Can we please stop fighting over the 9/11 stuff now? Specifically I’m talking about the conspiracy theories. Through random surfing, I found my way to another one of those sites that is full of hue and cry about buildings being brought down deliberately, whether the hole in the Pentagon could have been made by a plane, etc. My response to all of that now is: Shut the hell up. It doesn’t matter.

Seriously, why does it matter if the government was lying to us? Is that going to change anything that happened? Newsflash: the government is elected in the United States. If you don’t like the government, if you think they lied, vote them out of office and change it! Let me know if that brings back the 2800 people who died that day.

The question should not be “what happened then?” The question should be “what do we do now?”

This link on Metafilter directed me to the online collection of exhibits from the Moussaoui trial. I was browsing the prosecution exhibits and I found the list of e-mails rather interesting; in them Moussaoui attempts to wheedle training materials from major aerospace companies. I clicked on the link for exhibit number FO05521.54, which was described as “E-mail” and in a listing of other e-mails. I was quite shocked to find myself on the page for exhibit number P200098 which is described on that page as follows:

Photo of Firefighter D.S. on 9/11/01
[Viewer discretion is advised]

Holy shit. It was graphic. It was not pretty. It was the kind of stuff you see on Rotten.com and Ogrish.com, two shock sites. And I had clicked on it unwittingly. Somebody seriously screwed up the code somewhere.

The only e-mail address I could find on the www.vaed.uscourts.gov website was for a financial clerk who works in Alexandria. I e-mailed her and explained that I couldn’t find any contact information for a webmaster, but that there was a graphic and upsetting image improperly labeled, and I asked her to please pass the information along to the webmaster if she could. Because…that’s just wrong. It’s unlikely that children would be looking at the exhibits from the Moussaoui trial, but if other exhibits were properly labeled on the exhibit list, then they obviously have concern for their sensitive viewers, and that one should have been properly labeled too.

I need to go wash my eyeballs now.

Edit: It was fixed within an hour after I sent the e-mail, but I’m browsing other exhibits and finding some labeled as graphic when they’re not, so I suspect the whole list is risky. Also, I removed the firefighter’s name because I don’t care to have this entry come up when somebody Googles him.

The jury in the Zacarias Moussaoui case has decided to sentence him to life in prison. I think this was absolutely the right decision, mainly because he wanted the death penalty. I’m sure he felt the death penalty would have resulted in martyrdom, just as all the suicide bombers probably hope for. Unfortunately his psych care will be paid for by American taxpayers anyway, but he will have to sit in his cell and stew for the rest of his damn life.

I was participating in a forum thread about the phone calls that were made from Flight 93 on 9/11, and I had the opportunity to give my opinion on the conspiracy theories relating to those calls. I figured I’d share on my own site, too. The “fascinating link” is one that I presented following a simple Google search.
Read the rest of this entry »