Amongst the media hysteria following the
terrorist attacks on the
World Trade Center, Coulter came up with an editorial for the
National Review (it was also
syndicated) dated 14th September 2001, of such
rabidity that one suspects she will either be
arrested, or
given an award.
It took the form of an obituary for Barbara Olson, wife of the US Solicitor General Ted Olson and passenger on the ill-fated American Airlines Flight 77. After diverting through her standard attack on Bill Clinton, who Coulter seemed unwilling to accept was no longer president, she launched into a rant against immigrants and airport security, her argument being that increased airport security would be ineffective due to the fact that it is currently ineffective, and if this state of ineffectiveness was increased it would etc. It culminated in a declaration that:
"The airport kabuki theater of magnetometers, asinine questions about whether passengers "packed their own bags," and the hostile, lumpen mesomorphs ripping open our luggage somehow allowed over a dozen armed hijackers to board four American planes almost simultaneously on Bloody Tuesday. (Did those fabulous security procedures stop a single hijacker anyplace in America that day?)
Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."
-Ann Coulter, 2001
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As it turns out Coulter was neither arrested nor given an award; her relationship with the National Review was severed at the end of October, although FrontPage magazine picked her up immediately afterwards. Her follow-up column argued that passports should be compulsory for flights within the US in order to filter out 'swarthy-looking males'.
The National Review's explanation:
http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment100301.shtml