Twenty five years ago today the deadliest attack on American soil occurred.
Some of the followers of this account were not of “news age” at that time.
But everyone who has seen the videos of those planes hitting the Twin Towers has those images burned into their memories forever.
Many of our fighting aged boys and girls joined the armed forces.
I’d like to humbly provide a short recap on what happened that morning when everyone in the United States was in front of a television.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, nineteen men from al-Qaeda hijacked four US airliners and turned them into missiles.
American Airlines Flight 11 left Boston for Los Angeles. Mohamed Atta of Egypt flew it into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m.
With him were Abdulaziz al-Omari, Wail al-Shehri, Waleed al-Shehri, and Satam al-Suqami, all Saudis.
Seventeen minutes later United Airlines Flight 175, also out of Boston, struck the South Tower.
Marwan al-Shehhi of the United Arab Emirates was the pilot. Fayez Banihammad, Ahmed al-Ghamdi, Hamza al-Ghamdi, and Mohand al-Shehri were the other hijackers.
American Airlines Flight 77 left Dulles for Los Angeles. Hani Hanjour of Saudi Arabia flew it into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. Khalid al-Mihdhar, Majed Moqed, Nawaf al-Hazmi, and Salem al-Hazmi were with him.
United Airlines Flight 93 left Newark for San Francisco. Ziad Jarrah of Lebanon was at the controls. Ahmed al-Haznawi, Ahmed al-Nami, and Saeed al-Ghamdi were the remaining hijackers.
Passengers and crew learned of the other crashes by phone, fought back, and forced the plane down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m. It never reached its likely target in Washington.
Todd Beamer was heard saying, “Are you ready? Okay. Let’s roll,” before 93 crashed.
The South Tower fell at 9:59. The North Tower fell at 10:28. Official counts put the dead at 2,977, not including the nineteen terrorists.
That number includes 2,753 at the World Trade Center site and 343 New York firefighters, plus 184 at the Pentagon and 40 on Flight 93.
Al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, (and in part Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who mastermind the attacks), claimed responsibility for the operation.
Bin Laden had declared war on the United States years earlier from Afghanistan, where the Taliban sheltered him.
President George W. Bush was reading to schoolchildren in Florida when the second plane hit.
Within hours every civilian flight over the United States was grounded.
Combat air patrols filled the skies. Congress authorized the use of force.
On October 7, 2001, the United States and allies launched Operation Enduring Freedom.
American and British aircraft and special operations forces struck Taliban and al-Qaeda camps. The Northern Alliance took Kabul.
The Taliban government collapsed. Bin Laden slipped away at Tora Bora that December.
The hunt for him lasted almost ten years. On May 2, 2011, local time in Pakistan, Navy SEALs from DEVGRU, known as SEAL Team Six, raided a compound in Abbottabad under Operation Neptune Spear.
They killed bin Laden on the third floor. His body was identified and buried at sea from the USS Carl Vinson within twenty-four hours.
Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed on July 31, 2022 at the age of 71, in a US counterterrorism drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan.
The strike targeted him while he was standing on the balcony of a safe house, and used Hellfire missiles fired by the CIA to blow him into little al-Qaeda chunks.
The war that began that Tuesday morning in September did not end with them, but the two terrorists who ordered the attacks were gone.
So many heroes died that day and continue to die from related illnesses.
We were one country on 9-11.
No political division. No left versus right.
It was all of us against them.
We said we’d never forget.
Unfortunately many in this country have done just that.
#9-11
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