I agree with many posts already on here, both about 9/11 being shamelessly used, yet should not be forgotten.

Whenever I head into the Lincoln Tunnel from New Jersey, I still shake my head when I look at the skyline and say "where did they go?"

I don't forget. Ever.

But what has happened since then has been nothing short of a disgrace.

For me, The Tipping Point was the 2004 presidential election. In the months leading up to the election, resources allocated to prevent another terrorist attack were used as pawns to scare people leading up to the election, all based on flawed and/or outdated "intelligence." That was the first sign of that we can get back to normalcy.

I also take the things the TSA does nowadays as a sign that we are safer nowadays. No, not because of what the TSA does, but rather what the TSA has morphed itself into, doing anything to make itself relevant.

Unfortunately, the TSA was created as a total knee-jerk reaction, not thinking things through. All the moons were in the right alignment, 9/11 just happened, the private screeners use of English as a second language were at fever pitches and the government was ready to spend, spend, spend to travel down its CYA path.

The thing that few remember about 9/11 is that private screeners executed the SOP they were told, as dictated by the airlines and the FAA. They did nothing wrong. A couple of the hijackers even got a secondary screening, and passed.

The TSA is created, prohibits boxcutters and about a dozen other commonly-transported carry-on items, issues arbitrary and retaliatory secondary screenings, and that's about it.

Oh yeah, and a half-decade after the TSA is created, The GAO says we are no safer with the TSA than we were with private screeners.

There are some other things that make me think shamefully about my country since 9/11, but there are also many things that make me proud of my country since 9/11. But I don't want to turn this into an OMNI thread.

Benjamin Franklin:
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Yes, so we put all of our security on the last thing attacked. :rolleyes:

The TSA does not understand security. This is their policy:

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/2331/secure.jpg


Stupid.

Great photo ^

Where did you find it?

Please describe for us the one measure taken by the TSA that, had it been in effect on 9/10/01, would have prevented 9/11 (TM). Excluded answers include locking cockpit doors, no longer cooperating w/hijackers, & banning of boxcutters which both pre-dates the TSA & is nothing more than symbolic given that scissors w/blades up to 4 in, much longer than those in boxcutters, are allowed. TSORon has been asked this question multiple times when he has tried to make similar claims, but he tends to just run & hide.

Please also refrain from the use of terms such as 'cupcake', 'sport', et al in your answers.

and "SSI"....

+1,000,000 Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin 1815.

"He that would live in peace and at ease, must not speak all he knows nor judge all he sees" - Benjamin Franklin

Same guy, Same publication

"The crowd compels us to adopt its language, manners, morals, and religion; and it is a rare freedom in human life when even a slight personal originality in any of these matters - or even in dress - is not crushed at once by universal obloquy and persecution. This is not because the public is wicked but because it is the public - which is hardly its own fault. Society suffocates liberty merely by existing, and it must exist, and all its mem.bers are equally its slaves."

TSORon don't quote what you don't understand.

How about this one

"Social institutions must always remain questionable and op.pressive in varying degrees, because they are not innate in the human race but are imposed upon us by circumstances."

or this one.

"Conviction always abounds in its own sense, as in theology: but what breaks at last through such a charmed circle is wild nature, within and without. A thousand contrary facts, a thousand rebel emotions, drive us from our nest. We find that there can be no peace in delusion: and perhaps in this negative and moral guise the idea of truth first insinuates itself into the mind."

I like this one

"The living mind cannot surrender its rights to any physical power or subordinate itself to any figment of its own art without falling into manifest idolatry."

Finally lets do the whole quote.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when ex.perience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience. In a second stage men are docile to events, plastic to new habits and suggestions, yet able to graft them on original instincts, which they thus bring to fuller satisfaction. This is the plane of manhood and true progress. Last comes a stage when retentiveness is exhausted and all that hap.pens is at once forgotten; a vain, because unpractical, repetition of the past takes the place of plasticity and fertile re-adaptation. In a moving world re-adaptation is the price of longevity. The hard shell, far from protecting the vital principle, condemns it to die down slowly and be gradually chilled; immortality in such a case must have been secured earlier, by giving birth to a genera.tion plastic to the contemporary world and able to retain its les.sons. Thus old age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible; it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions; its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird's chirp.

Thank you, now taking questions and praise.

reminds me of the episode of family guy where lois is running for mayor and is getting hammered in the polls by actually answering questions vs spin. she ends up winning the election when she decides to answer every question (no matter what the subject) with "9/11"

Never forgetting is one thing but the need to move on is something greater. Living in the past won't help things. From the history books the French lived in the past at the start of WWII thinking warfare was the same as it was in WWI. Well we all know living in the past didn't help the French and living in the past dwelling on 9-11 all these years later won't help the USA either. So many other counties in the world have to deal with terrorism on a much greater basis than the US yet they all seem to have the ability to move on and go forward.