9/11, What Were Your First Thoughts?

reply to post by chemistry


Most people didnt know who Osama was prior to 9/11. People who DID pay attention to things like terrorism and Muslim extremists in the late 80s early 90s knew who he was.


As for the buildings, my first thought when I saw the coverage when I got home last night, was that I was amazed they had stood as long as they did.

Well, here in Australia - from what I recall it was the wee hours of the night and I had school in the morning...
We had quite a few American exchange students in my year...
My mum being a night owl she woke me first thing with tears in her eyes and said quickly quickly come look!
thoughts were
How?
does?
this?
HAPPEN?
and Why?
my stomach sank, my heart almost physically squeezed itself into a hard ball and then started breaking when people were jumping from the windows...
I didnt care who did it...
I just wanted it to be a bad dream.

reply to post by kevinunknown


My first thoughts when I saw the second plane hit were, "What the hell is going on?" Then, I just cried as I watched people jumping from the towers, and later the towers collapsing. And then later that day, when evaluating the targets in total, I thought, "Thats a pretty strong message that our economic, political, and military strategies over seas are really doing some damage, and have some people pretty mad and desperate."

I did not jump on the "why would they do this to us" bandwagon, which many of the people around me that day did. The targets were a pretty clear signal WHY they did that to us.

Thats my 9-11.

reply to post by vipertech0596




That’s unlikely US intelligence didn’t really pay much attention to him until 1998 before that his name was really only well known amongst radical Islamises and a few journalists. Prior to 1996, I don’t think anybody really know who he was, sure he might have popped up every now and then in some intelligence documents but that’s about it. Even a person who was studding terrorism in the west during the early 1990’s probably didn’t really know about him

reply to post by kevinunknown


You should have paid more attention back then. He was one of the loudest voices arguing against the US placing troops in Saudi Arabia in 1990.

I was in California, on my way to a job interview when it happened so I didn't see anything until later that afternoon. During the interview, the interviewer asked if I had heard about New York and I said no. He went on to explain that 2 planes had hit buildings in New York and that he had heard it from family living on the east coast.

I told that guy that it was likely a terrorist attack if 2 had hit. He asked, "Are you sure?" And I said "Yes. I bet we're going to invade Afghanistan. I know these things."

It wasn't until Bush televised his address to the nation later that night that I realized it was a complete con job.

My car's radio had ceased to function months before so I was blissfully unaware of what was going on as I headed to work that morning. When I arrived at the office everyone was standing in the break room with their eyes glued to the TV.

I asked a coworker what was going on and he said "a plane just hit one of the WTC towers." As I approached the TV, WTC tower 2 was hit. It was surreal. My thought was "this has to be a horrible accident." Then reports started pouring in of what was really happening. I couldn't believe it, but I knew America wouldn't be the same after that day.

When the towers fell I was so shocked and numb that I actually thought "how the hell did they get up there and plant enough charges in that small amount of time to bring them down?" Yes, I was that out of it!

My initial reaction was of course, shock and disbelief at what I was seeing on TV. My immediate thought was, OMG there is going to be a WAR and I felt worried for the future of my unborn child (I was 4 months pregnant at the time). Later as some facts came through (such as finding the unsinged passport of one of the 'terrorists'), I remember thinking, hold on, that sounds a bit farfetched...but I guess I just believed the official story...initially,,,now I have very big doubts.

I found an interesting article on 9/11 Health Trials a while back which you may like to read...

These cases include some who have spent the greatest amount of time searching for remains, cleaning up. They are among the greatest heroes and they bear the brunt of illness because of those efforts. The dozen cases are a mix of New York City firefighters, cops and transit workers ...arch1design.com...

When this happened, I was out of town, doing a technical sales presentation to a group in Halifax, Canada. The room had a "glass wall" separating the room from office space. At some point, many pple I was presenting to got paged and ran out of the room one after the other. I could see a lot of pple running back and forth outside the room.

At some point, I guess someone took pity on us and entered the room telling us: something is happening you guys should come see this. There was a tv set on a chariot that was rolled in a corridor, and pple were saying "the US are under attack". At some point I saw a replay of a plane crashing into a tower, and after maybe 10-15 minutes, I saw the first tower fall down. My thoughts were "This is the end of the world". I remember thinking that these buildings were falling exactly as if they were being destroyed by explosion. Not that I thought they were actually being "exploded", only that it was looking like a demolition.

I was really depressed by this, I thought I would not go on with my presentations, but these guys all wanted to continue being sold to!!! I guess my products were very interesting lmao.

Being out of town and all, I wasn't really informed, but my colleague and I got to a good restaurant for dinner and discussed. He told me that US were accusing Bin Laden, not that he claimed the incident, and I thought: how can they come up with a guilty guy so fast?

Only years later I took the time to check the conspiracy theories. One conspiracy video was showing the building collapse and pointing to images of explosion smoke just below the level at which the building was collapsing and I thought these are faked images. I then went to town buying 4 movies about 911, to check all this "original" footage, and verify that smoke was in these images too, and it was…

Now I simply don't understand how pple don't see it was not the planes that destroyed these steel-structured buildings. Again today I tried to mildly suggest that something was amiss about the events of 911. Each time I do this, I feel like someone who is shaking a lazy guy who only want to rollover and keep sleeping. Sleeping is comfortable.

Sorry for my less than perfect english.

Be well!

[edit on 5-8-2010 by Wut?!?]

My first thought was they did it Bush will get his way out comes the draft, and Marshal law.
Then i later saw his first reaction when he was with them kids the look he had , "like WTF????your joking right." that told me right there that something was not right, here is the Pres sitting there not saying a word, that is when i said WTF!!!!!
Ever sense, i have known that this was, like most of you, planed, staged, and set up by TPTB. Thank the good lord we are not stomping around going ZIG BUSH!!!

My initial reaction, other than absolute numbing shock and horror?

1. That the Saudis were behind it. Which, in some ways, is true, seeing how 15 of the 19 were Saudis.

2. That the twin towers were bombed by said terrorists, making them collapse. Jury is still out on that one, I'm on the fence on the WTC issue now, though I felt for years they were brought down by explosives. Now, I really don't know what to believe.

3. That flight 93 was either commandeered by passengers rather than being allowed to hit it's target, or the Air Force got to it but wasn't talking. I still favor both ideas.

4. That terrorism had finally come home to the US after a decade of ignoring it and continuing idiotic foreign alliances and polices. Still believe this to be so.

5. That nothing would ever be the same again in the U.S. Sadly, this became true.

6. That tens of thousands of people would be dead. Thankfully, this was not true.

7. That we would finally bring the smack down on the major supporters and financers of terrorism: Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, and Pakistan. Sadly, this turned out wrong.

8.

Living in Seattle, it was really early for me when everything was taking place. I'd just came from the shower (community shower in Army barracks), when a buddy called to me from his room to "come here!"

I walked into his room to see what was up, just seconds before the 2nd plane hit. As that fireball went up the tower, I said "Osama bin Laden. Bet." My buddy and the other guy who was in his room said "what?", and I repeated "Osama bin Laden, that's who did it. Bet." Neither of them had ever heard of him.

I'd learned of Osama in the aftermath of the attack on the USS Cole. As a 22-year-old at the time I was no news buff by any stretch of the imagination, but for some reason on a Sunday afternoon a few months prior, I'd sat in my room drinking beer and watching all kinds of coverage on the USS Cole. I remember thinking as I gazed at the hole in that boat "this is the beginning of something"... I was unfamiliar with embassy bombings, other attacks, et cetera...didn't really care about that stuff much, but I remember being inexplicably interested in the USS Cole attack. Maybe it was because I was a serviceman and so were the victims, I don't know, but I do remember a feeling that there would be more to come.

As we sat there watching those buildings smoke, I thought back to the USS Cole. I remember thinking "That really was the beginning, I wonder what's next?"

In the coming weeks, my buddy asked me "how'd you know that was Osama bin Laden that morning?" I don't remember my answer to him, it was something about watching the news....but in the years since, I've wondered the same thing myself. I mean, I called his name out immediately as the plane exploded through the building. Why did I do that? As someone who very rarely watched or listened to the news, how did it work out that the one program I watched was the one that brought that name into my head, and why did the name stick? Was the attack on the USS Cole a forerunner to set up bin Laden to be the fall guy for 9/11? Did the news coverage of the attack on the Cole use the name Osama bin Laden an extraordinary amount of times to stick it in the heads of all who'd watched? I don't remember, but I've thought about those questions more than once in the last few years.