It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to learn that elements in the administration knew about the attacks in advance, and decided to let them happen and profit from them.

Anyway, I haven’t yet made plans to watch United 93, but I was very impressed by another Paul Greengrass film, Bloody Sunday, about a massacre of Irish civil rights marches by the British Army in 1972. That was my “9/11″ when I was growing up in Ireland – obviously it was on a smaller scale, but there was the same sense of shock and disbelief throughout Ireland. And the political crisis could have been resolved peacefully before Bloody Sunday if the Brits had given an inch – instead they went in with all guns blazing, their bloodthirstiness and stupidity leading to the appearance of the IRA and 30 years of upheaval. How sad that the powers that be never learn anything from history.

I live in Manhattan, I don’t need a movie to remind me what happened. The Catholic church two blocks from my apartment has cross made out of cross beams from the WTC sitting in its yard, on a street that’s been unofficially renamed “Heroes of 9/11 Way.” You can’t avoid discussion of 9/11 anyway because it’s local news here, almost every day. You know reconstruction only just started this week, because the government, the victims families, and the developer have all been at war for two years trying to hash out the details. Many architects have said publicly that the Freedom Tower is a phenomenally bad idea. There’s still some kind of problem with the memorial construction, such that Governor Pataki has to get on TV every couple of weeks to assure people that it will still be built.

And we in New York have to deal with the fact that anti-terrorism funding is still too low, that the NYPD is ill-equipped to deal with another attack, that the port in nearby Elizabeth, NJ, still lets in a lot of cargo without checking it sufficiently. We’re told to be on the lookout for suspicious activity, and everyone’s so on edge that earlier this week, the N train shut down because the ink bomb thingy from a bank robbery exploded in a subway car and the cops thought it was a tear gas bomb at first. So that’s what the Patriot Act and spying on those evil brown people did for us. Every time there’s a minor incident, it becomes increasingly clear that we’re not prepared should there be another attack.

Which is to say… good for the movie, but I don’t have to see it to demonstrate that I care or to show I love freedom or whatever. And clearly I love freedom more than Debbie does, since she wants her civil liberties abridged.

Two things: There was a movie made for A&E. It was shown, I believe, in March. It is being reshown this weekend. They did a fair bit of advertising for it on A&E, History and Discovery channels, IIRC. I didn’t watch it. I was sick that morning and stayed home from work (in Manhattan) and didn’t know what was happening in Manhattan until the afternoon. The Towers were a landmark for so many things that you cannot escape their absence on the skyline. (I have several friends who should have been in the vicinity that day and were saved by either not being at work or on the way to work. Another friend’s son went to Stuyvesant HS.)

As to the memorial: Several months ago there was a long thread at TBogg about the people protesting the shape of the proposed memorial. That thread then had a sibling thread at Making Light. Both grew to hundreds of comments. Absolutely insane reactions from the wingnuts about the memorial. I saw the other day (I don’t remember where) that a congresscritter from Delaware (IIRC) doesn’t want the federal government to buy the land needed for the memorial and doesn’t one built, period. The land purchase is part of a new Interior Department appropriations bill coming up in Congress in the next few weeks.

The attack makes my heart sick, and all the crap from the wingnuts just makes the hurt worse.

Anyway, maybe the link to Peaceful Tomorrows is the more worthwhile link to look at.

See, I think they are truly evil enough to do this. Isn’t there some quote about “the more someone tells me how honest they are, the more I start counting my money?” The more Bush and Co. bring up 9/11 and use it as a justification for wiping their asses with the Constitution, the more one has to wonder if they didn’t at the very least not prevent it.. even Debbie Downer could hardly deny that 9/11 has been quite the political boon for the GOP.

One question, though. What is the purpose of donating to the National Park Service? For some sort of memorial? I’d want the movie to contribute toward something more pragmatic, e.g. the scholarship funds you mention; but again, to each their own.

This certainly isn’t the first buck anybody made off 9/11, and it won’t be the last.