Reply #42: I read this a couple of weeks ago

[madison2000]

Its very interesting to think about how our impressions of history are formed right there "in the moment". I remember watching television from about 11am onward on September 11 and Peter Jennings kept saying they were trying to figure out where the president is... The president should have known the country was under attack before he ever got to the school and he should have sprung to action immediately. That would have made sense.

Once we hear the first explanation and see the first images, its very hard to dislodge them from our minds. We want to make sense of it so badly.

We all heard the touching story of the folks on flight 93 wrestling the plane away from the hijackers and so on. We wanted it to be true that they protected the Capitol. Thats a much better story than having it shot down by our own military.

We tend not to ask the big questions when we are in shock. But if we ask them too late its like we are questioning an official myth, a sacred story. The story we have does not really add up, but I am afraid the truth will not be known to anyone who was alive in 2001.