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9/11

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1 hour ago, DestinFlPackfan said:

While I agree whole heartedly with your statement. ...we had our guard down...and learned from it. What would peel back that is overkill? 

FISA needs to go. It’s nothing but a rubber stamp court that acts as a paper shield. Yes, the executive branch needs to spy on people sometimes, but all FISA does is give the veneer of a legitimate due process which doesn’t exist. Start there.

I’d say stop collecting everyone’s metadata as well, but six years on after the scandal nobody really cares but me. It’s a Brave New World.

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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Like some others on here, I was in my college years. It must have been jr. or sr. year. I was driving home that morning. I was on the 10 west fwy. I couldn't believe that it was so empty and I was driving at 50+ mph at 8am. I did keep noticing local law enforcement and CHP every few miles roaring on the fast lane of the fwy. I figured a severe accident up ahead or something. All were headed in the direction of DTLA. Got home to my parents. I was happy to be there once I knew what had happened. My mom immediately ordered me to drive her to SD and pick up my sister who was a freshmen at SDSU. I had never gotten to SD so fast. 

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12 minutes ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

FISA needs to go. It’s nothing but a rubber stamp court that acts as a paper shield. Yes, the executive branch needs to spy on people sometimes, but all FISA does is give the veneer of a legitimate due process which doesn’t exist. Start there.

I’d say stop collecting everyone’s metadata as well, but six years on after the scandal nobody really cares but me. It’s a Brave New World.

I'd start with the metadata.

Thought I don't understand why you'd do away with due process, veneer or not, as opposed to simply modifying the existing process.

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9 hours ago, TheSanDiegan said:

I'd start with the metadata.

Thought I don't understand why you'd do away with due process, veneer or not, as opposed to simply modifying the existing process.

I’ve looked into this process as thoroughly as I can. The only real information I can gather on this super secret court is through the revelations of the Carter Page affair. In which he had zero due process. The FISA court assures the government will reveal all the relevant evidence in a case in place of a legal defense, which is not possible under the law, and all the evidence was not offered by the government before the court.

The FISA is in no way a court of due process. It’s a rubber stamp for tyranny and corruption. It’s main purpose is to protect the executive branch from its own overreach. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “there were judges who signed off” on the case of Carter Page, where an American, who did nothing illegal other than speak his stupid mind, was targeted by the government for no good reason other than politics.

The executive branch needs to spy on people, and that’s fair. But they shouldn’t be allowed to hide behind rubber stamp judges. It’s necessary, but can also slide into impeachable corruption, let’s quit putting up a phony court to hide discreditable behavior. 

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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10 hours ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

Not one wide scale attack since. I hate almost all the things we did while understandably overreacting to what happened, but a tip of the cap should be given to the spooks and feds for that. Now, let’s take the things that work and peel all the stuff back that was overkill.

The Patriot Act needs to go. It was a huge overreaction.

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9 hours ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

I’ve looked into this process as thoroughly as I can. The only real information I can gather on this super secret court is through the revelations of the Carter Page affair. In which he had zero due process. The FISA court assures the government will reveal all the relevant evidence in a case in place of a legal defense, which is not possible under the law, and all the evidence was not offered by the government before the court.

The FISA is in no way a court of due process. It’s a rubber stamp for tyranny and corruption. It’s main purpose is to protect the executive branch from its own overreach. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “there were judges who signed off” on the case of Carter Page, where an American, who did nothing illegal other than speak his stupid mind, was targeted by the government for no good reason other than politics.

The executive branch needs to spy on people, and that’s fair. But they shouldn’t be allowed to hide behind rubber stamp judges. It’s necessary, but can also slide into impeachable corruption, let’s quit putting up a phony court to hide discreditable behavior. 

I agree with everything you said, with the lone exception of letting the government spy on its populace with zero oversight - or attempt at oversight.

To me it is analogous to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As opposed to an inherently fatalist view of "let them do what they're going to do because they're going to do it anyway" (correct me if I misunderstood the sentiment I am trying to reproduce), I maintain that if current modalities do not present the proper solution than we simply define and implement a better one. 

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22 hours ago, Uncle Juan said:

I was stationed at Cherry Point NC when it happened. My wife called me at work to tell me what happened. As soon as I hung up with her the phone went into non stop ringing mode. Everyone and their brother was calling to get their equipment back, or asking whether we could operate aboard ship while in transit. No one even knew where we were going or if we would even go.I had just been promoted to GySgt 10 days before, and got a crash course in contingency planning. That day was crazy. I didn’t even go home that night. All incoming and outgoing traffic was stopped at the gates and searched. I lived off base and figured it wasn’t worth the aggravation of trying to get home. 

Did you ever deploy after 9/11 Devil Dog?  9/11 is why my daughter joined the military.  Even though she was in grade school when it happened.  Her older sister always had a big shadow, as do a lot of older siblings and I believe she chose the Marines because it was the hardest, especially for women.  She wanted to prove that she could to it!  She was an athlete, ran cross country, played soft ball, participated in triathlons, so basic was easy for her.  She said MCT was hell because they own your ass now!  She finished the MCT final exercise with a fractured hip.  I think she proved she was Marine material and could do it!  She even made it all five years without an JMP (is that the right acronym?) 

 

 

 

 

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8 minutes ago, Broncomare said:

Did you ever deploy after 9/11 Devil Dog?  9/11 is why my daughter joined the military.  Even though she was in grade school when it happened.  Her older sister always had a big shadow, as do a lot of older siblings and I believe she chose the Marines because it was the hardest, especially for women.  She wanted to prove that she could to it!  She was an athlete, ran cross country, played soft ball, participated in triathlons, so basic was easy for her.  She said MCT was hell because they own your ass now!  She finished the MCT final exercise with a fractured hip.  I think she proved she was Marine material and could do it!  She even made it all five years without an JMP (is that the right acronym?) 

The mom pride in your post comes through in spades - as well it should - she sounds like a special woman. You did well, Broncomare. :cheers:

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16 minutes ago, TheSanDiegan said:

The mom pride in your post comes through in spades - as well it should - she sounds like a special woman. You did well, Broncomare. :cheers:

Thank you!!  Oldest daughter is no slouch either.... she's a rappeller on a Forest Service heli-tack crew!  Been doing that for 10 years now.  Like to see UNR fans trying to throw them down the stairs. :D

 

 

 

 

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46 minutes ago, Broncomare said:

Did you ever deploy after 9/11 Devil Dog?  9/11 is why my daughter joined the military.  Even though she was in grade school when it happened.  Her older sister always had a big shadow, as do a lot of older siblings and I believe she chose the Marines because it was the hardest, especially for women.  She wanted to prove that she could to it!  She was an athlete, ran cross country, played soft ball, participated in triathlons, so basic was easy for her.  She said MCT was hell because they own your ass now!  She finished the MCT final exercise with a fractured hip.  I think she proved she was Marine material and could do it!  She even made it all five years without an JMP (is that the right acronym?) 

I went to Afghanistan in 2004. I stumbled upon the MWC Board when I got back in 2005. You have every right to be proud of your daughter. The Marine Corps is very much a boys club, that makes it even harder on women. The acronym is NJP (Non Judicial Punishment) we called it getting “Ninja Punched”.

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20 minutes ago, Uncle Juan said:

I went to Afghanistan in 2004. I stumbled upon the MWC Board when I got back in 2005. You have every right to be proud of your daughter. The Marine Corps is very much a boys club, that makes it even harder on women. The acronym is NJP (Non Judicial Punishment) we called it getting “Ninja Punched”.

A couple years ago there was a video of a woman in the Army finishing some kind of run and all the guys were cheering her on and she was struggling to finish.  My daughter said that wouldn't happen in the Marines because they would be giving you shit.  Even in the MCT final exercise she finished in the top 1/4.  Even with the fractured hip, she wasn't going to give the guys something to rag on her for.....  I knew I was close with the acronym.... between both daughter's using acronym's I have no idea what they are saying. LOL

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Broncomare said:

Thank you!!  Oldest daughter is no slouch either.... she's a rappeller on a Forest Service heli-tack crew!  Been doing that for 10 years now.  Like to see UNR fans trying to throw them down the stairs. :D

We'll see how they're doing at 60 :ph34r:

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52 minutes ago, renoskier said:

We'll see how they're doing at 60 :ph34r:

My oldest is a little ornery.... she'll kick the shit out of someone, even if it is with a walker......     she even refuses to use the smaller chain saw and she matches the guys tank for tank.  Although, at night she is cussing herself but she still won't change it.  :rock:

 

 

 

 

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A testimony to just how small a world it is...

I had bought gas (more than once) from one of the hjackers, Nawaf Alhazmi, who worked at a freeway-adjacent gas station in La Mesa at which I always filled up.

And in addition, I knew an individual who issued a visa to another one of the hijackers in Riyadh.

Six degrees of Kevin Bacon and all that.

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On 9/11/2019 at 3:28 PM, retrofade said:

I was in the first semester of my freshman year of junior college and still living at home. My alarm went off right at 6am, because I had a 7:10am Spanish class to get to. I walked out of my bedroom, into the living room and literally watched the second plane crashing into the tower as I walked into the living room. My mom started yelling at me after I exclaimed, "holy what the +++++ just happened??!!?!" because I lived in a conservative Christian home. My dad just looked at me and said, these aren't accidents, we're under attack.... and then told me about the first plane.

Everything changed in that moment. 

My at the time girlfriend --- would later become my wife and then ex-wife --- was on a trip with her family on the east coast right before school started back up for her. I knew they were scheduled to be in NYC that day, and one of their planned destinations was the World Trade Center. I didn't know if they had gotten there the night before or were planning on going into the city later on in that day. I thought it was highly unlikely that they were already at the WTC that early, but I had no way of knowing. I didn't find out she was okay until late that afternoon, they were in the city, but hadn't left their hotel room when all hell broke loose. 

I went to my Spanish class, and nobody could focus on anything. The professor insisted on still having class despite everything else that was going on. I finished that class and went off to my voice class after stopping for some food. I had a cell phone, but those things didn't do anything but receive phone calls back then. Somebody in voice had a portable radio, and we listened to the local news coverage. I'll never forget how freaked out everyone was. There were rumored reports of hijacked planes all over... some were headed for Los Angeles, others for San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago. Nobody knew what was going on, everybody was terrified. 

At the time, I was working about 25-30 hours a week at my first job at the help desk with a local medical group. I got into work, and it was a ghost town. Lots of the providers had elected to just go home and not see patients that day, staff members were told that they could leave if they wanted. I got there around 11am, and decided to just work the whole rest of the day. My boss and two of my co-workers had gone home, so it was just me and one other guy there, and we didn't do any work. We scoured the internet for radio or television streams of news coverage. I still remember listening to an online BBC stream while he had a CNN stream going on a different computer. He had left the Marines two years prior, and he spent the afternoon talking about how he was going to re-enlist... he didn't ultimately do that, but he wanted to kill any and everyone that had anything to do with the attacks, or who celebrated them. 

My best friend had just enlisted in the Air Force two months prior. He had come home briefly between Basic and Tech School the week prior. He would later be deployed to Afghanistan and then Iraq, received a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star during an attack on his base in Iraq, and got out after six years. A family friend of mine who was two years younger than me enlisted, and later died in Iraq, saving Iraqi civilians during an attack. He was the first California National Guard member to be killed in Iraq. All told, nearly 20 of my friends from high school deployed to both Afghanistan and Iraq, most of whom enlisted in the months after the attack. Fortunately, all but one of them survived their service and deployments. 

That day galvanized me as a war mongering "patriot". Like my co-worker, I wanted everyone to die... nuke Afghanistan, Iraq, +++++ it... nuke the entire Middle East, we'd be better off. I was elated to watch the coverage of our attacks in Afghanistan just a few short weeks later... kill them all. In retrospect, my base feelings at the time disgust me. I wanted what would amount to genocide of an entire region of the world. I'm know that I'm not the only one who felt that way at the time, and there are probably some who still do. I found out about the Non-Aggression Principle shortly before GWB announced our invasion of Iraq, an event that I watched while on a treadmill at the gym. Instead of feeling the elation that I did after the Afghanistan invasion commenced, I felt sick. Much like 9/11 galvanized me as a war monger who wanted blood, that day made me realize just how sick our planet really is, and how invading Iraq or Afghanistan, or whatever else wasn't actually going to change things. 

In any event, that's probably enough rambling from me. 

 

I remember 911 very well.  Shortly afterward I volunteered to train and fly as a Federal Air Marshal for several months.  I was given a leave of absence from my job as a Treasury Special Agent and received my Air Marshal training in Ft Dix New Jersey.  I flew about 180 missions in a 6 month period, working 15 hour days, from 6am to 9pm most days.  I was averaging about 4 flights per day when I was working.  It was a national emergency and I had previously served in the military and felt it was my patriotic duty.  And like many that have already posted about 9/11 I was angry and upset and I wanted to make a difference in fighting back against the war on terrorism.  I remember how surreal it was briefing the air crews and informing them what would happen if someone tried to breach the cockpit or attempt to take over the aircraft and what I was willing to do to stop that from happening.

Initially only the largest and most strategically vital civilian airports were being protected by Federal Air Marshals (FAM).  So I would fly in and out of New York City and Washington DC and get assigned to other flights going in and out of other large airports like Houston and Atlanta.  I still vividly recall the smoking ruins of the WTC towers flying in and out of New York City or flying past the Pentagon on approach to National Airport and witnessing the damage present there.  During the Winter Olympics in 2001 (Salt Lake City) all flights were being covered by FAMs because of the sensitive nature of the Olympics.  So I flew in and out of Salt Lake City during the Olympics.  Once a sufficient number of FAMs had been trained and become operational first line volunteers like myself were released back to their respective federal agencies.  Being separated from my family for several months and all the personal hardships I went through I would do it again no questions asked.  One more post 9/11 story you can add to the list here.

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12 hours ago, TheSanDiegan said:

I agree with everything you said, with the lone exception of letting the government spy on its populace with zero oversight - or attempt at oversight.

To me it is analogous to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As opposed to an inherently fatalist view of "let them do what they're going to do because they're going to do it anyway" (correct me if I misunderstood the sentiment I am trying to reproduce), I maintain that if current modalities do not present the proper solution than we simply define and implement a better one. 

Well Congress is supposed to provide the oversight. The FISA court was an abdication or their responsibility that only serves as a shield for the executive branch for overstepping our rights. It wasn’t until it became a political wedge issue over the Russia investigation that we even got a good look at the problem from Congress. But we don’t need to get into what’s wrong with congress and the main problems with our body politic as a whole. We all know them. 

In any case it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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