Like most, I still notice when I pass the World Trade Center area, from lower Manhattan, or from across the River, that those towers are missing. This morning I noted it missing from the skyline — from the George Washington Bridge, than as I turned onto Lexington Avenue again. I got mad all over again. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

I’m thinking too, of course, like many, of people we lost that day and people we lost because of that day. I was in a bit of a not-believing fog five years ago this morning until word came — over various IMs (the most reliable mode of communication five years ago today) – that our friend Barbara Olson had been murdered in the plane that hit the Pentagon. Still a bit of disbelief, but at that point, too, some potent resolve seemed to fill the NR offices along with the increasing smell of death that was making its way more and more to us here in the shadow of the Empire State Building.

I’m thinking of so many of those who have gone to Afghanistan and Iraq, some who have lost their lives there; many, too, who have been dramatically and painfully injured. God bless them for doing what they do, for being willing to make that ultimate sacrifice; thank God there are families willing to give everything so that we can be free.

I’m thinking too of the Flight 93ers — Americans don’t go down without a fight — and the people whose lives they saved by doing what they did.

And I’m thinking of our friend Steven Vincent who would be murdered years later in Iraq while reporting – he headed there because his beloved city was attacked five years ago today.

Such evil, but so many heroes.