It shouldn’t have stretched credibility at all. The intelligence was available to the White House; they just chose to ignore it.
Who said I don’t accept that? That’s the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle. You’re contending that I must either believe that everything was handled perfectly on 9/11, OR I must believe that 9/11 was no surprise AT ALL.
It’s possible to believe that al Qaeda exploited a vulnerability AND believe that there were some aspects to the U.S. contingency planning and response that could be improved.
Didn’t say it had to be perfect. YOU’RE the one contending that everything was done perfectly on 9/11. I disagree.
Nope. Before that.
Right - so why do you keep insisting that it was their responsibility to debate whether to shoot down planes? That’s just wrong.
If the White House had received reliable intelligence that such was the case, then yes. But they didn’t. However, they DID receive intelligence that terrorists might crash planes into buildings. See how that works?
The question is irrelevant. The cost of the measures we’re talking about would not be cost-prohibitive. In fact, it’s my understanding that they have already been put in place.
Ridiculous. To contend that it’s impossible to ever anticipate possible future scenarios is absurd. That’s why we have intelligence agencies.
Yet another strawman. I never contended that we could be perfectly safe.
I have no idea what that garbage is all about.
I already answered this specious argument when you made it in your other post.
That’s not what you said. You referred to other flights.
Oh, geez. That wasn’t clever the first time.
The military is in the executive branch. If I understand the government correctly, the President is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and would be ultimately responsible for defending the country against attack. So you’d contact someone somewhere in that chain of command, would you not? That’s what I meant by exective branch. If you don’t want to call it that, that’s fine - I don’t care. It wasn’t the point. You’re just nitpicking irrelevancies again. I wouldn’t presume to make pronouncements as to exactly which people should be contacted. I’m just saying there should be some kind of procedure to enable it to happen.
But they didn’t contact ANYONE. Not until after the plane already crashed, and over 1/2 hour after they knew of the hijacking.
O.K., you’re really missing the point. Please get off it.
Nope, you’re the one who’s got it all fouled up.
You’re making a career out of missing the point.
Hmmm…I already addressed this. Either you’re repeating yourself, or I’m responding to the same post twice, so I’ll stop here.
You’re using the knowledge we have today to judge the actions of people over three years ago, people who did not have all the knowledge then that we do now.
Beause I don’t think it’s irrelevant. I am certainly open to possibility we aren’t quite discussing the same thing (which, by the way, is the point of Princess Bride quote)
By 9:30 there was also a report of a bomb detonated at the State Department in DC, broadcast multiple times on several networks - but that report turned out to be false. Now, before you get all worked up again, anyone who had a TV set and saw the second plane hit the WTC had no doubt there were multiple hijackings that day – BUT, there were more reported hijackings than actual hijackings that morning At 9:30 did they know for certain that Flight 93 was hijacked… or were they still trying to confirm that fact?
I know it’s hard for you to conceive the amount of information that must have been pouring into that command center that morning - but try, just for a moment, to imagine. They have dozens, if not hundreds, of reports of hijacked or possibly hijacked airplanes. How many actual hijackings are there? Which planes are hijacks, and which false reports? There are not enough military aircraft to chase a hundred hijacked airplanes - you can’t just send out after every possible hijacking, you have to focus on which are most likely to be hijacked.
“Bomb on board” != “hijack” It’s an indcation there might be a hijacking, in this context a very strong one, but it is in no way proof of hijacking. If you have a bomb but no hijackings you don’t need a military intercept, you need a bomb expert on the radio talking to the people on board the airplane. The wrong response to an emergency will not help anyone.
Also, again, the word “may” indicates that they aren’t certain. I’m sure they have a very strong feeling something bad was going on, but they didn’t know for sure. Is it beyond the realm of possibility that a lack of certainty may well have slowed the process down?
So? So you have to fit the response to the crisis. How you handle a damaged aircraft without terrorists aboard is different than how you handle an undamaged airplane with terrorists aboard. In the first case you foam a runway, assemble a crash team, and attempt to land the airplane. In the latter you send a military intercept which may potentially end in shooting the airplane down. Slightly different, don’t you think?
As I have said - some of the evidence of Something Wrong you present is ambiguous - sudden changes in altitude and screams can result from severe damage to an airplane - heck, it’s been known to happen to UNdamaged airplanes going through certain air currents, although Ohio on a clear day would be a very strange place to find such. A new voice on the radio could be a hijacker… or it could be a pilot deadheading in the back taking over for an injured flight crew. And while you can jump up and down and say “but they knew it was a hijacker!” you can do that only because you know for sure that it was, because of things we learned subsequent to that day. On that morning, there wasn’t any reason to automatically excluded “bombs on board” without a terrorist on board as well - especially since there had been a number of instances with “bombs on board”/no terrorists on board in the past.
My point is that things were not so cut-and-dried and certain as you are convinced they are.
Don’t twist my words, please. No one said anything about a “good bomb”. To repeat: How you handle a damaged aircraft without terrorists aboard is different than how you handle an undamaged airplane with terrorists aboard. In the first case you foam a runway, assemble a crash team, and attempt to land the airplane. In the latter you send a military intercept which may potentially end in shooting the airplane down. Slightly different, don’t you think?
That would be fine - if this was the only airplane in crisis or if we had unlimited machinery and personnel for intercepts. On that morning, neither of those scenarios was reality. We had a LOT of airplanes that might or might not have been hijacks (fortunately, most were false reports), and only so many fighters.
As I said - there’s no proof the FAA didn’t notify the military, and the military took its time deciding whether or not to send their limited supply of interceptors after Flight 93. Just because the FAA asks for an intercept doesn’t mean they automatically get one.
No, but the possibility is always there - and even more so on that day.
[quote]
[quote]
Um… are you aware that the “San Francisco United Airlines maintenance center” is NOT an FAA facility? It is part of a privately owned business called “United Airlines”. It is not a room full of controllers, nor would it have radar screens depicting current flight information anywhere in its facilities. It probably would have FAA inspectors on premesis part of the time, but those would be maintenance inspectors who have nothing to do with ATC.
The point is that the fact that confirmed the hijacking - the phone call stating “Flight 93 is hijacked and they’ve killed people” - did NOT go directly to the FAA, it had to be relayed. THIS is the definitive proof that you do have hijacking terrorists on board and need to send a military intercept. And at 9:35 it hadn’t reached either the FAA or the military, though certainly it was relayed quickly.
Because what reached the FAA headquarters was information regarding a possible hijacking, that might have been an airplane in distress after an attack rather than one with active Bad Guys aboard. Just as other reports of other possible/probable hijacks were coming in.
No, I am neither proving nor disproving in that statement - but the “evidence” you present is second hand at best. Transcripts of the ATC conversations would be primary evidence, not something paraphrased by the news media.
“Reaching Washington headquarters” != automatic call to military to intercept. Even if they DID call the military immediately, a call for an intercept != an automatic dispatching of aircraft. Nothing happens instantly in this world.
What other alternative would they have had to shooting down that plane on that morning? Seriously? Why do you think the miltiary asked the White House for the authority to shoot down a civilian airliner? (And maybe that took a little time?) Shooting civilians is normally construed as an illegal order and our troops are forbidden to delibrately target enemy civilians, much less our own - it takes an extraordinary circumstance to justify delibrately destroying a civilian airliner full of civilians. Yes, soldiers and airmen are supposed to follow orders, but it’s within the bounds of reason the some of them might balk at such an order.
Even on that morning, they knew IF they sent and intercept and IF there really were more of these homicidal maniacs on board the only likely way to stop them would be to kill them - and every innocent on board. Subsequent events and information only confirm this.
On an ordinary day an intercept doesn’t mean an automatic shoot-down - but that was no ordinary day. An intercept was likely to end in a shoot-down.
When I’m right and you’re wrong - yeah, I’m sure that’s pretty annoying.
Because it does mean something and it’s not irrelevant. You can’t discard things just because they disagree with your theory of reality.
No, they were aware there MIGHT be a hijacking, there MAY be a bomb on the airplane - that is not the same sort of confirmation as “I’m calling from on board an airplane where a bunch of goons have killed some of the flight crew and taken over”
Huh - I have no idea how you can read it that way. It sounds like the ATCs knew what should have been done, and it got lost in the upper levels of beauracracy. Sounds like another failure of the system.
[/quote]
Oh? Is that your assumptions talking again, or do you have evidence that someone “sat on” the informaiton and did nothing?
And what if that “nearby military base” doesn’t have any aircraft suitable for interceptors? What if the military prefers to put fighters over a major target like DC so the Bad Guys have to fly towards the fighters to reach their goal, rather than being chased by the fighters? (Which, by the way, was the choice of the military - to put the fighters over the potential targets and head the Bad Guys off, rather than attempt to chase them). “Let’s scramble our limited number of fighters to protect DC” might make much more sense than “Let’s chase 20 potentially hijacked airplanes across North America”
I understand that you have given me considerable stuff paraphrased by the news media, most likely by reporters who are neither pilots nor ATC nor military personnel. In a court of law it would be called “hearsay”.
Yes, it means something is Very Wrong - but what? Since when do hijackers file flight plans? The point is - they might have been delibrately keeping doubt as to what was going on in that airplane, to cause a delay in reaction on ATC and any other authorities who might try to stop them.
What you quote has qualifiers like MAY in it - implying less than certain. They weren’t SURE what was going on. Yes, that’s going to affect response time!
I never said the decision to make a shoot-down was the FAA’s - but you’re a fool if you think calling for an intercept on that day wasn’t like holding a loaded gun to someone’s head. What kind of alternative do you think they would have had? Seriously? What? They’re going to intercept it then meekly chase Flight 93 until it impacts something?
Do you have an alternative means of stopping Flight 93 that doesn’t result in everyone aboard being dead at the end of the day? If so, please speak up - I’d love to hear it.
And how, pray tell, do you think you can stop an airliner with “suicide operatives” aboard short of destroying it? AND killing everyone aboard?
“Murder” implies malice towards the victims… I’m not sure how you’d refer to it - regrettably necessary homicide? The fact remains, if you shoot down the airplane you kill everyone aboard, and most of those aboard are innocent bystanders. If you can do that without a moral qualm then I’m just as happy not to know such a cold-blooded human being in real life.
I’d think they were desparate if they called the base themselves instead of waiting for the higher ups to act.
That’s a place, not a person. Who at the FAA was contacted? The receptionist answering phones? Or does that mean the information was in the hands of the FAA Administrator? You don’t have a name? A title? WHO, not WHERE.
OK - do you have any OTHER sources? Like, something that’s NOT a paraphrase?
But – but you said EVERYBODY in the WHOLE NATION knew what was going on by 9:30 am!!!
Could you try to be a little more consistent? Or perhaps a little less broad in your statements?
No, it’s not - I prefer to live in a nation where the military hesistates to shoot civilians. While that occassionally might result in a delay in action we can ill afford - such as, perhaps, on September 11, 2001 - overall I feel much safer with a military that does not want to open fire on common citizens.
Or maybe I just don’t want to be flying over the Midwest and one day to the side and see a daring young airman in a flying machine opening fire on me – I’d prefer shooting to be a last resort and not the first one.
Then prove it
Ah, but YOU said:
So, which is it?
[Quote]
[quote]
That timeline seems to indicate that, until 9:35 when the flight attendant called San Francisco no one on the ground knew for sure this was a hijacked airplane, and at the point the information confirming the hijack was yet to be in the hands of the FAA. I’m sure United didn’t dawdle in relaying it, but I’m expecting it took at least a few minutes to hand it over.
Yes, the phone call DOES prove the hijacking on its own. The other “evidence” you present does not.
Or maybe I know more about how these things actually work than you do.
Nope, never said nothing of the sort - I think the system functioned well in dealing with a situation that was not foreseen by anyone involved in the “front lines” that day. That does NOT mean I think the system was - or is - perfect. Far from it. But it was NOT the sort of systemic failure that you seem to think it was.
Or is it that you’re just looking for a scapegoat?
Why? They had worked well for 40 years.
Never said they had the shoot-down decision - you still haven’t proved that they “sat on” the information. Maybe it was the military that hesistated. I don’t know. I don’t think you do either.
In hindsight we know that the intelligence about suicide hijackers was credible - apparently in the summer of 2001 there wasn’t enough evidence of credibility for those in charge to take it seriously. What do you offer as proof of credibility? A Tom Clancy novel?
And what measures are those?
Do you have PROOF they’ve been put in place and are effective? If not - why do you trust they are there?
Funny - I thought we had intelligence agencies to spy on people
No it’s not!
Clearly you don’t!
That and the Secretary of Defense are the only points were the executive and the military touch.
The point is you debate in a sloppy manner when you do that. The chain of command you contact is military not executive branch. Only the very highest military officers would ever call the Commander in Chief, and only for the most critical items. And it would take some time to work it’s way up to the White House.
And there was, and it was used.
How do you know that? Where is the PROOF the FAA “sat on” the information? How do you know they didn’t send the information on and the military sat on it? How do you the system didn’t work as fast as possible? I see a lot of assumption on your part - but no proof. Your cite is second hand information, and paraphrased. I want to see something better.
No, I’m not suggesting they should have known what was impossible to know, only that we need to adopt procedures so that 1/2 hour delays like that don’t occur in the future.
It’s not a matter of opinion. If I post evidence that proves a certain thing, and you ignore that evidence in favor of focusing on another extraneous detail, then you are being disingenuous. For example, if I post a timeline that clearly shows what division of the FAA was aware of what information, and at what time, but you instead focus on a different entry in the timeline about a phone call, and pretend that that first entry isn’t there, then you’re not debating in earnest. That’s NOT just a matter of us differing on what’s important. So keep your cryptic movie quotes to yourself.
That doesn’t address the question at all, your snotty insinuation that I’m “worked up” aside. The issue was, “Did they know that there had been multiple hijackings by 9:30?” The answer in an unequivocable “yes”. Your reply is obfuscatory. Again, you are blathering on about things that aren’t relevant to the point under consideration. You do this little “bait & switch” maneuver. First, you question if they knew that multiple hijackings had occured. When I point out that they obviously DID, you change the question to “Did they know for certain that Flight 93 was hijacked?” Arguing with you is like trying to nail a turd to the wall.
Yet another strawman. I never suggested that the amount of information was small. None of my arguments hinge on the amount of information being small.
Exactly the problem. The FAA sat around waiting for “proof”, instead of acting. You would have them do nothing until they got a signed, notarized, affidavit from the hijackers that yes, they were members of al Qaeda and have hijacked the plane and planned to crash it into a building. And once again, you fail to realize that it’s possible to send planes out to intercept without necessarily being committed to shooting down the plane. If you wait for ironclad proof before you even think about telling the military, it’s already too late. If the nation is under attack, we don’t have that luxury. That wasn’t the FAAs call to make, it was the military’s. And they can’t make the call if nobody even tells them what’s going on. How exactly would it have hurt to scramble fighters? If they decide not to shoot down the plane, they simply radio the pilots and say, “Hey Joe, don’t shoot down that plane, O.K.?” (Yes, I know they don’t actually say it that way - I was being facetious.)
I suppose you could think that way if you suddenly woke up from a coma at 9:30 on 9/11, and had no idea what had happened earlier that morning. And again, you can intercept the plane without shooting it down. But you can’t even do that if you just sit on your ass for 1/2 hour.
Wow, you are quite the apologist for the federal government. I have a feeling that in your eyes, it would be literally impossible for them to do anything short of perfection. You’re now going out of your way to construct implausable scenarios as to why something that looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, isn’t a duck. That’s just not a good system if you want to be able to react quickly to an emergency. You can’t have government beauracracies sitting on crucial information while they sit around and construct scenarios as to why they shouldn’t take action.
I didn’t say it was “cut and dried”. I said there was more than enough suspicion that they should have contacted the proper authorities immediately. Waiting until it’s “cut and dried” is too late.
I never said those were your words.
Your posts wouldn’t be so damn long if you’d quit repeating yourself verbatim. :rolleyes:
Really? Which other flights were all the fighters being used to intercept, such that they couldn’t spare even one to intercept Flight 93?
You aren’t following the thread. We covered that early on. The military wasn’t notified until 10:07, AFTER 93 already crashed on its own. Wasn’t even notified, until then. My God, how many times do I have to repeat that until you stop ignoring it? The proof was posted early on in the thread, directly from the 9/11 Commission Report.
Nonsense. It’s quite routine to intercept flights. If the Air Force never launched fighters due to fear that someone might get hurt, then they wouldn’t have had fighters circling D.C. - by your logic they shouldn’t have done that because someone might get hurt. Unless you’re contending that they should have just left all the fighters in their hangers just in case anyone got hurt, I don’t get your point.
I’m snipping a big chunk of nonsense you posted, because you’re just rehashing the same arguments that I already shot down (no pun intended). In general, what you’re failing to understand is that it’s a mistake to wait for ironclad proof before even thinking about telling anybody about the hijacking. They were responding to an emergency, not trying a case in court.
I don’t know what you’re talking about here. When did I say it was “automatic”? In fact, my exact point is that they waited TOO LONG. That’s the polar opposite of “automatic”. I don’t know what else to say; it’s like you’re not even talking about the same thing.
That has absolutely nothing to do with anything in this thread. You don’t seem to acknowledge that any increment between “instantly” and “1/2 hour” exists. Let me ask you this: Is there any amount of time that you would concede is too long a delay when the nation is under attack? An hour? 5 hours? A day?
Oh, and in fact, I had originally thought that the military was informed earlier, and I was corrected, at which time I accepted the evidence that was shown. Why can’t you do the same?
That website you linked to is NOT the 9/11 report - it is something called cooperativeresearch.org. Who are these people? Why should I believe them?
Yes, they quote the 9/11 report, but not in great detail, and they quote a lot of other people without any apparent attempt to distinguish good sources from bad.
And what if 30 minutes is the best we can do?
There are limits to how fast people can communicate and react.
Sure, I’d prefer quicker than a 1/2 an hour - but I don’t automatically assume that someone screwed up because it took that long.
I’m not ignoring your evidence - I’m questioning the quality of your evidence. Why should I trust cooperativeresearch.org?
If you want to get insulting we can adjorn to the Pit, I have no problems with that. While we’re here, though, let’s not get personal, m’okay?
Limited resources - we only have so many fighters and couldn’t afford to have them chasing false alarms that morning. If they’re off chasing a false report they may not be available to deal with a real threat.
I’m trimming this one down, that make you happy? Well, it’ll get longer later but it will be relativley new stuff.
From the website you linked to, emphasis added:
Did you even read the website you quoted?
Did you read this one? (Again, emphasis added)
Gosh darn, but it sounds like somebody at the FAA was talking to somebody at the military! But, darn it, guess it takes some time to get fighters into the air. Gee, maybe it wasn’t the FAA’s problem, maybe the military should get a move on? Or maybe it was peacetime and thus fighters weren’t as on alert as they should have been - which is NOT the responsibility of the FAA.
Go back and re-read your website. Read the whole thing. With a critical mindset. Obviously people were being scrambled at Andrews, which is the closest air base to Washington, even before the FAA headquarters knew about Flight 93. Maybe there was less urgency about Flight 93 becuase the FAA knew fighters were already being dispatched to guard DC? Don’t blindly believe everything you read.
If you had linked to an on-line version of the 9/11 report, so these excerpts could be read in context I might concede you have a leg to stand on but you didn’t do that. You don’t quote from a paper copy of the report. No, you relay on information excerpted by a website - does this side have a bias? An agenda? Are they doing a creative cut-and-paste? Do they questions the quality and reliability of their sources?
Even if you DO quote directly from the 9/11 report I’d still ask where they got their information from - they are no more immune to questioning than anyone else as far as I’m concerned.
I don’t know how long it takes to launch a fully armed and loaded fighter-interceptor. Such airplanes are not normally stored with full armament, and if you don’t arm them then the only option your giving the pilots under these circumstances is ramming.
Without that information no, I can’t determine how long is too long. The question isn’t “Is 30 minutes too long?” it’s “were fighters launched in the shortest possible time on that day?”
Of course, the next question is can we shorten the time it takes to launch? Again, I don’t know enough about the airplanes in question to answer that.
How about - two to three hours would have been too long for sure, and five minutes would have been impossible.
Here’s some more:
Ohmigosh! It looks like another instance of the military being informed before 10:07!
Wow - looks like they’re diverting UNARMED fighters from training missions to protect the capital - is that the action of an uninformed military?
Look at that - someone DID call the FBI! Is that the action of a government/FAA employee “sitting on information”?
Remember that Delta 1989 was, in fact, NOT hijacked - and this is at 9:44. Yeah, some bad information was flowing with the good. This is from YOUR source and cite by the way.
Looks like they weren’t sure it was going to Washington, DC after all. Sure, why NOT Pittburgh? It’s a big city, it has skyscrapers…
Two point here:
Looks like EVERYBODY was put on alert by 9:49 am at the latest
Why didn’t the military act sooner? Like at 9:03 when the calls came rolling in from around the country and clearly someone at the bases was watching the TV?
And you claim the FAA sat on information and dragged their feet?
OK, either we’ve got criminal negligence here OR everybody important has already left to room to do important things and it’s an ignorant flunky answering the phone. Given that the guy on the phone says “everybody just left the room” I’m opting for number 2. Especially given this next bit, from 9:53 am:
Sounds like the big guys are doing their job. Maybe that’s why they left the room?
Your own source discredits your claim that no one was informed until after 10:07!
C’mon, man - Dick Cheney essentially asked a bunch of fighters to go a on a suicide mission to down Flight 93 - TWICE! Before 10:07 am! Is that acting quickly enough for you? Is that enough for you, in the way of response? “Stop that plane even if you have to kill yourself to do it” - how much more would it take to make you happy?
OK, guess now we know - it takes 16 minutes to scramble F-16’s. And note - the FAA is calling for an intercept BEFORE 10:07 am!
There is also a long passage about what eyewitnesses to the crash of Flight 93 saw, which I will not quote in detail. I will say, however, that problems with that testimony was discussed in detail here in Great Debates in an earlier thread, one of many we’ve had about Flight 93
They made a call - nowhere does it state that this is the FIRST call. Indeed, your own source makes it very apparent the FAA was talking to the military.
If you read the wholetimeline (which I encourage followers of this thread to do) you’ll find a whole lot of confusion and contradiction about what, exactly, happening that morning. Well, I believe it - it was a strange and terrible time. But enough of this nonsense that the FAA somehow “sat on” vital information.
It’s meticulously cited. If you disagree with any of the assertions, by all means tell us why.
Again, if you have issue with anything I’ve posted, by all means tell us why it’s invalid. But don’t try to impugn everything with general hand-waving. That doesn’t cut it.
I don’t see any reason why we can’t do better. It’s just a matter of having lines of communication open.
But in this case, they could have communicated faster.
I didn’t automatically assume it; I concluded it based on the evidence.
No, that’s not what you did. You deliberately picked ancillary items on the timeline, and pretended as if the ancillary items were the only ones, even though there were other items that made a more direct and compelling case. You were not, as you now claim, questioning the veracity of the individual items. This is just another surreptitious switch in tactics on your part.
I said “Arguing with you is like trying to nail a turd to the wall.” That is not a personal insult. It’s an expression that indicates that your arguments are slippery, and can’t be nailed down because you keep switching them. No offense was intended. If you want to pit me, by all means - knock yourself out.
Again, which real threat was missed? The fighters never even got to any real threats.
Did YOU? None of that negates what was known about Flight 93 at 9:34 am. If you have proof that they were prevented from notifying the military about Flight 93, by all means post it. Don’t just keep saying “Gee willikers, there were lots and lots of other flights.”
Yet another strawman. I did not say the FAA didn’t talk to the military at all; I said they waited too long to tell them about Flight 93. Are you really this obtuse?
Besides which, it’s hilarious how earlier your tack was to argue that the FAA is a civilian organization and they’re not supposed to be able to contact the military right away and blah, blah blah. But now you’re arguing the exact opposite.
How many times is this that you’ve offered the same specious argument after I shot it down. Five? Six?
Now you’re just making stuff up. The military didn’t decide to guard DC rather than intercept 93, they didn’t even know about 93 until after it crashed - according to their own testimony. And if they lied about when they knew, well that’s not good either.
Besides which, that would have been a stupid strategy - put all your eggs in one basket, guarding D.C., and not even send one fighter to intercept the hijacked plane? That’s not what they did, and even if they did, it would have been stupid.
Everything has cites. You can follow the links and make your own determination. It’s actually a pretty good website. If it’s so awful, why can’t you tell us precisely which sources are invalid?
I can’t believe this. More obfuscation from you. You know perfectly well we’re talking about the time from when the FAA knew about the hijacking to the time they told the military. The military didn’t even know about it yet; what does that have to do with the amount of time it takes to launch a fighter? If anything, it just shows that it was even MORE critical to react to the situation quickly.
Really? There is NO time that you would consider too long? So if they waited a week, that wouldn’t be too long in your mind?
Wow! You switched arguments again. We weren’t talking about launch times at all. That’s completely irrelevant to the discussion.
You’re only proving my point. Earlier, I argued that there must be channels through which the FAA could contact the military, and you argued that no, it takes a long time, official channels, blah blah blah. So now, you have PROVEN yourself wrong, and shown that the channels of communication existed, so there’s no excuse for the FAA not telling the military about Flight 93 right away. Well done.
The evidence for 1989 was considerably weaker, but I certainly wouldn’t have a problem with them notifying NORAD about both flights, and letting them decide what to do. If they wanted to send a fighter to intercept both flights, that would have been perfectly reasonable. When they found out that 1989 wasn’t hijacked, they could have simply recalled the fighter.
Which is why it’s a better strategy to intercept the flight rather than try to guess where it’s heading (as you suggested was the military’s strategy in patrolling D.C.).
And you’re perfectly satisfied with that state of affairs, huh?
Earlier, you blustered about how scrambling fighter is not the FAA’s job. Now you brag about how it IS their job. Total contradiction.
As I told you, it wasn’t MY claim; I was corrected about that on the first page of this thread. Please read the beginning of the thread. Your quote says (After 9:56 - 10:06). Wouldn’t 10:07 be considered “after 10:06”? It’s not necessarily a contradiction.
And besides that, if you succeed in proving that the military were the ones who dragged their feet, how does that prove that nobody screwed up? It just means somebody else screwed up.
I don’t see where it say “before 10:07 am”. Did you forget to quote that part?
No, it’s not. I would accept a 5 minute delay, or 10 minutes even, but not a half hour. Or even a half hour until the fighter had already been launched and were waiting for the order whether to engage the airplane. But not a half hour before they even think about launching fighters.
Yet another strawman. My bone of contention is not about what orders were given to the pilots. In fact, it wouldn’t have helped anyway if the fighter pilots had died trying to bring the plane down. But in the future, there could conceivably be a situation where reacting quickly could mean the difference between a major tragedy and a minor one.
The rest of your post is irrelevant.
The problem in general, Broomstick, is that you aren’t really arguing a coherent idea. You’re just randomly selecting tidbits and nitpicking them to death. You don’t care at all if your arguments contradict each other, or are irrelevant to the point at hand. In short, you just argue for the sake of argument.
Well, I’m open to suggestions. What should I do? His first post to me was this:
I made a perfectly cogent and reasonable point, and Broomstick responded with flippancy, and has proceeded to post extremely long-winded and specious attacks on everything I post. (BTW, he’s now come full-circle and said that the FAA did share the information, even though he initial post was to lambaste me for suggesting that they ought to have done so). Should I just ignore him, and not bother to defend what I said?
A citatation alone does not prove something is truthful or valid - I could quote something off page 43 of the Necromonicon, that in no way makes the statement anything other than a fragment of a forgery or fiction.
So yes, everything on that website has a cite - but again, I question just how accurate some of those sources are. Take eye-witness reports - they can be wildly unreliable. Yet all eye-witness reports on that website are given equal weight, even though some contradict others. Obviously, someone was mistaken! But who?
I don’t trust them because they cite everyone with no attempt to sort out the quality of the evidence and separate actual facts and occurances from the confusion evident on that day.
I don’t trust them because many of their quotes are out of context.
Right - “evidence” from a website with questionable veracity and apparently no standards. They just dump everything on the table with no regards as to who might know more or less about events than someone else.
And how, pray tell, do you separate “ancillary” items from “non-ancillary” items on that timeline? How do they indicate that? The webpage does not have instructions or an interpretive legend - just dumping of quotes for the most part. Or is it what YOU decide is important which, as near as I can tell, is dependent mostly on whether or not those items support your personal stance or not?
If you meant that you could have said something like “nailing jello to the wall”, the use of the word “turd” makes it insulting, and you know it. I’m telling you now, I found it offensive. Is that plain enough for you?
Excuse me? YOU’RE the one claiming “the military” didn’t know anything about that flight because the FAA “sat on the information”. The website you linked to shows that various levels of the military DID know about multiple hijackings and even Flight 93 before the 10:07 am time that you gave as their “notification”. Your own source proves you wrong. Accusing me of “hand waving” and “bait and switch” will not change that fact.
Do you really have that much trouble reading the website that you give as your source?
Oh, please - more reading comprehension trouble. I never said that the FAA COULDN’T contact the military Or that they’re “not supposed” to. They are not required to contact the military every time a transponder fails or an airplane deviates from course. It is an OPTION, not a MANDATE. Note that that statement does NOT cover a known hijacking. And yes, you can have a transponder failure without a hijacking being responsible.
And your own source contradicts your argument! My argument is “specious” only because that fact - your source proves you wrong - won’t go away.
Oh? You’re some sort of hot-shot military strategist?
OK - you’re on. What would YOU have done that day? How would YOU have allocated limited resources?
Why? Because you’re too lazy to make judgements on your own? You just absorb everything uncritically?
But since you ask: USAToday is infamous in aviation circles for getting anything to do with aviation wrong. USAToday quotes are offered frequently. The Guardian, from what I have read of it on-line and from feedback offered by fellow Dopers, is more than somewhat a ragsheet more interested in headlines than actual factual news - sort of the FoxTV of British newspapers. That’s two sources right there I don’t trust.
Some of the eye-witness testimony quoted I flat out don’t believe, which argument appears in this thread which contains the input of professional airline pilots as well as myself, and more specifically in this post which I did not feel like re-typing in its entirety. Here is the response to that post by Pilot141, who flies big jets for a living. Note, too, that the arguments presented rely upon multiple sources and not just a single website.
In the very next paragraph I told you what I thought was acceptable/not acceptable for that day. NOW I’d want something a little tighter, but I’d still be quite impressed if we could launch and intercept in under a half an hour.
No it’s not! If someone in a military plane was launched to chase Flight 93 before your 10:07 am claim then somebody in the ATC network must have talked to somebody in the military!
Well, see, that’s one of my points - they DID send a fighter to intercept a flight they thought was hijacked, but that actually wasn’t.
The military DID know about both flights. For whatever reason, they DID make a choice. Whether it was a good choice or a bad choice is another, separate question. Maybe it isn’t the decision YOU would make, but it is the one they did make.
Only if you can CATCH the airplane with the fighter craft - and that is NOT a sure thing!
Airliners such as the 757 are fast - hundreds of miles per hour. The chase plane has to be even faster. Which the planes they sent were. BUT - to go very fast you burn hellacious amounts of fuel, which severely limits the amount of time you can remain airborne, and aerial refueling during a crisis is of questionable sense. They have to go fast enough to catch the airliners, but still arive with enough fuel left to have time to actually DO something.
I am satisfied that, given the situation on that morning, that was the best we could have done. I expect us to learn from what occurred - and didn’t occur - to improve our resopnse in the future.
First of all, I didn’t brag about anything. Second - it is true, it is NOT the FAA’s job to scramble/launch a fighter - they can request it, but they do not, in fact, have the authority to do it. I’m sorry if you can’t comprehend the difference between “request” and “order”.
YOU claimed the FAA screwed up. I said that was by no means certain. Apparently, you are conceding that I am right - there is not certainty about who, or even IF, anyone “screwed up”.
It wouldn’t? You mean brave young men heroically sacrificing themselves to defend the country “wouldn’t have helped”?
Or you’re just getting tired.
Only when there’s nothing good on TV for entertainment
You’re dismissing all evidence out of hand because it’s possible for some evidence to be unreliable. Sorry, you lose. That’s not how it works. If you are questioning a particular cite, you have to tell us specifically which ones. You can’t just say, “I reject everything posted by Blowero because sometimes evidence can be faulty.”
You didn’t really think you were gonna get away with that one, did you? :rolleyes:
I’m not citing “everything on the website”. I’m citing specific items that are taken directly from reliable media or government sources.
I’m not surprised that you don’t know the difference. :rolleyes:
Personal insults are not allowed here. But as far as I know, vulgarity is not expressly forbidden. I am not aware of a rule against using the word “turd”. If the word itself offends you, too bad for you. Don’t read my posts.
Not only is this false, it has nothing to do with your incorrect assertion that “other flights” prevented the FAA from acting on Flight 93. Just more misdirection on your part.
Non-sequitur; ad hominem.
Of course you did. You can’t even remember what your previous line of reasoning was. And failed transponders have absolutely nothing to do with it. Ridiculous.
ad hominem.
Asked and answered.
ad hominem.
My arguments in this thread do not hinge on any eyewitness testimony. So now you’re going to attack arguments from completely different threads? How utterly lame.
You haven’t demonstrated that that happened.
No cite for that, huh?
This doesn’t follow the line of discussion at all. I’m not questioning the choices made by the military. Are you misdirecting on purpose, or are you just unable to follow a train of thought?
Nothing is a sure thing. What’s your point? That nothing should be done?
No, I am not dismissing “all” evidence. I do state that I do not trust anything *USAToday * publishes about anything to do with flying. You asked me which sources I found unreliable. I gave you two. So - specifically I question all items with origins of either *USAToday * or the Guardian unless confirmed by at least one other source with more credibility.
USAToday is NOT a reliable media source in regards to aviation.
No, seriously - on what basis are you making these judgements? Do you have any experience with the military? With aviation? Anti-terrorism activities? Do you have credentials or do you consider yourself a self-educated layman on this topic?
You are free to leave this thread at any time.
You are so intent in your hunt for a scapegoat, and you are so convinced that scapegoat is the FAA, that you won’t even consider alternative possibilities. Yet you won’t even hazard a guess at the NAME or the POSITION of the party(s) at the FAA who slacked off - when I did ask you for that you gave me a PLACE. So I ask again - if you think someone at the FAA screwed up, slacked off, or what have you WHO do you think did that?
This has been pretty well hammered, but I have a question for Broomstick for which I pre-aplogize if it looks like a hijack.
Why did 4 out of 4 pilots give up their planes? Was there an FAA rule that when a passenger gets grumpy enough, the pilot should open the door? Did 100% of the pilots think they could handle an unknown number of thugs?
