POW/MIAs remembered at vigil
Mount Vernon News Fri, 16 Sep 2005 6:51 AM PDT
MOUNT VERNON
The Patriotic Memorial Committee of Mount Vernon held the annual MIA/POW vigil Thursday night on Public Square. The ceremony is to honor and remember those who have fallen for freedom and not returned.

Veterans reunited after half a century
Kansas City Star
Thu, 15 Sep 2005 10:26 PM PDT
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - There they were, their images frozen in time, framed forever inside the borders of a black-and-white photograph. Their young faces were smooth and smiling, their eyes bright and alive, their hair thick.

Rescuers save pets too
JACKSON, Miss. -- Senior Master Sgt. James Sanchez carries a cat he rescued from the second floor of a flooded house in New Orleans. The cat, which he named PJ, is one of 22 cats he has saved during rescue missions in support of Hurricane Katrina relief operations. Sergeant Sanchez is a pararescueman with the 306th Rescue Squadron from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Master Sgt. Elaine Mayo)

This release has been posted online

PRO-TROOP TOUR TO MAKE 20+ STOPS ACROSS NATION NEXT WEEK:

From San Francisco to Washington, D.C. Includes Stop at 9/11 Crash Site in Shanksville, PA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - September 15, 2005

CONTACT: Robert Dixon
(916) 441-6197

(SACRAMENTO) - The national organization that supports our troops and the war against terrorism, Move America Forward.org, has announced a national pro-troop bus tour that will stop in more than 20 U.S. cities beginning next Monday, September 19th. Move America Forward and Marine Mom Deborah Johns (founder of Northern California Marine Moms) will launch a cross-country bus tour, including stops for patriotic pro-troop rallies beginning in San Francisco,California on Monday, September 19th.

From there the tour will cross the nation rallying supporters of U.S. Troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Sunday, September 25th the bus tour will arrive in Washington, D.C., culminating in a giant pro-troop rally held in conjunction with a coalition of groups including Free Republic, RightMarch and Protest Warrior.

The "Support The Troops And Their Mission" bus tour is currently planning rallies in over 20 U.S. cities including:

San Francisco, California; Vacaville, California; Sacramento,California; Reno Nevada; Elko, Nevada; Salt Lake City, Utah; Cheyenne,Wyoming; Fort Collins, Colorado; Denver, Colorado; Lincoln, Nebraska;Omaha, Nebraska; Des Moines, Iowa; Rockford, Illinois; Chicago,Illinois; Indianapolis, Indiana; Cincinnati, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio;Columbus, Ohio; Wheeling, West Virginia; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;Shanksville, Pennsylvania (site of Flight 93 crash in 9/11); Baltimore,Maryland; and Washington, D.C.

An itinerary of the tour & rallies is being continuously updated at:MoveAmericaForward.org.

"To those misguided individuals who are trying to undermine the mission our troops are serving in, let us make our message loud and clear: we will travel to any place at any time to rally together the American public to oppose your defeatist, anti-military agenda," said MelanieMorgan, Chair of Move America Forward.

"We will not sit back and let the 'Blame America First' crowd try to turn this generation into a hybrid of the Vietnam protest era. Never again will our nation turn its back on our troops or their mission."

"Most importantly, we will never send a message to the terrorists that we are prepared to cut and run. The United States will never surrender to the terrorists, and they should understand full well that those shrieking voices coming from the radical left do not speak for the majority of Americans," Morgan concluded.

At each stop, Move America Forward will invite members of the community to come out and sign "We Support Our Troops" sheet-banners. Individuals can also include a personal message to our troops serving in Iraq & Afghanistan.

At the conclusion of the national tour and Washington, D.C. rally, Move America Forward will then send the sheets to the troops serving in Iraq & Afghanistan.

Move America Forward will also air television ads nationwide on cable news networks to promote awareness of the bus tour and attendance ateach of the stops and associated rallies.

My adopted POW/MIA Hero: Major Charles Lee Bergevin

POW/MIA: Scott Speicher

POW/MIA: Keith "Matt" Maupin

SCOPE Systems POW/MIA Search Engine

National League of POW/MIA Families

Library of Congress POW/MIA Database

P.O.W. Network

DISEMBARK — U.S. Marines assigned to the Expeditionary Strike Group 1, 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, disembark a Landing Craft Utility from the amphibious assault ship USS Tarawa, Sept. 13, 2005. The Marines are preparing for “Bright Star”, a multinational exercise held every two years in Egypt. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Brandon A. Teeples

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 15, 2005
Contact: Anthony Gardner
Coalition of 9/11 Families
(973) 216-2623

New York, N.Y.—September 15, 3005—The alliance of 15 major 9/11 family organizations was stunned to learn through the media last week and not from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation of their plans to engage in mediated talks with 9/11 family members about the presence of the International Freedom Center on the World Trade Center memorial site. According to the media, the LMDC’s stated purpose in hiring an outside mediator was to facilitate ‘conversations that might otherwise not happen.” We hasten to point out that individual and collective members of the 9/11 family groups, along with of citizens from the Lower Manhattan community and other interested parties, have been meeting in good faith at LMDC-sponsored forums for more than three years. The last such meeting, held by the Civic Alliance for Rebuilding Lower Manhattan, took place just two days ago. If anything, the LMDC has once again demonstrated that it does not understand the difference between having meetings and actually listening to the public.

The LMDC appears not to understand that the objection, in principle, to the presence of the IFC on the World Trade Center site is no longer a matter that can be resolved by 9/11 family groups alone. They have been joined by the 22,000 members of ‘New York’s Bravest”–the Uniformed Firefighters Association– which lost 343 of its active members and three of its retired members in the 9/11 attacks, as well as the Firemen’s Association of the State of New York, the state’s largest firefighter organization consisting of 110,000 volunteer firefighters, many of whom participated in the rescue and recovery effort at Ground Zero. These organizations are also joined by more than 46,000 people from all over the country who have signed an online petition calling for the LMDC to remove the IFC and the Drawing Center from the memorial site. We anticipate that the growing list of organizations joining this fight for a proper memorial will increase these numbers exponentially in the coming days.

The LMDC’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge this wider rejection of the IFC mirrors its denial of other critical problems with the larger memorial and memorial museum plans. Constantly fuzzy and, curiously, always reduced projections on the millions of people per year who will visit the memorial do not add up when compared to other major memorials around the country such as the Statue of Liberty. The LMDC cannot demonstrate that the memorial itself and the underground museum on the site will be able to accommodate visitors without having to turn away millions per year and thousands daily. Nor can it demonstrate that it can safely and securely send 20,000 people underground every day, much less through one entrance and one exit.

Additionally, the LMDC cannot show how precious 9/11 artifacts and the momentous story of the worst attack in the history of our nation can all be contained in a cramped underground space which will also house train tracks, a PATH terminal, loading platforms, passageways, waterfalls, ventilation shafts, soil and root systems from the forest above and infrastructure for a massive cooling plant below. In short, the problem of space may ultimately be the most practical reason not to allocate 300,000 square feet of space to any entity other than the memorial and the memorial museum. To do so will bring dishonor to the lost, discord to the living and disunity to the country.

By creating yet another deaf and redundant ‘process” from which they are removed, the LMDC and Governor George Pataki are simply delaying resolution of an issue which has been clearly laid out before them, as well as wasting time and resources that could be better spent addressing other compelling problems that must be solved before the first shovel is sunk into sacred ground. The time is long overdue for civic and political leaders to act. The IFC must go.

Advocates for 9/11 Fallen Heroes
rjtallon@REMOVETHIScs.com
jalel31@REMOVETHIShotmail.com
l59e85@REMOVETHISaol.com

Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund
Coalition of 9/11 Families
Fix the Fund
Give Your Voice
Margie Miller 9/11 Support Group
9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America
9/11 Families for a Secure America
September 11th Families Association
September’s Mission Foundation
Skyscraper Safety Campaign
Voices of September 11th
W. Doyle 9/11 Support Group
WTC Families for Proper Burial, Inc.
World Trade Center United Family Group

by Sgt. Kevin Bromley
September 15, 2005
Spc. Rene Abelar, from the 1st Armored Division, mans a .50-caliber machine gun atop his 5-ton truck northwest of Baghdad. Abelar's unit, with assistance from Iraqi forces and Aviation Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, captured a team of bomb makers in the act of building a car bomb. This photo appeared on www.army.mil.