Hunter S. Thompson and the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

I've spent a few minutes trying to verify this Hunter S. Thompson quote, which I've seen tweeted several times today -- the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerrilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.

These words can be found as part of a column published shortly after the attacks, as archived at ESPN.com, and a version of it apparently is included in the book Kingdom of Fear.

However, to google Hunter S. Thompson and 9-11 together yields a treasure trove of crackpot conspiracy theories about the writer's interviews in the aftermath of 9-11, and his subsequent death, which (naturally) wasn't suicide but murder.

This is why I don't go to Reddit.

Ever.

Still, if the above quote actually is Dr. Thompson writing just after the towers fell, it is remarkably prescient. We've been at war for 15 years, and there's no end in sight. A few days ago we visited the Antietam battlefield, and it prompted reflection -- about sacrifice, but also what comes after a bloody day. In the case of 9/11, we're still living it.