Does Rumsfeld Say Flight 93 Was Shot Down by US Fighters?

Last night my friend Tim from Philadelphia sent me a clip of a youtube clip of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld speaking before reporters.

While reflecting on 911, he clearly says in passing that Flight 93 was shot down. Check it out for yourself.



Given what had happened that morning, I don't think many people would be surprised to learn that US fighters DID shoot down Flight 93 rather than risk it crashing into the Capitol Dome in Washington, DC.

Not sure about the veracity of the clip, you can fudge anything these days, but it seemed authentic enough.

My take is that Rumsfeld is way too intelligent to "misspeak" about something like that. There's been so much discussion in the media on the strategic implications of terrorism that I'm not sure how much we really pause and think about how the collective culturegeist of the WORLD changed on that day.

I've never really blogged about 911. It's still something of an unhealed emotional trauma for me and I think I am still processing the reality of what happened and the images broadcast from around the world from the media's non-stop coverage. I'm still not ready to watch Oliver Stone's movie about 911 - the trauma, for me, is still to real.

Like millions of others I was living here in New York on September 11, 2001 when the World Trade Center's towers were destroyed in one of the most horrific incidents of violence and terror ever perpetrated upon the people of the United States.

I was off that Tuesday and I sat in my living room for hours with tears in my eyes watching the hellish vision unfold before me on television; scarcely able to believe what I was seeing.

In the eerie silence during the days that followed, many things about our cultural awareness were permanently changed. Differences in nationality, skin color or religion were rendered irrelevant in the face of the blood spilled from over 3,000 innocent people. Those people came from all facets of life, all races and religions; speaking languages from across the globe.

Perhaps the lives of those on board remind us to strive to make a difference in the short time we have here - if the entire population of the Earth were crammed onto a flight that was going to crash, we'd find a way to get past the cultural issues that divide us.

Shouldn't that desire be just as sincere and urgent knowing we're lucky enough to be here, alive in this moment?