9/11

[Eagle653]

Hi folks. I've heavily edited this thread because I found one poster to be particuarly rude and dis-respectful. In doing so, I also edited posts that quoted his rants.

Mostly, though, the editing was done because the rantings were off topic. This is not a thread about WW II, Germany, Russia, China or the bombing of Dresden. The originator of this thread titled it "9/11" and asked people to express their thoughts.

Most of you did just that. I'm sorry that you were subjected to off-topic rantings. He's been warned to stay out of this thread. If he does not, please report it.

Thanks.

 

[ixthrock]

9/11 2k1 fell right between an old friend telling me he didnt want to talk about it, but he didnt want me coming anywhere near him or his son... and the restraining order. I was staying with friends, i was having my own personal crisis. i remember walking into the den and watching the broadcast - for the entire day. I was already enormously depressed and grieving, and all i kept thinking was, "how can we maintain our petty squabble in the face of THIS?" I still wonder. I havent seen him or his son in that long; this is always a hard time of year for me.

you might find it perverse of me to subsume a "national tragedy" into a backdrop of my own selfish and personal pains, but it IS what i'll be thinking about. I hate the canning of sentimentality into propaganda; it numbs me, but when something is up close and personal...well, it puts me in mind of not-so-dissimiliar truisms, one from the wizard of oz:

1) dorothy says at the end of the movie..."and I learned that what ever I'm looking for, i can find it in my own back yard..." (paraphrased) and

2) so you want to change the world? you can start in your own back yard...

while perhaps we DO need to be concerned about the terrorists from abroad, i'd certainly be a lot happier if I knew more of us took the time to root out the "terrorists" lurking within our own beating hearts...

 

[james1200]

it would just be nice if no one polticized it...you can pay respect to the victims without endorsing war or bush...i think people in NY and here in MA still feel it but the rest of the country just pays lip service at this point...and because of bush's actions, the rest of the world feels nothing for those victims...just hatred and a feeling we deserved it.

 

[ixthrock]

......the rest of the world feels nothing for those victims...just hatred and a feeling we deserved it.

oh, honey, the "rest of the world" would have to be a lot more callous than even I am willing to believe, were that true.

my boss says, "no no no - people got it all wrong - that wasnt an attack on the us or nyc, it was an attack on the WORLD TRADE center," but even THAT doesnt take into account the innocence of the many individuals who suffered losses in that attack; whatever the motivation for the attack, those who experienced the suffering first-hand did not deserve it, and I hope even this country's "enemies" realize this...

of course, my naievete may be peeping out from behind my rose-coloured glasses, there...

9/11 is kinda like the aids crisis, for me - before i travelled out west. I knew of one friend of a friend who had gotten sick and died, but i'd had no personal exposure. I watched the tv all that day, but i didnt get ash in my hair; i didn't know a single person who died either in the towers or on the jets... regardless, my life is affected by the aids crisis, my life has been affected by 9/11. now, though, having travelled around a bit, and knowing more people from urban centers, (and losing many friends, some quite young) my life has been touched more directly by the aids epidemic than it has been by 9/11.

 

[TylerKS]

I'll never forget that day. I was sitting in my biz class in HS and I hear over the school intercom "Attention all students and staff we are under an imediate code 3" I had never heard that before and I looked at my teacher and her face was white. She went over to the windows, closed the blinds then went to the door and locked it. We asked what was going on and she told us to just sit there and be quiet. Her phone rang and I saw her face, I was scared as to what was happening. She pulled out her cell phone and called other teachers in our hall and made sure they were on total lock down. Right after that our principal came over the intercom. "I have an annoucement to make. at *:**am the World Trade Center was attacked. One tower has been hit." while she was saying this her voice was very unstable which I have never seen. She was continuing to tell us what was going on. She was watching a TV and she saw the 2nd plane hit and her voice went silent and she started to tell us what happened and she couldn't talk". The head police officer at our school then came on the intercom and told us that the school was on total lockdown and to not attempt to leave the building. He said all Wichita schools have been canceled but the students need to stay inside. All of us in our class started talking. My teachers phone rang and when she answered it she started to tear up then began to cry. Someone she knew called her saying she was in the WTC but was getting out. I decided to just peek outside and I saw something that made me very uncomfortable. Our school was surrounded by police. The entrance and exits were all blocked. My sister called me from work and told me the Malls were all evacuated and shes coming to our house. They let use leave our classrooms and go to the commons or rooms that had TVs so we could see what was happening. I happend to walk into the ROTC room and stood there watching as I see the planes hitting the towers over and over again. Everyone at my HS was silent. They told us that the building and parking lot is clear and we are all able to leave if we want too. I decide to leave. I get in my truck and turn on the radio and everysingle station is broadcasting the same. When I got home I rushed inside and turned on the TV. There wasn't one channel that didn't have a news feed being broadcasted on it. I sat there in shock watching people in my country running for their lives. People jumping out of windows because they were getting burned alive. It was like it was from a moive. That night I decided I had to do something to help. The next morning I called the Red Cross and asked what they needed and they literally said they need money from people that are not close. I asked how much and they said every dollar counts. I gave my own money out of my savings because my heart knew thousands of people needed help. I didn't go to school for a couple days because I wanted to learn the most about what was happening to my country. That day and the events that happened will be with me for the rest of my life. Many people lost their lives and there are many many heros whom I praise. The people that have something negative to say about the events that happened on 9/11/01 should be ashamed. I don't care if you hate this war that is going on or you don't agree with the President, House and Senate. This happened to us it could have been your mother, brother, sister, father, aunt, uncle, or child. Innocent people lost their lives on that day for no reason at all. We must always stand behind our own people.

 

[slobone]

Oddly enough, one of the things I remember is that for about two seconds it actually looked like George Bush was going to show real leadership. Two things he did stick out in my mind.

The first is when there were some hate crimes against Muslim Americans in the immediate aftermath. Bush made an appearance on TV to denounce it, flanked by two Muslim clerics. I thought, "That's exactly what the President should be doing." Not many people remember that incident.

The second is that he made an appearance at Ground Zero within days, talking to the rescue workers through a bullhorn. A lot of his advisers told him not to do it, for safety reasons, but he did it anyway. Again, the presidential thing to do.

And I don't think anybody faulted him for invading Afghanistan to get rid of the loathsome Taliban.

But after that, everything went all to shit.... oh well.

 

[operafan]

Gay Widows and widowers from 9/11

Here is a slightly different take on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 - operafan


NATIONAL NEWS

Sept. 11 introduced U.S. to gay families
On fifth anniversary, activists ponder impact of attacks on gay couples’ rights
By LOU CHIBBARO JR
Friday, September 08, 2006

Although Mark Bingham (right) was lauded as a hero of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, some initial press reports did not acknowledge that he was


Less than a week after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks rocked the United States and much of the world, Tom Hay sat tensely in a pew near the front of St. Matthews Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

Minutes earlier, dozens of flight crew employees of American Airlines, wearing their formal, navy blue dress uniforms, filed into the cathedral to join Hay and hundreds of others for a memorial mass for pilot David Charlebois.

Charlebois, Hay’s domestic partner for nearly 13 years, held the position of first officer onboard American Airlines Flight 77 at the time terrorists hijacked the Boeing 757 jetliner and crashed it into the Pentagon.

“It sounds mushy, but we saw each other from across the room, and that was it,” Hay told Southern Voice in 2002, on the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks. “He was the first and only person I ever had a serious relationship with.”

Rest of the story http://www.southernvoice.com/2006/9-8/news/national/septeleven.cfm

 

[Dobson73]

Monday is 9/11. Any thoughts?

It's my birthday. I'm going to be....older than I am now. UGH.

Oh yeh, and THAT thing happened. The day the world probably did stand still.

 

[james1200]

James, i think i knew long before most American people that the USA doesnt have the resources to keep commiting troops to the war zones as it is. America is struggling, but surviving. The UK on the other hand is sinking fast. We're a country in a right old mess. Troops are only getting 5 months R&R before being shipped back out to war... they dont have the correct gear, most troops have to resort to buying the own stuff of the internet as the MoD cant provide it for them.

However that is besides the point - Any armed force be it Army, Navy and Air Force is there to defend that nations best interests anywhere in the world.

Rightly, or as it most often happens to be, wrongly, that happens, and its the way it will continue to be.

Yes as for Dresden, that was morally, legally and just about any other way justified. I agree entirely.

As for Iraq, lets just say we dont know the full truth. What we DO know, is that the Intel about the 45mins was spun - spun massively by our good friend Alistair Campbell. HE made the claim sound as though they could hit London in 45 mins. What he actually meant was that by placing a scud launcher up against the Syrian border, they could hit Israel in 45 mins.

But there is the justification. Israel is american "best interest", thus, if the Intel says that Israel can be hit by WMD in 45 mins, they have to move to defend it

I know its not right - i certainly didnt agree and dont agree with them going into Iraq - all i am addressing here is the fundamentals of how it came about and the "justification" of their actions.

Of course, as it turned out, there were no WMD. But now we're in, we cant just leave. By doing so would create a power vacume. A place of no law, where terrorists can breed, train and plot their next attacks freely against innocent civilians here.

Now, what i am about to say, is controversial, you'll hate me for it, but its the cold hard truth of the matter.


Dont you think its better that the MAJORITY of the terrorists (insurgents) are holed up in Afghanistan, Iraq etc, fighting our troops there, as opposed to killing civilians here in the UK or over there in the US?

Sure, our boys are being killed out there... but like i say, its what they're paid to do. Dont beleive me, go and apply.. i bet its on the application somewhere "are you prepared to die to defend the soverign rights of this country?"... i know its what you get asked when you apply for the UK Armed Forces.

So thus, they are defending the nations best interests...

Contraversial? Very.

Nice? Not at all.

Justified? Possibly.

True? You bet your ass its true!

Hard to beleive and understand? Ill let you decide...


Anyway, thats to derail the thread... back on topic please all.

i am somewhat naively beginning to realize that some people are so partisan that they will only vote one way no matter what...i think if bush came out and admitted he only invaded iraq cause he was bored that week you and his neo con buddies would find a way to justify it.

what is even scarier are the rural types...i just read an interview of southern women by breitbart.com in which most have thankfully turned away in disgust from the republicans...but they interviewed one woman, a substitute teacher to boot, who said that she will always support bush and the republicans because "they are doing what god wants"...someone please buy me a one way ticket to france!

 

[greaves]

It's obvious from the responses to this thread, that 9/11 is an emotive issue. As it should be.

The events of that day affect of all of us today. The twin towers will continue to cast very long shadows.

But as long as there are people who value freedom above bigotry there is hope for all us.

One day...

 

[dddog71]

WOW 5 yrs have come and gone but the thoughts of that day will live in my mind forever. I had a friend that was in the WTC when the plans hit. I grew up with him and he was my best Friend all thorough grade school. He was one of the lucky ones to make it out alive. He was only on the 44th floor. I remember the day like it was yesterday.. It was on a Tuesday and I had a dentist appointment that day. I was making my rounds with the company truck when I heard about it. Then I called my husband at work and told him.
At work we are not allowed to listen to the radio but that day we did. We also had a TV set in the break room. Watching those towers fall was so sad. All I could think of was my Friend and all of those Innocent people who are in there. Not to mention every one in the pentagon and the flight that crashed.
My thoughts are with all the family's who lost a loved on that day!
Bless you all!

 

[ComNavFdgPk]

Here is a great site that I stumbled onto a few weeks ago. It has people's comments about where they were and what they were doing on Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001. A lot of them are really heartwrenching!

http://wherewereyou.org/

 

[techboywi]

I was on my way to work when the first tower was hit. At the time, I worked for a webhosting company. Normally, I listen to the radio when driving in, that day I just happened to have a CD on. When I got into work, someone mentioned somehting about a plane hitting a building in New York. I tried going on to the news sites for more info. Then I heard the second tower got hit. At that moment, we turned on a small 7" black and white tv one of my co-workers had in their cubical. There was about 9 of us huddled around the tv. It was a slow morning that day, we usually didnt get busy till around 10am anyway.

The powers that be decided to shut down operations for the day, so we were let go at noon. On the way home, listening to the radio, the only thing that was on was news coverage. Same thing when I got home and turned on the tv. It didnt really hit me untill the next morning, I was listening to the radio while I got ready for work, and they played "God Bless Th USA". It was at that moment I broke down. Just thinking about it now is almost making me cry. It was a horrific event that will forever be engrained on my mind.

 

[NedNickerson]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060908/ap_on_re_us/sept11_turning5

9/11 babies old enough to ask for dad
By SARA KUGLER, Associated Press Writer

Julie McMahon holds her younger son, Patrick, 4, as her older boy, Matthew, 6, looks on in their back yard in Westport, Conn., Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2006. Patrick was born seven weeks after his father, James, a Cantor Fitzgerald bond broker, died in the Sept. 11 terroprist attack on the World Trade Center. (AP Photo/Bob Child)

Four-year-old Gabriel Jacobs inherited his dad's sandy hair, long nose and blue eyes. The day they buried what was left of his father — a piece of rib, part of a thigh bone, a bit of one arm — the boy released a balloon into the air, then turned that familiar face skyward to make sure his daddy caught it.

This is how a son reaches out to the father he never met. Ariel Jacobs died in the World Trade Center attack six days before his only child was born.

"When he sends a balloon up to the sky and he finally sees the tiny dot of the balloon go through the clouds, he says, 'OK, the balloon found the doorway to heaven, I think he has it now," says Gabi's mother, Jenna Jacobs-Dick.

There are dozens of children like Gabi Jacobs, born to Sept. 11 widows in the months after the attacks. Five years later, as they approach kindergarten, they are just beginning to grasp the stories of their fathers and of the day that changed their lives forever.

The first baby arrived just hours after the disaster, and the last nine months later. Some mothers only discovered they were pregnant after the dads were gone — including Rudolph Giuliani's longtime aide, who was married to fire Capt. Terence Hatton. The firefighter's daughter was born the next spring, and her mother named her Terri.

Their fathers were rescue workers, cops, restaurant waiters and stockbrokers. Their mothers, pregnant and alone when the dust of the towers settled, worried about the stress on their unborn children from the agony and shock. Some miscarried. One went into labor during her husband's memorial service.

Many moms broke down in the delivery room, where they tried to fill that empty space with photos, a police badge, a piece of clothing. Friends, sisters and in-laws with cameras and brave faces stood in for all those lost dads.

Each delivery was, all at once, wonderful and awful.

Julie McMahon remembers her son's birth in early 2002 as a day of jangled nerves. "It wasn't supposed to be this way," she thought.

She delivered baby Patrick while her husband, Bobby, a firefighter and high school baseball star, looked on from a photograph on the bedside table. The picture captured a moment of pure happiness — Bobby, wearing a cap and a giant grin, leans over their first son Matthew, clutching a massive tuft of cotton candy.

Patrick arrived with Bobby's curly hair and lanky body, and has sprouted into a miniature version of his daredevil dad. The child took his mother's breath away recently when he bounded by, swinging his arms and moving his head just so — it was Bobby's carefree strut.

When James Patrick's son was born, everyone agreed it was like looking at his father — the same fair skin, blue eyes and brown hair, that certain way he moved his mouth. The Cantor Fitzgerald bond broker, ecstatic about starting a family, died seven weeks before Jack entered the world.

The boy is also playful and silly like his dad. His mother, Terilyn Esse, like many of the other 9/11 moms, cannot explain how the children acquired their fathers' personalities — the social grace, the twinkling eyes, a love of words or music.

But there is a word they all use to describe it.

"It's bittersweet," says Jacobs-Dick, whose husband was attending a conference at the World Trade Center. "He's a reminder of Ari, not just the fact that he existed, but of who he was because they're so similar, and I can appreciate Ari in the present through him."

She is careful, though, that Gabi doesn't grow up with the sense that he is here to take the place of his father, who wept at the doctor's office when he learned that the blur on the ultrasound was a boy.

It is an unfair burden for any child who has lost a parent, says Marylene Cloitre, director of the Institute for Trauma and Stress at the New York University Child Study Center. And because of the public tragedy, children of 9/11 victims might always feel pressure to represent something even larger.

"Which is very hard to do when you're 17 and you hardly know what you feel and think yourself," Cloitre said. "Like 'Oh, my father's a hero so I have to carry the heroic memory,' when they don't even know what that is or how to do that."

Cloitre is tracking 700 children who lost parents in the 2001 attack, each a study in grief and hardship.

But the 4-year-olds are unique: They are building images of their fathers from the wisps of other people's memories and photographs, without even the subconscious sense of long ago cuddles or kisses on the forehead.

As each child discovers a lost father's life, along come questions: How did Daddy die? Who are the bad guys? Where did the buildings go? When they cleaned up the buildings, did they clean up Daddy, too?

Cloitre says the conversation will change as they grow up. In a few years they will probably want to know whether their fathers would have loved them. As teens, they may wonder about identity — how am I like him?

"It sort of exhausts people — they wish it could be over, that they could just say one thing, but really, what to say today pales in the face of the real challenge, which is a lifelong dialogue with their child about who this person was," she said.

Already, some of these children can tell you Daddy died when bad guys took control of some airplanes, and then flew them into the towers. Others haven't even heard the word "terrorist" and don't know there was anything more than a big fire.

"There are always questions and things that come up, and sometimes I'm thinking, 'oh my gosh' — you try to buy time so you can come up with an answer and do the best you can," says Kimberly Statkevicus, whose second son was born four months after husband Derek died.

Their child, named after his father, turns 5 in January. He knows that a piece of bone was recovered from his father's right hand, and is matter-of-fact about what happened. "My daddy went to work one day and some bad guys came and knocked the buildings down and crushed him like a pancake," he explains.

He wonders why there are no photographs of him and his father, like his brother has. Sometimes, it upsets him.

Some of the questions of these fatherless children are easy: Did Daddy like mayonnaise or mustard? When he played baseball, did he strike people out?

Other times, they're more spiritual: Does he see me when I ride my bike?

For those answers, Terilyn Esse has taught Jack Patrick there is a special thing he can do.

"When he started to talk, I would ask him, 'Where does Daddy live?' And he would say 'In heaven,' and I would say, 'Who does he live with?'" she said. "And he would say 'With God and the angels,' and I would say 'If you want to talk to Daddy what do you do?'

"And he would say 'I close my eyes and look inside my heart.'"

 

[NedNickerson]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/

PEGGY NOONAN

I Just Called to Say I Love You
The sounds of 9/11, beyond the metallic roar.

Friday, September 8, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Everyone remembers the pictures, but I think more and more about the sounds. I always ask people what they heard that day in New York. We've all seen the film and videotape, but the sound equipment of television crews didn't always catch what people have described as the deep metallic roar.

The other night on TV there was a documentary on the Ironworkers of New York's Local 40, whose members ran to the site when the towers fell. They pitched in on rescue, then stayed for eight months to deconstruct a skyscraper some of them had helped build 35 years before. An ironworker named Jim Gaffney said, "My partner kept telling me the buildings are coming down and I'm saying 'no way.' Then we heard that noise that I will never forget. It was like a creaking and then the next thing you felt the ground rumbling."

Rudy Giuliani said it was like an earthquake. The actor Jim Caviezel saw the second plane hit the towers on television and what he heard shook him: "A weird, guttural discordant sound," he called it, a sound exactly like lightning. He knew because earlier that year he'd been hit. My son, then a teenager in a high school across the river from the towers, heard the first plane go in at 8:45 a.m. It sounded, he said, like a heavy truck going hard over a big street grate.

I think too about the sounds that came from within the buildings and within the planes--the phone calls and messages left on answering machines, all the last things said to whoever was home and picked up the phone. They awe me, those messages.

Something terrible had happened. Life was reduced to its essentials. Time was short. People said what counted, what mattered. It has been noted that there is no record of anyone calling to say, "I never liked you," or, "You hurt my feelings." No one negotiated past grievances or said, "Vote for Smith." Amazingly --or not--there is no record of anyone damning the terrorists or saying "I hate them."

No one said anything unneeded, extraneous or small. Crisis is a great editor. When you read the transcripts that have been released over the years it's all so clear.

Flight 93 flight attendant Ceecee Lyles, 33 years old, in an answering-machine message to her husband: "Please tell my children that I love them very much. I'm sorry, baby. I wish I could see your face again."

Thirty-one-year-old Melissa Harrington, a California-based trade consultant at a meeting in the towers, called her father to say she loved him. Minutes later she left a message on the answering machine as her new husband slept in their San Francisco home. "Sean, it's me, she said. "I just wanted to let you know I love you."

Capt. Walter Hynes of the New York Fire Department's Ladder 13 dialed home that morning as his rig left the firehouse at 85th Street and Lexington Avenue. He was on his way downtown, he said in his message, and things were bad. "I don't know if we'll make it out. I want to tell you that I love you and I love the kids."

Firemen don't become firemen because they're pessimists. Imagine being a guy who feels in his gut he's going to his death, and he calls on the way to say goodbye and make things clear. His widow later told the Associated Press she'd played his message hundreds of times and made copies for their kids. "He was thinking about us in those final moments."

Elizabeth Rivas saw it that way too. When her husband left for the World Trade Center that morning, she went to a laundromat, where she heard the news. She couldn't reach him by cell and rushed home. He'd called at 9:02 and reached her daughter. The child reported, "He say, mommy, he say he love you no matter what happens, he loves you." He never called again. Mrs. Rivas later said, "He tried to call me. He called me."

There was the amazing acceptance. I spoke this week with a medical doctor who told me she'd seen many people die, and many "with grace and acceptance." The people on the planes didn't have time to accept, to reflect, to think through; and yet so many showed the kind of grace you see in a hospice.

Peter Hanson, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 175 called his father. "I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building," he said. "Don't worry, Dad--if it happens, it will be very fast." On the same flight, Brian Sweeney called his wife, got the answering machine, and told her they'd been hijacked. "Hopefully I'll talk to you again, but if not, have a good life. I know I'll see you again some day."

There was Tom Burnett's famous call from United Flight 93. "We're all going to die, but three of us are going to do something," he told his wife, Deena. "I love you, honey."

These were people saying, essentially, In spite of my imminent death, my thoughts are on you, and on love. I asked a psychiatrist the other day for his thoughts, and he said the people on the planes and in the towers were "accepting the inevitable" and taking care of "unfinished business." "At death's door people pass on a responsibility--'Tell Billy I never stopped loving him and forgave him long ago.' 'Take care of Mom.' 'Pray for me, Father. Pray for me, I haven't been very good.' " They address what needs doing.

This reminded me of that moment when Todd Beamer of United 93 wound up praying on the phone with a woman he'd never met before, a Verizon Airfone supervisor named Lisa Jefferson. She said later that his tone was calm. It seemed as if they were "old friends," she later wrote. They said the Lord's Prayer together. Then he said "Let's roll."

This is what I get from the last messages. People are often stronger than they know, bigger, more gallant than they'd guess. And this: We're all lucky to be here today and able to say what deserves saying, and if you say it a lot, it won't make it common and so unheard, but known and absorbed.

I think the sound of the last messages, of what was said, will live as long in human history, and contain within it as much of human history, as any old metallic roar.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father," (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Fridays.

 

[sparky95]

I think it is very tragic, but outside of the U.S it is not as important for us as other events. The poor people killed were very far from us....

 

[greaves]

I think it is very tragic, but outside of the U.S it is not as important for us as other events. The poor people killed were very far from us....

Nowhere on earth is "very far" from the events of 9/11. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Bali_bombing