Returning to Half-Blood Hill

After the disaster at Goode High School, Annabeth and Percy took a taxi back to Camp Half-Blood. Dionysus was out so a man named Quinton was training swordsman and he had an enormous hellhound as a pet. At Camp Half-Blood was Grover with a lot of old satyrs who were talking about the search of Pan and they will give Grover one week to find him. Tyson told Percy that there are a lot of monsters and titans trying to attack Poseidon under the sea, but the god wants them out of danger in the camp. On the other side, ina dream, Percy saw that Nico di Angelo is alive, he wants his sister back, and he may have a revenge against someone in order to complete his objective.

"I stared at him. Tyson had faced down fire-breathing bulls and sea monsters and cannibal giants. "Why would you be scared of Grover?" "Hooves and horns," Tyson muttered nervously. "And goat fur makes my nose itchy."" Tyson explained to Percy that he has been under the sea and fight a lot of monsters and titans that want to kill Poseidon; Percy does not understand how can the cyclops be afraid from Grover who is a friendly satyr.
"Annabeth had always admired Luke, the former head counselor for Hermes who had betrayed us and joined the evil Titan Lord Kronos." Hermes was in the side of the gods, but now he had betrayed them and will help the Titan Kronos to kill them and have the control of Mount Olympus again after a lot of time.

Percy is having problems again and also, strange things are happening in Camp Half-Blood. Finding a half-blood such as Quinton with a big hellhound as a pet is not something normal nor finding an old half-blood. The gods, also are having problems and changes because Hermes changed to the evil side and Poseidon is trying to avoid monsters that want to kill him. Percy was told in dreams that Nico di Angelo was going to get back his sister through a revenge. If Nico is going to take revenge, who will be the affected?

New School New Problems New Monster

Percy Jackson is arriving to a new school called Goode High School  and here is where Paul Blofis (Percy mother´s boyfriend) works. When arriving there, Percy finds Rachel, who is a girl that he have seen before, and two Cheerleaders that seem strange to him. The Cheerleaders were empousas which are monsters that in these case, were sent there by Kronos in order to fight and kill him. Percy will kill those beasts and also cause a fire on the school because of the explosion that occured when he killed the monsters. Annabeth will go to the school and take Percy out of there, Rachel will stay to explain everything to the director and defend Percy.

"Just before the celestial bronze hit her, Kelli exploded into flames like a Molotov cocktail. Waves of fire splashed over everything." Percy killed the empousa, but the explosion will burn the school and may take Percy some problems.
""I´ll make up some story," Rachel said. "I´ll tell them it wasn´t your fault. Just go!"" Rachel is going to save Percy from the problems, but she want to know more about half-bloods in exchange of defending him.

To every school to which Percy attends, he founds monsters and gets in trouble because of fighting them. He never finished a school year because he will be kicked out before the end of it. In this case it was a little different from other times because this happened before starting the school year and he escaped instead of being kicked out from the school. In these school, he only find more problems and another fight with another monster.

Improving Security

After the 9/11, American authorities are viewing how they can improve security to protect the country from this terrorist attacks. After the destroy of the World Trade Center, the United States spended a lot of money on improving the national security. They know that the major enemy are the Islamist groups of terrorism. Now, they set some goals to improve the security and some of them are to prevent the growth of terrorism and prepare people for future attacks. Americans know that another attack can occur at any moment, but for the next time, they want to be prepared in order to protect people.

"Total federal spending on defense (including expenditures on both Iraq and Afghanistan), homeland security, and international affairs rose more than 50 percent, from $354 billion to about $547 billion. The United States has not experienced such a rapid surge in national security spending since the Korean War."
In a lot of time, the U.S. didn´t spend that amount of money and all these can tell that this attack was massive.
"Islam is not the enemy. It is not synonymous with terror. Nor does Islam teach terror."
Islam is not bad and they don´t teach terror, but there are some extremist groups that attack places and those people are the enemies.

America took the Islamist attacks seriously and really wanted to improve the security of the country. They are clear on who the enemy is and invested big amounts of money because the are concerned about the protection of the citizens. They also know that more attacks may occur and they are doing all what they can in order to try to prevent them or prepare people from them. They know the whole situation and it will be easier to be prepared on the future.

Staying Safe

President Bush was flying to Nebraska because he needed a safe place and also a location where he can speak and give reports. In Nebraska, Bush had a conference with Rice and they concluded that they are involved in a war. Specifically, members of the government stayed in Offutt Air Force Base in which fifty people could stay. As planed, U.S. president stayed in Nebraska for some time and after that, he flew back to the White House in Washington D.C. passing over the Pentagon. Protections from Al Qaeda will be better and the war was against this extremist group from the Middle East.

"President Bush met with his principal advisers through a secure video teleconference. Rice said President Bush began the meeting with the words, "We´re at war," and that Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said the agency was still assessing who was responsible, but the early signs all pointed to al Qaeda."
Everybody is concerned about the topic of the attacks and the war that they are having against the Al Qaeda group.
"Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska was chosen because of its elaborate command and control facilities, and because it could accommodate overnight lodging for 50 persons."
This was a very good place for people to stay so they selected it in order to have good instruments and security.

The president thought a lot about his security and he had chosen the best place for him and his men to stay. They got out of the White House and the Pentagon because they were attacked and they were dangerous places. After having the conference, they considered that it was safe to go back to Washington D.C. This was a memorable day for the U.S., but more for the government and they will be more alert if someone attacks again.

Knowing All About it

On March 23, Condoleezza Rice was told that Bin Ladin was planning to attack the U.S. and he might use a truck bomb. People started getting alert when there was a repoert that Al Qaeda might be using aircrafts to attack the cities of London, Boston, and New York. Three months later, the government and agencies discovered that Al Qaeda is located in different parts of the Middle East and maybe they could be in Rome too. Agencies discovered that attack are imminent because there are people concentrated on the borders of the country. Bin Ladin and Al Qaeda told to the U.S. that they are planning a massive attack and they will follow the plan in short time.

"Clarke warned National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that domestic or foreign terrorists might use a truck bomb-their "weapon of choice"-on Pennsylvania Avenue." Rice was adviced that Al Qaeda will use a truck bomb and they actually used it, but in the World Trade Center instead of Pennsylvania Avenue.
"In early May, a walk-in to the FBI claimed there was a plan to launch attacks on London, Boston, and New York." They got information of the places that would be attacked and now, they knew barely what Al Qaeda meant to do.

Agencies and investigators got a lot of good information about the attacks that were being planned by the extremists. They knew the places that might be attacked and were these people were concentrated. These information was reliable and through spying, they got it from good sources and also from the actual extremist plans. If the U.S. knew almost everything, Why didn´t they stopped the attacks or improved security in important placessuch as airports?

FBI is Unprepared

In 9/11, in addition of the airplanes, they had a truck with bombs that a man put in the underground garage to blow up the building after crashing the planes. FBI, had arrested people from the Middle East that were entering to the U.S., but also other members of Al-Qaeda could enter to the country. FBI did a good job in arresting people that were going to cause damage in the country at the JFK Airport. Also, some people accessed so there were failures in FBI spying system too. There were a lot of errors and one of them was the poor training of the analysts and spyers because they didn´t have too much experience in counterterrorism and also they couldn´t speak foreign languages like the ones they speak in the Middle East.

"This was not a suicide attack. The terrorists parked a truck bomb with a timing device on Level B-2 of the underground garage, then departed." Terrorist attack was planned very well and they had some alternatives in case of something failing or going wrong.
"Ramzi Yousef, the Sunni extremist who planted the bomb, said later that he had hoped to kill 250,000 people." This person planted the bomb expecting to kill thousands of people, but fortunately only 6 people died in the attack of the bomb.

These extremists´ objective is to kill a lot of people in New York and to destroy the World Trade Center also. Their plans to reach the goal are inhuman and here we can understand that they will do whatever it takes to kill people and do whatever they want. On the other hand, FBI had to be prepared to deal with any attack from other people, but in these case, they were certainly unprepared. Some FBI errors and bad intentions from these extremists lead to one of the most terrible catastrophes in the history of the United States.

Airplanes are hijacked

In September 11th, 2001, nineteen terrorists were aboarding the flights: American 11, United 175, American 77, and United 93. The different terrorists passed through the security checkpoints and boarded the airplane. These flights departed from Boston, Newark, and Washington D.C. in between 7:30 and 9:00 am. After final contact with the towers, the planes were hijacked by this group. Two airplanes collided with the World Trade Center, one with the Pentagon, and another in an abandoned field in Pennsylvania after a battle between the bad guys and the passengers.

"At Dulles International Airport in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., five more men were preparing to take their early morning flight." Five terrorists were going to an airplane in Washington D.C. and this plane will be the one that will end colliding near the White House inside of the Pentagon.
"At 8:46:40, American 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City." This is the first hijacked plane and one of the two that crashed the World Trade Center.

There was suspect about these terrorists getting into the airplanes, but they were allowed to go becaused they passed through the checks. Once they were in the air, there was nothing that people could do, only wait to see what happens. Some brave passengers almost controlled the United 93 flight, but the bad guys crashed it before people rescuing it. This was a massive attack that will always be remembered by the whole world, but especially by the Americans.