Come on. I don’t think much of anything supports a shootdown, but it pretty darn obvious that admitting a heartwrenching last-chance policy is a pretty big difference from actually having carried it out, especially when in retrospect it turned out that, in this instance, it might have been unecessary and avoidable.
The story sounded much too odd in the original telling: the passengers crashed the plane? Why? How? While a total neonate passenger certainly couldn’t pull off a clean landing, it’s not, at least in clear conditions, that hard to keep the plane in flight while ATC talks you through at least some attempt at a survivable hard landing. Unless, of course, the terrorists disabled/broke the key automated systems before getting overpowered, which is certainly a possibility.
But the terrorists deliberately or in a struggle putting the plane into a deadly trajectory/speed is really a far more likely scenario.
It doesn’t say what month, but I guess we can assume that about a year lapsed before they let the families listen to the recording, during which time the official story was that the heroes downed the plane. That is, it was sort of the official story, because they were always careful to qualify everything with words like “perhaps” or “probably”. At any rate, belief in the story of the heroes successfully defeating the hijackers was certainly encouraged during that time. I remember Bush himself getting a lot of mileage out of the story.
Well if they made the determination last year, and the families were first allowed to listen to the tape last year, then it does fit with my scenario. I distinctly recall reading news articles about the families requesting to hear the recording, and I also distinctly remember the government delaying before they finally allowed the families to listen. So perhaps they were deciding what parts of the story would have to be changed. I’m not saying that’s what happened, just suggesting it as one possible answer to your question “Why would they change their story?”.
Yeah, but that’s kind of my point. Why is it only hitting the press now if they’ve known for a year? Sensitivity to whom? The families? How is it any more sensitive to hit people with it now as opposed to a year ago? Or are you suggesting sensitivity to possible legal action against terrorists or possible national security concerns? Were that the case, I would think the government would simply cite such concerns, and that would be the end of it. I can’t imagine a scenario where delaying the truth for a year could have helped bring anyone to justice, can you?
Like blowero, I’m not ready to support a conspiracy theory, but I’m very suspicious of the government’s story. It’s been obvious all along that they’ve been covering something up. Am I the only person who heard a news report on September 11 that said that the government had unequivocally stated that the plane had been shot down? It could have been a mistake, but I was listening to the same radio station all day and never heard a correction - the story just kind of disappeared. If the government did shoot the plane down, it would upset a lot of people, even if objectively it was the right thing to do.
The only consolation for my stupidity is that that was freakni funny.
I’m not sure I remember it like that. It was clear that the passengers fought the hijackers, but was it ever definitively stated back then why the plane crashed? Was it ever stated that the passengers were successful in taking control of the cockpit. Because if they had, then the story makes no sense: why wouldn’t there have been cel calls about the success, or asking for help in landing the plane? If the passengers ever did take the cockpit, the plane must have crashed very very soon afterwards, and almost certianly because of something the hjiackers did.
Obviously I’m not in a position to say. A lot of stuff here is, or was, classified. To be really picky about it, the FBI isn’t required to tell the press much of anything.
I did mean the families. I’m in agreement with you that the administration got some mileage out of the story. Maybe it’s me, but I think the reaction to this is more muted than it might’ve been a year ago. Just my opinion, though.
I can’t think of one either; I was thinking in terms of sensitivity to the families and public reaction.
I certainly didn’t hear that, and I didn’t do anything but watch the news for at least 3 or 4 days. Anybody else?
Call me a little cynical as a journalism student, but I find that’s usually what happens when a story is screwed up. Like I said, I heard a report on CNN in the morning or early afternoon on September 11th that a car bomb had detonated in front of the State Department. Nobody apologized. Maybe it was retracted, but retractions of stories are always quiet.
I remember reading an article about the F-16s which were the first aircraft to arrive on the scene after Flight 93 crashed. The pilots of those planes were on a training mission, and the planes were not armed. So they couldn’t have shot Flight 93 down. The best they could have hoped for was that by buzzing the plane closely they caused the hijackers to panic and lose control of the plane. At worst, one of the fighter pilots would have had to take Flight 93 out kamikaze-style. Perhaps he could have ejected safely at the last possible second, but I don’t know.
Secondly, a seismologist realized that when Flight 93 crashed, it should have been detectible by the equipment used for monitoring earth movement. He went and looked at the data, which showed a large, sudden spike at the moment Flight 93 crashed. Had the plane been blown up in the air, the seismographs would have shown multiple smaller spikes, instead of just one large one.
Marley23 and Apos - please attribute your quotes. When you quote someone, you need to indicate who said it. You are both mixing & matching your quotes and giving the false impression that quotes from multiple people are from only one person. Thanks.
I think what we’re discussing is why the government sat on the information, not whether they can.
Then it sounds like you are of the opinion that the government did hide certain things from us. Personally, I’m not in favor of the government misleading the public in the interest of making people “feel” better. I prefer honesty. Here’s why: If you claim that the end justifies the means, and that it’s o.k. to mislead people in the interest of “sensitivity”, then it’s not much of a stretch from there to say that misleading people is o.k. for any purpose, as long as it’s good. And of course “good” can be quite subjective at times.
Chill, blowero, who I am now quoting. I was just responding to different things, not attempting to characterize people.
Anyway, you also said:
I’m of the opinion that I don’t know all the information here, so I’m not willing to committ to a theory on what happened. In this case, the explanation the FBI is giving about Flight 93 fits the facts as I know them. I don’t know if the government is hiding anything or not. And I never said for a moment I’m alright with it if that’s what’s going on; I’m not. And I concur with all your comments about the end justifying the means, in fact I said all the same things regarding the Iraq invasion.
I’ll try to remember, though I don’t think of myself as responding to the person, but to the argument. I’m not trying to create any impression about anyone at all UNLESS I specifically reference them.
You’re saying it fits the facts now, but most recently, we were talking about the story they were floating before, where the passengers supposedly took over the plane and crashed it themselves. I was referring to what they were hiding before.
Well I was going by this:
I guess I took your earlier comment that they may have sat on the truth out of “sensitivity”, together with this comment that it would serve to mute public reaction, as your tacit endorsement of the policy. So I take it that you are saying that’s not what you meant, right? Then we seem to be in agreement that the government may have mislead us, and that they shouldn’t have done so.
If it makes sense, I was speculating as to why they might have sat on the information, not saying they were correct to do it. I agreed with you that the government did get some mileage out of the whole “Let’s roll” story, and as such they may have been loath to deflate it. Doing so now, as opposed to a year earlier for example, doesn’t damage the myth as much. The public reaction is more muted, which is good for them. Government dishonesty isn’t a good thing, and if there was dishonesty here, it was probably of the self-serving variety, whcih isn’t good either.
