This poem was written by JoAnn Wendl on September 17, 2001

We bear Witness
 
Sure footed rescuers, alerted hearts and minds, balancing on dusty
smoldering broken steel and glass, pass countless buckets back and
forth in sobering brigade, gently and reverently remove the fallen
broken dead, scattered and in pieces from the treachery of that
tangled grave.
 
With a searching hope that will not die, born live within their
memory’s reach, they stop at the urging of a canine friend. In the
clarity and brilliance of an azure sky, they listen, unmoving, perched
upon the stillness, hearing nothing but the beating of their own brave
hearts.
 
In the eerie glow of work lights as our heroes labor on, amidst the
horror wrought from desperate sickened minds, our broken hearts are
crushed beneath the cranes that come to search their nests, a message
to the world for all mankind.
 
We feel America rising out of the ashes of her dead, a giant anguished
womb on eagle’s wings.  We pray to hold her temper well, her empathy in
tact, to work with a united hope to deliver peace at last. We are the
children of the sacrificed, from families around the world.
 
We are the mourners, and we bear witness.
 
Addendum: September 11, 2008 (Also by JoAnn Wendl)
 
The questions for the Bush administration still remain; Why weren’t
our jets scrambled at the first report of hijacking? And did the
Administration encourage FEMA’s failure to respond to the Katrina
Disaster in an attempt to prove we could handle it ourselves?

Your uncle has been around long enough to have seen . . . an awful lot.  (No one’s old enough to have seen it all.)  I vividly remember the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the attack on the USS Cole, the African embassy bombings, even: the Beirut barracks bombing, the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, and more tragedies than I care to remember.  The one thing that stands out about all of these “terrorist” acts is that it took weeks, months, and even years before we determined who was responsible for these heinous acts.  So, how is it that, on the very morning of 9/11/2001, there were a slew of “experts”, on just about every television network, all talking about the (then) little known Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorist group?  Now, that was not my first question of the day, but it does stand out as one of the most relevant.  This video brings up some burningquestions.  It’s grainy, and it repeats itself, but it makes valid points.  Points that I don’t feel were adequately addressed in any of the official so-called 9/11 investigations.

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=2792830342831749576&hl=en&fs=

MY first big question that day was: With the FTA and Air Traffic Control regulations, and NORAD protocols, how was it possible for 4 commercial airliners to, virtually simultaneously, deviate from their designated flight paths, without the scrambling of US military fighter planes?  I’ve heard some very weak arguments about the hijackers turning off the transponders, and much of the air-military was on some sort of maneuvers that morning.  So the world’s most pre-eminent military didn’t have the ability to hold maneuvers and protect our airspace, at the same time?   Hmmm.

As the video points out, there was an anonymous man-on-the-street expert(?) explaining how the impact of the crash, combined with the heat of the jet fuel, caused the towers to collapse, “mostly due to structural failure”.  He even beat out the television “experts”. 

I watched the towers collapse, from the vantage point of being on the Jersey City side of the Hudson River, at the Harborside complex, directly across from the World Trade Center complex.  Everyone at work was absolutely stunned that the towers collapsed – for whatever reason – as quickly as they did.  And, that they fell straight down on themselves.  For all us laymen architects . . . it just seemed bizarre that the buildings would fall in this fashion, especially considering the relatively short amount of time and how high up the damage/fires were.

The fact that it happened on a Tuesday morning, following a Monday Night Football game, involving our New York Giants was a bit . . . fortuitous. (for lack of a better word)  A lot of tired New York football fans dragged their butts in a little late that morning.  Myself included.  This had the positive effect of there not being more people in the towers when they were hit, and consequently came down.  This, partially, accounts for the initial estimates of fatalities being much higher than what they eventually/actually would end up being.  If someone other than foreign terrorists were involved in this . . . it was a way of taking down the towers, with minimizing the number (and types) of people that would be casualties.  There was a high percentage of immigrant and non-American WTC worker fatalities that morning.  Wouldn’t al Qaeda – who “Hates us for our freedoms” - want to take out as many “real Americans” as possible?

The selection of targets that morning seemed more symbolic, than strategic, for a group that so hates us.  Why the Pentagon?  A relatively low lying building made of granite???  How many military personnel did they think they’d take out flying into that?  And, the World Trade Center may have represented the U.S. economy, success, greed – what have you, but why not crash into the Indian Point nuclear plant?  At least two of the hijacked airliners had four opportunities to do just that.  I know there is some debate of whether nuclear plants can hold up to airliner crashes, but the potential devastation would have made that a much more logical target for any group that harbors as much hatred of the U.S. as al Qaeda reputedly does.  It was a suicide mission.  What did they have to lose?

There are so many compelling questions that have never been addressed.  We were fed an “official” story on the morning of day 1, and the federal government and the (corporate) media have done a very good job of getting most of us to accept it.  It was SUCH a tidy little package that they presented to us!  We deserve better.  We deserve comprehensive explanations of how, and why, 9/11 actually came to be.  We deserve the truth.  We need to hold our elected officials’ feet to the fire on this.  We need a thorough and independent investigation, not a rubber stamp of what the television pundits told us that fateful morning.  Considering that virtually every national decision since 9/11 has been predicated on the events of 9/11 we desperately need to get to the truth.

For further information visit: http://patriotsquestion911.com/

Then contact your Congress persons.  Petition them to press for a full investigation.

Your Uncle Rave

Your uncle has been around long enough to have seen . . . an awful lot.  (No one’s old enough to have seen it all.)  I vividly remember the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the attack on the USS Cole, the African embassy bombings, even: the Beirut barracks bombing, the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, and more tragedies than I care to remember.  The one thing that stands out about all of these “terrorist” acts is that it took weeks, months, and even years before we determined who was responsible for these heinous acts.  So, how is it that, on the very morning of 9/11/2001, there were a slew of “experts”, on just about every television network, all talking about the (then) little known Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorist group?  Now, that was not my first question of the day, but it does stand out as one of the most relevant.  This video brings up some burningquestions.  It’s grainy, and it repeats itself, but it makes valid points.  Points that I don’t feel were adequately addressed in any of the official so-called 9/11 investigations.

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=2792830342831749576&hl=en&fs=

MY first big question that day was: With the FTA and Air Traffic Control regulations, and NORAD protocols, how was it possible for 4 commercial airliners to, virtually simultaneously, deviate from their designated flight paths, without the scrambling of US military fighter planes?  I’ve heard some very weak arguments about the hijackers turning off the transponders, and much of the air-military was on some sort of maneuvers that morning.  So the world’s most pre-eminent military didn’t have the ability to hold maneuvers and protect our airspace, at the same time?   Hmmm.

As the video points out, there was an anonymous man-on-the-street expert(?) explaining how the impact of the crash, combined with the heat of the jet fuel, caused the towers to collapse, “mostly due to structural failure”.  He even beat out the television “experts”. 

I watched the towers collapse, from the vantage point of being on the Jersey City side of the Hudson River, at the Harborside complex, directly across from the World Trade Center complex.  Everyone at work was absolutely stunned that the towers collapsed – for whatever reason – as quickly as they did.  And, that they fell straight down on themselves.  For all us laymen architects . . . it just seemed bizarre that the buildings would fall in this fashion, especially considering the relatively short amount of time and how high up the damage/fires were.

The fact that it happened on a Tuesday morning, following a Monday Night Football game, involving our New York Giants was a bit . . . fortuitous. (for lack of a better word)  A lot of tired New York football fans dragged their butts in a little late that morning.  Myself included.  This had the positive effect of there not being more people in the towers when they were hit, and consequently came down.  This, partially, accounts for the initial estimates of fatalities being much higher than what they eventually/actually would end up being.  If someone other than foreign terrorists were involved in this . . . it was a way of taking down the towers, with minimizing the number (and types) of people that would be casualties.  There was a high percentage of immigrant and non-American WTC worker fatalities that morning.  Wouldn’t al Qaeda – who “Hates us for our freedoms” - want to take out as many “real Americans” as possible?

The selection of targets that morning seemed more symbolic, than strategic, for a group that so hates us.  Why the Pentagon?  A relatively low lying building made of granite???  How many military personnel did they think they’d take out flying into that?  And, the World Trade Center may have represented the U.S. economy, success, greed – what have you, but why not crash into the Indian Point nuclear plant?  At least two of the hijacked airliners had four opportunities to do just that.  I know there is some debate of whether nuclear plants can hold up to airliner crashes, but the potential devastation would have made that a much more logical target for any group that harbors as much hatred of the U.S. as al Qaeda reputedly does.  It was a suicide mission.  What did they have to lose?

There are many compelling questions that have never been addressed.  We were fed an “official” story on the morning of day 1, and the federal government and the (corporate)media have done a very good job of getting most of us to accept it.  We deserve better.  We deserve comprehensive explanations of how, and why, 9/11 actually came to be.  We deserve the truth.  We need to hold our elected officials’ feet to the fire on this.  We need a thorough and independent investigation, not a rubber stamp of what the television pundits told us that fateful morning.  Considering that virtually every national decision since 9/11 has been predicated on the events of 9/11 we desperately need to get to the truth.

For further information visit: http://patriotsquestion911.com/

Then contact your Congress persons.  Petition them to press for a full investigation.

Your Uncle Rave

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSBYdRRuLxI

Your Uncle Rave had the misfortune of personally watching the Twin Towers, on the morning of 9/11/2001.  He was right across the Hudson River, at Exchange Place in Jersey City, NJ.  He hates to say this, but his very first inkling was - at the very least - that our government allowed this to happen.  Since that day, the arguments that some faction of our government actually took a more active role, in the events of that morning, have gotten more and more intriguing . . . and compelling.  It’s like assembling a large jigsaw puzzle . . . that comes in a blank box.  You might not start out knowing where it’s all going . . . but, eventually the pieces begin to fall into place.  Just because we’ve all been told it happened a certain way . . . doesn’t make it necessarily so.  We, ultimately, might not like the answers that we find, but we owe it to ourselves, and to our children and grandchildren, to ask the hard questions.

The 9/11 Commission Report was far from thorough.  The 9/11 investigation needs to be re-opened, and it needs to be non-partisan, autonomous and very far reaching.  Write and call your senators and congressperson, and let them know that you want a new  and thorough investigation..

Your Uncle Rave