But I was not surprised.

Our family was on neon Red Alert at least a month before 9/11.

One of our sons was in Japan with a Stanford University Program; he was studying Japanese during the academic year 2001-2002.  He had arrived in Japan in early August to sightsee a bit before classes began. 

About mid-August we began receiving emails from Stanford suggesting we consider bringing our students home because of the overwhelming dislike of Americans abroad.  As the days and weeks passed, the emails became more urgent.

We finally reached our son by phone.  We repeated what we had emailed to him, and he repeated what he had emailed to us.  We had searched the news and listened to the news for any threats against Americans and found nothing  – apparently our country, for whatever reason – published nothing.  Nothing that we could find anyway.   Our son searched the news and listened to all that went on around him. He, a senior in college, concluded that he was much safer in Japan than he would be at home in the States.  He even suggested we visit him in Japan for a few months until the unrest passed.

Then came the phone call to turn on the television.  I was horrendously horrified at what I saw. 

But I was not surprised.

But I was surprised to learn that some of our government officials claimed to have no warning of possible attacks.