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September 10, 2001: “Make no mistake, it’s not revenge he’s after. It’s a reckoning.”

He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Easter, 1916 by William Butler Yeats

I’ve been trying to remember September 10 but it’s no go.

I know what I must have been doing, but I don’t remember what I did. I kept no notes on that most ordinary of September days. I kept many notes on the day that followed and the days, weeks, months and years that followed that day. What I do know is that whatever might have followed September 10 was taken from us all that day never to be returned or recaptured only avenged. What I do know is that “justice being served” has no part in it, and never did.

I can, of course, assume what I did — what I must have done — on a routine Monday in Brooklyn Heights. I would have gotten up and showered in my strange bathroom with half a tub. I would have dressed for work; maybe a white shirt and a tie and a suit. I would have walked a block and a half to the Clark Street Station and taken an elevator 11 floors beneath the surface of the earth, ridden a train deeper still under the East River, and gotten out at Penn Station, walked across the street and taken the elevator up to the eleventh floor, and worked my way through my day before repeating the journey back to Brooklyn Heights. I must have done those things and done them without knowing it would be the last time I would do them in a heedless fashion. It was just the pattern my life had come to in all the long New York years leading to September 10.

I can, of course, look and see what the nation and the world was concerned with on September 10. John O’Neil, the FBI’s leading counterterrorism expert was dining at Elaine’s Restaurant on the Upper East Side, and telling his fellow diners, “We’re due. And we’re due for something big. Some things have happened in Afghanistan….” O’Neill would be dead within 24 hours when the South Tower collapsed. On the same day, Iran denied, not for the first or last time, that it was trying to develop nuclear weapons. Down on Wall Street the Dow Jones index remained flat at the close of business and the New York Times wrote, not for the first or last time, of “the darkening economic outlook” while noting that most economists didn’t “anticipate a full-blown recession.” Overall the hottest news story in the nation concerned Michael Jordan’s pending return to professional basketball. The news that day was a case of the banal overshadowing the mundane.

It was against that background of works and days that the doors of history swung open and we all walked through them forgetting to ask, “What fresh hell is this?”

We were soon to know the nature of the new hell and we were all thrust into it without repeal. The days turned to months and the months turned to years and now we have turned around and a decade is gone. What might have been ours, for good or ill, in that decade was forever stolen from us. Stolen from us not — never doubt this — by one man alone, but by a host of savages and throwbacks spread around the world and here among us and dedicated to our destruction. A host that will use any means necessary to destroy this nation while this nation “serves justice” up in spoonfuls and creates “Rules of Engagement” with which to hamper those who would defend it with their very lives.

What the nation has become, through death by fire, bravado, war, forgetfulness, treason, and blunt stupidity could not have been foretold on September 10, but here we are. It is a difficult reality that has been dealt by the hands of fate; one that is still being played out.

Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death.

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 W.H. Auden

Now over a decade and a half has passed, “a low dishonest decade,” since the day after September 10 and the thing that looked like a man, the monster that set the events of the 11th in motion, has been expunged from the Book of Life. Too easily and too quickly for my tastes but my tastes in these matters are rooted in Scots’ blood, and that blood demands punishments too severe to write down here or to hold in the mind for long.

Some would say that Bin Laden’s death with a bullet to the brain and then the use of the body as food for crabs and worms on the bottom of the ocean means “Debt paid” and “War over” and “Victory.” Let that be to them as it will be, but my blood says that it is not paid, not over and not a victory.

My blood says that all of those in his line need to be expunged, and that all of those who emulate and revere his manner of thinking need to be expunged, and all of those in his part of the gene pool need to be drained away and destroyed, root and branch. My blood says, “Carthago delenda est.”

From what little I know of history, what little I know of our enemies, I know in the marrow of my bones that there will come a terrible day in which that final judgment will be rendered and that final act shall be done. And as it was on the day after September 10, I remain relentlessly for this reckoning; a reckoning that is still to come, but like September 11 itself, certain to arrive.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • WiscoDave September 10, 2017, 8:47 AM

    I, too, can’t remember that day. But I do think of those that went about that day, in each their own way, with no idea it would be their last full day on this plain of existence.
    Just like I go about each and every day…

  • Jack September 10, 2017, 8:51 AM

    Good article and I agree completely. I’m old but I would love to help bring righteous destruction to them, served up in spades and with a fury that even those bastards would shrink from.

  • Howard Nelson September 10, 2017, 10:49 AM

    Your words, your meditation, should be spliced into our dna, for this reckoning will go on for many generations. Madrassas continue to teach hate for all others. Until that ideology is shown to be idolatry, and shattered, we must be on guard and on the offensive.
    Will what we teach in our homes and schools activate that dna spirit-slice?

  • jwm September 10, 2017, 12:16 PM

    @Howard Nelson:
    Get it into their DNA, indeed. Call me the fool for thinking it was inborn. Progressivism, leftism, or whatever you choose to call the insanity infecting the West has had the effect of cultural AIDS. In many it has destroyed the ability tell Good from Evil; it has ruined the most basic instincts of cultural survival. The desire to defend one’s self and one’s civilization has been lost in these people. Dennis Prager has said, many times, that there is a three-way battle going on for the future. Broadly stated, it is the Judaeo-Christian West, the Progressive left, or islam. The sheep have been well and truly separated from the goats. The alignment of sides is complete.

    JWM

  • Fuel Filter September 10, 2017, 2:14 PM

    Will re-post “A Desert Called Glass” on 9/11

  • Bob Sykes September 10, 2017, 2:54 PM

    I fear that final judgement will be entered against us, America, and that Islam will have its final revenge, perhaps via North Korean nukes.

  • Madhatton September 10, 2017, 3:49 PM

    I was there . I ran into it to get my grandlings . I still smell it , see it , cry it . Look grandmom, thereare people falling ! No that’s debris .. no i see legs .
    Went to episcopal st luke’s that sunday . Before their “service ” .. let us pray for our muslim brothers .. and not judge . Well fuck that . I felt punched . The fires were still burning . Never went back to that ” religion” of crap , i hate this time of fake rememberance with those who don’t mean it , don’t see the war against innocent.

  • ghostsniper September 10, 2018, 4:31 AM

    There’s enough wrong to go around, but it is not in the innocents that died that day.
    The incompetency and irresponsibility is breath taking.
    When they turn the pages of history when these days have passed long ago
    Will they read of us with sadness for the seeds that we let grow?
    We turned our gaze from the castles in the distance
    Eyes cast down on the path of least resistance
    The hypocrites are slandering the sacred halls of truth
    Ancient nobles showering their bitterness on youth
    Can’t we find the minds that made us strong?
    Oh can’t we learn to feel what’s right and what’s wrong?
    Cities full of hatred fear and lies
    Withered hearts and cruel, tormented eyes
    Scheming demons dressed in kingly guise
    Beating down the multitude and scoffing at the wise
    Can’t we raise our eyes and make a start?
    Can’t we find the minds to lead us closer to the heart?

  • Casey Klahn September 10, 2018, 4:58 AM

    My compliments to the author and all commenters above.

    I think Carthage already got destroyed; we understand salting the Earth from that history. In the extreme eastmost part of Europe, they “scorched” the Russian earth. Fury feels good, in part, but it never sticks. A bug crawls out and so it begins again.

    Some turn inward and find fault. On that awful morning of the eleventh, my wife interrupted my shower to tell me that the WTC was being attacked, and that the buildings were falling down. My almost immediate reaction was: “there is nothing wrong with us!” So, I turn inward and ground myself. My strength. My rightness, such as it is, and lit by God and a great history. The West is not beholden to Mohammed; it is at war with him. M’s bug crawled out of hell; it is up to us to stay girded.

    Razed Earth? That’s process, not answer.

    Now you know why I think of war as “us right – you wrong.” It must be so. Have no doubt.

  • Arcs September 10, 2018, 5:56 AM

    “Well fuck that,” is right. Thanks, Gerard, for what you do here. Your words and thoughts are of invaluable import to some people. They help keep me centered where I think one should be on this eve of our dread anniversary.

  • Tom Hyland September 10, 2018, 7:46 AM

    I’ll never forget September 10, 2001 as long as I live. I went to a local clinic and had a vasectomy. As I was walking out the doctor told me it doesn’t hurt now, with all of the anesthetic. He said, “Tomorrow, it’s gonna hurt.” I’ve got a TV but I seldom turn it on….. I read a lot. September 11th I was looking forward to reading all day long when a friend called early morning and said, “Turn on the TV… doesn’t matter which channel… just turn it on.” All day long it was “Osama bin Laden” repeated endlessly. As for the pain, it felt like a jet aircraft had crashed into my crotch. I’ve been lied to endlessly since I was 8 years old…. when Dan Rather said, “The President’s head jerked violently forward.” I watched the most powerfully built skyscrapers ever erected tumble into dust because there was a fire on the 83rd floor. I watched building number 7 flatten into dust because office furniture was smoldering upstairs. Ten years later I was told Osama bin Laden got whacked and they threw him in the ocean. No photos allowed. He was too icky to look at and the American people can not be subjected to icky. The fabric of our nation would unravel. Just take our word for it… Dan Rather, Katy Couric, Obama and the like. Believe. Believe what you’re told. Got a problem with what you’re told? You don’t love America. Get out. We have tolerance only for those who believe.

  • Bill in Tennessee September 10, 2018, 8:02 AM

    I learned everything I ever needed to know about Islam on that day. Thus endeth the lesson.

  • Welp September 10, 2018, 8:17 AM

    After we were attacked by Muslims, TPTB decided that what America needed was…more Muslims! Imagine that! More Muslims here while we kill them there. We must defend ourselves against the threat overseas, while remaining exposed and vulnerable at home. Oh, we created a couple of new agencies and gave up a few of our rights to mitigate the risks. All because every single line of defense against attack failed that day, every single one, and no one, not a single one, was held accountable. If the cognitive dissonance of that doesn’t hit us, it proves history really is written by the victors.

  • Boat Guy September 10, 2018, 10:17 AM

    A friend posited that the appropriate response would have been “MIRV’s on Mecca on 12 September”; I’ve come to conclude he is right. If it wasn’t 12 September 2001 it’s still not too late.

  • MMinLamesa September 10, 2018, 2:44 PM

    I remember exactly what I was doing on 9/10 only because I also remember exactly where I was on 9/11, which was the same place, Nevis, setting up my off shore banking account.

    When flights into the States were allowed to resume, myself and my very large friend were ready for blood.

    I’ve always been curious that the Afghan BS was the extent of our retribution.

  • SLM September 10, 2018, 3:27 PM

    Anybody 25 years old today was 8 years old then. There is now an entire generation that has only a hazy memory of 9/11, if they remember it at all. This world is their normal: Homeland “Security,” TSA, NSA, Sudden Jihad Syndrome, War in Afghanistan because…?

  • ghostsniper September 10, 2018, 6:16 PM

    Woodpile update:

    Update: Here’s what’s going on. Windows 10 itself crapped the bed, so my IT guy had to recover all my stuff – excuse the technical jargon – and put it on a new PC. So, dead in the water until now, Sunday pm. My many hundreds of “favorites” are gone so I gotta rebuild it, and there are almost 300 emails piled up unanswered … jeez, how I love the 21st century. Bottom line, I’ll have a new Woodpile Report out in a few days.

    There’s an automatic archive thingy attached to the new PC, every day it makes a “mirror”, so I’m told. One terrabyte (sp?). I remember when I first heard of a one gigabyte hard drive. Seemed dubious to me. What would such a beast look like, an old 78 rpm record? Would it spin so fast the proximate time/space continuum would be distorted? Would it take days or weeks to defrag the thing? And so forth. Y’gotta remember, I’m from the old 8-bit paper punch days, and one of the holes was a parity check.

    As for my recovery, I’m ahead of expectations. I felt so good the other day I went woods cruising for an hour and a half. Bad mistake. Next day I paid dearly … dearly, gasping for forgiveness, making promises I know I’ll not keep, and yes the missus told me so. And wouldn’t you know, today is a perfect day for woods cruising: cold, overcast, drizzly rain. And here I am pecking away. Jes’ ain’t no justice in the world.

    Anyway, thanks for hanging in there. WPR will be back better ‘n ever in a few days.

  • Exnuke91! September 10, 2018, 6:27 PM

    Someone quoted Rush lyrics! I love it. Wait. Weren’t the hijackers almost all Saudis? 28 pages. Did we not heartily support the mujahadin who became Al Q for many years? 9/10. I was in Cleveland at an Indians game. It was the end of my young adulthood and the beginning of the U.S. transition to full empire mode. I am now 51 and I don’t believe in anything we did after Tora Bora. SF brought Al Q in Afghanistan to its knees in weeks. Then what. The U.S. ordered military commanders on the ground to essentially allow the few remaining Q to escape to Pakistan. Because we needed a “good war”. Read Studs Terkel. We knew those assholes were in the country and there were people in the FBI we knew they were bad actors and nobody gave a shit. Bill Binney knew, but they shut him down. 9/11 was a sickening act and there were millions of Americans who were devastated on that day. But this was the U.S. war machines wet dream. Read Scott Horton’s, Fool’s Errand. As a former Submariner and a patriot of liberty, I can only feel shame and anger about the U.S. Our vengeance should be on the impudent, impotent men that put US (Americans) at such risk. Then and only then, we can deal with Islam with clear, razor sharp focus.

  • Exnuke91! September 10, 2018, 6:36 PM

    Tried to buy me some Remus on the street corner this morning from some Lester Holt looking Sumbitch. Cat told me it was bone a fide, high quality stuff! Musta been Maddow cut with rat poison. All I got was a case of the diversity and a bad headache. I needs me some WPR!

  • mushroom September 10, 2018, 7:23 PM

    Then there was 9/11/2012 with its lies.

  • pbird September 10, 2018, 7:53 PM

    I do remember that day because one of my kids was coming home from Japan and was in the air the next morning. She was coming home to Brooklyn, NY. It was a very uniquely terrifying time for several reasons.

  • Alan Potkin September 10, 2018, 8:01 PM

    Thanks, Tom Hyland, for terminating on Sept 10th 2001 any future contribution to our national gene pool of your well-stated, if not unique, variation upon America Derangement Syndrome.

  • Martell September 10, 2018, 9:57 PM

    Don’t remember 9/10. Probably a regular busy day taking care of my kids and home.
    The next day stands up as a vivid and deep chasm in my past. The memory is huge like a fault between two tectonic plates. From that moment on I’ve been in a state of heightened awareness. A feeling of impending doom started to develop and increased slowly over the years culminating when obama came into the picture. I felt that evil approaching and saw the foolishness of the people who saw only what they wanted to see and not what was truly in front of their eyes.
    My view of islam is a stark and brutally clear understanding of an evil that goes back way back for centuries. I have a loathing for it embedded in my dna, and I am not sorry for it.

  • azlibertarian September 11, 2018, 9:38 AM

    By my nature, I am a peaceful and fairly non-competitive man. I would like to live and let live.

    However, that changed on 9/11. I now believe that there are far too many of us who want peace with our enemies. There can be no peace with someone who defines himself as your enemy. There can only be victory over him.

    Until we realize this, and really right-down-to-your-bones seek out that victory, none of this will be over. Our enemy does not hide that they’re after victory; Why shouldn’t we do the same?

  • Tom Hyland September 12, 2018, 7:47 AM

    The ADS disease, the “American Derangement Syndrome” that Alan Potkin is referring to, is the diagnosis tagged to people who practice critical thinking. Alan is offended by those who think. If you ask, “where’s the plane?” when viewing that steam-spewing ditch in Shanksville, Pennsylvania then you’ve got ADS. If you ask, “how does a jet airliner leave a 16′ diameter hole in the Pentagon, no trace of wings or engines?”… ADS. If you ask, “how do passengers on jet aircraft make cell phone calls at a 33,000 foot altitude?” …. ADS. If you don’t swallow the government and msm explanation for how it all unfolded that September 11th then you are deranged, disturbed, unpatriotic, a quack, a deplorable, an unhinged whack-job. I say to Mr. Potkin, “Believe… believe and sleep tight. Your government is doing all your thinking for you.”

  • Neuday September 10, 2019, 10:08 AM

    I was watching the planes and the towers and I remember thinking ,”Ha! Those muzzies went too far this time and now we’re gonna go Dresden on muzzies cities”. How sad that all we did was go Gestapo on our own people and invite the muzzie cities here.

  • Montefrío September 10, 2019, 10:49 AM

    I remember 9/10 well because I was on my way to rescue a friend from my former coastal village in Spain. This friend (r.i.p.), who lived a few blocks from the WTC was pissing blood and was concerned. This friend, a Viet Nam vet and a tough dude doing some sea kayaking was not one to complain, but I could hear in his voice that something was really, really wrong, so I got in my car and made the long drive to go get him. The following day we were in a bar in Guadalupe in Cáceres Province having a bit of lunch before a visit to the monastery and watched the Towers get hit. When we arrived at my village, we tried to call friends and family back in NYC, but… When we went out, the Muslims immigrants working in the asparagus canning factories were in hiding. Smart move.

    I took him to the doc, who recommended he go home to the USA for tests. He took the advice and went to the VA. They misdiagnosed and the private-sector doc who gave the second opinion after things worsened a year later explained that the bladder infection the VA misdiagnosed was actually cancer and was then beyond treatment. Fewer than two years later he was dead. Ah yes, I remember it well.

    It took both of us less time to disbelieve the official 9/11 narrative. I’d permanently emigrated by that time and will never return to the USA, a vassal state of the BIS and its central bank subsidiaries, such as nearly all nation states now are. Militant Islam is no friend to the West, but there are others who aren’t either, save that they are better at deception and can fund that deception well.

    I had friends who died in that attack, friends who may yet die from what spewed out into the neighborhood. I have Muslim friends who felt compelled to leave the USA thanks to that attack with which they had nothing to do other than having Muslim-sounding surnames, whether or not they were affiliated with that religion.

    Enemies? I have my own beliefs as to the enemies behind that attack, and not all of them are Muslims. Maybe I’m wrong in those beliefs, but I have yet to see any convincing evidence to that effect; quite the contrary. All that I believe with total certainty is that the country of my birth and upbringing was largely destroyed on the day following 9/10 and that those responsible have yet to be brought to justice.

  • Jack September 10, 2019, 12:02 PM

    I read my comment on this article from 2 years ago and I have to say that I feel stronger about that point of view than I did now. I may not sound like it very often but I’m a devout Christian who is still walking that road and at times I think I’m making a little progress but when it comes to those monsters, as well as others who have since emerged and live untouched in our ranks, if the day ever comes that we bring them to heel, I want to be in the squad that does so.

  • Joan Of Argghh! September 10, 2019, 3:21 PM

    Wretchard still speaks for me:
    “The story of September 11 must for all time become the story of how a certain date became unspeakable to al-Qaeda and its followers; a tale of how this day of all others, became the blackest day in the history of Islam. It should forever be a date that can never be mentioned without arousing a deep sense of shame throughout the Middle East so that in generations hence, people should still come up to strangers unbidden and say, “I’m sorry for September 11. “ Until then it is unfinished business.

    We have no right to forgive. We have no right to forget. We have no right to move on until this final condition is met. That in the holy of holies of our civilization’s enemies, in the innermost recesses of their sanctum sanctorum they should say with heartfelt ardor: never again. Never again. Never, ever again.”

  • Snakepit Kansas September 10, 2019, 6:27 PM

    I only slightly remember 10SEP2001 because I worked very late and came into the office the next day late morning. I recall the 11th being a too quiet morning until I drove into the parking lot at work. All the doors were open and people standing around outside. I had no idea what the hell was going on yet, but one of my friends approached and said to me “Are you ready to go to war?” Then I received all the details and more as they unfolded through the day. People burning to death or jumping from on high to avoid the flames. How horrid. Christ asks us to forgive, as He forgive us. OK, but I will never forget.

  • Tom Hyland September 10, 2019, 6:52 PM

    I dove right into this article because of the impending anniversary. And I only realized I had already participated in this same article a year ago when my comments appeared above. I stand by every word I wrote last year. Now in 2019 I add this link to a new video that asks the same old questions that the “believers” will forever refuse to answer.
    https://www.brasscheck.com/video/9-11-first-the-explosion-and-then-the-planes/?omhide=true

  • Bunny September 10, 2019, 7:27 PM

    I commented a year ago as Welp and stand by every word as well. Reckoning, hah! There hasn’t been even a thimbleful of justice in an ocean of lies. But hope springs eternal.
    Job 12:22 He reveals the deep things of darkness and brings utter darkness into the light.
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=104&v=C-VNjYXU-CE

  • Tom Hyland September 11, 2019, 6:18 AM

    It is imperative to the machinations of our government that the people BELIEVE what they are told. Just like “Lee Harvey Oswald did it, now move along folks, nothing to see here”… 9/11 was conducted by a man named Osama Bin Laden who lived in a cave in Afghanistan. Fire brought down two of the most heavily constructed skyscrapers ever built in human history. Airplanes constructed of aluminum penetrated the towers and emerged through the other side with nose intact and unscathed. HBO is releasing a film today to explain to elementary school kids “how it all happened.” Guaranteed it’s going to be the same old crap because it is imperative that people BELIEVE what they are told. Don’t trouble your little brain thinking… class is dismissed. https://tinyurl.com/yypehbs5

  • carl in atlanta September 11, 2019, 9:49 AM

    Good piece. Pre 9/11/2001 also brought us obsessive, almost- daily “the Summer of the Shark Invasion” news stories from most of the MSM outlets. These dominated the news cycles.

    Have you noticed that those stories have now returned? Or wondered about what that might portend?

  • donald j tingle September 11, 2019, 10:27 AM

    You need to calm down, you’re getting a tad overwrought.

    Most of wounds arising from that infamous day were self-inflicted, from the failure of those responsible for stopping it to actually stop it, to the continuing alliance this county has with the people who committed the crime.

    If there were to be a reckoning, the only conceivable object would reside in DC.

  • Micha Elyi September 11, 2019, 11:29 PM

    With every day that passes, Ann Coulter’s words of September 12, 2001 become wiser and wiser.

  • jhstuart September 10, 2020, 8:45 AM

    Is it possible Biden colluded with Bin Laden?

  • Joan Of Argghh! September 10, 2020, 9:22 AM

    Every year I read your accounts from the outside, and read Mike Wilson’s account from the inside:
    http://iwilson.net/15-years-really/
    Something about the writing of both, instead of all the images, that slows time down to milliseconds of details that make the hair stand up on the nape. Never Forget.

    Thank you for being part of the remembering.

  • ghostsniper September 10, 2020, 1:56 PM

    Amazingly enough, 19 years hence, and everything has gotten exponentially worse, almost as if learning or paying attention is no longer possible. What do you think it’ll be like in another 19 years? I bet it’ll be a world you never imagined and like no other in recorded history. “The people” deserve it.

  • Auntie Analogue September 10, 2020, 3:22 PM

    If you want to know how much “our” Elite $ellout E$tabli$hment cares for us ordinary Americans, all you need to do is to count the numbers of Japs FDR imported following their attack on Pearl Harbor, and then to compare those numbers against the numbers of Moslems George W. and Obama imported following the jihad mass murders of 9-11. Quod erat demonstrandum.

  • gwbnyc September 10, 2021, 6:15 AM

    I have a broken bolt from the site I pocketed on day three, I used to break it out once a year 9/11.

    “commemorative” t-shirt, keychain, flag and ball cap sales commenced it seems immediately from carts on the lessening perimeter of the site and continued progressively.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1cf18481717944b7278cdac0db29f17148aa283e057848a01c2df7d849f94759.jpg

    Now it’s a sideshow, a brothel.

  • Casey Klahn September 10, 2021, 6:43 AM

    I wonder how the next 9-11 comes?

    My tactic is to not be anywhere near that battle. I hate the idea of defeat. I counseled a victory.

  • Thud Muffle September 10, 2021, 7:53 AM

    In Thud World it would have come within a month of 9-11. Shrub just didn’t have it in him

  • Walter Sobchak September 10, 2021, 1:35 PM

    We made a horrible mistake in responding to the Muslim attack on September 11. On September 12, 2001, we should have nuked Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. We should not have bothered to invade anywhere or anybody. Just 2 nukes would have delivered the message: Don’t #$%& with us. If you conduct a surprise attack on American cities, we will exact the most terrible revenge.

    The world would have been a much calmer and more orderly place.

  • Diane de P September 10, 2021, 2:36 PM

    On the morning of 9/11 I was walking to the subway in lower Manhattan to go to work. Tall buildings on either side of the street leaving only a slice of sky above. As I approached the entrance to the subway an enormous plane flew above me in the slice of sky. I couldn’t see the whole plane at once, it was so low. First the nose, then the belly and wings and then the tail. “Whoo, that plane is too low, it’s going to hit something.” None of the zombies on the street even looked up. I continued down into the subway on Prince and Broadway. When I got down the stairs the station shook. “It must have hit something” I thought. At the time I thought the plane had just crashed accidently and I had seen it coming down. I continued to work on Broadway and 50th Street where I was informed that a plane had hit the WTC and I knew I had seen it on it’s way. We had big South facing windows where we could see the smoking tower and then the 2nd plane flying toward the 2nd tower and hitting it. We turned on the tv in the conference room and watched news coverage until our boss told us all to go home and we arranged for those who lived outside of Manhattan to bunk up with those of us who lived here since everything was closed down. My area was closed off to traffic for days and the acrid smell of smoke and something else stunk for days.

  • JoeDaddy September 11, 2021, 3:03 AM

    Let’s ask the Bush family what they knew. Let’s ask the hundreds + firefighters that saw and heard explosions inside the lower floors of the buildings. Like the vaxx, JFK’s assassination,Jan. 6, etc…..the ‘official’ stories are a lie to protect the officials.

    • Vanderleun September 11, 2021, 2:39 PM

      Oh go fuck yourself with an atom bomb. Taker your strange outrage over to the coffee table with the geezers freaking out about contrails. They got a strap-on that will fit you nicely. And a spiked muzzle dipped in white phosphorus as well. Suit UP!

  • Vanderleun September 11, 2021, 9:07 AM

    ONE… MORE…. TIME….

    Cher Joedaddy… On this subject you either know jack or shit or a combination of both. I saw it I stood in the blowing ash of the cremated and I lived in the smoke and rubble for more than most of a year. Kindly shove this idea of yours up your ass after pasting its shallowness and stupidity on your forehead and then igniting the gas soaked hair.

    • John Venlet September 11, 2021, 10:18 AM

      Righteous anger sometimes requires us to speak the truth forcefully, which you did in your response to Joedaddy, Gerard. Carry on.

  • ASM826 September 11, 2021, 2:07 PM

    I know where I was on September 10, 2001.

    September 10th, 2001 was a Monday. I had scheduled a day off a couple of weeks in advance, and we had made plans to go canoeing. The perfection of the day was breathtaking. A Carolina blue sky, a light breeze, afternoon temperature in the low 80s.

    We put in at the landing in the primitive camping area in Goose Creek State Park, N.C.. The marsh grass and trees were showing some signs of fall. The creek runs up through the park becoming narrower as it goes. We slowly picked our way along, stopping to look at birds and wildflowers. When we got to a point where all we could do was turn around, we paddled back out.

    Going past the landing, we paddled out into the Pamlico Sound. The breeze was in our faces, so it was slow going, but the water was calm enough for the canoe. We paddled almost all the way across, enjoying the exertion. When we turned around it was a fast run back to the creek, 20 minutes to cover what had taken a couple of hours going out.

    We sat in the sun on the landing and ate and talked. After we loaded the canoe on the truck and started home, she fell asleep. I remember it so clearly because it was the last day of the old world. A carefree, gentle day on the water, shared with a fine woman. There will never be another day like it in my lifetime.