Ron Reagan: Missed chances, squandered opportunities

[Contrary1]

Sept. 11, 2006 | 12:51 p.m. ET

"This will be, quite naturally, a week for remembering. Short of shunning all media and perhaps locking yourself in a root cellar, there will be no way to avoid thinking about the events of 9/11.

But what will you remember? What would you just as soon forget? The initial puzzlement after the first plane hit? The dawning realization, after the second plane, that this was no accident? The smoke? The flames? The bits of office paper, like confetti, snowing down on the onlookers? The bodies tumbling through the air?

As it happened, I had flown into New York on Sept. 10, 2001. Jet-lagged, I overslept the next morning, finally opening my eyes to a digital clock that read 8:46 a.m., as is my habit when traveling, I flipped on the TV to check the morning’s news and was mildly startled to see the very first pictures broadcast of what virtually everyone, newscasters included, assumed was a tragic accident. An airplane of some sort had crashed into one of the Trade Center towers. A small private plane, the pilot of which had suffered a blackout? Nobody could say.

As I sat there in bed watching smoke pour from a gash in the facade, it seemed obvious this would be the day’s major story. I wondered if anyone had been at work in the offices behind that smoke. Were there many casualties?"

The rest: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5445086/#060911c