these are wat i get some of thethe comments from the usa citizens in yahoo news...dun believe check the yahoo news...
Sun, September 15, 2002
9-11 SCORECARD
Thu Sep 12,10:01 PM ET
By Ted Rall
In Some Ways, America is Better Off
NEW YORK--We've lost a great deal during the past year. For one thing, the September 11 attacks became a pretend president's pretext to eviscerate the First Amendment and other basic rights. Stifling even the slightest whimpers of dissent may end up killing the two-party political system, long crippled and ineffectual, once and for all. Although terrorists had previously massacred Americans on American soil (jihadis in `93, rednecks in `95), 9-11 wiped away our national sense of invulnerability. An illusion of security--the fantasy that bomb-throwing hatemongers would shoot up airports and blow up buildings elsewhere in the world but not within the United States--turned out to be an utterly imaginary privilege of citizenship.
Infinitely more important, we lost a lot of people: 2,819 at the World Trade Center, including passengers on the planes that struck them. 189 in Washington. 44 in Pennsylvania. 3,052 Americans in all, not including many more who will die from cancer, asbestosis and other ailments related to the attacks. Many more are disabled. Huge numbers have suffered emotional damage, losing parents, children, spouses, friends.
And we killed a lot of people, too. We killed so many that nobody's sure of the exact number: 84 accidentally-bombed Afghans who were either neutral or on our side. Four Canadian soldiers. 40 innocent people celebrating a wedding. Several U.S. servicemen died in helicopter mishaps. Estimates range from 3,500 to 10,000 total, and that's not including the Taliban troops we killed on purpose--even though they had nothing to do with 9-11.
The odds that one of those 6,500 to 13,000 people--or their children--would someday have cured cancer or written a great novel may be slim. But those deaths are nevertheless an unfathomable tragedy, and not just to their friends and families. If a universe is lost when a single person dies, who can justify what was done to us, or what we did to others?
The crucible of crisis, however, always creates opportunities and solutions as old assumptions are swept aside. We Americans have gained a lot since 9-11. Perhaps the perks weren't worth the price paid, but they're still worth noting:
The End of Ignorance. Before 9-11, American newspapers rarely covered international affairs at all, much less in the remote, obscure backwaters of former Soviet Central Asia. While most people may still not know the exchange rate between Uzbek som and Kyrgyz sum, people now better understand basic Afghan geography and history, tribal politics and rising Islamic fundamentalism--issues that will continue to affect the U.S. for the foreseeable future. While much coverage of international affairs and the "war on terrorism" remains sketchy or misleading, we're beginning to pay serious attention to the world beyond our borders and to the possibility that we're not always the good guys. Since the U.S. is a major player overseas, this is obviously a good thing.
The End of Naiveté. Believing that there was no meaningful difference between the Democratic and Republican parties, I voted for the Green Party's Ralph Nader ( news - web sites) in 2000. Before 9-11, that decision seemed sound. Now, however, the ideological extremism of the GOP has been cast into sharp relief for all to see--as LBJ historian Robert A. Caro writes, power doesn't corrupt, power reveals. Bush exploited his post-9-11 90 percent approval rating by bullying Congress into passing a litany of GOP wish-list agenda items with no link to fighting terrorism. Would Al Gore ( news - web sites) have bombed Afghanistan ( news - web sites)? Perhaps--Clinton did. Gore, however, would not have used 9-11 to justify fast-track signing authority for free-trade agreements, tax cuts for the wealthy (or for increases), jailing American citizens without charging them with a crime or invading Iraq without provocation. The two parties are still painfully close in ideology and temperament--but Bush after 9-11 provides ample warning that a right-wing demagogue can travel in a buffoon's clothing.
The End of Moderation. The Bush Administration's hard right turn after 9-11 forces all Americans to take firm stands on various issues. If you say that you support George W. Bush, many people will assume that you despise the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, working people and the middle class. "Isn't there some middle ground?" a friend asked me the other day. "Can't I be a moderate Republican?" Not any more. Neo-McCarthyism is at war with democracy, and it's time for every American to stand up and be counted.
(Ted Rall's latest book, a graphic travelogue about his recent coverage of the Afghan war titled "To Afghanistan and Back," is now in its second edition. Ordering and review-copy information are available at nbmpub.com.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------WAR WIDOWS OF 9/11
Wed Sep 11,10:04 PM ET
By Maggie Gallagher
Joe, who is 3 years old, remembers his father a little bit.
For the first few days, when no one knew quite who had survived, his mother kept telling him Daddy was at work. As the days passed, finally she had to level with him: Daddy was never coming home. "He knows his daddy is missing," his mom, Barbara Atwood, told me. "A few nights ago, he said, 'Daddy's gone. He didn't say goodbye.'"
Joe's daddy, Gerald Atwood, was a fireman, one of the heroes who died Sept. 11.
Of course, it has been hard. Joe has a 2-year-old sister and a brand-new baby brother, born six months after Sept. 11. "It's frustrating. Under normal circumstances you would privately go through this period, if it had been a normal death, and since it's not, it has to be shared and the privacy is hard to find," says Barbara.
Barbara is one of at least 102 women who were expecting babies when their husbands died at the World Trade Center who are beneficiaries of the Infant Care Project, designed to get immediate assistance into the hands of these war widows. Barbara is generous about my particular invasion of her privacy because she wants to thank the Independent Women's Forum. (You can contact the Infant Care Project through www.iwf.org.)
"Many of these moms feel they are supposed to put every dime away for college. We told them, 'You must use this on yourself right now: Fly your mom in, hire a baby sitter so you can get some sleep, get a cleaning service,'" explains IWF President Nancy Pfotenhauer. Their theory is that husbands are more than just paychecks. A dad can never be replaced, but a pair of helping hands can ease the stress around the baby's birth. ("If just one mom gets a good night's sleep because of this, I am happy!" says Nancy, who, with five children, knows whereof she speaks.)
None of the big charities agreed to help out, for whatever reason. So IWF, normally a small public-policy think tank specializing in women's issues from a center-right perspective, has raised the money from individual donors. An anonymous donor covered the administrative costs. IWF has painstakingly assembled probably the most comprehensive list of women who were expecting children and lost husbands that day. Every dime that comes in for the Infant Care Project goes directly to the war widows. So far they have distributed $400,000.
Last week, Barbara Atwood attended a baby shower sponsored by IWF for all the new moms widowed on 9/11. "Fabulous," says Barbara. "They took care of your baby while you ate and socialized. They had toys donated, playpens, changing tables, swings, cribs. They had everything you could imagine to keep the children entertained. I met some new mothers, and it was absolutely wonderful. It gave us the opportunity to identify with each other and our experiences and know that we are not losing it."
For Barbara the experience was "mostly happy and somewhat tearful -- which is fine: You are crying with people going through the whole thing. I am really glad IWF kept this going, and I told them if you keep doing this, I will keep showing up."
She pauses. "I feel so energized when I leave. I left with a smile and I need that."
And yet the future of the project is uncertain. "We would like to keep helping these moms out at least through Christmas," says Nancy. It seems the least we can do.
(Readers may reach Maggie Gallagher at GallagherIAV@ Yahoo.com.)
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BUSH AT THE U.N.: THOUGHTS SAID AND U.N.SAID
Sat Sep 14,10:02 PM ET
By William F. Buckley Jr.
The habit of presidents and popes, when they address the United Nations ( news - web sites), is to sound unctuous and vapid. This time around, circumstances made it impossible to come and go having deposited nothing of substance. No prosecuting attorney could have been more thorough in reciting the violations of Iraq, not merely of ideals in general, but of specific undertakings after its defeat in the Gulf War ( news - web sites).
Mr. Bush was unsparing of detail. "Just months after the 1991 cease-fire, the Security Council twice renewed its demand that the Iraqi regime cooperate fully with inspectors, condemning Iraq's serious violations of its obligations. The Security Council again renewed that demand in 1994 and twice more in 1996, deploring Iraq's clear violations of its obligations. The Security Council renewed its demand three more times in 1997, citing flagrant violations, and three more times in 1998, calling Iraq's behavior totally unacceptable. And in 1999, the demand was renewed yet again."
Security Council members were presumably embarrassed by this recitation of the council's indolence. Somebody was doing things right, namely the people who were recording the acts of lawlessness. Formal responsibility is, of course, that of the United Nations. The great precedent, mentioned by Mr. Bush early in his speech, is the League of Nations, which, once again, was not so blind as to fail to notice transgressions against the code of the league.
The question became: What then? If a convict is placed on parole and instances of violation of parole mount, attention inevitably turns to the enforcing arm. There is, in the last analysis, nobody around to enforce U.N. decisions of a nonclerical character other than the United States. If the session in New York on Thursday had had parliamentary form, one would not have been surprised to hear someone shoot up from across the aisle to say: Mr. President, what was the U.S. government doing during this period of contumacy that you're talking about?
In his speech to the United Nations in November, President Bush ( news - web sites) acknowledged the early mobilization of the U.N. after the Gulf War. It was gratifying that a mere two weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1373, which held up specific obligations on U.N. member states. They were to crack down on terrorist financing, share intelligence with those who coordinate law enforcement, deny sanctuary or safe haven to terrorists or their accomplices. Some such pressures were placed on Iraq, but focus on Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites) dissipated, and diplomatic and commercial talk turned rather to the restoration of normalcy and the end of sanctions, than to hardening such sanctions and enforcing U.N. resolutions.
In his November speech, Mr. Bush had said: "These same terrorists are searching for weapons of mass destruction, the tools to turn their hatred into holocaust. They can be expected to use chemical, biological and nuclear weapons the moment they are capable of doing so."
The U.S. position is of course that Saddam Hussein has chemical and biological weapons. Not prospectively, but in hand. How do we explain that Saddam has not in fact used them?
The point is important, because those who resist the imperatives of the Bush-Cheney analysis do so by insisting that there is time to mediate. What Mr. Bush did was to give out a six-point ultimatum, the things Saddam needs to do to comply with the demands of peace and justice. Included was everything short of baptizing himself as a Christian. At the end of the list, General Bush unsheathed his sword: "The Security Council resolutions will be enforced. The just demands of peace and security will be met, or action will be unavoidable."
Bush knows how to be tough. In November he told the United Nations: "They dare to ask God's blessing as they set out to kill innocent men, women and children. But the God of Isaac and Ishmael would never allow such a prayer. And a murderer is not a martyr; he is just a murderer." The end of those murderers was given in tones of biblical wrath and certitude: "The people of my country will remember those who have plotted against us. We are learning their names. We are coming to know their faces. There is no corner of the Earth distant or dark enough to protect them. However long it takes, their hour of justice will come."
We will see. During the speech, the camera turned from time to time to the Iraqi ambassador to the U.N. His expression was stony. But sitting behind him, a middle-aged aide, who might have been Saddam's brother, chewed gum. Everybody in the U.N. has chewed gum for years, including the U.S. delegation. But no longer, Mr. Bush has said.
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You will be the judge for the current Bush Administration tactics. These are purely come from some of the Americans comments. Dun let the Busd admin tactics blind ur thoughts....you gotta find from different types of sources to know wat is realli happening right now. News info is the most important toknow the current issue both inside n outside of the govn n the ppl.
4 the TRUTH is out there]) The rest go search ur self, i will not post everything tt is in the net.