http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0824-28.htmPublished on Thursday, August 24, 2006 by the Baltimore Sun (Maryland)
Hear the Voices of 9/11
by Garrison Keillor
It was painful to hear the woman in anguish on the 83rd floor of the World Trade Center, crying, "I'm going to die, aren't I? I'm going to die." Melissa Doi was 32, beautiful, with laughing eyes and black hair. She was lying on the floor of her office at IQ Financial, overwhelmed by smoke and heat, calling for help. And then there was Kevin Cosgrove on the 105th floor, moments before it collapsed, gasping for breath, saying, "We're young men, we're not ready to die." And then he screamed, "Oh my God" as the building started to collapse. It's in their voices, what they went through.
Those were two of the 1,613 calls to 911 released by New York City last week, on almost all of which the caller's voice was beeped out. The city argued that to hear people in anguish in their last minutes constitutes invasion of privacy. The truth is that the callers had no interest in privacy - they were desperate to be heard, and censoring them now is a last insult by a bureaucracy that failed to protect them in the first place.
They were people like us; we might have sat near them in a theater or restaurant, asked them for directions on the street. They went to work that fine Tuesday morning and suddenly found themselves facing the abyss, and the first thing we thought, seeing the burning buildings on TV, was, "What is it like for the people in there?" We wanted to know.
Then, inevitably, politicians began to seize the day and turn it into a patriotic tableau starring Themselves. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who does not appear in a leadership capacity in the reliable accounts of that morning - who was captured on videotape fleeing uptown - soon stepped into the TV lights and put on his public face, and a few days later the Current Occupant mounted the wreckage with bullhorn in hand and vowed vengeance. The media were glad to focus on the martial moment, the flag waving over the wreckage, the theme of America United, and the anguished voices from the towers were unheard; the people who fell from high floors and smashed into the pavement were not seen on American TV. The media averted their eyes from the reality of Sept. 11 and started looking for the Message.
Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun
End of excerpt.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
While Bush sat in a classroom reading a book about a goat knowing this country was under attack, American citizens who did nothing but get up and go to work on a sunny Spetember day were staring hell in the face. While he was making excuses, stalling, and totally abandoning his duties as the coronated occupant of our White House, fathers and mothers, lovers, children, and every day people were being murdered and jumping out of windows to their deaths. And then, he had the unmitigated gall to stand on their graves with a bullhorn to use this tragedy for his OWN political gain...and he's still doing it.
This September 11 will be the fifth anniversary of an event that to date still has not seen justice. The families of the victims still have not found peace and closure. There is still no monument to the dead at Ground Zero as those in charge care more about making money from this tragedy than giving the people a fitting tribute. And the supposed planner of it all is still free while Americans submit daily to metal detectors, scanners, x-ray machines, and fearmongering about shaving cream.
Not ONE employee in this current regime has been fired or held accountable for their negligence, incompetence, and perhaps even involvement. All we the people got was a whitewash of an investigation headed by elitists who were tied to special interests that profited from the attacks, and to this day anyone who still has questions that any American who loves this country should ask, is considered a "conspiracy theorist." Such is the depth to which our Republic has sunk gripped in the throse of fear, paranoia, and political powerplaying.
They have now taken that tragic day and used it to trash our Constitution. To abrogate basic Constitutional rights that no terrorist should be allowed to take away by fear. We have cowered to fear, and for too long have allowed the merchants of it to get away with selling us a bogus "1984" package that has done nothing but perpetuate terrorism in the world and set our children on a course for decades of debt, war, and instability.
And I say, it is time for them to be made accountable for their negligence, incompetence, indifference, and even culpability in this crime. And they must not get away with stifling the voices of 9.11. I like so many, lost people I knew in those towers that day. I worked there for years and called the WTC my second home. I love NYC, and I still grieve. And I will never, ever back down from the questions and suspicions that I believe are totally valid regarding that day in light of this regime's blatant insensitivity to the plight of the real people who died that day, and their total retiscence in doing nothing but using this day for their own political gain. There is still a story to be told about this day, and I hope by the grace of God and the power of truth that it comes out one day... One day soon so that those who may still be hiding in the shadows receive the justice they deserve.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
