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Essay on Terror in America

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Terror in America

On the most horrifying day in American history, with smoke still billowing out of rubble in New York and Washington, a grim-faced President addressed the U.S. nation from the Oval Office, "Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist attacks... Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into building, fires burning, huge structures collapsing have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet, unyielding anger."

September 11, 2001.... By far it was the most devastating terrorist attack ever on American soil, as four planes headed to California were hijacked …show more content…

Congress: "International terrorism poses an increasingly dangerous and difficult threat to America... Today's terrorists seek to inflict mass casualties, and they are attempting to do so both overseas and on American soil. They are less dependent on state sponsorship and are, instead, forming loose, transnational affiliations based on religious or ideological affinity and a common hatred of the United States. This makes terrorist attacks more difficult to detect and prevent."

Wanted: Osama Bin Laden

Before night fell on the collapsed World Trade Center complex, the wealthy Saudi expatriate, Osama Bin Laden emerged as the prime suspect, based on known associations with the hijackers. Known as "the contractor," Bin Laden operates a loose confederation of terrorist groups that dispatch funds and trained warriors to terrorist groups around the world.

Even before September 11th, Bin Laden was on the FBI's "Top 10 Most Wanted List" for masterminding the East Africa Embassy bombings and the year 2000 attack on of the USS Cole. He also is thought to have sponsored the mid-'90s bombings of U.S. facilities in Saudi Arabia. And in the late '90s, Russian military intelligence sources reported he was hunting for nuclear weapons in Chechnya and in the Central Asia republics, to convert his ballistic weapons into "suitcase nukes."

Bin Laden was born in 1957, son of a wealthy general contractor in Saudi Arabia. Working for the Saudi Royal

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