Fifteen Years Later

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the 1993 WTC Bombing, which killed six and wounded over 1,000 people. I continue to refer back to this posting in reference to the attacks, which occurred at 12:18 PM on a snowy overcast day:

The bomb went off at 12:18PM.

It took some people more than 2 hours to evacuate the towers. The emergency stairwells were pitch black, and the air was thick with smoke.

The six people who were murdered in the first major Islamic terrorist attack on US soil were:
John DiGiovanni, Valley Stream, New York
Robert Kirkpatrick, Suffern, New York
Steve Knapp, Manhattan, New York City
Monica Smith, Seaford, New York
William Macko, Bayonne, New Jersey
Wilfredo Mercado, Brooklyn, New York City

The terrorists had sought to do more than just damage the towers. They wanted to make an emphatic and deadly statement:

Yousef was assisted by Iraqi bomb maker Abdul Rahman Yasin. Yasin's complex 1300 lb (600 kg) bomb was made of urea pellets, nitroglycerin, sulfuric acid, aluminum azide, magnesium azide, and bottled hydrogen. He added sodium cyanide to the mix as the vapors could go through the ventilation shafts and elevators of the towers. The van that Yousef used had four 20 ft (6 m) long fuses, all covered in surgical tubing. Yasin calculated that the fuse would trigger the bomb in twelve minutes after he would use a cheap cigarette lighter to light the fuse.

Yousef wanted to prevent smoke from escaping the towers, therefore catching the public eye by smothering people inside. He foresaw Tower One collapsing onto Tower Two after the blast would occur. The materials to build the bomb cost some US$300.

Andrew McCarthy has a good roundup of his thoughts on the war launched by the Islamists on US soil on that day.

UPDATE:
Others remembering this day of infamy: Michelle Malkin (thanks for the link!), and Debbie Schlussel.

Jammie reports that one of the convicted terrorists rotting in Supermax for his participation in the attack is trying his best to conduct lawfare on the US courts system. The US Supreme Court isn't giving him the satisfaction.