I didnt even think it was real. I was almost sure it was a joke. The Desk Clerk at the Dorm I was living in told me the brief rundown of what had happened, (this is just after I had come downstairs and woken up, just after the tower one had come down). I was so sure he was joking. I mean that it could even happen, and that anyone would try it! Impossable! For me it was as clear as that. One Night I went to sleep never having considered for a moment that American, as vulnerable as she was, would ever be forced to change like this. The next morning it was a new world, even though only this one thing had changed.

Chairman Mao, one of the worst dictators of all time, constantly employed the tactic of lying low and doing nothing and waiting to see who his enemies really were before he would lash out and destroy them.

We laid low without thinking for long enough and it is clear to me now as it was on that day who the enemies of this country are.

vengence is mine is a popular biblical expression and a generally very good quote, but these things we have to do arent vengenance. They are common sense. This struggle was forced upon us that they and let us never forget that fact. Now that we are in this lets win it all the way, and then worry about who we have offended or what new international law we have made.

Nothing else can replace the horror of that moment on tv and in the world with some sort of meaning. Those three thousand who died should just be paving the way for the criminal terrorists and pepetrators who will follow them.

Great idea Charles,
My story seems so paltry to the happenings of that day. All I can say is that I watched it live on CNN and will never ever forget that day. I cry whenever I see those images.

It not only changed the world, it changed me.

I have just read some of the stories on the previous thread..
I can hardly read through the tears.

The terrorists, their supporters and the evil cult behind this will pay.

We will never forget and we will never submit.

I live on a very tiny island off the coast of Vancouver Island. I got up that morning and took the dog for a walk. I hadn't turned on the TV because my wife is not that well and sleeps very late.

As I was walking the dog one of my fellow islanders was driving by on a golf cart and told me that someone had flown a plane into the World Trade Centre.

To be honest I didn't really believe him.

So I headed back to the house and turned on the TV. I was wearing some wireless head phones so my wife wouldn't be woken up.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

After about an hour, my wife came downstairs. She looked at my face and said "What happened, did the world come to an end?"

I said "Almost".

I am a Canadian living in Toronto, but I was living in NYC on 9/11, and I was at Park avenue and 32nd at the time.

I will never forget my experience of that time. I did nothing particularly heroic. There was nothing for me to do. But being part of a city that came together, remained calm and quickly tried to get back to normality in the face of total chaos was inspiring.

Although I am back in Canada now, there is a part of me that will always be a New Yorker and an American.

That morning I was in Prescott, AZ at a friend's apt. She was in California at the time. The week before we came back from the Burning Man festival and all the stuff we took with us was covered with playa dust. I was cleaning things bit by bit. Tuesday I was doing the car. I'd take short breaks now and then and check my email and CNN. Then, all of a sudden, the CNN page started timing out. That usually meant some kind of breaking news, so I persisted. Then it came up with a banner "WTC North Tower hit by plane". There was not much by way of details so my first thought was some bonehead in a little Cessna trying to show off. So I went back to the car and kept coming back to the PC periodically. Then the news came of the second tower being hit and of the kind of jets involved. Its funny how some people, even for weeks afterwards, were saying, "Well, we just can't be sure who is responsible". But I knew, the moment I heard about the second plane. Only one terrorist group had the kind of sophistication to pull off something like this and moreover has done it twice already, with the African embassies and USS Cole. And I knew, too, that Bush would not deal with it the way Clinton did, by randomly firing off some cruise missiles and drawing up grand jury inditements. There would be a war.
For the rest of my stay in AZ, I found it pretty hard to deal with my rather LLL friend; I was too full of grief and rage.

I was in a morning meeting at work. We entered the meeting after the 1st tower had already been hit. We all thought it was some electrical fire or an idiot in a Piper or Cesna.

We had the TV on in the conference room so we could follow the breaking story.

As we were fixated on the TV, we all saw the 2nd plane hit the Tower. We couldn't believe it at first, but the replays confrimed it.

I was eating a bagel at the time. I was sitting next to a colleague who served in the Army Rangers.

Our manager who was giving a presentation said, "This meeting is over," a few seconds after the second plane hit.

Charles, you're the best. Seriously. Thanks for everything, you're my sanity.

The radio came on a little after 6 am (Pacific) and I heard the news that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. I woke up immediately with the thought "They're back."

Starting with the twin bombings of the African embassies in 1998, I was sure that Islamic terrorists were going to hit the US big time. It was disappointing that the President needed the second plane to get the picture.

A horrific and shocking event, but inevitable with open borders open to even our enemies.

OT -- Jeff Shaara on C-span2 live now talking about the Civil War for 3 hours. Pretty great.

My story is pretty much like most people not personally affected. Heard it on the news and time stopped and the jaw dropped.

My first thoughts were: Oh my god. It's those damned Swedish Lutherans.

It seems kinda ironic to me now that as the events of 9/11 were unfolding, I was in my junior year US & VA History class. The class started less than 10 minutes before the first plane struck, but we didn't hear about what was happening until shortly after the second plane impacted. We watched with silent witness as our country fell under attack. We listened to the reports of a plane striking the Pentagon, to the first reports of Flight 93's crash, and the hysteria that'd gripped the nation. We watched with horror as the two towers, symbols of America, fell from the New York City skies.

It was shortly after the second tower fell that I had to travel by car to my afternoon class at the local technology school. I listened to what I could on the radio, both from news radio and from the Mancow Morning Radio show out of Chicago. There was no lesson that afternoon, as we all sat and watched the news reports come in. And when I went home, all I watched was the continuing news reports. I'll never forget that day, as much as I'd like to sometimes.

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Out of the clear blue sky.

My expectant wife and I were listening to Morning Edition as the Memphis traffic crept westward. Bob Edwards broke in to say that they were following up a report of a small plane that had crashed into the World Trade Center. A small plane, hmmm... I thought, remembering the WTC had been attacked before, in 1993. Hope it wasn't loaded with biological weapons. My background is in microbiology, I suppose if I were a chemist or physicist, I would have considered different nightmares.

The NPRniks continued their speculations --was it a commuter, or sightseeing plane? how could it have not seen the building?-- and I commented right along with the radio, telling my wife "I hope it's not terrorism." I thought, that'd be a good way to disperse something nasty, from a centrally located tall building like that. Then in a few minutes, the fog of war, which had already begun (though we who only watched and listened didn't know it yet) rolled in thick and fast in an instant, as the second plane hit.

Washington-based NPR was as confused as everyone else --there was another plane crash? the other tower? that can't be right...-- but as it was gradually confirmed that the second plane had hit, that both towers were on fire, the conclusion was obvious. Terrorists. The further conclusion, that we were now at war, would not settle in for several hours, as the shock of the attacks was absorbed, and the day's horrific news and images continued.

We arrived at work, and in the basement where my office is, there is no radio or T.V., so I was with the flash crowd of millions hitting the web servers hard that morning, bringing the Internet to a crawl with our refresh buttons. Access to major media sites was intermittent, so I turned to Slashdot, where those who could get information were posting it as fast as they could, amid the comments of anger, horror and grief. It was good to have somewhere to talk about this...

I'd been online since 1992, as a regular on Usenet's talk.politics.guns since before there was a World Wide Web, and I had already heard of Glenn Reynolds due to his law review articles on Second Amendment issues, so when I found out a few weeks later he had something called a "blog," I started reading Instapundit. Following his links, I hung out at Rand Simberg's Transterrestrial Musings for a while (who, unlike the Blogfather, had a comments section), commented a bit there and on Steven Den Beste's U.S.S. Clueless (back when he had comments ;) ), and then one day decided to click on something absurdly named "Little Green Footballs".

Thanks, Charles.

I was at work. My mother called and said a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I thought that it was a small one, like the one that hit the Empire State Building years ago. Then she called again and said that another plane had hit the WTC. Then she called AGAIN and said one had hit the Pentagon. The FIRST thing I said was, "It's Osama bin Lauden who did this". And then I said a prayer for all who had died in the attack. I tried to get on the internet, which went down where I was working. But the Dean in our department had a television in his office and we went there. I watched for awhile, then I could bear no more and by then the internet was back. I surfed the net for news and exchanged e-mails all day long.

I didn't get much done that day, no one did. When I got home, I watched the news. And I made a vow that I would never forget, and never forgive. And after that day, I totally lost patience with the intellectualoids who ask "Why do they hate us?" There is good and there is evil and it's really not too hard to tell the difference.

9/11 was first day of the semester for two courses I was to begin teaching at a Western Canadian university, 2 hours behind NYC. I normally turn on the news when I get up in the morning, but because I was focused on the first day of classes, I hadn't bothered on 9/11.

My office was located in a research centre on campus, and when I entered it at ~0850 local time (just after the Pentagon was hit, I believe), there was only a senior graduate student and a secretary present.

He immediately blurted out "DID YOU HEAR THE NEWS? BOTH TOWERS OF THE WTC WERE HIT BY AIRCRAFT, BOTH CAME DOWN, THE PENTAGON HAS JUST BEEN HIT BY ANOTHER, TWO OTHER PASSENGER JETS ARE MISSIING!!", that last an erroneous bit of initial reporting, though reflecting the fate of the plane that went down in Pennsylvania.

So I got the 10 megaton version of the story in one fell swoop...

My reaction, inside my head: You're s***ing me...no, he's really bouncing off the walls here...I look over to the secretary, because all the usual websites were flooded, she had some site on the screen that I'd never heard of (not LGF) describing the attack, I begin thinking of Orson Welles and the "War of the Worlds" hoax/hysteria, I say "Are reputable news organizations (sic) saying this?" The student reacts incredulously, insisting that it's true...just then a TV ordered from the media department arrived, it was set up, non-stop for the rest of the week...

It was a mad house in the centre for the rest of the day, fielding media calls for comment, etc. (we did security/strategic studies).

Lots of concern about likely casualty rates, particularly at the Pentagon and any people there the centre had been in contact with. As news began filtering through about the AQ/Taliban/Afghan connection, my own suggestion to the student mentioned above was that if I was Dubya, the idea of nuclear strikes against the Afghan terrorist training camps, occupied or not, would at least be on the table as an option for action that day...to make it clear in no uncertain terms that this is just not something that anyone does and walks away from...and that any means necessary will be employed against our enemies.

Also a feeling of frustration at the anticipated feeble commitment I knew our government would show on behalf of our allies, particularly as this was as much our fight as theirs.

That's an honest synopsis, not wisdom after the fact.

Also, one student affiliated with the centre had a relative who worked at the WTC; because she was low-person on the totem pole at her firm, she had to take her summer vacation that week...the daughter of a friend of a friend litterally was at the outside base of the first tower as the plane struck; she was late for a meeting that had been scheduled for 0830.

I was watching Fox that morning and getting my 7th grader ready for school. The news flashed to the view of the tower and the announcer saying that a plane had hit it. We jumped into the car, and I turned on the radio. They had aman on the phone from New York who was watching the fire in the first tower. Out of nowhere this man began screaming-OHMYGOD< OHMYGOD. I almost had a wreck.I ended up going back to the school to pick my daughter up.After watching the images of the towers coming down and the Pentagon being hit, I was convinced that there was more to come. I think back now, and am glad my son was only 3 at the time and couldn't understand the images on the television. But he was definitely old enough to know mommy was very upset. When I got up to the school, there were several other parents there. The ones that I really noticed were the active duty military in their BDU's. Apparently, I was not the only one worried. That is the day I started researching Islam. And the more I learned, the worse it got. Thank God for Charles and LGF!

Repost

I reside 1/4 mile from the WTC site. I was readying myself for work when the first plane hit the North Tower.

That first plane flew right down my street, darkening my living room window. I heard the whrr of the jet engines. Next I felt a vibration, then I heard a rumble. I heard people shouting in the street 29 floors down. My windows face east and north so I was essentially clueless with WTC to the south.

I turned on one of the radio news stations and heard that a small plane hit the north tower. Turning on the local TV news channel, I saw the horizontal gash in the North Tower. I saw the South Tower hit on live TV.

I used the concourse level of WTC as a shopping mall. I hadn't been in the towers themselves since the garage was hit in 1993. Lots of folk down here suspected that similar minded types would be back.

I was lucky. No family or friends lost. The debris field ended two blocks to the south. I'm on the first block heading north that retained electricity. I lost hot water for a week and landline phone for a month.

My corner was a staging zone. Featured prominently on tonight's MSNBC special.

Sadly, that day, we found out what it was like to be Israeli.

We who read LGF woke up that day.

It was our december 7, 1941. It truly was a day that changed the world.

While many have hit the snooze button and gone back to sleep, for us, the restless, we are changed, so profoundly that I pity our enemies, for on 9/11/2001, their evil game was for once and all cemented into out consciousness.

While today our leaders may not have the courage to fight militant Islam, there is a new generation of people who have seen the truth and will not rest until this evil is defeated.

Steven King wrote of a day when survivers of a catastrophy had to take a stand. We are at that time in our history, and we have no option but to win.

It was a beautiful day in Toronto. I was starting to work on a new painting and had just turned Howard Stern on the radio. The first plane had hit a few minutes before and you could tell from his voice that something odd was going down (yes, odd even for Stern). I turned on the TV and didn't move for the whole day.

I'm convinced that if the US is ever nuked by the islamofascists, our radiochemists will discover that the nuke came not from Iran, or Russia, or Iraq, or North Korean, but from pakistan (which, incidentally, is the source of nuke technology for Iran and NK). Pakistan already has the bomb, and their intelligence services and army are so infested with Islamists that it's impossible for there not to be some collusion there.

I simply cannot understand why Bush continues to support these people. Whatever piddling amount of overt help they are giving us is nothing compared to the covert help they are still giving to the Taliban, and Pakistan's nuclear program is a direct threat to the US, the west, and Israel.

I've heard all the arguments about how we need Musharraf to fight the Islamists, and I think that's bullshit. As many people both in India and in Pakistan itself have pointed out, the army in Pakistan has always controlled the Islamist terrorsts, and not the other way around. If it wasn't for weapons and money and training supplied by the Pakistani army, the Islamists in Pakistan would have nothing but their rhetoric.

We already lost 3,000 Americans to terrorists backed by Pakistan. How many more do we have to lose before the American people see what is going on here?

I was having coffee at a local coffee shop in my neighborhood in the Bronx when a guy came in and said that a plane had hit one of the WTC towers. Everyone was speculating as to whether it was an accident.

I had called for a car service to go to work, because I was running late, and it arrived before I had heard anything more. We must have been one of the last cars allowed into Manhattan on the West Side Highway before all the roads, bridges, tunnels and airports were closed. All kinds of emergency vehicles were flying past us down the road. I have no idea how the driver got back up to the Bronx after he dropped me off.

By the time I got to the office on the Upper East Side, the second plane had hit. All the telephone trunk lines were full, and cellphones weren't working (since the transmission towers were on the WTC), so I couldn't call my son, who was in Providence, to tell him I was OK. I finally reached a friend in Boston via email and asked him to call my son, which he did.

I couldn't reach my best friend, who was living on West 13th between Sixth and Seventh in the West Village, a mere hop, skip and jump away from the WTC. The area that was closed to the public started at 14th Street, so her block was included. I didn't hear from her until the next day.

I was marooned in Manhattan until sometime between 1 and 2 pm, when Metro North started running trains out of Grand Central. The city bus down Fifth Avenue was running as far as 42nd Street and not collecting fares. I walked to Grand Central, where there were no schedules in effect. Trains would come in, load up and leave as fast as possible. People were getting to Jersey by ferry.

I got on a packed Hudson Line train to Spuyten Duyvil and stood on the platform between two cars with about 6 or 7 other people. Nobody had much to say - we just looked at one another. Everyone was disheveled, starey-eyed and in shock.

I was never so grateful to get home to Riverdale as I was that day. I sat glued in front of the TV with my Airedale terrier for company and with tears running down my face for the rest of the day.

I live on the west coast. I sleep very heavily and to make sure I wake up on time Ive rigged my light, clock radio and TV to all go off at the same time. Sometimes even that doesnt work.

When I did wake up that morning I was still pretty cottonheaded. Looking at CNN sideways I couldnt make sence of what the picture was they were showing. Slowly sitting up right and paying closer attention I saw the first tower on fire. Man on Tv said some one had plowed a plane into the building. I remembered the last attack on the WTC and I figured some Al Quaeda jerk had flown a cessna into the thing.

Dumbasses. Hope their dirty night shirts get infected with lice.

I was running late. Turned off the TV. Jumped into the shower for about 10 seconds then ran out the door. Just caught the bus to the train.

There were hardley anyone on the train. Strange. Rush hour usually means standing room only. Oh well. I sat down and enjoy'd the room. My walkmans batteries were dead so I lightly dozed till my stop.

About an hour after I got my little store opened and running my boss came in. "Have you heard? Both buildings fell down" he said strangley quietly. Charlie is always loudly happy. Not today.

"what are you talking about? The WTC? But I thought a little cessna had hit the one tower"

"No. 747's. They each were hit"

I drug out an old TV from the back room and turned it on. The only station I could get in clear was Dan Rather. End of the world and Im forced to watch a Simpsons character escapee.

I didnt cry that day even though I understood that we were now at war in a VERY big way. Knew were in for a fight that would ... in the end... be as big maybe as what my grandparents faced. Also understood that the Dems and the Left would be against Bush and the War every step of the way. Hatred of the Right (and hence Bush) and war protests are part of thier genetic code. They almost cant help themselves. Doesnt make my distaste for their dangerous silliness any less.

Was absorbed by the TV for 3 straight days. Paced back and forth, full of a growing anger. Anger like I havent felt since I was in the 2nd grade and some kid nearly twice my size spent the entire year beating me up.

Customer came into my store. "Yea, the attack. Thats pretty horrible.... Say do you have.." He asked for something I no longer carried. I wanted to strangle him. The way he just sort of blew off what was happening, what was GOING to happen so he could get some new little do-dad to plug into his entertainment center... I really and truly wanted to strangle him, or yell at him "GOD DAM YOU!! DONT YOU KNOW WE ARE GOING TO WAR!!!???"

I didnt. Need the job. Rent to be paid.

I cried finaly when the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace plaid the American anthem instead its normal tune. Im a grown man, at the time 31. I havent cried since that bully was the center piece of my world. The sympathy europe was showing us was incredibly moving.

But every time they showed some display of sympathy from across the pond I couldnt help but wonder if such support would hold when the fighting started. Never been there but everything Ive read suggested the place was so wacko left-socialist that they would be more apt to wag their finger at us when the shooting started than to help us remove this cancer from the world. I was right.

Act one of the war on terror is over. Afghanistan and Iraq have been overthrown but there is still a long way to go. Nukes in North Korea, Iran... Pakistan to. And the latter is closer everyday to being taken over by Taliban clones. Saudi Arabia hunches still like some desert version of Mordor.... evil oozing out of it to taint all parts of the world.

And the road map has failed like we all knew it would. Busses blowing up here and there and Hamas being swatted like disease carrying pests.

Welcome back to the War on Terror. Act II scene 1

Never for get. Never let go of the anger and outrage of that day.

My experience is a bit different than normal I guess, because of where I was at the time and the lack of TV access for much of the day.

The first tower was hit while I was in the shower, and I got out just after the second plane hit. I had to leave for school right away, so I just had time to learn two planes had crashed into the WTC. I knew it was a terror attack, but I thought they had used Cessnas, not passenger liners. By the time I got to my first class everyone was talking about it. People asked who would do this, and I knew instantly that it Bin Laden. I remembered his previous actions, and intentions, and realized instantly he was behind it. However, in my first class I didn't have TV access, so we actually went through some of the things we were supposed to for a short while, but not long. My teacher was pre-occupied, he was trying to make phone calls all during the class. As class ended he explained why: a female friend of his was a flight stewardess, and might have been on one of the planes(Later we learned she wasn't). Here I guess things get interesting, as the only new info we had was from people coming and going. Someone came in late, and told us that They had hit the Pentagon with a plane, and that the State department had been hit with a car bomb.

At my next class, I still didn't have TV access, so the rumors built up. First, I learned that the father of one of the students in my class was supposed to be heading home from the East Coast, he was supposed to have been on one of the planes that hit the WTC. Fortunately for him, he decided to wait another day before coming hom. However, it took several hours to learn that. So you can imagine the panic that she felt. Things got worse however, as now I was hearing that the big mall in DC was on fire, in a big way. So for me, 9/11, at first at least, was a huge event, with Al Qaeda mounting a full scale terror assault. It was only later i learned what had really happened, but that was bad enough.

Eventually I realized that just the Pentagon and WTC had been hit, but the realization that the WTC was gone more that made up for the lack of other targets. I couldn't believe it when i first saw the towers go down on CNN. I couldn't understand why they would now, and not when the planes crashed. I didn't know that the fire fighting systems in the buildings couldn't handle jet fuel. Also, one of the things I heard from Fox, I think it was, was that Rumsfield hadn't been seen since the plane hit the Pentagon. So for a while there I thought that he had died too. Eventually the picture became clearer, but it all remains seared into my mind, inaccuracies and all, and will continue to do so as long as I draw breath.

I was at work, in a meeting. As I returned to my desk my boss, looked up & said 'America is on fire - the Worlds Trade Center has been hit, the Pentagon has been bombed'. My first thoughts were for 3 of my friends who were in NYC on holiday. Then as it sunk in, I thought it's WW3.

I tried to get internet news - it was very sporadic.

I went home & saw the footage for the first time & cried. Then I got very angry. I'm still angry.

Please excuse my typing, I took shop in high school.-I also wanted to add why 911 felt so personal to me. About 6 yrs ago, my husband was a full time flight instructor at a local flight school here in San Antonio. The flight school was owned by a man named Hameed(shock). He was a nice man, but the majority of the students my husband instructed were(shock) arabs. Hameed also had a nasty habit of not doing the background checks on these people before issuing their airport IDS. He would simply sign off on them. Imet several of these people-had many in my home from time to time as guests. One student even came on a hunting trip with my family and my hubby(shock). Most were from pakistan, and ALL-with the exception of one, were total drunks and perverts. One named Haroon, was constantly borrowing money from my hubby because he spent all of daddy sheik's money at All Stars.(men's club). There wre times my husband refused to fly with him because he was so hungover. One thing my husband did remark on after 911 was to say how shocked he was that these guys could fly the jets so proficiently-because ALL the arabs he taught were the worst pilots he had ever taught. Needless to say, I called the FBI and told them about this flight school. I ,nor my husband was ever contacted.However, the school was investigated, and shut down. Come to find out, one of the nineteen trained there-Yep! That hits close to home!

9/11 was the first day of this course I was teaching that term. I remember getting up in the morning and trying to read the NYT online, but I couldn't get to. I couldn't get to CNN, WaPo, the BBC, the Hindustan times, or anything else, either. I couldn't get to any news site, there was so much traffic. I didn't realize why at the time, though. Then one of my dorm mates came and told me that someone had crashed a plane into the WTC.

I saw the picture on CNN, and I couldn't believe it was a jetliner. The hole looked so small, at first, I thought it was a cesna or something.

When the towers came down, I thought, "this is it for the terrorists. We are going to come down on them like the wrath of God and wipe them from the earth." But I was wrong. Since then, I have been filled with a profound sense of hopelessness, as I see our leaders ignore or even appease the worst terrorists and terrorist-supporting states (the PA, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia) in the world. I wish I could feel more confident about the future, but I don't

For some reason (I can't remember why) I was at the Capo Inn at that moment. (At the Navy base at Capodichino that's the upscale quarters for transient personnel.)

There's always a TV on in the lobby. At that moment, the TV was showing the first tower already burning. I thought it was some "War of the Worlds" thing. Then I watched as the second plane crashed into the other tower. I started listening to the Italians talking excitedly about it and then I realized it wasn't a show. It was real.

I ran back to my office to spread the news. I said that planes had crashed into the WTC. There was a Lieutenant Commander there with whom I had never got on. He was a typical know-it-all smart ass. When I related what happened, he said "Where in the World Trade Center?" I answered, "The Twin Towers! What other World Trade Center is there?"

He looked like he was about to respond to an insubordinate enlisted person. But he sort of froze. Then he really didn't say anything.

That night I went home and got good and stinky. Haven't been the same since.

I had just left the office to go to my first school. I drive from school to school every day working with visually impaired and blind children so they can stay mainstreamed in their neighborhood schools. As I turned the corner onto a main road, I heard on the radio that a plane had chrashed into the World Trade Center. At the exact same moment as I heard this there was a minor fender-bender accident on the crossroad. It didn't seem to do any damage to either car, so I kept going. As I was pulling into my first school, a late-starting middle school, I heard that a second plane had crashed.

I ran into the school, went to the teacher's lounge, and saw the damage. It didn't register emotionally. It didn't even seem possible.

After a half-hour, I went to the media center to meet with my student. He never showed up. His parents had (wisely, in my opinion) kept him home. The TVs in the media center were running, showing the scene while rumors started flooding in about an attack on the Pentagon, other planes crashing, possible car bombs. When the first tower fell, it seemed like something out of a movie. Utter shock. I knew then that the second tower would fall, I just hoped it could be evacuated.

I cancelled my session with my other student at the school and drove to my last school, a high school with a sophmore who has me as a credit teacher. The other tower fell while I was on my way, with me screaming "No! No!" and slamming my fist into the steering wheel so hard it left a bruise.

I had to eat; I was starving and had skipped breakfast, so I ran into a drug store, bought a portable radio, then ran into a McDonalds to gulp down a cheeseburger while listening to the news. The TV was on in there, too, with customers and employees standing around it in shock, occasionally quietly talking about what was going on.

I met my high school student, and we spent the entire session in the media center watching news footage, with me explaining what was happening on the screen that he couldn't see. He had actually been in history when the news broke, and his teacher had stopped her lesson, turned on the news, and grimly told her students "Never forget this day. This is history."

I remember watching Peter Jennings on the news criticizing President Bush for not being on his way back to DC, despite the fact that less than three hours had passed since the fall of the second tower. I remember remarking to my student with disgust "Looks like some one's got an agenda."

Most of the rest of the day, the week is a blur. Endless news reports. Speculation. Rumors. Talking with friends and family.

The naive part of me died that day, the part of me said that reason and friendship could always carry the day. Any respect I had for excuse-makers, peaceniks, and pacifists died that day. The fury remains.

I had just gotten to work. I came out of my office for some reason and one of the secretaries told me a plane had just hit the WTC. I honestly waited for the punch line; I thought it was a joke. Then I could see by her face that it was not. I knew exactly who had done it, though at the time I thought it was a private plane; the airliners didn't cross my mind.

[As an aside, I worked - as a civilian - for V Corp G-2 in Frankfurt, West Germany, in the early 1970's when all this international terrorism crap started, so a lot of this is "been there, done that" for me.]

When I found out about the airliners and the whole scope of the attack, my thought was "they finally got it right." For years, the various terrorists' attacks hadn't really accomplished much - they seemed on the whole pretty incompetent, compared to what they could have done with a little thought and a lot less idiology - but 9/11 was the big score, the splashy headline-grabbing statement they had been trying for for so long. And I remember thinking that, while they thought they'd made a big score, Clinton was no longer president and they had no idea what they'd unleased against themselves.

I remember being amazingly calm - probably because of my experiences in Germany (our headquarters was bombed by the Baader-Mainhofs) - but thinking, we're going to war. And I'm too old to sign up, damn it.

Midday I received a call from my volunteer rescue squad that our county was getting up a response team. [We're in the Richmond, VA, area, less than 2 hours from the Pentagon.] I shut down my computer, told my boss goodbye, see ya' whenever, and left. All he said was be careful. In less than an hour and a half, I had driven home from downtown, changed, packed a bag and left a note for a neighbor to take care of my new kitten, and driven to the squad (the drive to the squad alone is usually 25 minutes). I joined the others who were making up our crews, checking out the ambulances we would take and stocking them with extra supplies. Then we watched TV and waited. And waited. It became apparent that those people who didn't get out of the WTC or the Pentagon right away weren't going to get out. Too many dead, not enough injured to need us. We eventually were let go as long as we could get back to the squad, ready to leave town, in an hour, if we were needed to help with body recovery. [We were given the choice of dropping off the crews if we didn't want to be involved in that - and we all knew it meant body part recovery - but nobody did.]

I think that was the worst part. We're use to dealing with injuries, mass casualties, and even death, but there was nothing we could do to help. Anyone who didn't get out right away was beyond help.

I keep my bag packed and ready to go. It's getting cool now, so I'll put a jacket back in. My squad has all the numbers where they can reach me and others who have the freedom to go at a moment's notice. I hope I never have to use that emergency bag, but I don't trust these bastards, or their fellow travellers.

I will never forget. I will never forgive.

Because I'm in the UK, I was five hours ahead. The first plane hit the north tower at about 1:45PM GMT.

I was at school. We'd just finished lunch, and were watching an Aussie soap. It finished, and all but two of my friends left. I went back to see what they were up to, and they were sat staring at the television. As I looked to see what they were watching, the second plane hit.

I sunk in to a seat and just stared at the burning buildings, the replays, the flames, for twenty minutes before we were told to go down to lessons.

I couldn't work all afternoon. I didn't feel anything. I wasn't callous, just numb. "All those people..." kept running through my head.

After school, I watched the TV all afternoon. When someone suggested we change the channel, I told them that my country had just been attacked and if they wanted to change it, they'd have to go through me.

9/11 was the first time I considered myself American.

I should add that I was never truly angry about 9/11 until the first anniversary. That day, I was angrier than I've ever been, and, I hope, ever will be.

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I worked with a muslim woman then. She asked "who could have done such a thing?" Said, "L, it was either the Chi Coms or muslims." She immediately teared up and said "no, not the muslims please no." She cried when she discovered that muslims had indeed been the ones who piloted the planes into the towers. She was very much afraid of an anti-muslim backlash.

She also said that the mosque she went to (in the Chicago area)had young men who were more than willing to go to Gaza or the West Bank and begin killing Jews. She said that islam was whacked out and that it needed to change before the world rose up against it to stamp it out.

One of her comments was "some of the worst sluts I've ever known wore full burkas/habibs."

All in all she was a fun person to know. She had, as a child in Lebanon, gone to a Catholic Church because they had the best youth choir and her father wanted her to learn how to sing.

Her father had been shot and wounded by arafat's thugs and still carried around some of the bullet fragments. Seems he wanted to collect on some money owed to him and was shot instead.

I heard on the car radio about the first plane crashing into the towers and at first thought is was some of the folks on WLS screwing around again. Wish that is what it was. You get used to certain sounds and when they go away it messes with you. The sounds of the planes taking off and landing at O'hare just went away. When they resumed flying many people looked up to see what was going on. Even road traffic was subdued for the next few days.

My son's ship was deployed within a few hours of the incident. Since he was in search and rescue they put him in a helo to help out. He flew over the WTC for several hours that night. Since it was a night flight he wore the NVG (night vision goggles) and said that even several thousand feet up they could smell the smoke of the WTC burning. Looking into the WTC he said it looked like a boiling caldron of fire. After a couple days the Navy pulled out because there were no survivors that the city hospitals couldn't handle on their own.

Before moving to Milwaukee, I lived and worked in the Tribeca area of Manhattan, the WTC was just a 1/3 south of my apartment. I worked on Murray St., 2 blocks north of the WTC and often went there for lunch or shopping.

On 9/11 I just just gotten into the office when one of my co-workers (who had a radio at her desk) told me that a plane had crashed into the WTC. We listened to the radio until the 2nd jet hit. We then opended a conference room, turned on a TV, and watched the news of the other attacks, the collapse of the towers and the murder of 3,000 people. I saw my old neighborhood enveloped in smoke and dust and watched the people running from the collapses.

I think many people in my office were in a state of shock or fear. Many just left work and the office finally closed; everyone being told to go home.

I'll never forget 9/11 and I won't forgive. I don't want closure; I want the people responsible (and those who fund them) driven into the ground. If we don't stop them, they will surely attempt another mass murder.

On 9/11 I woke up to my husband on the phone yelling that “ 2 planes have hit the WTC in New York. I turned on one of the news channels to hear some dumb announcer exclaim “what kind of navigational error could cause 2 planes to hit the tower!” Are these people really that clueless?
That night there were over 1000 people at church for mass. In the weeks following the attack attendance at church rose dramatically. But, now we’re pretty much back to business as usual.

I was in high-school, my senior year, when the first tower was hit. The verdict was still out on whether it was terrorism or an accident until the 2nd plane hit, then I immediately turned to my friend Brett Beyer and told him "This was Osama Bin Laden." because, I mean, who else would have done that? For some reason I wrote in my notebook that day "We are all Israelis now." because I had been politically active in Israel's favor for a few months since I started reading the New Republic.

I remember being angry at the people at school the next day urging caution and saying "we don't know who did this" and I was yelling at them in class "Yes we do, it was Osama Bin Laden and Arab terrorists."

Then I vividly remembered a long conversation I had with a marine recruiter a year earlier when we talked about probable threats to the United States. China was the big bad threat back then but I told him that I figured China was too smart to start a fight with us. I told him specifically that the next big enemy of the US would be some crazy Arab Islamic fundies. I had always had kind of a prejudice against Islam because of the stereotypes about terrorism, which they are constantly reinforcing through their action or inaction. I had studied the Taliban before and I had wanted us to destroy them even before 9/11, so I was happy when we finally did.

I used to live 2 blocks from the WTC when I lived in New York for 14 years. My dad worked in the WTC for those 14 (thank God he had since retired)

I remember being asleep in my dorm room when my roomate who stayed at his parent's place the night before gives me a call early in the morning (ok, early by college standards). "Who the hell is calling this early? They've got some nerve," I thought.

"Did you hear that one of the World Trade Center towers was struck? Turn on the TV."

"You're shitting me. You're making this up." I exclaimed.

But I turned on the TV to make sure he wasn't telling some sick joke. Sure enough the 1st Tower was burning. And within minutes, I witnessed the second Tower being struck. I couldn't believe it. Then, the Pentagon was struck. Considering I go to college in DC (American University), we heard military jets flying overheard in our dorms soon afterwards. Here I was witnessing the collapse of my 2 favorite cities, New York and now DC. I wasn't scared. I was too shocked, too angry to be scared. I had never cared one iota about politics before 9/11, and with that moment, I soon wanted to know everything about world affairs.

My father knew people in the buildings who didn't make it, mostly business associates and one or two acquiantances. I know of friends who have lost close family to 9/11. Just last week, I found out my girlfriend's roomate lost her father to 9/11. I want to extend my grief to her (she just lost her mother to cancer this summer, poor girl), but I don't even know how.

Never forget. I sure as well won't.

I got the phone call early in the morning here in LA. It was total disbelief. As I watched the images on TV I took an accounting of everyone I knew to make sure they were okay, then I took off to go to work. We had deadlines looming, and our fall launch (TV) was upon us. A couple of us who went to or stayed at work basically got together and said okay, what airs this weekend that isn't finished. Realistically we knew that our broadcast would be preempted, but just in case, perhaps just in hope. We stayed to get the essentials done, because dammit, those bastards wouldn't win, they wouldn't make us live our lives differently, fearfully. I was angry. I was sad. I was pained greatly inside and out, and at one point, I'm not sure when exactly, I was in a room by myself and broke down and cried like hadn't cried in years or since.

9/11 strikes me as the day that our enemies made their greatest miscalculation, because even though I broke down and cried, I was angry. I'm still angry, but I'm not an angry person.

The world has been shown what true evil is and but has only to open its eyes.

We are not a perfect country, we are flawed and recognize this. We are young and still learning, but never forget that we were founded on the notion that the other systems to then were failures. Our fatal flaw may be that we respect too much as a society, we forgive too easily. How many out there would have felt that had the Taliban given us Osama bin Laden the debt would have been paid? We must not forget the events of 9/11, we must not forget that among the billion Muslims on the planet, that if only 1% want to kill the West, that's 10 million want us off the planet, and that 1% is very very conservative. As people in the middle east danced in the streets, gave candy to children, made commemorative lighters, etc., they stood up and made it clear their joy at our loss. Joy at the loss of civilians, many off whom probably felt that the US was a bully in the world, diverse in opinion on what stand the US should take after their deaths, whose voices were silenced by those who feel opinion is irrelevant, that we must all submit to Islam and Allah, or simply be enslaved or killed.

Know this, you will never make me believe in your god. I have read the Qu'Ran, and I will never accept a god to whom I am enslaved, I will never accept a god by whom I am not loved, I will never accept a god who demands that I kill anybody, for any reason.

The very first thing I did after 9-11 was purchase a Koran at my local Borders. The second thing I did was read it. The third thing I did was burn it in my fireplace. The Koran is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. Rather, it should be thrown with great force.

How I lived 9/11 in France:

I'll always remember this day.

3pm CET (Paris).

Could not work anymore for the tomorrow exam. Listening to the news: some plane has crashed in NYC. I immediatly turned on the TV and watched CNN : reporters cannot really comment what is really going on. As some cnn's guy gave his opinion in front of a blue screen, everybody could see a black spot, and then an explosion in the WTC. I couldn't believe it. Is it a repeat broadcast of the first crash ? The cnn's guy didn't stop his speech, because he wasn't monitoring what showed the blue screen. This was crazy. And then he stops talking. He couldn't resume, he was white as a sheet...

Then you know the tragedy.

I yelled and called everybody I could.

Could really not work anymore for the rest of the day.

French opinion was divided in two: it was "we all are americans" or "america deserves it". How could people react like this ? The most impressive and typical french reaction was "I don't care about what's going on, they [the french authorities] make me sick with their vigipirate" (vigipirate is the codename of a high security level where people think they're safe with soldiers in the subway).

#21 Mr. E. Train:

I cried finally when the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace plaid the American anthem instead its normal tune.

That was the exact precise moment when I lost it, too. I completely broke down when the Brits played that at the Changing of the Guard.

With that I leave you all (again, sorry) with a quote from Winston Churchill via Steven Den Beste:

No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! Yes, after Dunkirk; after the fall of France; after the horrible episode of Oran; after the threat of invasion, when, apart from the Air and the Navy, we were an almost unarmed people; after the deadly struggle of the U-boat war -- the first Battle of the Atlantic, gained by a hand's breadth; after seventeen months of lonely fighting and nineteen months of my responsibility in dire stress, we had won the war. England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live. How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end, no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care. Once again in our long Island history we should emerge, however mauled or mutiliated, safe and victorious. We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals. Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force. The British Empire, the Soviet Union, and now the United States, bound together with every scrap of their life and strength, were, according to my lights, twice or even thrice the force of their antagonists. No doubt it would take a long time. I expected terrible forfeits in the East; but all this would be merely a passing phase. United we could subdue everybody else in the world. Many disasters, immeasurable cost and tribulation lay ahead, but there was no more doubt about the end.

Silly people -- and there were many, not only in enemy countries -- might discount the force of the United States. Some said they were soft, others that they would never be united. They would fool around at a distance. They would never come to grips. They would never stand blood-letting. Their democracy and system of recurrent elections would paralyze their war effort. They would be just a vague blur on the horizon to friend or foe. Now we should see the weakness of this numerous but remote, wealthy, and talkative people. But I had studied the American Civil War, fought out to the last desperate inch. American blood flowed in my veins. I thought of a remark which Edward Grey had made to me more than thirty years before -- that the United States is like "a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate." Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.

(For those who don't know, Churchill's mother was American.)

i live pretty close to the WTC.

i'm on Henry Street due east of Chinatownand everyday as i walked down that street to the subway the towers were directly in front of me. i looked up at them every day.

i heard the first plane hit while i was getting out of the shower and the resonance of the boom made me stop in my tracks, but i assumed that a scaffolding down the street might have collapsed and i went on with getting dressed. as i walked out of my front door, there were people peppered across the intersection(in the street) frozen, looking up. i looked up and immediately realized why the woman i passed walking up the stairs of my buidling had that look on her face. the tower was burning and a massive cloud of black smoke was billowing out of it.

i ran up and woke my roommate and we went to the rooftop, where in a little bit of time i watched the second plane hit the other tower. when i think about it and visualize it in my head, i still get the palpable feeling of dread from that day.

(note -my roommate is squinting - NOT smiling)

i tried to post(link) a pic above but it didn't work....

I lived in California at the time - East of the San Francisco Bay, near Livermore.

My best friend called at 7:30am (roughly) to tell me that planes had hit the WTC, and one had collapsed. I knew right away that this was not one of his pranks.

We turned on the TV and the horror sunk in. Then sadness, then anger, then fury.

The fury remains.

I'm a a stock trader on a desk in Cincinnati, OH. My company had offices on Wall Street and in WTC 7. We got word shortly after the first plane hit that the Wall Street office's power was out because a plane had crashed into one of the towers. Coverage on TV and the Internet was sketchy and repetitive, so we watched the Dow Jones newswire for reports. The day unfolded like a nightmare. We didn't know when it would stop. Our office in WTC 7 was demolished by debris, but fortunately none of our people died. A bittersweet blessing.

Weirdly, it was my 53rd birthday. We live north of Seattle and I was sort of sleeping with my earphones in as I do and sometime in the morning I started hearing Peter Jennings (pthpt'!) saying that a jet had flown into the WTC. I jumped out of bed and ran out and turned on the tv. My station on the radio doesn't play Peter Jennings so it was like something was really wrong anyhow...
I yelled at my husband to get up that we were under attack and the rest of the day was much like all of our country's days from then on.
The terrfying thing for us personally was that my daughter was in the ai