I work about 4 blocks from the White House, and on Tuesday we all sat in our offices listening to the reports of plane after plane hitting the buildings in New York and Washington, and reports of a few more attacks on Washington that turned out to be just rumors. There was no place to run- traffic was already grid-locked; the subways were full; and there was no telling what was coming next. So we waited it out...The feeling I had in the pit of my stomach took me back to my Navy days when we faced a similar siuation.

Today the roads are blockaded in a three-block radius around the White House; there are armed D.C. National Guard soldiers patrolling the streets; F-16s fly overhead looking for incoming planes; an aircraft carrier sits off the coast to provide suport; and smoke rises in the distance from the Pentagon. All of this on a day with a bright blue sky that should have been like any other. Life is already changing in America as a result of the attacks in New York and Washington. You only have to look around up here to see it and to wonder if it will ever be the same again.

After grieving for the people of New York and for the folks in the Pentagon, I thought about the people of the South and what they must have gone through when the Civil War came to their homes. They too wondered what life would be like in the future. Now war has come to our homes too.

Sometimes I forget what it means to be an American- the security our country has always given us; the freedom to act and speak and move about- more than any other people on the planet. You get spoiled and you take these things for granted...at least I did until Tuesday. I think that when times get tough and the American people rally as one to deal with it, that's when I am the most proud of America. It's definitely a country worth fighting for.

My thoughts and prayers go out to us all, especially to those who lost loved ones and friends. But before it's all over and done with, there will probably be more of what we have just experienced and it can happen anywhere. Life goes on and we will have to be tough and pull through it together. God bless us all, and God bless America.

John