Thanks for the ping KC_Lion. Even more thanks to JimRob for that link, and for building and maintaining FR. This is the Digest ping for the week, one day early.
Posted on 09/11/2015 12:57:39 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
Click to see the actual Free Republic latest posts page if you logged in at about 8:45 (pacific) on 9/11/2001: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/news-forum/index?more=520374
Thank you for posting that! It was a bit before my time here and I appreciate seeing what people were saying and thinking on that horrible day!
When he came back and told me that another plane had hit the other tower, I just looked at him and said "That's no accident, we're under attack".
Gives me chills, and makes me sick....
Not 15 minutes ago, in my diary I wrote, “Who would believe that we’d have a Muslim president seven years later?” Stunning.
Heading for the dining car for breakfast, one of our group heard on his radio that the World Trade Center towers had been hit by airliners and had collapsed. He also said that the Pentagon had been attacked.
We were at war.
We debarked at San Jose and took Caltrain to the suburb of the meeting where we checked in to our motel and spent the day watching events unfold on CNN. The skies overhead were silent except for the occasional military fighter jet.
The meeting never took place. The Oregon contingent opted to fly to San Jose, and their plane never got off the ground. The California contingent was at their emergency stations.
The next day we boarded the Coast Starlight at San Jose to return to Seattle. The train was three hours late, which was normal for Amtrak, and we got later and later as we missed every dispatching window on the Union Pacific. We were held up on a siding near Dunsmuir (CA) for five hours because of a rail terror scare in Utah, which turned out to be nothing more than an engineer running a red block signal.
By the time we reached Portland, we were ten hours late.
North of Portland we entered the tracks of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, and I could feel the BNSF dispatchers in Fort Worth moving us from track to track to get us around slower freight trains. They did their best.
We hit Seattle’s King Street Station at 5 AM, roughly ten hours late. Never did the lights of that station look so welcoming. The Amtrak people were there to greet us, despite the hour, and I was home before 6 AM.
People who were stranded by the closed skies were trying to find buses, rental cars, and some even tried hitchhiking. Practically no one knew we had a national rail system, which despite being severely strained, performed well. I couldn’t have made it home without it.
I was driving in to the lab where I worked at around 8:50 and heard on the Howard Stern show of all places about how a plane hit one of the towers. I immediately thought of that famous story of a prop plane hitting the Empire State Building, thinking that it was a similar kind of plane and dismissed it as nothing big.
Right after I heard the news I got out of my car and went into the lab to start an important experiment that I had been performing the last few days before, and intended to repeat in hopes of getting a confirming result. So it was something that was going to take my full attention.
As the day went on, and I was working on the experiment, I was using a lab computer to keep up with news of the day and FR was one of the sites I had started visiting. A few weeks before my mother had told me about it and I was already getting hooked. But I didn't register yet I was just lurking. But as the day went on and I was intermittently checking the various news sites I went to, I noticed a few more threads on FR about this plane that hit the tower and a few more articles about it on Fox News but nothing a lot more that caught my attention (at this time I still had the mistaken impression it was just some prop plane that hit and it would be only a matter of time before the fire was put out. And then we would get back to the "real" news of the day, like more info on the Chandra Leevy case or more news on the Firestone tire problems. )
Affer taking in the websites one final time around 10, I focused on the experiment and couldn't check again until 11. By then I had heard people waking a bit faster outside the lab and, right around 11, I went outside for a cigarette and sensed others seemed anxious and overheard some saying "I can't believe this" or similar sentences. At a certain moment as I was going back to the lab after the cigarette I passed this woman on a cellphone coming out of the elevator I was about to get on and I'll never forget what I heard her saying at that moment. She said to whoever she was calling, "I don't know where I can go to be safe I mean it's like we are at war or something..."
"Af WAR or something?" I was amazed and remember thinking "Gosh lady, don't you think you're overhyping a stupid plane crash a bit?!"
I went back up to the lab and checked the news sites again. At this time, FR wasn't loading at all and FOX News was slowed to a crawl. The only thing that would load off Fox was a page that had bold yellow letters that were saying something like "Terror Strike!" It didn't load much more than that banner at the top of the page. At this moment, I started to think "Maybe this is more than some prop plane hitting the tower". I didn't even know the second tower had been hit st this time.
I went down to the end of the hall where there was a break room with a TV. I figured I'd turn that TV on and get the real story. When I got there, a group of people were already huddled around the TV. I asked what was going on and someone said the towers were hit by JET planes and they just announced the fires were out of control.
I really don't remember much about the order of events after that, but I remember going back to the lab in a state of shock, thinking about all the people in the towers, I figured there must be at least 10,000 people in them and they were all in danger of dying! I completely abandoned the experiment at this point and just tried to get focused on the news. Then I heard one of the towers had collapsed and I started loosing it, thinking of thousands upon thousands of people dying so instantaneously. It was like I could feel each of them cry out in sheer terror!
All of the emotions of anger and sadness can't help but come forth again remembering the events of that day, how a normal Tuesday morning was flipped upside down in almost an instant. The course of humanity forever altered. Terrorist animals felt they had scored a major victory. Our nation became patriotic and resolved to mete out justice. A real sense that things had changed and never again would we care about a missing intern, tire blowouts or sharks off the east coast beaches. All those stories and more had become so small, so insignificant in comparison, there was almost, at least for me, a sense of nostalgia for those "innocent" days of summer. Oh, if only that were all we had to worry about.
Now, I wonder if that nostalgia wasn't shared by everyone and indeed it's this sense of nostalgia for those bygone days of innocence that has enabled us to apparently, collectively, as a nation seem to have done what we all thought so unthinkable Wednesday September 12, 2001: we have forgotten. We now have stories about sharks off the east coast again. Stories about the Clintons. Stories about the latest Hollywood news. All with as much if not more weight as the latest news on our efforts to defeat terrorism world wide. At best. Usually actually we hardly even think about killing terrorists, except for our latest efforts against ISIS, which again don't dominate the news. "News" such as the latest "controversey" about the presidential primaries dominates, or Hillary's latest efforts to cover up her and her husband's lies. It's like we've gone back in time to the 90's. We can just stream video better than back then, that's pretty much the only difference anymore. How sad.
How sad for our country and our own humanity, that so many can forget so much. As I said on the other memorial thread: May God help us. And have mercy on our souls.
I was just a lurker here then, and a month away from 18.
As I recall the Internet was super slow with dialup, I had trouble getting FR to load.
I worked in downtown Cleveland, and had to get a document mailed that day, in the Post Office. If not, I could have been sued big time. Businesses were closing due to the plane to Cleveland. I got to the window just as the USPS was closing early. Whew. Evacuated right after that!
Thanks for the ping KC_Lion. Even more thanks to JimRob for that link, and for building and maintaining FR. This is the Digest ping for the week, one day early.
Name her, ping her...
To speak of the dead is to bring them to life. ~ Egyptian proverb
200 years from now, I want their children's children's children's children to cower and cringe in fear whenever they hear the sounds of jet engines overhead because their legends tell of fire from the sky.
I want them to hide in dark caves and holes in the earth, shivering with terror whenever they hear the roar of diesel engines because the tales of their ancestors talk about metal monsters crawling over the earth, spitting death and destruction. I want their mothers to be able to admonish them with "If you don't behave, the Pale Destroyers will come for you", and that will be enough to reduce them to quivering obeisance.
I want the annihilation to be so complete that their mythology will tell them of the day of judgment when the stern gods from across the sea .. the powerful 'Mericans .. destroyed their forefathers' wickedness.
By BlueLancer
13 SEP 01
Driving to junior college on a bright, sunny day. Second plane hit live on the radio, I was on a bridge over the Arkansas River. Almost drove off in surprise.
bookmark
Bookmarked
The early analysis on FR is striking:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/520255/posts first thread on the attacks
9:18:58 “Nobody paid for the last 5 terrorist attacks on US interests. Bin Laden should have been a dead man by now. I hope and pray that W has the strength and will to do what has to be done.” - jwalsh07 [That was fast!]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/520262/posts
9:15:55 “Osama bin Ladin is my guess, no matter who takes credit.” - Catspaw (also posted at 9:09:58 on another thread)
9:35:19 “FBI enroute. Osama bin Laden suspected.” - piasa
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/520260/posts Another thread at . . .
11:01:57 “I doubt Arafat had anything to do with this. This was almost certainly Osama Bin Laden.” - Illbay [That was confident and correct; clearly based on knowledge rather than guessing.]
The timeliness of information and quality of analysis on FR are the best in the world. If that’s not a reason to donate, I don’t know what is.
Awesomely, poignantly beautiful. Thanks, Nully. <3
I thought BlueLancer nailed it then.
Special Ping out to the Lists.
Where were YOU on September 11th, 2001?
I was 13 Years old in 8th Grade. This we before the ear of Ubiquitous Cell Phones and Media so we were kept in the Dark until bout 10:50 CST when I arrived in History Class, which had a TV, Just in time watch the Towers Begin to Fall.
I literally couldn't believe it.
Again, I have been overwhelmed by this day. One would think it would ease with time, but like President John Kennedy’s assassination back in ‘63, I recall it and the poignancy of the moment with utmost clarity.
The hurt in my heart will never leave, and maybe that’s a good thing. At least I won’t take my country for granted.
Life is fleeting. And we are always gone too soon.
I remember being totally stunned and disbelieving... Barbara Olsen reportedly being on the plane that hit the Pentagon and assumed killed along with everyone on board... watching in real time as the second tower was hit, and then a bit later on the towers came down.
No one wanted to say it, but we were at war.
Firefighters and rescuers arriving from all over the country to assist with searching for survivors and only finding that one lucky group of firemen in a corner of a stairwell that managed to make it... then hope slowly dying as the hours went by and no one else was found, with the beeps of the downed firefighters Emergency Locator Devices gradually stopping.
I remember being totally outraged when a group of “academics”, professors from some local educational establishment stepping up to a stage that had been set up somewhere close by and beginning to make a speech about how this was all the fault of the U.S. and its foreign policies and warmongering, then them being shocked as members of the crowd began shouting at them and objects beginning to fly towards them in increasingly greater numbers as they hastily retreated and ran for cover. They are lucky they survived as the crowd was quite, quite upset. I am still looking for copies of that vid as I want everyone to remember who those buggering loons are.
I remember George Bush arriving at the tower’s remains and climbing up to stand with a firefighter and with a bullhorn announce “I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people - and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”
Never forget.
(transcript: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbush911groundzerobullhorn.htm )
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