Amazing thread..
I live in the USA now.. 13 years ago I was in Canberra Australia doing my PhD. I was pretty tech savvy at the time, living in a small one bedroom bachelor pad on the outskirts of town (now married with a 9 year old). On checking my email in the morning I knocked on my neighbor's door, a young woman with a fiancee in the Australian officer training core. We made tea and sat and discussed what we had heard and what it meant. We both felt numb and horrified but I think only she felt scared.
Today MSNBC showed historical footage in displaced real time.. Watching and hearing the anchors ponder as to what has had happened... Today a car backfires and we think of terrorism.. Call it a cliche but the USA lost it's innocence that day.