Posted on 12/20/2001 7:01:47 AM PST by classygreeneyedblonde
The last 100 days can be counted in so many ways.
Break it down into minutes. The 12 minutes on the morning of Sept. 11 during which four planes left airports in Boston, Newark, N.J., and Washington destined for terror.
The 57 minutes it took the south tower of the World Trade Center to collapse after being hit by a hijacked airliner.
The 48 minutes terrorist ringleader Osama bin Laden spent gloating about the attacks a few weeks later with fellow militants on a videotape released Dec. 13.
Tally the dead. In New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, authorities now estimate that 3,251 lost their lives at the hands of terrorists Sept. 11.
Eleven people have been infected with inhalation anthrax, a biological agent mysteriously released through the mail in a second wave of terror that began late September. Five have died.
Eight Americans have become casualties of war: four outside of combat, three Army Rangers from a misdirected U.S. bomb and one CIA agent in a prison uprising.
Calculate the money. The attacks cost New York $83 billion; Washington and Virginia, $2.1 billion. But they also dealt a crippling blow to a weakening economy with effects rippling across the globe.
National unemployment has reached 5.7 percent, the highest rate in six years. In Georgia, there were 48 plant closings and 9,538 layoffs between September and November.
In Blaine, Wash., near the Canadian border, Hill's Chevron gas station now sells 3,000 gallons a day compared to 11,000 it pumped before Sept. 11. Folks aren't passing by as much because they don't want to endure the long security checks at the border.
In Peru, a group of 80 Indian weavers is facing a difficult Christmas because it lost a contract for 1,200 scarves with a business destroyed in the World Trade Center.
The federal government has ponied up $15 billion to aid the faltering airline industry and $40 billion to finance homeland security and the war on terrorism. Americans have chipped in $1.5 billion in donations to provide relief for the victims.
But how can the worth of a father, a daughter, a friend be counted? How long does a phone call from a loved one on a doomed plane really last?
No numbers can match the agony of waiting to find out if anything from a missing family member -- a ring, a tooth, a piece of clothing -- has been recovered from the 104 tons of rubble removed from ground zero so far.
Nor is there a way to measure the courage of rescue workers who rush into towering infernos or the horror of a military wife who opens the door to find a uniformed officer and a chaplain there to deliver only one possible message.
The last 100 days have brought all of this and more.
The United States and Britain began attacking Afghanistan on Oct. 7. Nearly 3,000 U.S. troops are now in the country, 50,000 in the region.
So far, the Taliban has folded like a house of cards, while all but a few al-Qaida terrorists have been rooted from their caves.
President Bush and the Congress worked together -- at least for a while -- on some issues. Church pews filled up, and patriotism came back in fashion.
Some American Muslims have confronted suspicion and hatred; others have been invited to share their faith. Sales of an English version of the Quran have jumped 1,000 percent.
Local firefighters, police and postal workers received standing ovations when Bush delivered an address at the Georgia World Congress Center on Nov. 8. The next week, a man running down an up escalator shut down Hartsfield International Airport, a sign of the new hyper-vigilant age.
Words like "Cipro" (anthrax antibiotic) and "daisy cutter" (a 15,000-pound bomb) have found their way into dinner conversations. So have debates over military tribunals and the targeting by Attorney General John Ashcroft of some 5,000 foreign students for interviews.
Bin Laden eludes the noose, and his al-Qaida network is scattered across dozens of countries. World alliances seem certain to strain and shift, especially as violence flares between India and Pakistan; Israel and the Palestinians.
Countless times, Americans have been urged to stay on alert.
And each minute they are reminded that the last 100 days may really be the first. link to photos
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