In my third year of law school. At home. My wife called to tell me, so I watched tv for the next several hours. I had afternoon class (Federal Crimes with Steve Duke). Wasn't sure if it was still on, but went. He showed up and said that in these situations, it's probably better to go on with life, so he didn't cancel class.

I was moving into a new place and had no radio, TV, or computer set up, so I didn't hear the news until the late afternoon when I went to the store and heard about it over the radio over the P.A. system. Since by then it was old news, it took quite a while to understand what had happened.

I was a sophomore at USC sitting in a French class. My muslim professor refused to cancel class and was angry that the press was so eager to "assume" that the attacks were by islamic extremists. She believed it was another angry white dude like the Oklahoma City bombing . . .

I was practicing in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, at the time. I was in court that morning, on a family law case. When I got back to my office, I wanted to take a look at the news online before getting back to work, and I noticed that many of the popular news sites - cnn.com, in particular - were either offline or unusually slow.

After trying several sites, with no idea of what was happening, I finally saw the news that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center towers. My first thought was of that B-29 that hit the Empire State Building in 1945, and I thought - hoped - it was a horrible accident.

Driving across Ireland and planning to fly home the next day. When we arrived in Dublin, the owner of the bed-and-breakfast opened the door and said, "Come in and see what's happening in your country."

putting lipstick on a pig (which the pig enjoyed).

Living on the west coast, I awoke to read my morning news online, and was wondering "why the heck is yahoo so slow to load?" At that point the only thing on the site was a simple statement that an aircraft had hit one of the twin towers. My first thought was, bummer, must have been like when that small plane hit the Empire State building in the 40's. Ten minutes later I found on another website with more info that 2 jetliners had hit the towers and this was no tragic accident...

The Friday before I'd cancelled my Saturday night flight to Hong Kong in some panic I couldn't name.

I was still asleep (West Coast) when my girlfriend came in to tell me about it. I watched for a couple hours, and then spent the day in a scheduled meeting with the head of R&D from a major surveillance company.

Thanks, by the way, for posting this, Orin.

It is, among many things, an opportunity for us at a very divided time to remember a moment when we were all together.

In my dorm room, studying for Japanese class. I got woken up to the RA banging on every door "DAVID?! HAS ANYONE SEEN DAVID?!"

"What's he want with David?" I asked.

"David has family in New York."

"Whaaa, whaddya want from me?"

"DAVID! CALL YOUR FAMILY NOW!"

"Why..."

"JUST F'(#$ING CALL YOUR FAMILY NOW!"

David's family was OK. I headed off to Japanese class, where half the class knew and half the class didn't. It proceeded in a bit of a haze. One of the American professors rushed in halfway through and canceled our afternoon class for the day.

That's all I remember. That and I started reading Instapundit that day, for the updates.

I was in the office, making coffee in the lunchroom. The TV was tuned to the morning news traffic report. The traffic camera suddenly whipped around to show the WTC exploding.

When the second plane hit, I left the office. My office was over Grand Central, which would have been a logical target.

I walked to my son's school (he was then in first grade), gave him a big hug and walked him home.

My (then new) wife and I were sleeping in after returning the night before from our Honeymoon to Costa Rica. Had our flight been a day later, we might have been stuck there for weeks (and as a poor 3L, that would have been a pretty big deal).

I remember being paralyzed by the television for hour after hour after hour.

i was in college in fairbanks. i'd slept in, as my first class wasn't till 10ish.

on my way to class, the atmosphere was electric, and there where excited whispers amongst students: "Did you hear what happened?" "Unbelievable, unbelievable!"

my first thoughts were: "Dear god -- someone, somewhere, has dropped The Bomb!"

i got to class, and heard the news from the prof, and the attacks were all we talked about for the rest of the day.

Getting ready to go to morning college classes. I never went.

Taking a day off from work, outside Boston. I checked the Drudge Report when I got out of bed and found out a plane had crashed into the WTC. I called a friend who told me that he'd just learned a second plane had crashed into the building. At that point we both knew immediately that it was an act of terrorism and began speculating who might have been behind it, what their motives were, and whether other attacks might occur. I remember the next few days seemed surreal. The only planes in the sky were military interceptors, some of which flew quite low. Only much later did I discover that a friend died on UA Flight 93. He was a very brave person and I'm sure he was among those who helped send the hijackers on that plane to hell.

On a business trip in the Philippines, trying to go to bed. A colleague called my hotel room and told me turn on CNN. I stayed up watching in shock almost all night.

Fayetteville, NC (home of Fort Bragg) conducting interviews for a college scholarship program. Stunned kids started showing up at 9 or so.

Stood watching the TV news around lunchtime in the hotel lobby. Guy standing next to me said he had just gotten out of the Army a few days before and was heading right back to the base to re-up.

calculus class in college as a freshmen

we thought it was a small bomb-no big deal.

then we started to see it was more as people who had seen in the student union gave word and the cell phone network was jammed.

life went on as normal and UMD canceled class around 12 or 1pm tthe same day.

Underground in a 4/5 train just about to enter Wall St. station when the first tower collapsed. A wave of dust that rushed down the subway entrance overwhelmed the lead car of the train and forced everyone to rush to the back. Soon the rush of dust stopped, and the lead car was able to open the train door. Slowly we all filtered out, completely clueless as to what just happened. We walked out onto Broadway, and everything was covered with at least an inch of dust. It was white dust, and looked oddly like a fresh snowfall.

Still thankful that that was the worst of it for me. I spent time that day walking up the east side with someone who saw jumpers first hand. And still, he was a lucky one. So many bad stories from that day...

my newly pregnant wife and i woke up in LA to the sound of our clock radio, tuned to npr. the reporter was in one of the towers, talking about the people streaming down the stairwell, and it was clearly chaos.

my wife and i actually thought they were running some kind of radio play, which we thought was odd at that time of the morning. it took a minute before we figured out what was happening, then ran to the television.

I was a grad student in New Haven and didn't have any classes (until my first time leading a discussion section that evening). I woke up, read the NYT (printed much earlier), didn't watch TV, didn't listen to the radio. I took a shower and walked to another apartment building where I had an appointment for a haircut.

I thought, as I walked, how it was the most pleasant day we'd had in weeks -- no stifling humidity, but no rain either.

I got to the guy's apartment and knocked for a half hour before he came to the door and knew from my face, "you haven't heard!"

We spent the next half hour (12:30-1:00 Eastern) watching the various news channels in disbelief. Then he cut my hair. Didn't even jokingly flirt with the straight customer like usual.

I haven't had my hair cut since.

Went through that day in a daze, thankful that I had two young daughters to look after. The next day, Georgetown didn't cancel classes. Crossing the Key Bridge, I stopped to watch the smoke coming from the Pentagon, and went into Georgetown, which had a military presence. I wondered how I was going to teach a class for a hundred eighteen-year-old Georgetown students who had arrived not two weeks before.

I was going through security at the Downtown Phoenix Justice Court as I did every weekday morning when the security guard told me what had happened. Didn't fully comprehend and went through my routine doing my business. Only when I got to my car and it's radio did I really begin to understand.

But what was Sarah Palin doing? I'll bet she was safely squirreled away in some safe location at the other end of the continent, just where you'd want to be if you wanted to avoid suspicion. Clearly someone should investigate this suspicious behavior.

As for me, I was reading my email in my dorm room. When I got an email about the first plane, I assumed it was some kind of accident and ignored it. When someone on the same listserv wrote about another one, I interpreted it as a bad joke. I didn't realize something was really going on until people on the same listserv started reporting in that they were alive.

Then I went to chemistry class, which was not canceled.

My roommate (who’s muslim) woke me up after the first plane hit. We sat horrified as we watched the second plane hit live on TV. I spent most of the morning trying to get in touch with my relatives, who nearly all live in Manhattan. Eventually a relative was able to send out an e-mail letting us know that everyone in the family was okay.

I think my most distinct memory from that day (other than seeing the second plane hit) was a live shot of the president’s plane taking off. I can’t remember where he was going or where he was taking off from. But I remember expecting his plane to just explode or something. It was weird having this sense that nobody knew what was going to happen next. Two planes had hit already. There were reports of other planes going down. It was surreal.

I was in a hotel room in Minneapolis, getting dressed. I flipped on the TV and saw smoke streaming from a skyscraper. Nobody knew yet what it meant.

My plan had been to meet a colleague in the lobby and walk over to our meeting. Everybody in the lobby area was watching the big-screen TV in the bar. It’s there that I saw the second plane hit.

There was nothing to do but go to the meeting. Not much got accomplished and we all spent much of the day in my hosts’ conference room watching a projected image of CNN. Much later I visited the same room and found a big painting of a firefighter hanging near where I had stood that day.

(For the rest of my 9/11 story, see http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1062 )

I was in Evidence class as a 2L taking good notes so I could later share them with my roommate who was in NYC on a callback interview at a law firm. They had put her up at the WTC Marriott. I noticed that several cell phones went off during class and a couple people left class early (which was unusual for such an early class and for it to happen in a Socratic class). I left class and found the student lounge packed but oddly quiet.

When I finally got in touch with my roommate, she had been casually watching news of the first plane on the Today Show like people across the country while she was getting ready for her interview when she realized it was happening right across the street. She wouldn't talk about what she saw when she exited the hotel. She ended up walking across the Brooklyn Bridge in her interview suit and heels.

I had just arrived at work (in Central Texas) and was surfing the Internet for the morning news. I remember being very puzzled for a while that I couldn't access any of the websites of the New York or Washington newspapers.

When I found out what had happened, I drove to WalMart and bought 2 weeks worth of canned food and a few hundred rounds of Ammunition. Then I picked up my kids from school, went home, and filled the gas tanks on all our vehicles.

P.S. > I can also tell y'all what I was doing when Kennedy was shot, if anybody's interested. And my older sister still remembers what she was doing when she heard about Pearl Harbor.

I'd just gotten home from my office at the US Embassy in New Delhi, a bit before 7pm, when I got a call from a Marine Security Guard who had been tasked to call senior officers and report that a Flash precedence message had come in stating that a plane had hit the WTC. He had no further information. I, too, thought of the 1945 crash of the B-25 into the Empire State building. I changed and started to eat dinner.

A few minutes later, another phone call reporting a second plane. I had absolutely no doubt that this was a terrorist attack and that Al-Qaeda was behind it. Synchronized attacks were a known attribute of AQ to anyone who was following terrorism issues. People working in US embassies, even if their jobs didn't involve terrorism, were acutely aware of AQ following the bombings of US embassies in Africa.

I immediately headed back to the office, where I was Information Officer and Acting Public Affairs Officer. I turned on the TV to CNN-International and checked to see when the Ambassador and Country Team would be meeting. By 8pm, everyone was assembled and trying to sort out rumors from facts. Then we worked out what we needed to do to assure--insofar as possible--the safety of the Embassy, Consulates, and all Americans in the country. One of the first things, of course, was to ask for enhanced security from the Indian government and to ask that the private airport, located about two miles from the Embassy, be temporarily closed.

I'd been in negotiation with HR at State Dept. about going to Saudi Arabia on assignment later in the year. I realized pretty quickly that 'later in the year' was coming real soon. The next day I got my orders.

Pretty much like Damian P -- my mother had had a neighbor who was working in the Empire State Building back when it got hit, and I figured it was a repeat.

It was as we know a beautiful early-fall day like today. We'd dropped my oldest off at 1st grade, and my wife and I went to a playground with the the other two. I got a text message from CNN (35 cents each then, or something, but I've had to keep them ever since) so we went to the car to catch the newsradio. I remember some guy claiming he'd seen a DC-3 flying down Fifth Avenue, never heard about that again. My wife was in a convenience store when the second plane hit, and I knew we were entering into bad times.
We rushed home and I remember sitting in front of the TV for the next day or two. I never saw the iconic jumpers, but I remember the live video as the towers collapsed. I couldn't raise my parents (retired and out of NY by then) but in the evening my father called to tell me.
I didn't lose anybody personally, but this was my city. My father had worked at 99 Church Street since before I was born, so I knew that neighborhood well, and I'd watched the World Trade Center going up. I'd been to the top a few times, straining to see the northeast Bronx.
At the time I'd been out of work since March. By the time it got to be mid-summer I'd given up expecting to find work until after Labor Day. I got a job with a school bus company right after New Year's, figuring I could support my family in the new order better as a truck driver than as an unskilled laborer.
I'd only been back to New York once since my oldest was born, 18 hours for a high school reunion in 1999, until last summer. Ground Zero (when did they name it that? When did "United We Stand" become the motto and "Proud to be an American" the anthem? I have the papers from that week) was a mandatory stop on my first visit back, last summer, as I was trying to figure things out after my wife died, by going back home.

I was a junior in high school in Pennsylvania at the time. The first plane struck between class periods. My French teacher had the radio on when I got to class and briefly explained what had happened. We made some idiotic joke and then shortly thereafter the second plane hit and I felt sick to my stomach. I was in a daze for awhile. I remember listening to Opie and Anthony, who gave a truly excellent broadcast that day, at work after school and being moved by a lot of what I heard.

Then I went to chemistry class, which was not canceled.

My chem class was canceled. Old prof who had fought in WWII said he just couldn't handle teaching that day, as it brought back too many memories of Pearl Harbour.

I was a high school student sitting in first period Biology. We were discussing meiosis vs. mitosis and my Social Studies teacher came in to tell the teacher something. The Biology teacher then announced that something had happened at the WTC. I had never been to New York City; and I couldn't imagine a "trade center." The entire thing went over my head at first. Was a trade center like a kiosk? Or a bazaar?

I went to my locker, where people were talking. Then I headed over to Algebra, my second period class, where the teacher turned on the TV. We watched the events unfold, but I, distracted, kept looking outside at the neatly trimmed basement fields. Fall in Chicago is cloudy and damp. The day was no exception. Unaware that the teacher had no plans to go ahead with our algebra test, I studied furiously and didn't mind the TV.

When I went home for lunch, my parents were watching TV (my dad had come home) and an omelet lay prepared for me on the table. What amazes me in retrospect was that I didn't know how much the world changed that day. I was just a kid with an algebra assignment to do and no interest in doing it. Often, they say, life is what happens when you least expect it.

My then-fiancee woke me up just past 6am PT after the second plane hit. I distinctly remember thinking it must be some sort of terrorist but having no idea who, of course. I was starting law school two weeks later, but at that point was still working at a local a/v store. I left for work around 9:30 PT and, at that time, had an unobstructed view of the Seattle skyline from the street in front of my house. I felt so certain that something amongst it would explode at any second. Anyway, at work we had tv's tuned to every news outlet imaginable. Needless to say, we didn't have a lot of business that day -- we just stood around all day and watched.

Hector: I'm guessing you were a Chicago student? Or did some other school start late?

Wallace -- UW, Seattle. Fall quarter starts at the end of September.

I was sitting in the flight surgeon's waiting room; I had an appointment for a required physical before getting a private pilot license.

We went through with it, even though by that time it was clear it would be a worthless piece of paper.

Does anyone remember where they were when they heard about Kennedy or the 1987 stock market crash?

Kennedy, sure. The '87 crash? Not at all.

I was in class.

"Two things stuck with me. The first was everyone there, a very liberal crowd, GOT IT. I am at a loss ot understand why they don't anymore. They were talking about nuking Saudi. They were not talking about terrorist rights. I know that is political, but its how i feel. Its all so depressing now, looking back. "

Yeah, why don't those goddamn liberals understand that the only logical reaction is to kill more brown people! Don't get mad at me for being a racist know-nothing; it's just how I feel.

You wonder why we're so divided now? It's because of inflammatory bullshit like that.

I was in the subway, approaching city hall station downtown, heading into work on the 13th floor of the woolworth building. The subway slowly halted- typical subway delays that you wait through every day. Except this one didn't end- we just sat there waiting to start again. After about 15 minutes one of the other riders ransacked his bag and found a little sports radio with earphones; he started waving the radio around until he could get it tuned in, and somehow was able to pick up the local news station, probably 1010 wins.

He turned pale; he said a second plane had just hit the other world trade center tower. I didn't know what he meant. We waited for the train to move.

Another half hour went by, with occasional updates from the man able to get the radio station- we looked at him in silence, nobody knew what to do. As the conductor walked by to reassure us, he said the tower had come down- it had fallen. The conductor looked at him, said "You're joking, right? My sister works for PATH in that building. Tell me this is a joke".

He just looked at her. A minute went by in silence and she started walking up the train again. Some length of time- I think an hour- went by and he reported that the other tower had fallen as well. He looked at us, said "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are at war". I thought he was a bit pretentious, but it was hard to disagree.

Finally they backed the train out to the previous station, had us get out and walk up the stairs into the beautiful September afternoon- cool, crisp, wonderful weather, with enormous clouds the color of a bruise covering the sky. The smell was what I remember most; cement, ashes, and electrical smoke. As I started to hike uptown, my cellphone rang, and I was finally able to tell my wife I wasn't dead.

I woke up to see Drudge report headlines, and receive from frantic IMs from friends. Rumors were rife, and one of my friends was saying that the State Department was under attack.

My first class in the morning was Turkish, followed by Islamic Civilizations, and then computer science in the afternoon.

Something I'll never forget... by the afternoon, the computer class was cancelled. Most of the students and faculty in the computer building were sitting around watching BBC news coverage as I remember. I was talking with one of the other students--an Indian grad student--who said "You should know that we Indians will stand with you Americans--we have to deal with this kind of thing from Muslims all the time."

Racist/etc yes, but rather prescient considering that nobody knew a thing by that point...

I had just gotten into work, my second week on the job, at a law firm in a high-rise in Chicago. I watched the first tower smoke for a while in a partner's corner office, keeping an eye on the Sears Tower the whole time. After the second plane hit, I left work and went looking for my wife, who was in the middle of interviewing as a 2L. Her stories were more interesting. One of the interviewers from Sidley (in the WTC) just went on interviewing people as if nothing had happened. Another burst into tears, turned around and composed himself, and then asked the interviewee to continue. The trains were running non-stop and the streets were jammed with traffic as everybody tried to get home to be with their families.

One interesting thing I do recall from my office -- a coworker who had served for many years in the military didn't stop working. She just kept working, although she looked upset. She apparently didn't want to go and watch or need to be around other people the same way most of us did. Made me appreciate the level of training they put people through in some ways.

What were you doing during Kennedy?

I was in the first semester of my junior year at Virginia Tech studying political science, sitting in a lounge at the Johnston Student Center before an international relations class with Jeff Corntassel. When we got to class, virtually everyone knew, with some people just sitting there quietly sobbing.

I don't even remember whether they canceled classes that afternoon.

I was at a west-coast military prep school that semester, earning my AFA appointment. We were all in the dining hall eating breakfast when the headmaster (Mrs. D, a woman we all loved and respected) burst through the door. On most days, she would greet us with a standard "good morning" to which we would all reply in kind and in unison. This morning, however, she looked angry. An angry Mrs. D usually meant there had been a late-night fight or someone had been caught sneaking into town. Not having access to television or the internet, we had idea why she wheeled a tv cart front and center and plugged the thing in.

The aircraft had already hit their targets in NYC. It was clear to all of us that this was no accident. The room was quiet. Those of us who had family in NYC (I do not) asked to use the telephone. It was when the towers fell that the spell was broken. The silence turned to shouts and prayers as they crumbled on live tv.

I know this smacks of melodrama. But, it was a life-changing experience for me to have this happen in those circumstances. We were all away from home. We all had hopes of getting a military commission. Each of us had reason to believe that the things we witnessed together would change the course of our lives.

At home, on-line, on a beta version of a brand-new Electronic Arts Massively-Multiplayer Online Game (which are basically chat mechanisms with something attached). People all over the world were on-line. Back then real-time chat was new. Someone said that a plane had hit the tower; I don't recall anyone thinking it was anything other than an accident. Only after the second plane hit, did people realize what was happening.

Immediately turned on CNN, saw what was happening, and tried to reach my wife, who was returning from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. She couldn't get back for four days.

Went outside, talked to a neighbor as we watched the fighter planes flying CAP over D.C. "Have you ever been so scared in your life?" she, a Navy captain's wife, asked. "No," I replied, "With them up there, it's over." A dumb answer, but reassuring to us both.

Went to the office, where the smoke from the Pentagon was easily visible from my window, and completed a filing on a "fighting words" appeal in Michigan. Didn't look out the window after the first time until appeal was sent.

I called my kids' school first, but was told that it was safer for them to stay there, as the school had already put into place its shelter plan (it's part of a monastery in D.C. and they are used to staying during emergencies). I went later anyway, and almost all the parents had already picked up their kids when I got there.

Left at mid-afternoon to coach my youth football team; practice was cancelled, and the team had set up to seek contributions of blood and funds for the Red Cross. We added American flags to their uniforms for the season.

What were you doing during Kennedy?

I was a Junior or Senior undergraduate Physics major, and I had an undergraduate teaching assistantship which involved being the Lab Instructor in a Science class for Elementary Ed. majors. Somebody stuck their head in the classroom door and said that the President had been shot; one of the students had a transistor radio and was able to get some news reports coming from Dallas. I didn't quite know what to do; I tried to keep my class going, but a bunch of the girls were crying, and finally my faculty adviser came in and said to cancel the class. And shortly thereafter, the entire University closed down for the rest of the day.

And of course the whole country was in shock for days &days. I still have rather vivid memories of the funeral procession on television: the caissons, the riderless horse, Caroline, John-John, etc., etc. ... Walter Cronkite narrating ....

The first major world event I remember was Nixon's resignation after Watergate. It was on the TV at my grandparents' house, and I asked what was happening, and my grandfather said something like, "the President is in trouble for doing something very bad." I was 5.

Kennedy - apparently I was in a stroller in the vicinity of Brooklyn College.
Martin Luther King - I was at a neighbor's, and she said "Run home and tell your parents Martin Luther King has been killed." I didn't know what those words meant.
Black Monday (1987) - I was in a software startup that was already running on fumes. I think none of us had any stock because we needed money for things like food and rent. At the time there was that same feeling of dread around the office.
(While we're at it: RFK: I remember my grandmother took to her bed. Moon landing: we came home from the summer bungalow to watch it. Mets winning the World Series: saw that on the same B&W TV later that year. Challenger: At my first job at the former Sperry Gyroscope, soon to be UNiSYS, someone had a radio. It was more WTF? than dread. Columbia: I think because of the Jews-in-space aspect I was watching for the landing when that happened.)

A friend of mine is an American of Israeli descent, and we exchange Rosh Hashonah cards. He'd sent his out early that year, and he wrote a little note about his family in Israel, and how thankful he was to live in a country where we didn't have to worry about terrorist attacks.

In high school in New York City. During gym class. I was new to the school and a guy I'd pegged as a class clown came up to me and (as I interpreted it) dead-panned "someone just flew a plane into the World Trade Center." I thought he was trying to tell a joke and figured the neighborly thing to do was to let out an amiable guffaw. Then I saw the gym teacher fighting to hold back tears as he tried to get in touch with his brother who worked in the upper stories of the WTC. They kept us in school, and I spent the rest of the day sitting in the library trading gallows humor with my classmates. I made my first high school friends that day. (I guess it has to be said that 9/11 was an effective icebreaker.)

It took me until mid-October to notice that things never quite felt the same as they had on September 10th.

I had just come to work from a routine medical appointment (where I had my first elevated blood sugar).

I got to my office at Bellevue Hospital and heard from some coworkers about the first plane. I recalled aloud the plane that hit the Empire State Building in the 1940's.

Then the second plane hit, and I realized that it was no accident, but a deliberate attack.

All of the doctors were sent to the Emergency Room to wait for casualties. After a few hours, none presented, and we realized that everyone either died or was not hurt badly.

They sent the gynecologic oncologists (my specialty) to the Labor and Delivery suite where we would perform emergency abdominal surgery in the cesarean section rooms if necnesary. It was not.

At some point, it was possible to smell the results of the explosion.

At 4 pm they sent us home. It took me 4 hours to get back to my home in Park Slope, Brooklyn because I couldn't drive below Canal street, and it took forever to get across the Williamsburgh Bridge. This was out of the way. In Brooklyn,there was a lot of random traffic diversion.

I was getting out of my car, about to board a BART train to downtown San Francisco, when I heard on NPR that "a plane seems to have hit" one of the World Trade Center towers. I thought the "plane" was a Cessna, not a jumbo jet, and didn't think too much of it. After I got off BART, at Montgomery Street, I saw people standing in front of a television showing in the windows of Fidelity Investments, talking about how a second jet had just hit. I went upstairs to my office at the US Securities &Exchange Commission, which decided to sent everyone home for the day about an hour later. I remember talking with a colleague how it likely was the work of Bin Laden (I had just watched a Frontline documentary on him and Al Qaeda).

I picked up my daughter from kindergarten, and went home. I read in the papers the name of an attorney I vaguely knew, who was on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.

I was in an OR for an all day case. Only a few snippets of information were relayed to us by the staff who could be glued to televisions in the lounges and offices. On hearing of the first plane I thought it must have been an accident, most likely a smaller plane. One hearing of the second, the possibility of a willful act still hadn't crossed our minds; we thought surely it was a rubber-necking pilot or news aircraft. Chalk that up to being simple midwesterners maybe. Or that we were willing to attribute to humans a greater capacity for stupid error than for cruelty.

With our oldest then being just 8 (plus 6, 3 and 1) we decided to stay away from television for a week and only slowly share the evolving crisis with the kids. I spent a lot of time outside with the kids and had them marvel at the bluest skies we had ever seen; only time in my life that the midwest sky was not marked by contrails from the fly-over crowd. (leaning toward my window I can see three contrails right now)

I just started my new job in Baltimore. The admin started panicking and shouting that they were attacking Baltimore and I ran to see what she was talk about. She said they had hit the World Trade Center (which is a 20 story building in Baltimore). I assured her that 'they' could give a crap about Baltimore and that we were safe.

Then, having just left NYC, I worked at NYU-Downtown (Beekman) Hospital, I thought of my friends who were working at the closest hospital to the attack and my barber who worked in WTC in NY. and then I panicked. My wife was on a plane back from Amsterdam...

9-11-01. I was working for a Federal agency in D.C. that shall go nameless. Some West-Coast colleagues and I went to a morning meeting at another agency located on Pennsylvania Avenue to coordinate our respective activities on an issue of common interest.

During the meeting, the building we were in was evacuated because of the Pentagon hit and reports of an unknown number of other planes being inbound toward D.C. They forgot to tell any of us holed up in the conference room. Heard a muffled "boom" at one point that I thought was construction, but later learned was a sonic boom from F-15s from Langley going overhead toward Pennsylvania with afterburners on.

Around 10:30 the meeting ended and we wandered out. Much frantic scurrying and sound of sirens on the street; in other words, a pretty normal day in D.C. The Left-Coasters and I, still being clueless, stopped in at a coffee place on the way back to my office. We ran into a new political appointee in our agency with responsibility over the subject of our meeting. One Left-Coast manager started describing the meeting. Then to score points, he asked if the politico was going to a conference planned for the following day in NYC. The politico answered with the equivalent of "you're an F*ing idiot," grabbed his coffee, and started high-tailing it up the street. His parting words were "you're on your own!"

A bystander in the coffee joint who overheard the exchange correctly assumed we'd just emerged from a cocoon and explained what had happened. When I got back to my office, I learned more from the frantic voicemails my wife had left. The Internet was down. Turned on the radio. Heard reports of panicked people driving on the sidewalks in downtown D.C., unconfirmed reports that bombs had gone off at the State Dept. and U.S. Capital, and other assorted scary things. Decided the smartest thing to do was stay put until things calmed down. When I eventually rode the Metro home some hours later, a lot of very dazed people got on at stations near the Pentagon.

A very bad day. And rather tense days to follow -- it's unnerving to see snipers on the roof of the National Archives building as you come out of the Metro station across the street. But any stories I have pale in comparison to what my friends who were in the Pentagon at the time had to say.

Just watched on TV at home (I remember thinking: they're not going to be able to repair the South Tower; they're going to have to tear it down.) After they fell, I just went to work. I had an interview scheduled and the candidate called me to ask if we were going ahead. I told him, sure, regular work day. I was one of only five people who even showed up; after an hour, we got a call that the mayor (Willie Brown) ordered all downtown buildings closed. Before I left my desk, I called a friend of mine who used to work with me at the Pentagon; I had moved to California and he had taken a job on the top floor of the North Tower. I later found out that he had been on the street outside for the collapse and just got covered with dust, but at the time, I got his voice mail, cheerful, standard greeting, "Leave your message at the tone..."

What do you say? "Hey, Mark, it's me, if you're not dead, call me back." I listened to his recorded message and just left my name and number.

I had no internet at home at that time, so I watched TV until, at about 3 pm, NY1 announced that the subways were running again. Then I went in to work so I could access the internet and email people.

I was in law school. I'd arrived early and was in an empty classroom to plug into the network. Someone came into a chat room I was in and said "A plane just hit the World Trade Center." Like most people, I was thinking of a little Cessna or something. I started trying to check news sites, and I ended up having to go to Sky News in England before I could access one. I immediately packed up and rushed home, and I turned on the TV at home just in time to see the Pentagon had been hit.

I called my parents, then got online for the rest of the day to get in touch with my scattered friends and family. I went back to that chatroom, and we had everyone watching a different news channel so we could compare and find out what was going on. I remember having the local news on all day instead of a national channel because I lived in the middle of downtown Chicago and I was afraid they were going to evacuate us.

I mostly remember all the misinformation that was going around. No one knew what was going on, how many planes there were, or anything. Someone came online with a "confirmed" report from one of the news stations that the Sears Tower had been hit. I looked out the window and said "nope, that one's wrong." A little later I heard a "confirmed" report that the Seattle Space Needle had been hit.

The neighbor used to live in the building that was torn down to erect the Federal Building which was destroyed in the Oklahoma City bombing.

I was in Denver and had joined a conference call with someone in New York and London just as news was starting to come out. 2 years prior, I had spent some time helping my former employer build out a new facility at 20 Broad Street from their old offices in One Liberty Plaza (which sustained heavy damage on 9/11) and more recently had spent a few nights in the WTC Marriott as well.

Initially we thought it was a repeat of what had happened years earlier at the Empire State building, but when the second plane hit we all knew what it meant. Our NY host quickly wrapped the call and I spent the rest of the day glued to the television. The most searing image for me was taken inside a Deli I used to frequent there across Liberty Street as the ash cloud blew by, immediately turning day to night as startled customers looked out and those outside came up to the doors seeking refuge.

In an undergrad Class that started at 8am (CST), a student walked in late to class, interrupted the professor and said "I think there has been a plane crash in New York". To wit the professor snidely replied that this was class and not to worry about things out of our control. Needless to say, he felt terrible at the next class and on Thursday we spent the entire class discussing the situation.

I remember looking out the window at the end of the hall on the top floor of the GMU law school building and seeing smoke rising from the Pentagon. I think this was before it was even reported that the Pentagon had been hit. I remember thinking that I felt like the world was ending.

I was in college in upstate NY. My morning class that day was cancelled in advance because the professor was out of town, so I was sleeping when the planes hit. Woke up and had about a dozen instant messages (as this was back in the day of AOL IM), and it took me a few minutes of watching TV to figure out what was going on.

Then I spent the next two hours trying to get in touch with my dad, who worked in 7 WTC. The details of which buildings were damaged and destroyed were very sketchy those first few hours, and of course all the cell phone lines were dead, so it wasn't until the early afternoon that I was able to get ahold of him and find out that he was okay.

That whole day was a daze, and the reactions where I was were noticeably different between the native NYers (like myself) and those who had little connection to NYC.

In my office in Boston. Working on a motion for summary judgment. I heard the managing partner tell his secretary something about a plane hitting WTC. I assumed it was a Cessna. I checked NY Times on-line and felt sick to my stomach (this was after the second plane hit). We repaired to another partner's office with a TV and watched until the second tower collapsed. An attorney observed that it was a progressive collapse. Our office shut down, but I stayed and finished my brief. On the subway ride home, I've never felt the silence more. I remember the news being sketchy and contradictory, but I felt certain it was muslim fanatics. I feared it was state sponsored &that nuclear weapons would be deployed against Iran. Had a case gone somewhat differently, I would have been on AA #11.

I was flying a small plane in central Virginia. Doing training, with an instructor, for my instrument rating. Air traffic control never mentioned it. We landed and learned about it for the first time when we saw a TV.

I was on the way to work, heard the radio broadcast of the first plane, and was still on the road when the second hit.
I recalled the Japanese admiral's view of the attack on Pearl Harbor. "Sleeping giant", indeed.
What I remember most was how little we knew that day. Was there any reason until afterwards to think it was only three--or four--airplanes? Were there truck bombs ready to go? Mall shooters with automatic weapons? Private aircraft with a school as the target?
Nobody knew much, and what we thought we knew was, half the time, wrong.
The next day, on business I called an office of a firm we do business with whose home office was in NYC. Asked if they'd heard anything. Nope. But the regional office was functioning. So I thought of resilience and was, strangely, comforted.
I don't cry about this stuff, but rage mightily.

As for the other dates;
in 63 I was in 1st grade and came home to find my mother crying--she had met him in 60 in a coffeeshop in northern Wisconsin, and he was the only Democrat she ever voted for.
In 87, I have no idea about the stock market crash, but in 86 when Challenger exploded I was watching it while having lunch in an Officer's club in South Korea.
No idea about RFK or MLK

I was in my last year of undergrad at UF. I had a 9:30 AM history class which had a quiz scheduled. I went to the library at 8 am to bone up on the material. As I was walking through campus I remembered hearing whispers about the "twin towers." We took the quiz (it lasted 15 minutes) and then our professor informed us that the two towers had been hit by planes, and not to "jump to conclusions." A student informed him that the Pentagon had just been hit and the towers had collapsed. He immediately cancelled class, and I walked to the student union, but the TVs were small. Florida has a lot of people with NY connections so there were a bunch of students crying, etc. I still didn't know what was meant by "collapse" until I arrived at my friends' apartment near campus. It was then that I saw the videotape and fully understood what was happening. We watched the coverage for the next few hours and finally had enough and went out for a late lunch. I remember going to the bank to get cash to donate at a special student mass, I left and accidentally turned right on a red that wasn't allowed. I was pulled over, told the cop i was "distracted" and he said, "we all are son" and let me go. The only time I've ever avoided a traffic ticket....

I forgot to add that, as I only had a dial-up account at the time, I didn't try going online at all because I wanted to keep the phone line open. My ISP at the time had a bunch of data nodes about a half mile from the WTC that got hit by dust from the towers, and failed, leaving a lot of their customers without Internet access for three days.

Iambatman

Right, its inflammatory to point out that the left seems to have forgotten everything they knew that day.

I mean, my God, I actually hear liberals say, “Iran’s President would never nuke Israel. It would be suicidal.” What could be a better example of failing to learn the lessons of 9-11 than arguing that a crazy Muslim would never do anything suicidal?

But I get it. You wish we could just go back to the way it was, ignoring the threat and the threat ignoring you. But the “peace” after the fall of the berlin wall was illusory. The forces of evil were gathering against us, striking here and there, becoming bolder each time. 9-11 was the result of us thinking wrongly that there was a vacation from history. There isn’t.

But let me be very clear on this. Every party, and even some of our best presidents made that mistake. We didn’t take it seriously enough. Certainly as far back as the iran hostage crisis, and probably more realistically, as far back as Munich. We should have known. We should have understood that something evil was being unleashed in the world and we should have confronted it when it was weaker than it is now. We didn’t--and when I say we, I mean myself too—and the price we paid was 9-11. And one of the questions on the ballot this November is whether we still understood what we learned that day.

I will tell the truth. I am deeply depressed about this. I think there are enough people in denial that we will not find the will to do what has to be done. And we might wake up tomorrow to find that Israel had been wiped off the map, or that our buildings are burning again. And sadly, I have to wonder if we would all GET IT that day, as we did back on September 11, 2001.

And maybe that is too political. But the dead deserve for the truth to be told, plainly, so that we can live up to our promise: never again.

I was at work in Wayne, PA for the ad agency I used to work for and my best friend/roommate was home sick. I'd just gotten my first smartphone the day before (it was a Handspring Visor Edge with the Visorphone) and had been really looking forward to getting it set up. That got put on hold when our facilities manager, who was a friend of mine, stopped by my desk and asked if I'd heard that a plane had hit the WTC. I hadn't, and it seemed a little unreal. Accident maybe? He stopped by again a little later to tell me a second plane had hit.

We'd had a client meeting scheduled in our boardroom, but instead both half the company and the client reps were watching TV on the big projector screen in the boardroom. After a while, I went back to see my boss and asked if I could go home. My boss OK'd it. I really wanted to be with my best friend, and nobody knew what was going to happen next.

The part that seemed to be the strangest afterwards was how perfect the weather was. It had been perfect that day, and was perfect for the rest of the week.

I was in Alameda, CA, driving my dog out to Bay Farm Island for his morning walk. The news came over the car radio.

I returned home, turned on the TV, woke up my wife, and told her, "Get up. You need to see something. Remember how they tried to destroy the World Trade Center in New York back in '93? Well, they just succeeded."

"And maybe that is too political. But the dead deserve for the truth to be told, plainly, so that we can live up to our promise: never again."

Why don't you just shut the hell up and stop using the victims of a tragedy for your political rantings. And if you think nuking Saudi Arabia is so great an idea, such a great sign that someone "gets it," why don't you find a candidate who supports that?

I guess you'd have to write in Ann Coulter or some other nutjob, 'cuz I don't know what party has that in their platform.

In short, shut up. No one wants to hear it. You should be depressed. Your ideas are stupid and discredited. And you have the gall to piss and moan about how divided this country is after constantly questioning loyalties and pointing fingers.

I was teaching a morning course at a San Antonio university. A student entered my class and said two planes had hit the twin towers.

Incredulous, I replied, "Two planes?" (The student confirmed.)

I remember thinking out loud, "How could two planes hit the towers in such a short period of time? That's no accident."

I returned to my office to find a message from my wife that confirmed the incident.

I canceled a later course.

Stuck in traffic on northbound I-395 next to the Pentagon. When WTOP-FM first reported that a plane had apparently crashed into the WTC, my first thought was how a plane had crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945. But that, I reflected, had happened because there was a thick fog over Manhattan and the plane lost its way. I looked up into the clear, cloudless sky and thought that, unless the weather was much different in New York, this probably wasn't a repeat of what happened in 1945.

But I had read that the designers of the WTC, thinking of the 1945 incident, had built it to withstand a crash by a Boeing 747. So, I thought, at least the buildings won't collapse. (I didn't realize that the planes that crashed into the towers were bigger and carrying considerably more fuel than a 747.)

Reports started coming in about possible hijackings, and then it was announced that a second plane had hit the south tower, and the newscasters started talking about how this was pretty clearly an act of terrorism, and one that few people would have the resources to pull off other than Osama bin Laden. I looked to my left and saw the Pentagon and mused that if terrorists were interested in attacking prominent targets, that would be a pretty good one. I didn't realize that Osama &Co. had already thought of that.

When I finally got to my office (on Pennsylvania Avenue across the street from the FBI), I could overhear the secretaries talking about what they had been hearing. Among the rumors was one that a bomb had gone off at the State Department, which turned out to be BS. I couldn't pull up CNN on the computer to see what was actually happening, and a little after 10 am, I got a call from my wife asking if I had heard what had happened. I told her that I knew was that planes had crashed into the WTC, and that beside that there was a lot of speculation. She then told me that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon and that one of the WTC towers had collapsed. Holy crap, I thought, this is really starting to suck.

Shortly afterwards, we were told the office was closing. My first thought was that, if terrorists were attacking, I'd be more vulnerable in my car trying to inch my way out of town than I would be in my office. (I was remembering how Mir Aimal Kasi had taken an AK-47 and shot people who were stuck in traffic at the entrance to the CIA headquarters.) But I wasn't given any choice, and had to leave the building and make my way home.

While in the car, I learned that the second tower had fallen, and that the Pentagon had been attacked as well. Traffic in Washington was awful until I got to the 3rd Street tunnel, at which point I whizzed home. There was virtually no southbound traffic on I-395 (except for pedestrian traffic--there were lots of people walking on the highway). I could smell the aviation fuel burning as I drove past the Pentagon. Back home, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, all was calm, and it was like a pleasant early fall day. Very eerie.

Just about to leave my apartment in Chelsea when I saw the first report of a fire in one of the WTC towers. Didn't know what to make of it, so left and got on the subway to go up to my office around 42nd and Lex. Got to my office shortly after tower #2 was hit. Turned around and went home - too scared to take the subway (which was stopped anyway), so walked home 30+ blocks. Worried about my sister, who works on Wall St., for hours. Heard she was OK, then worried about my cousin - a NYC fireman (he survived). Later in the day, I walked a few blocks over to West Street to watch the firemen and see what I could do to help.

I was in my morning free period between classes, senior year of high school. There were 7 of us who had that same free period (small high school, plus a weird combo of unpopular classes being required to have that particular period free), and we were in the Senior Lounge. The radio was on, and a morning show DJ said a plane had hit one of the towers. We thought it was some tasteless joke, so we turned the TV in there on and to the news, so we were watching when the second plane hit, and we knew it wasn't an accident, so we decided to split up and go knock on classrooms to interrupt classes and tell the teachers, since we thought we should let people know what had happened.

HGB:

You are right about iambatman.
You just left out the part about him being an offensive, classless jerk as he goes about it.

Best,
ATS

You stay classy, Andrew.

I was a student at Air Command and Staff College at the time. That morning, I was exercising in the garage when my wife walked in and said an airplane hit the World Trade Center. The first thing I thought of was that an aircraft had hit the Empire State Building in or just after WWII, and that this was just another accident. But I still went inside to check CNN, and that's when I saw the second aircraft hit.

I had been up all night at home in Los Angeles and went to bed just before all hell broke loose in New York City. I was exhausted and old, and I slept about 12 hours in blissful ignorance. On waking around 5 p.m., I listened to a telephone message from my girlfriend; it sounded incoherent, something about a plane crash at the World Trade Center. I turned on the TV just as the time NBC was showing a long repeat of a segment from the morning Today Show. That told me that two planes had hit the WTC. At the same time, I got on the Internet and found a story on the BBC that had a diagram of the WTC towers. It took some time to grasp what they meant; it gradually dawned on me that the two towers had collapsed. I was stunned. And then I learned the Pentagon had been hit, too, which was even more shocking since it underlined--with punctuation marks--how vulnerable we were.

The NBC Today Show replay gave me some idea of what it would have been like had I seen the disaster unfold live. What I remember most vividly is the quizzical tone in Katie Couric's voice after the second plane hit; slowly she realized that the unthinkable had happened and worked up the courage to give voice to it.

My mother took my sister and me to the air raid shelters in Manchester, England when we were children during the Second War, and I played in sandy bomb craters after the war. Huge swaths of rubble still dotted Manchester when we left England eight years after the war ended. We thought we had left that all behind us half a century ago. As I digested what had happened that September 11, the thought crossed my mind that that was a delusion, that it ought not to surprise me--were there time to be surprised--were I to see a flash from a nuclear explosion through my living room window. Blessed are the peacemakers.

JFK assassination: I was 20, a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. We students gathered in the old Student Union, a collection of Marine barracks left from World War II, and listened over the public address system to the radio as the drama taking place 1500 miles away in Dallas unfolded. Over the next 90 minutes, the reports got worse and worse: the President has been shot ... Mrs. Kennedy covered in the President's blood ... a report the President has been shot in the head ... a priest was seen entering the hospital ... a priest has said he has delivered last rites to the President ... President Kennedy has died. I remember Everett Dirksen, the gruff-voiced Republican Senator from Illinois, trying to reassure us: "The nation still stands, it still lives." I spent the rest of the day writing a story on what I heard and saw that day for the student newspaper; it kept me occupied on one of the saddest days of my life.

MLK assassination: I was at a meeting of the New England Resistance, an anti-war group, in Boston when a young man, almost hysterical, ran in yelling that Martin Luther King had just been killed. We knew it was true immediately; there were gasps and moans. We were devastated, but we were not surprised or even shocked. We had already seen Medgar Evers and Malcolm X assassinated. We turned to making plans to help the injured and the needy in the event there was urban unrest.

RFK assassination: It was my last day of law school and I was pulling an all-nighter typing my third-year paper for the constitutional law seminar led by Archibald Cox, who served as Solicitor General under Robert Kennedy as Attorney General. As I typed, I listened all night to the radio for the latest on Senator Kennedy's condition. He had been transferred to the Good Smaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, where my son was to be born just a year later. In the wee hours came the inevitable announcement from press secretary Frank Mankiewicz: "Senator Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1:44 A.M. today, June 6, 1968.... He was 42 years old." That morning I walked to the law school for the last time to turn in the paper, and picked up a copy of the one-page extra of the Crimson, which announced that Robert F. Kennedy, class of '48, had died. The following day I was back home in Los Angeles, which was now regarded as another Dallas.

Well said, r78. I'm sick of people who go around wearing United We Stand pins or what-have-you and then turning around and calling anyone who votes differently a traitor. They can go straight to hell. Say what you want about that opinion, at least its an honest one.

P.S. The trial judge set up a TV in a small conference room so that the parties in the trial scheduled for that day and their respective attorneys, who had none too much liking for each other, could watch events unfolding. (The judge hadn't decided yet whether the trial would start that afternoon. When the scope of the attacks became clear, there was no question that the trial would be postponed to a later date.)

I was at a resort on the Red Sea in Egypt attending a two week seminar on international intellectual property law. There were no Americans there -- all Egyptians and Germans.

The resort's BBC feed had gone down but I happened to be clicking past a Spanish-language news channel. I saw the second plane hit, live. From what little I could make out, I gleaned that the Pentagon had also been bombed. At that point, I was 100% convinced that the United States was under military attack, but from whom, I had no idea.

I ran to find some of my German colleagues. We found a German news channel and they were able to translate for me. After we figured out that it was just four hijacked planes, I was pretty relieved. The Germans, on the other hand, were all totally freaked out and convinced that German cities were also going to be attacked.

Suddenly, Egypt seemed like a much scarier place for an American to be. I managed to get back to the United States without incident around a week later, but I did not enjoy the rest of my trip. Even though I had been quite the international traveler, I have not left the country since September 2001. My passport expired in 2002 and I never bothered to renew it.

Iambatman

> Why don't you just shut the hell up and stop using the victims of a tragedy for your political rantings. And if you think nuking Saudi Arabia is so great an idea, such a great sign that someone "gets it," why don't you find a candidate who supports that?

A tragedy? No, an attack. Don’t dishonor their memories by pretending it was no different from a tornado.

And “getting it” wasn’t my way of saying we should nuke Saudi Arabia, but at least on that day they understood there was an enemy to be fought.

> And you have the gall to piss and moan about how divided this country is after constantly questioning loyalties and pointing fingers.

And now you are hallucinating about me.

I was doing some work in a chemistry lab at Drexel (in Philly) when someone told me a plane had crashed into one of the WTC towers. I went into the lounge and watched the live feed; I saw the second plane hit live. I think I saw one of the buildings collapse live, too, but I was also reading a lot of news on the Internet.

There were so many rumors flying around. We heard there were snipers or something like that at the 30th Street Amtrak station or the big post office across the street.

One of the guys I worked with was obviously Arabic, and named Mohammed and I walked with him to the train station. I remember a driver revved his engine as Mo crossed the street.

I was on my way to work in San Francisco with my daughter who was doing an externship at the California Attorney General's Office. We stopped off to get coffee in the basement cafe in the State Building and the employees there told us a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We then went to my office and ran up Fox News on the internet and saw that a second plane had hit. We decided to go home to the East Bay and picked up my daughter's husband on the way. His I-Bank had a small office in the World Trade Center and the parents of its employees had been frantically calling the SF office to see if anyone had heard from their children.

And yet, it's conservatism that's getting spanked by the American people.

But don't take that as any message that your tactics are stale and weak. By all means, keep trotting out the bloody flag and Giuliani's nonsense. Don't mind the majority of us; dig yourselves a little deeper.

Iambatman

> An attack obviously can't be a tragedy as well.

The left always wants to pretend it is just a tragedy.

> Or maybe it's not a tragedy to certain folks because they were able to make so much political hay of it and those killed were from New York.

Oh, so now you imagine that Americans with (r)’s after their name were glad it happened. Lovely. Perfect example of how the left has done much more dividing than anyone else.

> Ignoring facts is a time honored tradition by bigots, cowards, and fools, after all.

More like ignoring the unhinged lunacy of people like you who say such hateful things. Hell, you are exactly what I was talking about.

> The only hallucinations here are your own. First, you and a couple of your buddies

Um, its hallucinatory to say I have any “buddies” here.

> All I said is you're fearmongering ideologue looking for scapegoats.

Well, first, you didn’t say that. You said this:

> And you have the gall to piss and moan about how divided this country is after constantly questioning loyalties and pointing fingers.

And if you had said what you are saying now, that would have been equally a hallucination.

> You said people who wanted us to nuke some generic group of brown people, and I quote, "GOT IT."

You interpreted what I wrote in the worst possible faith, and I have already straightened you out about what I meant.

Bad faith, toward a fellow American. So who is dividing us right now? You are, with your decision to intentionally apply the worst possible interpretation of my words, by hallucinating motivations and even friendships for which there was no evidence.

Or maybe what really got you so overheated and angry was I hit a little too close to the truth.

> And yet, it's conservatism that's getting spanked by the American people.

And there is yet another example of how divisive your rhetoric is. Defending this nation should not be the principle of one American movement; it should be the one of all. And it *was* a mere 48 years ago, when Kennedy was sworn in. And advancing human freedom should not be the principle of one American movement, but of all. And it *was*. Kennedy spoke of bearing any burden necessary to see freedom advance throughout the world. Democrats, liberals used to believe that. But somewhere between Kennedy and Carter they lost their way.

Saying America should not lose in Iraq should never be a Democratic or Republican principle. It should be an American principle. Saying we cannot allow the Iranians to complete the holocaust and hold the world hostage with nuclear weapons should be every good American’s cause. And yet today the “liberals” sound like the Southern Democrats just before the Civil War and their Copperhead Allies up North. Michael Moore declares that the Iraqi people were happy to be enslaved. People actually say that the principles of the Declaration of Independence, that all persons are created with an equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, only applies to Americans, just as Roger Taney claimed that the same document only applied to whites. To borrow from Lincoln, when you say that you don’t care if a nation is ruled by a tyrant, or free, you “blow out the moral lights around us.” When you declare “a policy of ‘don't care’ on a question about which all true men do care” such as when Barack Obama declares that he is determined to leave even as he states that doing so would probably lead to genocide, you give up what it means to be an American. American defense, and the spread of freedom cannot be the cause of one party or one movement.

And I weep for my country that it seems to be exactly the case. If there is only one party that believes in these things—and the way the democrats excommunicated Joe Lieberman suggests it is—then I am a one party man. But I didn’t create this situation, this division. Every liberal who lost faith in what America was about did.

And if your ignorance and your bigotry toward those yearning to be free is ascendant, then I will be depressed.

But then it’s the warrior who is leading in the polls right now, isn’t it?

Scooby

Amen.

John

> and yes, A.W., you did say that above

I didn’t deny it. I just said it wasn’t that I wanted Saudi to be nuked, but they actually recognized it was serious. And they did.

> was a time of sober introspection, with no sign of the invective A.W. recalls from his classmates in YLS.

Well, if on 9-11 you never said, at any point in the day, “this is war” then you are among the people who apparently never got it.

> Everyone -- on either side -- who brings their petty bickering to even this hallowed space had ought to feel ashamed of themselves.

And if we as a country cannot find the will to stop the next 9-11, or worse, than all of that tragedy is for nothing.

When Lincoln came to Gettyburg, he didn’t just quietly reflect, etc. He gave a rousing battle cry. He said we had to take from the dead the grim determination to ensure the survival of democracy and a new birth of freedom—or else those union soldiers who died would have died in vain.

And when Martin Luther King spoke at the graveside of four little girls murdered in the bombing of the 16th St. Baptist Church, he didn’t merely quietly reflect. He stood at their graves and extolled the people of this nation that those who hate must stop hating; and those who know it is wrong to hate, had to find their conscience and courage to rise up against it. Either that or those little girls would have died in vain.

I am not as eloquent as Lincoln or Dr. King, but we dishonor the lives of every person who died on 9-11 if we don’t learn from that day and hold those lessons in our hearts. And frankly not everyone has done that.

John Armstrong said:

Anyone who reads what I usually say knows where my sentiments lie, but that is not the point here. Everyone -- on either side -- who brings their petty bickering to even this hallowed space had ought to feel ashamed of themselves.

Hear hear.

I rose early — the habit of a lifetime —that Tuesday. At not yet six in the morning, I was preparing to do business from my home office in Northern California and listening to a talk radio show on which I had often been a guest. My screens were coming up and my TV was showing the news on mute as I poured coffee and went in to sit down. I just happened to catch the very beginning of the coverage of the first attack. I called in to the producer of the radio show to tell her about it; they had had no inkling.

It was heart-wrenching, surreal, eerie, shocking and all the while ineffably sad and yet evocative of deep anger against those who had perpetrated this unforgivable perfidy, We all heard their gasps and sobs — mostly stifled, sometimes not — over the air from my two good friends, the man and woman who co-hosted the show. As they watched the TV in their studio, they tuned back and forth to stations I, too, was watching. They shared the experience with their audience, so very many of whom were in their cars, their kitchens, their offices or otherwise away from a television on that terrible morning. They were their eyes, watching this horror unfold, as we all witnessed in our various ways this unthinkable tragedy made all too real.

I remember wondering if our attackers had picked that bright, clear morning and the media center of the country (if not the entire world) in order to ensure that as many people as possible, all over the world, would see what they had done to our country. As I realized I would never be able to forget those images, I wondered if that was exactly what they wanted: their evil triumph seared into the collective consciousness of all who would ever see it. Bin Laden, as we have learned since, is on audio tape as far back as 1986, clearly naming the USA as his greatest enemy, and specifically identifying our economy as a target because of what he perceived was its effect on Muslim countries. The idea of striking the WTC may have been in his mind that long ago, but I think the knowledge is also critically important that he had committed to attacking us long before our troops entered Saudi Arabia to push Iraq back out of Kuwait

Iambatman

> Yeah, I'm sure Dr. King would be a huge fan of the Iraq war.

I didn’t cite Martin Luther King for supporting the war, but for talking about the inherent value and appropriateness of honoring the dead with action, not just say, “gosh, ain’t that too bad.”

But to meet you on that point, Martin Luther King is more of a pacifist than I am so he might hate the war just because it is war. But then again, he did say this, about a man (Bonhoeffer) who helped in an assassination attempt on Hitler: “if your opponent has a conscience, then follow Gandhi. But if you enemy has no conscience, like Hitler, then follow Bonhoeffer."

Saddam didn’t have a conscience, so Bonhoeffer would seem the most rational example to follow, if we are going to apply Martin Luther King’s principles. But what he actually would have done faced with that circumstance is a matter of rational disagreement.

But Martin Luther King is a good example of how the left has abandoned its own principles. He said injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere; but the left seems to think that you can keep millions of Muslims under a dictator’s boot and it won’t bite us in the ass down the road. Most of us should have figured out the folly of that approach on 9-11.

> I also love how you associate anyone who disagrees with you on Iraq with Michael Moore.

I didn’t say you were necessarily in his camp, but clearly modern liberals are. I mean do you think it was conservatives who bought tickets to his lame propaganda, especially Fahrenheit 9-11? And I certainly don’t recall too many liberals complaining about it afterword, with the obvious exception of a few principled liberals like David Zucker and Joe Lieberman.

> But teacher, I wasn't fightin'. It was that stupid liberal kid I kept hittin'.

Most teachers recognize that the person to punish isn’t the kid who fights back, but the kid who hits first.

> And talk about bad faith interpretations: my reference to your "buddies" was obviously a colloquial way of referring to a couple of other posters here.

And of associating me with actions I did not take, know of, or express approval of. But nice try attempting to turn it around.

King believed in redistribution of wealth, for Godsake, and we're supposed to believe he's some sort of neocon, not to mention his vocal opposition to the Vietnam war.

But we're supposed to believe he's some kind of neocon. And yes, Precious, you did cite Dr. King to try to justify the war. That was your whole fucking point.

What a 'tard.

I'll call out bullshit wherever I see it because that's what being a patriot means to me. I'm not gonna give anyone a pass on suggesting that just a little genocide is OK because they happen to say it on 9/11.

If OK doesn't like it, he can delete my comments. But you ain't the barkeep.

"If anyone back in 1963 criticized Rev. King for 'politicizing' their eulogy, we don’t see that behavior is inappropriate, to defend my very right to make the kinds of comments I have been making here."

You definitely have the right to spout whatever kind of nonsense you like, Precious. Thank God we live in a nation where the jingoists and know-nothings have not taken that right away. And my "tolerance" as you call it is this: I will not seek censorship of your provenly racist, cowardly, and foolish view. But I will always say that morally, you should shut your lying yap.

Because you *are* a racist, Precious. You openly applauded the notion that we should nuke the brown people because some *other* brown people attacked the US (and you'll note I have no problem using that word, *or* calling it a tragedy, though now I suppose you'll cravenly whine that I didn't say "super-duper attack" or some such). Not only that, but you apparently think nuking the brown people would be for their own good-- talk about White Man's Burden! (And I'm sure you enlisted in the Armed Forces to save those brown people you claim to be so concerned for.) And now you try to hide behind Dr. King. How pathetic. How weak. How cowardly.

Minor correction:

> I would have favored invading us first

to

> I would have favored invading Saudi first...

I think i need more caffine to keep away the typo fairy. :-)

Iambatman

> I did, and Army, to answer your questions.

Well, apparently you were asleep on the day they taught you about the value of civilian control of the military. Either that or maybe you are another poser, because I have never met a real veteran who used the chickenhawk trope before in my life. The vets I know get angry when they hear that as another betrayal of our founding principles.

But hey since you want to create an oligarchy run by the military a la starship troopers, where the only people who can support war are those who fought in one, why don’t we hold the next presidential election solely in our military and see how it comes out? The claim that the war is only supported by people who didn’t serve is belied by the fact that our military overwhelmingly does support the war. Take this man for instance: http://www.beldar.org/beldarblog/2008/09/credibility.html

> And since I don't support Iran or China I have no reason to move there

The point is, you would impose suffering on others you would never suffer yourself. If you think living under a dictator’s boot isn’t so bad, why don’t you do it?

> the consequences of war with China

I didn’t say we should invade china. Really, try reading what I write more than once before you formulate a reply.

> I also love the doublethink. "It doesn't matter what Dr. King would have thought. Oh, but he would have agreed with me, so that proves my point."

Its called arguing in the alternative, and one would think someone who posts on a legal blog would be used to that approach.

> You are racist because you choose to define our enemies as a faceless sea of brown people at ground zero of our nukes.

No, that is your hallucination of my intent.

> Another face of evil, which 9/11 lucidly demonstrated exists.

Ah, so you don’t want to fight the actual people who killed our fellow citizens, or their fellow travelers in the broader islamofascist movement, but you want to attack me (hopefully not physically) because you hallucinate that I am filled with a different but similar evil.

Mmm, wow, a dictionary definition of transference.

Wow. What. A. 'Tard. You seem to have me mistaken for Robert A. Heinlein, Neckbeard. And you say I'm hallucinating.

And for the record, the vets I know, me included, don't care for chickenshit neckbeards who have no idea what they're talking about. I never said you can't vote or can't speak. I just think you should assume some responsibility for your beliefs. Dr. King sure did. But I guess you'd rather hide behind a hero than do anything to emulate him.

Iambatman

> Wow. What. A. 'Tard.

More of that famous liberal tolerance.

> You seem to have me mistaken for Robert A. Heinlein

If you mean I was referring to the book, honestly, haven’t read it, but I suffered through the godawful movie they made out of it (supposedly the book isn’t godawful), and well, that is what you are aiming for when you say civilians can’t declare themselves in favor of war.

> who have no idea what they're talking about

Hey, same with me. How many totalitarian regimes have you lived under?

And frankly that statement is so contrafactual now I know you are full of sh-- about serving. I suppose you were with John Kerry on Christmas in Cambodia, 1968. Heh.

> I never said you can't vote or can't speak.

Actually that is exactly what you said.

Waitasecond, did blm28 explain the 9/11 attacks to you, A.W.?

iambatman

If you are out to prove who is more childish, you win. But as for the argument, you have lost and the lack of subtance in your last three posts and descent into pure name-calling is the proof you lost. You are filled with venomous hate, devisive and in deep denial. A perfect example of what I was complaining about in the first place.

Oh yeah, and if you still want to pretend you're interested in taking the action you claim will help the brown people you now tell us you don't want to nuke, please visit goarmy.com and look up a recruiter.

Having hesitated until now because I am a newbie here, I find I must essentially second what Even More Disgusted has to say, and what other posts have said in a similar vein. I have seen other places disintegrate over such behavior, and would rather not see it again. Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to how typical such behavior is here.
*
One of you, entirely apart from the merits on both sides, has let yourself be baited and provoked by sordid, juvenile, name-calling idiocy into what has devolved into essentially a poo-flinging contest. One of you should have evinced the requisite maturity to have refused to have been baited and provoked, let alone into responding in kind, even in the least degree, and should have walked away long ago, IMHO.