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Enduring Freedom:
Prime Time special
As a year on from the attacks on America approaches, Prime Time investigates how the United States has changed since September 11th, and what the future of the War on Terror will be.
RTE's Washington Correspondent, Carole Coleman, reports from New York, Washington and Virginia, speaking to some of the people whose lives were irrevocably changed by the attacks. She also analyses how the Bush administration has responded to the attacks, and with an attack on Saddam Hussein's Iraq looming, she asks whether the War on Terror is now spinning out of control.
| Lieutenant Colonel Brian Birdwell |
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The programme features interviews with an number of people who are lucky to be alive. None more so than Lieutenant Colonel Brian Birdwell, a 40 year old Texan, who was fifteen yards from the impact of the plane that slammed into the Pentagon. Birdwell's office took a direct hit, but by a pure fluke he was in the corridor outside returning from the mens toilet at the decisive moment.
"I went from a well lit hallway to an earthly hell... with fire smoke and disorientiation, says Birdwell. "It's hard to describe to you the abject panic that enters your heart when you are withstanding a life threatening injury and simultaneously to receiving that injury, you cannot escape it… and that's when you realize you are dying…and that's what happened inside corridor four for me"
"I had accepted the finality of my life that day, I had accepted my death."
Birdwell suffered devastating injuries, including burns over fifty per cent of his body, and is resolutely supportive of the War on Terror and his Government's reaction to the attacks. "Because of the grievousness and the cowardice and the hatred that these people must have for us. There is only one way to get rid of this evil - and it isn't in a court of law. And that's exactly what we are doing."
"I think we'll win the war. I don't know what the war ending will look like. I can't tell you this event will cause Al Qaeda or whatever to say 'we give'. I don't know what that event will look like, but I know it will happen."
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