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What I Saw: Notes Made on September 11, 2001 from Brooklyn Heights

[What follows is a slightly edited transcript of what I saw and how I felt on the 11th of September, 2001 from Brooklyn Heights in New York City. On that day I was posting to a West Coast Computer Conferencing system known as The Well. As a result, even though I was writing from Brooklyn Heights directly across the river from the Towers, the time stamp reflects PST. Real time is +3 hours.]

Tue 11 Sep 01 08:07

Saw the first tower collapse from the Promenade across the river in Brooklyn. Fine white and pale yellow ash everywhere. Lower Manhattan covered in smoke with ash still drifting down.

Military jets overhead every five minutes or so.

Lower span of Brooklyn Bridge jammed with people walking out of the city, many covered with white ash. Ghosts. The Living Dead. BQE empty except for convoys of emergency vehicles.

Sirens in all directions. Ferry ships emerging from the smoke heading to the Brooklyn shore riding low in the water fully loaded.

This is monstrous.

Deaths in the thousands in New York.

My body is trembling with sorrow and rage. I saw the first tower fall. Everyone in it would have been killed. This, all this, must be stopped. Those who have done this must be wiped out to the last.

War with whom?

Any and all terrorist organizations, foreign or domestic, must now be brought to a swift and complete halt no matter where they are located.

I watched this happen. The enormity of it cannot be communicated. Vile and bestial.

We need to destroy any and all capacity of anyone living anywhere to do anything like this ever again. There were thousands in those buildings. Thousands.

There is no justice swift enough or sure enough.

All that we have must be brought forward and used without restraint. This is an act of war beyond Pearl Harbor.

Military jets overhead again.

More ash on the street. I am cooled down. Way down.

This is pure evil.

*Tue 11 Sep 01 12:33 *

There is no World Trade Center visible from the Promenade. But you can smell it from there — a sort of burnt stench as if someone lit newspaper in a trash can and then poured water on it. That kind of wet, burnt stench.

It is bright in the sunshine now except for where the Trade Centers stood, and there is still a plume of thick brown smoke smouldering up from there making the sun behind it look dim and oily.

Just now I saw three large military helicopters land across the river from the Heights on the big pad at the foot of Wall Street. People on the streets are talking quietly — many of them on cells now that some of those nets are back up.

Everything is as quiet as it was this morning when I got up and began to take a shower.

Showering I felt a vibration shake my building in Brooklyn Heights like a subway train passing deep underneath the structure. I didn’ t think much of it. I’ ve felt similar vibrations before.

Getting out of the shower I was dressing, and I heard the second explosion from the second plane striking the buildings.

I turned on the radio and found out what was happening.

I dressed and left the house and walked a block to the Promenade at the edge of Brooklyn Heights and saw both towers in flames sending huge gouts of smoke into the air.

You don’ t know what to think. You don’ t know what to feel. You’re just reacting. The promenade was jammed with people with more arriving.

Then as I watched the first tower just imploded and plunged, it seemed to me, straight down. Then a huge brown and black rolling cloud of smoke came boiling through all the streets between the buildings and surged outwards towards us on the other side of the river and, at the same time, upward until it took over the center of the sky.

You could see bright shiny bits of metal squares tumbling up and down and drifting out of the smoke that moved up and blew out to the south east it was like confetti or stuff tossed out of windows in a ticker tape parade. I felt the sound before I heard it and it shook everything around me. I heard gasps and screams around me. People were turning away. Everyone with children was leaving the promenade. Some were moving closer.

The smoke took over everything. I knew that anyone in that building was dead. There was no building. I started to shake, and to weep, and to look around at the others who were in all states of reaction. And I had to go back to my house to regroup.

After I was in the house for a few minutes I heard another larger explosion. I went back out and down to the promenade again, but this time I couldn’ t see the sky as I had before. This time the whole sky had been darkened and, the wind having shifted, this fine white ash was swirling down the street. Not heavy, but everywhere around me and it was settling down lightly on all the surfaces.

When I got to the promenade again the entire southern tip of Manhattan was enveloped in a dirty brown cloud, No buildings visible at all. Nothing. It filled the sky and made it dark. Turning the corner if you looked uptown past the Brooklyn Bridge which was filled with hordes of people walking towards the Brooklyn shore you could see the buildings start to emerge from the smoke. People were sparse on the promenade now although down towards the end there were more, and if you walked down there you could see a little bit into the downtown section of Wall street. And there were ferries moving out of the smoke at high speed.

And then I started to hear the military jets but I didn ‘t see them. But no other planes are to be seen.

Now it is still smoking there. The trade centers are just gone. Erased. 50,000 people they say work there and 150,000 pass through.

What do I feel? I don’ t know what I feel — except that I want vengeance. I want everything this country possesses put onto the people who did this, and the people who supported this act, and the people who believe this is the way in which political ends are achieved.

I want there to be war until these people are eradicated whoever they are, and where ever they are. I want it made clear that anything even approaching this evil act will be met with utter destruction — people, families, villages, cities, nations. This is an act of war and war must be the response.

We will be having a long series of mass funerals for many weeks. I only hope that this country finds the stomach and the resolve to carry retribution forward until it is complete.

That is what I feel, now, today. And I ‘m not alone. I’ m not alone at all.

Tue 11 Sep 01 12:42

We need to be in a state of War and to pursue the real aims of war. Against what country? Against a list of countries that support, harbor, or approve of terrorism.

A list of countries. All of them. And we need to take action that is terrible and unilateral. Individuals, families, villages, cities, nations… all must be pursued and eliminated.

There needs to be revenge. There needs to be a balancing of the scales.

This is the greatest single evil act against Americans in history. It cannot be allowed to stand.

Tue 11 Sep 01 22:11

All day the images have repeated themselves on television while the smell of the smoke persisted in my rooms. Off and on, all day, I walked to the promenade to look at the reality of it and watch the smoke that didn ‘t stop. It will now play itself out, over and over again in my mind, until the day of my own death.

Television and reality. It is very difficult to separate the two, and when one has no reality, television is the thing that replaces it.

And because it is through television that those responsible for this monstrous act receive their impression of this country, I believe they have made a fundamental miscalculation about the deeper nature of the United States. A miscalculation that will cause to be visited upon them what I pray will be a terrible lesson; a lesson that will make the survivors envy the dead.

If you look at television, at the endless products of pap and nonsense that are piped out of the media centers of the United States, it is easy to see us as a weak, self-obsessed and foolish people. And many of us are that, even if we pretend to be other than weak, self-obsessed and foolish.

We have sitcoms and MTV. We have endless opinions about things which are not really central to serious life questions and serious policy decisions.

Our young people look foolish in their vanity and their fashions. Our military institutions are often ridiculed. Our entertainments are light and vapid. Many in positions of influence give short shrift to millions more with deeply held religious and traditional political convictions.

Our major issues on a day by day basis rarely rise above the level of fretful worry about the safety of restaurants that allow smoking, or whether or not a flower will be threatened by an oil well. These are serious issues to many Americans, and it is easy to see why such wet and weak concerns would lead others elsewhere in the world to hold us in contempt as a weak and decadent society that cannot defend itself against attack.

They see our men as feminine and our women as masculine and, to the fundamentalist mind, this signals a weakness in the blood and bone of the nation.They believe that they can attack such a society with a kind of impunity, or with the expectation of a careful and delicate response. They even note that our President is a man who communicates in a clumsy way, who is an “illegitimate” leader, and who does not have the support of many of the ruling elites of the country. They hold him to be easily frightened and stupid.

And perhaps he is many, if not all, of these things: clumsy, weak, illegitimate, frightened and stupid. Perhaps appearances are deceiving.

But it will not, in the long run, matter. And I pray it does not avail them. That is all only the television America.

September 11, 2001 there was one American in space. This is the picture he took from the International Space Station

But there is – and always has been – another America, and it is this America that I hope will emerge from this day, and remind all those who seek to harm us that we can be a nation that is as terrible as it seems foolish; that we are a country of deep resolve, capable of striking back in cold anger. Striking without compassion or regret; that we are, as the Japanese knew and were to discover, a sleeping giant. You wake us at your own risk. And once woken we will destroy you, and then rebuild you. The Japanese had their lesson and have learned. Germany had its lesson and has learned. Now it is the turn of a number of nations in the middle east.

We will first tend to our dead. Many funerals will take Place over the next month or so. At the same time we will also prepare for our vengence and I pray it will be terrible and without hesitation or compassion until all terrorists and all the villages, cities, and nations that support them are reduced to rubble.

This will be an America whose anger is not hidden beneath grief and the committment to save those not yet dead in the rubble of New York and Washington.

This is the America you see when you watch the head of the Fire Department of New York try to express his feelings at losing 300 men in one terrible moment.

This is the America of the thousands of rescue workers on the job tonight trying to dig through the rubble.

This is the America of terrible resolve that you can read on the face of the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he states the military is ready to do whatever is required of it. Whatever is required of it. I pray we require them to visit horror on our enemies that is a thousandfold worse than what we saw today.


Mark LaGanga’s WTC 9/11 Video

You see, it doesn’ t really matter who is the President. It matters only that there is a President.

The President is only one man and in times like this he does not really have to lead. He has only to follow and get out of the way.

After that what takes place will be done by many, many others in the hundreds and thousands. These people will not be a group of lame celebrities with their puling little concerns whose lives are just roles on television. They will not be a host of sensitive new-age babblers whose fantasies of a perfect world blind them to the evil of this one and the need to tear it out root and branch.

These will be Americans with terrible tools and with even more terrible weapons, and the skill and the will to use them. They will be filled with a terrible intensity and, I hope, a deep sense of mission which will not be lightly put aside.

This mission should be clear to everyone who has some experience of the world and how the world operates — how reality operates. This mission should be nothing less than one that is willing to use whatever means necessary to target terrorism and to destroy it, wherever it exists. If this means the wholesale destruction of nations, so be it.

This mission should be to remind the world that while we are a nation committed to peace, we are a nation to be feared at war. We have the power to do this. We must use it without hindrance. If peace needs to be purchased with the sword, we should be ready to do this. We must become what we were during the Second World War-ruthless and unrelenting.

Those who think we are only what they see on our foolish television, need to have a hard and burning lesson on who we are when we decide to turn off the sit-coms and get real.

If we cannot do this, we will suffer this again and we will deserve it. The time to fill ourselves with the resolve to crush this monster is now and I pray we are up to the task.

Wed 12 Sep 01 07:30

[I wrote above that we must be ] capable of striking back in cold anger without compassion or regret

[A Well Denizen responds: Perhaps boswell [ my Well handle] has never spoken with any WWII vets who were active in (e.g.) the bombing of Dresden.

I respond: You have no sense of shame or patriotism or anything other than your limp, feeble and twisted sense of a perfectable world that vanished yesterday morning.

Do I have a sense of WWII vets who bombed Dresden and what they feel today? I am sure they feel bad about it. I am sure that they felt bad about it at the time.

“Feelings,” upon which so much of your useless world view rests have nothing to do with this.

Only by doing what has to be done to protect and preserve this nation will we be able to maintain a way of life on this earth that makes your ideas and feelings possible.

In my family, I have four uncles. Three served in World War II and of those three, one, the most handsome and dashing — I have the pictures — was a navigator on a Flying Fortress. He was lost over the North Atlantic in the closing days of the war against Germany. His name is carved into the stones of the monument to these men that stands at the foot of Manhattan. I haven ‘t been to it in some years, but when the smoke that I can see from this office clears and we are allowed to go there, I plan on making a visit. [I did.]

Another uncle, a younger one, was in Korea at Inchon. He never speaks of it, but once when I was young I found an envelope filled with black and white pictures that he took during his time in that battle and they were horrific.

So while I in truth do not know the feelings of the bombers of Dresden, I know something of the effect of war on families in this country and I do not take it lightly.

The French has a saying that translates as “Revenge is a meal we eat cold.” Cold is what it will be and all your smary small comments will not change that one whit.

Wed 12 Sep 01 08:05

To answer leroy, I am back at my absurd day-job. So far I m just about the only one here. Maybe eight people out of 200+.

I don ‘t know quite why I am here, but then, in truth, I’ m never sure why I am ever here, other than that my personal life obligations require me to be here. That may have to change. [It did.]

At any rate, I woke up and could only take about five minutes of the endlessly repeated images of disaster, and having, literally nothing better to do, decided to try and come in.

I first walked to the Promenade to see where the Towers had been. The vile smoke blooming across the river was still there as it has always been, probably as it always will be in my mind where I will see it first as that moment when the first tower went down carrying thousands to a death I cannot imagine.

Still there. And the faint smell lingers too. And there were small clumps of people standing around, one couple even posing for a picture against the new skyline.

Then I walked through streets in the Heights that barely had any people on them. Usually full and bustling even on holiday weekends. Now just some elderly people moving slowly and a few clots of Jehovahs Witnesses in their cleaned and pressed clothing going down to put out what I am sure will be a special ” We told you so” issue of The Watchtower.

Clark Street subway station is shut down with a few police directing people to the Jay street station. Buy a New York Post because I’ ve read the Times. Walk to Jay Street in the heart of the Brooklyn government center across streets with few pedestrians and no traffic except for police, fire, and security vehicles cruising aimlessly about or parked at the curb.

Security in front of the courts and the city offices lounging in the bright sunshine of this second day of Indian Summer weather.

Down into the Jay Station and a very sparsely occupied A train. We set off on a slow, very slow, trip into Manhattan. Several people are reading bibles but most of the 15 or so people are just staring into space and looking vaguely alarmed whenever the train halts between stations — which is often.

I spend this time reading the New York Post which has, inside, a picture of the exterior of one of the towers just before it collapsed. In this picuture I can count around 24 people poking their heads out of the windows or actually on the outside of what has to be the nintieth floor of the towers. All of them, ALL OF THEM, about to ride this building down into oblivion and you know that THEY ALL KNOW THIS.

Next to this is a picture of the side of the Tower and a large empty space on the left which is thin air. In this space, close to the tower you can see five to seven people falling with nothing but space above and below them, falling straight down into doom rather than be burned alive.

Finally, the train pulls into 23rd Street and halts. After a minute or so you can hear the announcer telling us that we will be held in the station for some time because of a police investigation in Penn Station, my destination.

I get out and go up to the street to walk the rest of the way.

And I walk into a Manhattan I have never seen in the almost 30 years that I ‘ve been here. Streets almost utterly clear of traffic for as far uptown or downtown as you can see on 8th Ave. Nearly the same thing on 7th.

A smattering of pedestrians that grows somewhat thicker as you approach Penn Station. A nail salon open but with nobody getting their nails done that I can see.

Extortionate parking lots that are usually jammed with cars almost empty and with nobody there to collect the money.

On the street parking? Oh, we ve got it now.

Everywhere the hush. Everywhere. Like a ghost town with real ghosts now walking among us. People just standing around, people talking softly on cell phones, and people talking to themselves. On every corner small groups walking slowly into the street or ambling along the sidewalks as if nothing they normally do on Wednesdays in New York City is really all that important after all.

Wed 12 Sep 01 13:07

On blood and the giving of it in New York. It is important to do this, but no longer because of the need. It is pretty clear at this point in the evening of day 2 in New York that the city has more than enough blood to cover for this present emergency.

Still, people should give because it is something than they can give. That is the need it fills. As for blood for the wounded and the suffering, there is now a sufficient quantity. Why? Because there are not as many wounded as first feared. There are just mostly the dead.

With the exception of a few miracles that I hope will happen over the next few days, there will not be large numbers of injured beyond those who are already receiving treatment.

We are now starting to see the bodies emerge and they will continue in a ghastly parade of orange body bags for weeks now. Soon, tomorrow and over the weekend, the funerals and the memorials will begin. And they will go on and on and on. We will have, if we are fortunate 10,000 funerals in this city in the coming weeks.

Let me say that again: Ten thousand funerals.

Try, right now, to close your eyes and visualize this number of funeral ceremonies of every type and description and religion. You cannot do it because the enormity of it is too much for the human mind and soul. But we will have them, one by one and in groups. And here is another fact that comes along behind this number: We do not have enough land for 10,000 graves.

We do not have enough crematoriums. Many will go unburied for weeks. Many will be burned because that will be the only choice.

Many will have to be moved by train, plane, or van to some other place in the state, country, or the world.

And we will bury a thousand, and then another thousand, and another. And still the orange body bags will come up out of the pile and the pit one by one by one and lie in rows.

And this will go on for weeks if not months.

Think about what this will be like. Just stop and try to really see it.

And then think this: No matter what many may feel now about the wisdom, or the goodness, or the morality of retribution, there will come a time during this parade of our dead when this country, already uniting in a way I cannot remember in my 55 years, will have even a greater sea-change of spirit and rage. Many of those who do not really feel this now, for whatever enlightened or unenlightened reason, will feel this change and become part of it.

There will be those who do not, a smaller and smaller part of us as the days go by, and they will in the end be left behind.

But by far the most of us will be changed by this, even if now we are not.

Ten thousand funerals. We cannot imagine it, and yet we will live it. And I hope that each one of us can bear witness to as many as we can bear. It is the least of our duties.

[First published in real time on The Well, as it unfolded, September 11. And to be republished on this day as long as I shall live. Never forget. Never forgive.]

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • pbird September 11, 2017, 6:13 AM

    All of us have a story. I have one too. But its a west coast story. The only silver lining that day was the brief period of time in this country when we all remembered each other.

  • Howard Nelson September 11, 2017, 9:12 AM

    Enraging essay shouting ‘Fire’ to the distracted.
    Try https://youtu.be/t_Qpy0mXg8y for Bill Warner’s “Why We Are Afraid: A 1400 Year Secret.”
    His site is PoliticalIslam.org

    The western European experience will be ours if we allow ourselves to be peed on as peons.
    L

  • Fuel Filter September 11, 2017, 9:24 AM

    It’s far past time for some payback.

    On that note, here’s the post I promised:

    “A Desert Called Glass”

    They were all gathered in one place. The Hajj was the perfect time to have a strategy and coordination meeting. The blessings of Allah and his prophet were on them all. They had just sat down to a meal of traditional rice and lamb and were going to save the business talk for later. They had time. Their sources told them that their enemies were on the run and had unilaterally given up and gone home. The hated Americans had no stomach for a fight and abandoned Iraq, Afghanistan, and the rest of the Islamic world. Even the filthy Jews seemed to have pulled back their spies and allies to their own territory. This was the perfect time to go on the offensive. The entire Western world would learn submission.

    ***

    On the border between India and Pakistan, a different conversation is taking place. A junior captain in the Indian Strategic Rocket forces has an uncontrollable smile on his face. “REALLY? You would not be shitting on me like this?” His commander confirms, “it is an order, from the top. We will be eliminating our nuclear stockpile as part of our new treaty with America and the Russians. A Global peace initiative.” The Indian captain smiles broadly. Good cheer spreads to the other officers in the room and he sat at his control console and began to enter the instructions.

    ***
    35,000 feet over the Islamic Republic of Iran, an obsolete Russian Airplane was lumbering along on a direct path to Tehran International Airport. The pilot was hand chosen. He had lost his only son when Islamic terrorists stormed the child’s school years earlier. He didn’t really care about the orders he had. Something about global peace initiative to reduce nuclear stockpiles. But he was really happy to be delivering this particular cargo.
    ***
    Mecca – Coffee was being served and greasy hands were being cleaned on shirt fronts. Servants were carrying away the remains of the feast.

    Then it all changed in a blink.

    The people inside did not even have time for their minds to register confusion about what was happening to them.

    And then they were gone.
    ***
    35,000 feet over Mecca. A US B-2 bomber turned gently onto a new heading. LTC Brown muttered into the coms, “one down, three to go”. He noticed large bright flares in the distant horizon at two other points.  He calmly mutters, “Get Some” and looks back at his checklist.
    ***
    India — The captain hit the launch button, firing his entire battery of nuclear tipped missiles into Pakistan. He remembered the faces of his cousins who had been butchered in a market bombing a few years earlier. He muttered, “Burn in Hell” as he watched the rockets leave their launchers.
    ***
    Not all the bombs hit at the same time. Some Islamic nations had more time than others to contemplate what was befalling them. But it didn’t matter. The results were the same. The 1000 largest Islamic population centers in the world had all just been obliterated. Other targets had been destroyed using conventional weapons when they bordered on “friendly” areas.  60 percent of the Islamic population of the world had been instantly incinerated.  Half of the survivors would die in the following days due to exposure, disease, fallout, and starvation.  No international organizations were organizing humanitarian relief efforts to come save them.   The effect was dramatic and permanent. Most of the world had expended most of their nuclear arsenals and their stockpiles of evil cluster bombs and determined to live in peace with each other henceforth. The world lived happily ever after.

  • Howard Nelson September 11, 2017, 10:04 AM

    Oops, above in my earlier comment should be politicalislam.com

    Let’s put bounties on the heads of those mosque and madrassa teachers promoting our murder. Let’s support the sane and largest Muslim-dominated country, Indonesia. Let’s excise the jihadists who’ve infiltrated our schools and governments — local, state, federal. Let’s get textbooks reviewed and aligned with historical truth. Cripes, we’ve not been able to do that with our own Civil War period!
    Let’s teach all, all about Islam’s 1400 years of jihad against all others and it’s supposed justifications as found in Koran, Hadith, and Sira.
    These are actions within our power.

  • Phil Ossiferz Stone September 11, 2017, 3:37 PM

    And now a mosque stands at the spot, and Hamtramck and Dearborn and Minneapolis are overrun, and colonia of rapefugees from Syria and Somalia continue to sprout like toadstools from Vermont to North Dakota to LA. And the killers grin and sharpen their knives, confident now that we have lain down and offered our safety and our tribute in the form of welfare, as the manual to their death cult tells them we must.

    We have remembered nothing. 9/11 might as well be the sinking of the Maine for all this hopeless child-gelding vote-rigging bloated monster of a nation remembers any longer.

  • Anonymous September 11, 2018, 4:22 AM

    You can’t coalesce with people that don’t want to.
    Your enemy is far bigger than you imagined.
    In the end all you have is you.

  • Jack September 11, 2018, 7:06 AM

    Fuel Filter’s scenario would be Act I. Act II would be a similar fate for every remaining muslim, everywhere else. Then the world would live happily ever after, even longer.

  • Joe September 11, 2018, 7:29 AM

    Has anyone ever stopped to ask what group/race/religion/nation is orchestrating this madness? It seems to me that they are very adept at keeping the pot stirred while they go about destroying civilization.

  • Christina September 11, 2018, 9:43 AM

    Red mist, disordered crescent
    Faded glory, wounded star
    We who dare
    Never ask
    How dare you?
    We move on
    Relentlessly through
    Searing sand, blinding sun
    Blackest night, distant dawn

  • Bill in Tennessee September 11, 2018, 10:57 AM

    “Those who have done this must be wiped out to the last.”
    Yes, dear Lord, forgive my lust for vengeance, for blood, and for pain on our enemies, but I will never forgive and I will never forget. Would I be satisfied with the death of one-third of the human species as payment? Maybe… I will tell you, Lord, after it happens. All I know is that everything I needed to know about Islam, I learned on 9-11.

  • anon. September 11, 2018, 4:33 PM

    Dear Mr. VanderLeun, please tell us what has happened to z blog? It has disappeared.

  • Casey Klahn September 11, 2019, 3:43 AM

    Fuck off, Joe.

    I was taking a shower before heading off to work – west coast. My wife came in the bathroom and told me the tower had been hit with a plane and was on fire. The first thing I could think to say was: “there isn’t anything WRONG with America!” Meaning: horseshit to the terrorists and this is war.

    In those days, the culpability of America in world problems was a subject for discussion. That talk is over with, now. You either love your country, or you don’t. If it is a time of war (is it?), then there isn’t room for quibbling or self doubt. You strike.

    It was only, I think, about 2 or 3 months after the towers came down before some friends of my friends were visiting here, and the woman outs with: “isn’t it enough already with the flags?” No kidding? Would that be the flag my father is buried under, and the one my grandfather chose at great cost to live under? The one I served under? That flag (you ungracious cackling witch).

    It was only about a week after 9-11 before some asshole came into the store where I was working, carrying a very large format video camera (think of a movie set), and he had been taping in Afghanistan or Pakistan. His remark was that the muzzies were just doing things the way they saw fit; they were “cool”. Fucking hippie.

    Yep. I’m still mad at 9-11. And anyone whose not can eat shit and die, as far as I’m concerned.

  • Raider99 September 11, 2019, 6:00 AM

    To the author,

    You are a very gifted writer. Thank you for sharing your gift with us. Loved reading your article this morning and the one about the 10th.

    To the author of a Desert called glass. That pretty much sums up what should have happened on September 12th, 2001. Great story!

    I’m disgusted with our country today. Where this country is heading is no where good. If we survive as a union in the next 20 years it will be miraculous.
    I do foresee blood in the streets and Crusades 2.0. Especially if women are raped in the streets of the usa by those ragheads.
    I just wonder how long until this whole thing, “goes hot”.

    To all of the Patriots, God bless!

  • jwm September 11, 2019, 6:13 AM

    Don’t know what I can add. Fuel Filter, Phil O Stone, and Casey said it. But I see them here. Go to the beach of a weekend, and in the midst of swim suits, shorts and bare feet you see the greasy arrogant males with their slave wives in tow, bundled up like ugly mummies in the sun. I see the hijab wearing women on cell phones in their cars. I still do a slow burn. Expel every last one of them. out of my state, out of my nation, off this continent, out of this hemisphere, and back to the shit holes they create. Round ’em up, ship ’em out, nuke ’em flat. And don’t even get me going on the Africans.

    JWM

  • Tom Hyland September 11, 2019, 7:20 AM

    Hey Casey… why so pissed off at Joe? Who are the “terrorists” you think pulled off this event? C’mon, tell us who did it. And where did you hear the news? To quote Joe… “Has anyone ever stopped to ask what group/race/religion/nation is orchestrating this madness? It seems to me that they are very adept at keeping the pot stirred while they go about destroying civilization.” That’s a totally valid inquiry, Casey. Just like you, I’m still mad at 9/11. Who are you mad at?

  • Mark Matis September 11, 2019, 10:12 AM

    Never forget to thank HIAS appropriately for funding, planning, and supporting the illegal alien terrorist invasion into Western nations!

  • Sam L. September 11, 2019, 10:49 AM

    Let us NEVER forget.

  • ghostsniper September 11, 2019, 2:51 PM

    I suspect we’ll never know the whole story, and if we did this whole planet would ignite.

  • Jack September 11, 2019, 3:11 PM

    I’m certainly not upset with Joe but I’m with you Casey and I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that I would happily join the crew of men and women who evened the score on these muslim fucks, and on every American citizen or politician that supports them, down to the last breather among them.

  • Casey Klahn September 11, 2019, 9:13 PM

    Joe’s comment is boilerplate anti-semitism.

    All muslims did not commit the 9-11 act, but all those who did it were that religion. If it was my religion, I’d feel a heavy burden to explain myself at every step. I’d be bound to say that I deny every tenant of the religion of hate that I Slam has become in many, many places. I’d have to explain how I continue in the faith by threading it very tightly; the past is the past and forward is reformation.

    The jews? Say that shit, again. I am ecstatic to have the conversation, but anti-semitism is not fair criticism; it is knee-jerk of the first order. Nazi much?

    Every race and religion has to acquit itself on the world stage. It’s a very good day to not be a dick. Or a Joe…

  • Tom Hyland September 12, 2019, 8:06 AM

    Corporate fascism hand-in-hand with our own government evil brought down the WTC towers 1 & 2 & 7 and left smoking craters in Shanksville and the Pentagon. And, face it, a whole lotta Jews were involved. The false flag to top all false flags unfurled that day and we went to war against the “Muzzies” in the blink of an eye. Insert the USAPATRIOTACT in the same blink and it’s a war against all of America, too. The suspicious nature of every failed safety system that day is simply unbelievable. Littlest Bush brother managed the security enterprise at WTC. Now THAT’S suspicious. Also, the suspicious nature of every smoking ruin and the “official explanation” is insulting to thinking people everywhere. Larry Silverstein owned the WTC and had just insured the entire property for billions only days before. Then he said, “Pull it.” Are you Jewish? Don’t like having “your” people thought of as criminals? Be Jewish if you want but stop taking everything so personally. I came out of a Catholic family and they are murderous, perverted, satanic bastards also. Stop being human. Watch the clown show and quit making everything personal.

  • Bill Mullins September 12, 2019, 10:57 AM

    My first thought that morning when I turned on the news was, “What the hell? This can’t be real!” On the screen was the first tower on fire with Bryant Gumbel voiceover interviewing some woman in a nearby highrise. The woman was answering some inane question of Gumbel’s when the 2nd aircraft impacted the other tower. The poor woman (understandably) completely freaked; sounding pretty much in hysterics. Rather than kill the audio (7 second delay, remember) and cut away to a different shot, the program director, in true “If it bleeds it leads.” style did not cut away, choosing to broadcast the poor woman’s distress to all. What microscopic shred of respect I still retained for the LSM instantly evaporated.
    I had visions of seas of glass similar to Fuel Filter. I figured (still do) the only way to get rid of the alleged “Religion of peace” would be to turn Mecca and Medina into seas of glass along with Tehran and a few other choice spots. Absent Mecca and Medina and and the major centers of Ayatolla bravo sierra, I expect Islam would slowly whither and die – that or most Muzzies would go totally bat guano jehadist nuts and we could shoot ’em in self defense. No way we’d get a bounty on the beggars.

    Ever since 9/11 I’ve been proclaiming the following:
    Bullets before burkhas
    Pistols before prayer rugs
    Shotguns before sharia
    Rifles before ramadan
    DEATH BEFORE DHIMMITUDE!!!!!

    I’m not saying that the only good muzzie is a dead muzzie. Not at all. All I’m saying is that the only muzzie you can ever be 100% certain ISN’T contemplating hacking somebody’s head off is a dead one. If he/she’s breathing he/she COULD be plotting.

  • JoeDaddy September 11, 2020, 3:07 AM

    And Bldg. 7’s collapse? Untouched by airplanes. Uni.of Alaska-Fairbanks study. GW Bush continues to read ‘My Little Goat’ for 7 minutes to the elementary class after being told America is under attack. Stats say we only have 5 mins. to respond to a nuclear attack. What? No worries?…..disregard the ‘official’ stories, they are cooked up to protect officials. 9-11 sickens me on all levels.

  • ghostsniper September 11, 2020, 6:43 AM

    As terrible as that day was, now is even worse, manifold. It’s like that monstrous act was just the down payment on what would eventually be, which we still haven’t realized. I suspect we will soon.

  • TrangBang68 September 11, 2020, 7:55 AM

    The Jew baiting from Tom Hyland is disgusting. Eat a bag of d*cks, you fascist piece of sh*t

  • Fletcher Christian September 11, 2020, 8:04 AM

    And now, nineteen years later, what have we learned? Nothing. What, of any consequence, have we done? Nothing. Sure, we eventually got the SOB who orchestrated that atrocity – but the man who is really responsible is 1400 years beyond human justice.

    Still, we let them in. Still, the carnage continues – 35,000 attacks SINCE that day of evil. Akbarbarians blowing themselves up in buses in London, pop concerts in Manchester, mowing down pedestrians using stolen trucks or just running amok with knives without warning.

    One day, something like this will be written:

    At the last, when all other means had been exhausted, the Free Peoples grew weary of endless war, and drew upon the secrets that their wise men had revealed and their most marvellous artificers had embodied in devices; devices that had lain, unused and sleeping, in their lairs, and in the steel sharks swimming all over the world in the lightless deep, for three score years and more.

    And in that hour did the devices awaken, and the clouds of agony and vengeance did rise above the land of the Enemy, and the fires of Heaven did consume the Enemy, and their shadows were set in the stones and the ash of their burning rose high into Heaven and then fell, poisoning the land it fell upon, and the Enemy’s holy places were no more, and there was an end to seventy score decades of war, and peace was upon the Earth – for a time.

    Time, and well gone time, to create the need for roughly 36 billion virgins.

  • Joan Of Argghh! September 11, 2020, 8:06 AM

    This year is different. We know so much more about the players of that day, and the interesting part Mueller played in 9/11; and GWB’s fecklessness at the end of his second term that continues apace. The CIA’s unbridled power. China’s insidious influence. Everyone in DC is demented; politics is a virus.

    There are no good guys, maybe just better guys.

  • jwm September 11, 2020, 8:24 AM

    @ Fletcher Christian, and Joan of Argghh!
    I haven’t seen either of your names for a long time. I hope you are both well. Joan, I miss your comments. You’ve always had something good to offer up in discussion.

    JWM

  • Joan Of Argghh! September 11, 2020, 8:36 AM

    Hey, jwm!! I lurk. I comment here and at Gagdad’s place now and then.
    We live in high-central Mexico where the climate is forgiving, the food is delicious, no one is fooled by politicians, and the cartels are at least more straightforward in their torture of the citizenry. 😉

  • Joan Of Argghh! September 11, 2020, 8:39 AM

    Also, thank you for your kind words. Hoping you and your possum pack are all well!

  • gwbnyc September 11, 2020, 8:44 AM

    I knew some of them. I smelled them baking for months- the “curious, sweet smell” I had read descriptions of prior, in passing.

    The ground took the soles off my work boots during the one impotent night I tried to spend on the piles. There were three stampedes- the first one I awkwardly ran with everyone else. It was insane. The following two I stepped behind a nearby fuel-generated worklight as others, everyone, ran by.

    I still have my shoes; occasionally someone will tell me they kept theirs.

  • gwbnyc September 11, 2020, 9:02 AM
  • ghostsniper September 11, 2020, 9:26 AM

    Joan sed: “…and the cartels are at least more straightforward in their torture of the citizenry.”
    ========
    Last person I heard say something like that was Billy Beck speaking of street thugs.
    Yes, I too, prefer the honesty of “illegal” thugs as they make no falsehoods as to their intentions.

  • Casey Klahn September 11, 2020, 1:30 PM

    This fucking thread is a travesty. Let me bring some of you to school.

    The best government to criticize is your own. That’s out privilege; it’s codified and my own American family paid dearly for this. Not in blood, but nearly that and I’ll just mention that my father wrote you a check signed with his life, and threw himself at the blade, for your freedom to criticize.

    But, not today. What is unity in a nation? It’s partly the ability to stand firm. Corporate whut? Jewsih bankers? Bush? FFS. The planes, loaded with Saudis and fueled by dogmatic Islamic hatred flew planes into American targets. I don’t regret anything we’ve done since then to exact some pain on those sunsabitches in the MidEast. It’s whose on his heels, versus whose running forward. Initiative. So glad to hear Pres. trump today name Islamic terrorists during a speech.

    Tomorrow, I’ll go back to my white-hot intent to dethrone democrat governors and mayors. My distrust of the congress who are nothing more than a bag of cucks. However, today, I want to mention some sacred names.

    Todd Beamer. Rick Rescorla. Fr. Mychal Fallon Judge. RIP, American heroes.

  • Vanderleun September 11, 2020, 3:50 PM

    ” What? No worries?…..disregard the ‘official’ stories, they are cooked up to protect officials. 9-11 sickens me on all levels.”

    What can I say as somebody who saw this and lived this for almost a year other than that this whole 9/11 conspiracy is false.

    It is well known to be false.

    Those who believe it, however, cannot be cured of their delusion.

    • Abbe Faria September 11, 2022, 5:58 PM

      That’s the funniest thing you’ve ever written.
      “Well known”, my aßß.

      With your own eyes, you watched 3 perfectly executed controlled demolitions of very large buildings, and yet your mind refuses to process that obvious fact.

      How, and who, and why? Good questions. Whateer the answers are doesn’t change the fact : we witnessed controlled demolitions, not random collapses.

  • PA Cat September 11, 2020, 7:12 PM

    Gerard, I’m not sure whether this is the best thread for posting this type of link, but here goes: it’s a link to an hour-long 2019 documentary titled 9/11: Cleared for Chaos, about the small team of air traffic controllers in Gander, Newfoundland, who had to cope with an unprecedented challenge. They had to contact, monitor, and safely land a large number of incoming aircraft at Gander itself, Halifax, or St. John’s after U.S. airspace was closed on 9/11. They had little time to recover from initial disbelief and shock (“Whaddya mean, American airspace is closed? . . . Where the hell am I supposed to put 400 planes? . . . [The other controllers] looked at me as if I had two heads.”), but they got to work with self-control and professionalism. There were no additional casualties on that terrible day from aircraft collisions, runway accidents, pilot freakouts, or anything else that could have gone wrong under the circumstances. It’s a small chapter in the history of 9/11, but it deserves to be remembered.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDtKZZnYnjY&ab_channel=BeachBum

    • ghostsniper September 11, 2021, 8:33 AM

      Video unavailable
      This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.

  • Dirk September 11, 2021, 9:20 AM

    Amusing, your govt is complicit to its core, in direct action or in shielding the House Of Saudi.

    VI

  • Robert Orians September 11, 2021, 10:43 AM

    I wish I had not spent my career climbing the skeletons of skyscrapers being erected by the Ironworkers and other associated unions involved in that construction of those epics buildings . I wish I had not seen the testing of flame proof coatings designed to prevent a flaming jetliner from bringing a building down . But I have and I cannot accept the narrative of the day . It was an inside gubmint job meant to allow the passage of George W’s infamous Patriot Act whereby 99% of our rights were effectively nullified . I wish I had not taken the Red Pill ! But I did and I watch shamefully as America mourns her destruction without recompensing the powers that devised her humiliation and demise .

    • Vanderleun September 11, 2021, 2:14 PM

      I am puzzled by those who, trapped by a lie like Orians has been trapped by, just refuse to give up the lie they’ve swallowed.

      So, Robert, as an EYE-FUCKING-WITNESS to something you never saw Let me repeat…YOU ARE WRONG. YOU ARE SO FUCKING WRONG YOUR ASSHOLE OPINION DOESN’T EVEN RISE TO THE LEVEL OF WRONG.

      INDEED, you need to fuck yourself with a flaming chainsaw in order to blast that twenty-year-old turd you carry around in your skull.

      When done, look at the moon because that is where you need to fuck off to.

      Sincerly,
      Gerard Van der Leun

      “Then as I watched the first tower just imploded and plunged, it seemed to me, straight down. Then a huge brown and black rolling cloud of smoke came boiling through all the streets between the buildings and surged outwards towards us on the other side of the river and, at the same time, upward until it took over the center of the sky.

      You could see bright shiny bits of metal squares tumbling up and down and drifting out of the smoke that moved up and blew out to the south east it was like confetti or stuff tossed out of windows in a ticker tape parade. I felt the sound before I heard it and it shook everything around me. I heard gasps and screams around me. People were turning away. Everyone with children was leaving the promenade. Some were moving closer.

      The smoke took over everything. I knew that anyone in that building was dead. There was no building. I started to shake, and to weep, and to look around at the others who were in all states of reaction. And I had to go back to my house to regroup.”

      • Will_in_CA September 11, 2021, 3:13 PM

        With you on that. I don’t have much patience for 9/11 conspiracy theorists but they crawl out of the woodwork this time of year.

        While I only witnessed the collapse of the towers on television as it happened and not in person, 9/11 is always a difficult day. I knew a pretty large number of people who perished in the South Tower, all members of one particular firm I did business with. The saddest part is they had the chance to exit the tower after the first plane hit the north tower (and some did) only to be told by building security in the lobby “your building is fine, return to your offices.” So most of them got back on the elevator and returned to their 80th-84th floor offices just before the second plane hit. To this day that is one of the most insidious things about 9/11 and I’ve always wondered if a member of the terrorist group was manning the PA system in the South Tower to keep as many people as possible in the building before the second plane hit.

        A few days after 9/11 I spoke via phone to one of the members of that firm who had gotten all the way down to the South Tower lobby but ignored the call to return to his office. He had called his wife just before getting on the elevator down and she was adamant with him to get out of that building no matter what. He listened to his wife and lived. 67 other members of that firm did not.

        RIP 9/11 victims.

    • Fletcher Christian September 11, 2022, 4:22 PM

      On that day, I had many, and critically serious, problems of my own. I woke up from taking an afternoon nap in a cancer ward – I was about half-way through my second course of chemotherapy – to see something on the ward TV that looked like a bad disaster movie. I watched both jetliners fly into their respective targets, live on TV. And also, BTW, listened to the reports of the linked attack on the Pentagon and the heroism of the passengers on Flight 93.

      To all conspiracy theorists of any stripe, I would like to say something impolite. And to the various governments, ditto. 9/11 ought to have been followed by 9/12, a pair of extremely bright flashes in Saudi Arabia – and possibly by an ArcLight strike on the palace of the King of Mordor, who financed the entire operation. And then, by raids on each and every enemy base (many of them can be distinguished by the distinctive towers) on Western soil, looking for enemy operatives and intel – followed by the judicious application of bulldozers.

      Ceterum (autem) censeo Mecca esse delendam.

  • Bunny September 12, 2021, 9:29 AM

    Imagine still believing the 9/11 narrative hook, line and sinker after having twenty years to disabuse oneself. There is no special virtue or patriotism or respect for the memory of the fallen in certitude. Some family members are still looking for answers! Whatever heroism occurred that day does not transfer by proximity to the event or affirmation of the story. There is no disgrace in questioning government/media narratives. That lesson hasn’t been learned? Heaven help us all.

  • pbird September 11, 2022, 5:14 AM
  • LadyBikki September 11, 2022, 7:34 AM

    On 9/11 it’s always today.
    No matter how many years pass, it’s today.
    Always.
    There is no forgetting.

  • Handy N Handsome September 13, 2022, 5:42 AM

    A sad day in history for the US.
    Sadder days will ensue as the musloid horde continues it’s ceaseless attempt at world domination.
    We MUST eradicate islam.
    We must.