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Home Front: Culture Wars
Flight 93 Memorial Design Worries Father
2007-08-20
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The father of a man killed when hijacked Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, wants his son's name withheld from a victims memorial because of renewed concerns that its design is centered around Islamic symbolism.

Tom Burnett Sr. served on a jury that picked the winning design, originally named "Crescent of Embrace," and said the request was "something I'd rather not do, but I can't get anyone to listen."

Burnett's son, Thomas E. Burnett Jr., 38, died along with 39 other passengers and crew when Flight 93 was hijacked and crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pa., while flying to San Francisco from Newark, N.J. An investigation concluded the hijackers crashed when passengers rushed the cockpit and tried to regain control of the aircraft.

Nearly two years ago, designer Paul Murdoch changed the memorial's planned shape to a nearly full circle in response to critics who said the original crescent shape honored the Muslim extremists who carried out the attacks. The crescent is a Muslim symbol.

Burnett, of Northfield, Minn., said he is looking for is a "thorough, honest investigation" of the design and the elements discussed by Alec Rawls, a conservative blogger from Palo Alto, Calif. Burnett said many of his concerns were based on Rawls' theories.

Rawls says the planned memorial faces toward Mecca, Islam's holiest city, and contends that a planned 93-foot tower with wind chimes would act as an Islamic sundial.

Joanne Hanley, superintendent of the Flight 93 National Memorial, said, Rawls "bases all of his conclusions on faulty assumptions."
Posted by:anonymous5089

#11  I think all 9/11 Memorials should be designed by the thoughts, actions and insights of Vlad the Impaler. Like...93 impaled muslims in a circle around a crusader holding the severed head of allen's boy mudhead the child rapist.
Posted by: Silentbrick   2007-08-20 14:35  

#10  It's time the honest, hardworking citizens of this nation start kicking the a$$ of all the parisites that live here, but contribute nothing to the current success and sustained future of our nation. Unless we do, we're going to end up just like France.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2007-08-20 14:29  

#9  reading this makes me glad the memorial committee's appeal for money is still buried on my desk.
Posted by: Querent   2007-08-20 14:21  

#8  Tom lives in Northfield Minnesota. The town slogan used to be "Colleges Cows and Contentment".

They might want to change that to Tom Sr. plans on giving someone an ass kicking. Rightly so.

If they do open this thing they way it's planned everyone of us should go there with axes and cut those crescent trees down.
Posted by: Icerigger   2007-08-20 12:38  

#7  The perfect memorial would be a small white house.

As that was the target the passengers died and protected.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2007-08-20 10:50  

#6  Redesign it as a large contiguous reflective pool, 93 yards long, that when observed from above reads "F*ck Mecca".
Posted by: mcsegeek1   2007-08-20 10:43  

#5  This is just 'effing wrong.
Posted by: SteveS   2007-08-20 10:05  

#4  

Joanne Hanley, superintendent of the Flight 93 National Memorial, said, Rawls "bases all of his conclusions on faulty assumptions."


And those assumptions are? And why are they faulty?

Why not just reconsider the design?
Posted by: Rob Crawford   2007-08-20 09:31  

#3  I blogged about this myself a few days ago after reading this blog post at Error Theory.

http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2007/07/flight-93-update-hijacker-has-gained.html

We should be enraged, not just angry.
Posted by: DanNY   2007-08-20 09:11  

#2  I recognize that some of them might say, build nothing; and some would say build a monument that said kill all Muslims.

That was an option? Dang, we screwed up.
Posted by: Excalibur   2007-08-20 08:51  

#1  Flight 93 Memorial and all other Memorials that celebrate the lives or pay respects to the victims.

Perhaps it would be smarter, wiser and more humane to ask the victim's families what the
red-line no-go areas for them would be in the ultimate design.

I recognize that some of them might say, build nothing; and some would say build a monument that said kill all Muslims. [like someone says around here fairly regularly]

But if the right team leader works with the families with all the dos and don'ts they can give the Designers a wide latitude of choices for a decent monument celebrating their kin's lives while paying respect to their losses.

THEN if a Designer on his own goes *Munafiqs* and injects Islamic elements and motifs into the whole of the monument I would fire his ass for the Flight 93 Crew and passengers, and the families, and the let's Roll Team, America, and every red blooded American on the Planet.

Then I would do is check and see if designer Paul Murdoch in this instance, and his firm does any work in the Gulf or is bidding work in the Gulf.

[a good 40% of the $$$ HUGE $$$ CASH $$$ jobs will be in the Gulf region for the next few years... without war of course]
Posted by: Red Dawg   2007-08-20 04:13  

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