What was your 911 moment?

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<br> Around 10:30 <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>that</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> night, with the kids in bed and the S.O. stranded in Chicago, I finally sat down with the day’s NYTimes. Skipping over the now-irrelevant news, I went straight for the editorial pages where I read yet another variation of the theme which had been appearing regularly since at least mid-August, to the effect that <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em> ..now that Congress is back in session, Bush is going to have to buckle down and find a way to work with them…</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> “No he won’t”, I said to no one, “not NOW”. In that moment I knew, with the certainty as if I’d seen the blueprint, what was going to be coming down: from permawar to police state, political prisoners etc. Before that revelation I had believed the “attack” to be blowback. Within a couple of days I had written an essay describing our future, which I sent out to what would eventually become a mailing list of sorts.<br><br> Not having access to TeeVee, I didn’t see any videos from the day for months and thought I must be one of the few people on the planet not to have watched the events unfold in either real or canned time. My daughter related how the 1,500 or so students at her public high school were treated to a media barrage beginning about 9:15 am: the bells rang, signaling class change and the student shuffled from classroom to classroom where they watched the endless loop of planes crashing and towers falling All Day Long. Is this what took place in high schools across America?<br><br> Computer and internet illiterate at the time, I was initially limited to logging on to see how many people had signed the peace petition, waiting for others to send me information and composing letters to editors (none printed) and my congressional representatives (with vapid formulaic response) . So ignorant I didn’t even know how to formulate the questions that would provide me with the answers I was seeking (Me: where did you get that page you sent me? Answer: from the website, the address is at the top of the page. Me: ? ). In my immediate family, only my eighth-grader son was savvy enough to have pointed me in the right direction but I didn’t want him exposed to kind of information I knew I was looking for so it was several weeks before I could find my way around some of the back alleys of the web.<br> <br> Shocking as the initial realization had been, it wasn’t ‘til the signing of the Patriot Act that I found myself staring into the abyss with no ground under my feet because not <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>until</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> then had I understood that congress was complicit.<br><br><br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=1tal>1 tal</A> at: 6/25/06 4:10 pm<br></i>

[Seamus OBlimey]

that week in Y2K when bush and sharon got 'elected' in the same week. I knew it meant trouble..<br>Still, having got home from work in time to see the second plane hit live and the towers collapse it didn't really dawn on me until I got a txt msg from a mate saying "now we know why bush HAD TO win" <p></p><i></i>

[AlanStrangis]

either when I heard of the Pentagon crash, or some time in October of 2001.<br><br>A child of Iran/Contra (punk teen working in a comic shop in the 80's switching between watching the live coverage of the hearings and listening to New Model Army and The Clash), anything attached to international terrorism stunk to high heaven.<br><br>On 9/11 I was getting ready for work, when I saw the news of the first plane hit, with some live shots coming out of New York. This was on a Toronto News station (CP24), and they weren't SURE. My studio is just a five minute walk from home, and turned on the news about a minute before the second plane hit.<br><br>Besides the visceral horror in my gut, something didn't sit right, and when first news about the Pentagon came, I was in a "no f*ckin' way" mindset. <br><br>Still, there were too many percolating bits, but no real cohesion (which probably speaks to my frame of mind at the time - I'm usually more 'with it' in that sense. My neurons were IHOPping all over the place, but I don't think it was until I read about the FBI accusation of Mahmoud Ahmed's involvement, and said story quickly dying on the vine that I stayed permanently in the IHOP parking lot, pancakes be damned. <p></p><i></i>

[slimmouse]

<br> After being told for ever and a day that Iraq had WMD, when of course they didnt, I finally began to get the picture.<br><br> So, I now start thinking beyond the BBC, or Channel 4 news. I start thinking about how a terrorist passport survives, and a black box doesnt.<br><br> I start thinking about the pentagon strike, and how, even on the day, I can remember looking at that scene, and thinking how there appeared to be no plane wreckage or evidence thereof, before my logical thoughts were superimposed over by the Bin Laden story.<br><br> And somewhere therein, interestingly enough, lies the rub.<br><br> However "disinformationalist" such strands of evidence are to some, it is the pentagon, the passport, and subsequently the incredibly cute collapse of the towers which led to the deeper rings of the onion, involving put options, stand down orders, able danger, Bush talking goats, The anthrax stuff, the fast tracking of these Terrorists into the USA, The devout islamic terrorists drinking in strip clubs....I guess I neednt go on.<br><br> Never discount the physical evidence as a gateway to the stupidity of the "official" story, however stupid that gateway may appear to certain 9/11 intellectuals. <p></p><i></i>

[Joe Hillshoist]

I didn't want to accept that the US was responsible, but deep down I couldn't deny it. Also the sept 11, international day of anti globalisation action for the last couple of years.<br><br>That morning my bro said "why assume its Bin laden" (ie less than 12 hours later). It could have been a bunch of pissed off Indonesians whose wives and daughters died in a sweatshop."<br><br>And I started wondering why I assumed it was Bin ladens mob.<br><br>Part of me wanted it to be pissed off poor people with no other agenda. That made more sense to me. (PS I am no fan of suicide bombing, but how many Palestinian suicide bombers are pissed off poor people, and teenagers to boot?)<br><br>I wish I could remember what i dreamt that night...<br><br>To me the footage of the second plane (the silouette) hitting the WTC still looks sus.<br><br>I admit it could be the morning light behind the skyscraper or anything else, but that plane looks somehow wrong to my eyes. <p></p><i></i>