Today is September 11 – a date that is etched in all adults minds — and — a date and event that we’ll never forget. Today we commemorate the September 11 attacks, also called 9/11 attacks — a series of airline hijackings and suicide attacks committed in 2001 by 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda against targets in the United States. The deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil in U.S. history. The attacks against New York City and Washington, D.C. caused extensive death and destruction and triggered an enormous U.S. effort to combat terrorism. 2,750 people were killed in New York, 184 at the Pentagon and 40 in Pennsylvania. All 19 terrorists died.
9/11 was not the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center — a bombing in February of 1993 killed six people.
After the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, the rescue and recovery clean-up of the 1.8 million tons of wreckage from the site took 9 months.
Video accounts of the WTC attack aired immediately, but no video footage of the Pentagon attack was publicly released until 2006.
(Only) 18 people were rescued alive from the rubble of the World Trade Center.
The September 11 plot demonstrated that al-Qaeda was an organization of global reach. The plot played out across the globe with planning meetings in Malaysia, operatives taking flight lessons in the United States, coordination by plot leaders based in Hamburg, Germany, money transfers from Dubai, and recruitment of suicide operatives from countries around the Middle East — all activities that were ultimately overseen by al-Qaeda’s leaders in Afghanistan.
If this operation didn’t convince American leaders that the United States can’t operate alone or totally put “America first,” I don’t know what it would take. Just remember today as the political campaign picks up steam — and — never forget!
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