10 years ago today - what were you doing when you heard?

[noam]

wouldn't have even thought about it unless i was reminded of it by others

[Gewze]

Came home from primary school, would have have been 10. got home with my bro, sis and my mum saw my dad watching it on tv subsequently sat and watched it together not really knowing what was happening besides shit being blown up, crazy how vivid it is

[topmo3]

didnt read all the pages so prolly this has been already said (pretty damn obvious i realise it, jus gotta write something) but i'm sure not so many remember what they were doing for example when the tsunami hit in japan or thailand or when a massive landslide killed hundreds of thousands in pakistan or things like that.. now i know the 9/11 is totally different deal because of the violent nature and that it was implemented by other people rather than a force majeure but still. cant help but to think how we're so damn US-centered. even us europeans

and for the topic, i was 12, playing computer upstairs when my parents told me to come and see it in the news

[BonerJams04]

in school, they announced it over the intercom during story time
the teacher stopped and turned on the tv, and we just watched cnn till school got out

[mercutio]

didnt read all the pages so prolly this has been already said (pretty damn obvious i realise it, jus gotta write something) but i'm sure not so many remember what they were doing for example when the tsunami hit in japan or thailand or when a massive landslide killed hundreds of thousands in pakistan or things like that.. now i know the 9/11 is totally different deal because of the violent nature and that it was implemented by other people rather than a force majeure but still. cant help but to think how we're so damn US-centered. even us europeans

while you have a point about this being a less significant event in terms of number of dead than the tsunami etc, 9/11 has been the single most important event of the 21st century in terms of the way in which it changed the world. large numbers of deaths from a natural catastrophe are extremely saddening but the world continues to operate in the same manner. 9/11 irrevocably changed the geo-political landscape of the both the east and west and its therefore only natural for it to be remembered and grieved over for a longer period of time due to the fact that the ramifications of the event have actually affected a greater number of people than any natural catastrophe could.

i was outside school when i found out and thought that it was an accident until i got home. my youthful mind simply couldnt comprehend why people would purposefully fly planes into buildings

[topmo3]

very good point man, i rest my case

[joeki]

didnt read all the pages so prolly this has been already said (pretty damn obvious i realise it, jus gotta write something) but i'm sure not so many remember what they were doing for example when the tsunami hit in japan or thailand or when a massive landslide killed hundreds of thousands in pakistan or things like that.. now i know the 9/11 is totally different deal because of the violent nature and that it was implemented by other people rather than a force majeure but still. cant help but to think how we're so damn US-centered. even us europeans

and for the topic, i was 12, playing computer upstairs when my parents told me to come and see it in the news

all of the things happened in a radically different time zone: hence I was a sleep during all of it.

[Today]

i was in jr high, remember going in that morning and a little after the beginning of 2nd period class, we had announcements and all that, and we got sent home half way through the day after the second one hit and it was declared an attack or whatever
i remember being way too young and cuntish to recognize the gravity of the event and we were just pleased to get away from our school work
i even teased my indian friend about being responsible since he was brown skinned (based on nothing else, i didn't mean anything by it but I was a real shit head)

then we went home and looked at the news and out the window, im not far from nyc so we could easily see the smoke clouds
then the more we were told about what happened the worse i felt
my parents were terrified and told us to keep out of the city and just stay home
crazy day

[sarajevo]

i'd just got home from school was eating a chicago town microwave pepperoni.

i cooked it for too long and it burned my mouth pretty bad, was long

[nameless133]

I came home from elementary school then I saw in TV.

[New Sense]

always get asked same question so share same story

No one asked.

Bumps old thread to tell copy pasta story on same page from last year.

An hero.

[mo_respect]

sitting in my first jr high math class

[gwa]

was on school bus on way home. came to find my mum crying, didn't really understand it so went to play tony hawks

[flyingointment]

I was in middle school at the time, and they announced what had happened over the PA.

Once the second plane hit, we were all sent home early and thus were pretty hyped, myself included, until we got home and saw what was going on on TV.

The sight of huge plumes of dust and smoke billowing down Manhattan streets was one of the most surreal things I've ever seen.

[dickman69]

was in elementary school 4th or 5th grade

many kids were called down to leave class, their parents came to pick them up

school had never told us what happened, mom told me when i got home... i remember watching it pretty much all day on news

[chekov]

i was like 6, i don't really remember actually hearing about it myself but i remember one of the parents asking my teacher if they'd heard what had happened

weird how that's what's stuck with me rather than the actual event

[alphacat]

Report: Bush Administration Shrugged Off Many Al Qaeda Warnings Before 9/11


President George W. Bush on the morning of September 11th, 2001

Some CIA analysts were so frustrated with the Bush administration's failure to heed their Al Qaeda warnings in the months before 9/11 that they discussed transferring to a different division, according to classified records obtained by author and reporter Kurt Eichenwald. In today's NY Times, Eichenwald has an editorial claiming that the Bush administration's myopic obsession with regime change in Iraq blinded them to warnings about Al Qaeda, and that Bush did nothing to act on repeated warnings received long before the infamous August 6th brief titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."

According to documents reviewed by Eichenwald, "the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it." On May 1st, for example, the CIA warned the administration that there was a terrorist group already in the United States planning an attack, and in June they warned that multiple Al Qaeda attacks could be "imminent." But that wasn't what the Bush administration wanted to hear, and Eichenwald alleges that "some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster.":

An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat.

After many frustrating months spent watching their dire terrorism warnings shrugged off, Eichenwald reports that "officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic. On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews. The suggestion was batted down, they said, because there would be no time to train anyone else."

The Times op-ed, which coincides with the 11th anniversary of the attack (and the release of Eichenwald's book 500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars this month) has sparked predictable condemnation. This morning the author appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe with former Governor George Pataki, who said Eichenwald's investigation just isn't fair:

I just think this is incredibly unfortunate. First of all... on September 11th and for weeks and months thereafter, President Bush provided inspired, effective leadership... To look eleven years later and say that this was happening before September 11th in the summer and to go through and selectively take out quotes and say 'you should have done that, you should have done that,' I think is incredibly unfair and a disservice to history.

The two locked horns repeatedly during the segment, which you can watch below. It ended with Pataki declaring that, "thank God," he hasn't read Eichenwald's book and doesn't intend to, and Eichenwald arguing that Pataki's indignation was transparently partisan. "We cannot say, 'I'm not going to pay attention to history, because that part of history is my party,' " Eichenwald told the former governor. (video: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/morning-joe/48983950)

[ehbes]

first grade.. was home sick that day so i spent most of the day sleeping..found out when i woke up

[SheepShagga]

I was about 5 or 6. I thought the tower block down the road had collapsed. Quite a few years later till I understood what had really happened.

[wobbles]

7th grade
Social studies class
Teacher put it in the tv
:"(
Was very scary time