Let's take a moment.

[Travis Swift]

My wife and I had just gotten married.  We had been on our honeymoon just a week before when I rode in an airplane for the very first time.  I was at work and they called us into the breakroom to see the TV.  I remember panic as people thought we would run out of gas and many piling in their trucks to go fill up. My wife called crying and wanted me to come home (we lived in a town and didn't really know anyone at the time) and I told her I couldn't leave work.  So she went to the mall in Salina KS and all the stores had closed and people were just walking around and hugging strangers and crying.  She later told me she just wanted to be around other people and I understand that now.  Honestly I'm not sure we will ever get the innocent and secure feeling we had before that day back.  I'm not 45 years old and I still struggle to even watch shows or documentary's about that day.  

[rps]

I wrote this some years ago at a "Teaching Writing" workshop. I consider it the best short piece I ever wrote.

September 2001

            On the 11^th, I was in Texas to visit my father. He was in a nursing home and could not recognize me. Still, I visited when I could. That night I laid awake and tried to digest the horror which overlaid an already bittersweet trip. As I finally fell asleep, I realized my father was lucky. He had a reason not to recognize the world.

[Mitch f]

I went fishing that day on the Meramec with my friend Mark. We went into McDonalds to grab breakfast. They had a television in the upper corner of the dining area. People were crowded around the tv and it was right after the first plane hit. I asked a bystander what was going on…she said some guy accidentally ran a small plane into the Trade center. 
We later turned on the car radio and was listening when they announced the Pentagon was hit. I remember getting goosebumps on my arms. 

[fishinwrench]

Everything about that day, and the weeks following, struck me as odd.

The fact that they kept playing the clip of the first and second plane hitting OVER & OVER & OVER AGAIN.   After a couple of days I said to my wife at the time, "somebody is trying to sell the public something".  

Then there was news coverage of the firemen talking about how the towers had to be rigged to go down.  The one described it as it looked to me.  Boom, boom boom boom....and then collapse like a pancake.   Then a second building.....then a THIRD that wasn't even hit by a plane.  

Then the mayor or whoever it was (wasn't Rudy) reported that he gave the instruction to "PULL IT" (building 7) in order to control it's collapse.    And I was like "Oh!" So the buildings were built with an option to immediately destroy them at any given time?   Interesting!   

That sent me on a search for the REAL STORY.   But I've come to the conclusion that we'll never truly know. It's like a religion..... believe what you wanna believe, I guess.    But the official story that all the political figures and news outlets are sticking to..... is BS.     No doubt in my mind. 

So since I (and you, and everyone else) has been BS'ed and lied to..... I'm not gonna play this game.    I've 100% removed myself from it, and really (sad to say) don't even feel right about flying the stars and bars, because I am not PROUD of what we put up with AND PAY FOR in this country.      

Go ahead and tell me to move, I'm sure that several of you are dying to say that.   I'm prepared for it.   🙄

I love this land..... but I despise the political system and the people who regulate it.  It's not cool.   Not cool at all.   Hate it.   It's stupid.     Why ANYONE would join the military and be willing to die for the ignorance that is going on now......sickens and saddens me.     Poor, hard working, innocent, brainwashed people, "Patriots",  being 100% devalued and taken advantage of.   

😢 

And it's not going to end, or even start to get better, until everyone wakes the hell up and recognizes it.

[Ryan Miloshewski]

3 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

Everything about that day, and the weeks following, struck me as odd.

The fact that they kept playing the clip of the first and second plane hitting OVER & OVER & OVER AGAIN.   After a couple of days I said to my wife at the time, "somebody is trying to sell the public something".  

Then there was news coverage of the firemen talking about how the towers had to be rigged to go down.  The one described it as it looked to me.  Boom, boom boom boom....and then collapse like a pancake.   Then a second building.....then a THIRD that wasn't even hit by a plane.  

Then the mayor or whoever it was (wasn't Rudy) reported that he gave the instruction to "PULL IT" (building 7) in order to control it's collapse.    And I was like "Oh!" So the buildings were built with an option to immediately destroy them at any given time?   Interesting!   

That sent me on a search for the REAL STORY.   But I've come to the conclusion that we'll never truly know. It's like a religion..... believe what you wanna believe, I guess.    But the official story that all the political figures and news outlets are sticking to..... is BS.     No doubt in my mind. 

So since I (and you, and everyone else) has been BS'ed and lied to..... I'm not gonna play this game.    I've 100% removed myself from it, and really (sad to say) don't even feel right about flying the stars and bars, because I am not PROUD of what we put up with AND PAY FOR in this country.      

Go ahead and tell me to move, I'm sure that several of you are dying to say that.   I'm prepared for it.   🙄

I love this land..... but I despise the political system and the people who regulate it.  It's not cool.   Not cool at all.   Hate it.   It's stupid.     Why ANYONE would join the military and be willing to die for the ignorance that is going on now......sickens and saddens me.     Poor innocent brainwashed people, being 100% devalued and taken advantage of.   

😢

I'm not a "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" 9/11 truther, but I 100% believe the U.S. government allowed it to happen. They knew this was coming but did not act. Watch the Frontline documentary "The Man who Knew" about Jim O'Neill of the FBI. He and others knew this attack was imminent, even so much as knowing when two of the hijackers entered and left the country, and that they were associated with al Qaeda. He sent reports to the FBI director and CIA that urged them to look into flight schools these terrorists were training at. Nothing was done. The FBI and CIA powers that be essentially silenced and fired him. He became head of security at the WTC and died on 9/11..

There are countless examples of our worthless government overseeing heinous experiments, military acts, etc. MK Ultra, Bay of Pigs, Operation Paperclip (which worked out I guess), and many others. Why not this one?

[snagged in outlet 3]

8 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

Everything about that day, and the weeks following, struck me as odd.

The fact that they kept playing the clip of the first and second plane hitting OVER & OVER & OVER AGAIN.   After a couple of days I said to my wife at the time, "somebody is trying to sell the public something".  

Then there was news coverage of the firemen talking about how the towers had to be rigged to go down.  The one described it as it looked to me.  Boom, boom boom boom....and then collapse like a pancake.   Then a second building.....then a THIRD that wasn't even hit by a plane.  

Then the mayor or whoever it was (wasn't Rudy) reported that he gave the instruction to "PULL IT" (building 7) in order to control it's collapse.    And I was like "Oh!" So the buildings were built with an option to immediately destroy them at any given time?   Interesting!   

That sent me on a search for the REAL STORY.   But I've come to the conclusion that we'll never truly know. It's like a religion..... believe what you wanna believe, I guess.    But the official story that all the political figures and news outlets are sticking to..... is BS.     No doubt in my mind. 

So since I (and you, and everyone else) has been BS'ed and lied to..... I'm not gonna play this game.    I've 100% removed myself from it, and really (sad to say) don't even feel right about flying the stars and bars, because I am not PROUD of what we put up with AND PAY FOR in this country.      

Go ahead and tell me to move, I'm sure that several of you are dying to say that.   I'm prepared for it.   🙄

I love this land..... but I despise the political system and the people who regulate it.  It's not cool.   Not cool at all.   Hate it.   It's stupid.     Why ANYONE would join the military and be willing to die for the ignorance that is going on now......sickens and saddens me.     Poor, hard working, innocent, brainwashed people, "Patriots",  being 100% devalued and taken advantage of.   

😢

I agree about the BS we were fed about 9/11.  But I will always be proud of and fly the flag because to me it represents everyday people like us on here.  And some everyday people like us end up being heroes and THEY are why I’m proud.  

[fishinwrench]

13 minutes ago, snagged in outlet 3 said:

I agree about the BS we were fed about 9/11.  But I will always be proud of and fly the flag because to me it represents everyday people like us on here.  And some everyday people like us end up being heroes and THEY are why I’m proud.  

Good point.   I'd feel better about flying it if it could be removed from the county courthouses, state capitols, and the White house.  

Those pricks don't deserve to be flying it.

[snagged in outlet 3]

23 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

Good point.   I'd feel better about flying it if it could be removed from the county courthouses, state capitols, and the White house.  

Those pricks don't deserve to be flying it.

Yep.  That’s why I have a flag in my garage.   Reminds me of what I think of as being an American.   When the going gets tough we’ll come out of our garages wiping our hands on a greasy towel looking to take action.  Wives looking out the front door asking what’s up.  That’s what I think of and that’s who I am. 

[Al Agnew]

We lost our innocence on 9/11.  We had thought that, having outlasted the Soviet Union and converted China to a greed-driven instead of ideologically driven country, we didn't have much to worry about. The thing I remember most was how absolutely gobsmacked everybody was..."oh crap, there are terrorists out there who not only hate us but have the capability to really do serious harm to us".  I remember how much most people, no matter what their political persuasion, were on board with invading Iraq and Afghanistan to "do something".  It didn't last long, but it may have been the last time, and may be the last time, Americans actually put aside their differences and support a common goal.

I don't believe the conspiracy theories, sorry.  I have no illusions about the competency of government agencies.  Their very incompetence at times argues against grand conspiracies--how do the numbers of government workers in on the scheme ever keep it all secret?  It could have been prevented, we had the knowledge and the intelligence, but our intelligence agencies were rivals, not partners.  And the scheme would be unnecessarily complex...if you had the means to bring down the towers in the first place, why not just do it and frame some "terrorists", rather than having somebody do suicide missions flying planes into them plus the Pentagon?

But I'm also just as certain that the Bush administration (not so much Bush himself but Cheney and Rumsfeld and some of the other "hawks" in the administration) was quick to take advantage of the event to drum up popular support for their ideas of nation building.  It wasn't ideological, it was geopolitically strategic.  Iraq has oil.  At the time we were dependent upon a bunch of countries which didn't like us for a majority of our oil, and that didn't look like it would change any time soon.  So turn Iraq into a country "friendly" to the U.S. (maybe even a puppet government), and bingo, we'd have a stable oil supply there at least.  Of course, by this time we've learned that we simply aren't effective at nation building when the people with the most influence in that nation are medieval religious nutcases that hate our brand of society.  But at the time they probably thought it was easily doable.  Heck, we all did.   I was never sure about the whole weapons of mass destruction thing, but I thought, naively, that they were competent enough to pull off the nation building and that it might turn out well in the end.

In the 20 years since, we've learned, or should have learned, a lot of things.  One of the things I've learned is that if we have an outside enemy to rally against, that enemy is still not likely to prevail.  We've been pretty effective as a government in keeping another 9/11 from happening.  But...once that outside enemy fades into the background like Islamic terrorism has, we are ripe for being manipulated into going against a different enemy.  And now, the different enemy is the people in our own country who don't agree with us politically.  We are being conditioned by domestic greed and foreign influence in social media to hate each other, and I'm not sure how we back off from that. 

 

 

[snagged in outlet 3]

22 minutes ago, Al Agnew said:

on't believe the conspiracy theories, sorry.  I have no illusions about the competency of government agencies.  Their very incompetence at times argues against grand conspiracies--how do the numbers of government workers in on the scheme ever keep it all secret?  It could have been prevented, we had the knowledge and the intelligence, but our intelligence agencies were rivals, not partners.  And the scheme would be unnecessarily complex...if you had the means to bring down the towers in the first place, why not just do it and frame some "terrorists", rather than having somebody do suicide missions flying planes into them plus the Pentagon?

The group of engineers and physicists of the documentary “The New Pearl Harbor” have outlined their discrepancies in the “official” story and issued a challenge to anyone who can rationalize all of them and not one person has accepted the challenge.   Pretty interesting.