I remember 5 years ago on 9/11...

[Aplomb]

I was on my way to work at one of the hospitals where I photographed the newborns. I heard live reporting on the radio and I was in disbelief, thinking that this was some promotional material for an upcoming movie or something. Then it was announced that the second tower was hit and I sat at a red light grasping that this had actually happened. I walked into the hospital, went directly to my floor and right over to the center area desk and announced "We are at war." Everybody seemed occupied with work and barely noticed that I stood there. One person looked up at me and said, "we probably WILL be..." and I felt all alone and helpless to do anything. After I finished my job and returned home I watched the footage that most have seen on the news. Yes, it was real. We had been attacked on our own soil. I do not recall anything being said at that time about who was responsible.

I'd like to know how you experienced September 11th 5 years ago.

[American Patriot]

The Ghosts of 9-11

Filed under: US Military, TransAsian Axis, Survival, Terrorism
Far be it for me to try to explain the events of September 11th, 2001. I’ll just tell you what I was doing five years ago today, on a Tuesday morning. I had just returned from a deployment with the Air Force, and I had taken Monday off of my regular job to go with my wife to a car dealer. She needed a vehicle, and we were purchasing a Jeep for her. I spent the day with her, and we bought the new car, and we went home.


Tuesday morning I went to work at my normal time, early, about 0600. At a little after 0700 one of my co-workers called me and asked me to respond the Security Operations Center, as an aircraft had hit the World Trade Center and they had CNN on television at the time. I thought they were joking, and I walked across the hall from my office to the SOC. As I walked in, and saw Tower One on fire, smoke billowing out of the gaping hole that was being shown, a second plane hit the second tower, live.
Over the years I’ve tried to get people to be prepared for disasters, and I have become somewhat of an expert on terrorism threats simply by studying the past and the players. The Director of Security at the time knew this and turned to me and asked, "What next?"


I thought for a minute, as stunned as I was, I was mad as well — I said, "The Pentagon, White House and Capitol Building…"


He said, "What? What do you mean? What are you talking about?"
I said, "This is a terrorist attack on America’s financial district to break out economic back. Other planes will be headed to those other places."
His remarks were, "Bull S–t!" and from that point on they ignored me. I was no longer important, just a kooky fellow who saw survival as an important aspect of everyday life.


Roughly forty minutes later, reports trickled in of "an explosion outside of the Pentagon". It would be another 20 or 30 minutes before we saw images from that location. People were looking at me at that point, asking questions and I ended up leaving the SOC for a time to compose myself. I made my phone calls to my family, and asked them to get prepared in case this was a bigger, more expanded attack, and there were going to be other things happening.


Honestly, at that time, I was very concerned that because planes had hit, there would be other things, nuclear weapons, dirty bombs, or truck bombs, and a concerted effort to hit us all over America at the same time. Thankfully, those things never came to pass, and after frantically trying to call my wife, I finally contacted her by phone. She was unaware when I called what had happened. She made some calls to get the family to converge on our home so we could brief people.


At about 0930 my time (I’m two hours off of EST) they made the decision to evacuate all military bases in our region due to some intelligence that NORAD had passed. Apparently there were several planes that were yet unaccounted for, and some were in our area. Taking out NORAD, the Air Force Academy or other installationswouldn’t probably hurt us as much as some think, but, it would be a coup for terrorists to be able to say such a thing.


I opted to remain on duty, but finally my group was ordered out of the building, and sent home with everyone else. The base had already gone into Threat Condition Charlie at that point. We were under "imminent threat" and military personnel were already armed and in full combat gear. Personnel left quitely, and without conversation or comment. It was the most quiet I’ve ever seen on this installation. I made my way home and by 1100 hours local time my children and grandchildren had started to arrive.
We talked about what to do, what to prepare for and where to go in the event that the city were evacuated.


My wife and I made our preparations and I spent the next 12 hours glued to the television, the shortwave, the ham radio and the internet collecting information and trying to figure out who had done this. It was clear to me by the end of the day who it was. I’m just an amateur intelligence collector and I was able to ascertain it quickly. It wasn’t hard to figure out who was on the planes, and it was not difficult to determine where they were from. I hoped that the US government would figure it out and we’d get those responsible.


We did. A few weeks later, we hit the Taliban in Afghanastan, known terrorist trainers and supporters, but they certainly were NOT the prime targets and still are not to this day.


While I write this, I am watching various rememberance ceremonies across the country and in particular New York at Ground Zero and the Pentagon, and I remember that many thouands died that day. Those people are listed here. Thousands of innocent men, women and children died in the World Trade Center, in the Pentagon, and in those planes. None of them deserved to be killed in the manner they died. It was wrong, it was evil. Those people are only memories now and nothing we do will ever bring them back to us. The towers are gone and only are ghosts in our memories, as are the people. If there ever was a reason for us to be in a war, it’s the names of those people. The names are those of Americans as well as others from other countries who were in the World Trade Center that day. Please look at the page, and scan down the names at least one time
September 11th, 2001 changed America, and it changed the world. Some people cry out for peace, but peace is not to be had until the last terrorist has stopped attacking, until the last murderer is put down, until the last country or group harboring terrorists gives them up.



Then, and only then can the Ghosts of 9-11 sleep in peace forever.

[Sean Osborne]

Sitting at home, watching this most tragic event unfold live on TV, knowing it was just one more attack of Islam against our Judeo-Christian civilization --- and biding my time that morning waiting for "the call" to ring my telephone. The call came at 11:56 AM.

[MinutemanCO]

I’m a New Yorker, first and foremost. I currently live in Colorado but have spent a good portion of my earlier years in and around New York City. Despite where I now call home, I consider myself a New Yorker. The skyline of NYC is very familiar to me as being one of grandeur. Culturally, the City represents the social, economic and industrial growth of the greatest nation on the earth. Metaphorically… symbolically, NYC is the epitome of strength, with its foundations (and those of this nation) constructed through the blood, sweat and tears of hard working, God-fearing, courageous folks with origins as diverse as the many distant corners of the globe.

I had just arrived on the morning of September 11 at a design meeting I regularly attended with City of Boulder, CO officials. Someone in the lobby of the building was viewing a large screen television which, unbeknownst to me at the time, was showing real time news footage of the WTC scene following the collapse of the 2^nd Tower. I stopped to look at the TV. I stared at the screen knowing from the memory burned into my brain that I was looking at the NYC skyline… Battery Park, the Seaport, Lady Liberty, etc. However, I knew something was terribly wrong. I remember distinctly having the hardest time trying to distinguish what I was seeing. The WTC towers were gone; my brain couldn’t accept the image. I kept expecting to see the large smoke clouds clear to reveal the towers where they always stood. My heart sunk following a protracted delay of comprehension as I finally realized what had happened. I went home to be with my family and began a long process of prayer, anger, sadness, pride, honor, grief and humility which I don’t believe has subsided to this day. There is one thing I do know, our nation is not the same as it was on September 10, 2001. The enemy is real, dangerous and everywhere. Our innocence, if we ever possessed any real innocence, was gone.
>

[Jag]

My Father and I both watch Fox News in the morning and talk on the phone as we do. Sept. 11, 2001 was no different as we watched the first plane hit the towers and figured it had been flying too low. Then in horror we watched the second plane hit and knew it was no accident.

We watched as the towers fell and felt the panic and pain along with the people there, heard and then seen where the Pentagon was hit, and finally a plane was headed for the White House but went down in Pennsyvania, nothing left of it but a hole. Nothing had prepared us for that days events.

Then we waited to hear from my brother stationed at Offutt Air Force Base at that time. We did. POTUS was on his way there.

The one thing that stands out clearly in my mind was when all planes were ordered down. It was quiet outside, no noise at all where I live, just silence.

Jag

[Brykovian]

I was working from home that morning, with my 1-1/2 year-old daughter playing in our family room in front of the TV. The Today show was on as background noise nearby. My wife had left for her work a little while earlier and was (from talking with her later) about half-way toward downtown Minneapolis.

I had left the room for a moment and when I returned, the smoking figure of Tower 1 was being shown in a small over-the-shoulder box while the Today anchors talked, a bit confused, about reports that "apparently a small commuter plane" had hit the WTC. They were discussing the possibility of how such a navigational error could occur on such a clear day when the second plane was shown slamming into the second tower, live. I remember everything seeming to go into silence and I tried to figure out what was happening.

My brain ran through a lot of scenarios, from pure innocence through pure evil (hoping for the former, but knowing it was more likely the latter).

I sat down on the carpet in front of the TV and watched, stunned, while my daughter continued playing happily a couple feet away. I didn't move until my cellphone rang a few minutes later ... it was my wife saying that they had broken into the morning music on the radio with the news reports. Neither of us really understood the significance of the situation until later that day.

My company's office was located right across the road from the Mall of America. Apparently, they had sent everyone home by 10am that day, and told us not to come back to the office for a couple of days ... information on what other attacks may occur, and against what type of places was still pretty sketchy.

About a week later, one of our field technical workers sent a long and detailed company-wide e-mail about having escaped from one of the Towers ... he and our Northeast salesperson had been on the 60-something floor to pitch our software to the Port Authority that morning.

Our daughter, now 6-1/2, has a lot of questions about the event. I imagine it's hard for her to sort it out as a historic event of evil in what has really been a very safe little world that she lives in ... probably as hard for her to sort it out now as it was for me to figure out what was happening while watching it live on TV.

-Bryk

[Brian Baldwin]

I never watch much T.V. so I got up one morning and logged on to a MMORPG I was playing with some friends at the time who proceeded to tell me to turn on the television. I turned it on just in time to see the second jet hit the towers. I can remember how pissed off I was. I wanted the whole mideast nuked and every arab muslim killed in retaliation. I'm affraid that these days I don't feel much different on that. I don't ever want to hate that badly again.

[samizdat]

A fellow from the Pentagon mentioned to me in 1984 that the pentagon would take a direct hit. We were discussing the complete vulnerability of other DC buildings, and officials in relation to lower scale nut-job assasination or terrorist attacks. At first, I was surprised, until I recalled how vulnerable the White House was. I never gave it much thought until the 1st Iraq war.

I also rarely watch TV, but saw the news live that morning. Within minutes, I decided what I thot happened. It was the Russkies. But then how- with layers. Some nut-job with plenty of bucks paid the families of the agents a healthy sum, adversely promising to torture and kill the families of said agents if they did not complete their mission quickly quietly and secretly.

Later, I read from unrestricted warfare, that the chi-coms had an intellectual author play, and that Assad's birthday is 9-11.

If anyone bothered to research, the families of the attackers have likely flittered away their inheritance by now.

Even so, there are plenty of poor chinese and russian and syrian peasants.

[Aplomb]

Keep the anger and NEVER forget! Educate others in your own way. The rhetoric from Muslims is that we are waging a religious war on Islam, when in fact, there is so much reluctance to identify Islam being the problem here. Islam is an evil ideology where literalists are cowardice killers of specifically Jews and Christians, as well as anyone else jihadists feel need to be butchered, including their own. THEY are waging the war--be proud to be in the ranks of those who stand up and speak up and fight back.

Remember and honor our brave citizens, our brave fire fighters, and our brave troops who did what they could to help then and now. Amen.

[American Patriot]

[Backstop]

I was working at the (then called) SBC Center, ie the Spurs Arena. Think it's called the AT&T Center now.

Heard sometime after lunch that a plane had crashed earlier in the day.

When I got to my truck about 1500 and turned on my cell phone, I had 20 messages - some outrageous amount.

All darn day, the supervisors watched events unfold on the TV in the office trailer(s) and didn't tell any of us. There was approx. 400 people working on that site, and we didn't find out until the end of the day.

Sheesh...

[American Patriot]

CNN released their videos from 9/11. Youtube has it, and the HotAir blog has copies.

Go here: http://hotair.com/archives/2006/09/1...s-it-happened/

If you listen to these videos, this is live and as it happened, tell us exactly that a PLANE DID hit the pentagon, we watched as one crashed into the tower.

[American Patriot]

The Onion
September 26, 2001

Mohammed Atta

Ahmed al-Haznawi

JAHANNEM, OUTER DARKNESS—The hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon expressed confusion and surprise Monday to find themselves in the lowest plane of Na'ar, Islam's Hell.

"I was promised I would spend eternity in Paradise, being fed honeyed cakes by 67 virgins in a tree-lined garden, if only I would fly the airplane into one of the Twin Towers," said Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11, between attempts to vomit up the wasps, hornets, and live coals infesting his stomach. "But instead, I am fed the boiling feces of traitors by malicious, laughing Ifrit. Is this to be my reward for destroying the enemies of my faith?"

The rest of Atta's words turned to raw-throated shrieks, as a tusked, asp-tongued demon burst his eyeballs and drank the fluid that ran down his face.

According to Hell sources, the 19 eternally damned terrorists have struggled to understand why they have been subjected to soul-withering, infernal torture ever since their Sept. 11 arrival.

"There was a tumultuous conflagration of burning steel and fuel at our gates, and from it stepped forth these hijackers, the blessed name of the Lord already turning to molten brass on their accursed lips," said Iblis The Thrice-Damned, the cacodemon charged with conscripting new arrivals into the ranks of the forgotten. "Indeed, I do not know what they were expecting, but they certainly didn't seem prepared to be skewered from eye socket to bunghole and then placed on a spit so that their flesh could be roasted by the searing gale of flatus which issues forth from the haunches of Asmoday."

"Which is strange when you consider the evil with which they ended their lives and those of so many others," added Iblis, absentmindedly twisting the limbs of hijacker Abdul Aziz Alomari into unspeakably obscene shapes.

"I was told that these Americans were enemies of the one true religion, and that Heaven would be my reward for my noble sacrifice," said Alomari, moments before his jaw was sheared away by faceless homunculi. "But now I am forced to suckle from the 16 poisoned leathern teats of Gophahmet, Whore of Betrayal, until I burst from an unwholesome engorgement of curdled bile. This must be some sort of terrible mistake."

Exacerbating the terrorists' tortures, which include being hollowed out and used as prophylactics by thorn-cocked Gulbuth The Rampant, is the fact that they will be forced to endure such suffering in sight of the Paradise they were expecting.

"It might actually be the most painful thing we can do, to show these murderers the untold pleasures that would have awaited them in Paradise, if only they had lived pious lives," said Praxitas, Duke of Those Willingly Led Astray. "I mean, it's tough enough being forced through a wire screen by the callused palms of Halcorym and then having your entrails wound onto a stick and fed to the toothless, foul-breathed swine of Gehenna. But to endure that while watching the righteous drink from a river of wine? That can't be fun."

Underworld officials said they have not yet decided on a permanent punishment for the terrorists.

"Eventually, we'll settle on an eternal and unending task for them," said Lord Androalphus, High Praetor of Excruciations. "But for now, everyone down here wants a crack at them. The legions of fang-wombed hags will take their pleasure on their shattered carcasses for most of this afternoon. Tomorrow, their flesh will be melted from their bones like wax in the burning embrace of the Mother of Cowards. The day after that, they'll be sodomized by the Fallen and their bowels shredded by a demonic ejaculate of burning sand.

Then, on Sunday, Satan gets them all day. I can't even imagine what he's got cooked up for them."

[American Patriot]

That's kinda sick... but, what the Hell. /chuckle

[American Patriot]

[American Patriot]

[American Patriot]

[American Patriot]

[American Patriot]

[American Patriot]