The internet was buzzing this week with video of First Lady Michelle Obama apparently showing extreme disrespect to the American flag at a ceremony in honor of the victims of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. As police and firefighters fold the flag to the sound of marching bagpipers, a skeptical looking Mrs. Obama leans to her husband and appears to say, “all this just for a flag.” She then purses her lips and shakes her head slightly as Mr. Obama nods.

Just for a flag? If that is what she said it is regrettable. Even with all her years being around those who hold high public office Mrs. Obama does not seem to understand the purpose and importance of ceremonies. They reaffirm the bonds of loyalty and fellowship that cement our national unity. Yes, at one level a flag is just a colorful piece of cloth. But it symbolizes much more. It is the emblem of our land and all its ideals. It has been present at every major event of any importance to the country, battles,

“Myself as a photojournalist I’m like a first responder, as all journalists are in that situation, so we run to something instead of away from it when something happens. When I’m there I get in a zone and do my job and capture what’s there. I don’t really think about if I’m scared or not. You want to make sure you don’t miss that photograph. You get in a mindset. You have to commit to journalism, remember what your job is, and not get emotionally involved. The camera is like a filter for me, too. It’s not like I’m experiencing it, I’m seeing it through my camera. I have to remain emotionally uninvolved.

“I was standing next to a New York City police officer and a woman who was an EMT. We were looking up at the building and I was photographing it, and the police officer said, ‘I was here when the second plane hit. It was a big f—king airplane, like a 737 or something.’

Protesters set fire to the U.S. flag outside the American embassy in London today during a minute's silence to mark the moment the first hijacked airliner hit the World Trade Centre.

A group of 100 Muslim radicals, including members of Muslims Against Crusades, shouted 'USA terrorists' and brandished anti-American placards.

One protester in Grosvenor Square said: 'You will always face suffering, you will always face humiliation, unless you withdraw your troops from Muslim lands.'

A small group of Muslims staged a counter-demonstration nearby, holding up placards reading 'Muslims Against Extremism' and 'If You Want Sharia, Move To Saudi'.

Abdul Sallam, 41, who was waving a sign that read 'Keep The Silence', travelled down to London from his home in Glasgow to show the strength of his feelings.

He said: 'I'm a Muslim. What they're doing is bringing shame on all Muslims.This is not part of the teachings of Islam.

Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

As authorities search for three missing trucks in New York City in Washington, Dulles Airport has been partially evacuated after a bomb-sniffing dog alerted authorities Saturday night.

A Transportation Security Administration told CNN that a dog sounded the alert when cargo was being loaded into an aircraft. Virginia State Police are on the scene.
Explosive teams are at B Concourse area at Dulles investigated a number of canisters but found no explosives or anything harmful.

Tonight CNN is reporting that there are three vans missing in New York City, two of which were taken from a company that worked at Ground Zero over a week ago.

The third is a U-Haul that was stolen on August 21 from a Jersey City, New Jersey location.

The theft of the U-Haul was planned with cut lines to phones and surveillance cameras.

This information comes in just days after the White House announced that there is a credible threat from terrorists set for the anniversary of September 11, 2001.

The military officer overseeing the prosecution of Khalid Sheik Mohammed is taking a go-slow approach that would bring the confessed Sept. 11 mastermind to trial months, or perhaps years, from now.

It was seven years ago that the CIA in Pakistan captured KSM, as the former senior al Qaeda officer is known, and eventually turned him over to U.S. military custody for a war crimes trial at the Navy base in Guantanamo, Cuba.

It was six months ago that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. relented to political pressure in New York and Washington, and reversed his decision to try KSM in a civilian court in the Big Apple.

Since then, retired Navy Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald, who as the “convening authority” is overseeing prosecutions of terror suspects by military commissions, has set out a step-by-step process behind the scenes to begin the most prominent trial of the five 9/11 co-conspirators held in Cuba.

For the first time, the full audio recordings of communications between military and civilian air traffic controllers as they were dealing with the hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001, have been made public. The multimedia document, published by the Rutgers Law Review, provides a rare real-time look at how government agencies were responding as the hijacking of the four planes was unfolding.

"We have a problem here. We have hijacked aircraft headed towards New York and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up here to help us out," a worker at Boston Center's Traffic Management Unit said at 8:37 a.m., according to the recordings. No planes had struck any targets yet.

As the nation prepares for the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wants to bring new symbolism to that date, and suggested that perhaps it's time to retire the "ground zero" moniker.

Instead of remembering Sept. 11, 2001, as the day the terrorists attacked America, he said, it's time to recognize it as the day that American began to rebuild. He called the transformation of the site -- with its new skyscrapers, and its stark and stirring memorial to all the lives lost -- a symbol of triumph over the terrorists. So is the revitalization of Lower Manhattan, Bloomberg said at a breakfast this week hosted by the Assn. for a Better New York.

"As we look back on the past decade, and as the picture of what has happened here comes into sharper focus, I believe the rebirth and revitalization of Lower Manhattan will be remembered as one of the greatest comeback stories in American history," Bloomberg said.

The sound of a nation healing is the quiet prick of a needle through nylon fabric, the whisper of red, white or blue thread tightening into a stitch.

Less than two months from the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, D.C. residents, politicians and visiting friends and families affected by the terrorist attacks relieved a little bit more of the pain Thursday by adding stitches to the National 9/11 Flag when it arrived on Capitol Hill as part of a cross-country tour.

“Our goal is to make the flag whole again,” said Jeff Parness, chairman of New York Says Thank You Foundation, the project sponsor. “This is not telling a story about what happened on 9/11, but what happened on 9/12. We’re stitching together our histories. That’s what America is all about.”

The flag continued to fly for about a month across from where the World Trade Center towers fell, and was supposed to be buried in 2008 along with several others ravaged by a tornado in Greensburg, Kan.