http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?id=1250751Fear & Loathing in AmericaBy Hunter S. Thompson
Page 2 columnist
It was just after dawn in Woody Creek, Colo., when the first plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City on Tuesday morning, and as usual I was writing about sports. But not for long. Football suddenly seemed irrelevant, compared to the scenes of destruction and utter devastation coming out of New York on TV.
Even ESPN was broadcasting war news. It was the worst disaster in the history of the United States, including Pearl Harbor, the San Francisco earthquake and probably the Battle of Antietam in 1862, when 23,000 were slaughtered in one day.
The Battle of the World Trade Center lasted about 99 minutes and cost 20,000 lives in two hours (according to unofficial estimates as of midnight Tuesday). The final numbers, including those from the supposedly impregnable Pentagon, across the Potomac River from Washington, likely will be higher. Anything that kills 300 trained firefighters in two hours is a world-class disaster.
And it was not even Bombs that caused this massive damage. No nuclear missiles were launched from any foreign soil, no enemy bombers flew over New York and Washington to rain death on innocent Americans. No. It was four commercial jetliners.
They were the first flights of the day from American and United Airlines, piloted by skilled and loyal U.S. citizens, and there was nothing suspicious about them when they took off from Newark, N.J., and Dulles in D.C. and Logan in Boston on routine cross-country flights to the West Coast with fully-loaded fuel tanks -- which would soon explode on impact and utterly destroy the world-famous Twin Towers of downtown Manhattan's World Trade Center. Boom! Boom! Just like that.
The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.
It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. Osama bin Laden may be a primitive "figurehead" -- or even dead, for all we know -- but whoever put those All-American jet planes loaded with All-American fuel into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon did it with chilling precision and accuracy. The second one was a dead-on bullseye. Straight into the middle of the skyscraper.
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http://www.owlfarmblog.com/blog/2009/09/hunters_words_on_911.html
Hunter's Words on Sept 11, 2001
Below are some of Hunter's thoughts on the tragedy of 9 /11. It makes me shudder to think he wrote this before there was any talk of invading Afghanistan, Iraq or anyone else. He wrote this the morning it was happening. I have vivid memories of submitting the column for that week a few hours prior "The Wisdom of Nashville And The Violence of Jack Nicholson -- A Football Story." As usual, Hunter wrote with the typewriter, while I transcribed his pages hot off the IBM Selectric (which is sitting in front of me as I type to you onto my laptop).
Hunter had finished his column in the pre-dawn morning, and I had finished the transcription and attached it to the ESPN email as normal. Then the second plane hit.
I woke Hunter, who had already gone to bed after an all night column-writing session. I crawled up next to him, "Hunter, wake up. CNN is showing images of a second plane hitting the World Trade Center. It looks like we're being attacked or something. None of the networks have any information."
Hunter rolled over and looked at the TV, at the image of the smoke rolling out of the towers. He paused for some time then said. "Somebody sure doesn't like those towers."
He was right. I had forgotten that one had already been attacked in 1993. He rolled over and didn't say anything else. Being terrified, I crawled under the covers without shutting off the lights. We both lay there listening to the "news." He didn't say anything. His eyes were closed, but he was not asleep. He was listening Very closely to all the so-called reports.
What gave me the greatest sense of security was the moment Hunter got up from bed, despite a late work night before, and turned on his typewriter. He was ready to start.
And my god, he was right. What you will read below, if you haven't already, is what Hunter wrote as it was all unfolding that morning and following evening. His prescience is chilling, his anger is subtle, and his ability to make sense out of the chaos is what has cause millions of readers around the world to pick up one of his books when in need of some courage...
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