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Letters to David
Irving on this Website

Gene
Mangrum
of Nashville
Tennessee thinks () the
9/11 hijackers were not intrepid

Umbrage at “intrepid”

I AM an avid fan of yours and your website. But
I think you should refrain from language which may be interpreted as sympathetic to terrorists. It does not lend credibility or credence to your overall message. I quote:

“Hazard a guess that it spelt out in
simple, credible language the reasons why
Atta and his eighteen intrepid men were
sacrificing themselves to attack Wall Street,
the Pentagon, and the Capitol?”

[WTC]I don’t think these punks were “intrepid”. “Cowardly” is more like it. I think people who kill innocent people or use innocent people’s lives as simple cannon fodder are nothing more than cowards.
Terrorism is a desperate act by those who feel powerless and are too cowardly to attack those who directly threaten them. One should not describe these types of cowards as brave or “intrepid”.

I certainly hope that you don’t sympathize with these scoundrels. I don’t think you do and I don’t think you intentionally mean to portray these terrorists as heroes or martyrs or sympathetic characters. But I just ask that you try to refrain from language that might be interpreted as support for these terrorist scumbags.

Gene
MangrumNashville, TN

DAVID
IRVING writes:

HOW kind of you to write. If you read The 9/11 Commission
Report then “intrepid” is the only word to describe the actions of these nineteen young men
— in my view. I did not say “admirable,” I said: “Intrepid.”

Seizing control of a heavy airliner with a full load of fuel, cargo, and passengers and flying it deliberately into an “enemy” skyscraper takes more guts than launching a cruise missile from an aircraft carrier or submarine hundreds of miles away, or dropping cluster-bombs from an altitude of
30,000 feet or firing thousands of rounds of 50-
caliber ammunition* into a village from a C-130
Spectre gunship, or … or … or …
etc.

Would you deny the
Japanese kamikaze airmen the description
“intrepid”?

* Aubrey Soper corrects me on
about the armament carried by the Spectre gunship:

Index
to the Traditional Enemies of Free
Speech Alphabetical index (text)