I prayed and shocked. But then I remember the worst will come, cause the Word has spoken this before and it being fulfilled. Nations will come up against nations... you can find it in Matthew. I know He is right, all of these becoming so real. I can't live in a lazy, relaxing world anymore. God.. forgive us all!

I'm totally shocked.Everywhere people are completely taken aback. Even here in Germany people are crying and really shaken. I'd like to express my sympathy. I'm so sorry. And I fear things will get out off hand sooner or later. This won't be the last terrible thing to happen. I'm frightened that it may come to war or more violence. It's so absurd that people do this do others, that one cannot live in peace. I 'm not a christian,nor islamic, but I really pray for more tolerance. If people used acceptet the way of life of other cultures... such things wouldn't happen. So sorry. I can't understand such a deed. I do deeply hope, that the prophecies aren't right. I feel with you.

I noticed the last 3 days there have been massive troop movements taking the polar route. I saw the same thing a week before we found out about Desert Storm. So, yesterday, I told my friend Ron - we are going to war in the middle east.

Then last night I had a dream where I watched a building that looked like a single WTC tower get hit by a missle and blow up. In the dream the color was like a sepia-tone, very strange looking and unlike any dream I've ever had. This morning I woke up at 6:00am just before my alarm went off and I heard the report on the radio. I thought I was still dreaming at first and when I realized I wasn't, I ran to the living room and turned on the TV. Just in time to see the second plane hit the tower, and it looked exactly like the dream.

I've spent the whole day watching the news in numb horror and feeling shock and confusion. I wonder why all those troops were flown out right before this happened and I wonder why I saw it in a dream.

I've been to the World Trade Center and I love New York. I just can't believe what has happened. I only hope that it's over now and there won't be any more attacks tomorrow or in the coming weeks. God help us for mankind's unbelievable cruelty.

One of the things I find the most disturbing is that when a horrific event happens in another country, or a terrorist attack happens somewhere in the world, you do not see people in the US cheering about the attack. Imediately people start looking at sending aid or help to those harmed. While in the aftermath of horrific attack you see images of people celebrating the events. I guess that sight hit me harder than anything else, the fact that anyone person let alone large groups could be celebrating the massive scale of death and destruction of any other living beings.

I agree, MobiusCo. That has really enraged me the most. The fact that people in the MidEast are dancing in the streets. Makes me sick.

If it turns out to be Bin Laden, yet again, I just hope we don't pussyfoot around and wait for extradition from Afganistan. It will never happen. Maybe if we go after Bin Laden (If it was him) we can unseat the Taliban in the process.

Oh but Mobius, there are indeed people who wold cheer if this happened in any place in the world. There are extermists everywhere. I am sure there were some people dancing when the Bomb hit Hiroshima, or when Dresden was destroyed in 1945, or during the Tutsi massacres, or after the Holocaust or the Genocides in Tibet or Bosnia.
This world seems like a sick place sometimes. But just remember that those Palestinians you saw parading and dancing in the streets are only a small minority of fanatic extremists. Fanatics have no heart and no brain, but only hate and resentment. Rest assured that the vast majority of the millions of Palestinians, just like every other people in the world, are horrified by what happened yesterday.

I read this in TIME magazine, in reference to the Catholic -vs- Protestant battles in Belfast Ireland:

"If we were born where they were born, and taught what they were taught, we would believe, what they believe."

This also rings true for any belief system that is not one to which we subscribe.

Even within the US and other countries there are fanatical groups that voice their opinions in radical ways. The actions of a few do not disparage any particular nationality or belief.

Listen to those two ^^^. It's just a minority celebrating.

Oh yes I di understand it is a minority and a fanatical group. Along with the fack the hatred and ignorance is something that is easily embedded in some people, expecially in certain areas of the world, even here. If you are raised knowing only hatred then that is all you will know. I just found that extremely disturbing, any celebration of death and destruction is disturbing, and something I personal could never understand fully.

I too am deeply saddened and pray for the victims every night, however peace isn't the answer, I think. Look at other countries that have terrorist attacks day after day. That's what will happen to the US if we don't act now and attack all terrorist-supporting countries. While peace sounds good, it’s not reality.

Massive retaliation is the answer. Massive on a scale that would make any group think twice about ever doing such a thing again.

Massive retaliation to the level where each country will make it their own business to ensure that terrorists don't get organized at this level in their own countries.

Hey all...I have only rarely posted here but i lurk here and at devart.

I was two blocks from ground zero and watched the whole thing unfold. I was on my way to work, cming up out of the subway which faces the towers, when the first 767 slammed into the north tower. I stood there as the second tower exploded and watched as dozens of people leapt to their deaths or fell from the gaping whole in the structure. I saw a couple holding hands jump, a group of about 8 people all jump together...body parts were literally raining down all over the street...it was the most horrific thing I have ever seen.

Then all hell broke loose. You could hear the supports give way, it sounded like rubber bands popping. One after another for about ten seconds and then there was this thunderous shake. Not even a sound really, more like an all consuming feeling. and thats when the south tower cracked along the impact line and the top twenty or thirty floors collapsed...you could see them catch on the remaining floors for a split second...like the rest of the building could almost take the weight...then the floors just gave...they blew out one at a time as the weight descended.

You could see people still trying to jump get enveloped by debris. A hand landed about five feet from me. You could feel the air heat up as all the rubble compressed at the ground. I saw cars and firetrucks at the base get incinerated from the heat blast...it was like a small nuke went off.

There was absolute mass confusion, people crying in the street. There was a little girl still holding her mother's hand and the mother was under about five feet of rubble. Then the north tower came down, slower then the first...

I wish I could say that I was heroic or didn't panic. I was shocked into immobility. It wasn't until the second debris field rolled over me that I got moving really. I walked up Broadway to 57th street to get my wife.

The farther you got from ground zero the less concerned people were...it was almost like either they didn't know how bad it was or they were in shock...I remember hearing someone near me saying
"well now they've got the space for a stadium"

It took every ounce of self-control in my body to NOT beat the ever loving shit out this cold hearted asshole.

People just stared at me as I walked up Broadway. I was covered in debris and ash. When I got to my wife she was hysterical.

We then walked home to the Bronx...it took five hours to get home. My knee is completely blown and will require surgery...I have no idea how it happened.

I watched tens of thousands of people die two days ago and walked away essentially unharmed.

Sorry for the long post, but I needed to share that. The folks at some other boards, while doing a good job are limiting all posts on this topic to news only so I was afraid it would get edited or deleted.

The pics coming out of the news DO NOT do the devastation justice. Ground zero was ten square blocks in radius, in NYC there are 5 blocks to a quartermile roughly...that's about a mile in diameter.

Thanks for your time...

Frogboy, you scare me. What you speak of is unthinkable.

Lethal_Zen, I feel for you. I am sure those are images that will stay in your memory for you whole life. You have all my sincere sympathies.

paxx -
Terrorists main weapon is fear. That is the only thing that we can use against them, is fear... to make them afraid to repeat something like this ever again. What Frog is speaking of is not unthinkable. Allowing countries to harbor these "armies" under the pretense that their actions (terrorists) are not actions by the countries themselves is unthinkable.

Not knowing if I've got five less family members as of today is unthinkable.

World War II was unthinkable too. The United States got into the war because a country decided to bomb us.

The end result was the complete eradication of fascism world wide. In the 30s facism was considered the wave of the future. After World War II, only Spain had a facist regime and even there it was basically isolated.

Today, people see terrorism as something that can't be effectively stopped. Maybe it can't, it's hard to say but we can make the price of terrorism so high for the nation states that sponser or aid it and the people who carry it out that it will become "unthinkable".

i am in 2 minds about this idea
i suspect that it could well work for a nation, but i suspect that it may not work against the fanatics.
my concern is that it could drive others in the suffering nation to the fanatics

if the fanatics are not being supported by a nation, then it would be nice to think that they wont be able to act, but i doubt that is the case. at a very basic level all this required was a handfull of people, and minimal tools for the act its self. i dont know what support they required, but a quote from the book 2001 comes to mind:
"you can make a system proof against mistakes, but you can never make a system proof against sabotarge"

however, i dont know what to suggest in its place, which is an unsettling thought

Oh, when I say I fear, I mean I fear for the planet. Of course I fear for the majority of innocent arab people who have nothing to do with all of this, I fear also for the innocent Americans who are yet to suffer more terrorist attacks. I fear also for the planetary war that might follow if the next strike is too severe. I fear about the nuclear that might be used. I fear for the existance of any lifeform on this planet.

There won't just be a strike. The United States is mobilizing for war as we speak. The government just activated the reserves today. There won't be a single strike, it is going to be a prolonged campaign that will likely take years.

Colin Powell yesterday basically set up the way it's going to work. Countries with terrorist training camps in them will be approached to eliminate the problem themselves. If they do not, the US will 1) Take care of the problem for them and 2) Move to replace the government with one more civilized.

I don't think people outside the US have grasped that the United States is not viewing this as a law enforcement problem, it is viewing this as a war. We're not talking some air strikes, we're talking sending in ground troops to either blockade or invade nation states that harbor terrorists.

And the nations that may have US and international invervention (remember, this isn't the US versus the world, this is the world versus a handful of rogue nations who aid and harbor terrorists) would be conquered and have their governments replaced much as what we done with Japan and Germany.

One foreign policy expert yesterday pointed out that the only way to win for the long term is to change the cultures of this countries. To de-fanatacize them. When the US occupied Japan and Germany, it turned them into peaceful countries right down to the culture.

If they had had the Internet in 1941, I doubt anyone here would guess that years later, Japan would have Japan Disney and Mickey Mouse being their favorite cartoon character. Japan Disney does more business than Disney World in Florida. Cocacola is their favorite soft drink. American pop stars are their favorite musicians.

This is what is being discussed. The only way to win this in the long haul is for us to turn these enemies of the United States into us. Us being Western Europeans/Americans.

And before you think such plans absurd or extreme, I merely point to history where it is exactly how the Allies handled World War II. We turned the Japanese and Germans into us. And the people are happier for it.

And again, before someone points out that one cannot turn these fanatics into us. Read up on Nazism. You can't get much more fanatical than the Hitler youth was.

These countries in the Middle east will have to either abolish terrorism on their own or they will face the international community's determination to forever eliminate not just the terrorists but the culture that breeds terrorism. Don't think it can't be done, it's been done before when it was far more daunting to do so.

Let the harbouring countries deal with it themselves: smart. Indeed.
But there is something a little disturbing about the way you say Japan and Germany has been "turned into us". Japan and Germany are indeed happy democracies now, thanks to the United Nations' intendance. Japanese and Germans people were never turned into Americans...

I think I agree with the meaning of what you said, just maybe not with the specific words you chose.

Man... wrong, paxx (buzzer sound). Japan was indeed occupied by the US until 1952 when Japan regained full sovereignty.
Germany was divided into 4 zomes, occupied by France, England, the US (West Germany) and the USSR (East Germany). West Germany gained full independance in 1955.
But still, my main point was that both Germans and Japanese kept their beautiful cultures.

true, but alot of their basic, core attitude about life changed dramatically.

The cultures of Germany and Japan were fundamentally changed. Japan loves Mickey mouse and Coca Cola and Levi's jeans. Their defeat and occupation allowed us to instill our cultural views on them.

If you disagree, I suggest you look at the Japanese and German culture of say 1935 and then look at it again in 1955.