9/11

[MylesBAstor]

RIP 2973! God bless them and them families on this difficult occassion.

May those who carried out those heinous attacks assess rot in hell!!!

 

[mep]

RIP 2973! God bless them and them families on this difficult occassion.

May those who carried out those heinous attacks assess rot in hell!!!

I never bought into the 72 virgins fairy tale. I think it's more likely to be 72 well-endowed gay men with a limitless supply of Viagra.

 

[MylesBAstor]

I never bought into the 72 virgins fairy tale. I think it's more likely to be 72 well-endowed gay men with a limitless supply of Viagra.

Or Bubba making them his bitch.

 

[stargate]

I WISH I KNEW THIS GUY......I WOULD LOVE TO BUY HIM A DRINK !


From a Recon Marine in Afghanistan
>
> From the Sand Pit it's freezing here. I'm sitting on hard, cold dirt between rocks and shrubs at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains , along the Dar 'yoi Pomir River , watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave.


Stake out, my friend, and no pizza delivery for thousands of miles. I also glance at the area around my ass every ten to fifteen seconds to avoid another scorpion sting. I've actually given up battling the chiggers and sand fleas, but the scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod. Hurts like a
> bastard.. The antidote tastes like transmission fluid, but God bless the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.
>
> The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that, believe it or not, they are human beings, which means they have to eat food and drink water. That requires couriers and that's where an old bounty hunter like me comes in handy.


I track the couriers, locate the tunnel entrances and storage facilities, type the info into the handheld, shoot the coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders where to drop the hardware. We bash some heads for a while, then I track and record the new movement.


It's all about intelligence. We haven't even brought in the snipers yet. These scurrying rats have no idea what they're in for. We are but days away from cutting off supply lines and allowing the eradication to begin.


I dream of bin Laden waking up to find me standing over him with my boot on his throat as I spit into his face and plunge my nickel-plated Bowie knife through his frontal lobe. But you know me, I'm a romantic. I've said it before and I'll say it again: This country blows, man. It's not even a country. There are no roads, there's no infrastructure, there's no government. This is an inhospitable, rock pit **** hole ruled by eleventh century warring tribes. There are no jobs here like we know jobs.
>
> Afghanistan offers two ways for a man to support his family: join the opium trade or join the army. That's it. Those are your options. Oh, I forgot, you can also live in a refugee camp and eat plum-sweetened, crushed beetle
> paste
and squirt mud like a goose with stomach flu, if that's your idea of a party. But the smell alone of those 'tent cities of the walking dead' is enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to cheerfully scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day.
>
> I've been living with these Tajiks and Uzbeks, and Turkmen and even a couple of Pushtuns, for over a month-and-a-half now, and this much I can say for sure:
> These guys, all of 'em, are Huns... actual, living Huns.. They LIVE to fight. It's what they do. It's ALL they do. They have no respect for anything, not for their families, nor for each other, nor for themselves. They claw at one
> another as a way of life. They play polo with dead calves and force their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the family honor.


Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts who feed on each other's barbarism. Cavemen with AK-47's. Then again, maybe I'm just cranky.
>
> I'm freezing my ass off on this stupid hill because my lap warmer is running out of juice, and I can't recharge it until the sun comes up in a few hours. Oh yeah! You like to write letters, right? Do me a favor, Bizarre. Write a
> letter to CNN and tell Wolf and Anderson and that awful, sneering, pompous Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban 'smart.' They are not smart. I suggest CNN invest in a dictionary because the word they are looking for is
> 'cunning.' The Taliban are cunning, like jackals and hyenas and wolverines. They are sneaky and ruthless, and when confronted, cowardly. They are hateful,
malevolent
> parasites who create nothing and destroy everything else. Smart. Pfft. Yeah, they're real smart.
>
> They've spent their entire lives reading only one book (and not a very good one, as books go) and consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be products of the devil. They're still figuring out how to work a Bic lighter. Talking to a
> Taliban warrior about improving his quality of life is like trying to teach an ape how to hold a pen; eventually he just gets frustrated and sticks you in the eye with it.
>
> OK, enough. Snuffle will be up soon, so I have to get back to my hole. Covering my tracks in the snow takes a lot of practice, but I'm good at it.
>
> Please, I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn off the TV sets and move on with your lives. The story line you are getting from CNN and other news agencies is
utter bullshit and designed not to deliver truth but rather to keep
> you glued to the screen through the commercials. We've got this one under control. The worst thing you guys can do right now is sit around analyzing what we're doing
> over here, because you have no idea what we're doing, and really, you don't want to know. We are your military, and we are doing what you sent us here to do.
>
> Saucy Jack
> Recon Marine in Afghanistan
>
> Semper Fi
>
> "Freedom is not free...but the U.S. Marine Corps will pay most of your share".
>

 

[jazdoc]

I never bought into the 72 virgins fairy tale. I think it's more likely to be 72 well-endowed gay men with a limitless supply of Viagra.

Oh there are 72 virgins, but they look like this:

 

[MylesBAstor]

Oh there are 72 virgins, but they look like this:

Did you ever wonder how they came up with that number? Why not 75 or 100?

 

[Steve Williams]

I happened to watch a 2 hour special this morning on the A&E Network re 9/11/2001 and to see video footage which I had never seen before served to remind me of the events of that day. What could one say as we watched people jumping from the WTC to their deaths rather than succumb to the fire and smoke. Or to hear the voice of the fire chief stating that it was impossible to rescue people on floors above the crash. Or to hear first hand from a man who made it out alive having sat in his chair and looking out the window saw the plane coming right at him.

This was an event that changed our lives and history forever

 

[mep]

I know. I'm reminded of it every time I fly.

 

[naturephoto1]

Having lived in Elizabeth, NJ at the time and watching things on TV as it broke on the news, we would never forget while we lived there since we could always see the towers looking right down down Route 1. Once they were gone... Since we have moved to PA. I will still never forget.

Rich

 

[Steve Williams]

some of the footage shown on the A&E documentary showed footage that a couple shot while looking out drom their apartment less than a mile away. They were filming as the first tower came down. The remaining building was now engulfed in a cloud of smoke and the husband was overheard making a comment to his wife that "the first tower can't be seen...I think it came down" and then the wife was overheard commenting "that's impossible"

And then when the 2nd tower came down to watch the pandemonium of the people running on the streets below trying to escape the huge cloud of smoke and dust only to be engulfed in it. What can one say

 

[MylesBAstor]

some of the footage shown on the A&E documentary showed footage that a couple shot while looking out drom their apartment less than a mile away. They were filming as the first tower came down. The remaining building was now engulfed in a cloud of smoke and the husband was overheard making a comment to his wife that "the first tower can't be seen...I think it came down" and then the wife was overheard commenting "that's impossible"

And then when the 2nd tower came down to watch the pandemonium of the people running on the streets below trying to escape the huge cloud of smoke and dust only to be engulfed in it. What can one say

On Sept. 11, 2001, I was still publishing my audio magazine based out of a business "incubator" on Park Ave. So and 23rd. St. That day, as usual, I drove into work and parked my car in a garage in the 90s. What was unusual that morning was that as usual, I was listening to Howard Stern on my drive into work and he broke into a special news break, something that had never happened in all my years of listening to Howard. And of course the news was about the plane hitting the WTC. As I walked across 86th to get the subway, a crowd was gathered in front of PC Richards watching the TV and showing a repeat of the first plane crashing into the WTC. A janitor starting vacuuming and the security guard told him to shut the vacuum off so people could listen. The subways were still running and as I walked to the station, I looked south and could see the smoke billowing from the WTC.

I made it to work that day but everyone's mind in the office was the tragedy that was unfolding. Our communal conference room looked straight south onto the twin towers. Most people watched the TV or listened to news; some of us were watching the both towers burning and when we saw the first and then second tower collapse, our minds still couldn't comprehend what was going on. BTW, the Equinox gym on Wall St. turned into a triage center that day; friends working there told stories about people coming into the club covered in debris to escape the chaos.

I had an appt. later on in the day and by then the subways weren't running. So I ended up walking back uptown, a trip that took three hours because all fellow NYers were also on foot. Everyone walked in the streets and cars weren't really on the roads. People trying to get any news they could as communications were spotty since many towers were on top of the trade center. I do remember my ex-wife managing to get through on Verizon which was one of the few phone co's to have any service.

Like most NYers, there are the near miss and the tragic stories. My cousin had just retired a year earlier from Cantor-Fitzgerald, who lost most of their employees. My cousin's husband's son worked on the 5th floor and escaped (and in fact, there are many stories of survivors suffering from PTSD who would never again take a job for a company located over the 5th or 6th floors in a skyscraper). My ex-wife had two months earlier, turned down a job working for AON, who also on the top floors, lost most if not all of their employees. My best friend Rick Jensen, who wrote for me and now for Steve Rochlin, didn't make his usual trip to the co's branch office at the WTC. The unfortunate turned out to be an friend of my ex-wife who worked in the research division of Mercer Consulting. Marsh-McClennan, the parent compay of Mercer Consulting, lost over 300 employees in the attack on the WTC. MMC erected a wall at their main offices on 11666th Ave. commemerating those who lost their lives at the WTC, with the employees name along with their signature to honor their memory!

So like most NYers, it's been ten years since the WTC attack, but this anniversary, maybe more than any since the first, just has opened many old wounds. There is an overall sadness to the city this weekend, perhaps punctuated today when passing the local Fire Company on 85th St. who lost 15 members that day. Today the firehouse was open and the firemen were talking with people passing by the firehouse. Outside the firehouse, exactly like in the days after the intial attack, were at least 30 or 40 buckets filled with flowers from NYers paying their respects to the firemen who gave their lives trying to rescue the people from the burning buildings.

 

[amirm]

I know. I'm reminded of it every time I fly.

Tell me about it. Sitting here in Kansas City Airport.... Was coming from Indy. Got stuck there for 2 hours at the gate on the plan because some idiot here refused to have his case searched. Now we have landed at Kansas City and there is total mayhem with just two gates servicing the entire Southwest set of flights in an and out of here. No idea when I am getting home .

 

[mep]

Sorry Amir. I know the feeling all to well.

 

[stargate]

a reflection of time-I have a really good friend who on that day had an heart attact at 437 in the morning. yes he was suppose to go to work at wtc that morning-he is alright today-but 47 people that he work with weren't that lucky..since then he could'nt bare the taste it left him so he retired at that time. my wife was on a plane from L.A. to philly the plane had to land in colorado for all planes had to get down to the ground asap-then she had to take a train back from colorado, it took another 6 days for Julie to get home--my sister in law lives two blocks from the wtc and she saw from her window people jumping out to get away from the heat- to this day she still live near the wtc but now she has curtains on her windows-every time I walk pass any fire station in NYC, I shed a tear.

 

[DonH50]

Email friend, a trumpet player and artist, lost one of her best friends. Guy was in a cube but selling art and wanted to go into art full-time. Worked three floors above the plane strike, never made it out. Called his mom and my friend, then gone...

 

[Gregadd]

I had already seen pictures of tower one on fire. I left for work and as I climbed onto the SE expressway(295S) I could see black smoke rising on the horizon. The radio was reporting that an airplane had struck the Pentagon. My mom called me on my cell. I continued to travel to work only to see the courthouse was gated off. I turned around and went home.

 

[JackD201]

Did you ever wonder how they came up with that number? Why not 75 or 100?

All Jihad incentives are deducted 28% see Milk and Honey too.

Seriously, my prayers go out to all victims of 9/11.

 

[rblnr]

Just out of the shower, I got a phone call from my sister who lives on the Upper East Side that a small plane had hit one of the towers. I threw on some clothes and went up to my roof -- I was on the Lower East Side, about 3/4 mile directly east of the WTC with a view of it. A few others in the building were there too, we were shuttling up and down to a tv set in an apt. below for info. The news channels hadn't yet talked to an eyewitness of the jet, so it wasn't understood yet what was going on. We saw the second jet approaching and until we had the gut-sinking understanding it wasn't turning, we weren't fathoming what was going on. Looking east from my roof you see the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, I have some video of an unimaginable site to NYers -- people fleeing Manhattan over those bridges.

Had a very strange walk 5 miles up First Ave. to my sister's place that day -- shellshock on every other face, people walking at 1/2 the usual NYC pace. Got into the long line at Beth Israel hospital to donate blood, an attendant pulled me aside after a bit to say they really didn't need any -- the implication was clear. My local bar was next to a firehouse, so I had gotten to know some of those guys -- half were gone after the event. Knew a few guys in the towers, and also couple of news camera guys who were down there for weeks after and have health issues. It started with a persistent tickle in their lungs, and complications started to follow.


As Myles said, everybody in NYC has some story to tell. It's as resilient a place as there is in the country. As an aside, I think that tossing a bomb in a couple of malls in suburban USA would have a more lasting impact on the populace. As a second aside, I'd been exchanging some email with my old Poly Sci thesis professor a month before -- my thesis was on an aspect of the arms race -- and he brought up how it was odd that America had never had a terrorist attack from without, this had been a topic in that world (Poly Sci) for many years.

 

[NorthStar]

10 years after I am sure that many Americans reflect from it as a new measure for World Peace.

And no matter how awful that day was 10 years ago, the American vision should always be one of Protection. ...That was a big oversight then, from many departments.

My heart is with all who are affected, the entire planet!

 

[NorthStar]

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The Human Touch.