Blah blah. Lots of internet heros.
I was on the flying schedule on Sept 11. I have friends who patroled over New York on Sept 11, Sept 12... I lived the entire event as an active duty military pilot.
There are many bad people in this world, and details aside, in general I am happy that for a period of crisis, our nation was led by a man of principle. Whether or not you agree with him is irrelevant... When tough decisions had to be made, the buck stopped with a man who led by his principles rather than by whatever the polls said that week.
I judge no fewer than 6 years of my public service as true service in the nation's interest, simply because one man, right or wrong, chose to lead the nation instead of being swept away by events. The details are important only for the after-action debrief, because the damned armchair quarterbacks will ALWAYS second guess the decisions made by the one person who was truly responsible for EVERYTHING.
In my current job I'm walking the line between being merely an action officer, and guiding the nature of deterrence on the Korean Peninsula. For courage, I only have to take a look up my chain of command and see who's made the tough decisions even when they knew damn well they would not be popular decisions.
F**k everyone else, they haven't been there. They haven't strapped on the body armor or the jet. They're armchair quarterbacks at best and while that's a long American tradition, they really don't know crap. Joe citizen knows this, and I think that's why Bush won a second term.