I will admit... that the first time I was in the US, 2004, on my own bumbling around California, I was at a cocktail party in LA and I might have been a little bit drunk because I was holding forth about how, if you looked at it in a certain light through the lens of 70 years of American support for Israel and general dicking about in the Middle East and with Saudi Arabia in particular where billions of petrol dollars funded a Wahabi resurgence, funding the Mujahideen blah blah blah blah... you could kinda maybe understand
why the WTC attacks occurred.
That went down like a fart in a space suit.
And the host ot the party said, "You stop right there!" and went away and brought back a parcel and gave it to me saying, "I was in NYC on 9/11 and I want you to have this."
And I opened several layers of brown paper, down to some bubble wrap and then an A4 clip frame with.. dust, grit...? something grey... What is that?
And the host said, "We crept down under police on the night of the attack lines and collected this out of the air and I want you to have this."
Well that shut me up.
But. To this day I think it was a bit like this....