The server seems to have lost this and posted later e-mails of mine. I'll
resend and hope it won't show up twice:
In a message dated 9/13/01 11:52:43 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> Well, then why do you not build a huge wall around the entire US and then
> put a roof on it? No terrorists will be able to get in, no missiles can hurt
> you, and as a bonus it protects you from UV radiation from the Sun.
*Warning* This post may disturb some of you. It certainly disturbed me that
I had to write it.
Jon
Jeroen,
I'm quite sure that a lot of Americans are now considering possible values in
a more isolationist approach to the world around us. Look what happened when
we had a relatively open border policy.
> That should keep the US safe and happy...
Safe and happy? Thanks for the sarcasm. You obviously have no clue about
what is happening in this city. Let me enlighten you. Consider it a
bulletin from New York.
The lower half of the island I work on looks like a nuclear wasteland. This
is not an exaggeration. There are emergency workers, body bags, fires and
the remains of collapsed buildings, smoke, dust and inches and feet of soot
everywhere. There are also bodies and in some cases, body parts everywhere.
Everywhere means in at least a 30 to 50 block radius in all directions.
You don't see much of anything on TV. In fact, what's being released by our
media isn't much of anything. There's a lot more going on than you're aware
of. Unfortunately, I have firsthand experience. You see, I live here and
have friends in the NYPD. Let me tell you more of what New Yorkers are
dealing with.
They had to ask New Jersey for body bags. We ran out. Our dead are being
shipped to two boroughs (Queens and Staten Island) and at least one other
state (New Jersey) for cataloging. The volume of dead is too much to deal
with. They are using a baseball stadium (Shea) as a temporary morgue --
again, because the volume of bodies of murdered civilians is too much to deal
with. When the fires were bad, the smoke covered most of Brooklyn or
Manhattan depending on which way the winds moved. The smoke is still thick
and layered above the treetops in Brooklyn. I won't even try to describe the
smell in lower Manhattan for fear it will upset too many people on this list.
I have friends who live there who are now homeless because they can't get
back into their apartments. Rescue workers who were trapped when the
buildings collapsed numbered over 250. Thousands of people have been killed
-- possibly tens of thousands. A best-case scenario finds they were probably
incinerated or crushed. Worst case scenarios find them asphyxiating slowly
from lack of oxygen covered by tons of rubble.
The hospitals north of 17th Street stopped all non-essential surgeries in
anticipation of massive casualties. Instead, I could get treated for a
hangnail immediately at Lenox Hill Hospital if I wanted to right now. Why?
Because you can count the number of survivors who have been pulled from the
hundreds of tons of wreckage with both hands, and a single hospital handled
all of the injured.
Oh, and we've stopped running subways because they may destabilize additional
buildings whose foundations may have been damaged.
You want to tell me that closing our borders is a bad thing? You don't have
to live with the consequences of our open borders policy. A little
isolationism and higher security measures might have saved a lot of lives.
Thousands, in fact.
Keep the sarcasm. It's not appreciated, not wanted and highly, HIGHLY
inappropriate. We have thousands of dead civilians here. Have some respect.
Oh, and by the way, you're concerned about our reactions? I'm sure the rest
of the world is too. As an American, I can promise you this: We will react,
and unlike what we have received, our reaction will not kill tens of
thousands of innocents.
And when we do react we will take responsibility for what we have done.
That's what being civilized is about. It's certainly more than we have
recieved to date.
Jon
"We've got to make sure when we retaliate, it's against the people who were
involved in this terrorism and not just strike out blindly," ~ Rep. Dana
Rohrabacher, R-Calif., a senior member of the United States House of
Representative's International Relations Committee.
