To reiterate what Jill said and expand upon it,
This is not GD territory. GD is GD territory.
Members will not hijack this thread. It is not an option.
Future posts with political opinion, potshots, etc. will be deleted. At the very, very least.
Frpm http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010916/ts/attack_cheney_shoot_dc_4.html :
Doesn’t sound like the Secret Service gave the VP much of a choice. For one thing, I believe their mission of protecting the President is Congressionally mandated, and even the President cannot simply tell them to stop.
As far as threatening Air Force One, I’d imagine that it would not have been difficult for the terrorists to plan on the President being either at the White House or out of town. If out of town, the most likely response to the WTC attacks would be to immediately head to Andrews AFB in Air Force One. Thus, a dual attack, some time after the WTC attacks, on Andrews and the White House would be the easiest way to target the President.
I’ve heard it theorized that the White House was the intended target of the plane that hit the Pentagon. Supposedly, it is rather dificult to actually find the White House by sight if approaching from over the Potomac River, so the Pentagon may have been a backup target.
The terrorists may also have been counting on an unwillingness of US forces to shoot down a passenger jet full of people in order to reach their target.
It is also possible that the threat to Air Force One was meant to simply keep the President away from the situation, and out of touch. Certainly, anyone who simply assumed Tuesday morning that there was no danger to the President would be nuts. It may come to pass that it is discovered that there was no possible way for the terrorists to harm the President. However, at the time, failing to take such a threat seriously would have been reckless and stupid.
This is not to say anything one way or the other about whether Bush should have acted differently anyway, as that would be a GD. Maybe I’ll go start a thread on it over there…
To continue the slighty OT thread:
During the Cold War, the US government/military had various protocols in place for what to do with the command structure (P, VP, Speaker of the House) in the event of an attack or imminent attack on Washington DC.
To my tired and “out-of-touch” eye, it looks like we executed something very like those old protocols on Tuesday:
- VP taken to a command bunker.
- President taken aboard Air Force 1 which disappears into the heavens for a while (no one knows where), and finally shows up at a major command and control center in a well armored military base far from the area under attack.
- Selected members of Congress taken to a place of safety.
- <i>I can’t find out what they did with the Speaker…</i>
The leadership of the country was leading the country, and in such a way that no one attack or series of attacks could take out the entire leadership. That’s how it’s meant to work.
I was actually surprised that Air Force 1 showed up again so quickly; I was expecting it to stay aloft for a while longer (possibly a day or so) with the President aboard.
Scruff