[Mb-civic] Article and Letter

[Ian]

The following article is from The New York Times today.  Following that is my letter in response.

Peace.

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Rumsfeld Marks 9/11 Crash Site With Medallion Given to Troops 
By THOM SHANKER
SHANKSVILLE, Pa., March 27 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld gazed across a rolling meadow on Monday, its grass yellow in late winter's grip, and toward the stand of hemlock trees marking the area where Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001. He then bent and wordlessly placed a medallion at the base of a temporary memorial here.  Known as the defense secretary's "coin," the medallion is an elaborately pressed memento that Mr. Rumsfeld hands out to troops he meets in combat zones overseas.

His visit was his first to the site where passengers of Flight 93 overpowered their hijackers and sent an airliner crashing into the countryside instead of its intended target, the Capitol in Washington. His gesture was intended to link that event, through the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, to the wars started by the Bush administration in Afghanistan and Iraq.  At a time when polls indicate waning public support for the mission in Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld called Shanksville "the place where America really started to fight back."

He spoke later to officers at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., where he asserted that previous failures to fight back against terrorists had only emboldened them.  "The West was ambivalent about how to counter extremist ideology and that type of aggression," he said. "We should have learned the timeless truth that weakness is provocative."  By implication, he criticized those who called for quickly withdrawing American troops from Iraq. Instead, he said, the opponents there should be confronted, not only militarily but also in a contest of ideas and values.

But when asked by one of the officers how America was faring in its test of ideologies with extremists, Mr. Rumsfeld conceded, "If I were grading, I would say we probably deserve a D or a D-plus as a country as to how well we're doing in the battle of ideas that's taking place in the world today."

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Re Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's visit to the 9/11 crash site in Pennsylvania, you say it was "the site where passengers of Flight 93 overpowered their hijackers and sent an airliner crashing into the countryside..." ("Rumsfeld Marks 9/11 Crash Site With Medallion Given to Troops," Mar. 28).  This has never been proven.

Indeed, there is evidence to support the belief that Flight 93 was shot down.  At least five eyewitnesses - some as close as half a mile away - saw a white "military plane" following Flight 93 just moments prior to the crash.  And pieces of the wreckage were found as far as eight miles from the crash site, which would only be possible if the plane were blown apart in mid-air.  In addition, the FBI took possession of the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, and refuses to release the contents of either.  Thus, we have only their claim that passengers "overpowered their hijackers."

Most direct, however, is Mr. Rumsfeld's own statement, made in December 2004, that the plane was "shot down."  And although the Pentagon later claimed that Mr. Rumsfeld "misspoke," given the above and other evidence it would seem that his original comment is the one that has the ring of truth.

Rev. Ian Alterman
New York City

For the fact-finder:

1.  "Eyewitnesses" re military plane:

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/flight_93.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12192317&method=full&

2.  "Wreckage" found 8 miles from crash site:

http://thewebfairy.com/killtown/flight93.html  See second quote on right side of home page, reported by CNN.

http://www.flight93crash.com/flight93_secondary_debris_field.html  See 5th paragraph.


3.  Rumsfeld comment and "retraction":

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/12/27/rumsfeld.flt93/
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