7 minutes? 40 minutes? What did YOU think on 9/11, and when?

[Ready4Change]

I was driving to work when I heard of the first plane hitting the Trade Center. I thought, just like Bush claims "How bad a pilot do you need to be to hit a skyscraper?" I am a pilot myself, and I always wonder this when hearing of plane crashes. I was wondering if weather in New York was bad, if the plane was flying on instruments in fog, etc?

Later, at work, I heard of the 2nd plane hitting the Trade Center. I had no 7, no 30, or 40 minute lag. My immediate thought was "2 planes hitting the same building is no coincedence." I assumed pretty much what turned out to be the case. I didn't know who the attackers were, but I knew they were using hijacked planes, and that more could well be airborn.

There was no delay in my thoughts. I thought, were I POTUS, after the second plane hit, I would have ordered interceptors launched and authorized shooting down hijacked airliners approaching major population centers. I would have verified that alert interceptors were ALREADY airborne, and later heads would have rolled over that not being the case. I would be readying myself to deliver a speech pardoning any pilot who downed a civilian aircraft by my order, readying to take the heat for that choice. I recall sitting at my desk, thinking those exact thoughts.

Thus, when I heard of the plane crashing in PA, I assumed it had been shot down, and sent mental condolences to the fighter pilot who had to do that deed.

I wondered why they didn't attack DC, then learned of the plane hitting the Pentagon. I wondered if my location was at risk, and figured it wasn't a high enough value target (correctly.) I asked myself, if I were planning this attack, what other targets would I hit? The Capitol? White House? Skyscrapers in Los Angeles? Dallas? Seattle?

I watched the burning Trade Center on TV. I was genuinely surprised when first tower fell. But after a few moments thinking about all the fuel burning in a damaged, heavily loaded structure, it made sense to me. So I was expecting the 2nd towers fall.

I was thinking and functioning the whole time. I thought about leaving work, and decided that whoever launched this attack WANTED me to leave work. So I stayed, and did my job, while keeping an ear tuned to the TV being watched in a nearby room.

What did you think? What did you do, and when?

[swag]

1. My wife and I were just getting dressed. I saw a news flash on TV.

I said to my wife, "a jetliner just crashed into the World Trade Center."

My wife, coming out of the bathroom, looked at the TV and said without missing a beat, "Osama Bin Laden is going to be happy."

Got into the office about 30 minutes later. The only ones here were the stock and bond traders. "Did you see what happened?" one asked. "Yeah," I said, "a plane crashed into the World Trade Center." "Yeah, but another plane also hit the second tower."

[thisismyboomstick3]

14. Nothing could have been done.

The country was painfully unprepared for the incident. From * on down.

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jayfish]

40. Would You Say The...

same thing if RWR had allowed a rouge Soviet Bear to drop an H-bomb on New York?

Jay

[KurtNYC]

42. You wouldn't be saying that if you knew anything about

the drills they did at the Pentagon, Condi Rice's "Determined to Strike" memo, the 1993 WTC attack, and John O'Neil, etc. Get a clue.

Specifically, you should read about John O'Neil
http://www.rememberjohn.com/

In August 2001, FBI Deputy Director John O'Neill resigned from his post over George W. Bush's policy on terrorism and Osama bin Laden. Specifically, O'Neill's department was told to "back off" their bin Laden and Al Queda investigations while the Bush administration negotiated with the Taliban. O'Neill became the security chief of the World Trade Center - where he died during the events of 9/11.

[Chelsea Patriot]

50. Qu-e-e-e-e-e-en! Luv how you're workin' the " * " !

But, Doll, it's still so overwhelming obvious!

You need to learn to tuck better!

[bloom]

2. I started following the events

through whatever sites I could get to work on the internet after the 2nd plane hit. And listening on the radio. I was at work.

I think it was broadcast that Bush* was sitting there in that classroom and I thought at the time that it was ridiculous.

[ProfessorGAC]

3. I Was At The Airport

I heard about the first one, waiting for a plane for Atlanta. I went to the newsstand where the lady had a little TV. They were suspending all take-offs at that time. I saw the second one hit, on that little TV

I immediately(!) knew that it was no accident. I immediately knew there would be no flights that day. I left the airport, got in the car and went to work figuring i'd get my refund or replacment ticket later.

So, it took me under 5 seconds to make a decision and do something about the situation, which meant leaving the airport and going back to work.

I didn't need 7 minutes. I didn't even need 7 seconds.
The Professor

[ContraBass Black]

4. I heard it on the radio on my way to school from a doctor's office.

They were saying, plane inside the tower, plane in both towers, plane in one tower and the other just exploded for no reason, all manner of confusion.

I was thinking it was a Cessna that went far off course and broke a few windows.

At school, after about half an hour, my History teacher turned on the TV and we saw the Pentagon.

Then it dawned on me.

The moment class got out, I and others were up and down the hallways spreading the word. Many of the people in my school are children of Pentagon workers. I was in a church youth group with a girl whose father's office was destroyed right after he went to speak to someone in another part of the building.

There was little learning in school that day. Parents who managed to escape DC were picking up their children. Everyone was watching the pentagon burn. People were crying shivering, and praying.

[tridim]

5. I have yet to talk to anyone who didn't react immediately

As far as I can determine the only person on the face of the Earth who didn't react was the Commander In Chief.

[BlueStateGirl]

6. I was home, getting ready for work. The phone rang.

My father called and ordered

me not to go into Philly. He said terrorists attacked the World Trade Center.
This was before the second tower had been hit. He knew right away what had happened. My dad is a USN retired, a former jet engine mechanic. He knew it wasn't a small plane because of the size of fire and the damaged, and he knew it wasn't an accident. Jet liners don't accidentally fly into buildings like that.
I went to work anyway. I was on the train to Philly when the ticket taker announced both towers had collapsed and a plane hit the Pentagon and they wouldn't be continuing on to the airport.
I got off at Suburban Station, which was packed with people trying to get home.
When I got to work , our chef was running out the door. His father worked in the WTC, for Marsh and MClennan. Sadly, his father died that day.
I wanted my manager to close, I was scared and wanted to go home. He wouldn't because although were weren't officially open, people were coming in. They couldn't get on a train and the roads traffic was already bad, and many other bars and restaurants were closed. We were busy all day. Everyone who worked that day donated their tips to the Red Cross victims fund. I didn't feel right about keeping the money. It was about 5 times what I'd make on a typical Tuesday day shift. But the thought of keeping and spending it seemed ghoulish.

I took the 5:15 train home that afternoon. I was the only person on it. A peak hour train, leaving Philadelphia in the middle of the work week and I was alone. The whole ride. I cried the all the way to the last stop.
My dad picked me up at the train station.
I was 28 tears old at the time, but I ran onto my dad's arms like a five year old.

Anyway, my original point was that my dad knew right away we were under attack, and he reacted with in seconds to try to protect his family. He didn't sit for 7 minutes digesting what he saw before he picked up the phone to call me.

[VolcanoJen]

39. thatgirl, thank you for sharing.

That was a very touching story. :-(

[Vickers]

7. After the 1st one I thought it might be an ATC or autopilot malfunction

I was watching as the second one hit and thought, holy shit, how many more are hijacked?

[Old and In the Way]

22. Exactly...."how many more were hijaked"?

I remember watching the news and Bryant Gumbel was reporting on the 1st hit. The camera on WTC 2? was on and suddenly you see the next plane coming in....Gumbel thought it was a replay, but it wasn't. I said to my wife, this is an attack...how many more are going to hit targets.

That's what bugs me the most about Bush in Booker....wouldn't he be thinking worst case? There could have been 50 more plane-bombs in process. And he was contemplating the meaning of being at war while reading a story about pet goats? Doubtful. Criminal Incompetence at best, LIHOP treason at worst.

[w13rd0]

8. My business partner called me and told me...

..."Turn on CNN, NOW!" They were showing the tower after the first plane hit, and I said, "This is no accident." A few moments later, while we're talking, and he's saying, "Dang, you were right, less than a year in, and Bush will have us in a war," we watched the second plane enter the frame and hit the other tower.

Didn't take either of us 7 minutes from the FIRST plane. Bush went in for his photo op KNOWING that a plane hit the first tower, after having "read" the Aug6th PDB. Then, after the SECOND plane hit, he sat on his ass. NO ONE is going to tell me that the Bush administration wasn't thinking of ways to exploit their trifecta.

[Branjor]

9. I was off duty that day....

I am a New Jersey EMT. I hadn't had the TV on and was feeding my dogs when my father came in and said "did you hear what happened?" I said "no, what?" Then he said "a plane hit the WTC." I put on the TV and found out that TWO planes had hit the WTC and one hit the Pentagon. I immediately put on my EMT pager radio and found out that all off duty emergency personnel in my state were on stand-by alert. At that point I started watching nonstop television (don't think I blinked once in hours, heh.). I called the captain of my squad but he had decided not to activate us for duty in the tragedy unless we were absolutely needed as my squad is located in a retirement community and most members are ages 55+. If activated, we would have gone to the staging area at the Meadowlands for further assignment. I would have gone if that were the case.

I knew that it was no accident of course, but had not yet judged Bush in terms of his performance, MIHOP, LIHOP, etc. That was to come later.

[Ameridansk]

10. I was logged on here at DU

I live on the other side of the globe so it was at night. When everyone started writing about it, I turned on my shitty little TV. Since I couldn't understand the language of the TV station, I just watched the images. When the buildings fell, I had no doubt that they had been demolished.

ASIDE:
Ever since the first time I visited the Sears Tower I have known how pissed off developers in NY have been that after building the TWO tallest buildings in the world, all that work was made worthless after the Sears Tower was built a year later. There are many people who believe the world's tallest building belongs in NYC.)

While I'm sure many people would disagree with the above aside, after a quick search to find out who was in control of the towers, and lo and behold! I find out that they had just been handed over to private interests for the first time in history! And the guy the lease was sold to was a developer! And they were insured for an act of terrorism!
http://www.cnn.com/2001/BUSINESS/asia/09/12/aust.westfield.biz/

(this isn't the exact link I read but it makes the point)

This find was just the first of a long, long, long string of amazing finds that have left me absolutely convinced that 9/11 was done by certain Americans and for certain Americans, with some help from Israel and connected interests.


On edit:
While quickly investigating Westfield America, the other holders of the new lease, I found that Westfield managed concessions at 6 American airports. This is a new updated list (George Bush Houston Inter Continental was added later, in 2003):

<SNIP>
Westfield currently manages the retail concessions at:

Boston-Logan International Airport
George Bush Houston Intercontinental Airport
Newark International Airport
Orlando International Airport
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport
San Antonio International Airport
Washington Dulles International Airport
<SNIP>
http://www.westfield.com/corporate/retailer/us/airportretail/

Those two "coincidences" found on September 12, had me hooked.

[Tardisian]

11. My husband and I...

were on our way to O'Hare (trip to Disney World, for his birthday, 9/14). The cab dispatcher came on the line and said to our driver that he was not to take us to the airport, as they had all been shut down. We were not told why, at the time.
Got home, turned on the news, and was just in time to see the second plane hit the second Tower. At first, I thought it was a single plne hitting one Tower, but it turned out that had already happened. And I thought, wtf? what kind of pilot flies like that? Then we heard it was a second plane and we both knew this was an attack on our country, not some weird accident.
There is no-one we know who lived in NY at the time, and all our friends and family members were present and accounted for. My husband immediately went to donate blood to the Red Cross (I couldn't because of certain meds I was taking at the time.) Many of our friends and family did the same thing; police and EMT workers who were friends of one of my brother-in-laws got together and headed for NYC.
We, as the people of the US, knew what to do for our fellowman, and DID it. At once. Over the longer course, we donated blood a few more times, plus made monetary donations to funds that were helping out the victims of this attack.
It is unconsionable that the appointee to the country's highest office did nothing in those first moments, when perhaps the second plane, the PA plane, and the Pentagon plane could have been deterred.

[FlaGranny]

12. I was reading "Latest Breaking" here on DU

and someone posted about the first plane hitting. I immediately turned on the TV and watched the rest. Most of my thoughs were parallel to yours.

[UdoKier]

Everybody at my office knew IMMEDIATELY it was an attack after 2nd hit.

Even the idiots narrating on the news knew that. One would EXPECT the president to spring into action and be decisive at that moment.


Well, at least he was heroic and decisive in the Republicans' fantasy rretelling of the story.



I almost was going to get Showtime so I could see that Bush worship movie they made a while back.

Black is White. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.

[nostamj]

13. i was in my office in a midtown office tower

heard the first report on the classical music station (that was ODD)

switched to all news and was emailing friends when the 2nd tower was hit.

sent: IT'S TERRORISM to the friends. let my family know I was OK and got out of the building.

in under 7 minutes!

[leanings]

15. I was asleep.

I was working a law enforcement job in DC at the time and had just gotten off a night shift. I was asleep at my g/f's apartment in Ballston, maybe 2-3 miles from the Pentagon. She called and woke me up a few minutes after the second plane hit the towers. I told her to start walking (she worked in Foggy Bottom). I got dressed, threw my pistol and my gas mask on the front seat and went in to pick her up. Sat on the bridge and watched the Pentagon burn for a while, met her, took her home and then went back into work.

Didn't take me much time to get out the door. Then again, I was only responsible for me and possibly my g/f, not 300 million Americans, and I didn't have an entire national security apparatus already set in motion underneath me. I think the whole 7 minutes thing is kind of a weak argument. Humans are emotional beings; after Operation Barbarossa kicked off Stalin had a breakdown and didn't come out of his dacha for two days. Bush took seven minutes to absorb the shock, and I don't think there was anything he personally could have done during that time. I don't think anybody had any answers for him at that moment and I don't know what impact he could have had on the situation. We can Monday morning QB it all we want but I don't think anyone knows how they'd react in that situation.

There are plenty of other solid arguments that can be made against Bush. This one isn't very good.

[FlaGranny]

19. What a great excuse for Bush -

"Well I just sat there and did nothing, because there wasn't much I thought I could do." The whole point of that seven minutes was - he was NOT in control and he did NOT know what to do about the situation. What a president! The least that seven minutes proves is that G. W. Bush is very much NOT presidential material.

[wellstone_democrat]

41. A trained fighter pilot?

Sorry, I had related training in combat emergencies and you are screened for it. Pilots are thouroughly screened and trained---by personality they are the most "take charge" people there are. My questions start with WHY someone trained as he was didn't act. Yes, he could have acted because there are tasks that only he has the authority to do in an emergency. But, he DIDN'T just sit for 7 minutes--that's the length of the clip in the film Farhenheit 911. He sat far far longer and his ONLY action was to wait for prepared remarks for the TV cameras.

Frankly, what I never could understand was that he really never acted that morning.

[rucky]

16. Ask an air traffic controller what they can do in 7 minutes.

three words to the Bush defenders:

Shoot-down orders.

[Batgirl]

20. he was not deeply absorbed in chimplike contemplation

It's painfully obvious that the pretend president was frozen in place for 7 minutes waiting for his keepers to tell him what to do...

[LiberalPersona]

17. I was

Asleep on the couch, when my then room mate woke me up saying "America is under attack." I then proceeded to watch the towers falling on the television news. I don't remember what I felt, I'm not good at remembering details like emotion from years ago. This was before I started regularly reading political websites.

[Tracer]

18. My son called me at my home office.

And just said "Turn on CNN". From the tone of his voice I knew something awful had happened and I said "OK" and hung up to go turn on the television.

What I most remember in the early hours, was the confusion among the reporters about what was happening. I recall a woman in Washington standing outdoors with smoke in the background (from the Pentagon) and she had no clue as to what had just happened there.

There were many erroneous reports (as we know now) about the number of planes involved, the purported targets, but very, very few interviews or information on what the government was doing (in fact I can't recall any, but maybe I'm wrong).

I don't recall even thinking about *. At the time he just wasn't on my radar screen (so to speak).

[ilovenicepeople]

29. I pictured a jet plane hitting a high rise the day before

I was sitting in the garden having a coffee on Sept.10th and I heard a plane go over head,I thought that it was abnormally loud then I pictured it hitting a high rise building.I thought I was seeing buildings in Vancouver BC(the closest city to me)but it didn't look like Vancouver so I thought it might be Hong Kong,also(at that time) I saw what I thought were different views of the same plane hitting the building(the next day I found out why I saw more than one impact)The next morning I turned on the TV and saw the exact vision I had the day before (I turned on the TV 10 seconds before the second plane hit)Without thinking I screamed out "How can they do that to their own people" I wish that I would of told someone on Sept.10th of my vision because after the fact it's hard to convince people that I did not make this up.:scared: :hi:

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

21. At 8:00 am CDT on 9-11-01, my alarm clock went off and the phone

rang almost instanteously. My husband was on the phone and asked me did I have the TV on? I said no, that I had just gotten up and he interrupted me and told me "turn it on". I asked him why and he said that his boss's wife had just called and said a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers in NY. I hung up with him and told him I'd call him back and switched on the TV just in time to see the second plane hit.

I stood there in my pajamas and my mind couldn't comprehend what I was watching. The first tower was in flames and then as I watched the second plane came in. My first thought was, am I watching a bad Bruce Willis movie and then reality hit and images from the embassy bombings in Africa and the Cole attack flashed in my mind. Osama Bin Laden, made perfect sense to me.

I called my husband back and told him what had just happened. I wasn't in shock, just numb, and wondering if the Sears Tower was going to be next. He told me to keep the TV on and to call him before I left to go to work.

I left for work at about 9:45 that morning and the freakiest thing was the fact that there were no planes in the sky. We live in a flight path for Midway Airport and on that beautiful, pristine September morning, not one plane was in the air by 9:45 am.

If I figured out who was behind this and I ain't no rocket scientist, what was Chimpy's excuse?

[gauguin57]

23. The first thing I said: "It's gotta be that Osama bin Laden guy."

Now, I didn't get to sleep till 4 a.m that morning, so I was awakened by my Mom crying on the answering machine, after both towers had collapsed and the Pentagon had been hit. I turned on the TV, saw a replay of the collapsing towers, and I immediately said to her, "It HAS to be that Osama bin Laden guy."

Because I had been hearing news reports for weeks before Sept. 11 that bin Laden was up to something, was threatening, whatever.

And I am NOBODY. I'm not a psychic. I have no access to national security information. But I figured out it was bin Laden within 30 seconds of hearing the news.

Why did Bush look so lost and confused? He'd had the benefit of seeing the briefings!!! If nobody-little-me knew, why didn't Bush leap into action?

[dancing kali]

24. Just pulling out of our driveway

on the way to work... my husband was going to drop me off at work because he needed the car that day. It takes 20 minutes to get to the location I needed to be at that day...

I had just turned on the radio and caught the end of an announcer saying something about a building collapsing, people running... and station break... I checked the radio because I wanted to listen to the news station and I thought I was hearing the morning shock jocks doing a "War of the Worlds" parody or a commercial for the next Arnie movie... nope, the radio was on the news station. The report came back and the report was "a small plane" had just flown into the WTC". I thought they were talking about a Cessna. I hear about the second plane... still thinking Cessna. At this point, my husband and I were trying to decide if what we were hearing was real. When I heard that the Pentagon had gotten hit I made a comment about it being a bad day for flying, lousy pilots and "yippie... some schmuck with a statement and a Cessna crashed into the Pentagon". Remember that I'm hearing all of this on the radio, mostly covered at the time by our local (Vancouver, BC) reporters... so I'm still not convinced that this was all real... then we hear about a plane going down in Somerset, PA. That got our attention... my husband's parents live in Somerset. Then we hear that it was a site in Shanksville... I turn to my husband and say, "Why do I recognize the name Shanksville?" "That's where that dragline you can see on the top of the ridge from my folks kitchen window is." "You mean the strip mine?!" "Yeah, that's Shanksville." And that is the exact moment that I knew that the whole thing is real. Shanksville is somewhere that I would never expect to hear about in Western Canada on the news. Now I get to the, "Oh, shit... my niece was supposed to have been doing job training in the WTC for six months... and I don't know if the six months has ended yet. My sister-in-law works for NYC social services... aren't the city buildings down by the WTC... Shit, where are they... my brother must be going crazy..." Ten minutes has passed since we pulled out of our driveway and started heading for work. This was where we started hearing that the planes weren't little personal jets but hijacked full sized passenger aircraft. The radio station linked in with the CNN feed and that's where the rest of the news came from.

When I got to work, only the office staff had heard... I was working as an actor with the Paramedic training programme that day. Through most of the day, the only news I heard was filtered through by people who happened to be in the office at some point. It was very weird to be playing accident victims in paramedic training scenarios that day... generally I enjoy the gig but the emotional baggage of the events of the day made the whole thing very surreal.

For the record, my niece and sister-in-law both were at work in midtown Manhattan 10 to 20 blocks away. They are fine and didn't see anything. My brother was in a seminar room directly across the river from the WTC and witnessed the whole thing... I have a picture that he took seconds before the 2nd plane hit. I don't like what the events of that day have turned him into... he was always the cool, laid back one... My husband's parents listen to a police band radio and they said they were having lunch in the kitchen but not looking out the window when the radio "lit up" for a little while with lots of confused chatter then it all died out. They didn't know anything about it until my sister-in-law called to check on them.

There is a bit of humor here... Once a year, my husband and I travel back to the States to visit our respective families. In the early summer of 2001 we planned our trip and made our reservations for the end of September. We did this in June. My parents live outside of Pittsburgh. My husband's parents live in Somerset. My in-laws want to visit my sister-in-law in Texas at the beginning of October. My husband will accompany them while I go visit my baby brother in New York. We also figure that if the weather is nice it might be nice to drive down to DC to visit an old friend who is a camera operator for one of the networks - I've heard CNN but I'm not sure - I haven't seen her in over 20 years. To sum all of that up - my travel itinerary for that visit - Pittsburgh - Somerset - New York City - with a possible drive from Somerset to Washington DC. Now, picture standing at the border telling that to nice Mr. US Customs guard... two weeks after 9/11.

[tom_paine]

25. I was at work, we didn't have a TV, which made the whole thing surreal

and almost unfathomable.

People verbally relayed stuff to me asd they learned it from the Internet and radio.

After the second tower was hit and the first fell, they let us go home.

God Help Me, I arrived just in time to see Tower #2 fall.

As to when I realized it was a terrorist atttack?

When the first person told me "A plane just hit the World Trade Center."

Not to brag, but the FIRST THING which rushed into my mind upon hearing that was 1993 and the fact that the terrorists had been targetting the WTC repeatedly since '93.

[AngryAmish]

26. Driving to work, hear about Plane #1

Local CBS radio outlet was intervewing a guy in Grenwich Village when I heard the second plane hit. The guy said it was a DC-9 (the old two engine propeller job) sightseeing plane.

I figured, ok, who did this, we are at war. Everyone said it was OBL, but I was like, how do we know? I never tought much about terrorism, because I did not beleive there could be a mass casualty attack in the US.

I also predicted that Barry Sanders would be a bust in the NFL. I would do well not to make any predictions outside of my fields of expertise.

[Pabst Blue Democrat]

27. Does ANYONEremember......

Some of the first news reports coming out of 9/11 speculating that it was suspected to be the work of white supremacists?? I vividly remember hearing this on one and possibly a second TV station. No one else I've ever spoken with can recall such speculation. For whatever reason, it's always nagged at me. What about you guys?

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

32. No, that I don't remember.

But as I was leaving for work I had the car radio on naturally, and the country station I normally listen to had gone over to CBS radio. They were interviewing a man from PA, who swore up and down that Flight 93 had been shot down and he sounded real credible.

Of course, by the time I got home that afternoon, that story had been changed.

[Tosca]

45. White Supremacists.

That was my initial reaction, until I realized it was too coordinated, too spectacular, to be the likes of Timothy McVeigh.

I believe they timed the strikes on the WTC, knowing all cameras would be on the first crash, and knowing the second crash would have cameras all over it. It was brilliant strategy.

[Surf Cowboy]

28. I was fresh out of law school, working a

document review at an Iron Mountain warehouse in Wilmington, Delaware, when one of the dockworkers came into our room and told us he just heard from the radio that a plane crashed into the WTC.

Within 2 or 3 minutes, I had contacted my father in Virginia (who was retired and watching CNBC all day) to ask him what was up. He told me it reminded him of the time the military plane hit the Empire State Building back in the day. While we were talking I heard him mutter, "Jesus Christ..." Then he told me what he was seeing in the second plane. I heard it hit through the phone, with him doing the play-by-play.

The very first words out of his mouth were "terrorists."

How two Western Virginia rednecks could have this figured out upon the second collision, but the most powerful man in the world was still worried about his photo-op still stumps me. Wadda Jackass.

[greekspeak]

30. I got myself worked up into a tizzy

I wondered how many more planes were going to fall from the sky and what was going on. After the one hit mysteriously in PA, I remember thinking, "they are just dropping planes randomly. who is to stop them?"

Later that day, I was stunned by Clinton's reactions Vs. Shrub's. Clinton was on the streets of NYC comforting dismayed and disoriented New Yawkers. Shrub was playing PlaneHop. Then came my anger as gas stations started selling gas for over $3 a gallon, taking advantage of a national disaster to hit us all below the belt with price gouging.

[rocktivity]

31. I confess that I, too, thought a "terrible pilot" had hit the first WTC

I had moved that weekend, and was home from work waiting for my phone to be connected. I turned on the TV to watch Court TV and saw the first tower burning. I wasn't that surprised that plane had hit it--those little commuter plane buzz around those towers like mosquitoes. The phone guy arrived just in time to join me in watching the second tower blow up. Then, on the "replay," we saw that it was a full-sized commercial airliner! Then those awful colums of smoke began rising...

I remember the phone guy's wife called on his cell phone and begged him to come home. He got my phone working, but I couldn't reach anyone in my family (my nephew works in the area), though I was able to send an e-mail saying that under the circumstances, I wouldn't be in.

The next few days were a similar blur of trying to contact my family and being disgusted by the smarmy jinogism of the news coverage. It turned out that my nephew had been in New Jersey on a sales call. That Saturday, I yelled, "Goddamit, stop telling me how to feel!" at my TV. And when I turned on that evening to see John Walsh on America's Most Wanted, I knew I had turned the corner!

By the way, did I mention that I moved from downtown Jersey City, acorss the Hudson River from WTC? Two of my co workers who lived there didn't get home for three days, and my landlord said that the area smelled for weeks!

:headbang:
rocknation

[erpowers]

33. I was in College

I was listening to the radio and about to go to class. The dj said that a second plane had crashed into the World Trade Tower. For some reason it did not seem that unusual to me. I just blow it off as some sad or unfornuate accident. I actually thought that it was a small single engine plane not a big 747 plane. Only when I made it down stairs did I realize what was going on. I do not think I really felt anything for a few days later. I guess I was just shocked and did not know what to think.

[CaptainClark23]

34. Q Train - Manhattan Bridge

Someone got on train at DeKalb, talking about a plane hitting WTC. Came out of Brooklyn side moments after 2nd impact.

Not knowing the situation I decided to continue to office in midtown with reliable phone lines and T-1 connections, and a 47th floor view looking straight downtown.

As soon as I heard two seperate impacts, I knew. And so did everyone else in this horrified city.

I was close-by (about a block away) when WTC 7 was dropped, and that's what got me wondering at the whole fable we were already being fed.

I can still smell it. I'll never lose that stench in my nose and the ash on my tongue. dammit.

[johnnie]

35. I was out front of the office having a cigarette

When I came back in the controller and head of engineering were standing there and said some plane hit the WTC. I came over to my desk and checked the net and turned the radio up. I heard the second plane had hit and I got up out of me seat and everyone was standing around with a look of confusion on their faces.
I went in to the conference room and pulled the television out of the closet and got it up and running. People filed in to watch and Bin Ladin was mention in our group a few times. This was almost all done within 10 minutes of hearing about the second plane.
The kicker of that morning was this: The main boss at my company had just returned from Japan the evening before. When I arrived at the office I was reading the morning news on Yahoo and there was a report that they were evacuating Americans out of Japan because there was terror threats against Americans. I told my boss that it was a good thing he left Japan because there were terrorist threats against Americans.
After the planes hit I remembered that story and looked for it. It was gone, nowhere to be found. I checked all the news sites and couldn't find it anywhere. Strange.

[proud patriot]

36. "where is the president where is the president"

over and over again ....

[Missy Vixen]

38. Again

My husband woke me up with a phone call that morning. All he said was, "Turn on the TV." Like another poster has already mentioned, I knew from his tone of voice that something was desperately wrong. I will never, ever forget standing in my nightgown in front of the television while watching the second plane hit the towers, and his telling me that he had just driven by Microsoft's headquarters, which was completely sealed off by law enforcement. I was so shocked by what I was seeing on TV that I didn't even think to ask if he was coming home.

After I hung up with my husband, I called one of my friends to ask where her husband was. He commutes out of state to work. Thankfully, he was fine, but he was stranded in Arkansas. DH had a co-worker that flew out of Logan almost every day on sales calls; we tracked him down through another co-worker who managed to get in contact with him via beeper. DH finally reappeared at our house about two hours later. I asked him to pick up bottled water, etcetera, at the store, because I was then starting to wonder what was going to happen next.

DH's company had 17 different clients in the World Trade Center, two of which were Cantor Fitzgerald and Aeon (sorry for any misspelling.)

Every other adult I have talked with about the events of September 11th describes frantic activity after they found out what happened -- calling their loved ones, leaving the office, whatever. George W. Bush seems to be the only one so unconcerned with a terrorist attack on our nation that he could spend 7+ minutes (isn't the Booker Elementary tape in excess of 25 minutes?) after being notified sitting motionless with no discernible facial expression.

Julie

[drbtg1]

43. I wanted information

I was at my practice, no TV, and someone said a plane hit the WTC. Without hesitation, I hit the net (dial-up at the time) and it was so slow (understandable that day) so I couldn't get anything that way. Since the net wasn't cutting it, we tuned in AM stations from NYC. Again, no hesitation. Listened to WCBS-AM and WINS and I remember the calls from the newsreaders specifically for off-duty firefighters and policemen and told they were to report for duty. It's so horrible looking back on those calls now.

Between patients, I went to a neighbor's house to watch TV, just needed information as soon as possible. Even if it was "just" seven minutes, I can't understand why Bush didn't want information as soon as possible. I can't understand why he just sat there.

[KurtNYC]

44. Watching the TODAY show, my father flying into JFK

when they cut to the smoke pouring out of the tower. My first thought was "this is the follow up to the 1993 attack." I was writing out a list of things to do with my father while he was in town. He wound up landing in Pittsburgh.

After the second plane hit, I went out to stock up on groceries thinking they would close off Manhattan. Felt the ground shake while I was at the store and someone came out of a shop crying, 'the tower collapsed'. Aside from the first night of the Rodney King riots (machine guns taking down helicopters, whole frickin' city on fire, etc.), it was the worst day of my life.

[Dastard Stepchild]

46. True confession: I'm as bad as the Chimp :(

Well, maybe not. Truthfully, I am a late sleeper, and I remember that morning I kept hearing the telephone ring. After the 5th time in a row that the phone was ringing off the hook, I tore outta bed like a mad banshee, ready to spew vitriol on the sorry friend that dared to wake me from my slumber. It was my then fiance who was telling me that I needed to turn on the TV because the WTC Towers had been hit, and my first thought was...... you woke me for a bad plane accident?

OH HORRORS!!! - the Chimp and I shared the same reflex. I have tried to purge this from my memory, but to no avail. Of course, after the phone call, I turned on the television and watched the coverage nonstop, but my first reaction was, "what's all the fuss?" OH, sweet brain of mine, how ever could you betray me like this?

I remember classes were cancelled and I didn't have to work that day anyway, so I just watched TV all day and night, and then into the next day, and pretty much for the remainder of the week.

[Dastard Stepchild]

47. Post removed: was posted twice

Post Removed - was posted twice. sjbech

[graywarrior]

49. I was on Michael Moore's forum...

...when someone posted that he saw the tower hit by a plane. I read the post aloud to my husband and he turned on the tv. He thought of Osama immediatly. We watched tv all day and when reports of firefighters and rescue crews were killed, I lost it. We just went through the Worcester MA fire where we lost 5 firefighters. I have a family of generation firefighters, so that affected me a lot.

I have to confess, I never really stood behind Bush through any of this. I never gave him the benefit of the doubt. I never felt safe under his leadership. I never really believed he was in charge.

[Shadowen]

48. I was...stunned.

I'm the kind of person whose brain can operate rather remarkably well on autopilot, though. So I shut down the parts of my brain that couldn't handle it, and watched for a few hours, entertaining a dozen or more highly implausible "What if?" theories that bordered on sci-fi rather than things that could have stopped it in the real world. After that much time, I think I managed to get "over the hump", so to speak.

But I recall saying, in the tone of voice of Chris Rock's Chakakahan(sp?) in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, "George Bush gon' kill somebody!"

Then I went to class. None of mine were too tied up in modernity, unlike a friend of mine who had a PoliSci class that morning and whose prof said, "Just go home; I think I'm irrelevant today" to anyone who showed up for his course.

Being Canadian, the reaction wasn't the same as it would have been were I a US citizen. After all, at least one degree of separation existed between me and what happeened.

[Ready4Change]

51. Thanks to all for your responses.

I wrote the original question because, reading of the right wing spin on Kerry's comments, and their claim he was out of it for 40 minutes, I thought to myself "What would I want a POTUS to do? What would I EXPECT him to do?"

It's easy to be demanding after the fact, so I wondered if it was reasonable to expect someone to act sooner than 40, or 30, or 7 minutes. That's when I considered my only applicable experience. What did I do on that day, what did I think, and when?

I am very sure about immediately launching interceptors and issuing shoot down orders. There are some things I was wrong about, or had reservations about. While watching the WTC towers burning I recall a co-worker saying this had to be OBL. I saw no evidence of that, and decided to hold off making a judgment there till I had more info. I worried that there might be a ground portion of the attack using car or truck bombs, which have been rumoured of but not proven.

When we attacked Afghanistan I thought it was too soon, that we hadn't made a case for the attack, and that our rationale had better be supported by the facts afterwards or else our reputation in the world would be shattered. It now seems tht attacking Afghanistan was supportable.

But then came Iraq...

Again, thank you for your honest responses.