Five Years Later (Second Hour)

The second hour begins with shots of the lights in New York and at the Pentagon and then we move into another Nic piece (he's been busy today) on madrassas in Pakistan. Madrassas are basically schools where children study the Koran all day long, memorizing it word for word. There are 15,000 madrassas in Pakistan and the fear is that they're creating not only scholars, but terrorists too. Some of the London bombers visited these madrassas before carrying out their attacks. Musharraf has tried to crack down on these schools, but it's not working. In fact, due to hatred of the West, enrollment is up 40%. This is why we will never win this without winning hearts and minds.

Next Anderson has an interview with a commander in Afghanistan who was in the Pentagon on 9-11 and he tells us the Afghan army is now part of the problem. He also believes catching Bin Laden would be great, but it wouldn't shut down the terror network. Anderson then intros us into a Brian Todd piece on the new Zawahiri tape that warns of two new fronts on the War on Terror: Israel and the Gulf.

After Brian's piece we get a discussion with Anderson, Nic, Peter, and Gary Berntsen (author of "Jawbreaker"). Nic tells us that there's a general jihadi feeling in Pakistan and reminds us that they also have a longstanding fight going on over the region of Kashmir. Pakistan is the key to defeating Al Qaeda. Gary then talks about how we let Bin Laden get away at Tora Bora. He requested 600-800 forces and Washington only gave him 40. Infuriating. Also infuriating because Kerry was talking about this all through his campaign and everyone made him out to be a liar. As we go to commercial, Anderson totally grabs for his blackberry, or crackberry if you will. Yeah, don't think we didn't see that, mister.

On now to a piece by Gary Tuchman on Genelle Guzman McMillan, the last person pulled out of the World Trade Center alive. Apparently this is quite the exclusive and it's nice to see Gary doing a piece that doesn't involve getting yelled at by Mormon fundamentalists. Anyway, Genelle was on the 13th floor at the time of the collapse and ended up trapped for 27 hours with her head between two pillars. I cannot even imagine. She's doing well now and after the piece we get Gary live from where she was pulled out, but there are techinical difficulties. Anderson is crystal clear in Afghanistan, but Gary is cutting out in New York. Hmm. The wonders of technology.

Next Anderson intros us into a Jamie MacIntyre piece on Mike Wilson, a computer animator hell bent on debunking the conspiracy theory that a plane never hit the Pentagon. He's using a software program to prove there was really a plane. I never understood this theory. If there was no plane, then what the heck happened to flight 93? One of the main reasons I hate these conspiracy theories is that there are legitimate questions about that day. I think it's pretty obvious there are things we have been lied to about. As new transcripts and documents comes out more and more lies are exposed and I hate that these crazy theories make all questioning of the official story seem nutty. We'll probably never know the truth. What do you guys think?

On now to a Keeping Them Honest by Joe Johns. You gotta love Joe. He just keeps on plugging. Tonight he takes a look at the 9/11 Commission recommendations and guess what? A lot haven't been implemented yet. Shocking I know. Actually it was a little shocking to find that they still haven't fixed the communication problems. In fact a new system isn't set to be in place until 2009! But I'm sure the terrorists will be kind enough to wait until then to attack us again. Not to mention Mother Nature sending us natural disasters. What is wrong with these people?

We transition to David Mattingly in Shanksville, Pennsylvania and he gives us a piece about a student pilot who accidentally got too close to D.C. and was intercepted by jets. Needless to say, it freaked him out a bit. They use this example to prove that our air defense is much better now. In light of the above paragraph and everything else we've endured these past five years excuse me if I don't hold my breath.

As we go into (or was it out of?) a break we're shown images from a book called "Aftermath" and then next we have a repeat of Randi Kaye's piece on the ground zero air. Finally, we get a Reporter's Notebook from Anderson. Yay! I know, I know, you in your fancy media critic offices are horrified at a reporter interjecting himself in a story. Oh woe is me. Whatever. No one listens to you anyway. In the RN we learn there is a western style mall there where men dress in their best and security is so tight that one of the 360 protectors brought his RPG to lunch, just in case. Yikes. Anderson ends the broadcast by thanking the soldiers...and we're out.

Awesome screencaps by bcfraggle.