I know how you feel Persephone, the very core of my being is screaming bloody murder. I’ve been in a daze all day. I’ve been fighting this inner-turmoil, questioning my beliefs. I never imagined something like this could happen. My heart goes out to all involved and tommorrow I will go to give blood. I haven’t cried in a long time, but I lost it today. I’m praying for all of the victims.
I am feeling some changes too. Over the past 6 months I’ve really been rethinking my dealth penalty stance – thinking maybe “an eye for an eye” isn’t the best idea. But tonight I want to see these evil people suffer, and suffer horribly for what they did.
I saw the footage of the Palestinians celebrating in the streets a couple of hours ago, and I haven’t stopped crying since. It’s the first I’ve cried today, I think I was just in too much shock to let any of the emotion through.
Tomorrow morning I will go to my agency’s board meeting and pledge my allegiance to our flag. Never in my life will I have meant it more.
i have just heard the saddest thing i heard all day. on abc diane sawyer was speaking to a fellow reporter. he told of a fireman he had just spoken to, the fireman said that he had seen a firefighter killed by a body that had fallen from one of the towers. i can not imagine what the fire and police departments of nyc are going through. to see something like that…
Fox News just reported that ONE HUNDRED(100) people died in the Pentagon crash. This was far higher than I had expected.
Currently 250 firefighters are missing and 78 police are missing, virtualy all presumed dead. These were the people who went into the buildings before the collapses.
Part of me wants to blow up whoever did this, and part of me is scared that we’re going to war… I was watching some of the post-speech commentary by various political figures, and on one network they had Oliver North. He said that he hopes that tomorrow, President Bush declares war. The news anchor said, “Yes, but on who?” I’m worried now that people will be pressuring the President to declare war, and if he doesn’t, they’ll say, “He’s a p***y, it’s making us look bad by not declaring war!”, or that the President gives in to the pressure to declare war.
I DON’T WANT US TO BE AT WAR!!! That idea frightens me so very badly. I think that we as Americans have been somewhat insulated, we’ve never been bombed in a war like Britain was, we’re not one of these smaller strife-ridden countries that have a lot of fighting within. So when something happens like today, it’s a big shock. I mean it would have been anyway, but the massive scale of this tragedy hasn’t been seen before in this country.
I cried today- I had been watching the footage for a couple hours, and hadn’t seen the complete footage yet, I had only seen partial footage of one of the buildings collapsing. Then I saw footage of one of the buildings where the plane goes in to the side, and imagining what it must have been like inside that plane…or inside that office building…was too much for me. How can someone have planned this, how could the people that carried this out have done the deeds? I cannot comprehend it.
My thoughts and prayers are with all the survivors, and all the people who don’t know where their loved ones are yet, and with all the victims.
Please excuse my rambling, but I just had to post this somewhere:
I was already pissed off and terrified about what had happened. Then the news said that the planes that crashed into the WTC were hijacked passenger airplanes. And I got even more steamed up. As if it wasn’t bad enough already, that just made it seem…I don’t know…dirty or something. I just kept thinking: They attacked us with our own f—ing airplanes.
Today is my wedding anniversary. About three people at work today said, “I am so sorry this had to happen on your special day. You’ll always have bad memories of this day.” Well, yeah, I guess I will. But I will still have wonderful memories of what happened on this date two years ago. All I could reply to them was, “Yeah, it sucks, but compared to what thousands of other people are going through right now, having ‘my day’ tarnished a bit is really nothing.” It just seemed odd to me that they would say that. I mean, like the terrorists were gonna say, “Oh wait, not today, it’s Jeannie’s damned anniversary.”
I’m just so upset about the whole thing. This morning, after the second tower was hit, someone at work said, “And here I thought it would just be an Oklahoma City type thing.” Just? Like, what…now that wasn’t so bad? I understand that you need to have perspective, but that didn’t even make sense to me.
As I type this, it’s been roughly thirteen hours since it started. It seems like days. I really want to wake up now and have this turn out to be a nightmare.
At work my boss didn’t want us to tell our clients what happened (I work with developmentally disabled adults). WTF was that? They had heard about it on the news before they got there. So I told them all what we knew at the time (WTC and Pentagon had been hit). Some of them totally understood and were upset. Some knew it was bad but didn’t grasp the whole concept. One woman asked me if anyone was hurt. I just said, “Yes, probably.” She asked what we should do. I told her, “If you pray, now would be a good time. If you don’t, then try to think good thoughts and send your best wishes. If you need to talk I’m here. I don’t have any more answers than you do, but I’ll listen.” My boss is an idiot. My clients may have disabilities, but they’re not ignorant to world events.
Sorry for the long post. I had a hell of a time getting to the boards earlier, so I guess I’m making up for it now. I’m still praying for all of you and your loved ones.
Two of the people who jumped out of the WTC were holding hands.
I’ve been dwelling on that for a few hours.
My daughter was 8 when the OKC bombing occured and I remember having to sit down with her and explain it best I could. She’s 14 now and again we’ve had to talk about terrorism in America on a much larger scale.
As is expected, she’s stressed and nervous and afraid. She’s a member of the local Civil Air Patrol and her commander, Aaron, a friend of ours who had recently finished his tour in the Air Force, has been reactivated for search and rescue/relief missions as needed.
My son is 8 now and I’m having to explain it to him in terms he can understand because they watched coverage at school all day. He also is worried about Aaron because his sister is. He’s unusually quiet tonight and clingy. That’s okay, so am I.
Neither of them can wrap their minds around it. Hell, I’m having trouble doing that myself.
This just in.
The Chief and Deputy Chief of the NY Fire Department were killed today in the collapse. Foxnews reported this.
Yes. What always has spooked me about Bush is that he always speaks in a monotone, as if he were some kind of automaton. His mispronouncing words, etc. doesn’t bother me so much as that damn monotone he uses.
However, I was watching Diane Feinestein speaking on TV just an hour ago. It was an interesting show, but after she started speaking, I turned off the TV and started up my computer. She said such obvious, “no-shit” stuff.
New Information:
100-800 are the official estimates as to how many people died at the Pentagon. This is far higher than expected and shows how unclear the people in the area are. ONE HUNDRED is now the minimum.
Police have apprehended 2 men driving a truck full of explosives headed for the GWB. This reported by the local CBS news.
Cry, O’ beautiful Nation.
I slept late this morning, and had terrible nightmares. I woke up shaking, and said to myself, “boy, am I glad to be out of that nightmare!” Had I only known about the nightmare that was happening in the waking world, I think I would have stayed asleep.
My best friend is in Military Intelligence in the Army. I got off the phone with her about a half hour ago. She is being deployed, despite the fact that she is on FULL physical restrictions. In her words “Anyone that can carry a gun and walk a patrol is being deployed. Unless you’re pregnant. Then you can stay home.” She can’t tell me whether she’s going foreign or domestic. Nor does she know where her husband is, or where he is going.
I had dinner with my father, a disabled Vietnam combat vet and mental health counciler for a government agency. He might be sent to New York for Psych triage, because he is the leading federal shrink who specializes in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder guy in Vermont. He is also kinda freaked out. He talked about Nam a lot tonight. Green berets and bad stuff. His words: “Thousands of people died today. But tens of thousands more will die before this is through, and it all comes down to a godammed LAND dispute. It makes me tired and sad. Very, very sad.” And when he said that, he almost cried. And I did cry.
After dinner, I suggested we go to the Ben and Jerry’s for ice cream. We deserved it. And in an exceptional show of either bad taste or freakish coincidence, “The End of the Innocence” was playing on the loud speaker.
I feel twirled around and sick.
That’s terribly sad.
I was amazed at the group of senators and congressmen bursting into spontaneous song today…
I have a blinding headache. I feel queasy. I can’t get some of the stories out of my mind. The tragedies…oh dear Lord…the atrocities…
One story told…a worker scrambling to get out of one of the WTC passed wheelchair-bound workers in the stairwells, their chairs stuck and inoperable–and the elevators not working. What do you do? Holy God, what do you do? Minutes later the the building collapsed.
I do not mean this as a swear…Jesus. Je-sus.
Oh Goddess…I felt that way too. That was such a punch in the stomach. Not only do they kamikaze the buildings, but dammit, they used our passenger planes to do it. I think that was the thing that angered me the most.