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I was tempted to post for the first time when the "Find the Boeing" stupidity showed up the other day and the call went out for Freeper witnesses. I didn't because I figured it was a waste of time to argue with the "bet not" crowd. But, Defender3 really struck a cord with me. I had a very small of role in helping Arlington County Government deal with this event, I am very proud of what I did. Later, I had the privilege of hearing a briefing from the Arlington County Police. Everything that Defender3 said jibed with what I experienced and what I heard from Arlington County Police and other county employees involved with the incident. The pictures that I saw clearly showed the lamp posts that Defender3 mentioned.
I know it's a lot of fun for the tin foil crowd to play this game and tweak all the squares out there, but you are doing an incredible disservice to the men, women and children who died in that fireball. Tell your theory to the burn victims, be sure to add how the truck bomb was full of aviation fuel for an added sense of realism. Wow, wouldn't that be fun? Aren't you cleaver?

I was an "ear-witness" to the attack on the Pentagon. Yes, I know how unreliable eyewitnesses can be. But you know, a lot of eyewitnesses see the sun rise from the east each morning and they're right.
I work in Arlington County. I grew up there and my parents still live in the house that I was raised in. My parents live close to the 2nd St Gate to Ft Myer (about mile and a half from the Pentagon). I was out of my office, but still in Arlington, when the WTC was hit. I headed over to my folk's house to watch the news with my dad. I saw the image of the second plane hitting the tower (the video where it looks like a shadow). The image had just begun to register with me when a large commercial airliner flew very low and very fast over our neighborhood. The sound of the engines being throttled up was unmistakable. My first thought was don't get jumpy at every noise, there is no way that it is a plane crashing. For a moment, I though that it was heading to Reagan National, that it was one of the flights that was being ordered to land and it was coming in a hurry. However, within just a few seconds I heard the explosion. I can still hear the plane. I can still hear the explosion. Almost immediately WMAL (local radio) had people calling in from their cell phones saying that had just seen the plane and explosion. Hundreds of people saw and heard this happen. No one says they saw a truck bomb.

As for the truck bomb story...All that morning local TV reported that a car bomb had exploded outside the State Department building in DC. I found that a lot of my co-workers were still wondering a couple of days later why there was no mention of damage from that attack. The answer was simple, because the report was flat out wrong. So, I guess to prove what an intellectual I am, I'm supposed to entertain the idea that while everyone was looking at the Pentagon, the world's greatest carpenters and masons swooped in and rebuilt the place, paid off all the witnesses, swept the street and replaced all the news anchors with cyborgs programmed to never mention the incident. I can hear the enlightened ones now - "PROVE IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!"

Great post. Thanks for responding with an "ear-witness account". I can very much appreciate what you went through with this one. We live near enough to O'Hare Airport to live under a landing pattern which is generally not too noisy. Every so often I hear plane engine noise that is indeed worrisome from how low it seems to be coming in. So far, knock on wood, there's never been a problem around here with planes crash-landing in outlying suburbs away from O'Hare, but yes, it certainly could happen.

(Please see the links I posted above regarding information about one of the victims on this flight - MariRae Sopper.