9/11 families mark 20 years since the attacks
Debra Burlingame and Kathleen Deparis remember family members killed in 9/11 attacks on ‘The Story’
The sister of an American Airlines pilot killed after his plane was hijacked by terrorists and slammed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, told Fox News that she is "filled with rage" at the thought of President Biden's overtures to the Taliban throughout his withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Debra Burlingame's brother, Charles "Chic" Burlingame, was the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, bound from Dulles, Va., to Los Angeles on that Tuesday morning when a gang of terrorists led by Hani Hanjour hijacked it and killed everyone aboard, plus several inside the Pentagon at the time.
On "The Story," host Martha MacCallum played clips of President George W. Bush in the days following the attack promising to respond to the mass murder of Americans:
"Either you’re with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime," the Texas Republican proclaimed later in September 2001.
"There’s no negotiations, there’s no calendar. We’ll act on our time," he also said that fall.
Burlingame told MacCallum that Bush's response to the Taliban – who then, and again now, controlled Afghanistan, where the terrorists trained – was the complete opposite of how Biden has comported himself on the world stage:
"Just listening to that fills me with rage," she said. "Because I can’t imagine what the soundbites 20 years from now will be from President Biden: Those [from Bush] speak to everything he’s not doing.
"I believe we’re in grave danger now. This administration is now embracing a terrorist regime: The very people he's referring to sheltered Usama bin Laden, the ones that provided him a safe haven while they practiced storming the cockpits and killing the pilots."
Burlingame said pilots like Hanjour trained and practiced hijackings in Al-Farooq, Afghanistan – using animals instead of humans and "short-knives" instead of box cutters."
"That regime is now in place [in Kabul]. Some of the very people involved … are the people that President Biden is calling a friendlier, kinder Taliban," she said.
"No. They’re mullahs installed now. They have members of the Haqqani Network in their ministry: Haqqani is more vicious than al Qaeda: They are known for brutal hostage-taking."
Burlingame predicted America is again "in trouble" and that there will be "some very dark days ahead" because of Biden's actions.
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