Even those two minutes of film that have become an icon, showing Christopher Stevens in the hands of the Libyans after he was attacked aren’t clear cut. Are they rejoicing because they found his dead body, or are they rejoicing because someone saw a sign of life in him? We probably will never know the truth. The best we can hope for is some degree of closure, and get as close to the truth as we possibly can.

:

Just a few simple words, speaking volumes!

“On this solemn anniversary, Laura and I hold the victims of September 11th in our thoughts and prayers.”

May God bless America, and may God bless you, President Bush! You were by no means perfect, but your leadership is missed greatly! You united us on this tragic day 11 years ago!

September 10, 2001: A beautiful New England Day.

September 11, 2001: The day that changed America forever.

First Officer Steve Scheibner packed his suitcase and waited for the phone call finalizing his assignment to fly American Airlines Flight 11, from Boston to Los Angeles. The call never came. In My Seat recounts the events leading up to Flight 11 and the subsequent death of Tom McGuinness in the seat that should have been filled by Steve Scheibner.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ – Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), said today the fact that prayer and Scripture were key ingredients in the 9/11 remembrance at Ground Zero shows how wrong Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in refusing to reverse a ban prohibiting religious leaders and prayer from being part of the official ceremony.

“Despite the Mayor’s ban, prayer permeated the solemn and sacred remembrance at Ground Zero,” saidJay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ. “We heard from nearly 40,000 Americans who supported prayer at this event. And, in the end, even with the ban in place, President Obama, former President Bush, and former New York City Mayor Giuliani – understood the importance of including prayer in their remarks – prayer for those who are still suffering from the nation’s worst terrorist attack – prayer for our nation. In spite of the Mayor’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge the importance of including prayer, the fact is that prayer and Scripture played an integral part of this memorial event and for that we are grateful.”

The ACLJ sent Mayor Bloomberg a letter signed by nearly 40,000 Americans declaring their support for prayer at the event and urging him to rescind his ban.

In his remarks at Ground Zero, President Obama read Psalm 46, which begins with, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.”

Former President George W. Bush read from a letter written by Abraham Lincoln in 1864 to a mother who lost five sons during the Civil War. Lincoln ended the letter saying, “I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”

And former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani read from Ecclesiastes. As Giuliani put it: “The perspective that we need, and have needed, to get through the last 10 years, and the years that remain, are best expressed by the words of God as inscribed in the book of Ecclesiastes.”

What do you notice about this picture?

photo via theatlanticwire.com

UPDATE: Scripture makes this picture worth a lifetime!

A bright and beautiful Tuesday morning, 8:46 am was the moment the world we knew ceased to exist. Sixteen minutes later, there was no doubt in any of our minds that America The Beautiful was under attack! It was indeed a day like no other!

Ten years ago, our world was forever changed. Two strong towers that the we would never have imagined could fall fell mere minutes after impact. One fell in less time than most have for their lunch hour- 56 minutes; the other in less time than the average movie- 102 minutes. When they started to fall, it took only 12 seconds. We looked on in disbelief that this was reality- the news- and not the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

The official number of those killed in the attack is 2,819. This number alone is staggering! It is nothing less than mass murder, no matter how you try to explain it. The statistics are overwhelming!

Many have tried to make excuses for the mass murderers, but there is no acceptable excuse. Murder is murder, whether it’s under the guise of ‘misguided beliefs’ or not. Political Correctness may try to gloss over the facts, but we will never allow it!

The memory of these lives will never be forgotten! Never!

Here are just a few of the statistics from that fateful day. It is a part of America’s history that we must never allow to be diminished.

9/11 by the Numbers

Number of firefighters and paramedics killed: 343

Number of NYPD officers: 23

Number of Port Authority police officers: 37

Number of WTC companies that lost people: 60

Number of employees who died in Tower One: 1,402

Number of employees who died in Tower Two: 614

Number of nations whose citizens were killed in attacks: 115

Bodies found “intact”: 289

Body parts found: 19,858

Number of families who got no remains: 1,717

Estimated units of blood donated to the New York Blood Center: 36,000

Total units of donated blood actually used: 258

Number of people who lost a spouse or partner in the attacks: 1,609

Estimated number of children who lost a parent: 3,051

Percentage of Americans who knew someone hurt or killed in the attacks: 20

Number of funerals attended by Rudy Giuliani in 2001: 200

Number of FDNY vehicles destroyed: 98

Tons of debris removed from site: 1,506,124

Days fires continued to burn after the attack: 99

Jobs lost in New York owing to the attacks: 146,100

Days the New York Stock Exchange was closed: 6

Point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average when the NYSE reopened: 684.81

Economic loss to New York in month following the attacks: $105 billion

Estimated cost of cleanup: $600 million

Estimated amount donated to 9/11 charities: $1.4 billion

Estimated amount of insurance paid worldwide related to 9/11: $40.2 billion

Estimated amount of money needed to overhaul lower-Manhattan subways: $7.5 billion

Estimated amount of money raised for funds dedicated to NYPD and FDNY families: $500 million

Number of songs Clear Channel Radio considered “inappropriate” to play after 9/11: 150

Estimated number of New Yorkers suffering from post-traumatic-stress disorder as a result of 9/11: 422,000

__________

Source:

9/11 By The Numbers

Visit their website

It was a bright, sunny Tuesday morning.  I awoke from a good night’s sleep around 7:25am Central time that day.  It was a day I was off from work, chalk full of appointments and other things that sometimes must happen on a weekday.

I got out of bed, kicked on the TV, which was tuned to Fox News at the time, and headed to the restroom to freshen up.  When I came back into the bedroom, I glanced over at the TV and saw a live shot of the New York skyline.  The weather that morning in New York was much like it was at my home, 2500 miles away.  It was a clear, sparkling day, a day like so many others.  This day, however, would be different.

It was September 11, 2001.  The live shot I was looking at was of the World Trade Center towers and one of them was on fire.  It seemed, at the time, that a small plane had somehow veered off course and crashed into the tower.  I stood there for a minute or two and took it in.  It was interesting, but the story obviously had to develop before more was known, so I went on about my business.

I went out of my room and found my dad.  I told him about the World Trade Center and grabbed something to nibble on.  I went back to my room and sat down at my computer to browse the, at that time, fairly young Internet to see if anything interesting was there.

Meanwhile, the TV was still on in the background, and I heard John Scott commenting on the World Trade Center incident.  I got out of my chair and stood not more than 18 inches from my Sony 27” CRT TV that was pretty close to state of the art at the time.

While standing there, I saw a second plane, coming from right to left on my TV screen heading towards the towers.  Then it happened.  In what felt like slow motion, I watched the plane impact the second tower and flames shoot straight out the other side.  If I didn’t know I was watching the news, I would have thought it was a special FX shot from an action movie.

At that moment, I heard John Scott say, “This has to be deliberate, folks”, and I could only stand there.  I couldn’t move.  I couldn’t breathe.  I just stood there and watched with utter horror, shock, disbelief, and a number of other, sometimes, conflicting emotions that I just wasn’t able to process at the time.  That image is forever burned into my mind and I will never forget it, even if I wanted to.  I continued to watch the TV all day long, skipping all of my appointments.  I waited anxiously to hear what President Bush was going to do about this.

Flash forward 10 years.  This Sunday is the 10^th anniversary of that horrible day.  This week, the government released information on a credible plan to hit us again on or around the anniversary.   While something may not happen this time, it is yet another reminder that there are people in this would who will stop at nothing to try to destroy this country.

So many Americans have fallen back asleep.  Many who proudly flew American flags and proclaimed loudly in the days and weeks after 9/11 that they, too, would never forget, have, by their actions, forgotten.  One day out of the year they may allow themselves to be reminded of those horrible events, but the rest of the time, they choose not to be bothered with the truth.  They’d prefer to watch their reality shows and read the latest celebrity gossip news on TMZ.

This 9/11 and every day after that, let all of us remember with humility those who were taken from us on that bright Tuesday morning.  To the 2,976 men, women, and children that died on that day:  We made a promise to never forget you, and those of us that haven’t will make sure that the rest of us can’t.

Previous guests of Tim Connolly’s Winning Strategies (formerly Corporate Strategies) have included CNBC “Mad Money” Host Jim Cramer, Gamco’s Mario Gabelli, Muriel Siebert, U.S. Senator and Presidential Candidate John McCain, Texas oilman Lester Smith, ATP Oil & Gas CFO Albert Reese, Envision Capital Management CEO Marilyn Cohen, Presidential Candidate and CEO of Huntsman Corporation Jon M. Huntsman, Consolidated Graphics CEO Joe Davis, Enterprise Products CEO Dan Duncan, Celgene’s CEO John Jackson, Landry’s CEO Tilman Fertitta, former Compaq CEO Eckard Pfeiffer, Money ManagerLouis Navellier, former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, Changewave’s Tobin Smith and many others.

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — On September 11, 2001, then-U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta faced one of the toughest decisions of his career — ordering the grounding of all domestic air traffic for the first time in United States history following deadly attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.

On a special edition of the TxDOT Podcast commemorating the 10th anniversary of the September 11attacks, Secretary Mineta reflects on his actions to make air travel more secure. The episode is scheduled to post at noon CDT on Thursday, September 8.

In the days that followed, as investigations looked back, Secretary Mineta was charged with looking forward and improving security for the nation’s transportation infrastructure. Mineta, now global vice chairman for Hill and Knowlton in Washington, D.C., also talks about the legacy the September 11 attacks left on United States transportation in the interview.

Mineta served as Secretary of Transportation during part of President Bill Clinton‘s second term and both of President George W. Bush‘s terms. He’s the longest-serving Secretary of Transportation since the cabinet position was created in 1967.

Prior to his service as Secretary of Transportation, Mineta spent 20 years in Congress and served as mayor and city councilman for San Jose, California. As a Congressman, he chaired what is now the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and was a key author of the landmark Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, the first significant federal surface transportation legislation in the post-interstate highway system era.

TxDOT’s free podcasts are produced weekly and address a variety of transportation issues by talking with industry experts and business leaders. In the last four years, TxDOT has posted more than 100 transportation-related podcasts including interviews with Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, former Speaker of the House Dick Gebhardt and energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens.

All podcasts are available for download on TxDOT’s website and on iTunes. New episodes (with the exception of this week’s special edition podcast) are posted each Friday at noon.

“The incredible patriotism displayed in the days, weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks helped pull America through some very tough times,” said AmericanFlags.com President/CEO Dr. Jeffrey Reynolds. “American flags adorned every home, school and business in the fall of 2001, but now many have disappeared or are flying in a tattered state,” he said. “At AmericanFlags.com, we want to do our part to ensure that EVERY American properly flies the American flag in support of freedom and in support of those here and abroad who still to this day are fighting to preserve our safety.”

The free American flags being distributed by AmericanFlags.com are regulation-size 3′ X 5′ printed flags that generally sell for $14.99 on the site. Quantities are limited to six per person and customers pay only for shipping and handling. AmericanFlags.com is owned and operated by Precision Marketing Solutions, Inc., a privately held corporation based on Long Island, just outside of New York City. AmericanFlags.com features American flags of all sizes as well as historic flags, military flags, state flags, world flags, sports flags and decorative garden banners. Visitors can claim their free flags at http://www.AmericanFlags.com.