Where were you?

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I was at work and we were watching that event in the internet. Can't remember if it was some on-line news site or youtube.

 

I had just walked into a local gas-station. The tv was on, and as I was paying for tobacco, the second plane hit the tower. Remember it clear as day.

 

And for me, wednesday. I normally don't have the radio or the TV on, so I think I heard about it the day after, when I walked into common room and sat down to watch whatever my roommates were watching. Probably asked them what was going on, too. Then, after watching the news for a few minutes, got bored with what I guessed would be reiterated on the news for quite some time and left again.

Reasonably sure that's what happened anyway. Probably wouldn't even have remembered that much if it weren't for the people saying that people would remember what they were doing when they heard the news, which in turn made me think back on what I was doing, and in doing so, indirectly remember it better.

 

I saw it on tv once I came home from college. It's weird that I managed to go through the entire day without hearing about it up till then.

It was certainly a moment of world history. Like Barmy, I'm used to seeing terrorism on the news but watching the tv I knew the world was going to become a very different place. Aside from the sheer scale of the attacks, America as a country was not used to terrorism and this precipitated a drastic change in attitude towards it. This crackdown made things harder for terrorists the world over, not just the Islamic ones involved. And then of course we knew that the Americans would seek vengeance in a way the older European nations would not. There were interviews with people declaring that they would "bomb whomever was resonsible" despite the fact that they had no idea who carried out the attacks and whether bombing was a suitable response.

 

I was in my electronics class in high school. A student burst in to the class and shouted at us to turn the news on (every classroom had a TV), and said that something happened in NYC before running to alert the other classrooms. We all watched as the second plane crashed in to the south tower. Classes were suspended for the day, and I went home to watch the news for the rest of the day.

 

did it?

 

I would say so. The push on monitoring the financial system to prevent funds going to terrorists would certainly be a big impact. American immigrants who may previously have had a romantic notion of the struggle back home were less inclined to give money also. The US provided increased support for countries facing terrorism, such as funds or intelligence. There was increased support for actions against terrorists and a greater willingness to overlook the erosion of liberties to achieve this.

Whilst the IRA stopped using their weapons under Clinton's soft approach they didn't start getting rid of them until October 2001. It's generally considered that Bush's hardline approach was an important factor in convincing them that they had outlived their usefulness as a bargaining chip. A second Canary Wharf would have provoked a much bigger backlash than the first.

 

The IRA are a small slice of global terrorism, they toned down their activities well before sept 11th.

 

They're just the example I'm familiar with. While they weren't active at the time they only gave up their capacity to act after 9/11.

Looking at wikipedia the war on terror includes actions in The Phillippines, Somalia, The Sahara, Lebanon and Yemen. The section on ETA includes:

 

This not specifically addressed to Ragusa, but to everyone who remembers it happening in the morning who doesn't live in America (EDIT: or at least in North or South America /EDIT): What time do you people get up? I was already at work when the first tower got hit - it was Tuesday morning Eastern Time Zone. I just googled it - the planes hit the two WTC buildings and the Pentagon at 8:45, 9:03, and 9:37, repectively. Given that all of Europe is five or more hours ahead of the Eastern Time Zone in the US, it had to be afternoon already. If you live in Eastern Europe, it would be be late afternoon. Unless you mean you didn't hear about until morning the next day (plausible for Harbourboy and others in NZ and Australia, but implausible for just about anyone else).

 

Thinking about it, I am unsure about the exact time. It certainly was before dinner, and it was a sunny day. It definitely was before the second aircraft hit.

OK: New York is 5 hours back, which means it was around 13:45, as I said ... before dinner. It really felt morning-ish though.

 

I was puking my guts out that morning. When I finally dragged myself to my computer, I logged into AIM to have half a dozen friends message me "TURN ON THE TV NOW!" I turned on the TV in time to see plane #2 hit, and then I went to go puke again. I really didn't wrap my mind around things for a day or two because I was so sick.

 

Oh never mind.

 

I was in Baltimore on a business trip. I spent the next week trying to get home. I ended up on a Greyhound bus next to family that had fled NYC just as the towers fell.

When I got home I found the name of a friend on the Pentagon list of the dead. It was quite depressing. A few months later I ran into the guy -- the man who had been killed had the same name and military rank, and was from the same area (Chicago). For years he had the fight the military because on some records they had him dead. The widow of the other man had similar problems because some would claim her husband was still alive.

 

they can say and write what they want, but the reality of it is quite different:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ETA_attacks

there are plenty of attacks post sept 11

 

I had slept in a bit that morning, and it is not my habit to turn on the house TV or radio in the morning. The first time I usually turn anything on is getting into the car. It was about 8am my time, and I think that NY is two time zones away from me, so it would have been about 10am. IIRC, by the time I heard the news the second plane had already struck, but I could be mistaken.

My wife at the time got into the car and I said to her "you're not gonna believe what just happened." Then I shared my previously thought to her, to which she gave me a blank stare because she is really stupid and not plugged into anything other than her own extremely tiny little world of stupidity. Not that I'm judgmental or anything.

When I got to work I was able to discuss the issue with intelligent people. The Principal called an assembly to talk about what happened. Some truly stunned bunny looks from some of the students, who really didn't know what to make of such a large scale, foreign sponsered attack on American soil.

To be fair, we all were a little stunned, not knowing WHAT changes the attack would bring, but we knew changes were coming, that's for sure. Theories abounded.

 

I was in the army when it happened and as everybody who has served as a conscript can tell you, this is a period where the contact with the real world is not so regular, so I've been told about the attack one day later. The "funny" thing is that a very popular singer had died these days and when I saw that the flag was at half mast as a sign of mourning for the 3000 dead, my first thought was "WTF, did they put the flag at half mast because he died?". Also, the immediate consequence was that we were ordered to double the patrols. You see according to the intelligent people of our high command a small undermanned unit in an eastern Aegean island could be the next target of Al-Qaeda .

 

Yes, the situation started while I was asleep and was well advanced by the time I got up at 6am on 12 September.

 

There were none in 2001 post September and the number of attacks is greatly reduced in the immediate years afterwards. There was certainly an immediate impact, though this seems to be fading as the lists get longer.

 

I woke up about 10 minutes before the attack, and saw it happen just as I sat down to my morning coffee. I was in the Navy at the time, serving at the NSA complex in Fort Meade, Maryland. A lot of soldiers and sailors were ordered to stay home that day, but I worked in OPS. It was a long day.