HOME > JIHAD

Of course it wasn't to be. In a single day, in what was really the first year of the 21st Century, more Americans died than we lost in combat during the six years of the Revolutionary War. Thus this folder, which was intended to be temporary, because there are people far better qualified than I to talk about this subject. I don't update it any longer, but some of the pages are still frequently viewed, so I leave it in place for those who can use it.

• New: The trail that led to the arrest of a would-be hijacker
• What happens when there's a shoot-out in an airliner?
• Was Pat Tillman an 'idiot' to die in Afghanistan?
• George W. Bush: military pilot
• Of victims and heroes: a Veterans' Day story
• Time-line of the September 11 terrorist attacks
• The loonies solve the riddle of 9/11!
• That Saudi evacuation fantasy (on danford dot net)
• "So I said to them: be patient" (the bin Laden tapes)
• The strange case of the American Taliban fighter
• Who is Osama bin Laden?
• "Osama: a scorecard"
• "Afghanistan is the graveyard of the colonialists"
• "Take them prisoner and kill them" (the killers and their guide)
• "Are You Guys Ready? Let's Roll!" (Flight 93 fights back)
• President Bush speaks to the Congress
• "Bin Laden's Group Will Survive Him"
• FAA preliminary accident reports for September 11
• "How I can train myself for Jihad?"
• "The Ultimate Jihad Challenge" (U.S. training camp)
• "We stand by you" (a German ship does the honors)
• For background on Special Forces, see my Vietnam folder

Book reviews of interest:

• Keegan: The Iraq War | Record: Dark Victory
• Campbell: The Warthog and the CAS Debate
• West: The March Up: 1st Marine Division to Baghdad
• Berkowitz: The New Face of War
• Friedman: Terrorism, Afghanistan, & America's New Way of War
• Stanik: El Dorado Canyon: Reagan's War on Qaddagi

Some facts to ponder:

• The three bloodiest events in American history all took place in September: the Galveston Flood, 8 Sept 1900 ("more than 5,000 lost their lives"); the Battle of Antietam, 17 Sept 1862 (3,610 killed on both sides); and the Jihad atrocity, 11 Sept 2001 (3,180 killed according to the most recent estimates, with 2,800 of those at the World Trade Center).

• The force exerted by the crash of two airliners into the World Trade Center, the resulting fire, and the collapse of the towers was roughly equal to 1,000 tons of TNT. A one kiloton blast is the equivalent of a very small atomic bomb--a tenth the size of the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima, but within the range of tactical nuclear weapons deployed during the 1950s.