GOD BLESS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

I awoke with a start…then…as now…I sleep with the radio in my ear.

I ran downstairs to turn on the TV.

I turned it off when my youngest came down for breakfast…but I wouldn’t be able to hide this horror from my oldest.

She went to school downtown near all kinds of Federal Buildings …I thought about it some, decided to keep her home and called the school.

I told my youngest a little information and told her I believed school would be the best place for her that day. She could run and have fun and learn and not worry.
I’d do plenty of that for all of us.
We still didn’t really know what was going on….except that it was bad.
Would it get worse, though?
It would.

We heard about the Pentagon after that. The search for a plane that disappeared over Pennsylvania after that.
My husband was overseas and not scheduled to be on a plane that day. There was no way to get a hold of him. A friend had recently moved to Boston and traveled a great deal and I worried about him. I called their house and got the babysitter who quickly allayed my fears and then ask me why I was calling from across the country to ask. I just told her to turn on the TV.

The skies were quiet. We practically lived under the flight path of the airport.

The silence overhead was noticeable.

Within the next day I heard the F-15’s from the Oregon Air National Guard overhead. I ran outside to wave my arms to say thank you.

After that we would learn a few things that I believe some folks have forgotten in this discussion about the chaotic, complex war in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

1. We had to get Osama bin Laden
2. bin Laden had attacked US interests starting with the first WorldTradeCenter bombing in 1993…and almost every year in the 1990’s.
3. bin Laden had declared war on the US in 1998 and stepped up attacks against us.
4. Saddam Hussein had been hosting the world’s terrorists at his nearly annual Baghdad bash.
5. He was ignoring sanctions by bribing UN officials in the Oil for Food program to get cash.
6. Saddam and Osama had a non aggression pact and working relationship in the past.
7. Saddam considered Osama bin Laden an intelligence asset
8. The Sudanese had brought together bin Laden and Saddam so Iraqi weapons specialists could impart knowledge to bin Laden and Zawahiri
9. Saddam was a bad actor in the ‘hood
10. Regime change was a stated goal for the US
11. The question became “when” not “if” UBL would gain WMD
12. Saddam was believed to have WMD since he used chemical weapons on the Kurds and Iranians. He boasted of a nuclear development program.
13. He had to go.
14. Why was Zarqawi in Baghdad before the war?

That’s what I know.

If nothing else…post Saddam Iraq information has only served to increase the certainty of these claims and reveal even more connections between Saddam and bad actors around the world.

The 9/ll commission said that Saddam and Osama bin Laden did not have operational connections for the 9/ll attack. They acknowledged all the other connections and said more investigation must be done to determine the extent to which these connections existed.