Rush Limbaugh blasts Ron Paul as the Conservative Killer:

…the majority of people that voted him were not Republican. And in another poll, the percentage of Ron Paul voters who say they will vote for the Republican nominee is… like 80% of Tea Party voters in New Hampshire said no matter who the Republican nominee is they’re voting for it. The Ron Paul number is 40%. Now, as I say, I’ve gotta double confirm. It’s ostensibly Rasmussen and we’re double-checking this, but what I know so far, or what I’ve been told is that Ron Paul supporters, 40% say they would vote for the Republican nominee, 23% said they’d vote for Obama, and 31% of Ron Paul voters said they would vote third party. So the Ron Paul voters cannot be counted on, and most of Huntsman’s voters and most of Paul’s voters were Democrats who walked into the New Hampshire primary, picked up a Republican ballot, also according to this polling data.

…Here we go. It’s the exit polling data from Fox, and it is on political matters, “Do you consider yourself very liberal, somewhat liberal, moderate, somewhat conservative, very conservative?” You go to Ron Paul, 33% of his voters, according to exit polls, were somewhat liberal; 24% were moderate; 0 were very liberal. So 57% of the voters that voted for Ron Paul were not Republican conservatives. And that’s one of the things that I wanted to see because with this big push — what is happening here, the final push now that’s on to get Romney the nomination, Newt and Perry, with their attacks, have made it impossible to defend them. I hate to tell you, folks, but you just can’t put your name to what they’re out there saying, vulture capitalism and so forth.

Romney, however, wants Ron Paul to stay in. Everybody is urging everybody else to get out of this except for Ron Paul. They want Ron Paul to keep pounding away at Santorum and Newt. They want Ron Paul to continue to get big numbers and take away any high second- or third-place finishes from Santorum or Gingrich or Perry or anybody else. So the powers that be realize the monkey wrench that Ron Paul represents. Ron Paul is a conservative killer. Ron Paul kills the conservative vote, and the Romney camp wants him in there, encouraging him to stay in there.

So 40% of Paul voters said they would go on to support the eventual Republican nominee. 40%!

Where’s the other 60% going to go? Apparently Obama.

While 80% of the tea-party voters will support WHOEVER the Republican nominee is.

That should tell us a whole lot about Ron Paul and his supporters. They cannot be counted on to push the Republicans to victory in 2012. The only thing Ron Paul can guarantee is to kill off Santorum and Newt’s chances.

With that I’ll segue into the John Gibson show yesterday in which Gibson asked Ron Paul supporters to call in and give him reasons why he is so awesome: (its 15 minutes well spent?)

And hey, guess who else loves themselves some Ron Paul?

The Iranian regime’s English language propaganda channel, PressTV, has discovered a new American idol: presidential contender Rep. Ron Paul.

PressTV has stepped up its coverage of Paul’s campaign to win the Republican presidential nomination in recent weeks, featuring his anti-Israel rants, his claim that sanctions against Iran are “acts of war,” his approval of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and much more.

The Iranian government channel portrays Ron Paul as an American hero, and brings on conspiracy theorists masquerading as political “analysts” to laud him for “challenging the American establishment” and the “corporate neo-conservative Zionist consensus,” that cabal of Jews, banksters, and Reagan Democrats who in Tehran’s eyes (and in the eyes of these Ron Paul supporters) run the world.

It’s a script taken almost word-for-word from the infamous anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

So go ahead Paulbots….vote for Ron Paul, or Obama when RP doesn’t get the nomination but I will never pull the lever for this nut.

Ole’ Mitt is giving John Kerry a run for his money for the Flip-Flopper crown:

On an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” a few days ago, Mitt Romney was asked whether, given what we know today, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do. Romney wouldn’t say.

“Oh boy, that’s a big question,” Romney answered. “And going back and trying to say, given what we know now, what would we have done? Would we have invaded or not? At the time, we didn’t have the knowledge that we have now.” Romney mentioned intelligence before the war suggesting that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. After the war, U.S. and international inspection teams did not find those weapons, which had been the basis for much of the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq. Still, Romney told Fox’s Chris Wallace that the invasion was “appropriate at the time” because the U.S. acted “in light of that belief” — that is, in intelligence that turned out to be faulty.

Three days later?

This time, his answer was not only different but definitive: No, the U.S. would not have invaded Iraq had officials known there were no weapons of mass destruction there.

“Well, if we knew at the time of our entry into Iraq that there were no weapons of mass destruction — if somehow we had been given that information, why, obviously we would not have gone in,” Romney said.

“You don’t think we would have gone in?” asked MSNBC’s Chuck Todd.

“Well, of course not,” Romney answered. “The president went in based upon intelligence that they had weapons of mass destruction. Had he known that that was not the case, the U.N. would not have put forward resolutions authorizing this type of action. The president would not have been pursuing that course.”

My beef isn’t just his flip-flopping, it’s his focus on WMD’s and whether or not the UN would of authorized force without them. WMD’s were NOT the only reason we went in.

We knew Saddam had ties to terror groups.

we know from Clinton Administration claims, from captured documents, from pre-war and post-war intelligence that Saddam’s intelligence agencies had relationships with various groups in the Al Queda terrorist network of groups. We know from the 1998 Clinton Administration indictment of Osama Bin Laden that the two had reached an agreement to get WMD into the hands of the Al Queda network of terrorist groups.

the indictment states that Al Qaeda reached an agreement
with Iraq not to work against the regime of Saddam Hussein and that they would work cooperatively with Iraq, particularly in weapons development.

We also know from 1990-2003 Saddam’s government considered itself at war with the United States and from 1992-today Osama Bin Laden’s Al Queda network of terrorist groups has been at war with the United States.

A few great posts to read would be the debate between Scott, our Author, and a commenter. Both parts here and here.

Not only did he have the ties to terrorist groups but he had the means to get WMD’s into their hands. This would be unthinkable after 9/11, and after the previous 13 years in which he flipped the world off that was a chance no one could take.

Oh, but there were other reasons:

• The Cease Fire Agreement, broken many times by Iraq
• They thwarted inspections of their WMD facilities as mandated by the Cease Fire
• Iraq persisted in violating other resolutions by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its people
• The fact that Iraq had proven they were willing to use WMD from prior history.
• The fact that Iraq demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces
• The fact that after 9/11 the threat posed by any terrorist group acquiring WMD would be grave

And many more.

The man was evil and committed acts which ARE acts of war, ie firing on US fighter jets, attempted assassination of political leaders…you add that onto his history of aggression against its neighbors and his relationships with various terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, and you have a great reason to invade.

Not just WMD.

The fact that at the time everyone and their mother believed he had WMD is an added factor, but not THE factor.

Ok, off my soapbox.

Now onto some more Mitt news. It doesn’t just involve flip-floppery but full on stupidity. Here he is claiming that the individual mandate is “conservative”

Requiring people to have health insurance is “conservative,” GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney told MSNBC on Wednesday, but only if states do it.

The argument aims to improve Romney’s appeal to Republican voters concerned about the healthcare reform plan he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts in 2006. The Massachusetts law contains an individual mandate similar to the one in President Obama’s healthcare law, which conservatives despise.

“Personal responsibility,” Romney said, “is more conservative in my view than something being given out for free by government.”

Oh please. Personal responsabilitity is definitely conservative…but forcing someone to pay for everyone’s health insurance is NOT.

Well isn’t this wonderful:

Washington ready to negotiate with Mullah Omar

Right on the heels of this terrible news:

A Taliban suicide bomber rammed a van into an armored NATO bus Saturday in Kabul, killing 13 American troops and four Afghans, U.S. and Afghan officials said, in the deadliest attack on coalition forces in more than two months.

The explosion, which occurred as the convoy was passing the American University, sparked a fireball and littered the street with shrapnel. Heavy black smoke poured from burning wreckage at the site.

The armored personnel carrier, known as a Rhino was sandwiched between of a convoy of mine-resistant military vehicles traveling on a four-lane highway frequently used by NATO forces in a southwestern section of the city.

NATO said 13 service members were killed, but a U.S. official confirmed they were all Americans. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

We have been at war with the Taliban since 2001 after they, specifically Mullah Omar, were involved in 9/11. Either indirectly prior to the attack or in the help he gave al-Qaeda after the attack.

And now Obama wants to negotiate with him?

Wow

Washington is ready to negotiate with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and now regards his involvement as crucial to the prospects for peace in Afghanistan, Hillary Clinton has said.

Her comments been taken as a significant shift in American policy from moves to divide the Taliban-led insurgency and isolate Mullah Omar, the man who sheltered Osama bin Laden as he plotted the September 11 attacks, to an acknowledgement of his leadership.

It follows the disclosure earlier this month that American officials had met leaders of the Haqqani Network, the powerful Taliban faction blamed for some of the most devastating attacks on American and Nato forces in Afghanistan, including last month’s attack on the US embassy in Kabul in which seven were killed and 19 wounded.

Earlier this week the faction’s commander Sirajuddin Haqqani warned Washington that only the Quetta Shura, led by Mullah Omar, could negotiate a peace deal and that his fighters would not be divided from its leadership.

In an appearance before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mrs Clinton said the United States would continue to “fight, talk and build” in Afghanistan and Pakistan to “test whether these organisations have any willingness to negotiate in good faith”.

Sickening.

It’s obvious we are not in this to win anymore, now it’s how we can get the hell out of there the fastest and if it means we negotiate with the enemy then so be it I suppose.

Of course, the 9/11 Truther movement probably has its most receptive fan base in the Middle East.

About six days ago, Iranian leader Ahmadinejad made Truther claims before the UN General Assembly:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said he believes – as an engineer – the World Trade Center towers could not have been brought down by aircraft.

Interviewed after his address to the UN General Assembly sparked a walkout, he told the AP news agency some kind of planned explosion must have occurred.

But he stopped short of saying the US staged the disaster 10 years ago.

He had been widely condemned for using his UN address to brand the US killing of Osama Bin Laden a 9/11 cover-up.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Ahmadinejad has pushed 9/11 conspiracy theories. Following his speech last year to the UN General Assembly, ALLAHPUNDIT makes the point:

Today’s journey into Trutherism is new, though, I think. To be sure, he’s been pushing conspiracy theories about 9/11 (and not just 9/11) in interviews for years as a modern-day complement to his Holocaust denial, but as far as I know this is the first time he’s broached the subject from the podium at the UN.

It seems like a great number of people in the Middle East prefer to entertain the tantalizing notion that the U.S. government staged 9/11, framing innocent Muslims as an excuse to make war.

In Pakistan:

“Many Pakistanis I spoke to in the six years that I’ve been a correspondent here say they have no idea who carried out the 9/11 attacks,” she said.

In a 2008 World Public Opinion poll, 72 percent of the Pakistani respondents said they didn’t know who were behind the attacks. As many people believed Israel was behind it as al-Qaida (4 percent), and 19 percent thought the United States itself carried out the attacks.

“This is an argument that I have heard over and over again,” said Koster. “In this conspiracy theory, the U.S. staged the attacks to have a reason for invading Afghanistan.”

The conspiracy-minded think the United States wanted to enter Afghanistan to be closer to oil sources in Central Asia, closer to China to thwart its growing economy and power, or to wipe out the Muslim community, she said.

Many voicing these perspectives were well-educated Pakistanis, she added. “For instance, a wealthy English-speaking Pakistani from an area beleaguered by the Pakistani Taliban firmly believed the U.S. wanted to extinguish Muslims.”

According to the New Republic:

the unpopularity of the United States in the Arab world continues to be fueled by the belief that Islamist terrorists had nothing to do with 9/11, with many claiming the attacks were an American, Israeli, or joint American-Israeli conspiracy. In this sense, overcoming 9/11 revisionism is, perhaps, the greatest challenge facing American public diplomacy in the coming decade: So long as such conspiracy theories persist, Arabs will continue to view American policies aimed at preventing “another 9/11” as thoroughly illegitimate since, as they see it, 9/11 is just a big American lie.

In a report on Muslim-Western relations released on July 21 of this year, the Pew Research Center asked Muslim respondents in eight countries—including Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan—whether they thought groups of Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks on the United States. In every country, less than 30 percent of respondents professed their belief for the idea, and in Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey the level of acceptance is lower today than it was in 2006. Indeed, the same revolutionary Arab Street that toppled Mubarak in Egypt also registered the highest level of denial among all the countries surveyed, with a full 75 percent of respondents recording their disbelief.

To use a badly over-abused pun, Egyptians especially are living in “da Nile”:

Pew’s poll numbers from Egypt track closely with my own experience in the country, where I lived and conducted doctoral research during parts of its tumultuous spring. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I found that 9/ll revisionism was particularly prominent among Islamists, for whom rewriting history is necessary for deflecting the accusation that their ideology motivates mass murder. “There is no Al Qaeda,” former Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mehdi Akef told me in complete seriousness. “It’s an American expression. It’s just an ideology, Al Qaeda. This ideology comes from America and their coalitions.” In Akef’s inversion of reality, 9/11 constituted an American attack on the Middle East, followed by an Islamist policy of self-defense. “When they fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, Al Qaeda thinks it’s a jihad because the fight is against occupation,” he said. “And it is jihad to fight occupation. And when Americans kill civilians everywhere, it’s a big crime against humanity.”

Younger generations of Muslim Brothers echo Akef’s distortions without fail. “America did [9/11] for some business interests,” Alexandria Brotherhood leader Ali Abdelfattah said to me. Abdel Monem Abouel Fetouh, a former Brotherhood leader whom The New York Times touts as a “liberal Islamist,” agrees: “I don’t believe it was jihadists—it was too big an operation,” he told me. “This was done by a country, not individuals. It’s not a conspiracy theory—it’s just logical. They didn’t bring crimes before the U.S. justice system until now. Why? Because it’s part of the conspiracy.” Even Islam Lotfy, who recently left the Brotherhood to establish his own political party and works as a contractor for USAID in Egypt, finds American complicity in 9/11 plausible. “I can’t imagine someone flying for twenty minutes and nobody realizes it, and then another plane goes and crashes and then another in Pennsylvania,” he said. Sobhi Saleh, a former parliamentarian who is considered among the Brotherhood’s top legal thinkers, had a slightly different theory. “The Jews and the Zionist lobby [did it],” he said, referencing a book that a Lebanese Christian cleric gave him. “And this study is well known in America and it’s on the Internet. … It was a scientific research.”

Yet Islamists were hardly the only group I encountered in Egyptian society that denied Al Qaeda’s complicity in 9/11. Revolutionary socialists, who comprise an important segment of the youth activists that catalyzed the January anti-Mubarak revolt, see the machinations of global domination at work. “Personally, I think the imperial interests needed something like this,” Mustafa Shawqi, a leader in the Coalition of Revolutionary Youth, told me. “Gas tycoons—blocking any attempt for democratic change in the Arab world and serving the security of Israel.” And a number of self-proclaimed liberals sounded awfully like the Islamists when asked who was responsible for 9/11. “The CIA knows who did it. I don’t know,” said liberal Wafd party youth activist Mohamed Fouad. “It will remain a question mark. Al Qaeda is part of the theories, but it was organized with others. And let’s not forget that Al Qaeda is made and supported by the Americans.

Eric Trager concludes his piece by stating how difficult it will be to curb anti-American sentiment and resentment in the war on terror so long as Arab 9/11 conspiracy theories are the prevalent beliefs being spun and propagandized. One major problem of course, is the refusal on the part of Muslims to take ownership and responsibility that violent brethren of their religion were indeed responsible for “waking the sleeping/paper tiger” from its slumber. It is far easier to scapegoat the dysfunctions of their society upon the Jews or the U.S. Living in denial. And of course, when Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda claimed the charges of responsibility were true, that they brought the Towers down, some Arabs secretly (and openly) showed anything from admiration, sympathy, or support for their romanticized version of “Robin Hood” to claims that Osama must be an agent working for the CIA. No amount of evidence to the contrary will ever be enough to convince those who want to believe in conspiracies rather than face the real causes for their miserable states.

When Ahmadinejad suggested that 9/11 wasn’t caused by al Qaeda but by the U.S. government, who else other than We the People of the United States took offense? Why, al Qaeda in Yemen, no less, in the 7th issue of Inspire Magazine for Jihadis:

“The Iranian government has professed on the tongue of its president Ahmadinejad that it does not believe that al Qaeda was behind 9/11 but rather, the U.S. government. So we may ask the question: why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?” opinion writer Abu Suhail asks.

Last week, Ahmadinejad appeared before the United Nations General Assembly and blasted the U.S. for disposing of al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden.

“Last year, when the need to form a fact-finding team to undertake a thorough investigation concerning the hidden elements involved in September 11 incident was brought up; an idea also endorsed by all independent governments and nations as well as by the majority in the United States, my country and myself came under pressure and threat by the government of the United States,” Ahmadinejad said, referring to the United States.

“Instead of assigning a fact-finding team, they killed the main perpetrator and threw his body into the sea. Would it not have been reasonable to bring to justice and openly bring to trial the main perpetrator of the incident in order to identify the elements behind the safe space provided for the invading aircraft to attack the twin world trade towers?”

Several diplomatic delegations walked out of Ahmadinejad’s speech.

“If Iran was genuine in its animosity towards the U.S., it would be pleased to see another
entity striking a blow at the Great Satan but that’s not the case. For Iran, anti-Americanism is merely a game of politics,” reads Inspire’s article. “Iran and the Shi’a in general do not want to give al Qaeda credit for the greatest and biggest operation ever committed against America because this would expose their lip-service jihad against the Great Satan.”

ALLAHPUNDIT:

“For them, al Qaeda was a competitor for the hearts and minds of the disenfranchised Muslims around the world,” the article says. “Al Qaeda… succeeded in what Iran couldn’t. Therefore it was necessary for the Iranians to discredit 9/11 and what better way to do so? Conspiracy theories.”

That’s super, but AQ’s relationship with Iran is a lot more complicated than their propaganda would have you believe. I wonder if the tool who wrote that article realizes that and is simply pushing out standard anti-Shiite Wahhabist yammering or if he’s so low on the totem pole that he actually doesn’t know about the collusion at the top.

Alec Rawls, who has been working with Tom Burnett Sr. to stop the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93, explains the circumstances (related by Mr. Burnett in 2008, but not published until now).

Mr. Burnett had been telling his fellow design competition jurors that the crescent is a well known Islamic symbol. In addition to the giant central crescent (now called a broken circle) Tom also objected to the minaret-like Tower of Voices. “I made a point at that meeting,” says Mr. Burnett, “to tell people that we have an Islamist design here that can’t go forward, please, stay with me.”

One of the left-wing design professionals on the jury, Tom Sokolowski (then director of Pittsburg’s Andy Warhol Museum) thought that objecting to the crescent shape, just because it happens to be used by Muslims, was anti-Muslim bigotry. In a rude attempt to shut down criticism, Sokolowski actually called Mr. Burnett “asinine” for objecting to the huge Islamic-shaped Crescent. (Sokolowski would later repeat this performance to the press, calling a local preacher “asinine,” “small minded,” “bigoted,” “repellant,” and “disgusting” for protesting the Crescent design.)

It was in this atmosphere, charged with universal awareness amongst the jurors that the giant crescent was indeed a well-known Islamic symbol shape, but also charged with uncertainty as to whether people would be allowed to mention this fact, that another family member, Sandra Felt, started to explain what she liked about the Crescent design. She liked the “embracing” nature of it, says Mr. Burnett. She liked the way it “reached out…”

At which point another family member “lost it” (Mr. Burnett’s description), screaming in agony: “I don’t want to reach out to those people! THEY MURDERED MY DAUGHTER!”

The Park Service claims it “lost” the minutes

This extreme level of conflict on the jury over perceived Islamic symbolism should have come out years ago. The jury included a designated, non-voting, minutes taker. This was not supposed to be a private deliberation. These were volunteer citizens, doing the people’s business, and the jury minutes were supposed to be made available to the public.

The Memorial Project and the Park Service claim that the minutes were “lost.” No doubt, but that doesn’t mean the loss was accidental, and defenders of the Crescent design had good reason to make the minutes go away. Any faithful record would have been explosive, revealing these fierce objections from multiple Flight 93 family members to the blatant Islamic symbolism in the Crescent design.

The ballot wasn’t supposed to be secret either, but the Park Service refuses to account for what they claim was a 9 to 6 tally in favor of the Crescent design. What does 9 to 6 even mean on what was a ranked vote amongst three designs? Did every ballot that did not rank the Crescent last get counted as a vote in favor?

The whole thing is fishy, and there is one most obvious reason why the defenders of the Crescent might want to keep the vote details hidden. The seven family members on the jury were outnumbered by eight academics and design professionals. Thus all six of the votes against the Crescent could have come from the kin, with only Sandra Felt voting for it. This is more than just possible. It is likely.

Another mother of the murdered said only that she agreed with Mr. Burnett, and he thought that the other two men amongst the family members (Gerald Bingham and Ed Root) were on his side as well, though both have since spoken out against his ongoing effort to rescind the chosen design. Bingham and Root are angry at the anguish that the families are still being put through over the memorial design, but could such men have voted for the Crescent in the first place, in the face of that mother’s anguished cry?

A vicious left-wing ideologue like Sokolowski, yes, but it seems almost inconceivable that family members could vote for a design that other family members saw as a tribute to the terrorists, or at the very least, as reaching out to Islam. Since Bingham and Root are willing to speak out, can they please tell us whether they voted for the Crescent? If they didn’t, then the vote amongst the family members was at least 5 to 2 against.

In support of Powerline’s John Hinderaker

The immediate impetus for making these revelations public now is to support John Hinderaker’s 10th anniversary 9/11 post:

You may remember that there was considerable controversy when the design for the Flight 93 memorial was unveiled. It was called “Crescent of Embrace.” The crescent is, of course, the central symbol of Islam, and the design apparently was intended to symbolize some sort of rapprochement with that religion. The winning design was chosen by a jury, and some members of the jury, including Thomas Burnett, whose son was one of the heroes who brought down the airplane, vigorously opposed it. As I understand it, no one on the jury questioned the Muslim reference inherent in the crescent, but a majority believed that it would somehow be “healing” for the memorial to be, in part at least, a sort of tribute to Islam.

That was John’s response to Tom Sr.’s revelations, and his statement is fully supportable, but for people to know why, the supporting information has to be available to everyone. Now it is.

Given the conflict between Mr. Burnett and Tom Sokolowski, there could not have been any doubt in any juror’s mind that the Crescent was an Islamic symbol shape. Indeed, the jury made a specific request, not honored by the Park Service or by architect Paul Murdoch, that:

The crescent should be referred to as ‘the circle or arc,’ or other words that are not tied to specific religious iconography.

The only question was whether the use of this Islamic symbol shape should be seen as bad, and for a majority to favor the crescent design, a majority just have decided that it wasn’t bad, even in the face of family members who found it horrific.

Maybe these left-wing design professionals actually wanted to torture the families, but the generous interpretation is the one John gives: that they saw the Crescent design as symbolizing “some sort of rapprochement” with Islam. Certainly that seems to have been Sandra Felt’s idea, and at least one family member not on the jury thought it obvious that this must have been the intent of everyone who voted for the Crescent design. Mark Bingham’s mother, Alice Hoglan, just wished that the outreach to Islam had been made explicit:

The Flight 93 Memorial selection committee has admitted to misgivings about the word ‘crescent.’ I almost wish that instead they could claim they deliberately chose the crescent design as a gesture of peace and unity with the Islamic world. If they were to make that claim, I would not object. I would welcome such a compassionate gesture.

Unfortunately, regardless of the intentions of the jurors, architect Paul Murdoch did not have a compassionate gesture in mind.

A terrorist memorial mosque

Mr. Hinderaker’s anniversary post does not investigate whether the giant crescent actually does point to Mecca (allowing it to serve as an Islamic mihrab), or whether the Tower of Voices really is a year-round-accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial. Perfectly understandable, as these claims take some work to check and John had only just learned that the memorial controversy is still aboil, after thinking that it had been resolved in 2005.

But he does provide links to the evidence, and notes that some of it is accessible just by looking. Like why in the world does the Tower of Voices have an Islamic-shaped crescent on top?

The minaret-like Tower of Voices is formed in the shape of a crescent and is cut at an angle at the top so that its crescent arms reach up to the sky, as seen on mosque minarets across most of the Islamic world.

Literally dangling down below these symbolic Islamic heavens are the symbolic lives of the 40 heroes. This symbolic damnation is repeated over and over in Murdoch’s design. The memorial is not just any mosque, it is an al Qaeda victory mosque.

So much for trying to reach out to Islam without bothering to vet what part of Islam is being reached out to. Nothing could be worse for the decent people of the Islamic world than to hand a great victory to the very worst in the Islamic world. That is the problem with doing this Muslim-outreach thing on the sly.

Knowing the American people would never go along with intentional Islamic outreach, the Memorial Project had to cover up what actually went on in the jury room, and once they got into cover-up mode, they just kept covering up revelation after revelation about what is actually contained in Murdoch’s design.

Sokolowski’s own vile cover-up: attributing the Crescent choice to the families, after vilifying family members who opposed the Crescent design

Here is how the Post-Gazette reported on local preacher Ron McRae, who believed that architect Paul Murdoch had intended the Crescent as a tribute to Islam:

It’s a memorial to the terrorists,” McRae said. “It’s not a memorial to the innocent Americans who died there.”

But Tom Sokolowski, the director of the Andy Warhol Museum, and one of the Stage II jury members, said that claim is “asinine.”

“If the families of the 40 people who were killed felt this was an appropriate symbol to honor their loved ones, then I think he is delusional,” he said. “To take this small-minded, bigoted view is disgusting and repellent.”

Sokolowski knew that family members on the jury had taken that exact same “disgusting and repellent” view because he had said as much to their faces, and now here he was pretending that it was McRae, not himself, who was vilifying the families. Absolute moral trash of the highest order, even if he is just a feckless little worm. By intent, he is as evil as Murdoch.

Gordon Felt’s defense of the Crescent design is also belied by what transpired on the jury:

Gordon Felt, whose brother, Edward, died in the crash, called the focus on the crescent an “unfortunate distraction,” from the fourth anniversary memorial service tomorrow at the crash site.

Still, he continued, “It would be silly of us to have some sort of symbolism [in the memorial] that would be offensive to people.”

This from the man whose own sister in law had spoken in favor of the “reaching out” symbolism of the Crescent, symbolism that was seen by other family members as intending to reach out to Islam, inspiring the most dreadful offense. All this is FACT, and Gordon Felt waves off any thought of it as “silly.”

Did Gerald Bingham lie in his letter to the Memorial Project?

Mr. Bingham’s letter to the Memorial Project (p. 21 here) was timed to counter Mr. Burnett’s appearance at the 2008 Project meeting. It in-effect calls Mr. Burnett a liar, denying that Tom Sr. had ever raised any protest about Islamic symbolism when they served on the jury together:

Attention: Joanne Hanley
RE: Mr. Tom Burnett’s disapproval of the Memorial scheduled to be built honoring those on United Flight 93

Please read the following letter into the minutes of the Flight 93 board meeting scheduled for August 2, 2008.

I served on the Jury to select the final design for the Flight 93 Memorial along with Mr. Burnett. As I recall, Tom liked the design with a line of rocks along a 2 ½ mile walking trail. He indicated in his discussion with me that when it came to final vote that this would be the design of his choice. After the vote was taken and his design was not chosen he was very upset. Not once during these discussions did he mention that the design chosen by a majority vote of the committee had anything to do with a “symbol to the terrorist” as he is now saying.

The final design was chosen because its’ layout fit the landscape where the plane crashed and kept with the surrounding area.

I believe that Mr. Burnett has forgotten that this memorial is for 40 individual people who were on a flight taken over by terrorists and that all 40 of those people became heroes that day. All he is accomplishing at this point is causing other families aggravation and needless controversy.

We need to forge ahead with the plans as voted upon and join together as one just like our loved-ones did on United Flight 93, September 11, 2001.

Respectfully,
Gerald Bingham
Father of Mark Bingham

Mr. Bingham’s denial that Tom Sr. said anything about Islamic symbolism is contradicted by numerous data points, starting with the fact that Mr. Burnett spoke out to the press immediately after Crescent design was unveiled in 2005:

Tom Burnett Sr., whose son died in the crash, said he made an impassioned speech to his fellow jurors about what he felt the crescent represented.

“I explained this goes back centuries as an old-time Islamic symbol,” Burnett said. “I told them we’d be a laughing stock if we did this.”

But his fellow jurors — and it turns out, many of the other family members — disagree with his interpretation.

“I got blown off.”

But not entirely. The jurors, in their final report, suggested the name of Murdoch’s design be changed from crescent to something with less religious significance, like an arc or circle.

This is corroborated by Helene Fried, who helped to manage the design competition:

Fried said the connection was raised by some history buffs on the jury during three days of deliberations last month.

Compare “old time Islamic symbol,” with “history buffs.” And if the Jury’s statement that the Crescent name is “tied to specific religious iconography” was not in response to Mr. Burnett’s protests, where did it come from? Is Bingham saying that others on the jury were more vehement than Mr. Burnett in pointing out and objecting to this tie?

Then there is Mr. Burnett’s account of Tom Sokolowski calling him “asinine” for objecting to the Islamic symbolism of the crescent. This is corroborated by the fact that Sokolowski used the exact same language to condemn Pastor Ron McRae. Altogether, the evidence is overwhelming that it is Gerald Bingham who is lying when he accuses Mr. Burnett of lying.

For the sake of the families

Bingham makes his motivation clear. He opposes Mr. Burnett because:

All he is accomplishing at this point is causing other families aggravation and needless controversy.

But notice what Bingham doesn’t say. He is willing to discuss how Mr. Burnett voted, but he keeps his own vote secret. (Gerald Bingham has been divorced from Mark Bingham’s mother Alice Hoglan since the 1970′s, so her stated approval of Muslim-outreach in the Flight 93 Memorial should not be linked to him.)

If Bingham voted for the Crescent, his secrecy about his vote would make no sense. Everyone from Sokolowski on up appeals to the will of the families. Bingham himself does this. These appeals obviously turn on whether the nine votes for the Crescent design came from family members or from the cadre of left-wing design professionals who outnumbered the families 8 to 7.

For Bingham’s objective of ending the controversy, the most weighty thing he could say is that he voted for it, but he doesn’t. And how could he have voted for the Crescent? This is a man who is so keen to avoid pain for the families that he is even willing to tell slanderous lies about the one family member he blames for dragging out the controversy. Surely such a man would never have voted in the first place for a design that was already causing the most extreme anguish to multiple family members.

Ed Root is also loud in his condemnations but mum about his vote

Jury member Ed Root also attacks Mr. Burnett and Mr. Rawls for continuing to oppose the Crescent design (p. 22 here):

Those who oppose this Memorial, for whatever misplaced reasons, have voiced their belief on numerous occasions. That is a striking example of the democracy we hold dear. When those unfounded beliefs turn to a zealotry that attempts to overthrow the very democratic process that selected the winning design it does a terrible disservice to those who worked long and diligently during the design process and, to me, it mocks those very 40 that we long to honor. Our nation is one of laws and due process. To let a few destroy what many have built is not democracy, but tyranny.

Yet Root too keeps his vote secret. It could just be embarrassment, not wanting to admit that he voted for such an obvious perversion, crammed to the gills with Islamic-shaped crescents. Or it could be that he was better than that, and despite the magnificence of Murdoch’s Crescent, was unwilling to vote for as design that other family members found so appallingly offensive.

Mr. Burnett says he liked Mr. Root, and it is easy to see why. They both believe the passengers and crew were fighting, not just to stop the terrorist attack, but to get back to their families:

“The people of Flight 93 wanted to live,” Root said while visiting “Father Al” and the chapel in July. “There’s no doubt in my mind, they didn’t want to die.”

That distinguishes the passengers and crew from the hijackers, in Root’s eyes.

“[The passengers and flight attendants] wanted to try to get control of the plane and, if possible, to survive,” he said. “But they knew from all of the phone calls that if they didn’t do something, it would be far worse. So it really is this comparison of philosophies of a free society versus a terrorist society. One is, their cause is death; the other is, their cause is life. And that’s what makes this worthy of a national memorial. That’s what makes this worth being remembered.

Maybe he can join with Mr. Burnett in demanding an explanation for Memorial Superintendent Keith Newlin’s claim that it was the passengers and crew who crashed the airplane: “They are the one’s who brought the plane down,” says Newlin. This is his way of avoiding the implication that the circle-breaking crescent-creating theme of the memorial can only be depicting the actions of the terrorists. “[The terrorists] TRIED to break the peace,” says Newlin, “but they failed.” Surely Root would disagree.

But Root is wrong about who is refusing to respect democratic principles. Their 15 person jury does not take precedence over the will of the nation, clearly expressed in the national uproar over the original Crescent of Embrace design. The Memorial Project promised to remove the offensive features—the Islamic symbol shapes—but they never did. They just disguised them.

“The difference is at best a subtle one”

Thanks to Powerline for exposing this as well:

Crescent of Embrace, left. Circle of Embrace, right.

They call it a broken circle now, but the unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is just the original Crescent of Embrace. All they did was recolor the graphics, then add an extra arc of trees, placed to the rear of a person facing into the giant crescent, that explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle. As a result, Murdoch’s circle-breaking crescent-creating theme is now even more explicit, and so are its obvious terrorist-memorializing implications.

Will other front-line conservative blogs and publications take notice?

John Hinderaker is a top lawyer, a lifelong expert at evaluating evidence. When he announces that there is serious substance to the Flight 93 controversy, serious people ought to listen.

Everybody understands the difficulty. With multiple Flight 93 family members crying their anguish against anyone who prolongs the controversy, people need to actually look at the facts before taking a position. So take a look! MANY of the facts are perfectly straightforward and utterly damning. Not everyone can be as brave as Pamela Geller, but no one should let the whiff of danger stop them from examining this most important issue.

We’re talking no less than the re-hijacking of Flight 93 by an actual al Qaeda sympathizing architect. Think 9/11 folks. The whiff of danger should be an attractant, a chance to tackle a hijacker. Those lied-to and in some cases lying family members need to have their fat pulled out of the fire. Ride to the sound of the guns.

Caught this unusual and stunning Sept 11th tribute from the UK’s Daily Mail today.

Photographer, Norman Kent, had a birds-eye view as nine members of Team Fastrax released the flags at 10:28AM over the Middletown Regional Airport in Ohio on Sept 11th… marking the time the 2nd WTC building collapsed ten years ago.

The team originally wanted to perform this jump memorial over the New York site, but were denied for airspace restrictions because of terror attack concerns.

The flags varied in size… the largest being 7800sf. Between the weighted flags, plus the normal demands of a traditional dive at 9500 ft elevation, this was not a task for novice jumpers. Some of the team were ex military who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

View a Team Fastrax photo, as well as the rest of Mr. Kent’s stunning pictures for Barcroft Media at the Daily Mail link above.

The word “unique” is overused, but I think my experience on 9/11/01 may have been unique. I was actually on a plane, flying from Charlotte to Houston, when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. There were thousands of people in the air when the attacks happened, but what made my case unusual was that I was traveling on a business trip with a coworker, who happened to be Muslim.

The pilot did not immediately tell us what had actually happened. Instead, he announced that there was an air traffic control problem in New York, and that we had been instructed to land at the nearest airport, which happened to be New Orleans. He put the plane into the steepest descent I have ever experienced, as he headed towards the airport. I was personally convinced that there must have been some mechanical problem with the plane, and that he had made up the air traffic control problem to spare us the terror of anticipating a crash landing. It made no sense that a New York problem would require us to make an unscheduled landing, and even if it did, why would he make such a steep descent? I had mentally prepared myself for a crash landing, and possible death. Of course, he did pull out of the steep descent, and landed in New Orleans without incident.

Only when we were on the ground and were taxiing toward the gate did he explain the real reason, and even then the information was not totally correct. He announced that two planes had hit the two World Trade Center buildings, and a third had hit the White House. There was no mention of the Pentagon. Looking back, I realized how utterly confused and chaotic the situation must have been. The authorities did an excellent job, in the circumstances, of getting all of the many planes safely on the ground, with no other accidents or incidents.

We left the plane through the jetway in the usual way. The wing of the terminal where we entered had already been completely evacuated. The only people present, besides ourselves, were a large number of police. We were instructed to walk through the terminal in single file, without stopping, and were strictly order not to speak to anyone. I had been in this wing many times, and it was an eerie sensation to walk through a perfectly quiet and deserted building, which is normally bustling with thousands of people.

We made it through the wing, into the center of the airport building, and found total chaos. All arriving passengers had been funneled into this area, and a huge crowd of confused, frightened people was milling around.

My first thought was to find a rental car, and possibly continue the trip to Houston by driving. I went from one car rental counter to another, but all had been sold out. Finally, the last counter had one or two cars left, and I was able to book one on a one-way trip to Houston.

Next, I made my way to a pay phone, and called my wife to let her know I was all right. (I did not own a cell phone at the time.) There were long lines at the pay phones, but everyone was very orderly and patient. I waited in one line until I was able to make the call. It turned out that she had not had the TV or radio on, and knew nothing about what was happening, so I was the first one to give her the information. She turned the TV on while we were talking, and watched some of the reporting. We talked for just a few minutes, then I gave up the phone so that someone else could make a call.

Finally, I decided to attempt to find the coworker with whom I was traveling. Knowing that I had gotten one of the last few cars, I thought that he might not be able to find a car, and be stuck in New Orleans with no way to get to Houston. Although we were going to different meetings in Houston, we could at least drive over together, and he should be able to find a car in Houston. The area around the car rental desks was crowded and chaotic, and I thought I might not be able to locate him, but after a few minutes of searching, I saw him in the crowd. We picked up the rental car and set out on a six-hour drive, going west on I-10. Fortunately, the highway was near the airport, and we were on our way pretty quickly.

Of course, we immediately turned on the car radio, and listened to the coverage of the events. At first, most of it was just speculation, but before long the authorities had somehow pieced together some of the facts, and figured that Al Qaida was probably behind the attacks. Within a few hours, Bin Laden’s name was even mentioned in connection with the attacks. In any case, it seemed likely that they had been conducted by Islamic terrorists.

We drove in silence for a long time, listening to the reports. I was stunned, saddened, and worried about what this would mean for the future, so I was lost in my own thoughts, and in no mood to talk.

Suddenly, my coworker, who had been riding quietly, burst out with, “This would never have happened if it wasn’t for the US policy towards Israel!”

I was so surprised that all I could say was, “What?”

He went on in that vein for a few minutes. As he saw it, the US favored Israel in everything they did, it was a very bad policy, no wonder people were upset, this was a natural response to the bad actions of the US. Now, this fellow was a very intelligent and highly educated man. He had come to the US for graduate school, and had spent several years obtaining a PhD. He then worked for a large company in Los Angeles for five years before coming to our company a year or so earlier. He spoke perfect English, and seemed to be totally immersed in the culture of the US. But, somehow he had managed to maintain this extraordinarily warped attitude about the US and our politics.

After listening in stunned silence for a few minutes, I lost control, and basically told him to shut up, that I didn’t want to hear any more. We drove the rest of the way in silence. I dropped him off at a car rental counter in Houston, and did not see him again until we both returned home.

The actual events of the day of 9/11 were bad enough, but here is what has really stuck with me for the last ten years: after this event, we worked together for another couple of years, before he transferred to another location. In all that time, we never discussed it again. He never apologized for his outburst, or indicated that perhaps there might be another side to the question. He never condemned the attacks, or indicated that he regretted them. In fact, he never spoke negatively about terrorism at all.

I live in a small- to medium-sized city, but we have a fairly large and elaborate mosque. There is a local imam who is pretty well-known in the area. He publishes articles in the local paper periodically, calling for peace and brotherhood, or explaining elements of the Muslim faith. But as far as I know, he has never condemned any of the Muslim terror attacks, including the events of 9/11. My next-door neighbors are Muslims, and are wonderful people, but they have never commented on these issues. Before I retired, I worked with several other Muslim colleagues, most of whom I had great respect for. But again, I have never heard any of them speak out against Muslim-sponsored terrorism.

This, I think, is a major problem that the Muslim community in the US has not addressed. Until Muslims who live here are ready to openly and vigorously condemn the type of violence perpetrated on 9/11 and since then, there will always be an air of suspicion and hostility towards them. Like my neighbors, I think most of them are fine people and good Americans. But, this attitude just reinforces the belief on the part of many Americans that they cannot be trusted. In this atmosphere, one more attack, like that of Major Hasan, causes that belief to harden to the point that it will be almost impossible to change.

There is an article in my newspaper today, quoting several local Muslims as saying that they are being targeted for special attention by law enforcement officials. To be fair, one local doctor does say that he teaches his children that “…our religion does not, by any means, allow us to kill innocent women and children.” But, most of the article consists of complaints about the additional focus on Muslims.

Do they really not understand why this is happening?

Five years ago I signed up with the 2,996 project in which bloggers were assigned one of those who died on 9/11 to remember. I was given Aram Iskendarian. Aram was 41 the day he died. He was a vice president at Cantor Fitzgerald, where he headed the global risk management group. That day he would have been working on the 101st floor of building 1. He was a photo bug and took many pictures of his family which included wife Sheri (whom he had met when he was 15 in high school) and his four children Meryl, Kara, Alex and Jason. Visit my post on Aram here. He is just one out of 2,996 who will be memorialized today.

Take a moment sometime today to remember them.

Click the picture below to watch the video

REMEMBER

Above, one of the stunning AP photos of the site of terror attacks ten years ago. While we are remembering all those we have lost, and again being wow’d by all those who responded so magnificently, enjoy more of the new site at the Daily Mail.

Yesterday leaders gathered first at the Pentagon and, later, in Shanksville to honor those who lost their lives. If you missed the very moving speech by President Bush, you can see it below.

While former leaders were involved with ceremonies on Saturday, the President and the First Lady went to Section 60 in Arlington to pay tribute to the US warriors there, who had lost their lives in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

I would very much like to believe the nation has changed since the day jetlines hit the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and the passengers on Flight 93 gave their lives to save countless others. But then, I had to run across this Tenth Anniversary blog post from NYTs, Paul Krugman.

The Years of Shame

Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.

“Years of Shame”? Mr. Krugman has exhibited an unconscionable moment of shame for which he should forever be embarrassed. As you can see, he is as cowardly as the terrorists themselves… a hateful hit and run on a day of remembrance and mourning, demonstrating that he, himself, is guilty of the very accusations he dares to level at others.

More here

It was 19 Islamic terrorists. That makes the broken-circle memorial to Flight 93 a memorial to the terrorists, who are depicted not only as smashing our circle of peace, but as leaving a giant Islamic crescent-and-star flag in its place:

They call it a broken circle now, but the unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is just the original Crescent of Embrace: a giant Islamic-shaped crescent, pointing to Mecca.

The damned thing is actually an al Qaeda victory mosque, with the Mecca-oriented crescent as its mihrab: the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built.

That is the short version of an advertisement that started running in western Pennsylvania newspapers last week. Alec Rawls sends along this update on the effort to stop the crescent mosque.

10th anniversary ad campaign now underway

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review recently solicited Tom Burnett Senior’s response to some new design images for the Flight 93 memorial. When he said that the so-called redesign leaves all of the terrorist memorializing features intact, editors instructed reporter Kari Andren to leave his remarks out. They preferred un-interrupted praise from the same few family members who always speak up for the broken-circle design.

The people of Pennsylvania deserve to see what their information gate-keepers don’t want them to know, so Mr. Burnett and his backers decided to begin their 10th anniversary ad campaign a few weeks early. The first full-page color ad just ran in the Somerset Daily American and will appear in two other local papers next week.

For a PDF of the ad copy, click on the thumbnail below, or scroll down for the same content formatted for browsing. If anyone wants to help fund additional advertising, a very generous soul has offered to match all donations up to a total of $5000.

More explicit than a giant Islamic crescent-and-star flag?

As the ad-headline notes, the Circle of Embrace “redesign” only accentuates the circle-breaking crescent-creating theme of the original Crescent of Embrace. Mr. Burnett’s full remarks explain:

The only visible change is the addition of an extra arc of trees that explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle. The unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is just the original Crescent of Embrace: a giant Islamic shaped crescent, still pointing to Mecca.

People also need to know that a Mecca-direction indicator is the central feature around which every mosque is built. It is called a “mihrab,” and the classic mihrab is crescent shaped.

So the terrorists broke our circle of peace on 9/11, and all that remains standing is the central feature of a mosque. The inclusion of a broken-off part of the circle only accentuates this terrorist-memorializing symbolism. It bastardizes what my son Tom and the other heroes of Flight 93 accomplished. The crescent/broken-circle design is a desecration of sacred ground.

Tom Burnett Sr. Northfield MN

Park Service calls the circle “broken”

A proper newspaper would ask the Park Service if the extra arc of trees really does represent a broken-off part of the circle. Still, people can easily verify this crucial fact for themselves. It is right on the Park Service’s own website. Their “questions about the design” page asks “Is this circle ‘broken’ at all?” Their answer is yes:

… the circle is symbolically “broken” or missing trees in two places, depicting the flight path of the plane, and the crash site.

The locations of these two breaks in the “circle of embrace” are spelled out:

…first, where the flight path of the plane went overhead (which is the location of the planned memorial overlook and visitor center), and second, where the plane crashed at the Sacred Ground (depicted by a ceremonial gate and pathway into the Sacred Ground).

These are the two ends of the extra arc of trees, which starts near the original upper crescent tip and continues down to the crash site. So Mr. Burnett is right. Both ends of the new arc of trees are explicitly broken off. The unbroken part of the circle—what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11—is just the original Islamic-shaped Crescent of Embrace that the Park Service promised to change.

To illustrate, the ad includes a side-bar of graphics, showing just what is changed and what is not changed in the memorial. This is slightly complicated by the fact that the Park Service pretended that they were going to make one very big cosmetic change that they are not actually making, but a few pictures easily tell the tale.

The Park Service pretended the outside of the crescent would be filled in with a forest of trees

A publicity shot of the original Crescent of Embrace design shows what appears to be a bare-naked Islamic crescent-and-star flag planted atop the crash site:

When this blatant Islamic symbolism caused an uproar, architect Paul Murdoch re-worked his mock-up to show a forest of additional trees surrounding the outside of the original Crescent:

Only the inner arc of the crescent remains visible, making the new Circle of Embrace name seem reasonable. But none of these surrounding trees made it into the actual Circle of Embrace design drawings. (The “Stage 1″ drawings, encompassing the area seen in these images, were released in 2009.)

The Park Service may eventually let the bare field grow in with trees, but this is not a change in the design. The only actual change is the extra arc of trees, seen below in orange. It explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle:

What the Circle of Embrace actually looks like. The original giant crescent still sits naked on an open field and the flight path still “breaks the circle” at the upper crescent tip.

Remove the explicitly broken off part of the circle (in orange), and what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11 is the same giant Mecca-oriented crescent the Park Service promised to change. It constitutes a classic “mihrab,” the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built, and will form the centerpiece for the world’s largest mosque.

Who broke the circle of peace on 9/11?

When the “Crescent of Embrace” was unveiled as the winning design, architect Paul Murdoch explained the crescent name and the crescent shape by saying that the circle was broken on 9/11, leaving only a part of the circle still standing: the giant crescent. The fact that this circle-breaking crescent-creating theme remains completely intact in the broken-circle design demands the question of WHO is being depicted as breaking the circle of peace on 9/11.

The final section of the ad points out that there can only be one answer. We all know who broke the peace on 9/11. Thus the memorial can only be depicting the actions of the terrorists, who are seen not only as smashing our circle of peace, but as replacing it with their own crescent and star flag.

With the media censoring all criticism, people who don’t like all this blatant Islamic symbolism need a way to signal each other directly, so the ad finishes with a handy dandy flyer that readers can post on windows, walls, bulletin boards etcetera:

If you want to put a few up yourself, click the image above for a printable PDF, complete with urls for our petition to stop the memorial and for more information. And here is an ad-copy version that anyone can run in their own local paper (the free weeklies can be pretty reasonable).

As Flight 93 showed, just because the hijacker has control of the cockpit doesn’t mean he can’t still be stopped.