That 9-11 Attack Is Still Killing

By James Donahue

The attacks on the World Trade towers and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, changed America forever. Worse than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, where we had no doubt about the enemy, the truth behind the instigators of 9-11 and where the attack originated has remained clouded.

President George W. Bush and his administration blamed the raid that left about 3,000 dead and dying on an Islamic extremist terror group we called al-Qaeda. The official report said 19 Islamic militants hijacked four airliners that same morning and flew them on suicide missions into the buildings. One of the aircraft crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

That attack sparked the beginning of the longest war in United States history. American forces attacked Afghanistan, where the terrorist plot was believed to have been hatched, then spread to Iraq, which we later learned had nothing to do with 9-11. The fighting continues to this day, but instead of al-Qaeda forces, we are battling a new enemy known as ISIS, or the Islamic State.

The new round of attacks involve air strikes against militant field operations in Iraq and Syria, where ISIS is known to be operating. But the ISIS group appears to want to spread its hold on all of the Middle East Islamic nations.

In a talk before the United Nations General Assembly last week, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was critical of the way the United States and western allies have gone about arming terrorist groups to battle other terrorist groups. In doing this, he said, America is just creating and arming new terrorist organizations.

Critics like Rouhani are suggesting that the Obama Administration is setting the groundwork for a perpetual war against an enemy that has no country and operates freely across borders. It is warfare unlike anything the civilized world has ever experienced, and international rules for warfare are not designed to allow for it.

It is unclear just how many million people . . . mostly innocent citizens . . . have been killed or left destitute and homeless by all of the fighting. Nor can we predict how many will perish before all of this nonsense comes to an end.

Meanwhile, first responders that included police officers and fire fighters at the scene of the World Trade Center destruction on 9-11 are still dying of lung diseases and cancers caused by breathing the toxins in the air after the buildings collapsed.

Because America puts money above all other things of value, sending workers into the deadly smoke, soot and ash laced with asbestos and other toxins, without proper protective masks and suits, became a matter of national security. Even people still alive but trapped in the rubble, calling for help on their cell phones, were not considered as important as the job of linking the broken communication lines and getting the stock exchange, located just down the street, up and running again.

Workers now dying from lung diseases inflicted by inhaling those toxic fumes, were deliberately lied to about the safety of the air. They were sent into harm’s way to get that stock market running again.

The two towers housed several major Wall Street firms, including Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, one of the nation's largest investment banking operations. About 32 brokerage firms were headquartered there, plus Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, a major bank securities company, and Cantor Fitzgerald, which handled about a quarter of the government's bond trading, had major operations in those buildings.

There were vital communication links leading from there right to the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, located just a few blocks away. The destruction of the Trade Center was a brilliant attack, and came very close to wrecking the U.S. and even the world economic structure in one fell swoop.

Former White House anti-terrorism official Richard Clarke, in his book "Against All Enemies," wrote that on the evening of Sept. 11, President George W. Bush told several staff members, including Clarke, that "I want the economy back, open for business right away, banks, the stock market, everything tomorrow."

This order also was written about by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in yet another book. He said that on Sept. 12, one of his aides told him "the President wants to open the New York Stock Exchange tomorrow."