Bloodthirsty Liberal

If the 9/11 terrorists (and murderers of Daniel Pearl, don’t forget) want to spend their last days on earth acting out a farce more absurd than Noises Off, don’t they have that right? Say, in lieu of a last meal (which they’ll never finish digesting anyway).

You don’t have to be a mind reader to figure out the propaganda strategy of September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four other terrorists who were arraigned Saturday in a 13-hour spectacle in Guantanamo Bay. The idea is to use the open military trial to promote jihad and discredit American institutions, including the military system of justice.

The point to keep in mind is that this would have happened no matter the trial venue, civilian or military. The critics who have never liked military tribunals and accused them of being a form of railroad justice are now blaming them for being so unruly that they give terrorists a chance to act out. Well, which is it?

The real fault lies with the terrorists, who hope to put American justice on trial instead of themselves. The defendants refused even to look at Judge James Pohl, much less to answer questions or wear headsets to hear the simultaneous translation into Arabic. There were unscheduled prayers and a paper airplane. Ramzi bin Al Shibh commented in English that “Maybe they will kill us and say we have committed suicide.”

Sad to say, they were helped by some of the military defense lawyers, who know they can make a name for themselves by putting the Bush Administration’s detention policies on trial. KSM attorney David Nevin said in a press conference that “The government wants to kill Mr. Mohammed. They want to extinguish the last eyewitness to his torture so he can never speak again.” Sure, 9/11 was one giant cover-up.

The terrorists deserve a zealous defense under our adversarial trial system, but the lawyers’ efforts to defend their clients not by any evidence of their innocence but through political attacks on the procedural detail of military tribunals does a disservice to the victims and to their military peers.

The decision by Cheryl Bormann, the lawyer for Osama bin Laden bodyguard Walid bin Attash, to come to court in a black hijab and abaya and urge other female prosecutors to do the same was beyond any reasonable definition of what’s necessary and proper for women working in a U.S. military courtroom.

The professional female lawyers and members of the U.S. military should cover themselves, she said, so that the suspects wouldn’t be in “fear of committing a sin under their faith.”

To hell with that. I say the lawyers should be required to wear stilettos, sequined hot pants, and nothing on top but a push-up bra. And that’s just the guys!

This is America, baby, love it or leave it. To some of us, the Statue of Liberty is just a big dominatrix: “You’re tired! You’re poor! You’re nothing but a huddled mass yearning to breath free, you pathetic excuse for an American.” Crack! (You can’t truly appreciate liberty unless you’ve been in bondage, I always say.)

It’s not like the Gitmo Five haven’t seen their share of infidel flesh. Didn’t Mohammed (that name again!) Atta and his crew hit every titty bar and strip club in the Northeast before carrying out their mass-murderous mission?

We know that President Obama’s preferred method of dealing with America’s enemies is to terminate them with extreme prejudice—preferably by Predator drone, Navy SEALs a close second—and we salute him for that. (If a couple of wedding parties are mistaken for jihadist book groups and “accidentally” vaporized, just put your hat over heart and say you’re powerful sorry.)

If deprived the pleasure of a Hellfire missile or two in the head, however, Obama would settle for a show trial from out of the Cultural Revolution in lower Manhattan. But this? KSM middle-fingering us without consequence? That’s gotta be eating up Obama inside. We all know that in any other country, he’d get 70% of the vote—but in America and within Al Qaeda, he has to endure these indignities.

Me, on the other hand, I love it. The Gitmo Five can drop trou (or robe) and defecate in the middle of the courtroom for all I care. KSM can grope the female lawyers in their hijabs and say “How ’bout abaya drink?” He may make a farce out of the proceedings, but after his scrupulously fair military tribunal, we’ll get the last laugh at the firing squad.

Just swallow the popcorn before laughing. No choking on the concessions.

Khalid Sheikh Jacobi (or O’Donnell, you decide) gets his day in court: hilarity ensues:

Silence from accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others resulted in delays during their arraignment Saturday in Guantanamo Bay.

A hearing before a military judge that could have lasted minutes instead stretched into hours.

It is Mohammed and four others’ first appearance in a military courtroom since being charged a month ago.

Along with Mohammed, the others are Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.

…

The silence from the defendants — some ignored the judge and others appeared to be reading — slowed the proceedings to a crawl.

One of the defendants was brought in, in restraints, after refusing to come to court. The restraints were later removed.

The judge, Col. James Pohl, needed the five to confirm their desires to be represented by the attorneys who accompanied them. Because no one answered, Pohl had to go one-by-one and appoint military lawyers for them.

Earlier, the silence caused an issue with the court translations.

Mohammed’s lawyer said that his client “will decline to communicate with the court.”

Because they wouldn’t speak, the judge could not confirm that the defendants could hear the translation of the proceedings. Time elapsed while they set up loudspeakers in the court to carry the translations. Some lawyers objected to this solution, too, and translation remained a problem at the outset of the hearing.
Pohl said he would enter a not guilty plea on Mohammed’s behalf if he refused to enter a plea.

Two of the defendants, Bin ‘Attash and Binalshibh, started praying in the court.

The defendants’ silence was finally broken hours into the hearing by Binalshibh, who shouted in heavily accented English: “You may not see us anymore,” he said. “They are going to kill us.”

The outburst was short and the judge proceeded with the arraignment.

During recesses, the defendants talked amongst each other and seemed relaxed. They passed around a copy of The Economist magazine.

Mohammed wore a white turban; his long beard was colored red by henna.

From another account:

Yemeni defendant Ramzi Binalshibh knelt on the gray-carpeted courtroom floor and prayed as a row of burly guards in camouflage uniforms kept a close watch but did not interfere. Later he stood and shouted, and seemed to be saying that the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was being held at Guantanamo.

He said tricks were being played on the defendants inside the prison camp and that “maybe they are going to kill us at the camp … and say that we are committing suicide.”

Yemeni defendant Walid bin Attash refused to come into the court and was strapped into a restraining chair and wheeled in by the guards. His prosthetic leg was brought in later.

Ha! That could come from a stage direction from Ionesco or maybe Joe Orton.

But I can’t decide which image makes me laugh harder: the peg leg being brought in later; the praying and then braying about Muammar Qaddafi; the badass terrorists reading the house organ of the establishment, The Economist; or KSM’s hennaed beard. Carol’s right: that’s definitely more Rosie O’Donnell than Lou Jacobi. So’s his attitude and behavior.

It just goes to show you how wrong Holder and Obama were to want to hold a civilian show trial. Besides the obscenity against the American justice system such a kangaroo court would have been, we would have missed this epic farce. It’s going to run for years.

Remember, this is him talking, not me:

Following are excerpts from an interview with Hajj Malcolm Shabazz, grandson of Malcolm X, which aired on Press TV and was posted on Youtube on April 17, 2012:

I don’t believe in the presidency. I believe that the presidency post in the United States is nothing more than a puppet post. When we see movements like the Occupy movement where you have the 99% fighting against that 1% – it’s not about color. It’s about that minority, which keeps control of the majority.

When Bill Clinton became president, many black people considered Bill Clinton to be the first black president. Why? Because he smoked a little weed, he played the saxophone, he had an oral sex situation in the White House with Monica Lewinsky – many things that they feel appeal to black people.

Hey, not just black people, Malcolm. I love the saxophone!

Just like 9/11 – Muslims didn’t do 9/11, Muslims had nothing to do with 9/11. If you even research it, you see that everything that was utilized in order for 9/11 to take place pointed right back at the United States. Even the flight training – they received it here in the United States. The visas – from the United States. Everything – the airplanes they used – came from the United States.

We Muslims don’t take actions like this. Anybody to take such an action against civilians, as we already know, is not a Muslim. Many of the people who were involved in 9/11 itself were actually agents for the United States, whether it be CIA or whatever three-letter organization that exists within this country.
[…]
There are hundreds of black men who are being murdered all over the United States of America every year with impunity.

Sounds like Shabazz works for another secret three-letter organization, ASS.

Wow.

In an historic hearing in the federal courthouse in Manhattan on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge George Daniels said he planned to issue a ruling in the coming days declaring that Iran shares in the responsibility for the 9/11 terror attacks.

“The extensive record submitted to this court, including fact witnesses and expert testimony, is satisfactory to this court,” Judge Daniels said. The court “accepts as true” the various allegations of the plaintiffs and their experts, he declared, and “will issue an order” in the coming days that Iran bears legal responsibility for providing “material support” to the 9/11 plotters and hijackers.

Family members of 9/11 victims who attended the open-court hearing broke into tears. They had nervously sat through a four-hour presentation by attorneys Thomas E. Mellon, Jr., and Timothy B. Fleming, consisting of evidence backing up their claims that Iran had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and actively assisted the hijackers in planning, preparing, and executing their plan.

“My husband’s name is on that lawsuit,” said Fiona Havlish, the lead plaintiff in the case against Iran. Her spouse, Donald G. Havlish, Jr, perished on the 101st floor of the World Trade Center’s South Tower. “This is about my husband, all our husbands, our loved ones, our sons, our daughters.”
…
In presenting evidence gathered by the attorneys and their outside investigator, Timothy Fleming revealed tantalizing details of still-sealed videotaped depositions provided by three defectors from Iranian intelligence organizations.

One of those defectors was “physically present” when al-Qaida’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, came to Iran in January 2001 for four days of intense closed-door meetings with the top leadership in Iran to discuss the impending attacks.
…
The most dramatic moment of the hearing came when Fleming unveiled the identity of a third defector and described in detail the information he had provided.

The defector, Abdolghassem Mesbahi, had been a confidant of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founder, and headed up European operations for the new regime’s fledging intelligence service in the early 1980s.

Then, Mesbahi actively took part in developing a set of terrorist contingency plans, called “Shaitan der atash” — meaning “Satan in the Flames,” or “Satan on Fire” — to be used against the United States.

Had you heard of this lawsuit? This is news to me. This also blows a hole in the Leftist propaganda that Iran and various Arab groups cannot work together because of religious differences, Arab-Persian differences, etc. Are you listening, NPR?

- Aggie

Sorry this isn’t exactly breaking news, but anyway…

Last night I watched the PBS Frontline program on the Anthrax killings back in 2001. One part of the story I hadn’t remembered was NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s self-insertion into the investigation.

In this column, he all but named Steven Hatfill as the culprit:

The F.B.I.’s bumbling before 9/11 is water under the bridge. But the bureau’s lackadaisical ineptitude in pursuing the anthrax killer continues to threaten America’s national security by permitting him to strike again or, more likely, to flee to Iran or North Korea.

Almost everyone who has encountered the F.B.I. anthrax investigation is aghast at the bureau’s lethargy. Some in the biodefense community think they know a likely culprit, whom I’ll call Mr. Z. Although the bureau has polygraphed Mr. Z, searched his home twice and interviewed him four times, it has not placed him under surveillance or asked its outside handwriting expert to compare his writing to that on the anthrax letters.

After this and following columns, the FBI did exactly as Kristof insisted and hounded Hatfill (literally, they used bloodhounds) day and night. It ultimately cost them (us) over four and a half million dollars. Hatfill was cleared and won a settlement against the government. Shame on the FBI and John Ashcroft’s Justice Department for their treatment of a mere suspect, a person of interest, but shame, too, on Kristof for badgering the bureau into badgering Hatfill. As poorly as it speaks of our nation today, a columnist for the New York Times has influence, and if one of them is inciting you to act irrationally—in the wake of the worst attack on this country since Pearl Harbor—you act irrationally, presumption of innocence be damned.

Hatfill sued Kristof and the Times, too, but they skated. Kristoff did eventually apologize.

Fine, all that’s old news. But doesn’t it sound familiar? A Times columnist who thinks he (or she) knows better, banging away at something about which he (or she) actually knows nothing? Tom Friedman on China and Mideast peace, Paul Krugman on economics, Maureen Dowd on just about everything—even David Brooks on pant creases.

Is it something about the position on the op-ed page that makes a-holes out of them, or were they a-holes to begin with? Is indeed a-holiness a prerequisite?

Watching the show, I couldn’t believe that one columnist could abuse his position of influence so recklessly and that the Department of Justice of the American government would be so craven as to make an innocent man’s life so miserable. I guess I’m naive to the point of guilelessness.

Yesterday, we reported on the four Swedish “people” arrested on suspicion of terror. It was enough for us to know that they were people, and not Gila monsters, say, or koalas.

But you know the media, always poking and prodding:

Four terror suspects arrested over the weekend in Sweden’s second-largest city are being questioned and remain under suspicion of preparing a terror attack, prosecutors said Monday.

Authorities are being tightlipped about the arrests in the west coast city of Goteborg, which came on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary, and were followed by the evacuation of about 400 people from an arts center.

…

Prosecutors and police won’t say whether the suspects are suspected of links to Islamist terror groups or other extremist networks. The prosecutors’ statement said they were arrested without incident and noted that “the investigation is still in an early stage.”

Whoa! Who said anything about Islam?

Swedish tabloid Expressen, citing an unnamed police source, said investigators suspect the men belong to a terror network with links to al-Qaida, and that they had acquired, or were trying to acquire, firearms, explosives and hand grenades. Security police declined to comment on the newspaper’s information.

That means nothing. You can have links to Al Qaeda and be Methodist or Presbyterian. Take your time, Bjorn. Don’t jump to any conclusions.

- Aggie

Four “suspicious” people, thought possibly to be carrying out “terrorist” acts.

Hmm, with so little to go on, one wonders how the cops found them? The marvels of Swedish detective work!

“Safezone”, huh?

Sweden’s National Security Service (SAPO) said on Sunday it had arrested four people on suspicion of planning a terror attack on Gothenburg, the country’s second-largest city.

Ulf Edberg, spokesman for the Vastra Gotaland police in west Sweden, said a culture and arts arena had been cordoned off after information was received about a potential threat.

“We decided to clear the area because of a threat that could have involved serious danger to life, health or extensive destruction of property,” Edberg said.

The area was reopened at 0400 GMT on Sunday, the tenth anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks in the United States.

“Four people were arrested on suspicion of the preparation of terrorist acts,” said Sara Kvarnstrom, press secretary at SAPO.

Whoever these “people” were, they have some nerve attempting something like that on 9/11!

PS: Perhaps this case gave them the clues they needed:

A man who is suspected of trying to rape a 21-year-old woman in an apartment in Malmö over the weekend was left nursing a partially severed tongue as his would-be victim fought back.

The woman was at home in her apartment in the early hours of Sunday morning when the doorbell rang. She opened the door to find a middle-aged man who then forced his way in, according to the local Skånskan daily.

The man is reported to have told the young woman in broken English that he wanted to be her “friend” and proceeded to force himself on her, taking a stranglehold on her neck.

But when the man tried to kiss the woman she bit hard on his tongue, severing the tip.

“He is bleeding profusely and in the end he gives up. According to the woman he is furious and he kicks her before he leaves the apartment,” Anders Lindell at Malmö police told the newspaper.

…

According to the woman the man is aged 35-40-years-old with short, black hair, brown eyes and ugly teeth.

PPS: Another clue to the genius of Swedish policing:

Police who patrol Malmö’s Rosengård district are being offered a special Arabic language class to help them better understand and communicate with local residents in the predominantly immigrant area.

So far 45 officers have signed up for voluntary twelve-week class, which will provide training on a number of common greetings and pleasantries in Arabic, the local Skånska Dagbladet newspaper reports.

“It’s about dealing with immigrants in a more dignified and little more civil manner,” local police chief Bengt Hersler told the newspaper.

According to Hersler, the course was arranged at the request of officers who have pushed the department to provide them with the tools to better communicate with Rosengård’s residents, many of whom are immigrants and have Swedish as a second language.

In addition to teachings in basic Arabic, the tailor-made course will also offer lessons on Muslim culture and traditions to help officers better understand some of the cultural differences that can lead to misunderstandings in dealings with local residents.

Circle March 10th on your calendar, Malmo cops—Osama bin Laden’s birthday. Passing out sweets seems to be the traditional observance of such dates.

These remembrances were prompted by blogger Dale Roe, to pay tribute to the nearly 3,000 innocent people who were murdered by terrorists eight years ago today. I volunteered to write one, then saw that many more needed to be covered, and asked for seven more, for a total of eight—one for each year.

It wasn’t easy. These people weren’t special—or, rather, they all were. The eight, my eight, deserved their posthumous fifteen minutes of fame, and I had to see they got them.

I called these portraits “remembrances” earlier, but truthfully there’s nothing for me to remember: I didn’t know them; some I could barely relate to. But I feel came to know all of them. Through small details in their life stories, through remembrances of loved ones, through the depth and breadth of the influence they had on people they barely knew (or, like me, didn’t know at all). It would be unseemly to declare a favorite, but I can’t help smiling warmly at the thought of my first portrait, Curt (the flirt) Noel: wassup, yo!

Dale assigned a cross section of the extraordinary population of 9/11: WTC, Pentagon, UA, AA, black, white, male, female, straight, gay, old, young. They were Americans all.

I present them in the order I wrote them. I have no expectations for how these will be received, except for one. I hope the love with which these people were held by those who knew them comes through. That’s all I want, and I want it for them. It’s all any of us could really want.

2010 UPDATE:

I’ve reposted these remembrances (and this introduction) as I wrote them last year. What was there to add? Another year has passed since their lives were terminated in an instant, and their biographies remain locked in amber.

Some of the details still get to me—certain nicknames, hobbies, interests. What is clear of these eight people whom I chose to write about (from online obits and tribute sites) was that in their time they touched many lives. But as fascinating as they were to learn about, they were not unique in that regard. I think the lesson is that we all do, from the crustiest anonymous blogger to the wildest moonbat (hello, Chris, one and all). With apologies to Reverend Wright, I learned nothing about the nesting habits of fowl in researching these stories, only senseless loss.

The one detail I’d like to extract and leave as a marker comes from the remembrance of Patricia Cushing. She was fond of Debussy’s Clair de Lune, and it was played at her memorial service (see her story for the haunting details).

Let it be the soundtrack for our memories of that day nine years ago.

2011 UPDATE:

It’s all been said already. I want to run these remembrances a third (and I think final) time to let the missing of 9/11 speak for themselves. Humanity isn’t an exceptional feat, but these eight people, and their lamentably lost brothers and sister, are memorable and compelling. Still, who among them wouldn’t have traded their special status for another ten years of anonymity on this earth?

Curtis Terrence Noel didn’t get up for work on the morning of September 11, 2001 thinking he wouldn’t live to see the morning coffee break.

None of the victims in the World Trade Center (or the Pentagon, or the UA and AA flights did).

He just went to work.

Curtis was a switch operations technician for General Telecom, on the 83rd floor of the North Tower (the first to be hit, at 8:46 am). Through a cruel twist of fate, his office, though ten floors below the impact, was sealed off from any means of escape. All 13 employees of the company died in the collapse of the tower (they used a pager to communicate with the outside world until the end). Curtis’ body was never recovered.

Only 22, he left his mark on the world. Kisha remembered:

I miss you Curtis and they way you always made me smile. I will never ever forget you!

And again:

Curtis always made me laugh with his sparkling personality and his sense of humor. I find myself thinking of him quite often, driving his car down Croes Avenue in the Bronx with the tinted windows cracked enough so all you could see was his big eyes. My cousin Lisa and I would laugh as he pulled over to talk to us with his famous “Wassup Yo!”

I will always love and remember you Curt Flirt!

“Kizzy” recalled:

Curt was a comedian, always cracking jokes and smiling. He loved his family, his friends and i’ll always remember him pulling up in his Money Green Acura. Keep the angels laughing in Heaven, I guess god needed to smile more, so he called Curt home.

He was Curt to his friends, not Curtis Terrence. Only mass murderers and their victims are referred to by their full names. Let’s not do that to him.

And what a friend he was:

Mr. Noel, 22, could never bulk up. He would go to the gym, or eat a lot, but he was always skinny. So he would tell his husky friend Garvin Richardson, “You’re my bodyguard.” He had got Mr. Richardson a job at another office of General Telecom, but they rode most of the way from the Bronx to work together.

The last time he told Mr. Richardson about bodyguard duty was the morning of Sept. 11, when they arranged to go to the bank at lunchtime. They shook hands when Mr. Richardson got off at the Brooklyn Bridge stop on the No. 4 train.

Mr. Noel and his girlfriend, Aisha Harris, were thinking of getting married. She worked at General Telecom, and she died that day, too.

As painful and invasive as it may feel (at least to me), the last word should go to his mom:

Theresa Noel shows a photograph of her 22-year-old son, Curtis Noel, who was killed in Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The memory of losing her youngest son in the Sept. 11 terror attacks are still too fresh for Theresa Noel.

“I’ve never been to the World Trade Center site,” Noel, 55, of Bronx River, said Tuesday. “I can’t face that hole.”

…

For Noel, who always attends the Bronx memorial services, it’s an attempt to make sense of her loss of her 22-year-old son, whose body was never found.

“I have no closure yet,” she said. “If they build a memorial at the site, like a fountain or something, then maybe I can go. Until then, I can’t face it.”

Curt the Flirt Noel should have been 30 this year. Not would have, should have. He should have married Alisha, should have had kids.

Thousands of stories should have come out differently. We need to remember that as surely as we need to remember how they did come out.

As a teacher, Hilda E. Taylor shaped many lives:

Hilda E. Taylor, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77, was a veteran teacher at Leckie Elementary School in Southwest Washington. She taught sixth grade and was on her way to California on a National Geographic field trip when the plane slammed into the Pentagon.

Taylor, who was born in Sierra Leone, lived with a grandson and two adult sons.

…

Taylor came to the United States many years ago in search of a better life for herself and her children.

Taylor’s sons said their mother, a seasoned traveler and an accomplished cook, savored life. She received a master’s degree from the University of the District of Columbia. She loved the classroom, her students and the thought that she was helping to develop young minds.

Sounds like she did:

TO THOSE WHO DID NOT KNOW MS.HILDA TAYLOR U MISSED OUT ON AN ANGEL.I ATTENDED LECKIE FOR 7 YEARS(79-86) K-6 MS.TAYLOR WAS MY SIXTH GRADE TEACHER AND SHE BELIEVED IN ME WHEN I DIDNT BELIEVE IN MYSELF.I NEVER FORGOT THAT AND EVERYTIME I WD FLY HOME TO D.C I MADE IT MY BUSINESS TO ALWAYS GO TO THE SCHOOL TO VISIT HER.IT STILLS BREAKS MY HEART TO THIS DAY AND I PRAY FOR HER FAMILY.SHE WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN!

Ms. Taylor’s influence persisted, even after she passed:

Late teacher Hilda E. Taylor’s students gather after dinner for a moonlight hike through the forests of Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

They were afraid to drive across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, but the vertigo and the panoramic view were what their teacher wanted them to experience.

They were afraid of the woods after dark, but their teacher wanted them to know what it was like to hike, without streetlights, without flashlights, using only their night vision and hearing.

They were afraid of baby striped bass, and traps for hairy crabs near the pier, and the weird, symphonic sound of crickets, but all of that — the new, the strange and the different — was exactly what Hilda E. Taylor wanted them to confront.

But Taylor, 62, was not there to reassure them. She and one of her sixth-graders, Bernard Brown, were heading to California on Sept. 11 to hike and kayak and study oceanic life when their hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon. Taylor, of Forestville, was doing for 11-year-old Bernard what she tried to do for all of her students: give them the world.

So at 11:15 a.m. Monday, in a grove of naked trees, next to a goat named Doby and a black sheep named Wilbur, 39 sixth-grade students from M.V. Leckie Elementary School in Southwest Washington tumbled off two chartered buses and into the woods of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. They had their doubts about three days of nature.

“It smells like cow manure and looks like ‘Blair Witch 2,’ ” pronounced Kaleema Wages.

That’s the nature of the world, isn’t it? Ms. Taylor was very wise.

She touched colleagues as well:

I was blessed to work with you on several occasions through our shared interests in education and geography. I will always remember your sense of humor often directed at me. Save a hula dance for me.

What better way to remember her than hula dancing to the great beyond?

Aloha oe, Hilda.

I REMEMBER TAMARA AS A SWEET LITTLE GIRL FULL OF LIFE AND SPIRIT, SHE WAS IN MY DAUGHTER JAMIES’ CLASS FROM THE 1ST GRADE THROUGH THE 7TH, UNTIL WE MOVED. IT SADDENS ME SO TO KNOW THAT SUCH A LOVELY CHILD WAS TAKEN SO SUDDENLY. THE WORLD BECAME A LITTLE DIMMER WITHOUT HER GLOWING SMILE.

Sgt. Tamara Thurman she worked as an assistant in the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel at the Pentagon. After she enlisted out of high school, Tamara served in Bosnia, Korea, and Germany, earning several medals and commendations along the way.

She was 25 when she died. Too young. Too young to have done what she intended to do with her life. Too young to have made the mark she was intended to make.

But she made her mark anyway:

My sister, my friend. I miss you so much. Our sister bond was like no other. Not a day goes by that I dont think about you. I sit and think about when we were little kids and how I always managed to get us in trouble, but you would always take the wrap for it. I know now why.. You were my angel here on earth, now you are my angel in Heaven. Tami you were my best friend, no one can ever take your place. I will keep your memory alive through me always…Love your sis, Bea

You were thought of today as you always are…..In my own little way this is like talking to you (smile). I miss you…….Time has gone by but the memories still remain. An old friend reminded me of our MANY laughters……It made me smile….Just wanted you to know that even til this day, you will ALWAYS be my sister, my friend, my babies God mother, and my strength. I asked God to kiss you for me…..I love you!! Stacey

Sept 11,2008 i made the journey to the Pentagon Memorial Service as I have done faithfully every year since that day..This year I visited your memorial bench in the park that has opened.. It was breathtaking and beautiful..I took pictures and also talked to a co-worker of yours. She told me that she would never forget you..your smile..humble..and how sweet you were..People you came in contact with will always remember you..Our brother has joined the Army in your footsteps…My sister, my friend…No one will ever know the bond that we shared…not only as a sister, but as my best friend..that day i lost someone who could never be replaced…But I feel you and I know your by my side… always..I love you

Your Sister, Bea

Memories are persistent things. The memory of Tamara Thurman is testament to the line from the Beatles’ song:

“And, in the end, the love you take
Is equal to the love you make.”

Bea Woolen of Atlanta, Georgia, called the memorial, “beautiful and breathtaking.” “I hope everyone else will think it’s beautiful too,” she said. Woolen’s sister, Sgt. Tamara Thurman, U.S. Army, worked at the Pentagon.

So many people mentioned Tamara’s smile. Not hard to understand why.