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.

Repost
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 air right then flying home from Japan and we had no idea where she was or what would happen to her as she lives in NYC. It took her five days to get home and was very frightening. They kept having her and the others spend nights in Alaska and other places with out their luggage or anything and the last day of the journey was on a bus. I'm sure so many people went through trips like that.
I knew immeadiately who had done it. There was no question.

It was the month of Elul and my daughter was blowing shofar in the morning minyan of our synagogue. Although she had permission from her (Jewish) school to arrive late, since it was for a good cause, I still had to get her there as soon as possible and it's about 20-25 minutes away. So after grabbing a bagel for breakfast, we did our normal leap into the car.

The radio's tuned to the local CBC news station and it must have been about 8:25 (9:25 NY time) because the sports reporter was on. He said, "It all seems kinda trivial, now, doesn't it, with the awful news about the plane crashing into the World Trade Center." I was very confused, and assumed it was a small plane that had had an accident.

By the time we got near the school it was clear that it was no accident. Just before I dropped her off I said to my daughter, "In years to come you will always remember where you were when you heard about this."
She said, "I don't want to always remember this, because it means it's something bad." "It is something bad," I told her.

I then had to drive to work. At the time I was doing a project for Air Canada. By the time I'd arrived and parked my car, the FAA had closed American airspace. My mind was reeling and, like so many others, I was waiting to hear that it was all an Orson Welles radio play.

I walked into the office and they were trying to rig up a TV (they were unsuccessful). Web sites were almost impossible to log on to. We listened to the radio, and cried and hugged each other when the towers fell. My husband, who works on the top floor of the Air Canada building, watched as scores of diverted planes flew overhead to land at Winnipeg airport.

I tried calling my parents in Israel but the lines were busy and I made the mistake of trying several times in quick succession. This triggered the automatic software on my calling card and cancelled it. I had to call the customer help line to get it reset--several times. I tried calling my older daughter, who a week earlier had just started her first year at Carleton University in Ottawa. I got her answering machine. (Months later she said, "You've no idea how much I wanted to come home when that happened." I said, "You've no idea how much I wanted you to be home.")

We knew it was terrorism, and we assumed it was Islamiststs. Several Air Canada people also said that the pilots must have been killed right away because they would never have flown their planes into buildings. When we heard about Flight 93, the assumption was that the pilots had somehow managed to stay alive and had ditched the plane. We only found out later about the heroic actions of the passengers.

There was talk of sending us to the airport to help with stranded passengers, but when it became clear that wasn't going to happen, I went home. There I turned on the TV and made my phone calls. For several weeks I watched far more news than was good for me.

One comment I feel I must make: Certainly there are plenty of LLLs here in Canada, and I'm not proud of our government. But please don't forget how we helped on September 11. We accepted many, many diverted flights, even when it was quite possible that there were other terrorists on some of those flights, and we took care of the passengers. If you haven't read the story before--or even if you have--please read about what happened in Gander, Newfoundland. You might even want to read the book The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede. It's very moving.

I originally posted this in the remembrance thread on 9/11/02. There are lots of other stories there in case you haven't read it yet.

***
I was sleeping in my apartment, two blocks north of Tower 1. I heard a boom and felt the bedroom shake a little bit, and opened my eyes. It was 8:47. Everything was very quiet for a moment. Then I heard a man on the street below say, loudly enough that I could hear him on the second floor with my window closed, "Oh, shit." I got out of bed, opened the window and looked to the left. Smoke was starting to come out of the top of the Tower, and in a moment it looked like a chimney. I turned on the TV in my bedroom. There was no coverage yet because it was still too soon after the impact.

I sat on my bed waiting for the news bulletin and wondering whether I should evacuate. I thought of the fact that the Towers had withstood a car bomb a few years before. But I knew that if it didn't withstand whatever had just happened, if it collapsed on an angle to the north, my building was close enough that it (and I) would be flattened. I also thought that the fire at the top of the Tower might reach a gas line in the building and trigger an incredible explosion--and again, my building was close enough that we would have been hit with debris. For the next 15 minutes, the only sounds outside the window were sirens.

The news bulletin was on the TV by this time, but I continued to sit there and weigh the danger. I didn't look out the window but I could tell a crowd was gathering as I had begun to hear the murmuring below. Then I heard an explosion and thought that my fear about the gas line had come true. Everyone on the street screamed at once--the only time I've ever heard such a thing. I got dressed quickly and went downstairs. A woman from my building was in the lobby, crying, because her father worked on the 15th floor of one of the Towers. I talked to her for a few minutes. A bunch of us were standing around in the lobby, again trying to gauge the threat. I talked to the doorman to see what he had heard. We all knew now it was an attack and were thinking that a third plane might be coming. After a few more minutes, the FBI started cordoning off West Broadway. I went outside and asked an agent if our building was going to be evacuated and he said yes, probably.

I decided to start walking uptown, to 59th Street (a good 90-minute walk), where I would catch the subway to my parents' house in Queens. I figured I would return that night or perhaps the next day providing the fire was out by then. I must have been halfway to 59th when, at some point, I turned around and noticed that the smoke from the buildings was now very low to the ground. I assumed a fire had broken out in the lobby. I continued on to 59th Street and found out what had happened. I was told by passersby that the White House, Sears Tower, Pentagon and Camp David had also been hit. The subways were out. I started to wonder if something else was planned, perhaps chemical or biological, and thought I should leave the island immediately. I walked over the 59th Street bridge into Queens and continued along the "N" route to my parents' house.

Start to finish, my entire trip took me five hours. In my haste to get out, I had forgotten to put on socks so my feet were all cut up. I was covered with sweat and shaking from adrenaline. I was very, very, very lucky.

My wife and I were sleeping in that morning. Someone was ringing our phone repeatedly, and wouldn’t give up even though we weren’t answering. I finally answered the phone after more than a dozen rings. It was my father on the line, and he was shouting in a wavering voice I had never heard from him before, “it’s the Twin Towers…turn on the TV!” We spent the next several minutes in a stupefied state, staring in horror at the TV screen.

We threw on clothes and ran downstairs to look from the street. Both of us bust into tears to see the thick column of smoke rising from where the towers should have been on the skyline. We had gone to sleep the night before in one world, and woken up in quite another. A nightmare world.

I remember the droves and droves of people pouring up 8th avenue in a steady stream with solemn looks on their faces. We stood for a while with a crowd of people on 8th ave between 22nd and 23rd streets, all gathered around listening to the news bulletins on a radio someone had placed on top of a parked car. After a time we decided we should go get food and other supplies, just in case.

There was a line to get into the supermarket. Standing outside I remember looking up and seeing for the first time in my life fighter jets patrolling the skies over the city. It was very, very comforting to see that. I noticed some guys loading cases of bottled water into a car. I asked them what all the water was for, and they turned out to be firefighters in plain clothes on their way down to help with the rescue effort. I helped them load the cases of water into their car. They thanked me and sped off on their way.

Events after that are foggy in my mind. Everything is jumbled, and I am unsure of timeline of experiences. There are just scenes in my head, connected but out of sequence. At some point we were in the teens around 5th and B’way, I don’t remember why. My wife bought flowers from a Korean store on the corner, brought them to the fire station down the street and gave them to the firefighter standing outside. Apparently these were the first flowers for this particular firehouse as he didn’t understand at first why my wife was handing him flowers. She started crying again, and then he understood immediately.

I remember bringing cases of Gatorade and bags of clothing (for the rescue workers) down to Chelsea Piers, which was set up as an emergency triage center. They were swamped with volunteers, and more people coming to volunteer were pouring in every second, so they were turning people away. Everyone wanted to help, but there wasn’t much we could do. Unfortunately there weren't enough survivors, and Chelsea Piers became unnecessary.

Most of all I remember the haze and the smoke. That sick smelling smoke that lingered for months and months. Breathing in the smoke of two towers, and three thousand souls. That is seared into my memory for all eternity.

When the Twin Towers were attacked, I was in Lucerne, Switzerland, watching a beautiful, peaceful sunset. When I heard the news, I suddenly felt like a World War II refugee in neutral Switzerland.

Since that day, I've been extremely aware of how easy it would be to destroy our civilization. Most of my friends are like those isolated Swiss people who think things happen to "other people."

I read Little Green Footballs regularly in order to be among people who understand the incredible dangers facing us and our children.

Thank you Charles for keeping this important forum in existence. There are few other places to go to hear ordinary (non-media) people discussing the Islamofascist threat.

I was having a lie-in that morning (I live in London and was taking a day off work) and the first thing I did when I woke up was switch on the tv. The image was of a burning skyscraper and I thought to myself "this is a stange time to show the film 'The Towering Inferno'". Then I noticed that CNN's banner was at the bottom of the screen and I gulped in shock as I realised that this was really happening now. Shortly afterwards I saw the second tower explode and I kept on shouting "NO, NO, NO...." and I burst into tears. I stayed glued to the screen all day and night and I phoned my family to let them know that I was ok (there was a false report that London had been hit too).

I didn't sleep that night and that was the first time I ever typed "www.islam.com" into my browser. Up to then, I had always thought that Muslims were weird, as are all devoutly religious people, but I had been prepared to tolerate them in the typical European lefty fashion. I spent the next 2 years learning about Islam from both authentic Muslim sources and then from anti-Islamic sources and the more I learned the more I became convinced that this cancer of a religion must be wiped from the earth. Every day I wished for reports of mass demonstrations of Muslims protesting against the likes of al_Qaeda but none ever came. I joined a couple of dozen Muslim discussion groups on the internet, posing as a "brother", and not a single one was against the attacks. On the contrary, every single group praised the attacks and prayed to "allah" for more of the same.

Caring deeply for my fellow man, my life is now dedicated to the defeat of Islam. My contribution has been this: I have converted about 40-50 Muslims from their religion, have fired 3 Muslims from my firm who supported the attacks, have spread anti-Islamic information wherever possible and I am prepared to fight to kill jihadis wherever I can get away with it. In case anyone hasn't noticed, the world is at war and if our descendants and those of freedom-loving people everywhere are to have a future free from persecution, we must fight until every last jihadi is dead. The time is now, people.

I live in Manhattan (Murray Hill, which is Midtown East) and teach in a private school (Upper East Side) there. I had been closeted in a quiet office and didn't hear about the attack until both towers were down. I ran to the corner and watched the smoke and dust rise from the site. I watched people covered in dust walking uptown. The city was oddly quiet, except for sirens. People spoke in muted voices, or not at all.
School dismissed early. I walked home, escorting students until I reached my block. The students continued downtown with another teacher. I didn't see the footage until I got home mid-afternoon. Then I was transfixed, and spent the afternoon trying to contact people to see if they were all right, or letting them know that I was all right.
A former student lost her father in the attack; a friend works in the Pentagon but was on the other side of the building; Berry Berenson, who once took my photograph for a magazine was a passenger on one of the flights.

That night helicopters seemed to be combing the area all night long. That was comforting, like the sight and sound of fighters over the city.
I hung flags and took comfort in 'God Bless America" being sung all the time.

I walked all over the city in the next few days, seeing the people at the armory looking for loved ones, a firefighter in full gear, dusty and unshaven hitching a ride from a UPS truck, armed troops patrolling the streets, and the candles and flowers in Union Square, and all the photos of the missing which seemed to be everywhere.

I bought a lot of heavy socks and Vicks Vapo Rub which the news said were needed at Ground Zero, and brought them to the staging area for volunteers at the Javits center. Every place I tried to volunteer I was told 'thanks but we have too many now'.

The smoke, dust and ash drifted uptown when the winds changed and covered everything, and drifted in the windows. The smell was vile and unnatural. I covered the windows with duct tape.

For weeks the nearby Midtown tunnel was especially busy with fire and emergency vehicles, and there were funeral corteges everyday, it seemed.

Mostly when I think back to those days I remember crying and being angry. I'm still angry, and I still cry when I see reminders, and there are many. I will never forget why we are fighting this war, or doubt whether it's necessary.

Will it sound too weird if I mention that for about two years before 9/11 I would sometimes look at skyscrapers and have a fleeting image in my mind's eye of an airliner crashing into the building?

For me, and American expat living in Moscow, it was singular in that I was amazed at the sense of comapssion that was shown me individually, and my homeland as a whole.

Regardless, I had a meeting that day in the Sokal region of Northern Moscow. I was feeling slightly feaverish and over-tired, so I left work early and went home and took a nap.

I awoke, somehwat refreshed, at about 10 pm Moscow time, (7 pm GMT), and checked my e-mail box. The first thing which came up were several news alerts, the first saying a plane had hit the WTC in New York. My first thought was "How Ironic, much as when that B-26 hit the Empire State Building many years ago" Then the next alerts said a plane had hit the SOUTH Tower; that a plane had hit the Pentagon, that the South Tower was down, that a fourth Plane had crashed in Pennslvania....

My second thought was: "...I think I may be getting called back to active duty, should I call the Marine Corps leasion officer at the embassy and tell him where I am?"

I then turned on the TV, all of the Russian TV channels were running direct CNN coverage with a voice over, and intermediate translations; but the sense of shock, anger, frustration and isolation for me was astounding. Never in the ten years that I have lived outside of the US did I ever once feel the true distance from my homeland as I did at that one moment in time.

Recollections Part II

After absorbing the foregoing as best I could and having no doubts as to the cause of the day's events I decided to attempt to head for my day's work near yankee stadium in the Bronx.

I briefly thought about whether I could offer any assistance at the site, a 5 minute walk south, but being unskilled in emergency services I moved on.

When I reached my corner, looking south I saw the inferno. Greenwich Street was filled with people walking north. Stood and stared for 5 minutes then headed for the subway. My usual subway route would be to take the #1 train from Franklin Street to Columbus circle, then the D train to 161 Street. Figuring the #1 train to be out since it runs directly below WTC, I walked to the Brooklyn Bridge Station to get the #4 train.

The entrance I chose is right behind City Hall in a plaza. The towers were blazing. The south tower was listing above the impact line. I wondered about the extent of human carnage. But still, the towers actually falling was the last thing on my mind. I sensed they were finished and wondered how buildings that size would be taken down.

I arrived at my destination only to learn that business was suspended, the south tower had fallen, the Pentagon was hit and a plane was missing over Maryland. The people at my destination seemed to need my eyewitness confirmation that this was not an Orson Wells - War of the Worlds hoax. Attempting to call my parents in Florida, my cell phone was dead.

At the #4 train from whence I came, I learned that there was no 4 or D service back to Manhattan. I decided to walk home and crossed the Harlem River at the McCombs Dam - 155th Street Bridge. For you baseball fans out there, the Polo Grounds, home of New York's team - The New York Giants - until they skipped town - was located at the 155th Street Bridge.

At what was the entrance to the Polo Grounds sat a yellow cab. Anyone who knows New York knows that yellow cabs do not cruise Harlem. But here at a location where many a cab once carried baseball fans, I found some good luck. My Dad and I had a bonding moment that evening over this small part of the day. The driver was Haitian which I found satisfactory. I later heard a rumor that all of the Paki and Egyptian cab drivers took the day off.

I told the driver where I was going and asked him if he was up to it. Of course he was. My driver informed me that the north tower had fallen and it was rumored that the missing plane had fallen off the radar. I finally got a connection to Florida shortly after getting into the cab. Driving through the streets of Harlem and the Upper West Side, from the pulse of the street you couldn't tell anything had happened. At 9th Avenue and 34th Street, the pulse changed. I told my driver I wasn't sure if I had an apartment at this point and I didn't want to endanger him so we agreed he would leave me off at 14th street and 9th Avenue.

As it turned out, 14th Street was the first of three roadblocks I had to cross, the others being at Houston Street and Canal Street. My driver license got me through. Swarms of people were heading north on Hudson Street. It seemed I was the only person walking south. Cars with tailgates up were blasting newsradio. The main memorable image from this part of the day was a car traveling up Hudon Street apparently trailing big plumes of smoke. But the car was not consumed by fire. It was only WTC ash.

I walked through my door at 11:55 am

To see photos taken by a friend from my balcony and my roof later that day go to a friend's site

#50 mpax

Will it sound too weird if I mention that for about two years before 9/11 I would sometimes look at skyscrapers and have a fleeting image in my mind's eye of an airliner crashing into the building?

Not at all. An English teacher of mine had a similar thing: when he saw an airliner over the countryside, he was fine, but when he saw it over urban areas, he would panic.

Airliners come over our house everyday, and three times I've watched and "seen" a thin white trail lead up to the fuselage and detonate. We all get jumpy if the planes sound strange at all.

i live in the city and can still smell the smoke in my sense memory--what was an unforgivable tragedy for some was a shocking wakeup call to others--never forget/never forgive--the islamic death cult and its ideology of suprematism must be exposed, opposed and destroyed--allahu nakba

On the 106th floor of 1 WTC was a restaurant called Windows on the World.  This was the first tower struck that morning.

At the restaurant were over 100 people meeting for a business conference.  At the time of impact, they were probably enjoying a spread of bagels, muffins, and orange juice, and looking out the windows at the magnificent views, likely wondering how mankind could have built something as magnificent and functional (each tower served as office space for 25,000 people).

After the first plane struck, they were cut off from escape.  Smoke began to seep into the restaurant.  Calls to the Police department begged for advice, "Where can we go to avoid the smoke?  We have over 100 people up here and we don't know what to do."

Later, a caller from the restaurant would phone Police to ask if they can break a window to get some air, "Yes, whatever you need to do...to get air" was the response.

Those who did not jump to their deaths onto the concrete 106 floors below, were likely alert and conscious as Tower 1 collapsed, after an hour of waiting for help that would never arrive.

One of my colleagues was attending the conference that morning.

Another colleague perished elsewhere in the building.

My anger remains unchanged since that day.

Either this medieval Islamic culture will quickly join civilization, or it must be destroyed.  The hate sermons from Muslim mosques must end, the brainwashing in Muslim madrassas must end, the people of the Muslim world must be taught about the world they live in, and not to resent modern civilization, equality, and freedom.

And the Muslims and their apologists in America must step up to the plate, and say NOT IN MY NAME.  Their lame excuses and apologetics serve only to increase my anger and disdain.  After two years, there is still no promising behavior among Muslim American leadership, and certainly not among worldwide Muslim leadership.

Never forget.

Never submit.

Never quit until the job is done.

In this battle, if you are not my ally, you are my enemy.

- An Angry American

This is my story....

As some of you know I drive an 18 wheeler for a living. I was in a truckstop in Porter, Indiana laying over for the night, had the alarm set for 8 am local time. I have the radio set to the news to catch morning traffic reports and as I turned on WLS, I heard them break in to a news story of the WTC. I thought "this is odd", so I stumbled into the truckstop and one of the waitresses said to go into the TV room and check it out. I wasn't sitting there for more than 10 minutes when the second jet went in.

The whole place went quiet as the grave, then EVERYONE started crying, especially the drivers from New York. I called my dispatcher and he told me all the loads into New York were cancelled. I got into that truck and went home, took the rest of the week off.

My friend called a little after 9 am to see if my brother still worked at the WTC. "Turn on the TV", she said.

My mother is a survivor of Auschwitz. After a lifetime of living with her panic and anxiety attacks, I know the drill every time "something bad" happens anywhere near one of us "kids". She was in Atlantic City at the time, probably out on the boardwalk walking. (That day was gorgeous. Much like today is in Philadelphia.)

I called my "little" brother at home in NYC who was getting ready to go out and vote. "Turn on the TV", I said, "You're not voting today." Then I called my "baby" brother in NJ to make sure he wasn't traveling that day. (His company has a lot of government/military contracts and he often has appointments at the Pentagon.) Everybody was home or close to home. I finally got 'hold of my mother and told her I spoke to everyone and no one was anywhere near the danger.

Then the phones went down pretty much everywhere between NYC and Washington. I had internet working but I was not able to contact my mother. (I could feel the panic radiating all the way from Atlantic City.)

Late in the afternoon I finally got through to my mom. She made me swear up and down that I wasn't lying about speaking to my brothers early in the day because she never got to speak with them. Then she started to cry - "All those people!" - and I cried with her over the phone.

My mother shut down her emotions soon after that. I think survivors can do that better than most of us; that's how they survived. They are certainly better at it than their children.

I cried for two weeks. I was supposed to be working. I was also supposed to be working on my daughter's Bat Mitzvah which was less than 5 weeks away. I couldn't tear myself away from the TV and computer. Who slept?! My safe America, my home - the Golden Medina - was damaged forever.

Some wounds never heal...

My husband and I had a morning ritual of reading our emails after waking up; the homepage of our service that morning said something like "plane hits tower of World Trade Center." I had the same thought as many people here: must have been some little Cessna; how strange. When we finished our mail checks, the next homepage mentioned that the second tower had been hit. My husband went on to check out ebay, and I took our then-3-month-old downstairs, saying that I was going to look at the TV news. It was then that I saw that the towers had fell, the Pentagon hit. I started shaking. I ran up to tell my husband, who looked at me like I was an idiot.

I spent the next part of the day trying to reach my former boss; I had, the day before, resigned my job as a nurse practitioner in a Bronx ER. I finally got through late in the afternoon to tell him if he needed me to please call. Of course, he never did; there were only a few, minor injuries of people who had been running from the WTC and twisted their ankles, or were treated for smoke inhalation.

The next day a friend called to say that a mutual friend's husband, a firefighter in Manhattan, hadn't come home on the 11th. At that point, I broke down and cried. He never did come home; we all went to his memorial service the following month.

I knew that day that we were at war, and know that we must see it through. Nothing less only encourages future attacks.

And thank you, Charles, for LGF; it's a sanity-saving, eye-opening forum.

I logged onto Iwon first thing that morning to scroll through the news, and read a headline that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Towers. I had an image in my mind of a small Piper or something smacked into one of the floors, with its little tail poking out.

Then, as I was reading the first headline, a second headline appeared, that a second plane had one of the other towers. I immediately knew we were at war with someone or something, although I didn't know precisely who. I thought it might be Arabs, though, in one of their many mutations.

I was furious. Immediately furious. I turned on the TV set and watched for a while, until the hysteria of one of the newscasters crying out about the equivalent of "oh! the humanity!" got to me, so I turned it off, got dressed and drove to work.

When I got there, my boss had a radio on in his office, and he gestured to it, and said, "Can you believe this?" We mutually agreed that someone deserved to be nuked in response.

We had a fairly large meeting planned for that day, but should have just cancelled and sent everyone home. The whole day was spent checking the news to see if LA had also become a target, if the freeways were still operational, if anything else had happened that would affect us here on the West Coast.

One of the middle managers came in and said that people were asking to leave to go donate blood. Without thinking, I told him that there would be no survivors in New York, and no one would need blood. To tell his people to go next week or the week after to donate blood, but that for that day, it would be fruitless.

Another person asked if we could hold a memorial ceremony in our office. We called our staff Catholic priest, and notified everyone to gather, if they wanted to. He came and said a very calm and warming prayer for the dead ... I think. I don't remember what he said. I just remember crying quietly as he spoke, and noticing other people notice me weep, and not caring.

Driving home that night, on a bridge over the I-5 freeway, there was an elderly man slowly waving a huge American flag back and forth. And that comforted me. And filled me with resolve.

This was the day of my life where I became unashamed of weeping in front of other people. And I won't forget. Ever.

It was 7:00am in my time zone and I was just sitting down to a bowl of Cheerios and switched on the TV to CBC Newsworld. They were carrying a live feed from a local NY station that showed smoke billowing from the first impact. I, like many others, assumed that a Cessna pilot had fucked up. Then out the top, right hand corner of my screen came the second jet smashing into the second tower. The commentators on TV yelled, "WHOAA!" and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. My initial thought at that very moment was, "was the pilot of the second jet simply distracted by the initial crash site?". Pretty naive, don't you think? As I digested what I was seeing, it became obvious that this was a suicide mission courtesy of the Religion of Peace. In another naive moment, I thought to myself, "where did they steal these empty jets from?" Unfortunately, it soon became clear that these jets were not empty.
I was and still am livid. Unfortunately, these backwards, phony bunch of 11th century cocksuckers are likely going to bring jihad to our shores once again before we wake up and stomp these fuckers into the dirt once and for all. I have not forgotten and will never forget. If a single batty fellow traveller says to me, "well, you know the Americans reaped what they sowed that day.", even 15 years from now, they will very sorry.

I was driving my kid to school, here in East Petersburg, Pennsylvania. It was 8:40, when I dropped her off, and I remember my gas gage being on E, so I drove down to the gas station. When I went in to pay for the gas, the guy behind the counter says, "We are at war," and I thought he was full of it! I had heard nothing on the television at 8:30, just before we left for school! So he told me what had happened, and I just didn't believe it. I turned to public radio station WRTI in Philly, and there was absolutely nothing about it on the radio, just classical music, so I turned to the talk radio station, WHP in Harrisburg. The gas station owner had come out, and was now 'adjusting' the gas prices upwards.....glad I bought it when I did.
Dazed, I remembered that I had to go pick up my husband's new work shirts from the printer's house. When he answered the door, he had been crying, and was barely able to talk...his daughter came to the door to say that they couldn't get hold of his mother, who was on a United Airlines flight out of Boston....but she was unsure of the flight number, and after giving them their money, they quickly closed the door...I went home in time for the second plane to hit, and to watch the Pentagon shortly after. And flight 93....I cried the rest of the day, and poor Rachel, only 4, couldn't comprehend.

Well Bruce, our stories are similiar. I live on a Big Island in the Pacific. Hawaii Standard Time is six hours behind New York. My wife and I live out in the country and don't have T.V. or radio reception. At about 9 AM, Hawaiian time, I was taking the dogs on our morning walk to the beach. I'm only a few blocks from home and my neighbor drives by, stops next to me and yells, "we are at war, they just blew up New York." Then he drives off fullfilling his function as town cryer; he has a dish. My neighbor has a reputation as a hot-head, so I'm thinking, "WTF?"

I walk back home, dogs not happy. I ask my wife to get on the internet and check the news. That's when we saw the film clip, several hours after the fact. So we drove up to our friend's house to watch a little of his T.V. Needless to say, we where in a state of shock. My wife, who is from Haiti, asked, "who would be stupid enough to attack the USA?" We both figured it must be Islamokazis.

At the time of 911 I was semi-retired. Next January I enrolled as a full-time student at the University of Hawaii. I think one of the front lines of this war is fighting the Idiotarians in the colleges. There are many there. All right thinking Americans must do what they can to take our "public" schools and universities back from the America and Western Civ haters. The place is awash in White-Liberal Guilt.

P.S. The dogs never did get their walk that day.

Another thing I should mention. There are skyscapers in Seattle that have windows all the way to the floor. The first time I was near them at night after 911 I totally lost it because I felt like the people were in danger up in those lighted windows going all the way to the floor. I had no idea I was affected that way.

When the attacks came, I was preparing to teach a technical class. The software I was teaching people to support no longer exists. Strange how that day made people change their priorities.

Prior to that day, I kept my opinions to myself. People did not want to listen and I did not want to talk..

When the Stupidfada began in Israel in September 2000, I wept and mourned and feared that it would come to the US. Most Americans dismissed the "cycle of violence" as if that meant only the Israelis could ever get caught up in it.

I recognised the danger of global, fanatic Islam to the point of expecting some sort of attack was impending, but I di not expect the type or magnitude. Most of the people with whom I had discussed global terror or what really goes on in Israel dismissed me as a right winger or zionist. So I kept quiet.

When the attacks happened, I first called my wife so she would know and keep our son home from preschool. I decided to stay at work. Then I joined my coworkers in watching the video-conferencing system we converted to pick up network news.

It was obvious to us - and even our Muslim coworkers agreed at that point - that the perpetrators were Islamic terrorists, and we had watched the Palestinians celebrate. Some of our Palestinian coworkers had tried to claim that the US had brought this on itself, but no one wanted to listen. Most of them were afraid to say anything.

After staring at the television until we all thought we would go nuts, we were instructed to go back to class.
Since the class was not paying any attention to me, I let people talk. Someone asked why anyone would do this, and why anyone would celebrate this.

"I can answer your question," I said, "But you have to understand that this has nothing to do with [the software company I worked for]. These are my opinions, and not everyone likes them or wants me to share."

I spoke for fifteen minutes, using maps I pulled off the internet and projected instead of my slides. People listened, close to tears.

So now I cannot keep silent.

Two years have passed, and a lot of rhetoric. Americans want to get back to their lives and Europeans tell us to get over it, but the terrorists still want to kill us all. The terrorists have said the reason the fight is to prevent peace, to prevent freedom, and because the only way they can spread their twisted religion is through unholy war against Jews, against Christians, against pagans, against Muslims. Some Americans still believe that we brought this upon ourselves, or that we can end the terror with peace initiatives or aid money or other forms of appeasement.

Americans do not want to hear any more, but I still cannot stop talking.

I'm an American expatriate living in Israel. I grew up in New York State and spent a great deal of time in NYC as a child and young adult.

For about six weeks leading up to the attacks, two things kept going through my mind. The first was a snippet of conversation I had with an acquaintance sometime in the mid-1990s where he mentioned "that bastard, Osama bin Laden." The second was my class trip to the World Trade Center back when only one of the towers was completed. I remember how we stood on the roof and looked down, and how tiny everything seemed from up there.

The day of the attacks, I got home from work a little before 4 p.m. Israel time (GMT + 2, seven hours ahead of the US's east coast). On my answering machine was a message from a friend of mine in NYC who told me she'd just heard something terrible about one of the World Trade Center towers being hit. I do not have cable TV, so I turned on Israel's main channel, which was still broadcasting children's programs. Within minutes, though, they interrupted regular programming to tell us what had occurred. I saw the second plane hit on live television and sat on the floor, crying and saying over and over, "Oh, God. Oh, no. Oh, please, no."

I couldn't get through to the US. I knew my parents were all right, but what about my sister, who worked in NYC? After many tries I got through to her husband, who said she had called and was fine. Thank God. My friends in NYC were fine too. But a friend of mine from high school told me later that many of her colleagues from her former workplace were at a convention in the WTC when the planes hit. Few, if any, survived.

I am proud to be a member of a faith that holds life sacred. I do not understand people who worship death. But understand them or no, I feel we must fight them and everything they stand for. Not necessarily in anger or any particular emotion -- we simply must get the job done so that people of good will shall be able to survive in this world.

#55, Angry American mentioned Windows On The World...

All I can add is that in 1999 when I visited New York for the first time on a mission to propose to my future wife, that was one place I knew I had to see (having heard about it even as a child), so I arranged for dinner there for us in that 1970s-disco-posh gold dining room above the sparkling lights of Manhattan --a real New York experience. Gone forever, as are probably many of the people I saw that night...

Like #57, heretic, I remember the high school student on an overpass my wife and I saw as we left work early on 9-11-- defiantly waving a classroom size American flag by its pole, with the cars honking at him as they passed underneath.

Never forget.

(and that we are not alone)

First: Bless you Charles. Your blog is a mitzvah which you do every day for all of us.

I had stopped at 7-11 for coffee on my way to work when I heard the news. The Indians who run the store had the TV on with the volume up high, and didn't care if anyone heard them say "those Muslim bastards". Hindus know the threat of Islam. And they fight back. Bless them too.

I had to try several times before I was able to get through on the cell phone to my girfriend, who works for an investment bank in NYC about 30 blocks from the WTC. She was fine, but many of her fellow traders had been on the phone with people at Cantor Fitzgerald, people they dealt with daily for years, and had the phones go dead as the people on the other end of the line were incinerated. People were frantic. She said the building was being evacuated and she was walking home to the Upper East side.

I took my coffee and drove up to a hill here in Northern NJ. On the way I learned from the radio that a second plane had hit. It was a beautiful clear day, and I could look over the river and see both towers burning like roman candles.

I listened to the radio more and learned that many flights were missing, that the Sears Tower might have been hit along with the Pentagon and White House. I looked up and saw military jets flying overhead. "Damn", I thought". "We're going to war".

I sat there watching as the first tower fell. Even 25 miles away you could see the dust rise. We had roller bladed down the Hudson just two days earlier, and had lunch at Cosi, at one of the Trade Centers. That spot was gone, I thought.

It was maddening because the phones were very intermittent. I called friends who worked in lower Manhattan to see if they were safe. They were. Friends from all around the country called me, because they knew I spent a lot of time in NYC. It was nice to learn about the solidarity of feelings that were coming from around the country.

Later I learned from my best friend that his brother in law, his wife's brother, worked on an upper floor for Marsh and McClellan, and was missing. Looking back, and remembering the agony that this poor family all went through, the uncertainty, the frantic visits to the hospitals in town, the passing out of fliers, the waiting, and the gradual realization that he was gone, saddens and angers me so much. Sal wasn't the only family member who died that day. A big piece of the so many people who loved him died too.

In the days that passed I think the other most difficult thing was passing the train station, where so many from my town had parked their cars on the last day of their lives, and seeing the cars that hadn't moved. We lost many in our town, and in many other North Jersey towns.

We heard about Arabs celebrating in Paterson and Jersey City. I developed an intense loathing for any Muslim who doesn't repudiate all that's done in the name of their faith. That means I loathe most Muslims.

I went from being a "Kennedy democrat" to a conservative on most issues. The security of our country is the most important issue. Nothing else even comes close. Though I disagree with him on many things including abortion, the environment, fuel economy standards, and astonishing failure to require that Israel go absolutely fucking medieval on the [bigoted word]s as part of the global war on terror, etc., I am so glad Bush is our President, not Gore. Democrats, who I used to count myself among, revolt me.

I will never forget, forgive, or stop demanding that our government take out most of Islam. It is a cancer that will kill us if we don't.

I was in my dorm room sleeping when my mom called and said, "Wake up, prepare yourself to see something horrible and turn on the TV."

By the time we found out the numerous places hit and that this was not an accident, but the beginning of a war, her grief turned in to panic. Since we lived in the Middle East until a couple of years ago she had the experience to make sure that I promised to not use any vehicles of public transportation and did not take a trip to the mall - as if I yet had the stomach to face the world. She decided to pick up my younger brother from school and told me to consider the option of moving back home to Turkey.

So when I got in touch with them again I spoke to my younger brother and he said he watched the towers crash from the roof of his school and that it was the saddest thing he has ever seen.

When asked if I had considered the option of going back to Turkey I told her I didn't think I could be as safe and free in any other part of the world as I am here and that we took a great step at becoming Americans.
God Bless and never forget.

I had decided to cut down on business travel, but accepted a rare one-day assignment on the west coast. I flew in the evening of 9/10 with plans to return home the evening of 9/11.

I saw the smoke coming out of the WTC on CNN as I was getting ready to leave for my meeting. I could not believe that the announcers thought this was the result of an small plane accident... it looked like dozens of windows on several floors were out, and it wasn't clear we were looking at the original point of impact.

I will never forget the clueless announcer screaming "Another plane is heading towards the World Trade Center!"

Two other things I'll never forget. I called home to see how my wife and kids were taking it all. They were completely unaware. I told my wife "The US has just been attacked and thousands of people have been killed." We both knew it was Islamists, because this was an act of pure evil. There was no other purpose than to cause Death & Destruction--just as they have done to courageous little Israel for decades.

The other thing I'll never forget was driving nearly 2,000 miles to get home. Had my client not made a car rental reservation for me, I would have taken a taxi... The meeting went on, though we were all very distracted, and then I waited two full days to see if I'd be able to fly home.

I couldn't take watching CNN et al anymore and decided to drive the nearly 2,000 miles. It took me 3 very long days. I saw an incredible slice of this great country. Radio stations in Arizona and New Mexico renewed my faith in America. Both announcers and callers expressed determination that we use as much force as needed to crush this evil.

Here comes the startling part. One of the AM radio stations in my home city has a very powerful signal and can be picked up hundreds of miles away. They interviewed a local leader of the Muslim community. This scumbag had the audacity to say "Of course, we don't support terrorism but you have to understand the 'root cause': US support for Israel."

I'm sure not all Muslims are evil. But I am convinced that their religion as generally interpreted is primitive, dogmatic, and morally bankrupt.

I was living in Pittsburgh on 9/11/01. I was sitting at my kitchen table, with its spendid view of downtown Pittsburgh, listening to the radio. At about 8:40 est the local talk show host (WPTT)came back on the air after a Paul Harvey "update". He says something to the effect of "What are we going to talk about this morning?" Given that Pittsburgh was enjoying the same high pressure weather system as NY with a clear sky and unlimited visibility and its still pre 9/11, not an odd question. Then the producer breaks in to tell the host that a plane may have hit the WTC. I turn on CNN and start watching the coverage still listening to the radio show. I see the second plane go into the WTC. The host of the radio reports a few seconds later that a second may have hit the WTC. I call the show and tell the producer that yes I've just saw it happen. I go out to the auto parts store for something. I listen on the radio to KDKA. I'm half way to the store and a report comes that a building has collapsed. My engineering brain thinks"A building has collapsed!". I enter the auto parts chain store. They have their inhouse network on extolling the virtues of the chain. I buy what I needed and leave. At home I continue to listen. There are planes missing. The city is told to evacuate. I watch the cars on Rte 28 backing up to the Heinz plant. I look across the river at downtown Pittsburgh. I imagine a plane flying into the USX tower. I hear on the radio that an airplane went down just east in Somerset county. I think of the Palesinian I work with at a job I've just quit. I have vile thoughts

I live on the other side of the country, in the Pacific Northwest. My husband and I were still in bed that morning; he was listening to the radio, and I was sort of dozing. He jumped out of bed to turn on our TV and shouted to me what was going on.

While watching and trying to absorb it all, I was reminded of what reporter Herb Morrison who witnessed the Hindenburg disaster said nearly 70 years ago. In all of his obviously emotionally distraught state, he cries, "Oh, the humanity." That same phrase with the same emotional intensity kept going through my mind and heart, over and over again.

I didn't cry immediately, though. It wasn't until a night or two later, when very late at night I saw a replay of the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace being done to our National Anthem. I totally lost it at that point. However, other than a few other weepy, heart-rendering moments, even recently, that was the only time I really broke down.

The original feeling of being jolted from a sleepy haze to the terror is what I had most of the time for the first few weeks--kind of a blank, shock, numb, hollow, shaky feeling. I still get it sometimes when thinking about what happened or looking at camera footage, but it's not as strong. Most of it has been replaced with feelings of anger, resolve and, yes, a sense of righteousness.

As a side note: I'm an old ex-AOL msg board vet and had to change ISPs shortly after 9/11/01. For a few months thereafter, I was kind of lost on the net, and then I was introduced to the broader blogosphere by one of my favorite news sites. LGF and other blogs have been a God send to me because, just like when I watched Queen Elizabeth sing the Star Spangled Banner, I realize that we're not alone.

Thanks Charles.

The night of September 10th, my girlfriend broke up with me. I went to bed earlier than normal, knowing that Tuesday at the bookstore was new release day, and I had to get a lot done in a really short amount of time.

The morning of the 11th, my clock radio went off a little bit earlier than it normally does, since I figured I'd try and get into work a little earlier. The first clue I had that there was a problem was the tone of the voices on the radio. The "Boers & Bernsie" show on WSCR out of Chicago is a laff-a-minnit sports/talk, but they were rather subdued as they spoke about the pictures they were seeing. Then they said that a small plane had hit one of the WTC buildings.

Oh. "Must be a foggy day in NYC," I said to myself as I trudged into the living room, turning on the TV as I walked into the kitchen to get some OJ and a bagel.

Sat down on the couch, looked at the screen, and saw the blue sky and the smoke pouring out of the 1st tower, and immediatly thought to myself "that wasn't piper cub. Jet for sure, maybe a Gulf-IV." (one of my weird obsessions is "air disasters." Something fascinates me about plane crashes, so I know a little bit about what size plane would make what sort of hole in the ground... but a building?)

Then the 2nd plane flew into the picture. Disappeared behind the towers. Fireball coming out the side facing the camera... and I was standing in front of the TV, OJ and bagel spilled, my shins bleeding from where I went THRU my plexiglass-sheet-on-wicker-baskets coffee table... and I didn't even notice. I was horrified, awestruck, amazed.

I don't even know how long I stood there like that, but I eventually got into the shower (shower radio tuned to a CNN feed), and dressed for work. I tore myself away from the screen and hopped into the car, driving as fast as I could to work... there's a TV there, in the back room!

In the car, the announcer says that the 1st tower has come down. I bellow something incoherent. As I pull into the parking lot of the mall, they announce that there was an explosion at the Pentagon (I may have some of the day's events scrambled, I'll admit). I run into the store, and the TV is gone... Mike must've taken it with him last night. Well, there's always the boombox, which I bring out to the sales floor and turn on... just in time to hear the report that the 2nd tower has gone down.

I opened the store at the normal time, but the mall offices called quickly thereafter, saying that they may very well close the mall at noon... still waiting to hear from the local police about what to do. I call my staff, saying "don't come in."

Amazingly, a couple of customers wander in. They buy some stuff and leave. An elderly woman comes in, hears the radio, and begins to cry. She says that the last time she heard someting like this, it was December 7th, 1941.

Mall security comes around at a trot; close up and get out ASAP. "They just evacuated the Sears Tower. They think that maybe shopping malls would make a good target." Internally I'm thinking Yeah, terrorists would just LOVE to take down a dying mall in northern Illinois, when 10 minutes away there's a bigger and better one, and an hour away is Woodfield, in Chicago, but I hustle nonetheless. Nobody expected "them" to knock down the WTC either.

I stop at a grocery store on the way home, and nobody there seems to know anything has happened at all! Its not until I ask if they've heard anything new and they ask "About what?" that I realize they'd all been there since 6am with nothing but muzak...

I get home... and I wonder why there's OJ and a bagel on the floor, not to mention the coffee table. Oh right... NOW I remember. It was only 4 hours ago, but it felt like a week.

Later that evening, I hear that my cousin's husband was supposed to be in the Cantor-Fitzgerald offices for a meeting at 830am, and his hotel room was in the WTC complex. Fortunatly, he had wound up staying "in the country" with an old friend, and they had been driving in when the first plane hit. He saw it happen, then the 2nd, at which point, his friend said "meeting's cancelled" and turned around.

At some point during the night, I think to myself that I was GLAD that Al Gore (whom I had voted for) had lost...

When I finally fall asleep around three in the morning on the 12th, my nightmares are amazing.

I wasn't anywhere near the east coast, but that day affected me, and all of us, as if we had been a block away, thanks to the newsies. We were all New Yorkers for a while, even if I still couldn't stand the Yankees and the Mets... and yet, I still couldn't imagine what the families of those 10,000+ people killed in the WTC collapse (remember, they just didn't know how "lucky" we had been yet) were going through. I still don't. I still can't.

(sigh) Thank you, Charles, for letting us put these messages here.

I remember that day. I was going on my way to work and one of the coffee shops that the bus that I ride passes has one of those time, temp, and date things outside. I just happened to look up when I was going by and I saw that it had the date displayed as 9 11. Just thinking that was a strange happening. I put it behind me and went to work. I got to work and started doing my normal routine and that is when one of my fellow co-workers asked me if I had known what had happened. The first thing that comes to mind of 9/11 is that I lost a good friend. To this day, I still think we should have made Afghanistan a glass parking lot.

[repost]
I was in the car on my way to work, but no radio on - I like quiet in the a.m.

I stopped off at Starbucks, where the customers were chatting excitedly about a crash of a helicopter in the pentagon, and the crash of a commuter plan at the WTC. (This was way early in the day.) One customer dismissed the hype - "it's just a few accidents."

I turned on the radio in my car - and the announcer was crying and sobbing as she described what she was seeing on TV.

When I got to work, every TV set/projection room had live signals going. And after a few hours, we were all told to go home, as really, no one could work.

My wife had the radio on, but we had no TV - so I made sure I got my kids to a friend's house so they could see who their enemy was - so they would not think of 9/11 as just another day. It was a day of consciousness-raising for them.

Of course, now things are quite cooler at work. But it was heartening to see all the flags out - every foreign national that I knew had an American flag on his or her office door.

Only one (idiot) made the suggestion that we should not go to war, but we should try to dialog with the terrorists. (He didn't call them terrorists, of course.) Nothing would be achieved by more death. I noted that, one thing could be achieved - dead terrorists don't kill. But he's a gun-control freak and thinks that you can't hug a child with nuclear arms.

I became the hawk in my group, defending the right of America to kill her sworn enemies. Most of the people scoff at the idea of militant Mohammedism.

So it goes.

I didn't have a TV and was on a night schedule at the time, so the first I heard about the attack was when my doctor called to verify an appointment - he mentioned that New York had been hit by a terrorist attack... I just said "I'm not surprised".

I'm not from the "we deserved this" crowd, it's just that I've expecting an attack (probably nuclear) since I was a little kid and New York always seemed a likely target. I imagined it the most likely scenario was someone putting a WMD on a boat and floating it into the harbor.

I grew up very aware of the Holocaust and of the cold war... I have no faith that there's anything that prevents evil from prevailing except what we make to prevent it.

So I wasn't surprised. I immediately got on the internet started studying the Middle East, reading newpapers and translations from Jordon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Lebanon and of course Israel.

On the first day I found articles (translated into English by newspapers and proudly posted on their web sites) expressing Arabs universal joy at the attack, and another asking why Americans aren't anti-semetic like any sane person "why do Americans love Jews?" I found article after article of the most amazing hatred, ignorance and paranoia...

Every time I read what a middle eastern Muslim wrote, I was shocked at how unrestrained hatred controlled middle eastern muslim society. Middle Eastern Muslims are insane, paranoid, ignorant, self pitying, narcisistic (in the psychiatric sense), zenophobic haters (is there a word like "zenohater"?), they see no humanity whatsoever in Jews (and very little in other outsiders), and they have no respect for life. At least those are the attitudes evident in the writing in their newspapers, their poltical speeches, their school curricula, and in the sermons preached in their Mosques.

Even in the situations where you would expect them to reach out and make briges - they almost always fail to do so and take a stance of rejecting the humanity of outsiders. What happens among Arab "peace activists" is particularly pathetic. I could overrun this post's maximum word limit horrendous failures I've seen among Arabs who were supposedly peace activists, but I'm getting too depressed to continue.

This is way too depressing. I have seen a few bright spots. A few of sane Arabs exist, but in all my reading I've come across SO few, maybe three, who seem completely sane, reasonable and unbiased, a dozen or two if I lower my standards for bias. But I feel like ME society hates so much and wants war so badly that I can't see a good outcome.

The problem with our liberals is not that they are wrong in trying to restrain aggression, it's just that they need to focus the side that is the most out of control, and that isn't our side.

#50 mpax

Will it sound too weird if I mention that for about two years before 9/11 I would sometimes look at skyscrapers and have a fleeting image in my mind's eye of an airliner crashing into the building?

Two weeks prior to 9/11 a relative was seeing the city for the very first time, so my wife and I took him to the top of the WTC to check out the view.

We were only there for a short while when my wife had a kind of anxiety attack and felt it "unsafe" to be there, and actually mentioned the 1993 attack, which we had never really discussed much before. I myself had a sensation that my feet were on very unsure footing, perhaps I was feeling the building sway from the wind, but it was unsettling. So we decided to cut the trip short and head back down.

Waiting on a long line for the elevator down with tourists from all over the world, my wife turned to me and said, "if something happened, it would take forever to get all these people out." I can't help but think about that whenever I remember 9/11.

I was a senior in High School and I wasn on an errand to the office when the first plane hit. As I loitered around the central office, a teacher came in and said, "a plane hit the World Trade Center."

I thought it must have been some idiot in a Cessna trying to impress his girlfriend or something. A small, private plane. So did everyone in my class, when I brought the news. My teacher immediatly turned on the in-class cable TV and we saw the first tower in flames, and someone said, "Oh My God, it must have been a jet." My first thought then was still "horrible accident," and a lot of the kids and teachers thought the same.

How, we wondered, could this happen. There is rader and radio, and NYC isn't exactly difficult to locate. Why were they flying so low? Then somebody said, "Hey, look, there's a picture of it hitting the tower!"

Of course, it only took a few seconds for us to realize that it was the other tower that had been hit. Then it sank in. America was under attack. Theories flew, and already some of us said, 'terrorists.' We knew about the African embassies and the USS Cole, we knew there were people who hated America, but they had always seemed so far away.

A thing I should mention now - I went to Bishop Denis J. O'Connell Catholic School, in Arlington Virginia. We're right across town from the Pentagon, maybe 5 or 7 miles.

Everything seemed to be going to Hell, as the towers fell and kids were crying in the halls. Still, there was a semblance of order. It was all so far away. And then my cellphone rang...my father's work number, and he'd never call me during school so I picked it up. My father works only a few blocks from the Pentagon. We could see the smoke across town. Dad heard the plane go in.
"David, are you okay?" "Sure. Why?" "Those bastards just blew up the Pentagon."

I almost dropped the phone...I drove by the building everyday. I immediatly turned to the TV in the room, just as the first news reports of the hit on the Pentagon, provided by our local reporters, and they'd pretty much cracked by this point. Frantic speculation was the order of the day, and there were plenty of people in the school whose parents worked in the Pentagon.

All order broke down, kids crying in the halls and trying desperatly to get through on cell phone networks that had crumbled under the strain, news reports of explosions in DC, at the State Department (untrue, but we believed it. The unbelievable had just happened), and other random reports...by the time I got home, every media outlet on the air was speculating, talking, fretting, screaming...and I turned on my local country station, and they were playing God Bless America. I started crying myself then.

9/11 was both horrifying and spooky for me. I won't bore you with where I was (work), but about 5 years previous I had been to the top of one of the towers with some friends and it may have just been my acrophobia, but I had terrible feelings of dread about this place . In 2000, I was playing with Microsoft's flight simulator, and finding landings too hard, I was just crashing into landmarks. Guess what the first place I crashed into was.... (shudder) That really creeped me out, and I can't help wondering if that's where they got the idea from. (the game, not me. My pilot friend says it's extremely accurate and he uses it to arrange and time his flights. )

At least the next thing I crashed into was the Eiffel Tower.

I had known some creepy muslims, (extremely arrogant a**holy Saudis) and heard horror stories about them from a Hindu friend. In early 2001 I read 'In the Desert' by Karl Mai (German author in the late 1800's - good book, check it out.) That also showed Islam in an unflattering light. I started researching Islam in earnest after 9/11 and it just gets worse. Anyone who backs them should definitely do their homework to make sure they are backing the right horse. Or in this case, horse's a**.

Some of my comments may not be politically correct, but ask me if I care. Some timeline references may be incorrect.

********

September 11, 2001, being my day off, I woke up later than usual, around 6:30. I got my coffee, showered and was puttering around in my underwear when my eighty-year-old great-aunt called.

She was hysterical. “Turn on the TV! Someone ran a plane into the World Trade Center in New York!" Sure that she had, somehow, gotten it wrong (she was eighty, after all), I switched on the TV just in time to see a film of the second airplane hitting Tower number two. “Oh my God!" I said. “Arabs did this! I know they did it," I said to my aunt. Not long afterward, Tower number two crumbled to the ground. I was immediately in tears and I don’t cry easily. “It is ON! Those Arab bastards straight fucked-up this time." We stayed on the phone for about two hours more commenting, raging and consoling. Then I hung up. I stayed glued to the TV for a couple hours more. Then, though I was, somehow, exhausted, I got my clothes on and went outside.

I remember those moments when no one knew how many more hijacked aircraft were in the sky. I remember the report of two other crashed aircraft, one into the Pentagon and one somewhere in Pennsylvania--near Shanksville, as we now know. (I tried not to think of the friend that works in the Pentagon, to whom I had sent an e-mail as soon as I found out. Thankfully, it was his day off also.) Those moments were like the anticipation of the end of the world. One of the planes had been bound for Los Angeles and I lived ten miles from LAX, right under the air lanes. Did the terrorists have something more in store for us savage infidels, something worse, some grand nuclear finale? Who knew then?

With those unnerving thoughts in mind, I stepped out of my house and it was quiet. Now, I lived in the South Central LA ‘hood, where it’s never quiet, especially at midday. But this day was different. It was Dead Quiet. No planes in the sky (President Bush had grounded all aircraft hours before), no traffic on the street, nor did I hear any traffic from the highway two blocks away. No dogs barking, no children playing. Nothing but the eerie, booming echo of jet engines that were no longer making their way into LAX; like the aftermath of some gigantic explosion.

It seemed as if the whole world was waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was like the stillness preceding a violent earthquake that most southern Californians recognize. Any minute I expected a rogue airplane to come barreling out of the sky and plunge into LAX. Or, worse yet, a blindingly bright flash, then no more.

I’ll never forget that day as long as I live and I hope those who perpetrated the attacks are burning in hell right now. My day, however, was nothing compared to those who died horrible, crushing, burning, falling deaths, or live with the resulting disfigurements, physical and emotional. My day was nothing compared to those that lost their parents, their children, their spouses. Even whole families died on some of the airplanes. Little children, taking their first airplane trips were murdered on some of the airplanes. Men who will never see their then yet unborn children, pregnant women (a twofer for the jihadis); fire-fighters—whose job it is to save lives—blown to bits and for what? My day was nothing compared to theirs.

Yet, there are still people, other jihadis that would like nothing better than to finish the job.

On September 11, my wife and I were on Bainbridge Island, Washington, across Puget Sound from Seattle, on our honeymoon. We had arrived at a relative's house the night before, having been traveling around the Olympic Peninsula and other areas for five days. By the time we were awakened that morning, both towers had fallen, but there was still much uncertainty, especially since there were still many commercial flights still in the air. Of course we knew it was terrorists and assumed it was Islamists. I told my wife that no American pilot would ever fly a plane into the buildings - that, if they still had control of the planes, they would have crashed them into the ground or water before hitting a building. It took a long time before I was able to reach my parents in New York to find out that everyone in the extended family and all friends were fine. After that we spent the last five days of the honeymoon mostly where we were and halted all our travel. All we really wanted to do was go home to Minnesota, but of course that was impossible. We arrived home on September 15, the first day there were a reasonable number of flights going.

When I arrived home, disgusted by the quality of news reporting I was getting from TV and radio, I searched the Internet for anything I could find, and I discovered LGF. Thank you so much, Charles, for all the work that you put into this.

Having grown up in New York, I visited the World Trade Center twice. Once, I went to the observation deck at the top, and the second time (in 1981) to Windows on the World. I'm as angry as I was two years ago, and I can't understand why so many people are not. It was apparent to many of us more than two years ago that we were at war, and, if the events of September 11, 2001 didn't wake everyone else up, I don't know what will. Don't they know the consequences of not fighting the Islamists?

I'm not proud of the way I handled that day.
Right around that time, I was just your average run-of-the-mill Canadian socialist slug. I tried to justify the attacks, but it was a pretty tall order. Through it all, I clung to my belief that Islam was a peaceful religion. No matter what I saw going on around me, the Palestinians celebrating the attacks in the streets, the Canadian media had an excuse for it. It was the Jenin hoax of April 2002 that changed my mind in the end. It made me realize that there are liars, deceivers and evildoers in the world, and they are Muslims and the Canadian media outlets that apologize for them.

Welcome to reality, Deathberg. We're glad to have you onboard.

We lived on Kelly AFB on 9/11. I was at work, teaching my first period science class when the librarian (who was a very good friend of mine) sent someone up to say we should come down and watch the news - a plane had hit the WTC. I thought, "No biggie, just an idiot in a Cessna, or something" and kept on teaching the laws of motion.

Almost immediately she came up again and said, "Come down, NOW." My class and I went.

When I saw what was happening on the news, I couldn't think for minutes, all I could do was stare. My husband was TDY at this time, at CENTCOM. When my cell phone went off I pretty much lost it (right after the Pentagon was hit).

It was him, he was okay and locked down. He told me to get onto base IMMEDIATELY and pick up our kids from daycare before base was locked down. This I did. I almost didn't get on base, though, had to call my husband's CO to get the magic ticket in. Perhaps it was some kind of brain defense, all I could think of was that our dog was going to pee on the floor if I couldn't get in and let her out.

My husband was released from his TDY the next day and drove home nonstop with four other guys in a rental car. We had been considering getting out, but he decided then that he was going to make the people responsible for this pay and it would never happen again. Two days after he made it home (five days after the attacks) he took a TDY to the Pentagon.

My brother in law wrote a mass emailing the next week about how he felt true leadership would not respond in kind and would try to remedy the root causes of this event so that it wouldn't happen again - because, of course, the cycle of violence must end! I completely lost my temper and emailed him back, and everyone on his list, that he was a coward and an ingrate who had no clue what was going on. I described the SPs in full body armor who were patrolling our housing area, and the feeling of having automatic weapons trained on you when you tried to get onto Lackland to use the commissary. I described how my children, oblivious to what had happened even though FOX was playing 24/7 at my house, saw the heavily armed patrollers as nothing unusual. I described seeing SPs in the BX with their rifles slung over their shoulders as they ate lunch.
I asked him if he understood that these people didn't care if he was sympathetic or understanding - they wanted him DEAD. And his children DEAD. And his wife DEAD.

He still doesn't get it.

I live in San Francisco now, but I'm from the East Coast originally - my folks are both New Yorkers, and I still have family there...

I was getting the kids ready for school, when my husband came up from his office to tell me that the World Trade Center had just been struck by a plane. We have no TV - I guess he heard about it on the Web. I asked if it was an accident, and he said no one knew... Then he went down to get more news. I kept getting the kids ready.

He came back up to tell me about the second plane, and of course we knew then it wasn't an accident. We assumed Islamic terrorism.

We decided the kids' school was safe enough (despite being a Jewish school), so I took them there. But only about half the kids showed up, and the teachers were too freaked out to teach anyway. The school called to say to come get the kids around noon. My kids saw it as an exciting day - not so much a horrible one - probably because we don't have a TV and we parents weren't crying or freaking out. We were largely numb...

Later I spoke to a friend who lives in Jersey City, with a view of the Towers out her window. She was on the PATH going to work - normally she'd get out at the WTC stop and bike into the Village, but they wouldn't let her out - the first plane had struck. She got out in the Village in time to see the second plane hit. She was emotionally affected for months, but ended up being one of those to circulate peace petitions... I just don't understand that.

The worst thing about being out here in the LLL Left Coast is that people here (except for the few with East Coast roots) got over it so quickly - it never really touched them. It was like hearing about an earthquake in Mexico - a tragedy, but not my tragedy and nothing I can do about it anyway. It took no time at all for them to resume blaming America for everything... I've been utterly homesick for the East Coast ever since.

Oh, and subsequently I found that an artist of mine (a native New Yorker who lives out here now) had been in NYC at the time and shot a roll of film. It's very very moving - people fleeing from the scene. The slideshow is here.

Let my preface my remarks with this:
I'm nearly 40. A military brat, my father being a Navy man for ~25yrs. Lived all over the World & States. '79-80 Iranian Revolution & US Embassy Hostage-taking was my first focus on Islamic fervor / Jihad. The Beirut Marine Barracks bombing was my first true awareness of Terrorism, and drove my choice of service a couple years later.
I was off Active Duty and freshly in the Reserves when Saddam invaded Kuwait. After trying to transfer back to Active Duty, and being told 'no more transfers, we'll be calling up the Reserve units too', I spent all of Desert Shield expecting the Callup / Phone to ring. I became a 24/7/365 Int'l News Junkie, then.

I'm in Los Angeles. Shortly after my wife left on her morning commute, she called home to tell me of the flash news of the WTC being hit by a plane. I turned on the TV in time to see the confusing coverage of 'accident?' and conflicting reports of what type of plane.
Then came the live footage of the second plane (that fireball!).
My first thought was 'those bastards finished the job (of '93)'. There was no doubt in my mind at all that it was Jihadis, 11mos after the USS Cole attack (recall my Navy roots), 3yrs after the african US Embassy bombings. No doubt at all.
I remained fixated on the news stream, from every source I could absorb, especially visually / TV. And whenever a fatuous toad like Aaron Brown would start to wax rhapsodic, I'd flip channels to someone saying something more informative / useful.
I had several online acquaintances in the NYC area, and their first-person accoutns were riveting.

And to tie it all together - my dissatisfaction with Liberal / Western Media finally grew enough in the opening stages of the Afghan Taliban fight that I finally gave up on them as my primary news source. Now I scour the web to find the Real news. That same quest during the buildup for Iraq is what led me to LGF. Thanks Charles, for a great blog and a 'thank you' to all the folks here that contribute so much first-hand and focused info on the Forces of Evil.

Charles and others, just one fast question. Where are the posts from the muslims that read this site? This concerns them as well as us.

I was sitting in my bed here in Providence, where I'm a student at Brown University. 2001 was my freshman year of college. My roommate was a Japanese kid named Kenji, and he was typing at his computer. I woke up and turned on the TV, and then turned it off hapharzardly. I dressed and went outside to class.

My friend Sam was doing a full sprint from class to our dorm outside. "Planes hit the World Trade Center," he said. I instant messaged a friend of mine in New York, where he could see a cloud of ash coming towards his apartment building. We finally got off the computer and just sat and watch. Not very many folks on my hall had TVs and I lived on the first floor, so they all crowded around. Of course we would never erase those television images out of our mind, the plane hitting the building again and again.

I went to class, where a professor said, "Let's just have class as if nothing were happening." Plenty of NYCers in the class still hadn't found out about the attacks, so me and a few others would whisper around to let everyone know. There's a lot of New York folks, so in a large lecture hall about 65 to 75 people left.

In the days that followed I was assaulted by the typical hate-America propaganda, and I've been hearing it ever since. But many of us learned a different lesson, which was, whoever would do such a thing deserves the same penalty they proscribe for us. And that's for their hatred to be eradicated from this earth.

I was chatting on line with a friend in Manhattan (!) and his messages got very erratic, he didn't make any sense. I thought he lost his mind. Although I don't remember his exact words, I replied he sounded weird, to say the least. Had anything happened? Then finally he wrote: "Didn't you turn the TV on?" And then I saw...

Another friend from Israel had just arrived the night before and was staying in NJ with her friends, and decided to go to the WTC to see NY - first time in America, first morning in NY. Luckily, they got up late that morning... and never made it to the WTC... September 11, 2001.

I was woken up by a phone call. It was my sister in law. Bonnie hardly ever calls and that was the first time she had called in the A.M. She told me there was a disaster and to turn on the T.V. and that she had to make some other calls.
I heard the speculation on it being an accident...
Saw the second plane hit live. My heart dropped. Anguish doesn't cover my emotions on that day. I found myself wondering if this is how Freedom will end on Earth.
Watched the rescue work proceed through the night. Shared comments and condolences in a chatroom. Suddenly remembered it was my brothers birthday. 9/11
I called Ed wished him happy birthday . He said "We're going to get them"

Didn't sleep couldn't sleep. The next morning I see live from Buckingham Square London
The Queen's Minstrals all dressed up in their best Red with those big fur hats.
Playing the Star Spangled Banner
... Thats when I started crying

I think the gesture from Great Britain broke the hunkered down in my foxhole, us against the world mentality that had gripped me. I had thought that the U.S. only had friends as long as the money holds out.

It's funny, I use to ask the Brits I encountered in chatrooms "What's so great about Britain?"

I'll never ask that again!

In May 2000 I went to New York for the 1st time with my sister. It had always been a dream of mine and we had the perfect trip; Yankee Stadium, Gospel Tours, Ellis Island, Broadway Show, Helicopter tour, Empire State Building and the Twin Towers.
On our second day we walked all the way from 52nd street down through Greenwich Village and Tribeca, arriving at the Towers around 10:30 pm.

We took the elevator up to the top floor and were impressed by the helpful and friendly, yet thorough, female security guard on duty.
I remember looking out over Manhatten and feeling as though I were on top of a mountain, that this could not possibly be a man-made building I was in.

It felt so strong and permanent.

I will always remember that perfect day, and the people I met that worked there. May God ease the pain of the families of the victims.

May we find the strength to wipe out this evil cult and all those that support it.

I signed on to AOL at 9 that morning and saw a picture of a gray cloud emerging from one tower. The headline was: "Bomb" explodes at World Trade Center. It only looked like one or two floors on one side were damaged, and I assumed the sprinkler system would put out the fire. I did about 20 minutes of everyday trivial web surfing, closed the browser, and the same picture was there. I turned to cable TV.

It was horrible seeing the wounded towers and the replay of the second hijacked plane. I saw each tower collapse on live TV. Scully on C-SPAN was taking calls while the Pentagon belched smoke in the background. When the FAA announced the nationwide groundstop, it was very reassuring to know someone in our government was exercising real power to stop this madness. Knowing the President was heading to a secret air base and ordering fighter jets to patrol our skies was admittedly exhilirating. I was very relieved to see CNBC's Maria Bartiromo (who was outside when the cloud of debris darkened everything) report in safe from the closed, nearly empty stock exchange.

The weather that morning was clear and beautiful. I looked down into the backyard garden and saw the peaceful, miniature world go on, untouched by the hijacker's evil. A little lizard looked like a dinosaur in a forest of flowers. Butterflies carried on as usual on 9/11. My violated soul was seeing everything in crystal clarity.

The immensity of the loss hit me in the next few days. At first I estimated 30,000 people died in the towers. The daily reduction in the count of dead and missing was the only good news trickling forth from the scene. For the next month, every time I woke up during the night, I had to check the 24 hour TV coverage to see if another attack had happened.

May all hijackers, terrorists, hate-filled preachers, terrorist financiers, and crowds applauding terrorism have their eyes stabbed in with daggers dipped in sulfuric acid at full force for all eternity. You psychos deserve it.

My 9.11

I had finally managed to move out of my apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and rented a large u-Haul truck and drove to Michigan by myself. I arrived september 11th and as I entered the house I heard the TV news and went to see what was on. As I realized we were being attacked, I saw live on TV the second plane hit the north tower. My brother worked in the south tower, the first tower that was hit. For a while there we didn't know if he had gotten out. My mother called and she was hysterical, very frantic. My sister from the Bronx called and told me she got a blackberry (wireless) message from my brother that he was in the stairwell and going down to get out of the building. After a few hours we found out he had walked from downtown to my apartment over 150 blocks. He was ok his feet just hurt and the city was under lock down. Luckily, I had left my keys with my neighbor and he let my brother into my old apartment.

We later found out that night that my Uncle had been on the plane from Boston that hit the first tower, the tower my brother was in. My uncle worked in Boston and lived in California. He was on his way home to his wife and son.

I remember first being shocked and not really reacting at all. Then I remember getting very angry and mad. How dare they fuck with us. I wanted to kick some ass. I even thought of calling my local ROTC to check in with them and see if they needed people right away. I also remember trying to remain very calm and cool but it seemed very hard to do it.

Addendum to my earlier post:
Two weeks before the attacks I had hosted my 9 year old niece in the city. i took her to the usual tourist sites, Staue of Liberty, Empire State, ChinaTown, Wall Street, Battery Park, etc. On the way home we passed WTC and I said, "We'll leave that for your next visit." Two weeks later those devils from the religion of peace had ended the possibility of that visit. I wouldn't feel comfortable taking her to the top of The Empire State now.
God Bless America

I was at my computer doing my morning news surfing (I'm self-employed and can get away with that kind of behavior). I was reading Slashdot, and there was a story about it. I ran downstairs and put on CNN (this was before I had discovered Fox News). I called in my wife. She watched for a minute and said, "Bin Laden".

What else can I tell you. It's not a very dramatic story. I'll never forget that morning, though. And to make matters worse, 9/11 is my wife's birthday. Thanks a lot, Religion of Peace.

I was living in the East Village of Manhattan at the time, and worked in SOHO. That morning I didn't check the news but began to walk to the office immediately. As I turned south of St. Mark's onto Lafayette, I noticed something strange. Many dozens of people were walking *uptown*. I thought, maybe there is some sort of free concert in Union Square park. I noticed they were hardly talking. Heads were often down. As I walked down the street it was difficult to avoid people. What the hell was going on? Then I looked up and saw overhead what looked to be the plume of a volcano. A dark think giant cloud narrowing at some indeterminate point downtown. I knew then that something terrible happened. Didn't know what exactly, but that didn't prevent me from beginning to feel nauseous. I asked a passerby what happened. He told me that planes had just crashed into the Trade Centers. I began to run to work, against the crowd. When I arrived at work, they were doing an office head count. Some people had still not arrived. After numerous attempts to call home, I finally managed to leave a message. Then another developer ran into the room and shouted the first tower has collapsed. I just sat there in my chair in shock. After the second tower fell and the others had arrived, we decided to meet later at the CTO's apartment, so I left for home. Got there. Watched some CNN. Then left for the meeting place. When I arrived, we went to the roof and watched the smoking downtown. We decided to go up to Beth Israel and donate blood, but there was a huge line and people were being turned away. We went back to another developer's apartment and watched CNN on film screen via an LCD projector. I bought a bottle of Jack. We drank.

For two months after that the whole city reeked of a smell I will never forget. The smell of burning rubber and flesh and unknown shit. Makeshift shrines were constructed outside local FDNY precincts. It was a very depressing time. I started to reevaluate my life then, left my job, stayed with my parents, then spent 6 months in Israel. Now I am back home. New job, new politics, new outlook. Family is most important, followed by old friends.

I wanna add one thing to my comment in #94:

A day or two later, we decided that we wanted to fly a flag. The only place around we could find that had flags was a little flag store (now theres a ypecialty shop) in Arlington (MA). We went up there, and there was a huge line outside the shop and down the street. We stood in line for a couple of hours. Finally, when we were actually inside the shop, a local news reporter showed up and started interviewing people.

It might have been irrational on my part, but I felt really intruded upon. Before the reporter showed up, there had been a nice feeling of community among the people there. We felt as though there had been a certain purity of intent among us. After the reporter showed up, I felt like we were just participating in a piece of mass culture. He completely ruined the experience. I was fully prepared to deliver a very nasty diatribe had he even attempted to talk to me.

I had been rather down on the media before, but that really put the nail in it for me. My general annoyance with the media turned to cold contempt.

I travel for a living, selling Enterprise Software to Fortune 500 clients, based out of Phoenix, AZ. However on 9/11, for the first time in a whille, I had people flying into Phoenix joining me for various meetings, so instead of flying out that morning to the Bay area, or Southern California, or Las Vegas, I had the luxury of sleeping in that morning, waiting for my co-workers to join me at a meeting around mid-day.

I'm not sure of the time, but I think it was after 6:15am and before the 2nd tower was hit, I got a call on my cell phone. I remember waking up the cell phone ringing thinking why is it ringing so early? Which of my co-workers is not going to make it into town, or indefinately delayed. It was my co-worker Nancy and I remember her clearly "Sean, they closed the airport! Burbank (California) is closed and I can't get out. The World Trade Center has been hit by an airplane." I remember then saying to my slowly waking wife, "Turn on CNN!!".

I will always remember the image I saw on the TV, the 1st tower smoking. Then watching as what I think was a plane .... then a fireball. The commentators were saying, what was that? Replays played over and over and over again showed the second plane hitting the 2nd tower. I remember seeing the images of the Pentagon burning. Rumors of a car bomb at the State Department. Rumors of other hijacked airplanes all over the Eastern US. One of the local Phoenix news stations told of a hijacked airplane in Cleveland. Then reports of the plane down in Pennsylvania. All airplanes where being forced to land. F-16's over New York and D.C., and over Phoenix. Seeing images of our President flying to various locations to get ahold of the situation.

I reached all my co-workers that morning via cell phone. None had been able to depart due to the closure and lockdown of the airports nationally. We were all in disbelief. I remember thinking, this is our December 7th, 1941, or this is the day we will all remember, like my parents vivid recollections of the day JFK was killed. I remember thinking, they've woken a sleeping giant, just as the Japanese admiral said after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. I also remember thinking, thank God George Bush is our President, one who will bring the fight back to the Terrorists who struck and destroyed the World Trade Center, struck our Pentagon, and crashed the plane in the field in Pennsylvania, and caused so much grief for families of the victims and grief in Americans.

I found out a few days later, my manager at the time, had a childhood friend on the United flight that struck the 2nd tower. My neighbor lost 3 business partners in the World Trade Center, severly hurting his business. I have cousins in Northern New Jersey, and they were obviously impacted more by 9/11, since they had friends who lost loved ones and where in the World Trade Center at the time of the attacks. I remember my oldest cousins' husband telling me that he heard the New York police and firefighters radio traffic that morning, as he is a police officer in, I think, Morristown. He happened to in training that day at a regional training academy in Northern New Jersey. He said it was very busy over the radios, police officers and firefighers giving reports and status of locations in towers, then extreme static, then complete silence.

Thank you Charles, for giving us this outlet for telling our stories so people will never, never ever forget, this chilling day in American history.

I was on my 7th day of a 9 day vacation in London. I was having a great time. Just a few weeks before I'd decided that my work schedule would allow for a vacation then. I cashed in some frequent flyer points and made my plans. I would go by myself. I was interested to find out how it would be to take a European vacation alone.

I spent most of September 10, 2001 in museums. On the 11th I wanted some fresh air. I went all the way out (southwest London) to Kew Gardens. It was an overcast day, but I fell in love with the beauty of the place. The only bad thing was the fact that Kew is under one of the flight paths for Heathrow. The sound of planes flying overhead was annoying.

I didn't have much time to spend at Kew, because, just after I'd arrived the week before, I'd bought a ticket for a tour of Parliament at 1:30 p.m. (8:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Savings Time). On my way to the subway/underground (The Tube), I stopped at the ATM. For some reason, I took out a lot of money. Why did I do that, I thought? I'll have to spend it all before 4:00 on September 13, when my plane leaves! Before I caught the Tube back to central London, I bought a can of diet Coke. When I arrived at the Westminster Station, I couldn't find a trash can for the empty Coke can. On my way to the entrance to Parliament, I couldn't find a trash can. Then I remembered that there wouldn't be any trash cans in the Tube or around famous buildings in London - the IRA terrorists had a habit of leaving bombs in them. My empty diet Coke can when into my bag, through the airport-style security at Parliament, and on the tour.

The tour lasted about 2 hours. Because my 7-day transport pass would expire then next day, I decided to go all the way to the east side of London and ride the Docklands Light Railroad (DLR) and walk around Greenwich.

At about 5:30 p.m., I started back to central London and my hotel. I was on the (DLR). The seats are along the sides of the train so the passengers face each other. I was probably thinking about supper. Across from me, a woman raised her tabloid style newspaper. On the front and back was a huge photograph of the burning Twin Towers and with a headline about terrorism. I said something like "Oh my God!" The man beside said, "They're gone." I said, "What do you mean, ‘they're gone’?" He said, "They fell down."

I couldn’t believe they were gone. After I left the DLR and got on the Tube, it seemed as if everyone was reading a newspaper with a picture of the burning towers. I don’t remember anyone talking. All I could think about was getting a newspaper, because I needed the facts, and to my hotel room with the TV and then calling my parents.

An Evening Standard newspaper seller had set himself up at the corner of Baker Street. He was swamped by people wanting his already out of date papers. Within a couple minutes of turning on the TV, BBC started showing video of people waving and begging for help from the shattered windows of one of the towers. Then they started showing the jumpers. I started to cry. I decided there were some facts I just couldn’t face right then. I already knew (from what source I can’t remember, maybe the hotel owner) that all the flights to the US were canceled. Could I face getting on a plane on the 13th, if the flights started again? I turned off the TV and decided to try to call home. Of course, I couldn’t get through. But Internet cafes and email worked. In fact, it was easier to read about 9-11 online than watch those horrible images on TV.

When I got back to the hotel TV, they were getting ready for one of Guiliani’s appearances. Other than watching TV, I don’t remember anything else that evening. I can’t remember where I ate dinner. I tossed and turned all night. What was happening? When would I get back to my country? When would the other shoe drop? For the first time in a week of traveling by myself, I felt lonely.

I live in Toronto but one of my sons works in the World Financial Center, 2 buildings away from WTC. On Sept 11 after the first plane struck but before the second plane hit the tower, I had have not yet turned on the news and just finished exercising on my bike. My son called and said "Dad, I am ok, I was late for work today and I am now stuck on the GWB." I asked him what he is telling me that he is ok, and he told me what happened. Today, you can read on left wing "acceptable" Web sites (Counterpunch linked to by The Nation) that the Mossad is plotting a second 9/11 aided by the American Jewish Community. We are at war - and not only with the Islamofascists.

From Charles Jacobs,
American Anti-Slavery Group

I missed Mohammed Atta by a half hour.

I went to DC that morning from Boston to be part of a press conference on Sudan at the Capitol. Alan Greenspan was opposed to a provision in the Sudan Peace Act that would punish Wall St. companies that profited from jihad slavery and slaughter in Sudan: specifically it would prohibit a Canadian oil company, Talisman Energy, from trading on the NYSE. I went to defend what were called "capitol market sanctions," arguing - against his "slippery slope" position - that genocide and slavery were a bright red line, and that America, a nation of abolitionists, could not abide trade with companies abetting slavery. (Talisman is being sued for its complicity in ethnic cleansing the oil fields of Sudan: see [Link: www.iabolish.com...] and search "Talisman.")

My speech had this line, "Mr. Greenspan, if we don't defend people from terror THERE, it will come HERE." It came, right to Wall St., a few minutes before our press conference.

The Capitol police came to escort us from the building. I was with former Congressman Walter Fauntroy who had gone to Sudan with me to redeem slaves, John Eibner, the Christian Solidarity International hero, who created the "underground railroad" that freed tens of thousands of black Christian jihad slaves, and Joe Madison, a black radio talk show host in DC who also went to Sudan with us. We exited from the building when we heard that the Pentagon had been attacked.

I learned from my wife in Boston - when the cell phone worked -- that a man we knew was murdered on the plane.

Next day, I took a train home to Boston, and as it passed Manhattan I saw the devastation and the only question I pondered, then, as now, is: "can middle class, soft, dumbed-down, confused America kill this cancer?"

Even though I was less than two miles from the WTC, I was one of the last people on earth to know about it. I left a little late for work that day (I live in Forest Hills in Queens) It was about 8:45. Normally I walk from my house to the subway station and listen to my walkman in which case I would have heard about the first plane hitting. On this day, my walkman was out of batteries and my neighbor offered to drive me to the station where he was listening to classical music. The train arrived normally and I got on making further communication impossible because radios will not work underground. It was just about 9:00 as I got onto the train. For a while the train proceeded normally then it came to a hault probably around 9:30 or so. I had no idea where we were since we were between stations. No indication was given that anything had happened. I read my novel assuming it was a typical delay due to a broken down train or sick passenger. Meanwhile scores of people were jumping out of the burning building. At around 11:00, the train lurched forward for a while and stopped again. A conducter announced the following: "Due to a police action at the World Trade Center, there will be no service on the "E" line. The first car is currently at the 42nd Street Station. We STRONGLY suggest you walk forward to the first car and exit the train. Along with everyone else I did so. I still did not suspect that anything was seriously wrong. How could I? When I got out of the train, my first thought was to walk through the station and pick up the "1" train which stops near my office. (ten blocks north of the WTC) I stopped at a newstand to pick up my daily copy of the NY Post and the Daily News and walked to the new station, still underground and unable to hear any news. WHen I got to the platform for the 1,2,3 line, I saw two trains clearly inoperable sitting in the station. For the first time I knew something serious had happened. I asked a woman what was going on. She said a plane crashed into the WTC and ALL subway service was cancelled. By now the towers had collapsed but I knew nothing. Now I was getting nervous. I had never heard of all service being cancelled. And how could a plane crash into the WTC? I knew I would not be going to work that day. I left the station and exited at Times Square. Since my walkman was dead, I went into a deli and was charged seven bucks for new batteries. Desparate to hear what was happening, I paid the extortionist. Although there seemed to be long lines at phone booths and a lot of people milling around, I still could not imagine the scope of what had happened. Because of the tall buildings of mid town, the burning towers themselves would not have been visible let alone the rubble. FInally, putting on WCBS, I heard the announcers casually referring to the fact that the two towers were "gone". My mnind simply could not comprehend it. It took a few minutes of listening to discover what the whole world already knew. I waited 20 minutes to make a call home at a phone booth to let my family know I was o.k. Then I headed north and east towards the east river, figuring to walk home. I heard from Howard Stern (ironically the best coverage that day in my opinion) that a blood center was open on 53d and Lexington Ave. I walked over and ran into a friend of mine from Forest Hills whose office was right around the corner. He invited me up. I ate lunch with his firm and one of his colleages said "We can't overreact or we're just like them." (We already knew it was Bin Laden you all may recall) I wanted to kill him and at that moment my greatest fear was that the President of the U.S. who I had little regard for, wpould not be up to the task ahead. My friend and I eventually joined a great exodus of people walking over the 59th Street Bridge to Queens. As we walked across the river I saw for the first time the plume of smoke from the ruins of our city. His wife picked us up in Long Island CIty (just over the bridge) and drove us home. We waited for her in a bar.restaraunt and I will never forget watching for the first time on the bar T.V., the images we all know so well and I will NEVER forget a table in the back of the bar where about seven people were having a good old time laughing and joking completely oblivious to the disaster that had overtaken us. I couldn't understand how they could ignore the reality around them. At the time I assumed that tens of thousands would be dead. It seems like a miracle that so few actually died although it is still the worst death toll ever on American soil.
Postscript: I'm sure everyone felt much like I did. Over the next weeks I functioned in a state of shock. My daughter turned three on Sept. 23. I could not enjoy her birthday party. I did not watch a normal t.v. program for months. All I did was watch that news crawl obsessively. I will never forget those early days "Guliani-The loss will be too great to bear". The first comfort I got was the President's speech to the nation where he said the words I wanted to hear, that we were at war. I did not return to my office until the following Monday where those of us below Canal Street but above Chambers were given permission to enter to go to our offices. The stench was overwhelming for MONTHS. Traffic was not allowed for many months. The posters of the missing were everywhere. People would stand in the middle of the street and snap pictures of the ruins. I could never bring myself to do it. I thought it would be disrespectful. A friend of mine at work would always talk about the loss of the Towers. I would remind her that I would rather lose every building in New York than one human life and we had lost nearly three thousand. It was many many months before I felt even reasonably safe on the subway. I remember the Friday before Columbus Day thinking, yes. Now I have at least three days to live. I did not run for my life like so many others in the City. I did not witness the events live. But I will NEVER forget the feeling of horror and despair. NOTHING is more important than making sure it does not happen again on a similar or even larger scale. This is why I am no longer a democrat.

Just not to be confused with BC Bruce, I'm the one with rockets and experience with large lizards.
I guess I just missed the news and nothing on the local FM radio on the way to work. Anyway get to work at the nursery things are just normal. The boss arrives and says a plane hit the WTC. Tuesday is bug day the beneficals come from Koppert in Holland over the weekend and are shipped Fedex from Detroit on Monday. So the Fedex driver shows up. I asked what was going on and got the reply the WTC WAS GONE! TWO 767 HAD HIT IT! My first thought was the pilots had to have been killed first no one could have forced them to fly into the towers.
I think the unsung heros were the transit cops who told people to just go home because there was fire in the WTC. The daughter of a nursey owner I know was saved by this.

We were in the middle of hockey practice when someone called my coach over to the side for a few minutes. When he got back, he looked strained and called everyone into a huddle.

"Our country is under attack, planes have flown into the WTC towers and the Pentagon, subways may have been blown up, and we don't know for sure what's happening."

For several minutes, we all knelt for a moment of silence, no one wanting to be the first to move and everyone nonplussed or worried. After practice was over, some of the guys started talking about the news, comparing it to Red Dawn, but they weren't too shaken. I didn't say anything because I hardly believed what had happened. I wanted to get home and check it out online.

Months after, before our last practice game of the semester, we all lined up with our helmets off and sang the national anthem. It was off-key, but incredibly reverent for a gang of hockey players.

August 15-Sept 12,2001 I backpacked through North Cascades National Park in Washington State. I had planned the trek for over a year and returned each week to my home for resupply and a new hiking partner. My mantra to help the miles pass quickly and painlessly was "peace, shalom, salaam". On this, the last leg,when my friend Jon and I were within 12 miles of Rainey Pass on Hiway 20 we passed two men hiking in the opposite direction. I will always remember this guy with dark, metal, round, wire rimmed glasses, dressed in fashionable Patagonia and Mountain Hardware clothing, thin, with dark curly hair, and an East Coast accent, asking me if I had heard the news. "What news?", I asked. He told me to sit down on the bridge over Rainbow Creek and told me that there was a terrorist attack and the Twin towers were no more, that the Pentagon had been destroyed, that the White House was thought to be a target, and that more than 40,000 people were believed dead. Though sitting I felt the strength leave my legs. We sat together for a while as my mind raced and my hands shook. I could not put together sentences to quiz him on the details. I sat in a stupor trying to process what he had just told me. When we departed the bridge to finish our hike my pace slowed to a crawl. My legs seemed to stop working. My friend Jon finally told me he would meet me at the end of the trail as he became very anxious to get out and call home. When we got to the car we decided to go to the nearest phone which was about 20 miles East, in the opposite direction as home. We drove to Mazama, WA and the Mazama general store. Here for the first time I saw the images on television and heard the stories.
Since that time I have been hyper focused on the events in the Middle East. I read LGF everday but this is the first time I have posted. Thank you for this opportunity.
Stuart

Sorry folks, a very nasty conspira-loon troll has tried to sneak into yesterday's "new 9-11 video" string. I skinned it, but some of you may want to go there and piss on the writhing corpse before Charles buries it.

As we write here we should also remember that there are some hateful people at the DU, Indymedia and Counterpunch (plus ex-Congresswoman McKinney) who are working diligently to "prove" that 9/11 was the work of the Bush administration and/or Israel.

That morning at about 8:45a.m. I was in my room at home in Toronto getting ready for school. My father called upstairs to me that there had been a small plane crash in New York. I turned on my radio, which was tuned to the CBC, and nothing was mentioned about it. (Mark Steyn wrote an article about how the CBC didn't cut in). I didn't think anything of it and continued my regular schedule. At about 9:00ish I turned to the commercial station (1010?) and they were broadcasting straight from CNN. What struck me was that noone knew what the hell was going on, but it was bad. I literally sat there listening to the radio in my room for the next three-four hours saying tehillim (I completed it) and crying. (I was too freaked out to watch it on T.V.) At about noon I got up and went to school - unimaginably shaken up - stayed for a few minutes and then left and went home.

Vignettes I remember

1.) I seem to remember at some point that day a reporter describing how members of congress were arriving at a secure bunker - and thinking about the media, "these traitorous bastards! Whose side are they on?". That feeling hasn't gone away.

2.) I was going out with a girl from New York at the time and going in every other week. There was no way to get a phone line to New York; there was a creepy message that "all circuits are busy" like some 1950's movie after a nuclear attack.

3.) During the short time I went out that day, I bumped into an aquaintance who had slept in that morning. A group of us were standing around talking, and he asked something like, "so what's going on folks?" When it was described to him that the the RoP (tm) had blown up the pentagon he thought we were playing with him. He literally didn't believe us when we were talking to him. I guess he found out we weren't kidding later.

4.) That night on the talk radio station in Toronto they opened the lines for the first time all day. Virtually every caller was a "Mohammed" or "Ahmed" explaining that terrorism is forbidden by islam, but justified(simultaneously). Since 9/11 those soulless goblins haven't changed a bit.

I was at work at a small Texas newspaper that morning, and it was the day before press day. Things were a little busy (I was about to leave and change careers and was training my replacement).

I saw on the Internet AP wire that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. I too thought it was probably a Cessna and not anything bigger.

A few minutes later, the word was out about the strike on the second tower, and I told the incoming editor that we were going to have to start working up a story. Our paper does not use the wire services, so that means local connections.

He actually resisted and said it wasn't local news. We still did not realize the size of the planes, but I already knew it was going to be huge. There was no cable-TV in our office, and just one very old black and white set. All our news was off the Internet at first that day, and it was very sluggish.

We went over to the courthouse to check records for another story, and received the word there that the Pentagon had been struck. At that point, I told him that we were at war and needed to get to work.

We fired up the old 12-inch black and white TV in the office and watched the coverage unfolding as we worked on the story. By the end of the next day, we had interviews with a former resident of our town who now lives in New York. He saw the towers fall from another skyscraper. Another former resident volunteered and went down to help out near Ground Zero.

It was a day that changed many of us forever, and the first time I realized how many people hate America simply for being America - and the depth of that hatred. It's going to be a long war.

Mother in law calls and says turn the t.v. One tower burning and I went CRAAAP! and then the second plane hit... That's when I said to my wife "we're at war honey"I guess I was lucky I got to watch Cos I WILL NEVER FORGET!!!!! As an engineer I was wondering how difficult it was going to be to scrape off the top of those towers and repair them in the middle of the Apple and all I KNEW THEY COULDN'T FALL!!! then I cried.....

P.S. Thanks for doing this. I read half of the posts in the previuos thread,took my son to his football game,(we lost)came home and went straight back to reading the threads thank G-D for blogs especialy L.G.F.

I was at a meeting that morning and at the end of it, a physician said, "By the way, I heard on the radio that 2 planes have crashed into the WTC. One might be an accident, but two,...," I shrugged because, like many of us, my thought was "whackjobs with Cessnas" - bizarre and unpleasant, but nothing earthshattering. Then I left the meeting, and walked into the physician's lounge, which you have to walk though to get to my office. The lounge was packed with doctors and they were staring at CNN. I looked at the screen and saw the towers aflame.

I remember going back to my desk from time to time when I couldn't bear to look at the TV anymore and sitting there shuffling papers and staring at the wall. The emotion that I felt the most that day was a feeling of sick dread. Remember all the rumors that were flying around that day? The Sears tower was going to be targeted, there was an unidentified plane heading toward Fort Knox, or the West Coast, 50,000 people had died in the WTC attacks, etc. It felt like the world was ending, and in a way, it did.

The other thing I recall was walking home from work - I walk to and from work on nice days, and 9/11 was as perfect a day (weatherwise) here as it was in New york. The combination of beautiful weather and hellish events somehow made the day even more unsettling. I kept looking up at the sky and thinking that there wasn't a single plane flying over the U.S.

The next day, I woke up thinking "Yesterday was a dream. It really didn't happen." Then I turned on the TV and saw that it had.

And I will never,ever forget seeing the Palis on TV passing out candy and celebrating - that fat monstrous bitch ululating. I would not have believed I was capable of so much hatred at that moment. I wanted to shoot them all.

I find the Arab/muslim world stupid. Please free to write this individual with your 9/11 thoughts:
[Link: riverbendblog.blogspot.com...]

oh, and one more thing: that day was when I finally decided that all three major news anchors were jerks, but Peter Jennings was the WORST jerk with his petulant whining that the President wasn't rushing back into the White House.

that day exposed how many holes we have in our national security, and it would be the height of stupidity (ahem - liberal wisdom) to fly the leader of the free world into the battle "because it would make good TV."

Idiots, all of them. But Peter Jennings the most.

My Son's Story:

My son was in 6th grade on 9/11/01. One of his activiities at school was one of the student producers and "on-air" staff of the school's morning anouncements show, broadcast on closed-circuit TV to all the classrooms in the school. He only told me the other day about how he first found out about 9/11.

He had just turned the studio TV on to CNN to get a few headlines for the broadcast, and saw footage of a plane flying into the towers (probably the 2nd plane). He told me he first thought it was a movie or a commercial; but as the tape was repeated, he realized it was real and something was terribly wrong.

He asked the teacher what was happening - she told him something noncomittal but sufficiently reassuring, while switching off the TV. The broadcast went on as normal, albeit probably quicker than usual and with no mention of the attack. My son and the other students then returned to their classes. He knew something was wrong, but also knew it was in NY and not nearby (he didn't know about the Pentagon attack 25 miles from here until he got home) so school was safe enough.

It's with a lbittersweet feeling that he told me recently he thinks he was the first kid in his school, and maybe the first person in his school, to find out about the attack and see the image of the aircraft flying into the south tower.

I woke up to a phone call that said my brother was ok. I was thought ok from what?

It turns out my brother Mark and his fiance Juliana lived 3 blocks from the WTC. As I turned on the tv to CNN I saw the second plane hit.

Instantly I knew it had to be tied to the assasination of Ahmed Shah Masood two days earlier. Two planes, then a third and a fourth, and the assasination of the leader of the Northern Alliance, it was am escalation of the war with terror.

My heart goes out to the families who lost loved ones.

I will never forget the events of 9/11. I was watching the local early morning news when Diane Sawyer broke in with the news that a small plane had hit the WTC and they were showing pictures of the smoke. I wondered how on earth a plane could hit a building that big by accident. I saw a helicopter flying about the building and I thought perhaps they were working on a rescue plan for those poor souls trapped on the upper floors. Then I realized it was a news helicopter. Next I saw another plane flying toward the WTC. It looked so large and I again thought that perhaps this was some kind of rescue operation. (You know, one of those planes that drops fire-retardant.) But it kept on its course and flew right into the WTC. In that split-second of shock, I realized this was no accident. It was a terror attack.

I awoke my husband and daughter to tell them that something terrible had happened. (It was just after 7 MDT). As we watched on the tv, the first tower came down. It seemed so surreal and my mind couldn't comprehend it for a moment. I was sickened by the thought of all those who were forever lost. The second tower swayed and then also came down. This image will stay with me the rest of my life. This was the day that I personally knew that true evil exists and that there are those who will kill me and mine just because of who we are. That is why I am so committed to the War on Terror. We must fight so that our children and grandchildren will have peace and freedom.

God bless America. And God bless all those who have lost loved ones to the terrible evil that others do.

As was mentioned by others, I did not think it was real at first either. A bike messenger on the subway was talking to a couple women about a plane hitting the WTC and I figured it was either a small plane that got too close, or he was just some sick bastard trying to pick up on some attractive women.

Unfortuantely, we only had to travel a couple stops to realize the gravity of the situation. The N train in queens is elevated above 99% of the buildings and the view of the Manhattan skyline is incredible. While stopped for traffic, we saw the 2nd tower explode, but could not see why. The conductor came on and said that "apparently a bomb has gone off in each of the towers of the WTC". Yeah, no kidding.

Continued into work only to find out that we would be going home. 1st tower collapsed while I was there. 2nd while I was on my 2-3 hour walk home.

The image that I will remember most, however, is when I arrived at the closest hospital to my place to give blood. The line was huge. 6-8 hours wait was the estimate and the nurses there were ordering people to go home and come back the next day. That so many would have the same first thought in what to do was absolutely stunning. This in the city that was the butt of so many jokes after its reaction to the central park jogger rape was, "She was jogging in Central Park at 5:00 AM? What did she expect?"

I went back the next day and they did not want anyone that had never given blood before because doing the paperwork required would take too much time.

I don't want to fill Charles log with my whole thing, because it is quite long, but I sent an email to my sister on the 12th which pretty much describes my whole experience and feelings.

On Sept 11, 2001 I was at my college. I had walked into the counseling office to pick something up and noticed everyone was watching something on an office television. The screen showed buildings on fire. I asked what was going on, assuming it was a staged event or a small fire in the local area. A girl replied that the World Trade Centers had been destroyed and that a plane had hit the Pentagon. I mumbled something like "Jesus," and walked out.

In the main corridors that contain the multiple entrances and lobbies, janitors and school officials were pushing out television carts and hooking them up in front of tables and chairs. Hundreds of students and teachers were lined up to watch. Employees from the school library had printed out the frontpage of CNN.com and were passing them around to people. I took a seat and watched the devastation with all of the others. I was literally trembling. My hands and feet were shaking uncontrollably and I couldn't get them to stop. It wasn't fear causing it so much as anger and knowing that our country was at war in a way that hadn't existed for 50 years. I remember thinking that this was what they must have felt like on December 7, 1941.

I have never forgotten the reaction I had that day, and I'll never figure out how the hell liberals can justify their fervent opposition to destroying the cancer that caused the Sept 11 attacks. This is a war, and it's unfortunate and shocking that many in this country and around the world refuse to accept that.

I'll never forget, either.

Like Lizzie's brother, I live in New Jersey. I have a beautiful view of the NYC skyline from the top of the street. If I go a bit further up Eagle Rock Avenue, I can see the view of NYC from the same place where George Washington used to track British troop movements in the city.

My husband left for work late that day; we'd been discussing rearranging the boys' rooms. I went up to the playroom and was playing Operation with my younger son. Had no idea what was going on until my husband called me and told me that terrorists had successfully attacked the WTC and the Pentagon, and to turn on the TV.

When I did so, the first thing I heard was that both the towers were gone. I started shrieking in anguish and couldn't stop. GONE??? How could they be GONE???

I used to work for Aon, on the 101st floor of the South Tower. I'd go in from Newark every morning on the PATH train, patiently reading my book until I heard the call "World Trade Center!" I always got a seat when I was pregnant--people would INSIST on giving me a seat. I'd walk past The Gap, Crabtree and Evelyn, and stop for an almond milkshake before I got on one of those amazingly fast, ear-popping elevators. I'd giggle when the building swayed in a high wind. On foggy days we were literally in the clouds. But on sunny days, I'd watch the boats in the harbor leaving white wakes past the Statue of Liberty. I'd marvel at the window washer and wave to him when he was outside my office. At lunchtime I could go browse in the bookstore or take my lunch outside and watch the sailboats near the Financial Center. I brought my older son to work one day; my boss took him shopping down on the concourse and bought him a little souvenir replica of the towers.

So how could they be GONE??? I disliked the saying "I couldn't get my head around it" because I found it trite and overused. But for the next month, that was all I could think of when I thought of the towers' being gone. It was simply too big to get my head around. Was that one of my former coworkers jumping out? How many of them had been lost? How many people I didn't know but had smiled and nodded at in the elevators? How many were crushed, burned, or otherwise murdered in cold blood?

I remember calling my husband back and telling him we had to move to Iowa...right now. I was utterly terrified. I found the little replica of the towers in my son's room, held it to my chest and sobbed uncontrollably. All those lives--and all that life--gone. Just...gone.

I haven't been to Ground Zero for the same reason that some people don't want to see a loved one's body--I prefer to remember the WTC alive, thrumming and swirling with motion and color and sound--the biggest buildings in the city at the center of the universe. But I can't avoid seeing the ripped-open skyline when I come down the hill to my house. It looks like the face of a beloved friend who's been mugged and had his two front teeth knocked out.

No, I will never forget.

My dya was a rather uninteresting one to that point. I was at the time a trainer for the company I work for. i was in the middle of conducting a class, discussing how to identify correct document procedure (rather dry stuff, I kept telling them), when my supervisor came into the room and said that a jet had hit one of the WTC Towers. I know it seems kind of crass, but my first comment was something like, " Damn, how drunk does a pilot have to be to hit that big-ass building?" My boss gave me a dirty look (of course) and she left. She returned about 15 minutes later and told us that both towers had been hit. Again with the smart-alec attitude, I told her that it must have been a pilot for America West, since they had the party reputation for a long time. She then told us that it loked like two planes had hit the towers. At that point, I think I knew what was up. Then the news about the Pentagon came in, and I was getting a little worried. My kid was about 150 feet away from a large government installation, and my first thought was if the governernment buildings were being selected, we should do something quickly. We made arrangements for my kids to be brought out of school, and moved forward through the day. Not much we could do where we were, except watch the horror unfold. We knew who it was that did this. What began to sicken me was the sight of people plunging to their deaths from the towers. Then the towers fell. Horror gave way to shock, which soon gave way to anger.

Thanks to the pigs that practice this filth of a religion, I cannot look at a Arab or Muslim the same. I know they feel my stare when they walk past. I hope they know that they are no longer welcome in my country. I have no use for them. They are like the dog which has rabies, and needs to be destroyed.

It is now, that I understand why my grandfather felt the way he did towards the Germans and Japanese. now I understand. I hope the rest of America understands.

#118 Brian Jacks

This is a war, and it's unfortunate and shocking that many in this country and around the world refuse to accept that.

They need to remember Leon Trotsky's observation:

"You may not be interested in War, but War is interested in you."

A friend called me at work, 3 p.m. Central European time: "Two airplanes were dropped into the World Trade Center." - "You're kidding." - "I'm not." I kept silent for a few moments, thinking whether to take a side, and then said: "That's a big thing. Who does something like that?" - "No idea." It was a rainy day in old Berlin, nevertheless strange how everybody on the street looked like they already had become all wet. I realized that there was a war somewhere out there in the world, but the only conclusion I could draw was to be skeptical of everything I'd hear about it.

Seven months later, when on the peak of the Jenin hoax Joschka Fischer said Germany had a special responsibility to send troops to Israel because of the Holocaust, I got alarmed. As the decision whether to occupy Israel was pending in the U.N., a government broadcaster casually said there was a rumour in the U.S. administration that a prominent U.N. inspector to be sent to Jenin had likened the David Shield to the swastika. I twitched, wrote down the name, and later together with the term "Hakenkreuz" put it into a search engine, found nothing and repeated the search in combination with the English language "swastika".

I found watch/, the story turned out to be true, and, to my great astonishment, decisive. I started to read English language media and discovered that Saudi Arabia had been a white spot on my mental map, and the more I understood, I saw Gerhard Schröder standing way closer to Crown Prince Abdullah than to George W. Bush. Further, that when I had believed Schröder close to the U.S. before, this had been just a misperception resulting from that I hadn't realized that the Prince, who turned out to be the first man after Hitler to use the word "final victory" in a speech delivered in Berlin, was a part of the image at all.

But would Bush really deviate from their designs? In autumn 2002, German politicians visiting the U.S. started to answer questions in the press briefings with "I will answer this question then when it is posed." Meanwhile, political discussions I had more and more often were changed their subject to what was described as my lack of patriotism. I decided to be consistent, whatever might happen.

When in winter Sec Rumsfeld employed the terms "problem" in reference to Germany and "old and new" in reference to whole Europe, I was astonished by the unforseeable amount of realism appearing in that incredibly infamous Neocon conspiracy and decided to take a detailed look. I went through watch/'s linklist and found warblogs, among them one with a silly name where the kind of open competition of ideas that I had been looking for took place. After the liberation of Iraq, I started a bilingual website.

At the time, I was working for a small local nonprofit organization that had its office on the first floor of a three-storey building about three blocks from Yale's main library. My boss and I had plans to drive to Hartford that afternoon to work on a grant proposal with another academic. She was at home putting the final touches on the proposal draft, while I was in the office getting the rest of our materials together. I remember what a beautiful day it was-- perfect weather, really, a wonderful day. On impulse I decided to check the news on the New York Times web site around 9 am, and was surprised that the connection was so slow. When the headline finally materialized on the screen, I went numb. Just numb, as if someone had shot me full of Novocaine.

At this point the office phone rang-- my boss's son, a professor at the Law School, who knew we had plans to go to Hartford. His message was brief: Governor Rowland is going to close down the state offices at noon and tell people to stay off Connecticut highways. I called my boss, who asked me to tidy up the office and then go home.

The law student who lived on the third floor of our building came downstairs in the next few minutes with a radio so that I could listen to it while he went over to Mass at St. Mary's Church on Hillhouse Avenue-- his girl friend was a schoolteacher in Manhattan and he was worried about her safety. He told me that the two towers had just collapsed, that the Pentagon had been hit, and that there were three planes still unaccounted for. Governor Rowland was scheduled to speak around 11 am, partly because there were a number of rumors already circulating-- that there would be a terrorist attack on Yale because of the Bush family's connection with the University, that Hartford would be taken out because it's close to New York, and so on. When the Governor did begin to speak, he was not able to get much further than announcements about the closing of state offices and the Hartford airport before the reporters started to interrupt with all kinds of panicky questions.

Then the news came about the fourth plane crashing in Pennsylvania. That added to the unreality of the whole nightmare-- I had grown up in Pennsylvania (Lancaster). I notice that #61 mentions East Petersburg-- one of my high school teachers still lives there. I couldn't take any more, so I closed up the office and got in my car to go home. I remember reminding myself to drive with extra care because I was in shock. The strange thing was-- by now it was about 1 pm-- there was next to no traffic in downtown New Haven. It was eerie to see the streets so deserted, but with police standing on every corner. I had to stop for a red light on Elm Street, and I remember seeing one of New Haven's burliest cops listening to a radio as he stood there, with tears streaming down his face.

I stopped on the way home at a small market near my house run by two Italian immigrants. When I went in, I could hear the radio in the background broadcasting the latest about the attacks, with Romeo pacing behind the counter swearing, "God-a damma the sonsa-bitches that-a didda this! I lovva this country!" Several of the customers were visibly weeping as they waited in line at the deli counter.

I wasn't able to weep myself until the President addressed the nation that night. Then the tears came. My cats were sitting with me on the bed-- they knew something was horribly wrong-- and they let me weep against their fur. Even now, I cannot think of 9/11 without feeling tears welling in the corner of my eyes.

As so many others have said here, NEVER AGAIN!

Thank you, Charles, for this web site.

At 8:45 am, I drove from my apartment in suburban Pennsylvania to a local hotel to pick up someone who was interviewing that day for a job at my firm. When he got into my car, he mentioned that he had heard on the news that the WTC had been "bombed." I assumed it was another thankfully-minor event (in terms of damage and casualties) like in 1993, and we drove on. When we walked in the front door and I saw the VP of our company at the receptionist's desk watching her TV set, I knew something serious was up.

We weren't sure if we were going to go ahead with the interview, which was to start at 10. TV's were set up around the building. My mom called me (it was her birthday) to thank me for the flowers, but also to update me on what she was watching (as an aside, all my 3-digit combination locks on my luggage were already set to 911 because of her birthday). Then the second tower was hit. Then we heard the Pentagon had been
"bombed", and we decided that the interview would be cancelled. I wandered out to one TV that was on, and stupidly asked someone why one of the two towers was not really visible. "Because it just collapsed," he said.

Our company was (not surprisingly) riveted to the TVs; in addition to our general shock and horror, we were all wretchedly aware that about 35 of us (including myself) were supposed to be traveling to NYC to stay in the WTC Marriott that Thursday (9/13) for our annual NYC forum. Had the planes hit on Friday morning instead of Tuesday, I would have been asleep between the two towers. I think Marriott got every guest out alive (it would have been in their best interest to evacuate the minute the first plane hit), but some of their employees went missing.

Then a plane crashed in Pennsylvania - not near us, but at the time we didn't know where it crashed - and that's when even people who had it under control (like me) REALLY freaked out. My company closed for the day. People were crying inside the building, and everyone was either watching TV or were calling family and friends nonstop (some of my family members mistakenly thought I was already in NYC).

And the guy who had planned to interview that day, who had been sort of wandering around in a daze, now needed another hotel room and a rental car, because no planes were available to fly him to Pittsburgh. To top it all off, he was Egyptian and named "Mohammed," and we figured it might be best not to let HIM try to rent the hotel room or the car (or, God forbid, a later plane ticket). In fact, we told him if he got stopped by any policemen on the drive home to tell them he was planning on changing his name to "Tom Smith" very, very soon. A bit of black humor, but at the time, all of us, including Mohammed, were in such shock we didn't know what to make of the situation, and it was our way of coping.

Then I went home, turned on CNN, and curled up into a fetal position for the rest of the day...

On Sept. 9th my unit got the call to head to Sarasota Fla. Myself and 3 others hopped a plane and arrived that evening. We went to the meeting and learned what sites we would be working. Not much happened until the morning of the 11th. At O-dark-early we went to the resort where the President was staying to relieve the night shift. The day started normally, we searched a few dozen trucks, the beach area (W went jogging) and had breakfast. Around 7:30 we left for the airport to begin our sweeps. We finished up and took a break. I was standing in the lobby of the airport watching CNN with the Secret Service post standers. My team member came running out of the FAA office yelling that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Myself and the SS guys all said BS, we were watching the news afterall. It turned out the feed we were watching was pre-recorded. Just then my radio lit up announcing a possible early departure for POTUS. I walked down the terminal to the FAA office in time to see the second plane hit live. My first thought was that it was a replay. It hit me then. I turned and looked at my team member and told her to get the other team ready. The radio lit up again with the announcement that POTUS was leaving NOW. He was 25 minutes away by motorcade, he got to the airport in 10. It was an amazing sight. The four of us were standing to the rear of AF-1 catching bags of the President's staff. They were literally throwing them at us to get them searched and on the plane. As we would search a bag we would throw it into the cargo compartment to the Airman waiting there.
We got the last bag searched and thrown up into the plane when they started the engines. About half the staff never made the plane. My team got buffeted pretty hard when AF-1 taxied out. I was barely 25 yards away. Total time, about 7 minutes. I never saw AF-1 move that fast on the ground before, I was shocked. My team member asked me what was happening. I told her she just saw history being made. The first time ever that a President had to go hide.
Things calmed down for awhile. The USSS was trying to get a C-141 to come pick us up and follow the President. We didn't get it resolved until 9 hours later when they decided to use the local EOD teams wherever he was going.
After the second tower collapsed we really were in the hurry up and wait mode. I finally had a chance to think about what was going on and quickly thought of my sister, her and her husband worked in WTC-2. I tried for hours to get through to her but all the cell networks were swamped. I got both of their voice mail but couldn't get them to answer. 6 hours later I got a call from my brother in law saying he was okay. About an hour later my sister called.
The next day knowing we couldn't fly we turned in our rental cars and got one SUV to make the drive back to Fort Bragg/Pope. 14 hours later I got home and had a message on my machine. It was my boss telling me to be at work at 0200. I left at 0100, got to work at 0800. It took me seven hours to get through the military check points.
I responded to 67 incidents over the next 30 days. I was crushed when I put other people on the plane to Afghanistan. I wanted payback.

I worked in midtown Manhattan, and I had just come up out of the north Lexington Avenue tunnel. There was a crowd around the monitors on CNBC at Chase Bank and I was wondering if they'd dropped interest rates suddenly or something, and came by and saw the towers on TV with the gaping hole and the flame - somebody told me that an airplane had hit. One of my first thoughts was along the lines of what I read George Bush thought - "what a horrible pilot". But crossing the street somebody looked at me and said "my boss saw the second plane hit" and then I knew it wasn't an accident.

A colleague of mine and I often discussed how frighteningly easy it would be to put explosives in a truck in midtown, and I thought that if there had been two incidents already downtown, things might happen very soon in midtown, so I went underground in the tunnel between Fifth and Sixth Avenues to collect my thoughts. At a newsstand I saw replays of the second plane - it looked like a private jet and I thought that maybe terrorists had bought a private jet, filled it with explosives and taken off from Teterboro airport in nearby New Jersey.

I came out of the tunnel and looked downtown and could see the towers on fire. I couldn't look long because I knew people were dying. I went into my office, where everyone was in the conference room watching the television. I didn't stay there. I sat in my office, looking through websites to see what had happened and was happening. I worked in a national firm with prominent offices in most large cities - people next door to me were busy making sure that the offices on high floors in prominent buildings in other cities were closed down. A colleague would periodically come in and ask what we should do and I answered that we were in a nondescript building in midtown that probably was as safe a place as any in Manhattan until everyone concluded that things were somewhat under control.

Late in the afternoon I headed north on foot - I live north of New York City and was hoping I could catch a 1 or 9 train up to Van Cortland Park in the Bronx and get a ride from there - if the phones were working by then. But as I walked, I heard subway trains letting people off but nobody could get on. I kept this up clear to Van Cortland Park, and just decided to walk the few miles more home. It took a long time but I was hoping that exhaustion would enable me to sleep that night.

I found out that five people that worked in my firm were on the planes. I didn't know them though I'd worked very briefly with one of them. Miraculously, nobody from my firm - or from the families of anyone I knew - was killed in the buildings themselves.

People reading this should know that I voted AGAINST George W Bush more than for Al Gore, and that this was the type of thing that I was terrified to see somebody like Bush handle - but he has not only stepped up to the task but I believe that he has done it as well as anyone could have. I also believe that had Al Gore been president we would still be paralyzed, wringing our hands, and negotiating with the Taleban, all the while perhaps suffering several more terrorist hits inside the US. I cannot imagine not supporting Bush the next time around. He has shown resolve and moral clarity and I am extremely grateful that his abilities are so different than I had originally thought.

September 11, 2001 – A day like few others.

Sept 11 began mundanely enough for me. I had a 10:00 am meeting and I was hoping to get in early to do some preparations before hand. I was getting my coat and waiting for my husband to shut his computer down, our usual morning routine, and I decided to button my coat in front of the TV while catching the weather report. I was flipping channels when the sight of the Pentagon in flames caught my eye. I went back to the closet for my hat and shouted at my husband (who still hadn’t gotten off the computer).
“Dick, someone blew up the Pentagon!”
“What!” came his answer.
“The Pentagon, it’s burning.” I guess it hadn’t really sunk in because I kept digging for my hat. I remember thinking whoever did that was in for some really really big trouble. Talk about whacking a hornet’s nest with a stick.
My husband passed me and went to the TV. My hat was still missing and I was on tip toe rummaging for it when he shouted to me.
“They got the World Trade Center. There must be thousands dead.”
I forgot all about my hat. The shock was so great I walked back to the TV room feeling physically nauseous.
My husband looked at me as I walked in and his eyes were wide and pain filled. “The tower has collapsed. There are hundreds of fire fighters and police officers dead.”
As a teenager I enrolled in police technology for my CEGEP career choice and I spent six months working in an administrative position in a fire department. I had learned of the special bond they share. I found myself half sitting and half falling to join my husband, with my coat half buttoned. For the next thirty-five minutes we sat together, shoulders touching, holding hands, and trying to make sense of the catastrophe as we watched the skyscraper crumble again and again in replays. We reluctantly left for work when there was no more time to spare before my meeting. As I drove, my husband fumbled with the radio to find CBC and listen to the news from there. When he couldn’t get the station right away he swore and slammed the dash. I have never seen him do that before. We didn’t talk much. We heard that all international flights and many domestic ones were being rerouted to Canada. I asked my husband why they would do that. He replied they had no idea how many airplanes had been hijacked.
My meeting went badly. My boss was horribly upset and her family members were calling her during the meeting. She mourned the evil of the world.
I thought of the firefighters and police officers. “For each act that brought these terrorists to this destruction there will be a thousand individual acts of great heroism. The world is a good place and most people are decent.” No one disagreed with me, but they obviously didn’t draw much comfort from it. I found myself running through my mind trying to remember all the people we knew who might be in New York. I got a sudden sick feeling when I remembered most of my husband’s extended family, second and third cousins, great aunts and uncles, lived there.
My husband paged me and when I called him back he told me the second tower had collapsed. He had no word of his cousins. He had already sent e-mails to everyone he knew in the family asking about them. We ended up adjourning our meeting with little accomplished. On the walk to my office, people I barely knew stopped me to ask if I had heard or to share details. At one point during the morning I suddenly realized that I had left the house without a hat. I am an observant Jew and I had not been out without a head covering in a very long time.
I was supposed to teach a class on the Fort Garry campus and I left to drive there at 10:45 am. As I drove I saw the airplanes coming in. I watched four in total. All four were the big airplanes we rarely see here in Winnipeg. They were Boeing 747 and 767 with the colors of American Airlines and others I did not recognize. All the airplanes were coming in slowly and deliberately on what I knew (my father worked for Air Canada) was the approach best suited to take airplanes in distress or those that needed long runways. I thought about the lovely Trizac building in our own downtown. It was a small structure compared to the World Trade Center, but I had a sudden fear for it. What if one of those airplanes crashed into it? How many Winnipeggers would be lost? How many people would I know among the dead? I wondered why we were taking in these flights with such a risk.
I thought then of airplanes full of innocent people. What choice did Canada have? We had to give them a place to land. We had to welcome them. The only other option was to let them circle until they ran out of gas and fell from the sky. Taking these airplanes in was the right and moral thing to do even if it was incredibly dangerous. I was suddenly very proud to be Canadian and be able to call myself part of the country opening its skies to the airplanes of our brother, America, to the south. It was the least we could do. A pair of air force jets shot by, obviously on escort. I felt a sudden chill.
I arrived at the university to find the TVs in every hallway and the student lounge, usually noisy and raucous, quiet except for hushed chatter and the noise of news coverage. I heard more airplanes roar overhead and I looked up, as did most of the people in the room. I left to teach my class. It was likely the worst lecture of my teaching career. Audiovisual services had forgotten to provide me with a slide projector and my mind wasn’t on my notes. Fortunately we had a video on human conception to watch that took up most of the lecture. Several students left early.
Back in the student lounge I found a place near the front with an open seat. A bright eyed and innocent looking child-woman turned to me and said “Oh! It is so terrible! The world has been changed forever! How could something so horrendous happen?”
“I’m a Jew,” I replied. “The world hasn’t changed for me. The only difference now is you wasps getting what we’ve been getting for decades.”
I’m not sure why I said that. Pent up anger misdirected perhaps? I meant it and yet I didn’t. No one should have to know what Jews know. I was thinking about suicide bombings I guess. This was one more albeit very big, suicide bombing.
She pulled back, looking shocked and miserable. Behind her, I caught the eye of a woman wearing the hijab. Who had heard everything. “I’m sorry,” I said to the young ‘wasp’. “That was uncalled for. I am upset. I guess the real question is who did this.”
“I bet it was Arabs!” she replied emphatically.
I looked right into the stricken face of the young Moslem behind her. “Maybe,” I replied. “Maybe not.” Why did I want to cofort this obviously Moslem woman? She looked so horrified I felt I had to.) “Maybe it was some internal nut, another Oklahoma city.”
“No, I bet it was Moslems,” the young wasp repeated earnestly.
“It may have been Arabs,” I replied, “but it certainly wasn’t Moslems. No true Moslem would do such a thing.” I saw relief from the eyes under the hijab before she moved away stiflingly tears.
I returned to the Health Sciences Centre soon afterward listening to CBC for the entire trip. There was little that was new.
After I arrived at work my daughter, fifteen, called me nearly hysterical. “Oh Mom!” she said, “It’s going to be world war three!”
What do you say to someone who is only fifteen, and old enough to be as frightened as an adult but young enough to cry like a child? I struggled to find worlds of comfort. “I don’t think it is going to be World War Three, but I have read the history books about World War Two. In all my life I have never ever seen Americans so angry as they are today. I have heard they were like this after Pearl Harbor. Did you ever hear what one of the most famous generals from the attacking side of that time had to say about the Pearl Harbor attack?”
“No,” she sobbed.
continued next post

“He advised against the attack. He said ‘Do not wake a sleeping tiger’, well something like that. Maybe it was a sleeping giant. I don’t recall the exact quote. Whoever did this thing has awakened the USA and united them in outrage. The sleeping giant tiger is awake now and the USA will now rise up in all its great military might and seek these terrorists out wherever they are and completely and utterly destroy them. If they hadn’t done such terrible things today I would actually be feeling sorry for them. And there’s a Texan in the Whitehouse! For the first time, I’m really glad a Texan got into the White House. They are all nuts about revenge in Texas.”
At the other end of the telephone line, sobs stopped and I heard relieved laughter.
“Yup,” I added, “they are. Whoever did this might as well go shoot themselves in the head today because the Americans are coming after them now.”
She giggled again. Maybe it was inappropriate but it was better than tears. “Can I tell my friends what you said? They’re all really upset.”
“Sure thing,” I replied. “What is happening at school right now? Are you having classes?” (It was a private Jewish school.)
“Kind of,’ she answered. “They have TVs on and they made up tents around them to we could chose to watch or not watch. Lots of people are really upset.”
“Is it good to do this?” I asked her. “If you are upset, maybe you should just come home. Maybe you’ve absorbed enough for one day.”
“No,” she replied. “I’m okay.”
I tried to work, but got nowhere. About a half hour later my son who is 17 called me from the same school. “I can’t stand it anymore!” was his opening words. “Mom, I need to go home! All those dead people! All the tears and upset here! Everyone is so upset. I can’t stand it. Call the school and tell them I can go home.”
“Of course, I understand,” I assured him. “Find your sister and come home.”
I called the school. The school denied classes were canceled but I told them my kids were too upset and they were going home with my permission. I called my husband and he agreed he was too distraught to get much done so we packed our things and headed home. My last e-mail that particular day was a response to a general request via the hospital for possible places to house stranded airline passengers. I volunteered to take up to five people, preferably Jews who would require Kosher food as I could provide it. I also offered to help coordinate matching stranded Jews with homes of the same levels of observance if required. (I am one of the few in the community who can move easily between the most Orthodox to the most liberal secularists because I do work for the local burial society.) We arrived just ahead of the kids. When the kids walked in they joined us in the TV room and we sat there, all four of us, cuddled together, watching the horror.
At some point in the day, I’m not sure when, there was a report that another hijacked plane had been diverted into Canada and was heading towards Winnipeg. Later a second report said that the hijacked airplane had been forced down in Yellowknife. I think this must have happened after my children were home because I recall being worried only in the vaguest sense, not that my children were in any danger. There school is under one of the main airport flight paths and I think I would have been more upset if they had still been at school. Just before bed the true story came out. Two South Korean pilots had been unable to believe the USA was closed to traffic and had kept coming until someone finally convinced them that if they entered US airspace they would be shot down. They were finally diverted to the Yukon, running on fumes, as this airport was far from any major centers and had military personnel ready to seize terrorists. It turned out to be largely a problem with translation into English and the huge jet, loaded with people, had landed safely.
I do recall that while we watched, occasionally the telephone would ring and someone would be calling to let us know this or that person we knew in New York was safe and accounted for.
The father of one my husband’s students who worked in the Trade Center had been on a business trip in San Francisco though it appeared all his coworkers might be dead.
My friend at synagogue had a son who was working in the World Trade Center. He checked in via an e-mail to from a stranger’s satellite connected portable computer as he paused on his walk out of the city. He reported he had been eating a croissant across the street when the first plane hit and he was safe.
Another friend called to say that her brother, a Lubavitch Jew had been driving two other Lubavitch Jews visiting from Toronto to the World Trade Center for some kind of meeting. They had been running behind because special morning prayers of repentance prior to Rosh Hashannah meant an extra fifteen minutes at synagogue. He had been in the WTC drive in entrance of the North Tower when the first plane hit. His rear window had been blown out by the blast, but he and two his passengers were able to drive away unhurt at the forefront of the pandemonium.
We got an e-mail from a cousin in Philadephia at about 6:00 pm saying one of my husband’s two New York cousins had reported in safe and well. He had been in a meeting in another part of the city and, as his office didn’t open until 9:00, apparently his coworkers had all escaped as well.
We walked our dog after supper and the sky was eerie for its emptiness. There was not one contrail or a single airplane rumble to be seen or heard. I went to sleep wondering about the Americans at the Airport and if accommodations had been found for them and how would any observant Jews manage? No one had called back.
Only one of my husband’s New York cousins who worked in the Trade Center, a lawyer, was still missing. We went to bed falling into an exhausted sleep, very late that night. I finally fell asleep reciting psalms for the dead and hoping that didn’t include him.

Afterword:
The next day we heard that the missing cousin was working at home that day but had tried to go to work to find out about his coworkers and his office place, hence his long period of being missing.
I learned that the arrivals at the Winnipeg airport had been kept in groups and housed at local hotels for security reasons.
Two days later it was confirmed that my husband’s student’s father was the only survivor in his entire small company. I commented on this unlikely connection to my Israeli friend. “Every Israeli has a suicide bombing connection at least as close as that,” was her tart reply.
Later that week, we learned that one of my husband’s fellow faculty members, Dr. Christine Egan, a Christian, of the Department of Community Health had been visiting her brother at the World Trade Center when the first plane hit. She and her brother both died when the first tower collapsed. She was the only Manitoba to die in the attack.
A few weeks later I ran into the same young woman with the hijab going between classes. We rode up in an elevator together. At first we were silent though I knew she recognized me, but, I finally said “It was Arabs after all.”
“I am glad you did not say they were Moslems,” she replied. With that, she got out of the elevator.

I didn't cry for a long time. One day I was standing outside and I saw a contrail in the sky, maybe two or three weeks later. The sky was the same blue. After that I couldn't stop crying four hours.

Never forget.
Never stop hunting and killing.
Never stop until the last terrorist is dead.
Hang ‘em high, GWB.

My story of 9/11 starts a little earlier that year. It had been a strange summer – I had separated from my wife of 14 years in the spring and was tying to scrape by as a newly single person. I had started dating someone that summer, and the weekend of September 8th things came to a head because I took my new girlfriend on a date to the Army game at West Point, and I finally summoned up the courage to tell my estranged wife what the situation was. Needless to say, that was a difficult weekend, and on Monday Sept 10th it got worse, because a friend of mine had been injured in a household accident and was in the hospital. I visited him Monday night went to work a bit late on Tuesday with all this running through my head.

I got to my office in a high floor in a tower in Jersey City overlooking downtown Manhattan about 8:30. I had just finished sending an email to my estranged wife with an update on our injured friend, and finished the email by saying “he’ll be fine, but it’s scary how quickly things can go from being fine to really bad”. Little did I know - I still have the email, it’s time stamped 8:41 a.m.

I remember hearing the boom of the first plane hitting and thinking it must be a construction accident – there were a lot of buildings going up around us then. My desk didn’t have a direct view of the towers, so after a woman on the floor screamed “Oh my God” I got up and walked over to the window.

I remember running back to my desk and dashing off emails to my wife and the person I was dating. They would be concerned because they both knew that I walked down into the basement of the WTC to catch the Path train to Jersey City in my commute from north of the city.

I remember going back to the window and turning to a coworker to ask “what is that plane doing so close” to the towers right before I saw the second plane hit. I remember thinking that the plane had literally gone through the building and the debris flew out the other side. I ran off the floor and down 26 flights of stairs with dozens of my terrified co-workers.

I remember meeting up with a co-worker in the crowd and he said I could walk with him to his place in Hoboken. I remember hearing the first tower come down but not seeing it as I tried to call my wife from an outdoor pay phone in Hoboken a couple blocks from the river.

I remember seeing the bizarre sight of fighter jets patrolling up and down the city and thinking “couldn’t you have gotten here sooner?”

I remember the thousands of people walking around Hoboken in a daze and in utter silence, many of them coming off the ferries from Manhattan covered in soot with shell shocked looks on their faces.

I remember walking around Hoboken trying to find a place to give blood and being told to come back tomorrow by two nurses that were walking to the outdoor trauma center set up at Hoboken Station.

I remember going to the nearby Catholic Church (twice) and crying out loud for the first time in my adult life as I prayed to God to look after the children who had just lost a parent.

I remember trying to find a place to buy an American flag but being unable to.

I remember that we started drinking beer about 2:00 in the afternoon and didn’t stop until after 2:00 a.m. (It’s a little more difficult to remember what happened after that)

The next morning the trains were running again and I made my way into the city and back to my apartment in Westchester where my wife met me and drove me back to our house. I remember her asking me to move back home with her and our two girls. I did, and I’m still there.

I dropped my son off at school and on the way home turned on the radio. The rock station I usually listen to had a news feed and I heard someone say that the World Trade Center was gone. (This was at 8 am in California, so 11 am in NYC)

I felt my brain try to absorb that idea and I thought I must have heard wrong. I thought there was something wrong with me. I went home instead of to work, and turned on the TV. I spent much of the day pacing and saying "Bastards! Bastards!" and rueing the fact that I am too old to join the military.

When I picked up my son that afternoon, we had this exchange, which I'll never forget:

Me: "Did you hear what happened?"

Son: "Yeah, some people flew planes into the World Trade Center because the United States gives $10 billion a year to Israel."

Me: "Who told you that?"

Son: "Mr. Brinkerhoffer."

Mr. Brinkerhoffer was his math teacher. I withdrew him from the school and home schooled hime for 7th and 8th grade. (That was just the last straw. The public school thought control was just too much. They were also going to spend an entire week in abstinence workshops. No classes, just indoctrination all week. urgh.)

The lasting effect of 9/11 is that I left the software business and am training for a career in public safety. If I had to work one more day with the Berkeley software hippies I would have lost my mind.

It was a beautiful cool crispy autumn morning in Seattle and I arrived at work at 7 AM. The first thing I do in the morning is check the Yahoo news headlines. The headline read something like "A plane crashed into the World Trade Center." Even though we were to have an extremely busy workload that day, I could't help hitting my "refresh" button every minute.

I work in engineering and went to the front offices to get some water and saw one our salespeople in tears. This salesman is in his late 70's and usually was very stoic. He said, "We are being attacked." I then went to another department to talk to our planner, she too was in tears. She said she saw a second plane hit and that she saw people jumping from the building.

I couldn't be angry, I was in shock. I tried to work that day, but I couldn't. I basically got about 20% of the work done that I had planned. Then at about 3:30 PM, I told my boss, "I need to go home and watch the news." He said, "We all do." I stopped by a super market to get a six pack of beer and it was virtually empty. I saw a man buy 6 copies of the Seattle Times "Extra" that was in the store and decided to buy 2 for myself. I got home and watched tv from about 4 pm to midnight. And I didn't start crying until I saw the members of the House of Representatives, Republicans and Democrats side by side singing "God Bless America" on the Capitol steps. I completely lost it here, crying harder than I can ever remember.

I slept for 2 hours until 2 am and turned on the TV again until it was time to work at 7 AM. I kept thinking of how massive the planning was and this was going to be a history changing event. Never did I think an enemy could be greater than communism in the early 80's, but that day changed everything.

I'm an HR Manager in a manufacturing facility in South Carolina.

The day started well. I had a short staff meeting in my office. The meeting was coming to an end when I got a short message by email on my cell phone: World Trade Center hit by plane.

I really didn't give it much thought. I cleared the message and said to the group, "Did you know that somebody flew a plane into the Empire State Building during World War II?" I didn't even consider the message to be important enough to mention.

Went to make rounds on the floor, saying good morning to the workers and seeing if everything was alright. When I got back to the office, my training administrator had printed off a photo from CNN.com of a plane flying into the other tower. I said, "Wow, someone got a picture of that plane flying into the World Trade Center." She told me that a second plane had hit the other tower.

I didn't understand.

I directed my safety trainer to get a TV up to our office. Ten minutes later we were tuned to the local Fox affiliate. I had work to do, so I went back out to talk to one of our managers. Mentioned what I had seen. He laughed and said we Americans couldn't fly planes (he's English). When I got back to my office, the whole staff was standing there stunned, mute. I said, "What's happening to the building?" It looked like it was collapsing.

Someone, weeping, replied, "It fell down. Both of them. How many people did we just see die?"

I knew there were upwards of 50,000 people in the two buildings. I felt sick. I went to the floor and began to tell people to pray for our nation.

At that time, our business was not running well. Our customers (GM, BMW) did close their plants, but we needed to catch up, so we kept running.

On the following Friday, we did something I have never seen done in a manufacturing plant: We stopped production, gathered together, and prayed for our President, our nation, and the thousands who died, as well as our family members. Some production people wept openly.

Perhaps it won't mean much to anyone else, but I want to say this. My company is a French-owned company. Our president wrote us a letter, expressing his sorrow for our nation. Many, perhaps most, of the French are total snobs. There are a few who are true gentlemen.

For most, 9/11 started out as any other day. For me (in Maryland) 9/11 was a day cursed by the stars even before the first plane took off.

I woke up early that morning, a bit before 6am EDT. I was basking in the afterglow of a very pleasant vacation, my first in almost two years. First thing, I checked my e-mail and read the first message. It hit me like a thunderbolt, knocking the contented smile off my face instantly. It from my cousin telling me that his sister had been in a car accident the previous afternoon, and had been killed instantly. My emotional "pump" was already well-primed. The day had nowhere to go but up.

Or so I thought.

I arrived at work around 8:45. I checked the online news services, the headline was "Plane Hits World Trade Center". A small plane, or so I thought - surely this will do no more damage than the B-29 did to the Empire State Building. My guess was around a hundred dead in the building. Al-Qaidah was in the back of my mind, but I wasn't sure.

I checked the news again - this time the headline said "planeS", plural. Surely this was a typo. These things always happen in the rush to get the news out in situations like this.

I called my boss who was in another city, to We were having a conference in the Millenium Hilton, just across the street from the WTC, scheduled for the following week, and I needed to plan for any situation that might develop. He had just seen the second plane crash on TV. I realized that there was no typo after all - I knew there was no possibility that this was an accident, and I knew it was al-Qaidah.

I did not have access to a TV or radio, just the Internet, which deterioriated rapidly. Articles would take up to 15 minutes to completely download. Then on the New York Times, I saw "South Tower Collapses", with a photo from Hoboken. WHAT collapsed? Part of the facade? A corner of the building? I looked frantically at the picture, through the cloud of smoke and dust, almost to the point of inspecting every pixel on the screen. It took what seemed like the better part of a minute for the horrible reality.

The next few hours were a blur - more headlines "North Tower Collapses", "Fire at Pentagon" (it was ages before I was to learn that it was hit by a plane), "Several More Planes Missing", "Tens of Thousands Feared Dead". And in between checking the news, frantic calls to friends in New York, ending in "all lines are busy" messages". The government let out at midday; our office closed a bit after that.

It wasn't until I got home that I actually saw video of what had happened. I don't remember doing anything else but watch the TV endlessly, and again trying to contact my friends.

I even composed a sort of "sound track" for the footage in my head - a cross between the sound track from "Gladiator", the second side of Queensryche's "Warning", culminating in the funeral music from "Star Wars - The Phantom Menace".

The next morning was unforgettable - clear crisp skies, with absolutely no planes or even contrails. An amazingly peaceful, beautiful morning. I'm not sure how long it took me to realize that it was NOT "just a bad dream". Traffic was congested due to multiple accidents along the road - apparently people were just too distracted by the events of the day before. And to make matters worse, there was a brush fire spewing a huge column of smoke - at first, I feared there had been another hit, and I'm sure everyone else on the road did too.

I will never forget.

I was safely in Georgia, in my office when i heard people running to the lab where we have a video feed. I stuck my head out and someone told me a plane had hit the WTC. My first thought was of the plane that hit the empire state building. No big deal I thought. I went on to my meeting. When no one showed up, I knew why and went to the lab. I watched on live tv as the second plane hit. That's when we knew it was no accident. Hearing that the pentagon was hit just confirmed the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach - we were under attack. I canceled the rest of my meetings and watched as both towers fell and thousands of my countrymen died.

The worst part of it all was my wife calling me on the cell saying that she heard that five planes were unaccounted for and persumed to be under control of terrorists. I had never heard panic before in my wife's voice, and I never want to hear it again. "what should we do, what if one of those planes is in Atlanta?" she screamed. All I could muster was "there is nothing we can do. Just pray."

I had to endure terror for one morning and I lost no family or loved ones. I cannot imagine what it's like to live in Israel every day knowing that you could be blown up just going to the store.

I will not forget. Never again. Whatever it takes.

My other 9/11 related memory was being at a sold out Falcons game when just before the game started the announcer came over the loudspeaker and said we had just stared bombing Afganistan. 60,000 people jumped to their feet and cheered and shouted "U-S-A, U-S-A" for ten minutes. Can't remember if we won the game, but I'll never forget the cheering.

Please don't forget to light a candle at dusk on 9/11, put it outside the house somewhere and let it burn out on it's own, in memory, and a message to terrorist. We will never forget.

I was at home here just north of Houston Texas. I was watching Good Morning America when the first report came in. Immediately ABC started reporting from the streets about the first plane hitting. Then the second plane was spotted and hit the second tower. By this time I was numb with grief and anger. Tnen the report about the Pentagon came in along with reports about other planes missing. When the report about flight 93 came in I was beyond rage. I knew it was terrorism.
Then the cameras witnessed the implosion of one of the towers and I was beyond all emotion. As the tower came down I saw a rent in time and knew our world and our reality was changed forever. We had witnessed our wake up call to the fact we had indeed been at war for several years and had slept through it.
I am always aware of my surroundings more clearly, I watch where ever I go. I look for patterns in the news, in local activities.
We Are At War

Then thankfully I found Charles' LGF during the Iraqi war and it's helped me keep my sanity and quantify my own hunches.

I had just dropped off my husband at his office in downtown Dallas and flipped on NPR. (I don't listen to NPR anymore, their propaganda makes me sick). At first I thought they were referring to the 1993 bombing of the WTC, but then I heard that a plane had flown into the building. Ok, could be an accident, but then another one hit. Then, I was sure it was terrorism, probably a Islamonazi group (I've picked up a whole new vocab since then) since they have a thing for planes.

By the time I had arrived at school and told everyone I could find, the Pentagon had been attacked. That was as good as a declaration of war for me. We watched the footage on the TV in the conference room, but I decided to look for more info on the web. Someone told me one fo the towers had collapsed and all I could think was, please God, let most of the people have gotten out.

I wanted to do something to help, I couldn't just sit there and do nothing. So I decided to go donate some blood since I thought that it would be needed. I hadn't fully comprehended that not many people would survive the collapse of the towers. The donation center was packed already and I waited for 3-4 hours until my husband called me and told me to pick him up. He did not feel safe hanging out in a skyscraper in the middle of downtown. He was really freaked out.

Ever since then, I've been addicted to news, especially FoxNews and LGF (thank you Charles!). I also can't tolerate LLLs anymore. One such person in my lab rolled in that day at about 11 a.m. and, not knowing what had caused all the commotion, wondered if the ALIENS HAD FINALLY LANDED. The next day she sent out an email written by some guy that blamed the attacks on US foreign policy and poverty and blah blah blah. I was so irate, I really chewed her out.

My father was on his yearly training exercises for the Army Reserves in Georgia and we couldn't get a hold of him. His company's departure was postponed for about a week until the Army commanders could figure out what to do.

I will never forget the singing of God Bless America on the steps of the US capitol. I wish that we still had that kind of bipartisanship left. I feel the Dems, with a few minor exceptions, have gone off the deep end. I 'm so thankful that President Bush is our president and I no longer feel I have to justify my vote for him to my lefty peers. I'm proud of our troops, our police, our firemen, and everyone that serves our country sincerely. I will never forget and never surrender.

I reported to my classroom like any other morning at 7:30am, thankful for the cool air outside, and the feel of autumn. I spent first period at my desk, grading papers and drinking coffee. When the bell rang for 2nd period, I reported to a conference room downstairs for team planning time with other 7th grade teachers. That particular morning, we had a conference scheduled with a parent. We had barely sat down around the table when the parent arrived....crying. She asked if me had heard what happened. None of us had, so she informed us that a plane had crashed into the WTC. We were all SHOCKED!!! A male teacher beside me immediately got up and logged onto the coomputer in the room. We all gathered in together to see. The second plane had just crashed, and we all stood dumbfounded staring at the screen. We dismissed team meeting and all returned to our room instead.

I had an overwhelming desire to talk to my little girl at that moment, just to hear her voice. I called the school she was at, just to check on her. I got several phone calls from friends and family to see if I know, and the halls were filled with whispers and huddles of teachers all day, sharing whatever new bit we had picked up.

I felt that the school should have called the students down to the gym and discuss what had happened with them. However, central office refused us that right, stating the fear that it would induce panic. It was the longest day I have ever taught. Nouns and verbs and complete sentences seemed so unimportant in the light of things, and acting normal was so difficult, when I wanted to cry instead.

It doesn't take Jr. High students very long to figure out something is bad wrong, somber teachers, whispers, AND parents in and out all day long, upset and picking up their kids. The last class I had (usually a VERY rowdy class), came in, very quiet and nervous. One boy looked up at me, and said, "We know something is BAD wrong. We've asked all day. PLEASE will you tell us. Are we going to die or something?"

I could stand it no longer. I closed my classroom door and explained exactly what had happened to them as calmly as I could, and assured them they were not in immediate danger. I then turned my computer around facing them and let them gather around my desk and see the news and the pictures. They had hundreds of Qs, and I answered what I could. I passed around tissues and we cried and hugged and watched. So many things I had found so important, had suddenly lost all importance, and I appreciated other things so much more.

I was SOO thankful for the work day to end. I drove so eagerly to pick up my little girl and hugged her extra long that day. Even though my gas tank still touched the FULL line, we waited 35 min. in line at a gas station, just in case they were right, and gas would be $10/gal like everyone was saying. There were cops directing traffic near all the gas stations in town, which added to the eerie realization, that America was no longer the same. We went to a prayer meeting that night, to pray for America, but I could scarcely speak around the lump in my throat, and just hoped God was reading my heart. We listened to the horror on the radio until very late, with tears in our eyes for those people, then went to bed.....thankful to be American, and thankful to be alive.

addendum:

After the intial attack I watched the news straight for the rest of the week. I couldn't sleep, I talked to many people and prayed alot.
When the Changing of The Guard at Buckingham Palace took place and they played our anthem I was stricken with love, pride, grief and overwhelming desire to join in the fight. I'm too old to join, but what ever I can do even it's just ferreting out information from news articles I will do my small part.
I am a damned proud American.

I posted this on the wrong link, but here goes.

I was teaching High School Choir, as usual, on September 11. We'd just fifteen minutes earlier decided on "Annie" for the fall musical and "Nights in New York" for our Spring Cabaret theme. I'd had my first ever trip to the Big Apple that July... we took in a carriage ride in Central Park, a couple of B'way shows, and of course the trip to the Observation deck atop the WTC. What a view of the river! Wow. I'd posted my NY photos on our Choir Room bulletin board, hoping to persuade the students to use the "NY NY" themes. Eating lunch at Windows on the World, chatting with the WTC guides, buying bagels and espresso from the street vendors... I fell in love with the CIty.

Then Megan rushes in from the office, in tears, and I begin to scold her for disrupting my class. "Ms. L, we're under attack!" I thought she meant the school. "No, the WTC! The Pentagon!" We turn on the radio and listen, shocked, to the reports. A young girl cries out that her big brother works at the Pentagon. A boy stands up and stammers that his dad was supposed to leave NY that morning on a return flight from DFW. Another boy has relatives who live in Manhattan. I think of my priest friends at Trinity near the WTC, and of the dear people I met who work in and around the towers.

Imagine 52 rowdy high schoolers stunned, weeping, praying. Unbelieving silence. The whole school stops and begins to pray for the victims, for the rescuers, for our leaders. Someone even prays for the evil ones who carried out this crime, that justice come swiftly and surely, that Righteousness prevail, that no one else be deceived into acts of evil. Someone says, "This is what our friends in Israel experience all too often. Let's pray for them."

We're still praying. Two of my graduated guys enlisted, and a third went to Annapolis even though he was offered scholarships at a couple of Ivy League schools. The kids are preparing a memorial Mass on Thursday, with slide shows, music, candles and prayers. We've sent pizzas to NY cops and firemen, and to Israeli soldiers.

We're still working and praying.

We will never forget.

post mortem:

Oct.8th 2001 in a chatroom there was a person being consoled for a lost loved one from the WTC. She was holding out hope that her person would be back. They where in a hospital too injured to speak perhaps. The people in the chatroom played along saying:
"Keep the faith"
"Miracles happen" or
"Right on sister".
I was thinking about the wall were people had stapled pictures of people still missing. I thought about someone sitting on the sidewalk by that wall waiting for news of their special someone from the WTC.

I blurted out " Those people are gone. Their not coming back. I'm sorry"

I was immediately attacked.
"shut the hell up"
"you monster"
"he's an asshole just ignore him"
"damn you jama"
"you have no right to tell someone how to greave"

In my defence I said "your not doing her any kindness"
but their minds were set. I was a chew toy in a room full of pitbulls.
I left.

You walk down the street to the WTC on Sep.15th2001 and you see someone sitting on the sidewalk with a picture. Sure you say "keep the faith". Maybe you bring them a cup of coffee, and you go home feeling good about yourself.
You walk down the street to the WTC on Oct. 8th2001 and you see someone sitting on the sidewalk holding a picture. You don't say "Right on sister" or "Miracles happen". Do you? I couldn't.

I guess I'm looking for absolution that I'm not a monster.

I wasn't hurrying to work as usual because I had a doctor's appointment that morning. I was watching the channel 5 news because I liked Mark Mullen, the only Seattle newscaster not in dire need of a personality transplant. Right before the top of the hour, he said there was breaking news from New York City. He babbbled for a few minutes while showing tape of the aftermath of the first tower strike. Then they switched to some audio feed from New York, I don't know if it was radio or TV.

Someone on this audio feed was saying something about terrorists attacking and I remember oh-so-clearly saying to the TV, "I think that's just a wee bit premature." And so I sat watching, wondering what was going on with the blather on the TV barely registering when the second plane hit. And I remember very clearly saying "OK. That's terrorism."

The rest of the morning is a blur. I went downtown because something had happened to my long-distance service and I wanted to call my sister to make sure she and her husband were safe. They work in DC and I don't know my DC geography well at all so I didn't know if they would have reason to be near the Pentagon, or travel near it. I figured I would use the office phone and then go to the doctor. I got downtown and the office building was locked and they were sending everyone home at the request of the mayor.

I went ahead to the doctor's office and the doctor told me that both towers were gone which completely failed to register as real.

When I got home, I called my best friend and we talked for large chunks of the day, hoping no one we knew had been killed. Of course, we were disappointed as one of the nicest men we had ever met in the silly business we work in, Garo Voskerijian, had been at work for Marsh. He was torn from his wife and three children.

I finally got through to my sister in the DC area and her husband asked me to call his mother and tell her that both my brother-in-law and his brother were home safe. My BIL was unable to get through and he thought I might have better luck calling from the west coast.

I reached my sister's mother-in-law, and we talked for a while. She pegged it immediately as Muslim terrorists and I think that's what every rational person was thinking by then. For some reason, I"m thinking that she was thinking Saddam Hussein rather than any other groups, but who knows by now.

I know I spent at least the next month looking up and thinking two things: "Faster, please" to go after the veil bastards and "I wish it was September 10."

Sometimes I still wish it was Septermber 10 but that would mean would have to wake up to the truth all over again, and once was quite enough to do the trick.

#141 papertiger

Not a monster, I don't think... but just awfully bossy and insensitive. Grief, denial, acceptance... it takes time to process it. Some of us handle pain and loss very poorly and slowly. I still tear up when I think about the planes, the Restaurant people, the jumpers. I still weep when I think of the folk on the street with the pics of their loved ones. Flight 93? Hoo, boy, pass the Kleenex.

Better to pat the griever on the shoulder than to presume you know how they should grieve.

It was the 1st day of my second week of my brand new job. I was at work early to be a good employee. I had heard a rumbling outside my office about the WTC, so I went to check MSNBC. I couldn't get through.

"Ah well, the Internet connection is broken here again," I sighed and went about my tasks.

The partner with the office next to me stopped by soon enough. "The bastards hit the other tower." I was confused. I went out into the hall, and back into someone else's office, who had a tiny TV. Surrounded by other lawyers and secretaries, we watched the first tower collapse.

Our firm president called an all0firm meeting soon after, telling us that we could go home if we wanted to. I stuck around a little bit, but working on one of the highest floors of the NBC Tower in Chicago, I got scared. I and two other friends went to take the bus home.

On the way, I was finally able to get through to my sister's dorm room, and told her roommate to tell her that I was alright when she got home. From the bus to my apartment, I reached my father out in the suburbs, and my brother in California. I had nosooner gotten in my door when my mother called from work to make sure I was OK. Finally my sister called me back. And then, and only then, after I knew everyone was OK and knew I was OK, I broke down while talking to her. I bawled and just repeated over and over "I'm fine, I'm OK, I'm fine."

I composed myself and turned on the TV to learn about the Pentagon and the plane in PA. I said to myself, "Either the Jews will be blamed or whoever did it will say they did it because of the Jews." I didn't know I would be right on both accounts.

I broke down for the second time that evening. Some TV program or another was playing the STar Spangled banner while I had stepped out on my balcony for a minute. Towards the lake, I saw another building with a spotlight on its American flag at half-mast, just as the words "That our flag was still there" was sung.

G-d bless America, G-d bless Israel, and G-d find and repay those who still worship death over life.

I was sitting at my desk when my wife’s brother phoned,

Have you got a TV on? Turn on the TV? The World Trade Center’s been attacked.

I went to the other room, picked up another phone and turned on the TV. I didn’t even know what I was seeing. New York, but, which building is the World Trade Center?

As I spoke with my brother in law they showed a replay of the second plane hitting.

WTF!

As I watched the first building came down

WTF!

Minutes later, I watched as the second building collapsed.

I was convinced I’d just seen 10,000 people killed.

I heard about the pentagon.

I went out, hit the bank box, bought 48 rolls of toilet paper, 20 bic lighters, 6 cartons of cigarettes and 8 boxes of beer.

At the beer store I was greeted with a friendly, “Good morning.”

“Is it?”

“I guess that would depend on who you call God.”

The guy at the beer store also told me another plane in Pennsylvania. Jet fighters. Who knew? The whole world was in confusion.

I made it of course, spent the rest of my day watching TV. (Yes, and drinking beer.) Work was over, that day and forever. It seems now I simply exist on a razor’s edge of denial, frustration and anger. Work seems peripheral. Death walks among us and I must constantly be on the watch.

I’m viscerally aware that when your neigbour’s house is on fire you don’t quibble about who owns the hose. You get in there and help him put it out.

I changed then and am changed today. I feel I’ll be changed forever, and I hate those bastards for it.

Here in Arabia we had finished work and were at home, running a rehearsal for a local amateur dramatics production. Most people had arrived and we had started working on one of the song and dance numbers in the living room when a late-comer arrived and said "You'd better turn on the TV." At that time, we only had a TV in the bedroom so people squeezed in there and watched the terrible events unfurl. The rehearsal was abandoned and people drifted off home. I then remembered my old schoolfriend Rob, who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald and hung out at the blog for supporters of our hometown soccer team. Turns out he didn't make it. We all dreaded going into work the next day, trying to continue and hoping not to hear any comments from out Arabian colleagues. We didn't. To be honest, they were all as horrified as we were. Later we discovered one of the 19 was from our town, and we knew some of his family. They were all devastated too. There was no rejoicing or handing out sweets here in Arabia.

I woke up at about 9am and turned on the radio. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I called a freind who usually sleeps till noon, and left a message telling him to turn on his TV. I guess my voice alerted him, because he called me back right away.

I wasn't quite sure what to do. I got on a bus to go to school, but I sort of wanted to leave the Bay Area. I reasoned, that San Francisco and Berkeley are terrorist targets, too, and who knows if they (the terrorists) are done with us for now, or are they going to hit another US city, perhaps with nukes. Should I take the Greyhound as far away from a big city as possible? I suppose that's what I would have done if I had children...

Thankfully, the classes were cancelled, so I met a friend and watched TV in his house. Even though all networks were showing the footage of the towers collapsing, the fact that the WTC no longer exists was difficult to comprehend. When I was growing up in the Soviet Union, our American relatives sent us cards with the Towers in letters and packages. In my imagination it was perhaps the most important symbol of America.

Getting in touch with family was a whole different story. I called my immediate family as soon as I could. But we also have relatives in New York. I was worried about my cousin who works in the vicinity of what used to be the World Trade Center, so when I was on the phone with my mom, I started asking about her. At this point my mom reminded me that my other cousin worked in the North Tower -- she's a survivor. I completely blocked out the fact that she was supposed to be there. Fortunately, we knew she was safe because she was able to phone my aunt in Sacramento.

I could not relate to the reactions of grad students and faculty at Cal. Some of them were so absorbed in their studies, that they seemed completely disinterested. Yet others were insisting that since other places on this planet weren't safe, it's time for the US to experience "violence." They must be very worldly and sophisticated people to come up with that idea. Because they are also very creative thinkers, they tended to engage in a variety of WTC-related conversations: when they were building the complex, were they thinking about bringing it down, and if yes, how? Or the fact that Arafat seems scared, and we shouldn't blame his poor people. And we shouldn't lash out at anyone. And of cause there was the "America deserves it" choir.

If the "intifada" didn't make it clear yet, 9/11 certainly brought it home: I'm not going to stick around at this school long enough to get a PhD. I feel much better now that I'm out of there.

This was a very useful experience -- I think I'm already starting to forget some details of that day. I'm glad that I have a chance to refresh it in my memory while leaving a permanent mark. Thank you.

I live in the Yukon, and we watched the towers die that morning. A Korean airliner which had been denied access to land in Alaska was diverted to our airport in Whitehorse. By chance, a false 'hijack in progress' signal had been sent, so there we were, sitting ducks if they wanted to crash into our city. All the schoolkids were quickly put on buses and sent out of the city, and we waited. Thankfully the hijack signal turned out to be a low fuel signal, and the plane wasn't shot down. My rage and hatred for the islamic terrorists is renewed each year.
Never Forget.

I was in the car on the way to work, when the second plane hit. I had to stop and pulled over (could do it safely). I called my wife - her sister and BIL live in Manhatten, work in finance. She couldn't get through to either of them. They were safe. My SIL said that for months afterward, she would be flipping through her rolodex to call someone, realize that the number had a WTC prefix and, not knowing whether that person survived or how to contact them, be hit with a cavalcade of memories.

I got to work within ten minutes of second plane strike. One of my coworkers, an orthodox jew, left a half-hour later, to go pick up his kids from school. Cell phone networks crashed. Internet crashed. Only conference room with live video feed - filled with numb and staring coworkers. A coworker, whose father was a retired higher-up in SAC, said that her dad got a call at 10:30, was told to pack for "awhile" and get on a plane - he disappeared for the next three weeks. They sent us home, after we watched the towers collapse.

I remember amazement at how quickly the FAA shut down nationwide air travel. My house is in the landing flight path for Detroit Metro. Planes in a continuous stream would fly over the house on normal days. For days after 9/11, days just like that sunny tuesday, no planes - very strange and quiet.

I remember thinking that, now, this is something that we cannot ignore. Now, the country must awake, and DO something about the rising islamic terrorist threat. As reports began coming in of carrier battle groups being turned around mid-sea, and as large midnight flights left from Selfridge ANG, I was slightly reassured.

Adding onto #146, my previous comment.

On the morning of the 12th I called my brother back home in the UK. He was out of his mind with worry. My niece, only 19 at the time, was somewhere in NYC and he couldn't get in contact with her as all the phones were down. She was on a 2-week vacation to see her boyfriend, who was an exchange student at NYU. It was her first "grown-up" vacation, travelling all on her own and she had phoned on the 9th saying she was going to visit the WTC. Eventually, my brother managed to contact her. She had been to the WTC on the morning of the 10th September. She was so totally freaked out by the experience that she didn't leave her hotel room until it was time to return to England.

In Arabia, people just didn't talk about it in mixed (ie. Western and Arab) company. We even got an e-mail at work warning us not to discuss the issue with our students, not that I had any intention of doing so. I am happy that I managed to find LGF as a place to actually discuss all the stuff I was feeling but could never mention for fear of losing my job.

I was getting ready to go to a meeting in downtown ATL at a large construction site. I was running late and in a hurry. My son, a freshman at Va Tech, called me and told me to turn on the news. I never left the house that day.

Unlike some posters, I didn't know it was terrorists. I was naive. Thanks to LGF, Debka and other sites, I think I'm better educated.

Whateve I can do, in my own way, to prevent this from repeating, I will. In the words of Holocaust survivors: NEVER AGAIN!.

I received an email from a friend late September 11 night Australian time. I could hardly believe it, but also went to bed fearing that possibly hundreds of airplanes could do similar things. (Thankfully night time here was day time there, so by the time I was awake the day had more or less finished). My parents came in to my room the next morning and started to tell me what happened, and I finished what they were going to say somewhat to show that I already knew.

I criticised America for initially supporting the Taliban (now viewed by me as a baseless accusation) and said that America should have invaded Afghanistan well before this happened. (I had watched the BBC documentary behind the veil on September 10, and I knew how evil the Taliban were from that and other sources.)

I somewhat wince at that now. The international debate over Iraq gives me an impression of what would have happened if we had attacked Afghanistan before September 11.

Was just getting setup in my office at 58th and Madison, ready for the daily grind. My manager tells us that a plane hit the WTC, which we all first assumed was an accident. Then word started spreading about the 2nd tower being hit; could a news chopper have gotten disoriented and crashed too? Things were really fuzzy at this point, we had no cell phones or T-1 Internet connection. Next our controller arrived at work and told us that the Pentagon just had been hit. The fuzziness was now gone, we were at war.

Our conference room had a TV hookup, so the whole floor was crammed in there watching the live feed. All the women in the room were crying, the men looked remote. I could only watch a few minutes of it , then headed out to find a ride home.

Grand Central was closed, the only other option was a bus. While at the bus stop, I could see the huge cloud all the way down Madison Ave, didn't occur to me at the time that it was very low to the ground. Fortunately I was able to get to the Bank of New York ATM before their system went down, it didn't come back up for another 3 weeks. Every bus was packed, so I went back to the office to figure out another way to get home to Westchester.

Got through to the Metro North website, trains were being run out of Grand Central. They had swept the tunnels for terrorism and were resuming train service on a first come first serve basis. On the ride home there was a young Middle Eastern man sitting about 5 seats away facing me. I stared at him for 20 minutes straight, and not once did he make eye contact with me. It was probably the wrong thing to do, but I don't regret it. If he had looked back at me he wouldn't have liked the look to kill I possessed at the time.

I found out later that my godson's best friend had lost his dad, Jeffrey Walz of Ladder 9. It tears my heart out every time I see the little guy, he has asked my best friend a few times if he would be his dad.

I have the CBS and HBO documentaries on tape, they do not collect dust.

Never forget.

For those who know me , you know I was here on Wall Street that day I have worked in the financial district for close to 9 years.

It was a glorious morning , absolutely beautiful weather and a crystal clear clouldless blue sky
I was building out 2 floors at 100 Wall across from our main offices at 110 Wall and i just happened to be going out at 8 :45 and there was a blizzard of paper throughout the sky like a ticker tape parade it was confusing and not known yet what had happened
as i got to our main reception floor the girl at the desk was hysterical and on her cell phone talking about a bomb going off in the Trade Center It was about 8:50 at this point
I walked into our risk management area because there was a TV there and it is also the northern and western most spot with a commanding view of the WTC
As i enterd the room our head of HR was there and our CEO as well all watching the set at that point i was looking out the window and the second plane hit resulting in the huge fireball everyone has seen by now
It was huge and it shook the room , at this point i immediately turned to the head of HR and told him everybody had to go ( I am Safety director as well as construction head ) I got teams together to go to all floors and begin evacuation and contacted Building management in all 3 buildings we are in
We cleared all personnel rather well and directed evryone up the east side of manhattan when the first tower came down
I am about 9 blocks due east of the Trade Center and there was a terrific roar , frieght train like and perhaps you have all seen the tv shots of the huge clouds of dudt bu they are not done justice they were moving FAST and in an instant the cloud had surrounded the front of my building were i was ,it seemed to last forever

At this point the surreality of the day was furthered it was very quiet and there was a thick layer of dust every where and breathing was next to impossible
it seemed like it had just snowed honestly at this point things were maving fast and time was blending
when the second tower came down i was down in the basement with my electricians whatching the tube so we were not in it I had completely evacuated my personnel
and was working with the building and the NYPD at this stage
about an hour after the second tower came down ( 1 PM or so ) I took a walk up to the site and i will never forget what i saw crushed vehicles , crushed people carnage every where and it was at that point that i realized there was nothing to be done there would be absolutely no survivors
I will never forget that day

HG

I heard the first reports while driving to work that morning. All they said was that a "twin-engined aircraft" had crashed into one of the WTC towers. Being an aviation history buff, I remembered reading about the incident from WWII when a B-25 bomber hit the Empire State Building. The plane was lost in bad weather. I wondered if it had happened again.

When I got to work and fired up my computer, I checked the CNN news site. It showed a burning building against a clear blue sky. Things just didn't make sense. Did the pilot have a heart attack? There still was no word about the plane being an airliner, so "twin-engined aircraft" could've been a Cessna or Piper for all I knew.

Until the next one hit. It was clearly an airliner and clearly deliberate. Over the next couple hours, there was another crash into the Pentagon, the unprecedented ordering of all planes to land around the country, the crash of Flight 91, and the towers coming down.

The news website servers were pretty well overloaded, so it was hard to get more information. I listened on the radio and didn't get much work done. About noon, I had to take my wife to a doctor's office for a medical procedure. I got to see the footage for the first time while in the waiting room. It was strange, both numbing and infuriating.

That evening, I taught a class at a local college. We didn't cancel classes because we refused to cower in our homes. Still, it was clear everyone's hearts and minds were elsewhere. After class, I went home and watched more of the news coverage until late in the evening. There really wasn't much for them to say so they kept playing the video footage over and over.

I woke the next morning knowing our nation was at war. I worried about my son in the Navy, a corpsman, and what the future would hold for him and for the rest of us.

I still feel a strong connection to a man I never met because of 9-11. I was at work that day in my plant in Idaho. I was listening to the news all day and finding whatever news I could on the the internet. My plant has a large number of ex-nuclear Navy personnel and my boss was an Annapolis graduate, so I was paying particular attention to any military casualties. At lunch on Wednesday the 12, I ran into our plant manager who was a retired Admiral. They had just released some of the names from the downed planes and one of the listed names was an Admiral Flagg. I asked our manager if he had known the man. He questioned me closely about the name and said that his best friend, the man who mentored him when he first joined the Navy, was missing from the WTC. His friend's name was Admiral Flanagan and he'd been trying to contact him all night long, but there was no answer at his phone. I told him that I didn't think this casualty was his friend, but I felt terrible because for a moment, he thought it was confirmation that his best friend was dead. The misunderstanding was terrible.

I went back to my office, jumped on the internet, and started searching frantically for any news of his friend. All that I knew was the man's name, that he was a retired Admiral, and that he worked on top of the WTC. After much searching, I figured out that the man had to be working for Cantor Fitzgerald. The best that I was hoping for was give my facility manager some hard information, even though I expected that it would be bad news.

After an hour or so, I stumbled across Cantor Fitzgerald's list of missing and found employees. His friend was listed as unconfirmed but safe. I raced across the plant to tell my facility manager. He was gone, so I paged him and left the contact phone number for Cantor Fitzgerald. All weekend long, I watched that list going through a rollercoaster of emotions as the news changed. When the news broke about some of the missing and found persons lists being hacked, I was devastated. Then on Monday, my facility manager said that he had used the number I gave him and contacted his friend and he was safe.

I'll never forget the name of the retired Admiral that I spent hours tracking through the internet. I'll always feel a connection to a man I've never met and probably never will meet. During that weekend, I became so involved in trying to confirm that he was alive that I felt like he was part of my family.

Reading everyone's stories reminded me of a permanent change in my attitude. I had never paid attention to plane's in the sky before. I'd hear them all the time but I never really paid attention to them. Since 9-11, I always look up to locate the plane and watch it go by. Every single time. A plane in the sky will never again be just a plane in the sky.

I remember coming into work that morning, and seeing the image of the 1st tower smoldering, minutes after it was struck, hoping against hope that it was some kind of tragic accident. That hope was quickly dashed by the horrifying site of the next plane tearing into the second tower.

I remember the fear, anger and purest of sorrow at the sight of one of America's greatest engineering feats wounded and bleeding black smoke into the clear blue sky over New York.

I remember my brothers and sisters who chose to jump to their deaths rather than be burned alive in hate fueled flames.

I remember the nearly 3000 men and women, firefighters, police and citizens, who's lives were cut short in a cruel act of utter depravity and indifference to human suffering.

I remember September 11th, 2001.

I first saw the World Trade Center when I was 9 years old, and remember being completely awestruck with it. Looking up to it's summit from the plaza below, it's gleaming steel and glass facade was both beautiful, and mesmerizing. Looking out at the great city of New York from it's top was even more striking.

It was a symbol both of the city who's skyline it defined, and of the nation of men and women who built it.

9/11 was a loss of innocence. Both for me, who first saw the World Trade Center through the eyes of a child, and for my country.

We must never forget how we felt on that day. We must never forget the anger, and the resolve to see those responsible crushed beneath American boots.

I will never forget. I will never forgive.

I remember September 11th. 2001.

The lighter side of 9/11:

At about 9 p.m., I finally stopped watching TV, and went to the CVS down the street.

As I went in, I saw this guy who I was sure was Arab. I stared at him for what seemed like half a minute, and he stared back at me for about the same time.

The funny thing was, I soon realized that his stare was not a "how dare you stare at me" stare, but an "are YOU an Arab?" stare too.

My appearance is such that I can pass for Arab, and this is not the first time it's happened to me, but never was it this intense.

At about the same time he realized his mistake, I realized my own - the other guy was Israeli.

Ooops!

Amen on the "plane in the sky will never be 'just a plane in the sky'". This was particularly difficult, since a favorite beach of mine is not only in sight of lower Manhattan, but in the flight path to JFK and Newark as well. My head goes straight up every time a plane goes overhead - the reflex has only diminished slightly in the two years since then.

Our apartment building had a memorial ceremony on the first anniversary, last year. And wouldn't you know it, a plane flew right overhead during the middle of it.

I work for an investment company in northern New Jersey. On September 11th I was driving to work and listening to NPR. Shortly after 8:45 a.m., the broadcast became garbled and then stopped, replaced by static. I assumed that the station was merely experiencing technical problems, so I switched to the Howard Stern show, which is broadcast out of New York. A more sober than usual Stern was reading a news announcement that a plane had struck the World Trade Center.

When I got to work I went to our trading floor, which is equipped with several large flat panel televsions. At first I did not understand what I was seeing. Then I realized it was a close-up of one of the towers with a giant black hole in the side. The hole was rimmed with fire and shaped in the clear outline of a plane viewed head-on.

For the next two hours, everyone in my office watched in horror as events unfolded live on TV. When the first tower collapsed we all audibly gasped. I remember telling people that this was clearly the work of Osama bin Laden, and unfortunately I was right. Looking out my office window I could see a thin cloud of white smoke rising over the horizon as the remains of the World Trade Center wafted upward.

A stupid story, but I'll never forget it. On th night of Sept 10 I was up late brewing beer on my backporch. While I was waiting for the boil I was reading National Review. There was a quote from Al Sharpton saying we needed to slash the military budget because there were no real threats left to America. I laughed out loud... The next morning my wife woke me up after the first plane hit. I thought of Al Sharpton and the idiotic thinking that made us so complacent as a nation.

I don't know if you are aware, Charles, of Michele, at A Small Victory. She is doing a project called "Voices" which also provides space for people's memories of 9/11.

My "Voices" entry follows:

Where was I on 9/11? I was where I always was at 8:45 a.m.: at the World Trade Center. I worked in 7 World Trade. I was coming up out of the subway. Normally, I took a route under the towers, because there was a mall down there, and that's where I bought my morning coffee. That day, there was a policeman there telling us all that we couldn't go through, that there was some kind of bomb threat, or something.

When I got out of the subway, everyone stopped in their tracks. There was a big hole in the north tower, with flames shooting out from the hole. It was compelling. Surreal. Thankfully, I missed seeing people jumping by what must have been seconds.

The entire crowd just stood there, watching the tower burn. People were saying that they saw a plane hit the tower. My thought was, "what are they, crazy? some little cessna couldn't do that much damage."

Then there was a massive explosion. We had all been standing on the northeast corner of the WTC complex (by the post office, for those who know the area), and hadn't seen the second plane come in from the south. I can't explain how huge this explosion was. My first thought was, crazily, "how did they get a car bomb up that high?" My friends who were in the office were evacuated down to the lobby of 7 WTC. They told me later that the explosion blew out the windows in the lobby of our building. That's how huge the explosion was.

And policemen started yelling for people to run. But a crowd of us stood transfixed. When you see pictures of the second plane hitting the tower, it blew debris out the north side of the building. We were where that debris landed. But until it landed, it looked like a slow-moving expanding ball. It looked like it was moving in slow motion. Strange. Kind of like at a ball game when the batter hits the ball in your direction, and you can't quite tell where the ball is, or how fast it's moving. It was kind of like that. Until it started slamming down all around us. Then we started to run. It was a scary 90 seconds.

I ran north. There was a steady stream of federal agents running out of 26 Federal Plaza (home of the FBI, and other federal agencies), towards the towers, bless them. I remember stopping to rest by that building, and thinking to myself, "you're in the middle of a terrorist incident, and you're standing by the #1 target to hit...MOVE!" So I ran further north.

Then we started to hear reports from people with radios. My cell phone didn't work, and when I finally got to a pay phone, I couldn't call home (a lot of the land lines were down as well). The people with radios were talking about a plane hitting the Pentagon, a car bomb at the State Dept., a fire on the Mall in D.C., and 8 planes up in the air, unaccounted-for. I still ran north.

I went into a Kinkos, and asked to use the phone. They let me. I reached a few people, including my parents, and asked everyone to pass messages to my wife that I was OK.

I met up with some people from work, and we walked north. People who lived in the neighborhood were out on the street, giving people water, and use of their land-line wireless phones. The city had a tremendous sense of unity. Even misers became unselfish that day.

Then the first tower fell. I remember on the trek north how lonely the one tower looked. By that time, I was so far north that I didn't even get engulfed in the dust cloud. When the second tower fell, we were headed crosstown, so I couldn't see the actual event. But I saw the people on the next corner. I saw their faces. I turned to the person next to me and said, "the second tower just went down." When I got to the corner, I saw I was right.

We went to one of my colleague's brother's apartment, where I finally was able to get through to my wife. How's this for information speed nowadays? My father, in Florida, was in the gym, and saw the news. He called my mother at home. My mother called my wife. My wife left a message for me at work, asking if I was OK. Now, our phone system was working until the building fell down, and, later that afternoon, I retrieved my messages. The first plane hit at 8:45 a.m., the first call from my wife was at 8:53 a.m. 8 minutes for the news to get to Florida, then back to New York. After the first 90 seconds, I knew I was OK. My wife had to wait for 90 minutes without knowing if I was alive or dead. The day was much harder on her than on me.

I ended up walking uptown to Aish HaTorah (a Jewish religious organization), where I said some prayers. Then I walked cross-town to my sister's apartment on the Upper East Side. She worked downtown also, and was caught in the dust-cloud, but was otherwise OK. We watched the news together all day. I was watching CNN when my building fell. That was surreal, as well.

I took the 7:54 p.m. Long Island Rail Road train home that evening. The trains were back on schedule by then, and they didn't even check tickets.

In the days that followed, I remember most clearly seeing people clap and cheer whenever a firetruck went by. I remember that feeling of unity that I felt on the streets of downtown Manhattan that day, that it didn't go away so fast.

It was over a year before I could make myself go to the post office at the corner of Church and Vesey. When I got there, I said the prayer that orthodox Jews say on those rare occasions: Baruch Atah Hashem, Elokaynu Melech Ha'Olam, She'asah Li Neis B'Makom Hazeh. Blessed are You, Lord our G-d, Ruler of the Universe, who did a miracle for me in this place.

Sorry about the link...it should be A Small Victory

I remember waking up on 9/11 grumbling to myself that it was only Tuesday and I had four days of work to get through until the weekend. I picked up the New York Daily News at 8:30 on the way into the subway to get to midtown Manhattan. September 10th was an very slow news day. The paper was talking about how hip hop artists were planning to form a political action group.

Around half way into the city the train started to go very slowly. I was aggravated at the delay and the inconvenience of waiting on a stopped subway car. When got off the train at about 8:50, I just walked the five blocks to my office. I didn't bother looking downtown towards the World Trade Center. I was tired and didn't want to be at work on such a beautiful day. I just stared at the ground and thought about getting my first cup of coffee. On the elevator, a man said to a woman that they would have to relocate their downtown offices because a plane at hit the Trade Center.

"Could you say that again?" I asked.

A few seconds later the elevator doors opened at my floor and the horror began.

I went to high school near the WTC. I would go there at night and just stare up at the illuminted buildings. I always loved the red beacon on top of the main antenna. I would think that that light was America's heartbeat, and so long as we could make it beat a fifth of a mile in the air each night, it signified that we were alright as a nation. I imagined many years in the future taking my son there and explaining a wide-eyed boy what those buildings were and that they represented the best within us as a country and as human beings. As I sat at my desk that day frantically e-mailing everyone I knew to tell them that I was alive, I realized that I would only be able to point to a picture one day and tell that same boy about what had once been.

I will never forgive.
I will never forget.

I wrote for a small regional magazine called Utah Outdoors from about '99 until it went belly-up last Fall.

Over those first couple weeks of Sept. 2001 I was working on an article for the October edition about Yellowstone -- about the geothermal forces that shaped the park. The gist of the piece was that Yellowstone is basically a ticking bomb. The whole place has blown sky-high many, many times in the past. One detonation launched 15,000 times more ash into the atmosphere than Mt. St. Helens. The last eruption produced a 50-mile high mushroom cloud. The geological record suggests an actual pattern to these disasters, with the past three occurring at intervals of 600,000 to 800,000 years. The last was 650,000 years ago. You do the math. A catastrophe is in the offing, and when it happens the best of the West will be driven from post to pillar and pillar to post.

Needless to say, on 9/11 I put the article away and didn't return to it for about a week. But the two were never mutually exclusive in my mind. I thought about both often over the course of that week; they seemed to dovetail.

It's hard to articulate, but I guess what I realized -- really for the first time in my life -- was that this world of ours is an unbelievably dangerous place; that my life here in America is, from the perspective of history, an unforseen miracle; and that this miracle is not a free or unconditional gift -- it requires a few simple things from all who receive it: First, that they cherish it every waking moment; Second, that they defend it against all those forces -- and their name is Legion -- that threaten to snuff it out.

I realized that it was time to get Old School -- to start getting serious about being about the business of preserving what all our Old School badass ancestors had built for us. Everybody needed to dig deep and find their "John Colter spirit" within.

Colter the first recorded white man to see the wonders of Yellowstone. He was a man cut from a different cloth, a hunter and trailblazer for Lewis and Clark who chose to stay in the West after the rest of the Corps of Discovery turned for home. He was the real deal, the archetypical mountain man who explored the wilderness with the commitment of a samurai and went farther into the unknown Western Rockies than any of his contemporaries.

Colter became legendary for his stamina and feats of survival. He once outran several hundred Blackfoot warriors, naked, with a lead ball in his right ankle and blood spurting from his nose from the strain of his exertions. It was a game. When they caught him they’d torture him to death -- not out of spite, but as a gesture of honor. But Colter turned their game on its head, killing the forerunning Blackfoot with the warrior’s own spear, leaping into a river to hide in the icy current under a sawyer while the Indians scoured the banks, then walking 200 miles, barefoot and very hungry, to the relative safety of the nearest trading post.

Colter was the archetypical mountain man, but he was also the archetypical American. A survivor. An explorer. A free man. A liver of life, in all its raw, bloody, dangerous glory. Sometime in the 60's many Americans lost that ethic. They decided to return to the European life of hedonism and cowardice instead of the American life of courage and values. They took the gift, but didn't meet the conditions.

After 9/11, there is no choice. I'd tried to enlist in the Navy in '97 and in the Army in '99, but was turned down both times because I have a history of getting mauled by the Black Dog of depression. I ACHE that I can't go do my part. But I'm proud that others of my generation seems to be rising to the occasion. There are a bunch of John Colter's over in Afghanistan and Iraq right now, meeting the conditions of The Gift with heroism and grace.

I'm still trying to figure out how I can meet those conditions in my own life.

The first thing I did early that September 11th was vote in the primaries for NYC Mayor. Little did I know. . . .

I was at work, at 17th & 5th, in Manhatten, when I heard about the first strike. We were downstairs on 5th watching the towers burn, then crumble. While standng on 5th, I had my first real up-close introduction to moonbattery (a term I had no knowledge of at that time). As I stood with a co-worker, telling her we were at war, I didn't know with whom, but we were at war, none-the-less, and that it would be a 20-50 year war; I figured it was Muslim, but at that point, early on that Tuesday morning, nothing was definite. As I stood watching, this young kid, black, around 26, said to me, "It's all our fault!" I said, "Excuse me, WTF did you say?" He repeated, "It's all our fault! Check your history, my man!" I immediately felt a rage about to erupt, as my fists clenched in complete hostility. I said to the jackass, "First of all, asshole, I'm not your man. Second, I'd get the f*ck out of here right now, before something bad happens to you." He looked at me, saw my anger at him, shook his head, and walked away. As he walked away, a fireman from the 18th St Firehouse (just around the corner) standing behind me whispered in my ear, "I'm a fireman, and I just heard what you said. I wanted you to know I had your back." What a complete and utter moron that asshole moonbat was. I fully comprehend the conspiracy theory idiots and their moronic thought processes, if one can call them that. I had met the enemy, though I didn't know it, and he was us. Sorry, Pogo.

A little later on, around 10:30-11:00 a.m., jets went screaming overhead. As I grew up in a Navy town, I knew what fighter jets looked and sounded like; people in NYC hardly ever saw a modern fighter except on "JAG". People on the street started to panic at the sound, and I had to remind those within earshot they were ours, and not to worry. They were there to stop anything else from happening, especially to the nearby Empire State Building.

The other poignant moment of that day was trying to get back to Queens. I knew the City had shut down all transportation, and that most people were hoofing it across bridges or taking ferries to get home. I decided to wait, figuring the City would have to turn the power to the subways back on sometime; I figured correctly. Around 2:30 p.m., I walked over to Union Square to grab a train, but the station was locked up tighter than a drum. So I went to my normal 14th & 6th stop to grab an "F" train. As I stood there, an "E" train rolled in, put on the "F" track due the situation downtown, and it still had as a destination on its side, "World Trade Center." That really, really choked me up. The passengers on the train were totally quiet, except for some sobs here and there. I really believe everyone was in shock.

Earlier in the day, I had tried to reach family to let them know I was okay. I'm the only one in the NY area, and to my family, the Bronx is close to the Battery; they had no idea of my location in relation to the WTC. When I got hold of a close cousin's workplace in WV, while asking a person if I could speak with John, I heard the TV on, describing for all what I had just witnessed with my own two eyes. Talking to my cuz was such a surreal feeling as I'm hearing what I'm seeing, and talking to him at the same time. Very eerie.

My office was closed Tuesday and Wednesday, so that emergency personnel had the run of the City. On Thursday, we were to open since we were above 14th St. As I lay in bed at home before getting up that morning, the wind had shifted to the northeast overnight, and I could smell the burning as I lay there. The smell of burnt everything made me cry once again, as I struggled to get ready to go back to work in order not to let the bastards win.

As a result of what happened, the primary votes already in were voided. So I was able to vote again when the primary was rescheduled, but Rudy still wouldn't be on the ballot.

That's my story of that day plus.

My grandfather could always rattle off details about his activities when he heard about Pearl; my father could about the assassination of JFK. I got more experience with the phenomenon on that black Tuseday than I'd ever wanted.

I was just about to leave for class - a class on Islamic history, of all the ironic things - when my phone rang. It was my mother, calling from work. "Turn on the TV," she said. "A plane just hit the World Trade Center. They think it's terrorists." I grabbed the remote and flipped on the TV as I picked up the backpack.

I had the bad timing to catch the second plane ramming into the second tower. My bag hit the floor. I decided not to go to class as they would surely be canceled. In this I was right; my classmates said the few people who arrived at Turlington Hall found out and watched it in odd corners of the building.

After seeing the impacts I was pretty sure of the perpetrators: Al-Qaida. They had an avowed hatred of all things American and pulled off nasty stuff in the past. At the very least I was mortally sure the perpetrators were Arabic Muslims; no one else was suicidal enough or just plain crazy enough to kick the sleeping tiger this way, and they had always seemed to have a special unreasoning hatred for the twin towers. With the towers burning but standing, the attack seemed, at the time, to be another failed attempt to bring down the towers, and out of sheer hysteria - the plane ramming the second tower replayed itself in my mind endlessly, the huge fireball, and the tower resolutely - if temporarily - standing firm even under this punishment, I actually snapped and started laughing. "You dumb f**s! Ha! You took your best shot and you couln't pull it off! You're so f***ing dead now!" I ranted and rambled more or less incoherently until one of the towers collapsed, which cut off the warped anger and just left empty sadness.

I remembered then that my father had been supposed to fly that day, and managed to get in tough with him - his plane had ended up in Atlanta. Hearing from CNN that some of the planes left from Boston, I made some other calls to make sure that none of my family up in Boston had been flying, either. At that point I sat back down in front of the TV and, sve to go over to the computer to message people, didn't move much for the next 24 hours. I saw the second tower fall, and then the footage of the burning Pentagon, and the empty feeling was being replaced by raw red-hot rage again. Remembering the jumpers who leapt to their deaths, I voiced the opinion that if he (Osama) were caught, he should be taken up over the WTC site in a helicopter up to about a thousand feet and thrown out.

I very distinctly remember the Palestinians dancing in the streets and wondered aloud how much it would cost to 'borrow' one of those IDF tanks that drive around the 'occupied territories'. The sight of such ghoulish joy in the deaths of thousands, strangers all, was sickening and as inhuman a scene as I could imagine. Any sympathy I had ever had for an independent Palestinian homeland was gone, finished, dead as a doorknob.

I waited for miracles - people who escaped, rescued survivors - and found a few: the massive unity and support of New Yorkers and all Americans in the face of disaster, the heroism of the passengers in Pennsylvania, the firemen rescued from a vehicle that had been buried in debris.

I also saw mass hysteria. People were spreading the most horrible rumors online; that the terrorists were planning a grand nuclear finale later that week, that additional planes were missing, all sorts of crazy stuff. But that turned out to be untrue - our enemies were strategic morons.

I also remember the 'birthday present' Uncle Sam gave me almost a month later - payback. That was when we went and started hitting Afghanistan.

I will never forget.

I had flown in to San Jose from NYC the day before on business and woke up at about 6 am PT/ET and put on the TV to see tower 1 in smoke and then watched in disbelief as the 2d plane slammed into tower 2. I don't remember much after that.

Getting home to Long Island proved to be quite a challenge. I finally was able to get on a red-eye from San Jose to Atlanta that left Thursday night the 13th -- probably one of the first commercial flights to fly after 9/11. It was not easy walking onto that plane and it was a VERY quiet flight.

We will never forget.

As it seems to have been over much of the country, it was a beautiful day in the New Orleans area. I'd overslept a little, so was rushing to catch my bus & didn't have time to check e-mail & the news on my 'puter. Bus ride was kinda quiet, but not unusually so. This was around 8:20 central.
I walked from the Cemetary bus stop down to the computer shop I worked at, stopping on the way to get lunch & some odd & ends from a grocery on Canal Blvd. that was on the way. While checking out, the lady behind the counter was saying something about planes and how if it were up to her, we would have finished the job in Desert Storm. "Ok", I thought, "We must have finally lost a plane over the No Fly Zones. Bad, but had to happen sooner or later. I'll have to be sure & check foxnews.com when I get in." Just a block away from work, a Bell South repair guy tells me that some sort of plane, maybe two, had hit the Twin Towers. He wasn't sure.
I get in just before 9 central & ask the office manager/secretary just WTF was going on. She told me two jets had hit the Towers and the towers were on fire. "Terroism, then, not an accident." "Looks like. Don't bother with the news sites. They've all crashed under the load." I was able to e-mail an ex-girlfriend who now lived in New York. She was ok, and her roomie was as well. The roomie had a near miss, though. She'd been heading to the WTC to set-up lights for a trade show at Windows of the World, but had missed the early train.
During the course of the day news & rumors came in. Pentagon hit. Car bombs in DC. Groundstop of all flights in the US & world-wide. As many as 5 planes still missing. Plane down in Pennsylvania, possibly shot down by the ANG. As many as 30,000 believed dead.
Around mid-day, an F-15 from the local Joint Reserve Base screamed past, flying low & fast, heading north. Literally passed directly over the shop. Chatted with the Pakistani immigrants who runt he Shell station next door. They're as shocked as we are.
Stopped by the Blood center on the way home after work, only to be told that they were taking names to call for donations later. It was most of a month before my name got called. Once home, I started shaving off my beard (which had been full & thick) & ended up listening to the President's address on the radio instead of watching it on the TV in the complex's bar as I'd only gotten half of it off when the speech started. (I don't own a TV)
A week later, I was out of work. The computer shop relied on Just In Time shipping, and a few days of no cargo flights hurt them badly. Hell of a time to be looking for work. 16 months without steady employment, just what contractor stuff I could pick up here & there. I'd have re-enlisted, but I'd washed out on a medical issue (heart murmur) ten years before. Unlike many here, I was already informed about what was going on in the Mideast. I'm a news & history junkie.

I remember the radio alarm going off here in Phoenix, and the sports station I listened to has the host yelling "Jesus Christ, get all the planes out of the sky..."

I jump up, thinking "what the f---" and I run to the TV, just in time for them to show the second tower being hit. I remember thinking I knew the second tower would fall by the way the plane hit at an angle near a corner, but I honestly believed the first tower would somehow survive because the hit seemed so centered, in my mind it was like that bomber that hit the Empire State Building in the 40's and the tower would stand. When the first tower finally fell, I thought that at least ten to twenty-five thousand people had just died, forgetting that most people didn't get there until 9 NY time.

We kept the kids home from school that day, because nobody knew for sure what was next. Nothing at work that day, no phone calls, no nothing, everyone just sitting around and listening to the radio. Now it's 2 years later and the same media which showed this for a week non-stop won't do anything in commemoration of the thousands who died that day...LLL bastards...never forget.

I was staying down the coast for a work conference, and being a cheapskate, I had a room without a TV because it was cheap. I was asleep when my mobile rang (it was about 11.30pm here in Australia) with my incoherent boyfriend nearly in tears telling me that a plane had smashed into the WTC and also the Pentagon. I was dopey and half asleep and kept saying 'what??? are you sure??'. I thought he must have got it wrong. He had to get off the phone, because in front of him on the TV, one of the towers collapsed. I wandered through the pub where I was staying, to see if anyone was awake with a TV. Noone was. I finally went back to sleep and slept badly. Early in the morning there was a thunderstorm out over the ocean, and the distant rumbles woke me up. I seriously wondered whether I was hearing the end of the world happening.
I went off to the conference that morning and everyone was in shock. I drove back home that afternoon with my colleague who had some sarcastic comments to make about how it was all to be expected, deserved, very smarmy and seemed quite pleased. I was furious and sat in silence for 4 hours in the car.
That night my boyfriend and I watched the rescue and recovery for hours, crying.

Popular music has not done much to deal with 9-11, so I thought that I would bring these lyrics to your attention. They are by the prog-rock band Camel and the "high diver" referred to is one of the anonymous souls that fell to his death that September morning.

For Today
(for the courageous spirit of the High Diver on 11st September)
Latimer/Hoover/LeBlanc
I saw a pearl of wisdom
in the spirit of a man
as he saved
the day he lost.

Time will say I told you so
if we look back in regret.
Never give a day away.
It won't return the same again.

Nothing can last
there are no second chances.
Never give a day away.
Always live for today.

On 11 September 2001, at approximately 945 PM Japan Standard Time, I was enjoying a late-summer evening in the Japanese countryside in company of a dozen other men. We were dressed only in yukata – a type of lightweight, cotton kimono – and were well on our way to merry drunkenness. We had rented out a seaside resort for a software developers’ conference and this was our nightly ritual. After a 12-hour day of brain-busting technical discussions we would follow on to relationship-building exercises that consisted of adolescent binge drinking, old folk songs, and retelling of grade-school level dirty jokes. In Japan, million-dollar deals are closed this way.

Frank, from a partner firm in Texas, was the only other American there. Though Frank could hold his sake and perform coding miracles better than any of us, the Japanese language was not among his talents. As we all sat on the grass I was explaining to him the intricacies of yet another dick joke that simply would not translate when someone wheeled out a TV from one of the hotel rooms. "Everyone", he announced, "a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center." Sure enough, behind him was the image of Tower 1 smoldering on live TV.

Probably just a Cessna gone astray, I thought. Wasn’t there that old story about a B-25 hitting the Empire State Building back in WWII? The group thinking must have been similar because we were none too fussed to postpone the party. It was halfway through the first verse of Ishihara’s "Akai Hankachi" that I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and turned my head just in time to see the second plane disappearing into one side of Tower 2 and exploding out of the other.

"HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!"

Some exclamations require no translation. The karaoke gave way to cicadas in nearby woods and we all watched as the plume from Tower 2 joined that of Tower 1. News commentators added no information to what we could see for ourselves. We stared unbelieving as bodies spiraled like autumn leaves and both towers fell. Dust and smoke swallowed first lower Manhattan and then the TV screen. "Fuck me dead", I said, "What was that all about?"

"I dunno," said Frank, "I just wonder what pissant country ain’t gonna be around this time next month." It sounded extreme at the time.

The next morning the TV in the lobby bellowed ominous classical music over loops of the Towers falling from various angles while the names of missing Japanese bankers scrolled up the screen. It seemed so overblown to me. Why add the Hollywood effect to something already so heartbreaking? The news anchors continued their scramble to confirm rumors: one headline screamed that 50,000 were dead and 10 additional airplanes were unaccounted for. I zombied through my presentations for the day and returned to Tokyo that evening.

There was a problem with my hotel reservation back in the city. The clerk was being unusually difficult. I explained to him that my plane was not leaving until Saturday, that I needed a room, and that I patronized his hotel 5 or 6 times per year. "Oh," he cocked his head with a look of sudden empathy, "Is it the terror thing?" The inside of my head said "Screw you, buddy", but I instead nodded and let him pity me so that I could get a room. He charged me about 40 bucks more than usual. Doubtless the hotels were making a killing off stranded travelers. Once inside, I immediately stripped down and turned on CNN. I sobbed into my pillow at people carrying photos of their lost loved ones and pleading to the camera for anyone to call them with any sort of information. I cheered with pride at waving bulldozer drivers on their way to The Pile. I was heartened by Prime Minister Koizumi’s public outrage and pledge of support; a promise that he has kept far better than some of our more traditional allies. Many sought the comfort of others in those first days after. I felt isolated and alone and wanted it that way. I wanted to be with my wife in Australia or with my family back in America and better to be by myself than with any substitute.

I stayed in that room for 24 hours and finally left when hunger drove me out. Americans I saw on the street all had the same look: like their sister had smacked them in the crotch with a bag of quarters and they couldn’t decide whether to be angry, shocked or hurt. A Japanese businessman on the subway, red-face drunk and attended on either side by underlings, loudly proclaimed how he’d have been smart enough to have a parachute in his office and "wheeeeeeee" would’ve ridden it to safety. My brain told me that it was his reaction to the stress. My heart wanted to hit the bastard. I wanted to hit anyone that crossed me that day. But I somehow made it back to the hotel room, with a box of Ritz crackers and a quart of milk, where no sense was yet to be made of anything.

Because I live in Australia I had no trouble with cancelled flights and departed Narita, as scheduled, on Saturday. I was unusually conscious of airport procedure that trip. The high school age girls in their cute berets working the x-ray machines continued to giggle and gossip with one another as if there were no increased security risk. The slight anxiety I usually experience on takeoff was no longer there. When we touched down and I saw my wife waiting on the other side of immigration, the whole thing hit me again and I could not help but blubber like a kid leaving his mother on the first day of kindergarten. They were just people on a day’s work or off to see family. It could have been me. It could have been anyone.

Two years on I find it emblematic that I witnessed The Attack in Japan. I was sharing common experience with men whose still-living ancestors had sought to conquer my own. They, too, cold-cocked us on a beautiful morning in hope that we’d run bleeding. Toward the end of the war, when they knew they could not win, they hoped to hide their crimes and keep most of their Asian empire by sending home so many dead and mangled Americans that public opinion would force a negotiated peace. They systematically murdered more than 30 million Chinese and Koreans in a forgotten holocaust. If you were taken prisoner by the Japanese, you had a 2 out of 3 chance of dying from disease, starvation, overwork, beatings, torture or simple beheading. If you were a young, non-Japanese woman in an occupied territory, chances are you were a sex slave for the Imperial Army. When Americans came to Okinawa, school children were ordered to jump from cliffs rather than face the horror of occupation. Evil committed against everyday people because God told the Japanese to unshackle Asia from European imperialism. Sound familiar?

Some of the men with whom I witnessed The Attack I hold among my closest friends. Some of them grew up in a Tokyo flattened by bombs and remember how surprised they were at the kindness of occupation forces. One recounts with amusement the oath of fealty to the emperor he recited in school. One is the son of an unsuccessful Kamikaze pilot. They are very different from the Japanese that my grandfather’s generation knew. I am hopeful that we may someday hold our present enemy as close.

Two years on, however, I wonder if we can stomach the sacrifice necessary to achieve true peace. I wonder if our MTV attention span will fail us. 9/11 seems as abstract a concept to some as Gettysburg, the Alamo or a long-ago massacre in Boston. They apologize for the real or perceived wrongs of the United States and attempt to justify the terrorists’ crimes. They don’t remember that we tried the even-handed, measured approach for 10 years plus. We were rewarded with attacks on our sailors, diplomats, soldiers and civilians. We were rewarded with ignored treaties and clandestine nukes. We were rewarded with the live-via-satellite murder of 3000 people.

This we cannot forget. This we must not forget.

I was at the bench in my lab, building components for a one of a kind trainer used by Navy SEALS. Our property administrator, a kindly grandmother came in and told me that her husband had called, and a plane had crashed into the WTC. I assured her that he must have it wrong, and walked across the hall to my office to check the Internet. I don't remember what news feed that I found-some were loading slowly-but it was just in time to see the second plane hit the other tower.

At first I didn't believe it, when only the first plane had struck, but when the second plane struck (and there was no doubt it was an airliner and not general aviation,) I knew who it was.

I work in a large laboratory that does major defense research. Our property administrator asked me if we were in any danger, as we are a major national defense resource. "No, we not the kind of target that these people would want to hit," I replied; thinking that we are not the high profile type of target that Muslim terrorists would go after.

It didn't even dawn on me until that evening that any of my coworkers were in any danger: Often we have meetings at the Pentagon and other facilities in DC. (As it happens, of the thousands that work here, we lost one staff member who was on his annual active duty training and assigned to the Pentagon.)

I tried to go back to work, but it just wasn't happening. Finally, around noon, they announced that those of us who wanted or needed to could take administrative leave for the rest of the day. I decided to go home because I certainly couldn't concentrate on what I was doing. Walking out to the car, I had a very emotional realization that I was no longer able to reenlist: my birthday the month before made me inelegible by reason of age.

I really didn't have much information at this time...just dribs and drabs from others as they wandered through my lab. In the car, the radio reports were almost incoherent.

I started out on my normal route home, east to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, but as I approached the entrance ramp, it was obvious that traffic wasn't moving on the BW. The radio reports said traffic was jammed up on the DC Beltway. I don't really remember how I got home, only that it was twisty, turny, and clogged by traffic.

When I finally got home and saw on the tube the devastation, I was reminded of watching Mt St Helens erupting in 1980 and watching it from over 50 miles away. There was force involved here too, but not the force of nature, rather, the force of evil. I'd only been in NYC once, stuck in the Port Authority in a blizzard in 1977. I hadn't been back, partly because I didn't know anyone there, and partly because I prefer the mountains and the sea, and so NYC held no great attraction for me. Suddenly, it became my city too.

I hadn't been able to call any of my family because I had left my cell phone at home. I still couldn't reach anyone, the networks were down. All I could do was watch the images on TV and mutter "You bastards. You bastards," over and over.

Finally, late in the evening after having too much to drink, I got through to my brother, a Navy mustang stationed in Sardinia. He had talked to my parents and sisters and was able to relay to me that all were okay. Sensing that I was overwrought, he said to me "Pull yourself together man. We'll get them."

One of the pleasures of my job is interacting with the current generation of servicemen, and particularly submarine sailors. Its comforting to me to crawl around a torpedo room with all the racks loaded out.

Abu Jihad or whatever the hell your name is, its not a sight that should comfort you: Because we are coming to get you.

The day of the attacks, I was in Galliano, a small city in Tuscany. I was searching for a way to call my brother, when I came upon a small family-owned ristorante. I asked if there was a pay phone nearby, and the gentle souls sensed I was an American, and told me I could use their phone. After the call, I walked to their empty wine bar, and asked for a Coke. Berlusconi was on the TV addressing the Italian Parliament. I spoke briefly with the owner about being so far away from the tragedy, their time in New York City, and Berlusconi's courage. I put a coin on the table for the Coke, and the owner rejected it. "No, American, my pleasure".
Mine, too.

I had finished the cutover of a phone system for a customer in Arkansas the day before and I was supposed to fly back to Raleigh the afternoon of the 11th. That morning I turned the TV on in my hotel room and the first plane had just hit. Everyone seemed to think it was a cessna or something similarly small. I watched for a moment and went around the corner to turn on the coffee. When I came back to look at the TV the second plane had just hit. There was talk of hijacked planes. I remember thinking please god let them have been empty. I watched for a few more minutes and went to take a shower, hoping that perhaps things would be clearer when I got out. The next time I looked at the screen it was just a black cloud of dust. I thought that it must have been a close-up of one of the towers. It was the Pentagon. I didn't do anything for a while with a sick, almost superstitious fear that every time I looked away it would get worse. Knowing that I wouldn't be flying home any time soon I decided to go back to the customer site, to be around people. I finally got home on Friday, unlike too many people who never got home.

I will never forget.
I will never forgive.

It took me a couple of days to write this. My cousin died at Cantor Fitzgerald that day and I sort of have to force myself to tell this story.

I am Jewish and my wife is not. We agreed that we would raise our children in my faith. That meant that we could have them converted at, or shortly after, birth. We were supposed to do that in mid-August 2001 when my sister-in-law, who had expressed interest in being a part of the ceremony, was going to be in town. Without much in the way of explanation, the ceremony was postponed because of a problem with the mikvah (ritual bath).

The ceremony was rescheduled for September 11, 2001. That day, my wife had a meeting scheduled in the Towers that she was supposed to chair at 9:00 a.m. She was not going to cancel it until, at the last minute, she decided that she was only going to see her daughter converted once. So, on 9/11/01 we were in a car half way to Connecticut to attend my daughter's conversion to Judaism when we heard on the radio that a plane hit the WTC. I immediately prevailed on my wife to call her family in Norway to let them know where she was, before the cell phones went down. (They did not check their answering machines and thought she was dead, I think (they won't discuss it now), for several hours and the messages they left on our answering machine were haunting).

So, but for my daughter's conversion to Judaism, my wife might not be here today.

I thank God every day for preserving my family.

I don't listen the news to the news in the morning--I have a hard enough time getting out the door without the distractions of TV. So the first I heard of the attacks was on the bus. Another regular rider was telling people what he'd heard so far. Still I thought, this is one of those "telephone" stories...somebody hears one bit of news and it gets turned into a crazy tale.

But when I got downtown, I realized it wasn't a crazy story. In the coffeeshop, there was silence except for the radio. People just looked pole-axed. When I got to the office, again, silence except for radios. People stood around in little knots, listening intently. I believe a lot of people were thinking, as I was, "What's going to happen next?" Not in terms of war or whatever, but fear that the attacks of the day weren't over.

This has been rolling around inside of me now for a very long time, so I guess it is time to put it out there for all to see. This may be a bit long, but it is all me.

to read the rest go to:
[Link: biscuitsandgravy.blogspot.com...]

I had worked on the computer that mornign, but not looked at any news. An e-mail, with the subject line WTC, said "Holy Christ!" I had no idea -- probably a reponse to a thread I missed or something.

A little later, I got in my car to go to work. The voices on the morning radio show were different. I knew something was wrong. I didn't hear any specific words, just that tone that lets you know this isn't the typical morning talk show. I turned off the car and went inside to the TV. How bad must this be, that they're actually talking about it on the radio, I thought. Pretty bad.

I turned on the TV and saw the horror. It was so confusing -- I didn't know if this was real time, or pre-recorded; they switched back and forth so much. Is that the same tower? Are they both down?

Although I remember being enraged, and anxious -- how many people were in the towers? They were throwing around numbers like 20,000 -- I remember not being even remotely surprised. Of course this was happening, what did you all think was going to happen? The attempts had been getting bigger and bolder for years. Of course this was happening.

At least half my horror was for the future. Would we stop militant Islam now, or apologize and pay them off again? Would Washington commit to finally protecting us, or would we be told it's all so much more complicated than that, and we must be tolerant, etc. etc. Since that time, 2 years ago to this minute, my mind has been pre-occupied with what we *should* be doing, vs. what we *are* doing. It's been very frustrating. I'm calloused, in preparation for the next big attack.

I was in my office at the NY Mercantile Exchange (adjacent to the World Financial Center) when the news came in that the WTC was on fire. Besides being located right near the towers, that morning, as every morning until 9-11-01, I had been in the tower lobby walking from my subway station (Cortland) through the WTC to the "Merc". Out of morbid curiosity, I went downstairs into the WFC courtyard (about 500 feet from the Towers). Being on the West side of the building, I only saw a fire on the top floors (not the gaping hole on the East side where the plane had hit).

The crowd had gathered (it was roughly 9:00 am) and people were talking about a plane hitting the building - nobody suspected that it was a commercial airliner. A few minutes passed & the flames at the WTC spread several floors. I remember thinking that because of the spread of the fire, there would unfortunately be some fatalities (little did I know).

Then - I thought of going back into my office - & my life changed forever. I grew up near an international airport, so I am well aware of what a low-flying plane looks and sounds like. I noticed a plane flying south on the Hudson River - I can't remember if I thought it was odd - but - when I noticed it MAKE A U-TURN at the Statute of Liberty - something was obviously wrong, as I had never known a plane to hook a u-turn.

The noise of engines gunning (like gunning the engine in your car - multiplied a thousand times) - was deafening - rather than the ordinary landing position - with the nose of the plane tilted up so that the rear tires hit the ground first - followed by the front tires - this plane was coming down nose first - on a tilted angle.

Being only 500 feet or so from the Twin Towers (the first tower to be hit still had a raging fire - but I hadn't seen any people jumping at this point) - it was hard to judge the plane's intended target. Panic ensued. People were screaming as the jet nosedived towards the crowd. I started to panic & run - but where? I didn't know where the plane was going. I headed towards the Hudson River (I don't know why - maybe subconsciously - it was away from the rest of the City).

You know how in movies - when somebody's life flashes before their eyes - I actually went through that! I ran towards the water and looked over my shoulder and I couldn't believe it - I remember thinking to myself - I CAN'T BELIEVE IT - THIS PLANE IS GOING TO CRASH INTO NYC!

My mind was racing a mile a minute and although I could not have been more than 750 to 1000 feet from the Towers, I didn't even hear the plane hit the building - my mind was blank and nothing was working.

The next thought that everybody had was - ok - where's the next plane? People were jumping onto the docks and any boats leaving NYC for New Jersey (across the Hudson River). I'm not from NJ, so I didn't head for the boats - instead I headed north. I bumped into my childhood next-door neighbor (what a coincidence - although - at the time - to see anybody I knew was a relief). We bumped into somebody from my office who had been at the WTC in '93 & he wanted nothing more than to get far enough from the towers that if they fell over - we'd be out of range (such foresight - only minutes after the second plane hit!)

Heading up the West Side Highway, I saw the first few police cars, fire engines & EMT vehicles heading downtown. I passed St. Vincent's Hospital - dozens of stretchers were being taken outside - awaiting patients (were they ever used?).

Walking north, crowds gathered around radios & people were screaming - the tower fell - it was unbelievable. I remember seeing a woman jog by and thought to myself - is she crazy? the world seemed to be ending and she was burning off calories.

I wound up "hiding out" in a house of worship & listening to a radio. People were making plans to leave the City and we heard reports of thousands of people walking over bridges into Brooklyn & Queens. I remember having the feeling that simply because I made it out of downtown - didn't mean that all was safe. Nonetheless, after contacting my family, I walked back downtown (albeit on the East Side) and walked over the Williamsburg Bridge. When I exited the house of worship ( I had been there for about 3 hours - listening and waiting for news) I was surprised at how calm the City had become. That morning was panic & chaos & now - it was eerily quiet - with only billowing smoke visible where the towers had just stood some hours ago.

That night, I cowered as I heard the deafening roar of air force jets landing at a nearby airport. I didn't know what to think. I had not actually seen any of the television footage for that day until I returned home that night. Even today - it's hard to fathom that it actually happened.

I didn't return to wok for about 10 days . My regular subway stop (under the WTC) no longer existed. I exited a different subway station to see blocks & blocks of boarded up stores, desolate streets & destruction - the piles of debris & wreckage were enormous. Military humvees circled the area. It was like being in a war zone - I couldn't believe that this was NYC - what happened? I returned home that evening and didn't return to work for nearly a month. When I returned, it was impossible to go anywhere downtown without passing through checkpoints. Because my building was the only one open that was west of the towers, the security was extremely tight.

Two years later - I still work downtown. I have never been to visit ground zero - although I can see it from my new office. I guess there's not much left to see.

Although I have spoken with people about my 9-11 experience, I have never written it down. Thanks for the opportunity.

I was driving to work in Nashville, listening to the immature inane antics of the Bob and Tom morning show when Christie Lee broke in with the news. I was a few blocks from work and I gunned the gas to get in to my office to see what the hell was going on. Then I really freaked because my sister works near the WTC in New York, and she goes there for breakfast sometimes. I didn't get a hold of her for another six hours, and every possible thought had run through my head.

It turns out she was planning to go there for lunch that day to meet a friend, her friend showed up at her house in Brooklyn covered in soot from the collapse. I talked to her for a few hours that night, and after that talk I was ready to go to my local recruiters office and sign up. I drove by the office a few times, but never could quite bring myself to do it.

I can gauruntee if my sister was under that rubble, I would have not had the same reservations, and would probably be in Basra or something right now......

Never Forget..........

Tim

My story is at my blog.

I was at the time unemployed, in Los Angeles, and living more like a college student, going out on Monday nights until closing time. I was woken up soon after the first tower was hit by my Mom, who was frantic. I'd gone to school back east and the great majority of my friends live and work in NYC, with many of them downtown, if not in one of the towers.

I turned on the TV and watched in shock for a few moments, not sure what to expect. I knew it was a terrorist attack, though I thought that it was Saddam who was behind it. I walked into the living room and turned on the TV, and then I woke my roommate up (he was unemployed at the time as well).

I remember his first response was "cool". I was furious at him, but I don't think he understood the gravity of the situation. I think he was looking forward to the usual monotony of the day to broken up by some news. But before I could explain to him that I knew people there, that we were under attack, the second tower was hit, and he sobered up to the reality of what was going on.

We stood there in my living room, watching the smoke billow from the second tower, while I desperately tried to get ahold of my friends in NYC. Landlines were down, cellular coverage was nonexistent, and I realized I wasnt going to be able to get through and that I probably shouldn't clog up the lines with my calls. I ran to my office (3rd room), turned on the TV and started emailing everyone.

By this time, I was starting to receive a flood of emails from other friends wondering if I'd gotten ahold of Alan (who worked next door) or Andre or Shelly or any number of other friends. Some of these emails gave me a small measure of relief, as I knew that some of my friends were safe, but increased my anxiety as others were not to be found (including one of my best friends).

I went to my alma maters website; they had put up a special message board of people trying to find other people and we quickly had a list of the missing. It was there I found out that a friend had been on flight 11.

I spent the next few days glued to the television set, in a state of disbelief.

Sadly, I would later find outa business associate, a great guy, was among the first passengers killed. I don't know if it was because he was an Israeli-American Jew and the hijackers couldn't help themselves from a little Jew killing, but I believe that he died fighting. The irony of it is that he, a former member of sayeret matkal, was seated next to three of the hijackers.

I was on the 39th floor of One World Financial Center, diagonally across the street from the WTC. In the irony of ironies, in a meeting the previous afternoon we had agreed on an action item to look at disaster recovery and business continuity planning for the project we were working on at the time. I'd just sat down at my desk, plugged my laptop into the network and was sipping my coffee when I heard the roar. My office window was on the north side of 1 WFC, so I had a perfect view of the WTC and the events that followed.

My first thought was "Gee, he's awfully low and way off course" and then a horrible realization that it looked like he was pointing directly at my building. He was close, too close, and then the plane suddenly banked to the left (from my perspective) and hit the trade center. I screamed out "Oh My God"; I knew this was bad, bad trouble immediately when we saw the south side of the tower had been breached. Although I was trying to think of what kind of accident this might be, it occurred that nobody would generally be flying south over that part of Manhattan in any takeoff or landing incident for LGA or EWR. I called my wife (it was certainly less than a minute after the impact and had no trouble getting through) and told her that a plane had hit the north tower. She asked me what kind of plane, and I replied that it was definitely commercial, perhaps a 737 or an Airbus (since the plane was pointing straight at me and I only saw it for a couple of seconds I couldn't identify anything other than a large jet with two wing mounted engines). She asked if I was going to come home early as a result, and I said that I hoped I could get out as soon as possible.

Since my office had a good view of the proceedings, it quickly crowded up and then we started noticing the jumpers. After seeing the second person jump, I couldn't take any more and stepped outside to the secretary's desk, where I met a co-worker who was in tears because of all his friends at Cantor Fitzgerald (he had recently left Cantor himself). As we tried to make sense we heard the second plane hit the south tower. As soon as we realized what had happened, and gotten a view of both towers burning, we realized that everything had hit the fan, and we were worried that the targets were the financial institutions (Cantor, Morgan, Lehman) and that we in the WFC were next. I hightailed it to the stairs. It took almost a half hour to get to the street; my thoughts alternated between prayers for the safety of myself and my coworkers and unprintable, unbridled anger at the perpetrators of this. The traffic in the stairs bunched up quite a bit toward the bottom, and people were losing their cool as we pushed toward the street.

My office mates hadn't made it into the office yet when all this started, and I assumed they were on a bus or subway somewhere hopefully far from the scene. My other co-workers and I met at the boat basin, did a quick head count, and exchanged home phone numbers to check in with one another when we made it home (the implied "if" loomed heavily on the conversation). The Jersey folks headed for the ferries, and I started walking north towards Grand Central with one of my co-workers and her husband. I remember one lady in absolute hysterics at the sight of the burning towers; all I could say was "Lady, start walking home now. You will hug your children today"

We walked up West Street as quickly as possible. Once we got up around Franklin Street, we decided to get off West Street and get out of the emergency services teams ways. We had relaxed a tiny bit by that point as we walked along the side of 388 Greenwich, the Travelers / Smith Barney building. We were even able to make a nervous joke about if they were going after financial houses, the least they could do was include Sandy Weill. At that moment, on the corner of Greenwich and Franklin I heard bloodcurdling screams. I looked to the south, and saw the south tower collapsing. We ran like hell at that point.

We were walking up Hudson Street and had to stop to get some water. The Korean delis and bodegas had radios blasting with as much news as was available, and amazingly weren't overcharging. The sound of the fighter planes over Manhattan was everywhere (we first heard them as we jogged past the Holland Tunnel entrance). We stopped for a few moments of rest and started to head up Eighth Avenue. While on Eighth Avenue we heard the same screams we'd heard about a half hour previously, looked south and saw the end of the second collapse.

I left my co-workers at Penn Station and headed toward Grand Central. Although they were nominally supposed to implement the DR plan for their company, the second tower collapsing had made them decide to head home and get to their family. Likewise, my plan was to head to Grand Central, and if there were no trains running, to keep walking until I hit an on-ramp for I-95 in New Rochelle and hitchike from there.

I got to GCT, and there was a large crowd wanting out of the city waiting there. The terminal was closed. I was despairing for a few moments, when suddenly the terminal was opened and there was an announcement of three trains leaving (one on each division). I headed for the first one out, collapsed into a corner seat, and hoped that I could get a taxi at the station to get me home (I'm on one of the branches of the New Haven line, and since the branches weren't running, I had to hope for a cab). The train ride out was slow, creeping through the tunnel. We left Grand Central somewhere between 11:45 and noon. It must've taken a solid half hour or forty minutes to get out of the tunnel (normally it's about 7 or 8 minutes). We hit every stop on the way up, including those little stops in the Bronx that only the super locals stop at.

I got to the stop nearest my house on this branch, and luckily there was a cab waiting there. The cabbie listened pretty closely as I recounted the tale. When we got to my station's parking lot, he waited for me as I shakily got into my car and started it. There were some state troopers and cops watching the station who looked a bit askance at me, disheleved suit and all. All I could say was "I was there. I saw it".

My beeper and cell phone started going off like mad when I got close to my house. I called a couple of people from the car, and walked into my house, collapsed onto the living room sofa, and didn't get up for hours. Luckily, one of my attempts to call home on the train had succeeded (although very garbled), and my wife was going about her business knowing I was OK.

I went back to work about ten days later, and as luck would have it, work kept me in midtown for many months afterwards. When business next took me downtown, I came out of the IRT at Wall Street, and looked at Ground Zero. There was the little park on Liberty Street where I'd had lunch so often, just ruined. Then, there was the pit. When the rage subsided, I just hoped that this country would have the fortitude to chase these scoundrels to the ends of the earth and hang them high. And would that our wonderful country will have the fortitude to let political expediency be damned and deliver a crystal clear message to the world that we will never forget this, never let it happen again, and that all the lackeys and facilitators of the terror mongers will suffer the consequences as surely as those who commit such crimes.

I was at home in Washington, DC, getting ready to leave for work, when the radio reported the first WTC attack. I switched on CNN: within moments, we saw the second attack, the announcer shouting "there's a second plane!" and then a fireball rolling up from the bottom of the screen. I think at that moment, the void opened, it became clear what was happening. I sat horrified, staring at the events unfolding on the screen, for another 40 minutes; then, for some reason (I still can't explain why), I decided I should still go in to work. In the Metro station, a calm voice announced, "attention Metrorail passengers: the Pentagon station is closed, due to a terrorist attack." Surreal--the same tone of voice, the same style, used to announce, I don't know, that an elevator at station X is out of order. I rationalized that the reason the Pentagon had closed was due to the attacks in NYC. Only upon arriving at work did I learn, from the building security guard, that the Pentagon itself had been hit.

The next hour is something of a blur. Someone in the office had a television on; the first WTC had already collapsed. Someone had a wire report from internet that a Palestinian group had claimed responsibility (does anyone else remember this?). I heard the sound of a jet engine outside (I work about 2 blocks from the White House): to this day I don't know what that was, perhaps an Air Force patrol. I decided it was time to get out of downtown DC. I joined the exodus walking north along Connecticut Avenue; taking the Metro seemed like a bad idea. As we all know, it was a gorgeous day; some of the people streaming up the avenue were smiling and joking, as if this were just a day off from work.

Arrived home, switched on the television, saw the second tower had collapsed; frantically tried to make phone contact with family in the NY area. I eventually got through to a friend in Colorado, and asked him to try to call my family; it worked, somehow that call went through. After a while, I was able to get a line, too. My immediate family was all fine; but nobody knew yet where my cousin was, who worked in one of the WTC towers. I had forgotten that fact; I felt sick.

I went to join some friends to watch the news and just have some company. Some people seemed preternaturally cheerful, as if this were happening somewhere else. What the television was showing was unreal; US airspace closed, domestic aviation locked down. Unknown number of planes hijacked. I reached my sister by phone; she had news, my cousin was fine, she had been late for work that morning and this had probably saved her life. For some reason, upon hearing this *good* news, this was the first time I felt that cracking sensation inside me, and felt tears well up.

We finally went to get something to eat at "The Diner" in the Adams Morgan neighborhood. A weirdly, obscenely festive atmosphere there--not celebrating the event, no, but just a cheerful chatter as if it were a weekend. What the hell is wrong with these people? I think I mostly stared straight ahead. The t.v. in the corner showed the Palis dancing in the street. I will never, ever forget that image. Ever.

I had major surgery on my stomach on September 4th, exactly one week before September 11. I had returned home from the hospital that Saturday, and I was living and sleeping in my parents' den because their cushy recliner was better than even a hospital bed for someone who had sutures in the stomach area.

At just before nine AM that Tuesday, I had just awakened and I was still lying back in the recliner. My father entered the room and said, "Annie, you awake?

yes, I told him lazily.

He continued, "Mind if I turn on the TV? A plane crashed into the World Trade Center."

I was immediately wide awake and struggling to sit up.

Dad turned the TV on the Fox News. I bombarded him with questions because I had no idea of the time frame and for all I knew, this had been going on for hours. "What kind of plane? Was it an accident? Are many people hurt?" blah blah blah. He waved me off: "Nobody knows anything. It just happened. Mom had the news on upstairs and we just heard about it."

The second plane hit the South Tower as we sat there.

In early September of 2001, Alex I had been dating for three months. He had been working at Coca-Cola Enterprises for a little over a month. I called him at the office, shocked but not quite as freaked out as I would be later.

"Two planes have crashed into the World Trade Center," I said breathlessly. He said he knew, people in the office were all talking about it. "Have you seen it? The video. Is there a TV on there you can watch?" He said there was a TV in a break room or something but that there wasn't one in his work area and so no, he hadn't seen anything. I remember saying to him something like, "You have to see it. It's the most horrible thing you can imagine." I remember him expressing some anger that a few people in the office were already pointing the finger at terrorists, specifically Muslim terrorists, without really knowing anything about what was going on. I had to admit that that was what had crossed my mind as well.

After talking to Alex, I hauled my stiff, achy body upstairs to watch TV with my mom. We watched mostly Fox News and so we didn't see any of the falling bodies footage that CNN supposedly was airing. When news came through of the Pentagon attack, I started to get a little panicky. I thought, "The East Coast is under some kind of attack!" and I was wondering what would be next. I seem to remember it was at this time that news reports started coming through about hijacked planes. I called Alex back to share my panic with him, but I don't remember much of that second conversation.

As the nine o'clock hour wore on, the three of us - Mom, Dad and myself - sat and watched the video from the cameras trained with telephoto on the huge, gaping holes in the sides of the two buildings.

I had visited NYC and the WTC the November before, and in fact had stayed at the Marriott World Trade, located smack in between the two towers. Others in my group rode to the observation deck to see the view; I didn't care to. The World Trade Center made me skittish. Before the 1993 bombing I never gave them a second thought; ever since then I had thought of them as a target. That, and the fact that I cannot stand heights and get nervous in tall buildings anyway, kept me away from the WTC observation deck as well as the top of the Empire State Building. I remember the Alphabet City rooftop party I attended in 1995 - the view of the WTC towers was perfect from that spot. The towers rose impossibly from Lower Manhatten, something out of a sci-fi novel cover painting, almost unreal. No, I never had the desire to ride those elevators, and I even felt a little uncomfortable staying in the hotel so close to them.

I said to my mother at one point when staring at the horrifying images was becoming unbearable:

"These buildings can't withstand this much longer. They're going to fall."

And my mother said, no, that's impossible. They can't fall. Their engineering is incredible, the best of their time. She'd seen a TV special on them sometime, on PBS, which explained how they'd actually been specifically designed to withstand the impact of a jet airplane broadside. Which, as I learned later, was true - but the airplane used as a model in the calculations back in the 1960's was something like a 727. On the morning of 9/11 when my mother assured me of the buildings' safety in this kind of disaster, I just looked back at the screen and tried to believe her. But the situatiioon looked pretty dire to me. Especially that south tower.

And then that south tower suddenly came down. I was not less horrified by the fact that I was not surprised. I think I called Alex yet again, and told him that one of the towers had fallen, but I don't remember for sure. I was on and off the phone with him all morning, and I have a distinct memory of him not having heard that a tower had fallen and so I was the one to bear that news. I'll have to ask him what his recollection is. I may even have still been on the phone with him when the second tower fell. Memory gets hazy because at this point, it turns to sheer emotion. I kind of was surprised that the north tower fell. It looked less damaged than the south tower, and more stable. Since it withstood the collapse of the south tower, I thought too that maybe Lower Manhattan was out of the woods. And there was still a kind of glimmer of hope, too, that the north tower would stay put and that no more lives would be lost. That maybe the worst was over.

I think whatever news channel we had it on was trained on the top of the north tower with its TV antenna when it started to go down, and hence what I saw was that now-famous shot of the antenna sliding down out of sight into the dust. It's a nightmare shot for me now, anyway.

The next thing I remember is watching shots from aircraft circling over Manhattan showing a catastrophic cloud of dust and debris enveloping all. This was as traumatic for me as watching the north tower slip down out of sight. I could not stop thinking about the thousands of people caught in that, and I was imagining the worst. Because at that time, we had no idea what was going on. The news channels could just show the cloud - communication from the area was sketchy, and no other video had emerged. I figured it must be absolute hell to be in that place.

It was over though. As awful as it was, it was over, and the panic and horror subsided into a kind of acceptance. An acceptance that my boyfriend fought for a long time ... he, like many people, wanted desperately for the world to go on like it always had, and he was profoundly angry about the intrusion of 9/11 into our comfortable world.

Well, that is my story. It's not exciting. There's nothing heroic about it. Just someone watching TV for a few hours. And having her life change before her eyes.

I was a senior in high school, and it was our first class of the day. The class was almost over and we got an announcement from our principal that there had been a plane crash into one of the twin towers. My next class was a CS class. We frantically tried to go to the CNN sites and other internet sites to try to see the streaming video of what was happening. When I first heard of the attack, I didn't actually think people were going to die. The thought that those two towers would fall didn't even come into my head. After that, I was glued to the tv for the next several months. The images of September 11 are forever burned in my head.

102 minutes inside the WTC and the Port Authority tapes. - interactive sites with diagrams, voice-over anecdotes, photos.

I vividly recall having a conversation with my brother after seeing the dreadful movie, Pearl Harbor, which was released that earlier that summer. I remember saying "I wonder if we'll see anything like that in our lifetimes?"

Fast forward two months...

My dad once said that the history of tommorrow is often on the newspapers backpages today. I remember seeing a paragraph blurb in the Houston Chronicle's World section about the assasination of an Afghan commander on September 10th, 2001. The assasination had occured over the weekend, but being neither mindful nor caring of such things, I didn't pay it much attention. Afghanistan, terrorism, and Islamic extremism seemed worlds away. September 10th ultimately proved to be uneventful, and the morning of September 11th was an incredibly beautiful one here in Houston. It was unusually cool for September, with clear skies and low humidity. I had eaten a late dinner at James Coney Island the night before and had awoken with a bad case of indigestion. I got dressed left for work at about 6:30 (CDT) and arrived a little after 7:00. I sat down to work and immediately noticed that my indigestion seemed to be getting worse. My boss arrived at 7:30 and I requested permission to go home. She could see that I was uncomfortable, not my normal affable self, so she gave me permission. I arrived home about 8:00 and turned the TV on to Good Morning America. I laid down on my couch, closed my eyes, and listened to Diane Sawyer describe the fire in the North tower and about it appearing to "list". I reopened my eyes to see the fireball of the second impact on the South tower. I immediately recognized, as I'm sure everyone else did, "That couldn't have been an accident!" I inexplicably turned off the television and laid back down on my couch. My mind still struggling to come to terms with what I had just witnessed. For some reason a line from the movie "Path to Paradise" came to mind. In the film, one of the conspirators involved in the plots to attack a series of New York landmarks (the UN, the Holland Tunnel, etc.) is taken into custody and placed in a holding cell. As the agents who take him into custody leave he screams "This is only the beginning!"

A day etched in my memory forever.... as I remember

My family and I were living in Colorado Springs at the time. I awoke to the
repeated ringing of the phone. My husband, who'd gotten home just about an
hour before the first plane hit, was already back in uniform and ready to
report to duty. He's in the Air Force. Our then 3-year-old woke up
after the two planes hit, but before they came down. She was in a very
questioning state as to why her Daddy wasn't at work but was getting ready
to go back in. The only answer we could come up with was "Very bad men
did that (with the towers smoking on TV) so Daddy has to go back to work".
I mean, how do you explain that to anyone, let alone an innocent child?

I first had the thoughts of unreality. Then flashbacks to the first WTC
attack, and then the USS Cole and the Embasies and the assasination in
Afghanistan fell into place. I switched the TV to cartoons (thank you
Nick Jr. for continuing to air them...) and started checking the news via my
computer. It went from NYC to DC to the plane in Pennsylvania that was
still not known to have been hijacked at that time.

I remember shock, anger, desire for blood retribution, and then pride.
Pride at seeing those folks jumping to their deaths, because they denied the
terrorists what they most wanted. They embrased their deaths, they didn't
cower and whimper but met their ends bravely (more bravely than I think I
could have). They showed supreme acceptance and wouldn't be terrorised. My pride just swelled in the following days because of Flight 93, and the fact
that they fought back. It gives me comfort in a way to know my fellow
citizens knew they were going to die, and prevented those scum that did it
from taking any more innocents along with them.

All those folks, as well as all the rescuers that went into the burning
WTC buildings and the Pentagon, at risk to their own lives, portray the
American charecter in so great a way that any words I write to describe them are too small and insignificant when compared with their acts of heroicism.
They did not die in the dust. They did not "go gentle" into that dark night.
They fought for and won their freedom, even if it was only in death, and they showed us all the way. And in a way their freedom is disturbing, and even terrifying, but all true freedom really is the right to go out in your own way, and they all went out in ways that denied those terrorists their ultimate goal. For that, they are true American heros.

We Will NEVER Forget

I lived in eastern New Jersey for a year, volunteering with my township EMS squad. It was a great year, learning so much about a country I knew so little about, and coming to know and love America and her people. Often at weekends I would take the train to Hoboken, perhaps meet up with my friend there and take the ferry across to the WTC for a day in Manhattan. The sight of the towers looming out of the early morning mist was something magical, an eternal memory.

The afternoon of September 11th I was in work in Hampshire, England. A friend came up to me and told me that the WTC had been hit by a plane. All the news web sites were saturated, and I had to wait interminable hours before going home and turning on the TV. When I saw the towers collapse, one by one, I knew that thousands would be dead. Later that night I phoned my Hoboken friend, now back in London, and we said very little but understood much.

The next day we found out how many firefighters, EMS crew and police officers had been lost. I had trained with many of the Hoboken and Jersey City EMS crews, and felt those three hundred deaths perhaps more than the other three thousand. God bless them all. If ever we needed reassurance that we will win this war, remember that nineteen fanatics killed themselves to kill people they never met; three hundred heroes gave their lives to save people they had never met.

That day, I understood that we were going to war -- America and Britain together, and we wouldn't need anyone else. I'm no great fan of Tony Blair's politics, but in his commitment to America in the past two years I can't fault him. Britain and America stand together, now and always. That's what best friends do.

Adrian

Each September, for a dozen years, I've gone on a three-day ocean fishing trip out of San Diego with my father-in-law and all the male relatives. Since tuna fishing requires a certain amount of strength, none of the grandsons can go until they reach the age of twelve. That September, I was thrilled that my older son would be joining us for the first time.

My father-in-law is a retired senior naval officer, as were a number of other men on the charter. We left the dock on Sunday afternoon, and traveled that evening into Mexican waters about 120 miles from San Diego. Monday, we fished uneventfully. On Tuesday morning, I looked at my watch at 5:30 AM, and decided to sleep in, risking missing out on an early morning bite. When I finally came up on deck, my son said, "Dad, a plane hit the World Trade Center." The skipper had been in radio contact with the dock. At first, I was thinking: Piper Cub, Faye Ray and King Kong. Then the second plane hit, and I started to realize what was happening.

We were without television and radio, so ship-to-shore transmission was our only communication. Rumors began flying that the Capitol was hit. And of course, it was all so strange being out of touch and with so many retired military men; sort of like being out with the Over-The-Hill Gang.

Next morning, around 5:00 AM, we were close enough to San Diego to pick up television signals. It was our first look at the towers coming down. What a horrible sight.

Usually, our return to shore is something pleasant; the beginning of collecting our catch, and readying our stories for our wives and colleagues. This time, there was a Coast Guard cutter sitting astride the entrance buoys to the harbor. Normally filled with sailboats and fishermen, the harbor was still. A thousand yards off the entrace sat a destroyer.

Then two zodiak boats approached with two coastguardsmen each, who boarded our vessel. They looked so young and unsure of themselves, carrying sidearms. We were lined up at the stern as they went through the boat looking for...what exactly? I'm not sure they knew either.

And I thought, this must have been what Pearl Harbor felt like. We left on a pleasure trip, and came back to war.

September 11, 2001: I started my daily commute routine from my apartment at 76th and Lexington in Manhattan's Upper East Side to my World Trade Center (WTC) Tower 2 office. Getting to the 77th Street/Lexington Avenue subway station around my usual 7:40 a.m., I found that the downtown local was running late, but I was happy to see my three buddies on the train. They had the same commute as I did (they worked in WTC 1), and they were often feeling the morning effects of a previous night's socializing; I enjoyed teasing them on the way to work about what a long day it was going to be. We had gotten into a conversation about college football one morning, and we had made plans to meet up that weekend with various friends to watch the kickoff of a new season. I bid them "later," after we made plans to meet up after work that day at the Sphere fountain in the WTC plaza for the commute home.

After getting my daily cup of coffee at the Church Street Starbucks. Whenever the weather was as pretty as it was that day, I always walk across the Plaza level entering WTC 2 (the "South Tower") on the north mezzanine level entrance, and headed down one flight of escalators to the main lobby level. I took one of the three elevator banks in the lobby (each serving floors 3-43, 44-77, and 78-110 respectively). I took the second set, and then transferred to internal elevators to get to my office; the morning's delays caused me to arrive in my 59th floor office(in the center of the South Tower's west side), at 8:43 a.m. instead of my usual 8:30 a.m. (I glanced at my desk clock). I set my backpack down and with coffee in hand started towards my boss's office nearby. My co-worker and friend Karen, who was in early that morning (she usually got in at 9 a.m., but we commuted together that morning), had just turned on the morning radio news.

At that moment, a horrific boom resounded throughout the office, so loud that it reminded me of a supersonic jet screaming right next to the window, only 10 times louder. The building shook so severely that I had to grab the desk to keep my footing! Instantly, I spun around and ran into my boss office to look out the window facing west into New Jersey. Stepping up on the air conditioning vent that ran along the floor's perimeter, I pressed my face and body against the window (in hindsight this was not the smartest move, but it gave me a perspective on how severe the situation was). I saw monumental amounts of debris blowing by and raining down everywhere: chunks of burning metal, papers, desks -- and bodies.

I could not believe what I was seeing.

It was too much for any one person to filter. The entire West Side Highway, the roof of the Marriott Hotel directly below, and everything flying through the air, was on fire. I stood there for what seemed an eternally long time, fixated in shock and amazement as the cars on the West Side Highway blew up, one after another. It took me about two seconds to deduce that I needed to get out -- immediately. Although we had a good evacuation procedure in place, I was not going to wait for it to be dictated to me. I grabbed my backpack, then a frightened Karen, and stressed in a loud, forceful manor laced with foul language (using everything in the book and then some!) that everyone needed to move now! I didn't know at that moment what had occurred, but I knew that we were all in grave trouble, and that our best course of action was to be as close to the ground as we could go, in case something occurred that could trap us in a place where rescue was impossible. I've never liked being up high at all, which I know might sound silly coming from someone who worked in one of the tallest buildings in the world, but all I could think of was Towering Inferno at that moment, like I had thought everyday I worked there. Karen had been through the 1993 WTC bombing, and she had told me in detail what had happened, which always had frightened me; ironically, we had just been talking about it the day before. But these latent fears had served me well; I really did think often about the worst case scenario. Any time I went to another floor, or out to run an errand, I always took my belongings with me just in case something might happen. I was always looking at clocks, because for some reason the time was important to me. Now it was real.

Still, like most of the WTC occupants, I didn't yet know what exactly had happened. My first thought was that one of those traffic or commuter helicopters flying around us had lost control and hit the building, as happened during the 70's at the Pan Am Building. It still wasn't yet clear that anything happened to the tower next to us from my viewing angle; at that moment, I thought that it was above me in my tower. All I knew was that I sure wasn't going to hang around to find out! I went straight for the emergency stairwell about 12 feet from my desk with Karen in tow. Starting at our 59th floor, we zipped down the stairwell two and three stairs at a time, while in my head I could hear my father's voice saying, "Just get the hell out -- focus -- worry about what happened when you get home." I tied my jacket around my waist and ripped my dress shirt off (I had on a T-shirt because the office was always so cold), tearing it in half to wrap around our hands as they slid down the railings, or over our faces if we came upon smoke. We saw no one until we reached the 52nd floor. Everyone was descending orderly but rapidly, joking among ourselves to keep our own fears under control, but to also calm those around us that were more obviously scared. I remember passing the 44th floor thinking after what seemed like going down endless flights of stairs "Oh Lord I'm just at 44!" When I reach the 42nd floor, the P.A. announced that a plane has struck Tower 1 and to remain calm (which remarkably, everyone was at this point). When we reached the 38th floor, the now controversial P.A. announcement was issued that we should either return to our floor or exit onto the floor where we were, but to stay in the building because the falling debris made it unsafe to be outside, and our South Tower was not yet secure. No one going down in the stairwell stopped, although I know that others in the building took this advice, which for many of them was a fatal decision. We descended on.

It took me exactly 17 minutes to get down 59 flights of stairs because eventually it turned out to be the time difference between the two planes hitting each tower. I exited the emergency stairwell into the 1st floor lobby center elevator vestibule servicing floors 3 thought 43 about eight seconds before the second hijacked plane went through my Tower 2. I didn't think of it until later, but now as I recall, at this point I lost track of Karen.

What followed was unlike anything I have ever experienced, or could imagine experiencing; the only thing that comes close is the movie Die Hard. When that plane blew through upstairs the repercussions only took about 25 seconds, but it all seemed in slow motion to me, as if I was watching myself on a movie screen. All of the oxygen was sucked out of the building and my lungs (like being in a vacuum). I felt doomed because the turnstile exiting the elevator bank would not unlock for me to get out and run for the revolving doors leading out of the lobby and into the underground mall, under the plaza level. I could not have known at that panic-filled moment, but that locked-up turnstile would save my life. Instead I'm thinking, "This is where I will die," because I can hear an explosion roaring downward inside the building. Yet somehow I looked over to see that the end turnstile wraps around a support beam forming about a two-square-foot space, but there is only about six inches to squeeze through between the end of the turnstile and wall beam. Something inside me told me to get in there. I'm about 100 pounds soaking wet, so I pressed myself through and balled up facing the support beam with the steel barrier wrapped around my back giving me a little protected cubby hole.

This is when the explosion came.

Continued...

It progressed down the building, breaking the windows as it went; the entire building was groaning, an unnatural, unearthly sound, much like a can squeezing, or cracking uncooked spaghetti. By the time it reached the lobby, the marble veneer was cracking and falling off the walls; the chandeliers shattered on the floors along with the plaster ceiling, and the force imploded in at about 50 mph, pulling metal, balled safety glass, and other material with it. The pipes were bursting over my head and dense materials were flying around me as if they were being pureed in a blender. In the next instant came a horrible noise and a flash of extreme heat and light blown directly over my head. I concluded later in the day that this was from the huge airplane fireball sent down the 78-110 elevator shaft that exploded out into the lobby, and blew around the walls and curled into the center vestibule where I was taking cover. The third and last explosion occurred when a huge chunk of burning wreckage fell to Liberty Street, which runs parallel along the south side of the South Tower, and crashed through the building into the lobby behind me, bringing metal, glass, marble and revolving doors with it. There had been four security men and some fleeing WTC workers behind me near those revolving doors; I realized that they were all taken out by either a huge chunk of the building exploding outwards or the tail end of the plane falling to the street. I now know that there were nine of us in the lobby that day when the plane hit, two NYPD officers on the 44-77 elevator side, and two others coming out of emergency stairwells on the 78-110 elevator side. The two officers and I were the only ones who made it out alive.

As the debris and dust settled, water started to rain down, and black smoke began to roll through with the strong smell of jet fuel in what was left of a once beautiful lobby. I jumped up, wedging myself out of my cubbyhole, and tried to crawl under the turnstiles and out for the revolving doors leading to the underground mall. I was covered in dust, glass, water and a variety of other stuff, trying to get to one of the 10 revolving doors in front of me with every bit of calm I could muster. It was not easy. I looked back at two bodies, then forward to notice a ladder perched in front of one revolving door. Used to reach flowers in planters above the doors, it was a startling sight, completely undisturbed, along with the flowers and planters, in an otherwise chaotic, collapsing, rubble-filled lobby. After crawling to the revolving doors leading into the underground mall, I went about 14 feet further and came to a NYFD firefighter at the mall doors, who was pulling the door from the mall side. I couldn't move those doors because of all the debris in the footwell and their weight, nor did I think fast enough to crawl through the openings where the glass had been. He reached his hand in and pulled me through the door by my jacket shoulder, and asked if I was okay. I thought to myself, "Thank God the cavalry is here, everything is going to be okay, if anyone can fix this the Fire Department can." Of course I didn't know the full scope of the situation at that moment and I don't think they did either.

Now in the mall, beneath the plaza above, I looked straight ahead at the Chase cash bank, where there were some 100 people cowering; screaming, some hysterically started to run out of the bank and down the hall, as now the mall was rapidly filling up with thick black smoke. I was hanging onto this firefighter for dear life, while telling him, "You cannot go in there -- that place is exploding down around our heads!" He looked at me and in the calmest manner said, "Honey it's going to be okay, its my job. You just get out of here." He asked me if I new where the Borders book store was and I said yes, so he said, "Go there and get out as fast as you can." By this time he had a whole battalion behind him and they went in towards the lobby. I started for the Borders at top speed, while hearing secondary explosions going off above my head. All this made me want to hit the floor and all I could think was, "What in God's name is happening up there?"

I found myself next to a man who is taking out a cigarette, all the time while we both were running. I was thinking, "I could sure use one of those right now!" He tried to light it with very shaky hands at a dead run, when a Port Authority security guard (directing people to safety) said in a very Brooklyn-ish accent, "Hey buddy this is a no smoking zone! You can't light that down here." The man looked back at the guard, aghast, and I'm sure I had the same look on my face! The man said, "You have to be f-ing kidding me! This place is burning down around us, we are all going to die, and by God I am going to have my last cigarette before I go!" I managed at least one laugh that morning, as it was funny as hell, and I wished I could have stopped to get a cigarette from him myself. But the mood quickly turned serious again, as I came upon two portly grandmothers in their late 60's or early 70's; they're holding onto each other, crying, unable to keep up with the mass exodus. The explosions above our heads on the plaza were scaring them and they kept stopping. I grabbed one of their hands and told them to hold on and keep up. Dragging them behind me, I told them to worry about any resulting medical problems later -- for now we had to get out of there! I thought to myself, "If I can just get out, we can get to a hospital if someone starts to stroke out."

I finally made it next to Borders Bookstore in the other end of the mall. This was in WTC Building 5 at the northeast corner of the WTC complex facing Church Street, directly across from the Millennium Hotel. People were actually waiting in line for the escalator to go up the one level from the mall to the plaza above, despite an empty adjoining staircase that was about 15 feet wide and with only 20 steps! I couldn't believe it! I screamed at everyone in line saying, "People, this is very serious! Go up the f-ing stairs, move your asses, and get the hell out of here!" I was met with a few blank stares, but quite a few actually listened and followed me up the stairs. As I came out onto the street, dragging the two women behind me after going up the steps and through a revolving door, I was met with the most unbelievable scene I think I will witness in my life.

It was like being in a strange dream. Off to my right, all the way out onto Church Street and for about four blocks going south, was plane and building debris. It was everywhere, and the plaza was covered; I soon realized I was standing in about eight inches of it. There were monumental amounts of paper and ash floating everywhere like some bizarre storm, and the body parts - I could see body parts at every turn, some of which were just melted into the ground as they were blown out of the building, or jumped from the fire. I stepped over about three or four charred bodies and tried to make my way to the street while maintaining what was left of my composure. I got the two women to the east side of Church Street and told them to go east until they came to the South Street Seaport (on the lower East Side) as I knew that there they could get a ferry to Staten Island. Meanwhile, I had to try to get to my apartment to get my dog and try to get off the island of Manhattan.

Continued...

At this juncture I was frantic because, finally having time to think, this is when I realized I had lost Karen, and the chance of me finding her seemed to me to be nil. Yet unbelievably, after I headed east on Fulton Street, I can only say now it was by God's grace, I see Karen sitting on the steps of an office building across from the street from a church graveyard, crying! I grabbed her and said, "We have to get out of here. I know this is real bad but we can have the nervous breakdown when we get to my apartment and get a stiff drink." If you were in my shoes you would understand why I was thinking about a bourbon and cigarette quite a bit that day as we made our dash for the Upper East Side. As we started toward Broadway I looked back at the WTC and I now saw for the first time the situation was graver than anything I could have ever imagined. I was thinking to myself how lucky we are to have gotten this far. The top of both towers was engulfed in thick black smoke reaching up into the sky as far as I could see. There was a massive, black gaping hole in the north side of the WTC 1 around the 94th floor to 104th floor, and a massive section missing, wrapping around the east and north sides of WTC 2 at about the 80th to 90th floors. We were just 20 floors below where that fire was burning, and I thank God we moved when we did. We still heard the secondary explosions consistently, so I continued to look back at the WTC and noticed that people were jumping out of both towers from above the fire lines!

It was then that I started getting sick to my stomach because I now knew what those noises were as I ran through the underground mall. They were the sounds of the people jumping out of the towers hitting the concrete plaza sidewalk above me.

I knew that Karen and I had to get moving, so we continued to make our way east, until we reached Broadway, while all of the surrounding buildings were evacuating. Thousands of people emerged out of their buildings but were just standing around, 100 deep, looking up with their mouths agape. I was quite astonished at the general lack of concern regarding their own well-being. I guess we all react in different ways to different situations and I know a lot of people were in shock but I was thinking, "People, this is not a movie!" It was here I heard from a police officer that we had a terrorist attack on our hands, and it is about as bad as one can get -- but I decided it was going to get even worse. We headed down into the financial district and made our way into a deli we frequented to use the phone. I'm now desperately thinking that I need to let my little brother in Mississippi know I have made it out, but as I franticly dial all I am getting is rapid busy signals. I finally was able to reach my little grandmother on the phone at her house. She has a severe hearing problem, and had no concept of what was going on, which in a way for now I thank God. I couldn't make her understand the urgency of the situation, or that she needed to call my brother and tell him I was out of my office and so far, safely on the ground. The only thing she did manage to comprehend was my excessively foul language, about which she told me, "I do not care what kind of situation you are in, there was no need for it." She also asked me whether it was really that important that she call my brother to tell him she had talked to me because she was on her way out the door to go shopping and was running late. Obviously she didn't know what was happening. After some even more foul language and a few stern warnings, she finally did call him -- but only said, "Well I don't know what is wrong with your sister but there is something going on in New York. I did not know if she was at home or in her office because she was screaming and cussing at me so that I could not figure it out." She asked my brother if she needed to stay at home. He wisely called my cousin to the phone and said, "You take her shopping and you keep her away from the phone, TVs and radios for as long as you can." He was afraid that if she figured out what was really taking place she would die of a stroke or heart attack at the thought of me being in such a terrible holocaust. And, while he was glad to hear I was alive, none of this really helped him in knowing where I was, and if I was in any danger.

After the phone call, I returned to Karen, where, on the deli TV, we watched the coverage, like everyone else in the world by now -- only I'm two blocks east! At this moment the NYPD came in and told everyone to evacuate because there are three more hijacked planes in the air which have yet to be accounted for, plus it was believed that there were bombs planted all throughout the city, set to go off every 30 minutes. Running out of the deli with Karen, I noticed that we were standing right next to the Federal Gold Reserve. "Not a good place to be," I decided, because I know if I was a terrorist that would be on my top ten, so we headed north, at least now in the direction of my apartment. We reached the Brooklyn Bridge and City Hall, which is only two blocks north of WTC complex, and I looked back now with a clear view of the towers. What I was seeing is the most horrific thing I think I could ever witness -- not just one thing, but the whole picture: fires you realize that no one, regardless of how well trained they were or what equipment they may have available, can extinguish! And the people! They're still jumping and they just kept coming... it was a sign of how terrible things were up there that they were choosing to leap from 80 plus stories as opposed to burning to death. It was simply one of my worst nightmares and I could no longer watch. At this moment I had a terrible fear not that the buildings would ever come down, because that was just not a possibility in my mind -- but rather that the subway system below me was a prime target for a bombing campaign. It just made sense to me. You have everyone on the ground in a panic and you blow up the streets beneath their feet. I start to think, "Okay, that is when the bodies are really going to pile up and we are not going to be in that count -- we have to move!" Grabbing Karen, we headed past City Hall, and I turned and looked back to see the towers again -- I never thought it would be for the last time.

Continued...

We ran through the courthouse district (just north of City Hall) and took a right (going further east) trying to get away from the subway system underneath us, but somehow as we headed north, we weaved back east over it again. At this point, we made what I'm sure seems to be a strange decision -- we had to get Karen a pair of tennis shoes because she was in high heels (I was fortunate to have on my lucky cowboy boots that I wore during my commutes). We stopped at a Levi's store and bought her shoes; then I called home to Mississippi again. Believe it or not, I had to first wait on some moron discussing casual dinner plans with his wife; I let him have it because I was at the end of my rope. I got my little brother, who was drinking a bourbon and chain smoking, while waiting to hear from me (it was before 9 a.m. where he was in Mississippi). He was frantic. I told him that I was north of the building and have somehow managed to escape without so much as a scratch. He told me, "I am trying to find someone to get you off Manhattan island or come get you. Please call me as soon as you get to your apartment!" Karen called her husband to let him know she was out and we were revitalized with the new shoes in place. By this time Karen's phone was not working and mine had been left on my desk along with my palm pilot and my digital camera. I still wish I had thought quickly enough to grab that camera to have a pictorial of that day through my eyes, but getting out alive was just a bit higher up on the agenda. We came out of the store into the middle of the street and not two seconds later we heard screams coming from seemingly everywhere. I looked up but I couldn't see the towers because a building is blocking my sight line. Karen is looking down the avenue we are on and she says, "What is that?"

There was a black cloud rolling toward us and it is seemingly eating everything in front of it; people are trying to outrun it but they are just disappearing behind the wall of ash; we can hear glass breaking and debris flying as it rapidly mushroomed toward us. We started to run north as fast as we can, hysterically fleeing this ash tornado! We cut off on a side street, going east for about two blocks, at a full run while I was thinking, "The subways are blowing up!" (It just never occurred to me that those buildings would come down!) Cutting around a corner, we stopped and looked down the street to see the cloud going up the avenue, black as night, dissipating into the side street where we had just been standing (we managed to stay out of the thick of it somehow; although we were still covered in dust, we could at least breathe!) Still holding my composure, I remembered that I had a Discman in my backpack. I pulled it out and turned it to WINS, a primary news station. I heard the newscaster say, "Oh my God, this cannot be happening! Oh my God this is just unbelievable!" I say "What? Tell us what is happening!" He said, "Number 2 WTC has just fallen to the ground!" This is when the big tears stared to roll down my cheeks and Karen is looking at me, shaking me by the shoulders seeing the fear cross my face screaming, "What in the hell happened?" When I told her that our office building has just fallen to the ground, she could not believe it and was still shaking me, saying, "That cannot be! Those buildings cannot come down!" I thought quickly and told Karen, If Number 2 has fallen then Number 1 is going to go too! It seemed like the newscaster read my mind as he said, "Get out! Run north! The Number 1 Tower is going to come down!" The streets were unbelievable, full of people moving north. The only vehicles were emergency and officials going south or city buses trying to carry passengers north, as the subway had been shut down. People were stopped on the side of the streets with their car doors open and the radios on, with strangers gathered around them trying to hear any news they could of what was happening. Civilians were directing traffic for emergency vehicles to get through the crowds and intersection. We both stopped and talk to some guys running cable for Con-Edison power company; they told us about 20 of their fellow employees in the basement levels whom they had as yet to hear from. No one said anything but I think we all knew that it was not looking good for anyone below City Hall, much less the basement.

We didn't see the first tower fall, so I thought that it went over like a domino, as opposed to pancaking like it did! I grabbed Karen and said, "Okay, we are only about six blocks north and about three small blocks east; if the other one falls in this direction we are so dead." We again ran just as fast as we could. By this time we learned that the Pentagon had been hit, but we also heard that there are two other planes in the air that cannot be found. I started thinking, "UN, Chrysler Building, Empire State, Citicorp and Rockefeller Center" -- we had to go between all of those with the UN to our right by about three blocks and then all the other ones to our left about one block, all in the same area. I think we were around the south side of Soho when Tower 1 came down. I felt the ground shake a little but only could see the airborne smoke. When we went through the 3000 through 5000 blocks, we had to move fast because of all the potential targets for falling debris. Soon we crossed over to 3rd Avenue around 59th Street, and then it was home to 74th Street from there (between Lexington & Park) to my apartment. I would swear that at least once every block I turned in disbelief and said to Karen, Our office building fell to the ground and she would look at me with a hollow stare and say, I know, I know... how the hell are we still alive?" We crawled up five flights of stairs to my apartment, as we feared if we used the elevator, the power would go and we'd be stranded. When we walked through the door of my apartment, we began taking several drinks, and tried to reach family on the phone and the computer. At this point, there were ten people in my apartment - five whom I had never seen before that day, and five who were close friends, with whom I'd had escaped or who didn't not want to be alone at their places. Most everyone stayed overnight because all of the bridges and tunnels out of the city, as well as the mass transit systems, were shut down, and to be honest no one wanted to be alone. That day and night all the TVs were left on. While watching the news coverage we just sat there in amazement that we were alive, drank steadily and watched in further shock when we saw Building 7 fall to the ground around 5:30 p.m. But we knew one thing -- we wanted to get out of New York.

Continued...

I was lucky, as I had a close friend with me who had his vehicle parked on the street that day (if you had your car in a parking garage it would only be released after the FBI cleared it, which took days and weeks). My friend went and got his car at 6 a.m. the next (Wednesday) morning. Tuesday night I had managed to pack everything that I could put in duffel bags and then some -- I also got my dog. Wednesday the 12th, we set out for the George Washington Bridge, which opened at 6:30 a.m.; we were heading that way by 8 am. It's indescribable unless you were there to see firsthand what it was like in Manhattan, a city under siege, that morning. There was no one anywhere! Few have any idea what it's like to drive through the "City that Never Sleeps" and see no one on the street or driving in a car. Again, I felt like I was in some kind of never-ending movie -- this time a la Stephen King. When we went across the GW Bridge there were cars simply abandoned in the middle of it, and we saw more abandoned cars on the West Side Highway below the bridge; all incoming traffic was being searched by the military, and there were tanks on both sides of the bridge. I kept waiting for someone to yell, "Cut! Its a wrap! That was excellent people; you can go to breakfast!" but it just never happened... As we crossed into New Jersey and drove down the highway that parallels the Hudson River on our way to Philadelphia, I caught my first glimpse of New York the day after. All one could see was smoke, which had changed direction in the night, and was now drifting northward over the island from the southern tip. When we got closer to seeing the southern end of the island, the skyline as I have always known it was gone, only a gaping hole left with black smoke rising where my once majestic office buildings had stood. The smell was almost as disturbing as the missing outline- pungent, a mixture of burning rubber and steel. A great deal of very visible airborne debris was flying around the highway as we were driving south, as the wind had blown westward since the Towers had collapsed. I could not look at any of this without thinking about all of the innocent souls that had not been as lucky as we had been.

I got to Philadelphia about 11:00 a.m. Wednesday morning and managed by the grace of God to get the last SUV for rent at the train station. And what a madhouse the station was, with everyone stranded from every direction and the trains being the only way, besides cars, to move around! While I was reserving the car, the young woman behind the counter was going through her regular information check, and asked me a question I had not anticipated in my stunned state. "Miss, I need your employer, work address and a work phone number." I looked at her with what must have been the oddest expression on my face as I said, "Number 2 World Trade Center, 59th Floor, New York, New York, 10014," and I gave her the phone number. She just looked at me and said, "Oh God, I am so sorry, don't worry about this." I drove with my friends Julia (who was trying to get to Chicago) and Tilly to Akron, Ohio, to stay with old family friends, where I remained until Friday morning the 14th. I left Akron in my little rental at 10:00 a.m. Of course I went 95 mph the whole way, and never got pulled over for a ticket! My brother told me, "If you get stopped tell them you lost your license, give them that World Trade Center ID, and trust me, they will let you motor on!" I had my dog and the radio news for company, but now that I finally had some downtime away from the scene, it was hard not to dwell upon how lucky I had been. The further I drove, the more people I thought about or remembered who were up on those high floors, and the more phone calls I knew I would have to make most likely to receive bad news on the other end. Some of them are listed below. I was in Birmingham, Alabama by 6:30 p.m. that night.

When I got to Birmingham, I met my brother, who had driven there from Mississippi. He had gotten a small trophy and had it engraved with a "Survivor Award, September 11th 2001, World Trade Center #2, 59th Floor." After Caroline told him her story (which was even more severe than mine!), he went and got her an even bigger one that said "The Ultimate Survivor Award, September 11th 2001, World Trade Center #2, 102nd Floor." I thought that was pretty cool. My brother and I returned to our family home in Mississippi Saturday morning the 15th. I have never been so glad to see in my entire life what I will always call home, even though I consider myself a New Yorker after 14 years of residency in the Big Apple! I thought while I took a sabbatical down south that I would do something constructive with my time, so I started raising money for the New York City Firefighters Fund. I elected to give the money to a fireman's widow who was from my neighborhood station house on east 75th street in Manhattan. Mike Lyons was killed in the South Tower rescue efforts that day, and he left a two-year-old little boy and a pregnant wife, who gave birth last November to a little girl. Yet, I felt it really didn't matter what I did, it would never seem to be enough at the end of the day to match having been so blessed with all of the factors that contributed to my survival.

Since that day, as you can imagine, I've found myself awash in a spectrum of ups, downs, and unresolved questions, along with my memories. From the time I was driving at breakneck speed from Akron to Birmingham, up through today, I'm left with just too many thoughts to neatly process. I can't help at times but to think back...

I think back to maybe what could have been done, although I know that no one could fully anticipate the scope of these events. Still, I think back to the eleven critical minutes when most of the air traffic controllers on the eastern seaboard realized where the second plane was going, and not thinking to call New York Port Authority to get the people moving quickly down in the WTC towers. I also don't know why the Port Authority didn't use the WTC intercom system after the first explosion to get people moving downstairs quickly. Was a "lost workday" worth this delay? I think back to those like me who thought in the most urgent terms and lived, as opposed to those who didn't, and died; those who, just coming down from the upper floors, turned around because they didn't have the forethought or telling fear to think that something else could happen that might affect our building. I remember the eerie feeling Id have before that day whenever I went into the 59th floor bathroom and heard the pipes and tiles creak as they bent when the building swayed. Or of my brother's very assurance, ironically when I called him the 10th (the night before), and told him about the lightning, the pencil, and the pipes and tiles. He said, "You don't hear the lightning because of the high-tech grounding system, and the sway is all part of what makes them so strong. Those buildings will never come down, you are as safe as a baby in a bassinet!" and his later response in Birmingham when he said, I am so sorry, but you did not ask me about a 767 with full tanks!"

I think back to my own "what ifs." I sometimes awake at night in a panic thinking, "What if I had been one of the unfortunates on the floors above the impact areas?" I know that I wouldn't have done anything differently had I been on 104 (where I had gone the day before at about the same time to pick up some papers), but that would have meant that if I had started my descent from there, I would've been around the 44th floor when the plane went through my building, leaving me a short 55 minutes to get out and away. That means I would have been in the Death Zone of ash not far past City Hall when WTC 2 came down! Or what if I had not been fortunate enough to see the cubby hole in the 1st floor as the fireball hit? What if that fireman hadn't been there to pull me through the mall doors to safety? It's just hard for me not to think about these types of things and play them out in my head.

Continued...

I think back to those who didn't make it, or about whose fate I still dont know, some of whom I knew very well. Of the now-horrible sounds of those bodies hitting the plaza surface above me while I was in the mall; what if that had been my only choice? Of a girlfriend whose husband worked on the WTC 1 102nd floor, sitting at home with an 8-month-old daughter who would never know her father. Of the countless people with whom I exchanged pleasantries daily. Of a gentleman who I only knew as "Fred" in the 44th floor cafeteria, who would cook me a beautiful breakfast and who always had a funny story. Of the lovely little girl who sat three desks down from me, who was to be married in a few months, died we now believe in a trapped elevator. Of my good friend on the 60th floor, who was missing because he stayed behind while others fled, trying to ensure that no one was left; of his six and three year old daughters, along with his wife left to wonder. Of my three "subway guys" with whom I was going to watch college football that weekend; they were Cantor Fitzgerald employees who perished along with 700 of their co-workers on the 105th floor. Of the people who died not 10 feet from me in the first floor lobby. And, of that brave firefighter who pulled me through to the safety of the mall from the lobby. Oh, how I wish that I had thought to look at his badge or fire shield so that I would have known who he was! I don't know if he made it out alive but I believe he didn't. I wish I could have thanked his wife or mother and told them what he did for me and countless others. While I oddly remember many small details of that day, his face is a blur; I can only see his green eyes in my mind's eye, which makes me believe he was of Irish descent. I went through every photo of the lost firemen but could not positively identify him. This does give me some hope that maybe he made it out, but I just cannot imagine that being one of the first ones there, he was not on an upper floor when the building gave way. I can only hope...

And still, I can be encouraged by the people who made it. Of the nice maintenance man with whom I would speak every day, who had been on that ladder watering those flowers above the revolving doors. Of the two officers who, along with me, lived though that 1st floor lobby implosion; I first knew they were alive after I saw them being interviewed on Larry King when I made it Birmingham that Friday. Of a few friends that made it out of far worse circumstances than I encountered and in all honesty had beat odds that were mind-boggling. One of my girlfriends had been on the 102nd floor and was one of six people from her firm to live, because her brother called her from WTC 7 after the first plane struck, and told her to get out of there now! Of my friend Caroline, who had her own harrowing escape. And, of my friend Karen, who I feared lost and dead, yet who was behind me the entire time in the 1st floor lobby. Karen went for the revolving door with the ladder in front of it. She said, I just went right under the ladder and out into the mall.I said to her, You mean after all of that you went under a f-ing ladder?She laughed and said, Well, I figured at that point, how much more bad luck could we possibly encounter?" And of all things, getting shoes during our escape out into Manhattan. My brother said later, "Leave it to you and your girlfriend to stop and shop for shoes in the middle of the worst act of war in United States history! Women!"

So in the end, I'm left with my thoughts, memories, and experiences. I've really wanted to go back to New York, and even though I've kept my apartment there, I dont know when I will return on a permanent basis, if ever. There's that fear that if there is a next time, it would make September 11th look like a day at the beach. Furthermore, I experienced firsthand that if a catastrophic event happens in Manhattan, you cannot get off that island -- you're likely trapped. And that scares the devil out of me as it did on September 11th. I know that if something along the lines of chemical weapons is unleashed it could easily be more like 4 million dead, not 2,800. Beyond that, this experience has created a new self-identity for me. I find now that people who know me stare at me sometimes like I have Martian antennae atop my head, and I'm often greeted by people who address me as, "Oh you're the one that was in World Trade." I always think to myself, "This is not how I wanted my 15 minutes of fame." If I had to have them, I would have much rather have opted for the, "Oh that is Brad Pitt's wife!" Yet, once again I have to come back to the fact that I have nothing to complain about at the end of the day because I did get out and I am completely thankful for it, even if it means getting out the standard issue Martian antennae. I'm left with the impression of so many who made the ultimate sacrifice of going in those buildings when every fiber of their being must have been saying, "Run the other way!" but they didn't because that was their job. I'm left with remembering so many on the upper floors who were already as good as dead when that plane cut off their escape route, or they were in the direct path of the hit, and of course there are all of those poor souls that were on the planes...

September 11th, 2001 played out on the most watched global stage in history. In all likelihood for those of us that were there or lost a loved one, it will always seem like yesterday. It certainly does not seem like that much time and distance has already passed from that fateful day that changed so many of us and our city, country and world forever as we know it. But, I know that if any nation could bounce back from this, we can, as long as we dont forget what it was like that day, and how important it is to protect what we hold so dear.

- Tilly

Oh, God. What a harrowing story. I'm glad Tilly got out, and I share her sorrow for all those other 2792 people who didn't.

Tilly-

Thank you for bearing witness.

TW

I'm an atheist--but can't think of anything else to say: God Bless you, Tilly!.....

Tilly
I'm hyperventillating.
I am very thankful for your story.

0_0

with Tilly's story this thread has moved to here.

My story is nowhere near as harrowing or enlightening as others that have posted here.
I was at work in Norwalk, Conn. (that's in the little part of Connecticut that juts into New York) and coworkers were just filtering in, I had been at work since 6:30 or so and was way ahead of the day's work.
A coworker said "Mat, check on the internet, a plane just hit the World Trade Center," but I was on my way to the bathroom, so I told her I would in a few minutes, then made the remark, "Geez, you'd think people would know to avoid that, it's only been there 30 friggin' years!"

I thought it was a small plane like the one that had hit the Empire State years ago. When I got back to the office, the entire crew was there (minus the VPs that were around the country on sales calls-- September is the time big stores re-do their shelves, and for a small OTC drug company like ours, it's the busiest time of the year). Everyone had this look of shock and panic, and I asked what was going on. They said, no Mat, it was a big plane, "the pilot must have been drunk or asleep, then," I said.

The internet was slow at the time, and no-one could get into a news site (CNN, ABC, Fox, all the sites were jammed.) I guess as the lone Mac in the office, I got through to CNN and was wathing live feed... with a dozen or so coworkers gathered in my little cubicle, watching in disbelief.

Then we saw it.

The second plane hit the WTC in front of our eyes, on a jumpy Realvideo feed. It was completely silent.
"Holy fcking shit, " I said. A brand manager chided me for the language, but I retorted, "when they slam a pair of planes into buildings, it's acceptable."

Then I got about six IMs from friends who were watching from home. It took about five minutes before anyone connected the dots-- one friend thought the flight-navigation systems were fouled up, another thought the second plane was a press plane that had gone in for a better look.
Then, one friend came on, he worked in DC, near the Pentagon, he told us about the attack there. Then one guy said "America is under attack." My coworkers scattered toi their cubes and offices, everyone called home to get updates we heard some amazing rumors:
that the Executive Office Building in DC was burning, that three planes were missing and unaccounted for, that there were timed bombs in the planes, etc.
Even in Norwalk, some 40 miles from the City, we were aware of the magnitude of the attack on NewYork, emergency vehicles were scrambling south, fire trucks were being called out on a variety of imagined scares.

People in my office became scared that a sustained attack was underway; they feared that the Merritt 7 biulkding across the street, which house some big compoanies, were targets. Schools all over Conn. were closing down, they feared the attacks would continue.

In the bedlam that followed, I was on all the internet news sites, Drudge, the networks, Freep, etc. and I was trying to verify what people were saying. My sister is a nurse, and she worked nights; she called to say I should leave work, because the evacuation of the City would jam up the routes home. Everyone in the office was scared to leave until we heard from the VPs, who were scattered on now-downed flights all across the country. Finally, the VP of Operations called from his flight, which had been grounded in Kansas City.

"What the hell are you all doing there? get the fuck out of there," he said. This is an extremely Christian Kentuckian who had never used that language toi any of us before.

We tried to arrange travel for all our VPs, who had touched base to find out what was going on. Nobody could go anywhere it seemed.

I rushed home on the Merritt parkway, which was thankfully abandoned, except for the State Police Cruisers which were at every exit. I think they were trying to head-off a chaotic exodus, or looking for escaping terrorists.

I spent the rest of the day trying to reach a friend who had worked in the WTC until June, he had recently taken a job at Chase Manhattan in NYC, I think it was on wall st. We located him around 3 in the afternoon, he had escaped theough the PATH tunnel and was stranded in New Jersey. He had gone to a coworker's high-rise apartment, and was watching from the balcony as his former office and many of his former coworkers fell.

My sister was called in to the hospital in NewHaven, they were expecting thousands of casualties to be evacuated up I-95 that night, but none came. Either you escaped, or you died. I guess there wasn't a whole lot of in-between.

To this day, I hate when people call Sept. 11 a 'tragedy.'
It was an attack, an act of war, not a tragedy-- as if the buildings had just collapsed from wind or rain!

Thanks for sharing your incredible account.

NEVER FORGET...NEVER FORGIVE. These bastards are just itching to visit upon us a similar, if not worse, tragedy. WTF are we doing, allowing them into our homes. The day will come when they really go too far, and then the sweet payback will commence.

I'm grateful for firsthand testimony as related here. The record we have is from cameras mostly documenting the horror from safer distances. They, the ememies of this nation, are still sanitizing the story with references to our "hubris", in PBS documentaries "as if in mockery" of those who died and those who survived who's duty it is to proect and defend our cities, our nation, and yes-Our Way of Life, from the edicts of Mohammad Abdel-Rouf Asqudwa al Husseinni aka Yassar Araphat, the baby wipes billionaire. We choose life and our enemies worship death.

Our response to this attack, which turned our buildings into the slaughterhouses of Buchenwald, Sobibor, Dachau, Auschwitz and the rest, should be as the attacks themselves; visited on the enemy where he lives.

On September 11, 2001, Police and firefighters saved lives, such as Tilly and Karen, who share their testimonials of the crime, and on flight 93, Americans turned back the tide of the attack, and saved the lives of Congressmen and women, some of whom are now running for the office of President. The lives saved on that day include JF Kerry, Kucinich, and others who betray the Americans who saved thier lives in an effort to reurn to some Sept. 10 utopia.

The Coward Dean, referes to Hamas as "soldiers". And yet he also says we should not take sides.

Tilly

Glad you made it. We must have contemplated the same subway entrance at Brooklyn Bridge.

At 11:00 pm on the night of the 11th, I slipped through police lines to look at the wreckage. From the northeast corner of Church Street and Vesey Street, diagonally across from Borders the scene reminded me of scenes out of WW II.

For the next several weeks I made sure to get out of Lower Manhattan daily for at least a few hours.

It's amazing how we come together during an emergency. Electricity was restored in a week, phones within a month.

By the morning of the 12th, subway service was restored as far south as West Fourth Street on the 8th Avenue Line. Upon paying my fare, heading down the ramp, I noticed a man sitting on a milk crate, playing guitar and singing America The Beautiful in a mournful, soulful style. I tried singing along as I passed - but it's difficult to sing and sob at the same time. What they did to my city.

By Friday the 14th, East Side trains were running to Brooklyn Bridge.

Not to compare my experience with yours, but down here, we all came down with symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (see posts #16 and #52). PTSD is something to be shared with other sufferers. My work takes me to the Bronx several days a week. I'm the only one at that workplace residing below Canal Street. When I was in the Bronx I was bouncing off the walls ! Lasted about six or seven months. When I would return later in the day to "The Zone", a place of shared experience, I calmed down.

Continuing good luck to you.

i recall standing on my balcony with my toddler and watching everything from the 11th floor. when that cloud of blackness started rolling into brooklyn it looked like dooms day. thank god my other half didnt leave for work early. although their was nothing left of his work place in the finacial center..he was one of the lucky ones that day.

people still ask why....

BECAUSE WHEN YOU ARE A JEALOUS, INSIGNIFICANT, UNDERDEVELOPED DWARF...YOU WILL LOOK FOR GIANTS TO BLAME AND BRING DOWN.

they say we had it coming and that america needed a punch in the nose. well...i say...keep dreaming, no matter how many acts of terror your kind may establish, your muslim flag will NEVER hang in our white house, your people have a permanent stain on their records for all of eternity.

This is not Israel your messing with.

The muslims dug their own graves on sept. 11

Never, ever, let this testimony be forgotten.

I live in Dallas, Texas and was working for a large lawfirm located downtown on Sept. 11, 2001. I remember going to work ealry that day because I had played hooky the day before. While checking my e-mail, I got a call from my partner telling me that a plane just flew into the WTC. I remember that he was rather excited and I told him that it was probably a small private plane. I remember hanging up and looking up the news on the Drudgereport and then seeing the pictures on the CNN website. I remember reading about a second plane striking the WTC. I couldn't believe it! I remember hearing people talking out by a secrtary's desk. I remember joining them and seeing the live scenes on a small portableTV that everyone was gathered around. I remember hearing Dan Rather asking "What do you mean the Tower is no longer there?" I remember hearing that the Pentagon was hit. I remember trying to call my mother (she worked NFCU located across the street from the Pentagon). I remember getting the "All Circuits are Busy" recording. I remember calling my sister in Indiana and learning the no one was able to reach my mother. I remember being feeling numb. I remember seeing one of the partners in the hall way saying that the building was being evacuated and everyone was to go home. I remember being in the underground parking garage trying to get out and there being a long line of cars. I remember following some of the other cars out that decided to exit using the entrance ramps. I remember getting out of the garage and into the worse traffic I had ever seen in downtown Dallas. I remember calling my sister and father and learning that no one had heard from my mother. I remember driving past a large American flag that was now flying at half-mast. I remember crying. I remember going home and watching those terrible scenes on TV. I remember the spanish speaking stations showing people jumping from the towers. I remember crying again. I remember trying to call my mother and the circuits were still busy. I remember going to Mass and seeing all the people there. I remember lighting a candle and saying a prayer for my Mother and all those poor people that had died or been injuired. I remember crying during the recital of the Lord's Prayer. I remember driving home and passing the American flag and crying again. I remember getting a call from my brother-in-law tell me that he spoke to my mother and she was OK. I remember going home and watching TV. I remember being numb and crying. I remember go out for coffee and a gentlemen was passing out free special afternoon editions of the Dallas Morning News. I remember receiving a call from my mother, tell me of her day and ending her conversation in tears. I remember the quietness of the night - no cars on the street and no planes in the air. I remember going to bed that night afraid to sleep and hoping that it was all a bad nightmare.

It seemed to me that as the week wore on, things just got worse. Stories of loved ones making last minute calls to familiy. Security guards posted outside buildings and garages in downtown. The scenes on TV of people looking for the missing family members and friends. The moments of silence. The silence at night. No one out, no cars on the road, no planes or helicopters. The special Mass that friday. The only glimmers of hope were the words from Guliani, the President and Tony Blair.

To think that I AM A MISSISSIPPIAN and lived at 145 E 74th at the time a block away.

I am an editor and publisher. If she wants to do a book on this... have her email me at RAPTOR1066@hotmail.com

This was SUPERB!!

I remember on that day I was sitting in a Social Justice class (how ironic) in high school...class was almost over, then one of the priests (I went to a Jesuit high school) came up and got the teacher to turn on the TV. At first I didn't recognize anything--like many people, it seems, I thought this was some movie they had found and wanted to play to present an example. It was when we moved on into homeroom, and I saw both towers collapse in on themselves, that I realized that this was real. Screw Survivor and the like--THIS is reality TV. At its worst.

The entire rest of the day went uneasily--no one had much of an appetite during lunch; every class was spent watching the TV and its footage of the second plane smashing into the building, the smoke, the collapse, the debris blowing through the street...it was surreal. I knew what had happened, but I didn't believe it. I went to pick up my sister from her high school; I told her that today was a bad day, and she agreed. When I got home, Dad was there--he worked in Downtown Detroit at the time, in one of the tallest scrapers down there. He said that Metro Airport had grounded all flights indefinitely; that everyone had been sent home; bomb threats had been received; basically, our whole family was terrified that Detroit was next. After all, it's the Motor City...you want to cripple the automobile industry, hit D-town. The next few days were bizarre. I remember sitting through Latin class and crying because of Queen Elizabeth ordering the Star Spangled Banner being played during the Changing of the Guard.

Geez...I'm crying as I write this...

I was lucky enough to not know anyone inside the WTC or Pentagon on that fateful day....*snort* lucky; yeah, right. To all those who did lose someone close, know that my heart continuously goes out to you all. It's you ordinary citizens that prove just how tough America is, regardless of our military might. It's been said that as long as you can laugh at yourself, you can heal from anything. Well, 9/11/01 is no laughing matter, but perhaps one day we can laugh at Arafat and bin Laden and all their minions and cohorts as they rot in hell.

God bless America.

I live in downtown Jersey City, literally across the Hudson River from the World Trade Center. I work in NYC's Financial District. It would be about a little more than a mile walk to work if I were able to walk on water. I used to ride the PATH train into the basement of the WTC every morning.

I watched the towers burn and fall from the Jersey side of the Hudson. I wasn't getting off a PATH train in the WTC because I was only getting around to walking the dog as the first plane struck. The first reports were that a "small plane wobbled in." I remember thinking--after the first but before the second--"Sh*t, I can't take the train. I'll have to take the ferry but I won't be too late for work." After the second, I thought only that I had to see and so I and my dog walked down to the Hudson. After the first tower fell, I wasn't thinking any longer.

Police and fire workers from Jersey City were among the first responders. The ferry stop at Colgate was set up as an emergency station. Medical teams were set up at Colgate and at Liberty State Park. Emergency workers and later equipment were transported from Colgate to the WTC. Search and rescue dog teams were based in JC. Supplies were collected and shipped over.

Because the streets were completely closed to traffic and there was no way to truck in supplies, JC residents opened their cupboards to offer soap, sponges, towels, blankets, clean clothing, batteries, flashlights, bottled water, juice, garbage bags, filters, and more. Whatever you can imagine one needs to run a disaster effort, the authorites asked for and we collectively supplied. Local restaurants donated food--hot meals, some were able to donate three meals a day by the hundreds--until the "mass food establishments" like Burger King moved massive trucks in. The local Catholic church took in "displaced persons" and arranged for housing with JC residents. The men with the dog teams were astonished--they mentioned that they needed a few pairs of dog booties (remember how the site burned for weeks and weeks?) and received a case. They couldn't believe the generosity because they were accustomed to holding bake sales to raise funds to support their working dogs.

We shipped in workers--I don't know how many, for how many days or shifts--emergency workers, firefighters, steel workers, welders, heavy equipment operators, counselors. After a while, the dog teams were no longer "search and rescue", they were the "find dead bodies" teams. I remember seeing Sebastian, one of my neighbors, as a volunteer hauling garbage--hauling garbage because "all the glamorous jobs were taken."

I still live and work here although some of my neighbors died and others moved to what they hope are safer climes. I attended the funeral of a fireman, the brother of one of my co-workers. (Some months earlier, he had left the NYC police force and joined the Fire Department because it gave him more time to spend with his two sons.) Importantly, Mayor Giuliani was there as well, mourning the valient and selfless sacrifice (and, may I note, I am not a Giuliani fan).

I still love New York. I love NY because everybody is here. Because everybody is here, we have the best food on the planet. New York City is still the capital of the world.

Unfortunately, we are surrounded by evil people who believe that they know the mind of God. People who know absolutely what God wants, regardless of "affiliation", frighten me. People who know absolutely that God wants them to kill are like a cancerous growth and must be eliminated.

I'm tired of crying and mourning. I am still so, so angry. I want justice. I want the murderous and psychotic among us to be locked up forever so that they can no longer damage the rest of us.

I want NYC to be open and welcoming. My neighbors are--among others, these are just the closest--Puerto Rican, Chinese, Philipino, Greek, Japanese, Pakistani, African, Polish. Of late, even yuppies are moving into the neighborhood. I live in one of the most ethnically/racially integrated neighborhoods in the country. I want our doors to be open to the rest of the world and I wouldn't trade this neighborhood for anything in the world.

I don't understand the people who hate us. I don't have any interest in making the attempt. I believe that all people have the right to a decent living, decent education for the children. But people who are willing to let their children strap bombs to themselves and kill others are beyond my comprehension. I don't want to understand.

I want them stopped. (Why aren't "suicide bombers" called "suicide murderers"? The "suicide" bit seems to lead one to the conclusion that the bomber is only killing himself. That's just not the case.)

Can't I have both--an open NYC and a NYC free of people who want to kill us? I and my neighbors are still here and yet it's really exhausting knowing that some of the hijackers lived among us in Jersey City.

Too bad that there isn't an "immediately and intimately knowing the mind of God" psychosis test. Too bad that there isn't any way to recognize at sight the people willing to kill themselves in order to kill others. Too bad that we don't ask at the border (maybe it's a Yes/No), "Willing to kill ONLY self to make a statement (religious, political or otherwise)? Y/N?" (remember the Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire to protest the horrors of Viet Nam?) or "Willing to kill self AND others to make a statement (religious, political or otherwise)? Y/N?" Yes for the first question is okay; Yes for the second should be an immediate "no entry" barricade.

Gone on longer than I expected...I no longer want to live in "interesting times". Dull is good. Global food-tasting is good. "Interesting" or "news-worthy on a global scale" is bad. Here's hoping for decades of local interest, little news stories of school-tax increases and kittens trapped in trees, rescued by local firefighters....

SMK

My story is perhaps one of the more uninteresting here:

I was in lab making a polyacrylamide gel or some such and a co-worker, Craig, said that something "weird" was happening in New York with a plane. We normally had a radio on to listen to talk radio or sports talk but not today. On it went and there was Peter Jennings relaying the news.

As others have noted, the Internet was verily useless. Our only outlet was Peter Jennings and that did not please me the least. His smugness had rubbed me the wrong way for years.

We continued working but with a quiet, hushed tone that was very unusual for our group (every one I worked with at the time is a comedian). That evening, I saw the video of the planes and the building collapse for the first time.

I never cried over it; didn't drop a tear; didn't even get choked up...not for a long time. Not being one who ever cries, it does not come easily--it physically hurts my throat and head if I near tears (that's a story for another day). Watching video of people falling out of buildings left me empty, somewhat frightened (what if I were there? What would I have done?), but not lachrymose. I felt...resolve on September 11th, 2001, and the days, months, years following. I wanted to do something to those who had done this. I should not, will not, and cannot forget the image of the ululating people in the West Bank. Their image filled me with a cold, almost uniquely sterile rage I did not know could be engendered in a human. I was ready to end them. How could someone cheer the deaths of others? How was this possible? For the first time, I knew what it was like to have a true enemy. I saw that there are people in the world so fixated and consumed with hate that they would celebrate the death of others. My disdain ran white, cold, and pure.

If you can believe, only this past Thursday, two years hence, did something crack me. I was listening to the Glenn Beck show via streaming feed and heard his montage of reports from September 11th, 2001, and heard a woman (who died in one of the buildings), obviously in tears, leaving a message for her boyfriend or husband and she relayed to him that she loved him and just wanted him to know that. That got me. The on-the-surface visceral pain of listening to someone speak who knows their life is soon ending is like nothing else. And with this knowledge, she called someone she loved.

Since then, I have had something of an intellectual and, subsequent, political honing. Not so much a renaissance but more the addition of knowledge to come to grips with held assumptions and feelings. Sometimes you know something but cannot explain why. I sought the knowledge that would give me the explanation. Why did I like, no, love America? Why did I always get a little weak-kneed at the Star Spangled Banner? Why were Jews the objects of such hate and disdain throughout the world? Why are countries in the Middle East the most impoverished and backwards places on earth? Why? Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, Hayek, Friedman, Sowell, Orwell, Horowitz, Huntington, Kimball, Kramer, Kors, Victor Davis Hanson, Churchill, Burke, de Tocqueville...all these people and more are helping fill the missing pieces. Now I have an understanding of how a culture can cheer the deaths of people murdered at their place of business. I know. My Amazon wish list stands at 300-odd books. There's always something more to learn. If only we had the time.

After reading this thread and looking through my computer to pictures and videos collected from September 11th, 2001, I get that itch that has itched for four years. The itch that wants me to give up my somewhat cushy engineering job and enlist in the Army or Marines. We'll see, but I may just have to let that itch guide me.

For all those posting their personal stories and sharing with us their feelings during that horridic day my heart and prayers go out to all. I also have a personal story but my computer is somewhat screwy right now and it would take forever to type it. Also, it really isn't all that interesting (like other people have said also). But I enjoy (well, not enjoy, but I can't think of the right word right now) hearing others accounts and feelings of that fateful day.

NEVER FORGET

GOD BLESS AMERICA

I slept all day as I worked nights so I missed it. I woke at 5pm that day and my wife and I went to the family room. I turned on the computer and IWON came up. she behind me, turned on the TV. The image was a burning building. A movie, she just turned it on then ignored it out of reflex. I saw the headline links for articles and they made no sense. I turned to my wife and said "E someone hacked IWON." I then noticed she was looking at the TV weirdly. The building then collapsed. WTF? I sat there, due to the channels trying to show the best footage as it came in the order was all screwed up. I was an hour late getting to work and no one really gave a damn that night,
In our factory we have a dozen or so middle eastern men working there. They were quite that night and they seemed ashamed. No one said one bad word about it to them or hassled them. They worked with us and were friends. But they felt ashamed.

I was working nights in September 2001. Slept until 9:40am, when my roommate (and best friend, I was his best man) Don woke me, saying planes had hit the WTC. Now, Don has always enjoyed yanking my chain- did it the night before in fact.

First thing I did was slam the door in his face and go back to bed. This went on two more times- finally ended when I told him that I was going to go check the news, and when I found out he was lying I'd be coming back to break his nose. I think the world'd be happier had circumstances come to that.

The first conscious thought I recall, after turning on MSNBC, was wondering how many nuclear missile submarines we had in the Indian Ocean. When I heard other planes were missing and one had hit the Pentagon, I was convinced, for a few minutes, that they had nerve gas on board (watching the movie "Executive Decision" on Sept 9 was probably not a good idea). Thought we were looking at 75,000 dead between the WTC and the Pentagon for the first hour or so. Had Osamma's boys hit either the WTC or Pentagon ninety minutes later...

Don says the first thing I said was "I want to pave them in glass." I'll have to take his word for it. Other than the horror of the images on MSNBC, for the first few hours, all I remember is the sensation of the purest hate I've ever felt.

I do recall some black humor setting in around 1pm- besides a breakdown it seemed to be the only coping method available.

Can't say I've been the same person since 11 Sept, 2001. I was a fairly PC person beforehand; I still want to pave them in glass...

Duane

9/11

Can you see me?

Tall, glorious
The children I hold within me
Look up, the sky is raining down on me

Voices whisper through the fire
Im free now, i can fly
The ones I left behind
Pieces of me you will find
Keep my whispers in your mind

By her window she will wait
Her smile is not forgotten
Her hands are still holding mine
Her smell surrounds me
Now all I have left is time

Touch my cheek just once more
She will cry
She will dream
She will remember
Sweet soft childish laughter

Never look away
Hold my memories of that day

YK

It was about 7:30 a.m. PST, and I was heading into the office when I first heard of the attacks while listening to Hugh Hewitt's morning show on KRLA. I usually watch the news during the morning while getting ready for work, but that day I had not. So, when I heard about it on the radio, I had one of those "War of the Worlds" moments in which I could not discern whether Hugh was reading a dramatic script, or reporting the news. It took a minute for the fact of it to sink in, and then as I accepted the truth of it, I began to feel an enormous rage. Over the course the morning, that rage became a cold and sharp edged realization of what we, as a nation, need to do to make sure this never happens to us again.

As soon as I got to work, I called my wife and made sure that she and my son were OK. Later that morning, the owner of the company I work for asked me to lead the employees in a time of reflection and prayer. It was good that she did so, because I needed this counterpoint to regain my emotional center.

A couple of weeks later, I received an email message from a church friend who had moved back east and was working on the 34th floor of the World Financial Tower when the first plane hit. He said that the explosion rocked his building. At first, everyone in his office thought it was an earthquake, and he led the evacuation of his office down to the street. He said that, as soon as he had exited his building, he looked up just in time to see the second plane plow into the other tower. He is an eyewitness to many people jumping from the building. When Tower 2 collapsed, he barely escaped. To this day, he is haunted by his experience, but he also says that through the horror of it all, God gave him many opportunities to minister to people in need.

Sorry, I've gone on too long.

Thank you. Your resourcefulness and drive served you well, and we're all the better for it. You're helping us all do something extremely important, namely to NEVER FORGET what happened.

Good Luck - SC

Looking back, as many have described the day, it seemed so surreal.

My father & mother were watching TV the day Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. They remember things, very distinct things, about where they were & what they were doing when Pearl Harbor was attacked, when JFK was assassinated, and when Ruby shot Oswald. Dad said to me one time "when history making events happen, you'll remember the smallest details about the day, and the immediate days afterwards…"
Pop was right.
I remember distinctly in August of 1990 wondering if my unit would be activated for service in the Persian Gulf, and the anxiety I felt. I remember exactly where I was when the news hit that we had started bombing runs over Iraq in 1991. Who was around me and what was being said.

I remember 9-11 most vividly.
The day started as any other work day at my office in nothern Atlanta. I had been in the office for almost 2 hours. Jason, a coworker in the next cubicle, at approximately 8:57am, stands up and crouches over the cubicle wall and says "A plane just hit the twin towers. They just broke the news on WSB. Raymond has his radio on." I could hear Ray's radio a short distance away, but not clear enough to make out the words. Ray stood up and confirmed what Jason had stated.
I sat there for a second or two, and said back to Jason "I doubt it's an accident. It's probably a terrorist attack."
He looked at me blankly for a few seconds, then he said "what makes you think that? Isn't it a little early to make an assumption like that?"
I asked him if he'd ever flown into NYC on a commercial jet. He said he hadn't. I explained to him how controlled the flight paths are around NYC, and to hit the WTC towers was almost impossible. It would almost need to be intentional.
About 30 minutes earlier, I had checked Weather.com for a local forecast, and remember seeing the forecast for NYC on the main page. It was clear and sunny with highs in the mid-seventies. I told Jason what the weather report was. His jaw dropped open.
I called Mom & Dad in Nashville just a few seconds after telling Jason the weather in NYC. Dad answered the phone.
"Dad, you got the TV on?"
"No, not yet. Just got up. Did you forget we're an hour behind you? And we're retired?"
"Nope, but turn the TV on now. Something's happening in NYC. I think it may be a terrorist attack on the twin towers. I'm at work and don't have a radio at my desk."
"OK, hang on a minute."

**About 2 minutes pass. A few early arriving employees are starting to gather at Ray's desk about 20 feet away to listen to his radio.**

"Son? One of the towers is burning near the top. The news people are thinking it was hit by a smaller type of plane, like your uncle's KingAir. But I think there's too much damage from what I can see on the TV. We'll keep the news on and call you back if anything else happens, OK?"
"OK, Talk to you later."
Not 30 seconds after I hung up with Dad, Ray announces loud enough for everyone in the immediate area to hear that another plane just hit the other tower.
I look at Jason. His eyes are big. "You were right."
I get up to go listen to the radio at Ray's desk. A few minutes later I call Mom & Dad again.
Dad answers the phone.
"Hello? Dave?"
"Yeah Dad, it's me. Did you see it"
"Oh my god! Oh my god! Son! You were right! Another plane just hit the other tower! Oh God! I saw it! Oh God!"
"Dad! What kind of plane? Dad! You OK?"

**Dad is cursing loudly--at everything and nothing--and I know him and Mom are very upset. He gets back to the phone a few seconds later. I can hear Mom crying in the background.**

"Oh God, Dave, it was a big plane, like a 727, it had 2 engines! It was moving fast, real fast! The explosion was huge! Oh God, I bet they've killed 10,000 people at least! Those bastards! Those inhuman bastards!"
"Dad, tell Mom I love her! I'll call you back when I get home today, OK? I love you.
"OK, son, we'll talk to you later today. I love you too, son. Be careful today, OK?"
"OK Dad. I will be. I gotta go. Bye."

At this point I could feel my blood pressure rising. I was starting to get furious, so furious that my vision was literally taking on a red tinge. I forced myself to sit down. I tried to get on the net, but it was a wasted effort. None of the news sites I remembered were working--overloaded from the massive number of hits.
People were arriving in the office looking very shocked. Some were visibly upset, crying, or trying not to cry. Some were very angry.
I sat at my desk trying to control my temper. I couldn't sit still. I began to pace around the office. Some people were saying we needed to retaliate and start bombing every city in the Middle East.
At about 9:30am, another coworker had found a news website, the Chicago Tribune, which was working well enough to run a short clip of the plane hitting the south tower. The first time I saw it my blood ran cold. I was in a state of shock. Complete shock, for at least 10 minutes. I just stood there watching it over & over again in some state of morbid fascination. I began to feel nauseated. I walked away.
I found Joe & Steve, coworkers that formerly worked for a service company in NYC. Both were native New Yorkers. They both had friends that worked in the WTC towers. They had been trying for a over 20 minutes to get thru to anyone they could think of in NYC, but all the circuits were busy.
About 10 minutes late, at approximately 9:55am, the news broke of the attack at the Pentagon and that all aircraft in the US had been grounded. A wave of silence swept across the office. Then the questions started flying. People were asking why, what's next, what about the towers in downtown Atlanta, what about other cities. Rumors were flying, as were unsubstantiated reports from the media.

continued

Then the south tower collapsed. We all heard it live. By this time, every radio in the office was on with the volume up. We stood in silence as the announcer on the radio described the building collapsing before his eyes. Some started to weep, others just stared, dumbstruck at what they'd just heard. Radio reports over the next few minutes alluded to other missing aircraft.

I walked up to a group of coworkers and put my arm around one of them. She was crying. She said one of her friends from college worked in the south tower. Another coworker asked me what was gonna happen. Would the US declare war? Would we retaliate? How long before we started bombing Iraq or Iran or Syria? More coworkers started to approach this group and asking me similar questions. It was known that I was an officer in the army and that I kept up with politics and world events, so I guess they were just seeking comfort more than answers.
I asked the group "Who should we bomb?" This was a terrorist attack. It would be difficult to retaliate. It's not like a single nation had attacked us. But I stated that we would find the terrorist group, and we would get them. Other terrorist attacks had gone mostly unanswered, but this was entirely different. There could be as many as 30,000 dead after this attack.

Then the gravity of the situation really hit home on a personal level. We learned that Beliyou, a manager in another group in the office complex, had an older brother that worked on the 103rd floor of the north tower. In the frantic opening minutes of 9/11 she had been desperately trying to get in touch with him and any of her family members that lived in NYC. She had fainted after listening to a voice mail left by her brother. He had gone to work early on 9/11 and was in his office when the plane hit the north tower. He left her a quick message from his cell phone telling her he loved her and that he knew he was going to die and for her to tell their parents that he loved them. A coworker was walking by Beliyou's desk when she slowly stood up and then fainted. She yelled for help. Coworkers in that part of the building rushed to her side. They revived her and she went hysterical. They learned through racking sobs and tears that Beliyou's brother had left a message. One of them listened to the message in horror and sadness, but had the sense to save the message.

At 11:30am, the senior managers called everyone together in the cafeteria and told us we could all go home. Hell, I was planning on leaving anyway. It's not like I could work.
All of the tall buildings in the Atlanta area had been evacuated. On my way home I remember passing people on the road that looked as if they'd seen ghosts. The one comforting sight I remember seeing on my drive home was a flight of two F-18's taking off from the Naval Reserve Station at Dobbins AFB in Marietta. They were apparently on patrol over metro Atlanta.

The other thing I noticed was that American flags were EVERYWHERE and it was barely 1pm. They were plastered on car windows, taped to radio antennaes, and flying from houses. I decided to stop at Lowe's and get a few for my vehicle. I always fly one at the house anyway, but I knew that my coworkers would appreciate some flags for the office. Good thing I decided to do this because the flag section was being overrun by people with the same idea.

continued

I got home and called my parents to let them know I was home. They urged me to call my older sister in Woodstock GA. My nephew is in the Army--a tank crewman on an M1A1 Abrams tank--and my sister was scared to death he was going to end up in the middle of a war. So I called her to offer some comforting words, of which was the following:
A) He's in the best place to be if he ends up on the front lines--in the belly of an M1A1 tank. Trust me, I know from personal experience.
B) She needs to be concerned for the poor bastards on the receiving end of Jason and his crew, and of the US military in general. There would be hell to pay for these atrocities.
C) George W. Bush is President. I know he'll do the right thing and the use the military as it's meant to be used. He won't send tanks to where they have a disadvantage in combat.
She was a little less upset after we spoke.
She hadn't heard from my nephew and was expecting to since he was supposed to be back from a 30 day field exercise.
(His unit returned from the exercise on 9/9, spent 9/10 repairing & cleaning the tanks, and were locked down on 9/11 when the military went on combat alert. We didn't hear from him until the 9/17. They had been placed on extended guard duty around the perimeter of the base working 16 hours on and 8 hours off. His phone call on 9/17 was very short. He was exhausted and needed to sleep. But we were all thankful to hear from him.)

I turned on the TV and sat dumbfounded as I watched the videos of the plane hitting the south tower, the destruction at the Pentagon, and the towers collapsing.
About 3pm my stomach reminded me that I hadn't eaten all day, but I didn't really have an appetite. I did need to eat something, but I wanted something bland--my ulcer was acting up from all the stress. So I decided to go find something to eat. I tuned in to a local talk show, the Kim Peterson Show, and listened in amazement as "the Kimmer" went ballistic on the radio. Kimmer was a Marine infantryman in Viet Nam and is a complete patriot. I could relate….

I found something to eat somewhere, and drove back to the house, where I found myself glued to the TV. I barely ate whatever it was I had bought as I watched as the other buildings burned and collapsed around the WTC site--now being called Ground Zero by the media. I watched for what seemed to be hours.

I think about about 6pm my Dad called to tell me to turn the TV to CNN, which was breaking a story of explosions in the middle of the night around the airport outside of Kabul. I started shouting and jumping around my living room, thinking we were already striking back, but I was later to learn that it was an attack by the Northern Alliance forces. I remember feeling so disappointed. But my disappointment soon turned to absolute fury as I saw a replay of the Palestinians celebrating the attacks by the terrorist.
Finally emotional exhaustion caught up and I forced myself to go to bed around 11pm. But it was a fitfull and restless sleep.

On 9/12/2003 I awoke after a restless night to a changed world.

It is over 2 years later and I remember the atrocity of that infamous day with unnerving clarity.
I look back now, over the events since 9/11, and feel that we have come a long way in our fight against global terrorism, but we still have a very, very long way to go.

I ran across this picture of an event I had forgotten - the WTC tightrope walker Philippe Petit.

[Link: www.newyorkmetro.com...]

September 11, 2001 is a day I will never forget.

I was there. I don't go around telling people that when they first meet me, like I have a tattoo in an unusual place. Someone who wants to know me will find out eventually. But I hate talking about it.

I was outside the World Financial Center, drinking a coffee, sort of irritated that I was having a hard time waking up. I was getting ready for an interview on the corporate bond trading desk at my firm, so it was an important day. But I was glad that it was sunny but not as muggy as it had been the last month. It was just a fantastic day.

Everyone knows the sequence of events. I didn't see the first plane hit, but I heard it coming...sounded like I was at an air show, the plane was so close...but there was this huge explosion, somebody yelled "Bomb!", then everyone started running around in circles away from...something. Then we all stood there and looked up at the first tower, wondering what the heck happened. I knew it was a jet, because I had heard the engine...but I figured it was just some loon pilot with a small corporate jet or something. Had no idea how big it was; nobody did.

So I ran up to the building to see if I could help, somehow. A bunch of other guys had the same idea. We couldn't do much because there were pieces of the building the size of cars hitting the ground across the street. And then, of course, the people jumping.

When I look at photographs of the "jumpers" today, it doesn't look like I remember it. In my memory, the people look bigger. I can see their clothes, even the agonized expression of one man falling, flailing like a flying squirrel, hitting the ground face first. But in the pictures the people look so tiny compared to the building. It's like I had extraordinary vision...I was just focusing so hard. They looked bigger.

It was getting sickening so I was getting ready to leave. One guy had a cell phone that worked, so I borrowed it to call my wife. Then the second plane hit what seemed to be right over our heads, and a big fireball erupted.

So these grown men and I ran to the river, screaming. Some people jumped in the water, but I didn't see much sense in that. In the crowd of people at the water I heard rumors that it was a terrorist attack and that the Pentagon had been hit as well. I wasn't keen on getting on the ferry to go home, since it looked overloaded and ready to capsize, but I figured it was a safer bet to hanging around other tall buildings.

When I got home my wife was in pieces. She had left the house and returned to find a message on our answering machine..."I regret to inform you that...that...forget it." Someone had called to say that someone had died but got a *wrong number*. So she thought that I had been killed.

I work in midtown now, and only once since 9/11/01 have I been in lower Manhattan. I can't handle it. I went with my mother one time, she wanted to see it, but I was a mess. I doubt I will ever go back.

The cover on this week's Economist says: "What has the war on terror accopmlished?" Easy--we haven't had another one. And if that's all that it's accomplished, then it will have been worth it.

Jared

Bless you and your wife. Thank you for coming here and telling us your story. You wrote:

The cover on this week's Economist says: "What has the war on terror accopmlished?" Easy--we haven't had another one. And if that's all that it's accomplished, then it will have been worth it.

As you can see, we haven't forgotten here. I hope someone up there is listening to what survivors like you are saying.

Wish I had seen this thread earlier. Here's my attempt to bear witness:

I was sitting in my office in Washington DC's Capitol Hill neighborhood, reading a document, when a friend IMed me to ask if I had heard the news. Having not heard it yet, I went to MSNBC's site and read about the crash into the World Trade Center. A few minutes later, a friend who worked near the WTC called my cell to let me know she was okay. It was at that point that people in my office started to gather around the TV and we learned that in fact two planes had hit the WTC and it appeared to be terrorism.

As we were watchng the scene unfold on CNN, we got wind that there had been an attack on the Pentagon. There were subsequent erroneous reports of attacks at the State Department and the Capitol, which is about two blocks from my office. This, of course, hit much closer to home for us. After the Pentagon hit, my roomate from Birthright Israel called to make sure I was okay, and another friend of mine called to get me to convince a mutual friend to leave his office, as he works for the White House.

As this was all going down, I stepped outside to watch the spectacle of Hill staffers streaming from the Capitol to the train. It was at that point that rumors of a bomb at the Capitol and of three hijacked planes circling DC started to take hold. As I stood on the stoop of my office, people repeated the news and began filing out. One of my coworkers repeated the rumor of the planes as he ran off to fetch his kids from school. Most of us just started walking as far from the Capitol as possible. Once we felt we were far enough away, we mostly went in our own directions. A couple of us decided to take a circuitous route from the office to Union Station where we'd pick up the Metro (subway) and take it home. Thinking back now, I remember seeing streams of people heading down Massachusetts Avenue, and the oddly soothing voices of all-news radio station WTOP.

When we got there, we learned that Union Station had been shut down, and fearing a possible attack on our train system, Metro had ceased running as well. So, my coworker and I continued to walk for another hour or so in the direction of Dupont Circle which was nother stop
where we could pick up the red line if Metro began running again. On the way there, we overheard that Metro was indeed back up and running, so after walking for four or five miles, he went to find a bathroom, and I took the train home. My then-neighborhood, being residential, was a little more serene than downtown, but since it is where the Israeli Embassy is, there was no shortage of police or road closures.

After watching the drama unfold on TV, I went out for dinner on 18th Street, which is the center of activity in DC's trendy Adams-Morgan neighborhood. Usually you can't find any parking and the street is packed with people. That night it was like a ghost town...we just pulled into one of the coveted on-street parking spaces with no problem. Almost every other time, I've had to use a paid lot.

The next morning as I got off the Metro, there were Capitol police everywhere--it's become common to me now, but it was so striking that day. I walked past a guy with a bright orange sign that read, "War on Afghanistan NOW". There were a bank of newspaper
vending machines at the top of the escalator--Philadelphia, Baltimore, London, DC, New York, all with screaming headlines of horror. DC is a city of only ten square miles, but it can feel like the whole world at times.

A few nights later I was out with a friend at a bar in DC's Cleveland Park neighborhood. As we were getting ready to leave, the power went out and I looked outside to see a chemical truck. My buddy and I looked at each other and decided to high tail it out. Now, in many ways a lot of us here live like Israelis--going on with life but always having that one eye open for suspicious individuals, unattended packages, etc. I have since moved to DC's Capitol Hill neighborhood, many of the roads are closed off, and getting inside the Capitol office buildings, where so many of my friends work is difficult.

It is important to bear witness. I'll never forget that day, nor will I forgive the perpetrators. God bless America...and keep an extra special watch on the District of Columbia. :-)

It took me a while to come to grips with this... on 9/11/01, I was sitting at my desk at a U.S. Army installation, cheerfully working on a presentation, when someone casually commented that some idiot had crashed a plane into one of the WTC towers. I pulled up CNN's website and saw the images... then one of our budget analysts mentioned that the Deputy Program Manager had the coverage on a small TV in his office. A bunch of us gravitated in there, and were watching as the second plane struck the WTC.
I cannot recall who said it, but we all looked at each other in disbelief and someone said "This is war." Everyone jumped back to their desks to start the process of organizing... shortly afterwards the Command directed that we would evacuate by sections (I noted that ours was last, not leaving until almost 1 o'clock). Some of the women in our section were worrying that our installation would be a target, and some of the experienced military men in our midst were calming them, pointing out that we were too spread out to make a functional target.
One of the things that hit home the worst was hearing that the Pentagon had been hit, as people that we work with were there, and as it turns out, some of our colleagues were spared because they were called to a (and not normally scheduled) meeting. The plane struck directly in their offices, some of them unable to retrieve their car keys, wallets, etc. and had to borrow money for taxi fare home. A good many people that I interacted with were killed.
I can recall trying to calculate the death toll based on the number of floors involved and the number of people in the WTC... neither accurate nor fruitful, it was something to pass the time. How have I dealt with all this? Most of us cried all day long at the office for months... and shipped body bags and mortuary equipment to the area. But since that time, there has been a lot of determination, a focus on nailing these cheap, low-life bozos that thought that by pricking the giant with a pin they could defeat us... when in fact, all they did was awaken a sleeping giant.
Although I am no longer of an age where I can actively contribute to our military forces in the field, I have friends and family currently wearing the suit, and none of us will rest until this is finished.
Until that time, I keep my head shaved. I figure that if we win, I can always grow hair back. And if we lose, it won't matter, as these low-life, arrogant pagan muslim bastards will kill me and what my hair looks like won't matter to God... only what's in my heart.
As a footnote, I can only say that I'm thankful for this website being available. I spend my days surrounded by Special Forces officers, and when all is said and done, these arrogant Arab assholes are going to regret that they didn't leave well enough alone.

And as a follow-up... while most installations have a fair amount of security, we have gone to the "full-meal deal" with an armed Infantry Regiment onsite, razor wire everywhere around the perimeter, and such a careful entry process that my boss, who is a Rear Admiral, marvels that they take his car apart almost everytime he tries to come on post... even the Pentagon doesn't go to this extreme.
Funny thing though. I feel much safer. Driving along in traffic, when I see cars lacking a DoD sticker, I more or less dismiss them... and know that when I see one with a sticker, that I have a comrade alongside.

It's been two years now since the black day. I feel the same shock and horror today that I felt that day.

I was doing an internship at an American company in Düsseldorf that day (I live in Germany) when one of my colleagues told me: "Something happened, please come to the conference room, there is a television." His voice was so serious that I followed him immediately.

When I entered the room, it was already crowded; about 30 people were sitting on chairs and tables around a TV in the centre, and there would have been a deathlike silence except for the news speaker - and the TV pictures. I remember perceiving the twin towers wrapped in a black cloud, and it was a terrible thing to behold. Then the first tower collapsed.

My stomach was a fist in my belly, and I noticed one American manager ran out; she was weeping, and others followed to comfort her. Everything felt unreal, and the pictures were repeated over and over again, when the second tower collapsed.

This was really too much for me, I needed some fresh air; a colleague went with me, and we didn't speak, we just went down and walked a bit on the street without noticing anything around. It was terrible. Some later, both of us looked at each other, and we know that an era ended, and that something horrible lay ahead of us; I say us, because I felt American in heart then (and do so now), and I was angry and shocked because I felt this was an attack on the heart of liberty, a vile assault on the hope of the world. It was in these dark hours that I chose sides (though I disagreed about Iraq in the meantime, but not so now).

The war on terror is nothing one can choose, because warfare has already begun. The only thing one can do now is to choose sides - the side of liberty, democracy and hope - or the other side. A heart-felt thank you to the US for facing the threat; for defending the virtues of freedom and civilisation; and for being the lighthouse of hope in dark times.

In 1775, Patrick Henry made a brilliant statement which could be applied today:

Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Thank you, America.

I work just outside of the city. I was working on a proposal for THAAD which is antimissile missile stuff. The planes hit. I looked at the smoke covered island and thought what is the best thing I can do since I can't get to the island now? I went
back to work working on THAAD
allbeit with a heavey heart and a clenched jaw.

Rise above!

hans
That was beautiful. You're really something special.

kufr
Keep at it! Rise above indeed!