Article

2011-09-11

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Posted by 2011-09-11 00:09|| || Front Page|| [11133 views ] Top

#1 Morning commute to work; had just finished reading a book 'The Sky is Falling,' about a B-25 that hit the Empire State Building, so my first thought was; it happened again.
Still have the front page of the paper with the picture of the Twin Towers burning.
Please God, continue to show your love and mercy on all the victims, families, and responders of all sorts.
Never Forget.

Posted by USN, Ret. 2011-09-11 00:45|| 2011-09-11 00:45|| Front Page Top

#2 10 years ago I was red hot with fury, and some of that still bubbles up. But now, I have wear and tear, and its time for the next bunch to pick up the fire.

Id say more but tears come to my eyes. Lost so many friends and friend's children - but accomplished so many things, these past 10 years.

God preserve us that its not all in vain.

Posted by OldSpook 2011-09-11 00:45|| 2011-09-11 00:45|| Front Page Top

#3 I was in Arlington,VA, attending a class. We could see the Pentagon from the other side of the building. The center manager came into the classroom and told us that two planes had hit the World Trade Center, and one had hit the Pentagon. At first, I thought she meant two light planes. When it became clear that they were airliners, it was obvious that it was a deliberate attack.
The instructor told everyone to take a long lunch and to come back at 2 PM. I went back to my hotel and called my wife to tell her I was ok. Then I went out for a walk, and ended up at the Marine Corps Memorial. I stopped and prayed. I could see the smoke from the Pentagon. By the time I went back to class, the building had been closed for the day. When I drove home on Friday, I went past the Pentagon, and could see the hole in the wall.

It gave me a funny feeling - in 1970 and 71, I was stationed at the Pentagon as my first duty station out of OCS.

Posted by Rambler in Virginia 2011-09-11 01:03|| 2011-09-11 01:03|| Front Page Top

#4 I won't forget this clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrM0dAFsZ8k

Posted by Griting Smith6978 2011-09-11 01:11|| 2011-09-11 01:11|| Front Page Top

#5 I was working from home that A.M. The wife hadn't headed to work yet and had CNN on. She yelled at me to come watch what just happened. Saw the first announcement of the impact. Immediately said "Damn that's what the Muslims were up too". She accused me of being biased and it was likely just an accident. In a short while the second plane hit and I told her I rested my case. Called up my boss and told him about the attach and suggested that explained some anomalous cellphone behavior we had observed in our customers systems. He accused me of just hating Muslims and being quick to jump to conclusions. Later in the week work got strange with the Muslim workers freaking as co-workers got called up to service. I had to deal with the jerks whining that soldiers should not be working with citizens. The freaked even more when members of the test group headed out to ground zero with special equipment to find cellphones in the hopes of finding victims with them. (That equipment found a lot of phones but sadly no people).
Tried to explain to the muzzies that this was a nation of citizens and of course citizen soldiers worked in normal jobs because even the army were citizens first. The Indian workers didn't even understand. It brought home to me how different the rest of the world really is.
The sad thing is the last 10 years have shown us that they don't appear able to understand even something that simple.

Posted by Water Modem 2011-09-11 01:13|| 2011-09-11 01:13|| Front Page Top

#6 Got up late that morning, around ten. Moseyed in to work in El Segundo...I lived in Playa del Rey, in Los Angeles, very close to LAX. As I got onto Sepulveda, I noticed a convoy of black federal SUVs roaring by. What the hell was that, I thought, and continued to work. The streets were strangely empty.

A few days later, they closed the overpass to LAX that went over Sepulveda, and posted a cop on top at all times. Talk about closing the barn door after the horse has left.

Ten years later, and I still can't watch the footage of the planes hitting their targets. Too painful. I hate websites that use the still photos as some sort of icon.

Posted by gromky 2011-09-11 01:56|| 2011-09-11 01:56|| Front Page Top

#7 Ten years later, and I still can't watch the footage of the planes hitting their targets. Too painful. I hate websites that use the still photos as some sort of icon.
Posted by gromky

Ditto grom. The heads of all of the intelligence agencies, their deputies, and directors of operations, to include the FBI and US State Dept. should have immediatly been fired or retired. It was the greatest intelligence failure in our nation's history.

Posted by Besoeker 2011-09-11 02:05|| 2011-09-11 02:05|| Front Page Top

#8 Imagine inside of a SCIF, where everyone was silently asking themselves what was there they might have missed that could have stopped this -- even if it wasn't in the mission, region, or area of expertise... how the hell this got past "us", the Intelligence Community that took much credit for winning the cold war? What was the next attack and where was it coming from? What could we have overlooked that we can still do something about? Why were we not treating things as importantly in the 90's as we should have in hindsight?

Personally, now? I realize (thanks to PTSD counseling) I still have some shame, and guilt, (supposedly) misplaced since I was not in that part of the IC that could have detected or stopped 9/11. But it is still agonizing, to the point of involuntary tears in my eyes, to see those videos, the planes and flames, the towers and pentagon collapses, and especially the jumpers from the towers. The past few days have been hard.

Maybe that's why I get so angry and react harshly at times.

That's the most I care to talk about all of it in public.

God rest those who died on 9/11 and in since then too, may they never be forgotten - and God help the rest of us, we need it.

Posted by OldSpook 2011-09-11 04:01|| 2011-09-11 04:01|| Front Page Top

#9 Furious red hot rage. Finding Rantburg helped express that without getting arrested for assault in our local ~~houses of hate~~ Mosques

Posted by Frank G 2011-09-11 08:45|| 2011-09-11 08:45|| Front Page Top

#10 I second Frank G. I was teaching an MBA class and the students were in shock, afraid, and in tears, inconsolable. I assured them that we would find the people that did the deed and make them pay. I was half right.

Posted by Perfesser 2011-09-11 09:02|| 2011-09-11 09:02|| Front Page Top

#11 'Spook, I think it is a leading indicator of your decency and devotion to duty that you have the emotions you have. IMNTBHO, you and your colleagues have nothing to be ashamed of, and much to be proud of. Thank you for your service, and please relay that sentiment to everyone else in the "business" for me.

Posted by Mike 2011-09-11 09:19|| 2011-09-11 09:19|| Front Page Top

#12 Went into work, at the Mercantile Bldg. in San Antonio - on the top floor, and from the office windows we always had a beautiful view of the aircraft coming in on final approach to the airport - sliding across the sky like beads on an invisible thread. I didn't know anything had happened at all, until I began calling to confirm my bosses' appointments for the day, and the first client I called was almost in hysterics, telling me that airplanes had crashed into the WTC, and it was on fire, and people were jumping from the top floors.
A little later, the Pentagon - and about that time, all flights were grounded. The sky looked so empty.
(My posts here - I'm also posting at Chicago Boyz now.

Posted by Sgt. Mom 2011-09-11 09:20|| http://www.celiahayes.com 2011-09-11 09:20|| Front Page Top

#13 Driving home from work that day, in the SF bay area, I remember seeing an American flag hung from one of the overpasses. Tears rolled, I couldn't stop them. Something about that simple sign of patriotism, that we were all in this together, really hit my heart.

During the actual attack I wasn't sure I believed it. IT was on the news yet Howard Stern wasn't talking about it at all. I don't know if he was on vacation or they shifted over to recorded or if he simply hadn't gotten the news yet but it was bizarre to me and it wasn't until I got into work and watched streaming video of the news that I truly believed it was happening.

Posted by rjschwarz 2011-09-11 10:29|| 2011-09-11 10:29|| Front Page Top

#14 In case you'd forgotten what a piece of shit Paul Krugman is ...

safe link to JammieWearingFool. I won't link to the NYT or their resident asshat

Posted by Frank G 2011-09-11 10:36|| 2011-09-11 10:36|| Front Page Top

#15 Krugman says: Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

And sure enough, I've got the TV on showing the commemoration, and the crowd is really subdued as children read the names of their dead fathers and mothers.

Posted by Matt 2011-09-11 11:15|| 2011-09-11 11:15|| Front Page Top

#16 Inviting the left to help commemorate a patriotic day like 9-11 is like asking someone with a known bladder control problem to a pool party.

They're just going try to f*ck it up for everyone else.

9-11 didn't help me find my patriotism. It intensified it.

Posted by badanov 2011-09-11 11:42|| http://www.freefirezone.org 2011-09-11 11:42|| Front Page Top

#17 Please remember
Barbara Olson commentator on fox news. Aboard flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon. Was on the phone to her husband when she died.

Al

Posted by Frozen Al 2011-09-11 13:08|| 2011-09-11 13:08|| Front Page Top

#18 "Let's roll."

I have wept, feared, prayed, been angry. My duty to those who were murdered and to those who stepped forward -- police, firefighters, troops and civilians -- is to calmly do my bit to make sure we win the war the jihadis started. Not just the war of the sword, but also the war of the law they wage to steal our homeland behind the backs of our troops.

So I am sad, on this day of memory. Tomorrow the war continues until we have won because they surrendered. Not a hudna, but the real thing. As OldSpook said, we won the Cold War. No reason we can't win the Jihad as well.

Posted by trailing wife 2011-09-11 13:21|| 2011-09-11 13:21|| Front Page Top

#19 M'Lady had the radio going all night. I woke up around 5 AM Alaska Time and heard the news of the first plane hitting the WTC. I awoke and told her the news. Then the second plane hit, and I told her that we were under attack.

I started thinking about the African embassy bombings and the USS Cole and thought that we were really at war with the ME terrorists now. This will change everything, I thought. The bombing of the towers and the loss of life made me physically sick.

I went to work and it was extremely quiet in the air around Anchorage. Not the familiar sound of a plane or airliner flying, where earlier we always heard one. Then a flight of two jets flew overhead and out to the west. Later heard that a plane was acting suspiciously with no comm on the North Pac route into Anchorage. We had crews all over that couldn't get back from places like Nome because of the airspace shutdown.

Then when the President had to fly all over the place, the Dems were talking up a storm lambasting him when nobody knew what happened. I thought to myself, "This will be different than Pearl Harbor, and not in a good way." I feared for my country. And I still do.

We are fighting two enemies: the one external, and the other the traitors within.

Yes, 9-11 changed everything for the USA, and the world.

Posted by Alaska Paul 2011-09-11 13:42|| 2011-09-11 13:42|| Front Page Top

#20 AP pretty much sums up my thoughts that day, and my feelings since.

We are tottering on the edge of a precipice. Other civilizations have fallen into dark ages. I wonder if they did so by choice, too?

Posted by lotp 2011-09-11 15:20|| 2011-09-11 15:20|| Front Page Top

#21 Back in 2001 I really didn't understand much about Jihad or Sharia or Islamic terrorism. I'm still not an expert but my knowledge base is growing.

Rantburg, jihadwatch, islamwatch, faithfreedom, fasterplease, etc. are all helping to move the needle on public awareness and the "religion of peace" nonsense that was emitted soon after 9-11 is considered too crude to use by the political class. Now we have still have some skillful islamic apologists and many hard leftists trying to shift blame but their job becomes harder every day.

On the other hand, the Jihadist get closer to having effective weapons every day also.

Posted by Lord Garth 2011-09-11 15:51|| 2011-09-11 15:51|| Front Page Top

#22
Sitting on the couch, reading the paper and drinking coffee before work. The Tutsis and the Hutus were going at it again. I was thinking it would serve them right if Jesus and Mohammed both came back and kicked their sorry asses from one end of Africa to the other. Just then, a news flash on the TV about a plane crash in New York...

My cousin was working in the Pentagon. Had an office in the part that was hit. That morning, he was still at home packing for a trip.

I still cannot look at pictures of the burning towers without involuntarily spewing out bad words.

Posted by SteveS 2011-09-11 15:53|| 2011-09-11 15:53|| Front Page Top

#23 I don't believe that any of the speeches by any of the so called dignitaries that I could have listened to today would have provided as realistic an assessment of what happened that day and in the days since then as the comments I've just read above. I've learned a lot since 9/11 and a lot of it I learned from this website. Thanks, people.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2011-09-11 16:01|| 2011-09-11 16:01|| Front Page Top

#24 Church this morning was all about forgiveness. Scripture readings were all about forgiveness. We need to forgive our enemy's sin against us because God forgives our sins against Him. I almost got up and walked out. One problem - we have to admit our sin and ask forgiveness of God, but apparantly we are to be held to a higher standard, and forgive our ACTIVE enemies.

Posted by Glenmore 2011-09-11 16:25|| 2011-09-11 16:25|| Front Page Top

#25 HERSELF and I were vacationing in Malta, some seven hours ahead of NY time. Ironically enough, I spent the morning and forenoon visiting the WWII operations rooms and museum in the battlements. Got back to the resort just in time to see the second airplane hit the Trade Centre. That was a shock!

Strange and rather scary story: The previous evening HERSELF asked me why Sept 11 is famous in history. Being a would-be sometime historian and know-it-all I searched my memory then answered "Nothing in particular". She was adamant that it was a famous day for something, something big! Next day we found out and will never, ever forget nor forgive.

Posted by Canuckistan sniper 2011-09-11 16:50|| 2011-09-11 16:50|| Front Page Top

#26 Glenmore, our minister, not exactly a conservative, went on to point out that Jesus' call to forgive seven times seventy times was meant for members of the church community as they dealt with each other. You know, like that troublesome brother or sister, that problem child, who is all the time screwing up. It was not meant to provide guidance for foreign policy or for when we are confronted with genuine evil. That's what he said anyway and I was glad he did.

If terrorists would truly repent and ask our forgiveness that would be one thing. But if they keep trying to kill us we need to defend ourselves.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2011-09-11 17:28|| 2011-09-11 17:28|| Front Page Top

#27 I was sitting in a café in Morocco when news broke and everybody stared at the tv screen.

I saw local people weeping. One reason why I make a distinction between people who happen to be Muslims and Islamists.

No quarter for the latter.

Posted by European Conservative 2011-09-11 19:17|| 2011-09-11 19:17|| Front Page Top

#28 I'd taken some time off work to hang out at home and chip away at the honey-do list. That morning I'd gotten up to do a workout on my treadmill - went downstairs, put on my gym gear and turned on Fox News. This was around 7 in the morning or so West Coast time...so the treadmill workout never happened that morning. Once the wife got up, we spent the balance of the day glued to the TV. Next morning, we could see F-15's flying CAP over downtown Seattle, and an FFG from NAVSTA Everett on station (presumably at Condition 3 readiness) in Elliott Bay. Felt (and still feel) a great sense of guilt at being a 45 y/o guy with seriously bad back and knees who wouldn't be allowed within 10,000 miles of a battlefield.

AP: Re your thoughts on "We are fighting two enemies: the one external, and the other the traitors within" - Couldn't agree more. In the days immediately following 9/11, both my better half and I were amazed to see the media appearing to be wholeheartedly on our side. Even the New York Times - a few days later, there was a pic on their website from a "peace rally" which prominently featured a LARGE group of counterprotestors, one of whom held a sign inscribed "BIN LADEN THANKS YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT." I remember telling my wife "this won't last - in six months, the media will be in full Fifth Column mode and actively working to undermine the war effort."

Posted by Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) 2011-09-11 19:30|| 2011-09-11 19:30|| Front Page Top

#29 I had been up all night working on legal BS. It all seemed pretty stupid after the planes hit. Still had to move forward on the legal issues (judge still went forward with the hearing), but the events of 9/11 pretty much forever put the rest in perspective.

I will never forget how angry and sad I felt.

I think it was Frankl who said there are only two races, the decent and the indecent. May we always be counted among the decent and may the indecent be damned.

Posted by cingold 2011-09-11 21:39|| 2011-09-11 21:39|| Front Page Top

23:56 Skidmark
23:27 Skidmark
23:23 Skidmark
23:22 badanov
23:11 Perfesser
23:09 tu3031
22:50 badanov
22:46 badanov
22:42 Frank G
22:38 retired LEO
22:38 Secret Master
22:08 Redneck Jim
21:59 James
21:53 Anguper Hupomosing9418
21:39 cingold
21:15 trailing wife
21:11 charger
20:57 no mo uro
20:43 Barbara
20:39 Nimble Spemble
20:34 trailing wife
20:20 Secret Master
19:37 European Conservative
19:30 Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo)