The now of it all

 ONE...
   I looked at my watch today, for the date, instead of the time. I'm not sure why. If I'd only just thought about it a little bit, I would have realized that I'm leaving for a three week vacation in Italy tomorrow, and I've been telling absolutely everyone for weeks that my departure date is September 12th. But I didn't think about it that way. I just glanced at the little window on my watch that tells the date. It said, "SUN|11."

It is September 11th.

   Now, I'm not a very sentimental person. I have never attended a 9/11 memorial. Never really even thought about it before. I'm one of those guys who say, "isn't it about time they stopped playing America The Beautiful at baseball games now?" But, when I glanced at my watch this morning, and realized what the date was, I had a sudden pause.
   On September 11th, 2001, thousands of men and women kissed their families good morning, poured themselves a cup of coffee, and left for work, just as they did every morning. They were just regular people going about their regular lives. Like you. Like me.

   And then a group of insane people flew out of the sky and ended their lives.
  
   And I had this thought: 
Total death toll in World Trade Center disaster-2752
Total American Death toll in Iraq War to date-1896  (if you add other coalition troops, that number reaches 2093)
Estimated Iraqi death toll-somewhere between 24,680 and 27,930
Amount of credible evidence that Iraq had anything at all to do with the September 11th terrorist attacks-

...

...

::sigh::

   Somewhere, Osama Bin Laden is laughing.