Where were you on September 11, 2001?

[usmc12]

I was at Ft Leonard Wood, Missouri for Marine Corps Military Police School. We were out in the field when it happened and we didn't get a chance to see the news on tv til that evening.

 

[Gillette]

Recieved an urgent call from my mother telling me to turn on the TV because a terrorist had flown into the WTC. My mother is a chronic doomsayer so I tried to reason with her that it must have been an accident as I was turning on TV to see what she was talking about. Shortly after that the second plane hit.

Watching the towers collapse was a numbing experience and I didn't even know anyone in that area. Renewed sense of horror learning that a friend was supposed to have been in the WTC that day but his meeting had been postponed. I know my experience pales to those who did know one of the victims.

My heart goes out to anyone who has lost someone to a senseless death.

 

[Principessa]

Morons like Frizzle are why anyone with the means is now leaving the UK.

Did you have a point Drifterwood or was your intent just to pick on Drizzle for being young & dumb; whilst simultaneously bitching about US culture and foreign policy.

Many of us had grown up with IRA terror. Much funded by misguided twats in the US. I wish we had your names, you who funded terror thinking you were supporting freedom fighters, disgusting murderers like McGuiness. LOL - not.

Our parents had lived through the Blitz - 9/11. 10/11. 12/11. 13/11 etc etc etc

Your shock at someone actually landing a punch and your continued inability to deal with it are indeed very informative. Your culture allows for an Osama to be effective. And I am very sorry to say that.

As for our alleged inability to just deal with it, the USA is one of few countries in the world that has never had a major war fought on our soil. To have a major act of aggression happen against not just our military headquarters but thousands of innocent civilians from over 80 different countries was indeed shocking. We aren't used to that, I'm sorry that you are so jaded you feel terrorist acts of such magnitude are nothing.

I made a 'killing' with options .

I'd just bought puts on philips, just about 5 minutes later it happened...I was jubilant

WTF?!? Do you really think that was an appropriate thing to post in light of previous posts?

I think I was at school, don't really remember. Don't think half the people in the UK do.

I think the ones that don't have their heads up their butts remember. :smile:

 

[pdsover]

Getting ready for university and turned on the tv to watch the news before going to bed...the live feed of the WTC came on gradually every channel and spent most of the night finding out where family were in the U.S. Next day at uni everyone appeared in shock and the roads seemed emptier than usual, but we all went along with usual business of the day except for some classes which got cancelled....

 

[transformer_99]

Watching it on my couch and drinking a cup of coffee.

 

[tboi]

i was at lunch un the 7th grade

 

[SexyFront]

I was still in college. I had my nose in a book.

 

[VeeP]

I remember waking up late that day just in time to watch the second plane hit on TV. I remember the awful feeling in the pit of my stomach for at least a week following.

Above all, to this day I remember two things: 1) people jumping to their deaths to escape being burned alive, and 2) the message someone who was trapped in one of the towers left for their spouse: "Take good care of the kids and have a nice life, OK?".

 

[2322]

My grandmother's nurse called me, of all people. She mentioned a plane flying into the World Trade Center. I kind of dismissed it as I was heading to work and imagined it was a Cessna or something small. On the way to work I heard about a second plane and they were talking about Boeings. Good lord. The entire drive on the way to work I was passed by state troopers, ambulances, and every fire truck from miles away. Roads into the city were closed off for everyone else so the traffic was very light. Nobody was going anywhere.

I walked in to work at the cable company and every single TV, and we have a LOT of TVs, was showing both towers. My boss was crying and shouting through her cell phone to her husband who was in the north tower on the tenth floor. You could have heard a pin drop save for her voice. He was a firefighter stationed there at the WTC.

Minutes after she put the phone down the tower collapsed and so did she, right into a faint. Our webmaster is, or was, an RN and we found him and got her into one of the offices with a sofa while the webmaster did his thing. The same time my boss collapsed a few other people screamed because they had family working there.

The whole thing was surreal. The cable company served all of NYC including Manhattan and our major fiber line came across the Hudson from New Jersey into Manhattan at the WTC though not in the towers themselves, but a building right next to it (I think it's 13). If that link had failed, our data communication and that of every other data provider in the city would have failed. Getting a cell was next to impossible to get at that point so many people were emailing or IMing friends around the world to let them know what was happening. Because of this, my company, Sprint, and our trunk provider, Level 3, went into disaster mode.

After the south tower fell and the Pentagon was hit, things were nuts. We kept working though. My boss recovered from her fainting spell, but it wasn't until late afternoon that she learned her husband was alive. He had heard the rumbling and carrying another firefighter who had a heart attack, jumped from platform to platform and ran toward the river. The debris nearly overtook him but he just kept running and lived. He was one of only two or three firefighters from his station to survive. Another woman in our group wasn't so lucky and it wasn't until very early the following morning that she learned her husband was most likely dead. He hadn't made it and they never recovered his body.

After work I drove up to the top of one of the mountains that divides us from the city and watched the smoke rising up from the pile.

As our office was near an air national guard base we saw military planes coming and going but the one thing that stuck with me was that later that afternoon, two helicopters took off from the base and strung between them was a giant American flag. They flew that flag all around the area. It was comforting.

In the days that followed, fighters would land and refuel. Watching them was also inspiring. It felt good to know that we had all that military might, that a carrier and warships were on their way to protect the city. I resent it completely Bush and company used our grief and fear to whip us into a war frenzy against a country that had nothing to do with what happened. The most awful thing was hearing Bush say of bin Laden, "I don't think of him much at all," as if what happened wasn't a crime worthy of hunting down and capturing or killing the criminal that did this.

My stepfather lost over 30 coworkers at Marsh & McLennan. We learned later that evening that my cousin who worked in number 5 was on vacation in Cape Cod, and in the following days that the rest of my family and friends were safe. I was very lucky but people around me were not. Our town has put up a memorial to 13 people from here who died in the attacks.

I've been to Ground Zero a few times and each time I'm reminded of how small the area looks on TV compared to how it looks in real life. Because of the scale of the buildings in the area, TV makes it look like a small area but it isn't at all. Sometimes I think it's easy for people outside of New York to forget just how devastating this was. I hope I'm wrong.

 

[Andro Man]

WTF?!? Do you really think that was an appropriate thing to post in light of previous posts?

Everyone has a different experience of different events, don't be so judgemental....I just happen to reflect on 911 as one of the best trading days of my life, that's how I'll remember it. Taking xtc artificially made me feel happy for a few hours, 911 put me on a natural high that lasted weeks....

 

[Gillette]

Everyone has a different experience of different events, don't be so judgemental....I just happen to reflect on 911 as one of the best trading days of my life, that's how I'll remember it. Taking xtc artificially made me feel happy for a few hours, 911 put me on a natural high that lasted weeks....

If there is any justice your accountant will bleed you dry.

 

[Drifterwood]

As for our alleged inability to just deal with it, the USA is one of few countries in the world that has never had a major war fought on our soil. To have a major act of aggression happen against not just our military headquarters but thousands of innocent civilians from over 80 different countries was indeed shocking. We aren't used to that, I'm sorry that you are so jaded you feel terrorist acts of such magnitude are nothing. :smile:

Don't miscontrue my meaning NJ. I said that I was very sorry to say it.

I remember Oklahoma, and as far as I have read the American Civil War was one of the bloodiest and bitterest conflicts in history. When was the last generation of Americans not to be fighting somewhere?

But you had become complacent in perceived isolation and immunity to the response of some terrorists to your foreign policy. This is why such trauma was engendered by these terrorist acts. People in little towns in the middle of nownere suddenly felt that the next attack would be aimed at them.

 

[2322]

But you had become complacent in perceived isolation and immunity to the response of some terrorists to your foreign policy. This is why such trauma was engendered by these terrorist acts. People in little towns in the middle of nownere suddenly felt that the next attack would be aimed at them.

I don't think that's quite right. Close, but not right on target.

Your assessment assumes that Americans are aware of what our foreign policy truly is abroad and that, I daresay, is generally unlikely. The major media outlets in our country don't like to report negative stories about American foreign policy because they lose market share by doing so. Vast numbers of Americans were completely shocked by 9/11 because our perception of ourselves is as liberators, defenders of democracy, righters of wrongs. We're Superman standing on the tallest building, watching over the world.

The great majority of Americans are grossly unaware of our involvement in various world conflicts or our support of and even outright installation of dictatorships abroad or our predatory economic policies. They watch network news, read hometown papers, and maybe listen to the radio or visit a few websites and none of those media outlets, save a few websites, bother to explain the complex relationship that the United States has with many countries. People don't have the time or inclination to learn even when they know about such stories. They may know the Shah was once our ally or have heard that we prop-up the Saudi absolute monarchy, but as to the list of other dictators and repressive regimes, past and present, they have no clue because nobody told them and they don't know where to look to find the truth. As far as the great majority of Americans are concerned, 9/11 was completely unprovoked. At one point we were so clueless, even after 9/11, that during the run-up to the war, most Americans thought the hijackers were Iraqi!

Blame our educational system, lobbyists, reluctant major media, government, or national character, either way the result is ignorance that has resulted in a population unable to oversee the actions of its government and we're paying for it in American and Iraqi lives.

As to Drifterwood's opinions on the Troubles, he's quite right about the funding yet I must also say the UK handled the entire situation very badly for quite a long time inadvertently fanning Republican sentiment and support. Black and Tans anyone?

 

[Sassy88]

I can still remember it like it was yesterday. I was having my garden (back yard) landscaped so was home from work. My step daughter and her young son were with me too. When the first plane hit I ran outside to tell all the guys who were working... and we all thought OMG what a horrible tragic accident.... of course it was only too soon that we all realised that wasnt the case at all.

Moments later we were all in the house absolutely fixed on the TV screen where we stayed for all of the day.

It was the most unbelieveably incomprehensible thing that I had ever seen.

 

[frizzle]

I think the ones that don't have their heads up their butts remember. :smile:

You do realise that the youth culture in the UK hates America? (Ironically it's very Americianised but they do love a good bitch), therefore not caring about 2000-3000 random americans that died.

It's a shame really.

 

[Drifterwood]

Good points Jason.

I was making no comment about the British in Ireland. My purpose was to raise the irony that people from your country were funding/sponsoring terror against innocent people in my country, whereas now anyone supporting "terrorism" is part of the axis of evil.

Frizzle you are an ignorant little child. It doesn't wash to call people random and then say it's a shame.

 

[Osiris]

UK live - watched my nephew's godfather die.

and yes it REALLY pisses me off that most of you think that it is/was a solely American thing.

Be pissed Drifter, but some of us are aware. Painfully aware.

I lost a very good friend (a love interest) from London in the Towers. We had been talking that night before about a trip to Mexico we were going to take. I never went and I have not been back to London since because of the pain.

I am aware of how many international intersts were in the Towers. It was the WORLD Trade Center. It affected numerous countries. If anything it was shocking that it happened here.

No country was spared the pain. I think all of us can agree on that.

 

[Andro Man]

If there is any justice your accountant will bleed you dry.

You're pointing the finger at the wrong person.
Yes, I couldn't believe my luck, but what I made on it is peanuts compared to ppl in the CIA that knew it was going to happen and massively bought puts on the airline companies, or others with biz interests in the US government that used 911 to make billions on the arms industry and pushing their interests in Iraq.

There's a difference between a lucky break and actually causing a disaster to make money of it.

Besides if it's blood you're after you should get your kicks from the millions of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan that are getting killed in 'retalliation' for a few thousand USans that died in 911

 

[southwest]

I was building a house on site when the radio announced what was happening.
Still find that act of terrorism one of the most misguided things I have seen in my life. It still makes me sad to think of it.

 

[Drifterwood]

You're missing the point andro.

Anyone getting any kicks out of any of this is showing that they have as much humanity and compassion as a turd.