BUDDABING

Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online, weighs in on whether or not the President is onto something when he calls the country "soft". Money quote:

Seriously, in 2008 we elected a community organizer, state senator, college instructor first term senator over a guy who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison. And now he’s lecturing us about how America’s gone “soft”? Really?

McCain can be a pain, but the history remains.


KABOOM

Better dead than..... well, just about anything.

The report is in that Anwar al-Awlaki has been more forcibly redistributed than a capitalist's profit-margin, bombed to smithereens in his adopted home of Yemen. Yeah man. A truly poisonous traitor if ever there was one.

Apparently the CIA led the way with the strike -- Peaches Petraeus settles comfortably into his new chair.

New Mexico-born terrorist leader meets his 72 virgins.

Requiescat in fragmentis.

NOTHING SAYS HISTORY LIKE ACTUAL HISTORY

Why didn't they have this cartoon thing when I was in school?

KNIVES, OUT

JOURNALISTS FIND THEMSELVES DOING THEIR
2008 CANDIDATE RESEARCH

Even Christiane Amanpour can't cover this turd-cake with cream cheese frosting

ANNIVERSARY REFLECTIONS ROUND-UP:

DEPT. OF "SAD BUT TRUE"


Mark Steyn @ National Review Online

George Will @ Washington Post

Mark Judge @ The Daily Caller


On the other hand, a word from a future President:




And even finer words from a former President, eschewing the fake eye-contact of the teleprompter, speaking from his notes on the podium, speaking from his heart:




REMINDERS OF OUR BETTER SELVES

Linked here at Pajamas Media, courtesy of Bruce Bawer

[apropos of not very much, Bawer is an American writer who is gay, and who moved to Amsterdam and then to Oslo in the belief that society in those places was much more educated, sophisticated, free, and tolerant than that of the United States -- boy, did he get a wrong number. He has since re-thought that thesis, and written While Europe Slept and Surrender.]

Excellent round-up of links of all sorts via the Anchoress

We salute World Trade Center Memorial architect Michael Arad.

A personal visit will be required to know for certain, but at first impression, it seems he has done well.

ALIVE DAY


This Sunday is America's "Alive Day". That's a term that, as far as I know, is a coinage of the Iraq war -- it's a function of the fact that medical advances have brought more people home, alive and damaged, than ever before in the history of warfare. This war has produced more amputees than any conflict since the Civil War. Back then amputations resulted from simple gunshot wounds -- more grievous injuries, from artillery and such, killed instantly. Today, with vastly greater firepower in countless types of weapons, if the injured are evacuated in short order, their survival rate is over 90%. The day these warriors were hit, and didn't die, is their Alive Day.

In the ten years since September 11 and the start of the wars against terrorism, I have accumulated a small collection of videos that deserved to be bought and paid attention to. So I bought them to show my support, especially of people like J.D. Johannes, one of the self-embedded reporters who raised their own money and put themsleves in harm's way to get the true story out. I sent "walkin' around money" to Johannes and Bill Roggio, and more serious money to Michael Yon; and I bought two editions of Johannes' combat video documentary Outside the Wire.

And there they sat, gathering dust on my bookshelf. I could never make myself watch them. Sitting alongside was Alive Day Memories, actor James Gandolfini's interviews with severely wounded Iraq veterans, supplemented by video of the warriors before their injuries, during and after their hospitalizations, sometimes even the scene of the attack on their Alive Days through footage later released by "insurgents" showing massive IED explosions, complete with soundtrack of the sickeningly triumphant mantra "Allahu Akbar", as men like Army Sgt. Bryan Anderson, somewhere within the fireball, are being relieved of 3 out of 4 limbs.

Also in the mix are French brothers Jules and Gedeon Naudet's documentary 9/11, being their accidental history of September 11 in Manhattan, which started its life as a human interest documentary about rookie firemen; The Third Jihad, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser's 2008 close look at the true nature of the enemy; and my most recent addition, the commercial film/docudrama United 93.

This is my week for watching them all, ticked off one by one, sandwiched between various TV specials. Call it wallowing -- I do. It's time.


LEST WE FORGET, OKAY?

I learned today, to my great disappointment, that the majority of the tributes which once collectively formed the 2996 Project -- a website linking up personal tributes to every person killed on September 11 -- have gone offline into non-functional links. How very sad. As this anniversary day approached, I've been thinking about how I would re-post my tributes, and how important it would be to do so at this ten-year mark, and I find it hard to understand how more than 2000 of the one-time contributors to this project would not feel compelled to refresh their works for this anniversary year. However, that's how it is. We soldier on.

Once again, we remember:

Jack Charles Aaron
John Thomas McErlean
Rick Rescorla
Ken Basnicki
David Barkway
HERE
HERE
HERE


Never forget the sacrifice of:

Capt. Kyle Van de Giesen, USMC
1st Lt. Jared Landaker USMC
1st Lt. Travis Manion USMC
and
Lt. Brendan Looney USN


Never forget the suffering of:

PRIVATE KRISTIAN MENCHACA
AND
PRIVATE THOMAS TUCKER


Never forget the heroism of:

Tom Burnett
Jeremy Glick
Todd Beamer
Mark Bingham
and all the passengers and crew of United 93
Terrorism ruled in the United States for approximately one hour and twenty minutes. Then these ordinary Americans punched back.
They were the Minutemen of our age.

DRAW?

Republican debate tonight, the first I've seen all the way through so far. This was the big showcase for new candidate Rick Perry of Texas, the "idea" of whom caught fire (not a pleasant image for a Texan these days) very quickly after his announcement, failed to catch fire this evening. If it were a tennis match between Mitt Romney and Perry, it would have to be "advantage Romney".

It was, however, a team sport -- but one would be hard-pressed to say that the Repubs have a "deep bench". They (we?) could have a deep bench if it included a few others like Ryan, Cantor, West, or Rubio, but each of those guys is young enough to wait his turn and ripen for another election cycle or two. (Apparently the Rushmeister predicted that Rubio would be president one day -- I concur, all things begin equal regarding hotel rooms with live boys, dead girls, or kodiak bears...)

NOT A DRAW

President Zero (as more and more people across the political spectrum have taken to calling the current occupant of the Oval Office) has decided to decrease the military presence in Iraq to a KAMIKAZE level, to pander to his farthest left constituency, who are increasingly pissed off at him for adherence to various Bush doctrines.

People who know more about foreign policy and military matters than Obama (that would include most of the kids in charter and voucher schools) are absolutely beside themselves. Greta Von Susteren wonders why he would come up with this bonehead plan in defiance of the advice of all his generals -- maybe because he's an ARROGANT MARXIST IDIOT?

I can't really think of anything more to say about this plan, except to solicit prayers from all quarters that common sense and decency will prevail, and the Benighted One will pull a U-turn on this one.


Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle;

be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray.

And do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God,
cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who wander throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

What was this all for, anyway?

TEN YEARS ON

Poignant Tweets from Erica Basnicki, daughter of Canadian WTC victim Ken Basnicki, as she returns home from her new life in London, to be with her family this weekend.

August 11: Been quiet because I've been bracing for this, my last month as "Terror Orphan" (crappy columnists can be cruel). Freedom in T-minus 30 days

August 12: Surrounded by 10 years of 9/11 at home. No wonder I've moved so much; otherwise how to escape it? Maybe I should've tried coping. But how?

August 16:

Thought I was coming back to Canada to be 9/11 Girl again. I now realize, that's just not me anymore. Back to nerding out over audio...

August 17: Just posted: 9/11 Girl is Retiring [http://ericabasnicki.com/]

August 18: Loving this. Canada, what will we do? RT @911day "I will" billboard spotted in Miami! yfrog.com/h84j0ymwj


Thinking of you, Erica, and Maureen and Brennan (go Del! 2002 champs!)

WE COMMENCE A WEEK FOR REFLECTION

Here's a nice video piece on the World Trade Center memorial. It's been too long in arriving and still isn't finished (and those resposible should be ashamed) but it looks like the park itself will be a peaceful and yet haunting place, which is at it ought to be. Can't say I care for the "Freedom Tower" design at all, but I suspect in the end that few people on the site will look at it much.