Today is supposed to be a day of remembrance, so here are some sober things to remember:

Just a few months prior to the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the CIA was told by German intelligence that Middle Eastern terrorists were training for hijackings and were interested in targeting
American interests. Vladimir Putin also issued a similar alert, and he used the words "suicide pilots." (Interestingly, this was originally reported by Fox News and the report appeared on Fox's website. It has now disappeared and is a blank page. So...we report--you decide).

In July of 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft, having studied the threats, stopped flying commercial airlines and would not reply to media questions about his decision.

Israeli Mossad agents warned the FBI and CIA that multiple terrorists were in the U.S., and that they had a plan. The agents even handed over a list, and four of the names were those of September 11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta among them.

Two weeks prior to the attack, an FBI supervisor reported that he was working on preventing a hijacker from “flying a plane into the WTC.”

Newsweek reported that on September 10, 2001, a group of top Pentagon officials canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns.

On September 11, 2001, a US intelligence agency prepared for an exercise at 9 a.m. in which an aircraft would crash into one of its buildings near Washington, DC.