I held on to HOPE that day after the Towers fell, that someone might still be alive… and truly, the hands of Divinity reached out and delivered.

…

https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/sept11/2003/n_9189/

…

The story of their survival is amazing. As we witnessed tragedy playing out before us, at such a pivotal moment in TIME… someone made it out ALIVE. I remember asking anyone with news if anyone else had made it out… there would be time for anger and Justice another day… the Human Need in that moment was like a mental anchor, keeping me from drifting too far downstream.

Is there anything I could be doing to help save a LIFE?

…

It was soon apparent, as emergency triage centers filled with doctors and nurses… there were no patients. There were no casualties. The destruction was total. We would soon be honoring memories.

…

(At 5:40 in the video) “The building collapsed to dust.” -Joe Casaliggi

…

Though we live one thousand miles away with no physical connection to any of those SOULS, every one of us here in the Great State of Kansas knew what we were witnessing. Every one of us knew what this meant. My girlfriend at the time… my ‘high school sweetheart’… was an MP in the United States Army. She shipped out shortly after 9/11. We knew the uncertainty that lie ahead, and we parted ways as good friends.

It’s been twenty years since I last saw her. She served, got married, started a family… as we all do. twenty years…

In that moment, our reactions were almost instinctual. We knew War had come. Whatever sacrifices were to be asked of us… whatever it was we could do to HONOR those families and ensure this could NEVER happen again… the fight was JUST. The objective was CLEAR.

And then we INVADED IRAQ.

Our President LIED to us about yellowcake uranium. Our Secretary of State LIED to the United Nations about Mobile Processing Sites. Our Secretary of Defense LIED about how we would be greeted by the Iraqi People… and all but a notable FEW of our Elected Officials SUPPORTED those lies. Knowingly.

EVIDENCE, gathered after the fact. The outing of an undercover Intelligence Officer. In order to cover up their LIES… and they thumbed their noses as they held their heads HIGH. Hypocrisy… on full display! And to think, some people even had the nerve to claim, that Our President knew about the attacks in advance…

But that’s just crazy-talk right there.

…

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/pdb8-6-2001.pdf

…

“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”

Maybe that sentence would have had a greater IMPACT on someone like Al Gore, than it obviously did on George W. Bush.

…

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/exactly-12-years-later-msna75220

…

Conspiracy Theories exist. It does us no good to remain ignorant to their claims. The fanciful, the distraught, the horribly misinformed, the self-serving and the ideologically driven. All of them, sprinkled with verifiably provable facts. To bolster their position or add credibility to an obscure concept… one that often hides a racially charged or anti-Semitic agenda at its core.

Every one of their ideas are easily deconstructed in the LIGHT. We don’t need Conspiracy Theories to understand what truly happened that day. We have FACTS. We know WHY this happened.

The intelligence was there. The lights were all FLASHING RED… critical pieces weren’t passed up the chain. Oversight was lax…

HUMAN ERROR 

That’s what allowed this to happen. In essence… it was an inside job.

In those early months of a new Administration, with their transition period stunted by prolonged legal challenges. Was there something that they missed… was there something MORE they could have done to prevent this from happening in the first place?

We may never know… they were too busy figuring out how to INVADE IRAQ.

…

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/leadup-iraq-war-timeline/

…

“Go find me a way to do this.”

-POTUS, January 2001.

…

And even upon this Hallowed Day, still…

…

…

We all know what the problem is. An unpopular President elevated with only a MINORITY of support. Faced with a LIFE-THREATENING crisis, the Administration was too pre-occupied with their own agendas to be prepared in advance… and the American People are stuck holding the the check when the balance comes due.

Some things NEVER CHANGE… and that’s precisely what needs to change.

It doesn’t matter how many countries we invade. How many TRILLIONS of dollars we spend on securing the Homeland. If we do not address the cause of this problem… it will happen again. No matter how healthy the chicken is, if it doesn’t have its HEAD screwed on correctly, it’s only a matter of TIME.

We’ve spent the last twenty years trying to build something beautiful out of the ruins that were made. For our security, as well as theirs. We believed it could be done. We were told it could be done… it seems, in this we’ve found COMMON GROUND with the People of Afghanistan:

Elected Officials take positions that stand opposed to the Will of The People, because of the influence that MONEY has on their decision making processes.

We did everything we could possibly think of so it would never happen again, but we never addressed the UNDERLYING CAUSE of our problem. Twice now, in less than twenty years… 

We must fulfill our promise and ensure it can never happen again.

-JC