Sept. 11th Memories

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks.  Many have shared their memories of that day.  Here's mine:

I was sleeping in.  Mom was in the front room, but she didn't have the TV on.  She was probably reading.  The phone rang, and that's what woke me up.

The call was from one of Mom's friends.  Most of the times when this particular friend called, Mom would talk to her for a long time.  But Mom soon hung up and turned on the TV.  A few moments later, she came to my room to tell me that I needed to see what was on TV.

At that time, only the first plane had struck.  Most of the speculation then was that this was an accident.  But when the second plane hit, we all knew this was probably a deliberate act.

The collapse of the towers stunned me.  I'm not sure what I felt at that time, but I do remember thinking about all the live that would be lost.  I knew it would be in the thousands.

We watched the coverage for several hours.  I believe after a couple of hours the government confirmed that this was a terrorist attack.

That afternoon, when I went to the post office to get the mail, traffic was unusually heavy for the small town I live in.  The gas pumps at both convenience stores were busy.  Police were also quite visible.

When I heard that terrorists were behind the attack, I immediately thought of Saddam Hussein.  Being that he was a dictator, and had control of not only the Iraqi Air Force, but also Iraqi airlines, I thought he would have the knowledge to think up the plan for this attack.  As it turns out, Al Qaeda was behind the attack.

In all that has happened since then, I know that mistakes were made in our efforts to combat terrorism, but we must be doing something right, because we have not had another attack on that same scale.