20 years: The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
It started long before September 11. It started long before W. Never forget:
Memorial stone at Lockerbie, Scotland
The Lockerbie Cairn, through its 270 blocks of red Scottish sandstone, memorializes the 270 lives lost in the terrorist attack on the United States when Pan Am flight 103 was bombed Dec. 21, 1988, over Lockerbie Scotland. It is a gift of the people of Scotland to the people of the United States, financed entirely through private donations. The ill-fated flight was enroute from Frankfurt, Germany, to New York via London’s Heathrow Airport. Twenty-seven minutes after leaving London, at 7:02 p.m. the plane exploded, raining fragments on the city of Lockerbie, including an entire wing and engines. Eleven of the 270 dead were on the ground. The passengers and crew included people from 22 countries. Among them were 189 Americans, including 15 active-duty military and 10 veterans.
Senate Joint Resolution 129 designating Arlington National Cemetery as the site of the Cairn was unanimously passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in November, 1993.
The blocks of standstone come from Corsehill Quarry of Annan, Scotland, about eight miles southeast of Lockerbie and in the flight path of Flight 103. Corsehill Quarry, operating since 1820, has acquired a world-wide reputation for producing sandstone of superb quality. Stones from this quarry are used in many buildings in the United States including, most notably, the base stones of the Statue of Liberty.
A traditional Scottish monument form, a cairn can be an informal heap of stones or may take a more orderly mortared construction. In this instance, the 270 stones are mortared into a short tower-like circular form measuring approximately seven feet across at the base and tapering to a height of about 10 and a half feet.
The Memorial Cairn is being erected in Arlington National Cemetery in memory of the 270 lives lost in the One hundred and eighty-nine were Americans, including 15 active duties military and 10 veterans.
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- The TIW Blog » Blog Archive » Pan Am Flight 103 20 Years Ago
- Twenty Years On: Remember Pan Am Flight 103 « Jane Q. Republican
- Gay Rage Part VI: Terrorist Hypocrites of a Feather « Mark Epstein
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- ButAsForMe! » 20 years: The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
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Let’s hope we won’t have to build anymore memorials in the future…
We were very slow to recognize that we have a very patient, determined enemy devoted to wiping us out of existence. Let’s just hope the new administration recognizes this before it is too late.
We are fighting an enemy that hides in the shadows. It only takes 1 or 2 sick people to spark a disaster. It will be a long road to finally put a stop to this type of terrorism, so our vigilance must always be strong. Talking to “them” and appeasing “them” will not work; yet, leaders, here and abroad, feel that it is necessary. It will only culminate in more deaths. I remember that day in December; it is one that no-one should forget, lest we find ourselves with more of the same.
Somebody needs to put the truth on that Scottish memorial. This wasn’t an air disaster…it wasn’t an accident. It was murder. It was terrorism.
Given the way things are going, that stone’s probably going to disappear soon anyway.
The Truth is the first casualty of in a communist government.
Does anyone here know one of the victims of this terrorist act?
I was acquainted with Suzanne Miazga.
I’m so glad Ronald Reagan brought it home to Khadafi.
Thank you for this reminder Michelle.
May their Souls, and all the Souls of the Faithfully departed Rest in Peace.
Those are my sentiments as well, Zorro.
At least Muaamar Gadhafi wasn’t awarded a nobel piece prize for his role in terrorism ala yasir arafat.
F&*%&ing liberals!!!!!
I knew two people from my college who were on that plane. One lived in my freshman dorm. Every year on this date I think of her and what she missed out on in her own life.
Here is the most sickening thing of all. Although even the World Court ruled that the Libyan government and Qadafi were up their necks in the plotting and execution of the murder of passengers on Pan Am 103, Qadafi’s favorite minister, one Joseph Lowery, is scheduled to give the benediction at the inauguration or Barack Obama. In 1979, when even President Carter opposed Qadafi, Lowery led a delegation to visit Qadafi and lavish praise upon the Libyan tyrant. Nobody in the MSM bothered to ask Lowery who was paying for his trip. Lowery bestowed Qadafi with a medal called “The Decoration of Martin Luther King” and he embraced Qadafi. While he lavished praise on Qadafi, Lowery called Menachem Begin “a terrorist”. Lowery was (and still is) so antiIsrael that he blasted President Jimmy Carter for doing the bidding of what Lowery called “the Jewish lobby”. Lowery didn’t even bother to use the phrase “Israel lobby”.
Yet incredibly, our new president chose Joseph Lowery out of the thousands of ministers who toil in the US. When Lowery stands on the stage next to the new president, it will be a slap in the face to all the families who lost loved ones on Pan Am 103.
Very disturbing, but thank you for the info.
To this day I do not understand why we did not destroy Libya for this. This was an act of war every bit as much as the attack on Pearl Harbor or the Twin Towers.
Something is going on we are not being told. Tit for Tat, reasoned response and police action are all BS. Someone hits you you destroy their ability to do so again. You make it so horrible the neighbors take notice.
Personally I am getting a little tired of monuments to America’s unavenged dead. We killed Timothy McVeigh-so it should be with all terrorist and their supporters.
I have always said, can you name me one thing that Clinton accomplished in his 8 years as president that was noteworthy? Finally, something surfaces.
Hey Marc,
Why don’t you edit Lowery’s Wikipedia page since there is NO mention of that.
That is really sickening about Joseph Lowery. And yet, the left are screaming about Obama’s choice of Rev. Warren for a prayer at the inauguration. I guess it’s perfectly o.k. to have an anti-semite up there because that fits in with the left’s world view. But Rev. Ric Warren doesn’t believe in gay marriage or the murder of the unborn…so he shouldn’t have the right to give the prayer. Another example of the total intolerance of the left. If you don’t share their unbelievably immoral values, you have no right to speak. I get more disgusted with these screaming idiots every day!
Terrorists are murders and they don’t care who they kill. America has been coddling these bastards for far too long. The only thing they understand is power and strength…I say kill ‘em everywhere and anywhere they are. No more of this “enlightenment” crap.
Lock and load folks it’s going to get ugly.
I have often thought that black people would not be satisfied with enough MLK tributes until they blast his face into the surface of the moon that faces us. I guess maybe I should change that to Obama.
The MSM has been having discussions ad ad nauseum about whether Rick Warren has a right to give a prayer at the inauguration of Obama. And yet when it comes to Lowery, not a peep from the MSM, especially CNN. And there is even more to Lowery’s antiIsrael, antiSemitic, pro-Libya views. In addition to his loving tribute to Qadafi, replete with a medal ceremony, Lowery went to Lebanon where he and his delegation hugged and kissed Yasser Arafat. This was 1979, when Arafat was bragging about his terrorism. Lowery took an Arafat guided tour of Southern Lebanon and then his group called for the US to stop providing weapons to Israel. Lowery even said that the PLO was committed to nonviolence. Lowery also called Menachem Begin “a terrorist”. Lowery also accused American Jews of being “paternalistic to Blacks” and Lowery said that Jimmy Carter, of all people, was doing what “The Jewish Lobby” instructed him to do.
Since then, Lowery has insisted that the US government was involved in the assassination of Martine Luther King and he has said that the CIA spreads cocaine amound Black youths. Yet despite this record of support for Qadafi and Lybia, his virulent antiIsrael and antiJewish statements and his crackpot views, the NYSUT (that is the NY state teachers union) gave Lowery its highest award this year. The NYSUT website distorts, indeed lies, about Lowery’s MidEast views and statements. The NYSUT web site says that Lowery has traveled to the MiddleEast “to promote peace”. And this is the minister that Obama chooses above all others.
I have not gone to Wikepedia yet but I am assuming that Lowery gets a free pass there.
Why yes he does. COMPLETE PASS.
And yet Jimmy Carter has turned into a rabid anti-Semite. Barack Hussein-Allah be Praised-Obama attended an anti-Semitic Church, was friend and a follower of Farrakhan, friends with (for awhile) of Jesse-Hymie Town- Jackson and friendly with “Blood on the Diamonds Jews” Al Sharpton. And yet Barack Hussein-Allah be Praised-Obama picks a Jew-Rahm Israel Emanuel, the son of an Israeli Irgun Fighter, as Chief of Staff. I suppose Rahm Israel Emanuel is more Marxist than Jew.
The old truism-”Politics makes strange bedfellows” is once again in play. Oh but I do wish more of our Jewish Citizens would embrace the Second Amendment, be armed and get some fire arms training. I have a feeling they will be the first to go. Time after time they seem willingly to march into the Tsars, Kings, Fuhrers ghettos and camps hoping for the best.
Rahm Israel Emanuel would not be the first traitor to his race.
#6 Scott G said:
This NY’er shamefully forgot that 35 Syracuse University students were on that plane. Thank you for the reminder.
Michelle said:
Absolutely right. I lost more loved ones on September 11th then on any other date, but for me, “it” started when a friend of my family was kidnapped and executed in Lenanon, for all the world to see. For my Country, it started much earlier than that.
On a political note, it’s been roughly 20 years and six years respectively since Colonel Rich Higgins and many of my friends were slaughtered by Islamo-fascists around the globe. I have yet to hear a prominent liberal publicly chastise and repeatedly call for the elimination of those who regularly perpetuate these aggressions against my friends and my Country. Conversely, I could assemble a list of considerable length in which such liberals have decided to regularly attack our Commander In Chief in this regard.
I mention this because even as a young man (ironically a young man who was the same average age as many on the Syracuse University/Pan Am flight 103 legacy list that Scott G quoted above)I can remember how liberals in the media spent painstaking time and effort in trying to make Ronald Reagan the bad guy for Pan Am/Lockerbie and how it was years later when al-Gaddafi’s admissions of Libyan guilt were softly reported.
If you threw a dart at a wall of random media headlines collected over the years, you would have a much greater chance of hitting one regarding an instigation of President Bush’s complicity in the War on Terror than hitting one that holds the actual Islamic instigators and perpetrators accountable.
Likewise, if you tried aiming for an article describing the valiant efforts on behalf of the “resistors” and the “freedom fighters” involved in this War on Terror, you would be aiming for a long time if you were simultaneously searching for a clipping regarding our US Military.
Another sad legacy concerning liberalism in America and Europe.
Rahm Israel Emanuel, son of an Israeli born Irgun fighter, becomes Chief of staff for Barack Hussein, Allah Be Praised, Obama who surrounds himself with anti-Semites.
Politics does make strange bedfellows- apologies to William Shakespeare (told to do that in high school lit)
Looking for more about what Marc posted, I found that Rev. Lowery went to same school as Rev. Wright.
FrontPage Magazine reported on Lowery’s backslapping of terrorists and also that he thinks the government was behind the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and is placing drugs in the black community:
We should have nuked the bastards years ago.
The mohammedans WE feed, WE provide medicine for, WE build their water plants, danced in the streets on 9/11.
That the CIA planted drugs in the black community, invented AIDS and sickle cell anemia is one of The Reverand Jerryboy Wright’s themes. Often I have to ask myself “What is the point of trying to get along?”
Avenge our dead.
there is no ‘getting along’ with islam…the last 1,400 years have demonstrated that beyond a doubt.
I wonder what someone like Charles Martel would think of his descedants???
oh and this 4,000 year old blood feud between the children of Abraham, (Ishmael, and Isaac) will not end until Armageddon…
Peace through strenth is the only answer.
Their only definition of “getting along” is giving in to their agenda. To many of the followers of Wright and Lowery, equality means getting extra (read special) rights, not equal rights. They don’t want equality, they want superiority and since we won’t bend to that, there is no “getting along”.
strenth = strength
argggghhhh
A friend of mine lost his uncle on that flight.
Perhaps the lesson learned from Lockerbie is that the biggest terrorist attacks are assisted by Muslim governments.
There is a lot of things about Sep 11 we still don’t know. Skyjacking was never a native expertise of Al Qaeda, yet the one and only time they did it they were wildly successful. Their attack required the mastery of a number of skills and discipline that were likely acquired outside Al Qaeda, probably with the help of a friendly Muslim country. Who?
What a tragedy. How sad I am for the ones on the plane and the loved ones left behind.
Joseph Lowery will be giving the closing benediction at the Obama inaguration. The president elect decided that the most prestigious time slot will go to Muamar Qadafi’s favorite minister. One wonders if Qadafi will be invited to the ceremony. Although a simple google search would reveal decades of anti-American, antiIsrael and even antiSemitic ravings from Lowery, the New York Times has no interest in pursuing this. In 1978, Lowery blamed “The Jews” for a US Supreme Court decision that barred strict quotas at the University of California medical school. In 1984, Lowery said that “The Jews” were using Jesse Jackson as an excuse to leave the Democratic Party. Can anyone imagine if Rick Warren had engaged in this type of bigotry? Reverend Warren would be lambasted in the media. But Lowery is lionized and the MSM is getting all dewy eyed. Rest assured, The three network anchors will lavish praise on Lowery before and after his “benediction”.
Rahm Emmanual loved us Jews about as much as Yassir “Hitler didn’t do enough” Arafat, Louis “Kill all the Jews” Farrakhan and Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson.
jpost.com had an article about anti-Semitic Jews…but they left Emmanual out for some reason…
May they all rest in peace.
At the time of this act of terrorism I was at Goodfellow AFB, TX going through an advanced electronics school and eagerly awaiting going home for Christmas after two years away from my family. One of my cousins from England was flying over to spend the holidays in America. I didn’t know what day he was coming in and when I heard of this I called my mother to ask. She assured me that he was on another flight. I felt better knowing that, but still angry.
It goes well before this. Don’t forget (like our friends on the left have completely erased from their minds) that Robert Kennedy was assassinated by a Palestinian terrorist.
20 years ago BiX, BYTE Information eXchange, was officially 3 years old, although it had been up and running in beta since March of 1985. I was the person who was mother-hen to the Amiga computer crowd there.
Arnaud Rubin was a young member of the group from Belgium. For the preceding couple months he’d been excited about his planned trip to New York to visit all the computer stores and meet some of his on-line peers.
His plans ended December 21, 1988 over the skies of Lockerbie, Scotland, thanks to terrorist activities by Muslims. I hope he is flitting happily around heaven these days with a far more interesting crowd than the robot virgins promised jihadists by the book they consider holiest.
Arnaud is an icon for the innocents slaughtered over very nearly 1400 years by adherents to an ugly ideology. I for one do not intend to let Arnaud be forgotten nor how he died so long as I live.
Arnaud was so young and enthused about life I miss him. I miss watching him mature.
{^_^} Joanne Dow
Incredible
November 4, 1979, to be precise…
I will never forget. Lock and load brother.
WILDFIRE.. 20 years retroactively
That stopped the shooting at El Al counter at L.A. airport 2002, The Trolley Square shooting Salt Lake City 2007. Both by our mohammedan bros invited into this country by sheer foolishness. I call it the Richard Reid Syndrome.
We are dealing with people who have no intention of being Americans, democratic or tolerant. Going to their mosques and telling them we feel their pain IS NOT GOING TO HELP.
Lock and load brother just might.
Let me guess…is Joseph Lowery a follower of the “Socialist Gospel“?
By the way, Obama is not “our new president” yet. And if people are serious about “supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States”, then he will never be “our new president”.
Obama is Constitutionally unqualified to hold the office of POTUS & C-in-C.
Our Constitution was ratified in 1787. The meaning of “natural born citizen” can be found in a work from 1758, with which our founders were very familiar:
The meaning of “natural born citizen” is different from the meaning of “citizen”. It is not enough to have been born a “citizen”.
Obama is not a “natural born citizen” because he and his father were British subjects at the time of his birth.
He could have been born in the White House and he would still be unqualified. Natural born citizens have no tie to any other country at the time of their birth.
The 20th Amendment specifies that
If the Legislative Branch does not honor their sworn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and they certify the Electoral College vote for this unqualified President elect, then expect the Supreme Court to grant certiorari in 1 or more of the 4 cases currently on their docket.
The Supreme Court has only refused to interrupt the electoral process in the Legislative Branch. The Supreme Court has not “refused to hear” (denied certiorari to) any of the cases brought before it. The Judicial Branch cannot remain silent if the Legislative Branch certifies an unqualified head of the Executive Branch.
Don’t be surprised when certain Supreme Court justices uphold their oath. They seem to take their oath more seriously than those in the Congress do.
The liberal media has never reported on the whole sickening manner in which the Egyptian murderer who shot to death several people at the EL AL terminal in LAX on July 4, 2002 was allowed to stay in the USA. The INS had actually ordered him deported several times. Each time he took an “administrative appeal” which meant that he did not have to leave and could roam free anywhere in the US. Eventually he ran out of challenges. But he still did not have to leave. Teddy Kennedy had forced a law on the Congress and the President that said there would be a “random lottery” for anyone who had applied for citizenship to the US. Kennedy said his motive was to bring more “third world people” to the US and he said his lottery would achieve that. The Egyptian Killer’s wife was one of the winners of the lottery and although the INS knew that the guy was a menace and a danger, they now could not deport him because his wife won the lottery. He now had a lifetime pass to live in the US and he could laugh at the hapless INS. And that is exactly what he did. The NY Times has never used the word terrorist to describe this Egyptian murderer and the Times coverage only referred to him as “the gunman” and “the assailant”. The Times mentioned the many grievances the guy had with “the occupation”. From reading the NY Times coverage of this sickening man, you would think he was the hero and the EL AL security guy who shot him dead was treated as a madman by the NY Times.
Marc,
I didn’t know that, and I thank you for sharing that information.
Jihadists have been actively engaging in acts of war against both Israel and the United States. Unfortunately, the enemy controls people of power in all branches of our government, academia, and large parts of coporate America.
The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy is real, and in my opinion it appears that Teddy Kennedy plays a big role in it.
I lost two college classmates on that flight. A day I will never forget but I can’t believe it’s been 20 years. May all the victims, both in the air and on the ground, rest in peace.