Across America, Americans were deeply confused by the attack. "What's Canary Wharf?" was the most common sentiment. "What's that? Something about birds?" asked Willie Stevens, resident of Omaha, Nebraska. "I don't even know what you're talking about, why should I even care?"

David Boroughs, a student at the prestigious Stanford University in Palo Alto, Califonia, demonstrated his mastery of British fluvial geography and his large latinate vocabulary by his reaction to the attack: "I don't see why we should make such a big deal out of a plane crashing into Thames-side aviary."

Catholics throughout the U.K. were bracing for the backlash from the attack. "Of course they should brace themselves!" said Dottie Smith of Jefferson, Texas. "They are polytheists and pagans. They worship the Virgin Mary and hundreds of saints, and submit to the authority of the Pope. They had it coming."

When asked about the prospect of lending military support to the British government in its mission to respond to this terrorist attack, Americans reacted very negatively. "No American troops should risk their lives on some place nobody in the country doesn't know nothing [sic] about," were the words in which Eladio Pérez of New York City put it. "Anyway, it's not like they blew up some huge building where tons of people work. It's just some shipdock."