My first reaction to the news of the atrocities committed on September 11, 2001 was to think about all my good friends who'd regularly made a habit of eating breakfast at Windows On The World, and then praying to God that they'd all eaten at their desks that morning. (Which they had, thank heavens.) In Washington, however, the reaction of Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, was quite different from mine. With lower Manhattan, and the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania all still smoldering, this was Donald Rumsfeld's reaction. From a 2002 CBS News report:

With the intelligence all pointing toward bin Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans. And at 2:40 p.m., the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying he wanted "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H."–meaning Saddam Hussein–"at same time. Not only UBL"–the initials used to identify Osama bin Laden.



Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld. "Go massive," the notes quote him as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

Things related.

And not.

While most people were thinking and praying for friends and relatives in New York City, and just generally walking around stunned and hurting, there were people in government already planning to use the attacks as an opportunity to carry out the imperial projects about which they'd been dreaming for decades. (There were other people in government who saw the attacks as a chance to put in place authoritarian measures that had been gathering dust on the shelf since COINTELPRO was exposed in 1971.)

For all practical purposes, the Iraq War, with all its terrible consequences, intended and unintended, was launched on September 11, 2001. Four planes were hijacked that morning. A country's grief and pain was hijacked later that day.

Donald Rumsfeld in 2001. New York Daily News Archive Getty Images

So, yes, today, remember the fallen, and the friends lost and never found. But remember, too, that many of the people who will be telling you today how much "changed" that day were responsible for some of the changes that never should have happened—Iraq, rendition, torture, warrantless surveillance. Remember the fallen but remember the opportunists, too, the people who were neither stunned nor hurting enough that they lost sight of their golden dreams and who, when those dreams came apart in dust and blood, were able largely to escape responsibility and consequence.

Many of them are Never Trumpers now. Many of them will share their memories of that awful day in which so many of them found a dark opportunity to take the country into the shadows from which it has yet to emerge. Keep all those people and their memories at arm's length. Treasure your own. Console yourself with them if you must. But keep away from the anesthetic banalities that were used to shield effectively the plans and connivances of the people who saw opportunity in the still-burning places that morning. Remember things related.

And not.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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