More September 11 links that go with the last post:

Will Bunch:

On the second anniversary of 9/11, in 2003, I wrote a story in the Daily News that, among other things, mentioned that Bush had spent at least five minutes reading “The Pet Goat” in that Sarasota classroom. It was an indisputable fact, and yet I received hundreds of emails from readers, many asking if I would be fired for reporting such a simple and inconvenient truth. When Michael Moore showed the actual footage in “Fahrenheit 911” months later, much of the nation was shocked to learn for the first time what really happened that day.

It took that long for people to acknowledge the seven minutes. How long will it take before we can tell them that Air Force One circled Sarasota, Florida, for more than an hour that morning because the President couldn’t make up his bleeping mind where to go? (The South Tower collapsed just as Air Force One took off from Florida. Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania the North Tower collapsed while Air Force One circled and Bush, Cheney, and the Secret Service discussed the President’s flight itinerary.) If the circling is news to you, go read my last post.

I really like what Jill of Feministe wrote. I was going to quote from it but … it’s all good. Go read the whole thing. After you’ve read Jill’s post, contrast with what my big fan the Confederate Yankee wrote — pure, unadulterated horse shit from someone who sure as hell wasn’t in New York or Washington that day.

For the record, I wrote about my personal experiences of September 11 four years ago, and haven’t much written about it since. Although I don’t think what I wrote came close to what I was really feeling, I don’t want to go back there and write it over again.

Other New York City bloggers remembered September 11. Steve Gilliard:

I know there are people who think they’re paying respect by gawking at Ground Zero or by saying that all Americans are part of this.

They are full of shit. Not that they mean it, but they are.

You are not part of this and be glad of it. Be very glad you didn’t have to see people burning alive or smell them or lose anyone you know. Be glad you didn’t have to worry about anyone not coming home.

I want people to understand something.

There is a massive gap between 9/11 the day and 9/11 the event. The event lasted long after people went home, buried their dead and went on with life. It turned into arguments, questions, and most of all a void. That’s not transferrable, it’s not something you can give. Either you were part of it or you weren’t. And if you were, even if you didn’t know anyone who died, you saw their faces, read their stories, saw the grief of the living long after everyone else walked away.

And if you weren’t, be glad.

Because you’ll never know what it’s like to look up in the sky and see a hole where two buildings once were. And you’ll never have that eerie feeling of seeing the familiar turned into rubble.

Also at Steve’s, a commenter wrote:

All those people.

Steel.

PVC.

Fiberglass.

And asbestos.

Rent to bits molecular, hanging in the air next to death. And smoke. Hanging for weeks. South of Park Row, the city dusted by a fine snow of terror.

My wife worried about going back to work. She walked around ankle deep in the remains of millions of square feet of a mini-city brought down suddenly that day. She coughed like an old west “lunger” for a week. And still, worried about whether it was safe to go back down there because of all the sh*t in the air. The sh*t that blasted through crevices and into the shop window of a jeans store on Broadway, death-washing the trendy denims it touched a mealy gray.

That stuff hung in the air for days on end, and my wife worried about what it could do. She works in insurance and deals with lawsuits for asbestos victims and the ilk–so she knows the risks.

But hey…Saint f*cking Rudy and his faux-moderate aide-de-camp Sister Christie of the Hatchet-Face Order said for all to hear “The coast is clear–all is well!”…which really meant “Get back to work b*tches so’s we can run the spin about ‘pluck’ and ‘stick-to-it-iveness’, and f*ck you if you can’t take a lung or two full of God-knows-what that sh*t in the air is.”

Speaking for my brother and sister New Yorkers, I’d like to cordially invite the Confederate Yankee and Michelle and the rest of the rightie blogosphere that’s having a big whoop-it-up faux-patriotic pornfest today in honor of 9/11 to shove it up their asses.

Steve M. beat me to it:

I don’t know how much of a chance there is that I’ll die in a terrorist attack someday, but if it does happen, let me say in advance, to any right-wing blogger who wants to bask in self-satisfaction by waving my remains around and posturing:

Go fuck yourself. I will not be your bloody shirt.

If terrorists kill me, I don’t know what the meaning of my life or my death will have been, but I won’t have lived and died just so you can pound your chest and try to make all the world believe that no one hates my killers more than you do, that no one grieves for me more than you do.

Michelle Malkin says of her 9/11 “honoree,” Giovanna Porras,

I will not forget her.

Show of hands: Anyone believe that?

If the New Yorkers sound a bit bitter — the kind of rah-rah crap coming from the Right today strikes many who were there as akin to Fred Phelps crashing servicemen’s funerals with his gay-bashing message. It’s stomping on genuine grief and sorrow to promote their ideological agenda. And I feel the same way about the clowns the Rude Pundit describes here.

Elsewhere, my buddy The Talking Dog hasn’t forgotten Richard Pearlman.

The Onion gets serious. Don’t miss it.

An aside: Read what Digby says about last night’s audience for “The Path to 9/11.”

Update: Dan Froomkin on Bush’s continuing political exploitation of 9/11.

Update update: Thanks, Kos.