The Tenth Year Anniversary of 9/11

It's amazing how we all know our whereabouts and what we were doing on the morning of September 11, 2001 even though it was ten years ago. That was the morning 19 Islamic terrorist hijacked three California bound airliners because they knew the airliners had the right amount of fuel they needed, to do the most damage.

I remember my family being at the Galveston Burn Center that day because my daughter was being treated for a severe staph infection that almost took her life. I had run out of vacation, so I came back to Victoria because she was progressing nicely but I was giving special permission to leave at moment's notice if I needed to. I don't know what I was doing at work because my mind wasn't there. We got a call from security telling us to monitor our televisions because our country was being attacked. We kept watching the two airliners crash into the Twin Towers time after time. We had just vacationed in New York about a year before the attacks, so I was familiar with the area that the ABC commentators were talking about. Everyone was gathered around the TV sets in different offices, sharing all the rumors, we heard that day. On that particular day, most were stunned and confused but some were angry. I was in the daze worrying about my daughter and now our country was being attacked. It wasn't until a few minutes later when my wife called to confirm what she just heard and to tell me my daughter was responding favorably to her treatment,when I stared to feel better. After that call, I started paying more attention to the television reports.

The attacks on 9/11 lead to us attacking the training centers in Afghanistan and wiping out just about all of Al Qaeda in that country. We also removed the Taliban from power. This country was united, President Bush had about a 95% approval rating and 75% of the country were with him when we attacked Afghanistan. It was  at this time when I started reading about the Middle East, their customs, and the terrorist groups. I just had to get answers as to why we were attacked. It was during this time when I started reading the New York Times and Washington Post religiously; their online editions were free back then. Back then, I believed if an article made it to print; it was true because it went through a series of vetting. I didn't start suspecting the New York Times, and the Washington Post until I started seeing some articles that were beating the war drums, for a war with Iraq. I switched to weekly magazines like the New Yorker ,where Seymour Hersh explained how the Pentagon was feeding war propaganda to the New York Times and Washington Post. I went onto read Ron Suskind's book “The 1% Doctrine" that explained the Dick Cheney theory. Dick Cheney's theory was if there was 1% chance that a country was going to do harm to us; it was legitimate for us do a preemptive strike on them or those that supported them.

The 9/11 attacks did change me; it made me realize that you can have everything today and lose it tomorrow. It also thought me that you cannot believe everything you hear from the media; especially in this 24/7 news cycle. We no longer have the old news reporters who waited for the very last minute to report, because they scrubbed their sources for the truth. In writing blogs, I will check two or three sources before I submit the material but sometimes that's not enough.

There are times when I think we are overdoing it with media 9/11 saturation, but as the day approaches, I get caught up in it-like everyone else, I just hope the threats in New York, and Washington are bogus, and they get to commemorate that special day without harm.
What were you doing on that dreadful day? Has it changed you?