I am honored to present this small tribute to:

Name: Inna Basina

Age: 43

Killed at: World Trade Center

From country: USA

From city: New York

From state: N.Y.

The tears come when I hear the radio, remembering the tragic events of that day.

The tears come when I sit there at the moment of silence, and the bagpipes quiet down.

The tears come when I think of all those who lost someone like you.

And I raise my eyes, my heart to God and pray for your soul and your peace.

I pray for a day of justice because we have NOT forgotten.

Inna, I know only your name. We would be, if the joy of life had not been treacherously stolen from you, roughly the same age. I also know you are among the nearly 3000 innocent victims viciously attacked by Islamic Fundamentalist cowards on that ill-fated day, September 11th, 2001. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain, the suffering, the agony. Today five years, later, the land of the free, the home of the brave, our beloved North America, still convulses in pain and sorrow remembering those who went with you. Today I join many other compassionate souls, good-hearted American patriots who, driven by a concerted effort will be delivering the balm of kind words rendering tribute to all those who lost their life because of what we represent, freedom.

May you rest in glorious peace knowing that you lived in the most prosperous, generous, and free nation in the world. May your loved ones, if you knew the delights, triumphs and headaches of motherhood be comforted today by the knowledge that many of us share their incalculable loss. May your loved ones, if you shared the embracing, nurturing love of parents, siblings and friends be comforted today by the sweet thought that we remember you in our prayers. You have met our Creator. May he bless you and those that loved you and that now have one empty space at their table which shall never be filled again, but with their caring thoughts of remembrance and longing.

God bless you INA BASSINA. This tribute is accompanied by my heartfelt sympathy and condolences for all those whose lives were shattered by this tragedy. Rest assured that God in his infinite wisdom touches our lives every day with trials and tribulations to surmount and blessings and triumphs to enjoy and that he will allow for the just to prevail. Long Live the United States of America.

President Bush:

On those 20 million for PR......I have a better idea, infuse the military blogosphere with that money. (Provide internet access to the people waging the battle, to people doing the job, in the different theaters where conflict is most acute.) Flood the right wing blogosphere with photos, reality snapshots and let them run with them. GIVE more speeches, more frequently. BE RELENTLESS. Don't be afraid to profile the enemy. Most of us DO already know what they look like, how they think and HOW TO GET RID OF THEM.....A PR campaign is already being waged in the the blogosphere. I can't tell you who's winning but you already have the venues and forums to spread out your views. (I like to think the Right is ahead..because we're... right.Got to love etymology.)
RELY ON THE VALUE OF HISTORY. What is happening in Iraq, has already happened in Jordan and Lebanon. Jordan is a success story (Iran had not profiled itself as the insidious terror instigator it now is). Lebanon made a tepid attempt w/in the past 2 years, but has been unable to thanks to IRAN's army by proxy, Hezbollah.
RELY ON THE VALUE OF DEMOCRACY. You're right on the money here!! Democracy is the only cure for this cancer. This is why terrorists fear your administration. Because you are RIGHT. Democracy and prosperity are the balm for this treacherous cancer. And extending the analogy, they need to go through some severe "chemotherapy" (which may radically weaken their whole system) in order to come out FREE of the violence and the radicalism too many Middle Eastern leaders spouse today.

God Bless you and God bless America
Sincerely,

Lin-Dai Kendall
Proud mother of four,
Thinker and activist for PEACE (even if it means the eradication of a whole branch of homo not sapiens...)

Sorry if I mislead you there with the title.

I actually happen to believe that it made total sense to have eliminated that dictatorship and in the process liberate millions of people from the opression of a brutal, sanguinary regime. It may not be easy to discern the potential of this endeavor at this moment but I'm absolutely convinced that if democracy takes a stronghold in this nation, history will vindicate the policies and difficult choices that our President has made. I actually see the strength of his reasoning in the following:
ONE, any society who develops, nurtures democracy and progress can only flourish into a peaceful, life-respecting nation. Democracies don't generally attack their neighbors.
TWO, the only route to change the face of the Middle East is to propitiate and foster progress and freedom. We have seen the power of these elixirs transform nations as intensely totalitarian as CHINA!



I do not however find common sense in the following:
-people who think the Middle East "hates" us because we're in Iraq
(they love our dollars, they hate our freedom of religion and expression) you need a lesson in history
-people who say they're pro-our military but against the Iraqui intervention.
-people who express admiration for the "candor" and refreshing "honesty" with which Arab leaders and well known terrorists express their Anti-Semitic views and their desire to annihilate Israel
-women who express admiration for these Arab regimes which oppress and relegate women reducing them to a possession
-people who believe you can "talk" to or negotiate with a terrorist if they can only understand his motives, and of course, than offer to send them to a shrink....
-people who give moral equivalence to a sovereign democratic nation and a group of coward terrorists who use women's skirts and children's cribs to hide behind when launching their warfare
-people who believe we went there for oil...you also need a lesson in history
-people who fall for the Arab propaganda machine (will elaborate in the future)
-Muslims who don't condemn the fratricide they've been witness to in the past 5 decades but condemn a tiny little nation for defending what turns out to be 1/640th of the land in Arab hands and with NO OIL
>

Well....food for fodder....

AAAArrrrgh!
Did you all hear about the following case?

An illegal immigrant trying to sneak in a van into the United States, triggered an alarm and two border patrol officers pursued the van. The driver then headed back towards where he tried to cross with the border patrol in pursuit. This illegal attempting to get in, ends up getting rid of his van at the shore of the river (Rio Grande).The border patrol follows him, one of them apparently wrestled with him. The illegal manages to untangle himself and start running away. In the process the border patrol try to stop him w/out success. He pulls out what the border patrol believe to be a weapon and they shoot the illegal in the butt. And he manages to run away to a van awaiting on the Mexican side. They seize the van he leaves behind on our side and they come upon 800 lbs of marihuana!YIKES!
HERE'S WHERE THE CASE TURNS BIZARRE
An inspector from Homeland Security ends up going to Mexico, hunts this guy down in MEXICO, and offers immunity in exchange for his testimony against the border patrol, gets treatment in a military hospital and is now suing the government for $5 million dollars!
The two border patrol officers are awaiting sentence accused of infringement of the drug dealer's civil rights, assault and wounding & one other thing I can't remember at this moment.They could face a 20 yr sentence!


DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT'S GOING ON HERE? A PROSECUTOR AUTHORIZED THE LOCAL HOMELAND SECURITY OFFICE TO TRACK THE DRUG DEALER DOWN AND BRING HIM BACK TO THEN ACCUSE TWO OF OUR LOYAL BORDER PATROL MEMBERS? ONE OF THESE OFFICERS WAS UP LAST YEAR FOR PATROL MEMBER OF THE YEAR AND HAS SINCE HAD THE NOMINATION WITHDRAWN!He's been doing this job for approx. 10 years now and is responsible for the capture of tons of drug loads in that period of time.
So, what is wrong with this picture????

I'd like to direct your attention to the one element in this embroglio that smells fishy, (that wreaks to the high heavens describes it better). From sheer common sense, this is the catalyst element that does NOT make sense. That is, the decision maker that prompted the State Attorney's office/Homeland Security TO FIND THIS GUY AND GRANT HIM IMMUNITY! If that person is an elected official, he/she ought to be IMPEACHED/REMOVED immediately. He/she has allowed/brought in a criminal into the country that not only tried to trespass the border but in doing so brought with him 800 lbs of reasons to not let him in, but rather to capture him and prosecute him fiercely. As to the officers who may not have followed due process, for me, as a mother of four, they have earned nothing but a reminder and my eternal gratitude for a job well done.
I demand the prosecutor's RESIGNATION AND AN EXTRAORDINARY DOSE OF COMMON SENSE RAMMED DOWN HIS/HER THROAT SWEETENED WITH INTEGRITY!!!

Alas!!! I've just stumbled across an article By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, Times Perspective Columnist
Published August 20, 2006, Here's the link if you care to read it.
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/08/20/Columns/US_could_use_more_gir.shtml
This is a response to her diatribe (in a few words: the cowboy doctrine thats permeating our Society):

Robyn:

I'm as female as they get and yet I differ 180 degrees from you, in perspective. I'm not going to write an essay to refute each and every paragraph you've written. I have come to believe that it's futile to instill common sense in a mind as liberal as yours. Liberal thought that is. You see, liberal thought is that of an adolescent, carefree, mindless, uninformed and yes, erroneous due to lack of maturity, responsibility, fortitude, experience, character, and moral direction, easily prone to revisionist history in order to favor one's position.I'm not going to even try to get into all the political connotations of your article but I surely will skim the surface!

One has but to analyze the last two decades to find irrefutable proof in factual events to the nonsense you have come up with. Whereas in the past, nations (not subversive groups or terrorists) have fought among each other with a certain degree of honor and a sometimes foggy but existent code of conduct, today we are presented with an enemy of a totally different nature.
That enemy subjugates its women , condemns homosexuals, sends its children to blow themselves up in the name of .......(ooops what cause might that be? money, oil, land? none of the above, in the name of GOD! ), beheads their prisoners .....(as opposed to putting panties on their head, subjecting them to female presence....which last I heard, doesn't kill....)
HERE'S A LITTLE HISTORY LESSON:To the best of my knowledge the Arab States
*occupy 640 times the land area of Israel,
*have all the Oil the world may need,
*extort all possible wealth by blackmailing the world with reduction-in-oil-production threats,
*have stood by waiting for someone else to solve their cooked up refugee problem <...no this is not an opinion...it is a fact! Even Mark Twain wrote of the desolation, aridness and lack of population encountered in the great Palestine area before this struggle ever came to be! You need to read the Balfour Declaration and the famous White Papers. The Brits reneged on their commitment of the Palestinian Mandate to the Jews returning to occupy what was Palestine and the Holy land selling out to Arab conspiracy. The Brits finally presented to the emerging Jewish nation less than one tenth of the land gained from the Turks at the end of World War I from the defeat of Germany and the Turks, as had been pledged to them. Some of that land is what Jordan is today....The Arab exodus began to take shape even before Israel was attacked, ill-advised by their Arab leaders....Now here's some more food for thought, how did it come to be that these refugees became refugees even before a conflict occurred?
*5 Arab states attacked the emerging Israeli Nation scarcely 2 days after it was formed and were soundly defeated.

You, yes you specifically, would never even dream of having a voice if you were an Arab woman! You could never dream of speaking your mind about the ruling authority! You'd be dead by now....

So, let me get this straight...You'd rather that we have a leadership who seeks to continue in the failure of the last 20 years to stop this barbaric behavior of a group of men that are so immoral as to hide missiles behind the skirts of a woman or the crib of a baby? And just how do you intend to make them sit down to "talk"? These men don't talk Robyn, they behead, explode, butcher and grunt their way into the International Political Arena of our times.
Since I've outlined what I know is a dire reality, pardon me Ms. but I'd rather have the guy with the trigger mounted gun by my side protecting me. That other troglodyte knows no boundaries.
And as for the concept of all this being a reaction of living in fear, I do make a very perfectly outlined distinction between the MEN on my side and the ones you would like. MINE HAVE BACKBONE, RESOLUTION AND PRINCIPLES.

Last but not least, thanks for mildly appeasing my preoccupation w/ an article I recently read on some Blog or News podium about the "feminization of America"......phew, if what you say is true, I've got less to worry about.

Sincerely,

Last Samurai
Solid Citizen, mother of four
Practicing professional, w/ 2 master degrees.