I was working in my cubicle that fateful day in Olympia, Washington. A close friend and fellow military retiree approached my workstation to ask if “I’d heard the news.” I logged onto ABC on the Internet to verify what I thought at first was sick joke. “Oh God,” I thought. It’s finally hit here, in our beloved America — and obviously very hard and personal. I had an acute sense of sadness for the victims and for us as a democratic nation. We’d been taken advantage of. Our very systems, symbols and conveyances were used against us in unerringly deadly fashion.

I vowed vengance and began to realize that a “Crusade” would indeed be fought in the years ahead. The pond scum who planned this action and those that aided in its execution or fail to pay homage to our dead will pay dearly. We are no longer the innocents –we have been attacked by murderers (read crimimals) that covet our freedoms — earned so fearlessly and morally on countless battlefields over the course of more than 200 years. May we be deserving of the accolade “Americans” and pursue this battle to its ultimate victory. The victims and families of Flight 93, WTC and the Pentagon deserve no less. God Bless my daugher and son-in-law in the Air Force, my brother in the Army reserves, and all who fight or prepare or support the just cause ahead. God Bless this wonderful nation.