Tomorrow is the anniversary and what am I thinking?

CNN has a story called, Entertainment, a year later. Nothing like a bunch of ego-driven famous people talking about how hard it was for them. I’ve seen their stories for two weeks no on Access Hollywood. It must be tough to watch something like the NYC attacks from 3,000 miles away, in a mansion staffed with pool boys. How about, “My Ass, a year later - still working for shit for pay because I had to move on already.”

We are in the midst of a complete 9-11 overexposure. What’s worse is all the stories that are bound to covered next week about if 9-11 was overexposed. I agree with Cosbysweater’s comment. The media outlets discussing how much coverage is appropriate tomorrow is implying they actually stopped covering it at some point. They have been talking about the 1 year anniversary for months already.

I still remember with extreme clarity that day, when I first found out, and when I realized what impact it was going to have. Taranis and I messaged back and forth furiously that morning. I still remember the gasps in the conference room as we all watched the events.

Now I get to watch it 48 more times tomorrow from every camera angle. The media says they will be discrete, but all that means discrete but not so much so that they loose in the ratings. They’ll show it all again. Once was enough.

And, yes, the firefighters were heros. But the real heros among them are the ones that aren’t letting the media manipulate them on TV in the form of interviews for the sake of ratings.

I just wanted to let everyone know that the ads you currently see on the site probably won’t be there forever. We want to keep them, but we need to find a nice place to put them. In addition, we have pledged long ago never to have “ads” on this site. Well, clearly we have broken that pledge.

Except there’s a difference here. We make no money from these ads whatsoever. They are simply textad exchanges so that we might get some more readers and have more discussions on the site. Again, we make no money off this site and we never have. To be honest, we never will. We simply want to try to get more people participating so that the site is more engaging for everyone.

I also want to let everyone know that we can’t control the content of the ads. There is a distinct possibility that the sites these ads link to are not very much like our content-wise. If anyone sees anything objecitonable, please let us know so that we can let the ad exchange admins know.

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It seems that this whole two front war thing has really become a juggernaut of newsworthiness. Over at WarBlogging, George Paine is writing about Rumsfeld’s latest assurances that we can fight a two-front war.

If you read the quote in the article or on George’s page, you will notice this phrase, “swiftly defeat another aggressor” being used by Rumsfeld. It seems to me that maybe we are overestimating ourselves. Rumsfeld himself used these words on September 18, 2001, “This will take a long, sustained effort. It will require the support of the American people as well as our friends and allies around the world.” Let’s remember what I posted yesterday about any foreign army’s success in Afghanistan. Let’s also think back to the early successes in Vietnam, such as that depicted in We Were Soldiers.

I watched the movie last night and was impressed by the tone that it set. However, it reminded me of a lot of what we may be about to see. Sure, it was easy blowing away some underfed Iraqis in the middle of the desert. But those troops were just conscripts, not real fighting soldiers.

I can’t imagine what might happen if we try to march into downtown Baghdad. It’s one thing for a country to say, “Ok, we won’t fight anymore, you can have Kuwait back.” It is quite another for us to think that every person in the country won’t attempt to defend their homes.

We did it in Afghanistan (though it’s not over) because many of the Afghanis didn’t like being ruled by the Taliban, but we won’t do that in Baghdad. The Iraqi people love Saddam and they despise us. They will not hesitate to use every person and weapon at their disposal to keep their hands on their homeland.

As Col. Hal Moore said to General Westmoreland in Saigon in 1965 in We Were Soldiers, “We won’t make the little bastards run home, they are home.”

This fight will not be swift, it will not be easy. People will die.

“A horrible thing happened to me, and if I sat in bed and didn’t try to get better, I’d be a victim. But I haven’t. I’ve survived.”

– Deborah Mardenfeld, the last person still hospitalized with injuries from the Sept. 11 attacks.