Your Sunday Thought for the Day

Local Newsman Remembers 9/11

From Kris Ketz'Facebook page today.

"A personal note. 

Sunday. 15 years since 9/11. And on a day when the Chiefs open the 2016 season at home - for me - who could forget that first football game after the attacks. At Arrowhead. And it was the New York Giants in town. I'll never forget walking to my seats that morning and catching a glimpse of a sign hanging from the club level. 'KC NY.'

We all loved New York for all the obvious reasons. 

Anyone or anything from the big apple was a special guest that day. I don't know about the other 79,000 fans in the stadium that day but for me it was hard to think about football - yet - it was good to see it. It was more than a game. It was a step towards returning to some form of 'normal' and at a time when nobody knew what 'normal' would be. We all wanted to see how America and Americans would respond to what happened - long term. We were all so anxious to help in whatever small way we could. 

There was a big "fill the boot" effort in the stadium thanks to members of the KCFD (at least in my section 134) who were busy raising money for the recovery effort in NYC. I may be wrong on the numbers but I think Chiefs fans raised something north of $200,000 that day and then the Chiefs matched what was raised. The singing of the National Anthem that day meant more. 

Like most fans around us there was a lump in my throat and for once we all ended by singing 'Home of the Brave', Chiefs players & coaches had American Flags in their hands. Like I said we all wanted to help. We all wanted to do something. We all wanted people in NY to know that people in KC had their back. I don't recall the final score that day but I remember leaving the stadium thinking in any other environment this would have been just another football game. 

15 years later - KC still 's NY."

9/11

Thank you, George W. Bush.

The Bush White House Was Deaf to 9/11 Warnings

Bush administration ignored CIA terror warnings

Bush Received More Warnings About 9/11 Than We Realized

Unheeded Warnings: George W. Bush and 9/11

On Brussels

I am personally sick to death of people who think somehow that blowing up other civilians, strangers advances their cause. It's beyond disgusting.

The bad thing is that they killed and hurt lots of innocents.

The good thing is that they did it with suicide vests.

Could We All Give Up On This Idea Now?

Different people, different organizations, all with the same idea, the same "solution."

Maybe we all should try a new strategy.

Quote of the Day -- On Any "War On Terrorism"

What far too many don't know or realize. Or accept.

"You can't have a war on terrorism because that's not a actual enemy, it's an abstract. It's like having a war on dandruff. That war will be eternal and pointless. It's idiotic.

That's not a war, it's a slogan. it's a lie. It's advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented in America. And we use it to sell soap, wars and presidential candidates in the same fashion."

--Gore Vidal.

Nous sommes tous les Parisiens

We are all Parisians.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Vive la France.

In Memoriam, 9/11

To the estimated 4,347 American soldiers who died in the war we were all lied into (see Casualties in Iraq),

Links:  The Bush White House Was Deaf to 9/11 Warnings

Bush Received More Warnings About 9/11 Than We Realized

Bush Warned of Hijackings Before 9-11

On This, the Anniversary of 9/11

Lest we forget.

George W. Bush was president, Dick Cheney, Vice President.

Then-President George W. Bush had ignored daily presidential briefs, warning him of a possible attack by air and by terrorists in general and Osama bin Laden specifically.

One Kansas City area resident, Tomas Young, was inspired to join the military after the attack and did so:

Two days after the September 11 attacks, Young was inspired by President George W. Bush to enlist in the United States Army. There he hoped to earn money for college through the G.I. Bill and, in his words, "exact some form of retribution" on those who caused 9/11.

On April 4, 2004, five days after being sent to Iraq, Young was shot while riding in an open, unarmored truck during an ambush staged by rebels in Sadr City. One of the bullets pierced his spine and left him paralyzed from the chest down.

He returned home to Kansas City, Missouri and joined the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). He later became a public critic of the Iraq War.

The movie, Body of War, was based on his life and eventual opposition to the Iraq war.

Before his death in November, 2014, he penned the following letter to that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

I post it here, on this anniversary, in hopes of teaching some and so that more not forget what occurred.

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

—Tomas Young

Why You Can't Have a "War on Terrorism"

And keep in mind, Mr. Vidal wrote this before Dubya' lied us into offensively--and illegally--attacking Iraq and inflaming all this insanity.

Endless War

And the "war on terror" fits perfectly into this since such a war can never really be won.

Like

Quote of the day -- the "War on Terror"

And he wrote this a few years before Dubya' and Dick started both their illegal war in Iraq and our insane "war on terror" after 9/11.

Very prescient.

From the "Things We Allow Corporations to Get Away With" file

Perhaps you saw some of these headlines in the last few days?

West Virginians to be without water for days because of chemical spill

Tap water fix in West Virginia still days away, official says

Thousands Without Water After Spill in West Virginia

West Virginia chemical spill frustrates residents for fourth day

Which brings up this thought I saw yesterday on Facebook:

"If a foreign terrorist group poisoned the water of an entire region in the U.S. we'd likely be going into another war, but since it's just an improperly regulated company, well, that's just the cost of doing business."

--From a post on Http://Fb.com/TheMarmelPage

Additional link:  The Steve Marmel Page

A huge, overlooked possibility of time travel

Imagine if, one day, there really were such a thing as a time machine, time travel, stepping through a "wormhole" to another time.

Imagine putting it to REALLY good use.

Imagine if the person went back and--forgive me--killed Adolf Hitler in, oh, what?  1925?

Now that's a beautiful thought.

Have a great weekend, y'all.

Muslim extremists hurting their own cause

Did you see this rather big story from England today?

Chilling video of London attacker explaining machete attack

The report is that "..two men attacked a man believed to be a British soldier in the London neighborhood of Woolwich, but U.K. officials are already investigating it as a possible act of terrorism.

One of the two men are quoted as saying "We swear by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reasons we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth. We apologise that women had to see this today but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government. They don’t care about you."

And all I can say is that with the reports from around the world, that so many Muslims strapped bombs to themselves and blew themselves and innocents up, time after time, their fellow countrymen, frequently, and now this, it's all creating images of Muslims and Islamists that far too many people across in many countries, Americans, British, all kinds of people, all over the world, that they think "they're all like that."

This is going nowhere good for them, that's for sure, and for too many of them, they don't seem to care. How they expect this to go well for them, I don't know or understand.

In the meantime, here's something that won't get reported enough, also from today:

Woolwich attack: Religious groups condemn attack

And from this article:

...Muslim groups have condemned the attack after a video captured of the suspected attackers saying: “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.”

A statement from the Muslim Council of Britain said: “This is a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and we condemn this unreservedly. Our thoughts are with the victim and his family.

“We understand the victim is a serving member of the Armed Forces. Muslims have long served in this country’s Armed Forces, proudly and with honour.

“This attack on a member of the Armed Forces is dishonourable, and no cause justifies this murder.”

The group called for vigilance and solidarity between “all our communities, Muslim and non-Muslim”, and for police to “calm tensions”.

Mohammed Shafiq from the Ramadhan Foundation said: “I wish to condemn the evil and barbaric crime carried out today in Woolwich.

“Our immediate thoughts are with the family and friends of the victims. From whatever angle you see today’s attack, it was at every level evil.

“We must allow the police to gather all the facts before unnecessary speculation and wait for the facts before determining its impact on our country.

“But what happens in the days to come, London and our nation will come together and will not be divided. The terrorists will never win and succeed in their evil plans.

“But tonight we think of the family of that soldier killed.”

So let's keep that in mind,  too, if we can. 

Don't think all Muslims are for this bararity.

Purely by fluke, I ran across this flip side of the coin, so to speak, this evening, too:

British soldier jailed for stabbing 10-year-old Afghan boy - Telegraph

But that's different, right?

Right?

Quote of the day--on good vs evil

“When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

More of our nation's priorities

Quite a contrast to Boston.

On Boston, the police...and unions

We need to be far better than this, America

Already there are stories of Americans apparently, reputedly, I admit, attacking Muslims or people thought to be Muslims, because it's thought the 2 men who planted and set off the bombs in Boston this past week were Muslim:

Boston Marathon Bombing Fallout: Bangladeshi Man Beaten In Bronx For Being An 'Arab' - International Business Times

Link: http://www.ibtimes.com/boston-marathon-bombing-fallout-bangladeshi-man-beaten-bronx-being-arab-1201819

Man Beaten Outside Bronx Applebee's in Anti-Muslim Attack after Boston Bombing

Link: http://www.allmediany.com/news/8039-man-beaten-outside-bronx-applebees-in-anti-muslim-attack-after-boston-bombing

Hate Crimes Against Muslims Rising After Boston Bombings

There are so many ways we should be above this.

First, everyone is to be innocent before proven guilty. That alone should make anyone and everyone safe.

Second, violence should never be resorted to, naturally.

Third, how is it anyone could attack another on just the idea and assumption that they're some religion or ethnicity, as some kind of idea that this made any sense at all? Especially since the attacker knows the person they're attacking, in these cases, is totally and utterly innocent. They're only attacking them because they think them to be part of some religion. How do you do that? How do you justify that kind of act?

Fourth and finally, doesn't or wouldn't that make us, as Americans, or anyone who attacked others, just as bad as the original attackers? Sure, no one is killed but innocent people are attacked. It's wildly wrong.

Quote of the day--on good and evil

"All evil and all injustice should repel you and inspire you to create a world where it cannot occur in darkness. Be both a witness and a bright light that can be cast on these acts of cruelty. This applies to everyone, and it is the only way the world will change. The power resides within us."

--Tennessee Williams (1982)