Inside 9/11: The National Geographic Special

I will continue explaining my philosophy of politics very soon, but this is more important.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, my wife and I had just gotten out of bed and begun our daily ritual of getting ready for work. We always had the TV on in our room as we got ready (no kid yet back then), so we could catch the five-day weather forecast. So we were watching the local news, and they announced that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, and they were turning over their broadcast to the local NBC affiliate in NYC. At that point, only the north tower had been hit, and it was still logically probable that it was a horrible accident. While I was watching the live coverage, with the cameras focused on the burning north tower, I saw the very quick flash of another airliner on the TV screen, and then BOOM! There was a gigantic fireball that filled the screen, and the reporter who was giving an account of what was going on at that moment went - I can only think of one way to describe it - apeshit. Very soon after that, the Pentagon was hit, and that is when it occured to me to call my parents and tell them to turn on the TV. I drove to work, and it was during my commute, while listening to the radio, that the south tower collapsed. I got to work and we turned on the TV just in time to watch the north tower collapse live as we watched. About an hour later, our boss sent everyone home. I spent the rest of the day, sitting on my living room couch watching wall to wall coverage as I got angrier, and angrier. Finally, when a reporter said that upwards of 10,000 people could have possibly been killed, I burst into tears. I did not cry again about 9/11 until tonight, when I watched a truly amazing show on television.

I just finished watching the 9/11 documentary on the National Geographic Channel which is called Inside 9/11. What a magnificent piece of filmmaking that was. The producers need a handshake and a friendly chuck to the shoulder. It would have been so easy to politicize a show like this, and they didn't do it. They stuck to the facts and made a heart-wrenching and tear producing documentary. This was the first one I have seen where they actually showed jumpers falling from the World Trade Center, played an audio of a flight attendant talking to American Airline Headquarters, played the audio of Mohammad Atta speaking to the passengers on the intercom (it was also picked up over the plane's radio). All these images that have barely been shown in the four years since that fateful day, and they were all highlighted in what I consider the best film/documentary yet produced about the Islamic terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The American people need to see this. They need to see it often. The national media has practically had a blackout of the images of September 11 for a few years now. Seriously, when is the last time one of the major networks showed the planes crashing into the towers? When have they ever shown the jumpers period? I was listening tonight to a talk show host named Dennis Prager and he mentioned an interesting point: Regarding the war in Iraq, disregard for a second all the arguments about WMDs, no WMDs, yellow cake uranium, no yellow cake uranium, Bush lied, kids died, no link to Saddam and Al Qaeda, and every other argument out there - fallacious or not - and answer just one question. Are the people we are fighting in Iraq evil people? Even if you don't support the war, just ask yourself: are we fighting evil people who want to do harm to every American who exists? You would be surprised at the number of people I have talked to who can't admit to me that evil exists in this world. These are the same people who have more or less forgotton, or don't really care, that 9/11 happened in the first place.

Good Day to You, Sir