continue to this day, nearly every day.

9/11 happens again every time an IED explodes in Iraq, killing an American soldier.

It happens again when U.S. and Afghan troops call in an airstrike that kills Afghan civilians.

It happens every time someone is tortured in Guantanamo or Iraq, or "extraordinarily" rendered to another country for "proxy" torture.

It happens when a suicide bomber blows himself or herself up in a Baghdad market.

It happens when our politicians call for the bombing of another country that does not threaten us.

It happens when we accept those calls, with no thought to the thousands who will die for our reaction to the latest "existential" threat.

It happens when we build walls at our southern border.

It happens when our government taps our phones.

It happens when local police pre-empt political demonstrations at party conventions.

It is believed that the plotters who planned flying two planes into the World Trade Center towers seven years ago had hoped the buildings would topple, taking out many more buildings in lower Manhattan and killing thousands more.

They didn't. As we know, they collapsed in on themselves as steel girders melted in the tremendous heat.

But their fall reverberates to this day and we continue to react, as I think al Qaeda hoped, with fear of others, hatred, and disproportionate violence.

9/11 -- just a bunch of victimized kids?

Preznit unveils a new and very bizarre description of the 9/11 murderers.

* Bush had an unusual take on the 19 al-Qaeda members in their 20s and 30s, most from Saudi Arabia, who carried out the 9/11 terror attacks. In the midst of a long explanation of why winning in Iraq is so important, he said: "It matters to the security of people here at home if we don't work to change the conditions that cause 19 kids to be lured onto airplanes to come and murder our citizens." Kids? Lured? And how is the war in Iraq changing conditions in Saudi Arabia?

Or in Hamburg?

At the risk of misunderestimating the Rebel in Chief...he's a fucking moron who six years after the attacks hasn't bothered to understand, learn, think about what happened that day nor the motivations of those who did it (and no it's not because they hate our freedoms). You would think that would be important to a "war president," fighting the great existential battle of our generation.

UPDATED for clarity.