Local time where you're at. ("Where you're at"?)

(The following is a column which appeared on my web site, www.spatulacitybbs.com, on September 11th, 2001.  It is re-posted now in remembrance of then.)

NOTE: This column contains some coarse language. Back out now if such language offends you, please.

I got four hours of sleep last night. I’m fighting the obligatory yearly case of tonsillitis. My throat hurts like Hell ™, my body is racked with soreness, and – not to put too fine a point thereupon – I’m in need of a tube of Prep H.

You get the idea. (sigh)

So here I am on LBJ Freeway in Dallas, plodding my way through traffic, fighting hard the urge to fall asleep at the wheel, literally. I’m listening to our sports-talk/guy-talk station on AM, the Ticket (KTCK 1310), when the sports jocks there suddenly exclaim something to the effect of, “WTF…?!”. Apparently, a heavy jet has veered off course and slammed into one of the World Trade Center twin towers in New York City.

“Wow,” I’m thinking, “they’ll likely stay with this one all day”, and I immediately turn over to the news/talk station here, WBAP 820, for all the coverage. Yes, I admit it – I’m fascinated by carnage.

At that point, though, I’m thinking tragic accident. Somebody’s plane lost its hydraulics and careened out of control, and the World Trade Center, unfortunately, was simply in the way.

That was 7:50. At 8:09, my worldview – and that of 280 million Americans, I would bet – changed radically.

At that point, a second jet slammed headfirst into the other tower. At that point, it’s not just a major tragedy. This looks just a weeeee bit too organized to be a coincidence.

It’s 8:20 when I get to the office, and I meet my buddy and old Wingtip Courier dispatcher as he’s driving up. He hasn’t been paying attention to anything. We get inside the office, and I bring him and our other compadre up to speed on things (he wasn’t listening to the radio, either, which was surprising). I go into my office and try pulling up a video stream for any of this. It’s 8:25.

Fifteen minutes later, the message is clear: America is under attack for the first time in 60 years. Yet another heavy jet has crashed – this one into the Pentagon. Reports are coming in about multiple hijackings. I’ve read a report about a worldwide alert issued last Friday concerning our resident international terrorist, Osama bin Laden, Two & two are quickly starting to come together.

(Side note: Don’t let them tell you they had no warning. I’m not kidding about that worldwide alert concerning bin Laden. They knew. Damned right they knew.)

I can’t pull up anything on the ‘Net – and I have a T1 at work. The radio offers some details, but I want to know more. I run across the street to the CompUSSR to scope out the TV images.

And ohmigod – what TV images. I saw the second plane come in behind the first tower, and a plume of fire and deep black smoke explode out the other side. I saw the collapsed side of the Pentagon. I saw both WTC towers collapse – I had to ask someone if they’d collapsed all the way, so incredulous was the scene there. (A third building nearby would collapse six hours later.) I heard reports of yet another plane crash – this one near Pittsburgh. Rumor has it that the plane was headed to Camp David – we’re somewhere around the anniversary of the Camp David accords, so I hear.

Returned to work around 11:00 in a state of near-shock. Twenty minutes later, I received the go-ahead to go home. After a quick stop-off at the school to check on my wife, I arrived home and turned on the TV to Fox.

The images there were even more unbelievable than before. Fox had the direct angle on the second tower hit. They also had better angles on the collapse of both towers – although by that time, there was so much smoke & dust that one could hardly make anything out.

After a quick lunch, I sit down here to gather news stories, and I find this.

That’s right, sports fans. Here are a group of Palestinian squids laughing, dancing and cheering the attack on us, whom they call “the Great Satan”.

Compassionate people, those Palestinians.

Okay, now that I’ve bored you with my day, here’s my analysis: CNN early on was doing everything it could to avoid calling it a terrorist attack. But, Spatulaites & Spatulaettes, it’s too coordinated, too organized to be anything but. These events had to be planned months in advance. Certain people had to be installed at just the right junctures in order to pull this off – our airport security procedures, despite the fact that they’re handled by part-timers making minimum wage, are still way too strict. People who knew how to fly those planes had to arrange for passage on these planes. This would have been a major undertaking for simply one airliner – for four to have been hijacked in this manner and turned into suicide machines screams for the fact that this is more than just a Chinese fire drill.

So. Who’s got the capability to pull it off? Who has the money to train these thugs, place them right where they needed to be placed, and then turned loose? And who among them hates us enough to target us? Not to mention, who’s stupid-assed enough to try it?

If you haven’t figured it out by now, go back to school and take a comprehensive reading course. You think about it, there’s really only one man who qualifies: Osama bin Laden.

There can be no question. The mastermind behind the 1993 bombing at the aforementioned World Trade Center is so consumed with hatred for the United States that it sticks in his craw that he failed to bring us down eight years ago. So he decided to try and finish the job, gambling that we’ll be too chicken-shit to do anything about it.

(Second side note: Yeah, the Palestinians and the Taliban in Afghanistan are denying responsibility. Don’t believe the bastards. This is their baby.)

This is where George W. Bush needs to prove him wrong. Take this one to the bank, my friends: The Bush presidency – whether he believes it or not, whether he likes it or not – rides on how he handles this.

America is screaming for justice. More to the point, America is screaming for revenge. This is nothing short of an act of war. Yes, war. There’s been a formally undeclared one on us now, by most of the non-Israeli countries of the Middle East, for several years now. The Muslims hate our guts. The Syrians, the Iraqis, the Iranians – we’re their enemy. “Death To America” has been cruising at #1 on the Middle Eastern Top 40 for several years. They’re getting bolder, too – because they think we’re too cowardly to fight back. They think we’ve forgotten how to fight.

If George Bush has any balls, now’s the time to prove them wrong.

This is your solution, like it or not: Any country harboring terrorists – that would include Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, et. al. – must be wiped from the face of the earth.

Scramble 30 bombers. Five warheads each – six if the plane will hold it. Bomb the shit out of these countries – get rid of these raghead bastards.

So what if you take innocents out, too? This is war, people. They don’t care about killing our innocents; why should we give a shit about theirs??

And that goes for the Palestinians, too. Let’s do Israel a favor and eliminate those sons-of-bitches from the annals of history, as well. They want to laugh and make merry at our misfortune, they need to pay the ultimate price.

Show the world some balls, George W. Teach them that there’s a price for fucking with America. Demonstrate to them that we have not forgotten how to fight!