
Twenty-one years ago today, 2,973 people were murdered by these 19 Muslim fundamentalist Al-Qaeda terrorists who commandeered commercial airliners and flew them into the dual 110-story World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York City and into the Pentagon. The death toll includes 40 passengers and crew members aboard the fourth hijacked plane, United 93, which crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, as courageous passengers rushed the cockpit that was overtaken by hijackers. Many of them, here on over-stayed student visas, had trained for this reprehensible day at Arizona flight schools.
Along with our American citizens, people from 90 other countries were killed in the attacks perpetrated against non-combatants by Islamo-fascist extremists.
Regardless of where we were or what we were doing, not a single one of us who woke up to the televised horrors of September 11, 2001 will ever forget the shock we felt as we learned that our nation was under attack on that sunny fall morning. Network hosts were stunned speechless, trying to digest what they were seeing as one plane followed another into the Twin Towers. Thick, black smoke began billowing, followed by enormous orange fireballs, and desperate people could be seen leaping from the high-rise buildings.
This is the live 9/11/01 footage from ‘The Today Show’ on NBC as the massacre initially unfolded on air. The show begins with Matt Lauer’s perfunctory interview about Howard Hughes (which can be scrolled past) when harsh realities eclipse the chatter. (The clip contains commercials.)