The Times UK: Peggy Noonan, ex conseiller de Reagan et Bush père, avait signé un article prophétique selon certains en novembre 1998, jugez en vous même : "when you think of the terrorist places and the terrorist countries . . . who do they hate most? The Great Satan, the United States. What is its most important place? Some would say Washington. I would say the great city of the United States is the great city of the world, the dense, ten-mile-long island called Manhattan, where the economic and media power of the nation resides (....) The psychic blow — and that is what it will be as people absorb it, a blow, an insult that reorders and changes — will shift our perspective and priorities, dramatically, and for longer than a while. Something tells me more of us will be praying, and hard, one side-benefit of which is that there is sometimes a quality of stopped time when you pray. You get outside time.".

La journaliste Kate Muir complète sa pensée : "America, where I lived until recently, had taken on the style of the late Roman Empire, ready for a fall, or at least reassessment. We were in Washington for the millennium, and I recall the fin de siècle fears expressed then, which passed with the all-night parties and death of the Y2K bug. One or two dissenting voices held up a mirror to our civilisation, and questioned how civilised it was. They were ahead of the game."