Prime Time - 8th September 2011

RTÉ's Washington correspondent Richard Downes blogs ahead of tonight's extended Prime Time - Ten Years On From 9/11:

I was a little taken aback by one of our contributors to tonight’s piece about 9/11 and its bloody legacy. Michael O’Hanlon is a fellow of the Brookings Institution and a highly respected commentator from the centre/centre right.
When I asked him about the decade following 9/11, the wars, the deaths, the injured, the damage to the body politic, he didn’t reach for the tissues, as so many others have. It was always going to be an awful decade, he said. The response to 9/11 and the necessity of having to fight Al-Qaeda meant that the noughties would always be ugly.
He still supports the decision to invade Iraq but regrets the cavalier attitude that he says overshadowed the venture. Overall, it wasn’t as bad a decade as he expected.
Others in tonight’s film are not so forgiving. Former military spy Tony Shafer says the response to 9/11 was good until 2002 when it all went horribly wrong. The authorities took their eye off Afghanistan and ploughed into Iraq. “Iraq was nothing to me” in relation to Al-Qaeda, he says.
For our other contributors, the 9/11 attacks were the defining acts of their lives. Kayla Fallon lost her father. She was only eight at the time, a champion Irish dancer, doted on by her dad. She tells of the anger she felt. "Why did they take my Dad away? He was only going to work" she says.
Sally Regenhard lost her firefighter son, Christian. Both Sally’s parents were first generation Irish immigrants to America and she says she drew on their indominatable spirit to get her through some tough times. She is a feisty, angry organiser of victims of the attacks. Her latest battle is against the city of New York and plans to inter the unidentified remains of those killed behind a wall in a paid museum. It’s disgraceful, she says.
Prime Time will be discussing many of the issues brought up here with a distinguished panel. Here in New York there is a strange, slightly eerie feeling. Down at ground zero, the tourists are out in huge numbers. You can’t get a hotel for love nor money. Thousands will be there on Sunday for the tenth anniversary. For many of the relatives of the victims, there is a real sense that this could be the last year when their commemoration of lost loved ones will be shared with such a huge national and international audience.
Richard Downes