As the clock ticks down to next Sunday, September 11, and the 10th anniversary of the Nine Eleven attacks, it's hard not to think back to those days and the events leading up to that attack.
Here in Washington, D.C., there have been a parade of events in recent days, as former and current government officials look at what transpired that day and how the feds handled the subsequent war on Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.
"We went on the offense," said former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani, who spoke at the National Press Club on Tuesday.
Guiliani told a big crowd that while the terrorists succeeded in killing people on that day, they did not succeed in breaking the spirit of the American people.
"Resiliency takes away a lot of what they think they're going to do to us," said Guiliani.
Guiliani told of how he considered himself lucky to have survived the collapse of the Twin Towers, which crashed down on a building that housed the emergency command post for his city.
Ten years later, the ex-mayor smiled at how the city has overcome the tragedy of the Nine Eleven attacks.
"The people of New York really did rise to the occasion," Guiliani said. "They've been stronger and better than I even though they would be."
Guiliani got a bunch of laughs by describing some of the numerous times over the years where people have stopped him in airports to tell him where they were on Nine Eleven.
"The first couple of times, I found it very strange," Guiliani said, telling people, "No, I don't know where you were, I know where I was."
"I've decided that somehow I have become a repository for people feeling like they have to explain that," said Guiliani, labeling it a "defining event" for many like Pearl Harbor, or the assassination of President Kennedy.
"It's one of those events where people remember where they were when it happened."
While the absence of the World Trade Center towers marks the change in New York's skyline from that attack, the evidence in the nation's capital is difficult to find, as the gaping hole in the Pentagon was quickly repaired.
If you don't know which side of the Pentagon was hit, you probably won't be able to figure out as you drive by that building on the other side of the Potomac River.
It still seems hard to believe that ten years ago today, the nineteen hijackers were making their final preparations, totally undetected by U.S. intelligence or the FBI.
One group of hijackers was in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., staying in a cheap motel that I passed hundreds of times over the years near the horse race track named Laurel Park.
If you were in Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport ten years ago on this day, you might have been shoulder to shoulder with some of the hijackers, who flew from Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta to Boston. Others flew to Newark, New Jersey.
Ringleader Mohammed Atta flew to Baltimore on this day, likely for one last meeting with those hijackers in the Washington, D.C. area.
My thoughts at this time also go to those on the four planes, those regular Americans who would get on a plane on September 11, maybe worried only about whether their flight would be on time.
And I also think about those on United Flight 93, who rushed the cockpit, bringing the plane down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
That plane was thought to be heading for the U.S. Capitol, where I was busily working that morning.
I do remember where I was on September 11.
