We should have shot them down?

Great Debates
21

The same problem as with all historical hindsight. The solution is simple - if you know what was going to happen.

From everything I’ve seen, there is no way in hell they could have known that 4 planes were hijacked for 4 different targets in that short amount of time. Maybe there was a window where they realized that they had 4 hijacked planes in the air, but I would liken that to the moment you realize you are staring down a gun barrel. And even then, they had no clue what the intent to use those planes on was until the first one hit the WTC.

The only one they had the potential to intercept was the Pennsylvania plane, which was moot anyway.

22

Which is still one of the most densely populated areas in the United States. Get a map and draw a 10 mile radius circle centered at Church & Vesey. You’ll see what I mean.

23

Of course…if there was only one group at the FAA working all the problems simultaneously and in perfect coordination with all the other groups and having perfect access to all the information coming in at the time. Problem is, this isn’t reality. There were multiple groups working on their little piece, without good access to what the OTHER groups were doing. There was tons of mis-information also coming in (at one time the FAA thought there was something like a dozen aircraft that they weren’t sure if they were being hijacked or not). The problem Elvis, is you are looking at all the data AFTER THE FACT…after its been compiled, in light of what actually happened, with the mis-information and confusion taken out, with all the input from the various groups neatly laid out for your viewing pleasure…the people on the spot simply didn’t have that at the time.

Again, what would you have had him do? Rush about or issue arbitrary orders? Panic? They simply didn’t have enough data at the time to make any kind of decision as to what to do. Should GW have just guessed? Would that have made him look more presidential to you? Personally I’m no big fan of Bush, but on this one I’m glad he DIDN’T act the cowboy and go off half cocked. He did the best thing I can think of for him or any other president…he sat there looking calm and presidential while others rushed about trying to figure out what was going on so he could make an INFORMED decision. I wouldn’t have thought him capable (either then or now) of having such good sense.

-XT

24

Just read the damn article, willya, XT?

My jaw dropped for the first time today at your last 'graph, I must admit. The best thing a CinC can do when a crisis starts is to keep “looking presidential” to an audience of elementary school kids?

25

Since when does “glassy-eyed stare” == “presidential”?

26

I would love to old boy, but I refuse to register for online sites like that. As I asked before, would you just insert what you think are the relevant portions of the article into a post? YOU obviously are registered already. In the mean time, I’m doing a google search to see if the article is in an unregistered site…so I can read it finally.

Depends on the crisis and the situation. SOMETIMES the best thing anyone can do is to sit back and let others do their jobs, to take the time to figure out whats going on BEFORE committing to a decision, and to remain calm and collected so you don’t panic the country you are supposed to be serving any more than it already is. Why is this concept so hard for people to understand? Is it just partisan politics talking, or do you REALLY think the Presidents job is to micromanage the people around him, to take out his inspectors cap and find stuff out for himself, perhaps to tap into the FAA and NORAD directly via his handy dandy pocket watch and computer terminal and see first hand whats happening? At the time the President was reading to those kids NO ONE KNEW EXACTLY WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON! Is that REALLY so hard to understand?

So, anything he did, including throwing the book down and rushing from the room would have been going off half cocked, without a clue as to what was happening…and it would have helped to cause even more of a panic than already was happening. If you see a President who is reading to some kids as part of a PR stunt suddenly jump up, and Secret Service men with guns hustle him out suddenly, its going to cause people to panic.

Personally I’m shocked that GW DIDN’T do exactly what you are ragging on him about…i.e. jumping up and starting to issue orders and bluster about. Thats EXACTLY the kind of stupid shit I would have expected from him. However, he surprised me that day by doing something smart (of which I can count OTHER things he’s done that were smart on the fingers of one hand…and still have some fingers left over at the end)…but being calm and waiting until his people (who’s job it was) found out more information as to what was happening so he could make an informed decision…even about moving to another location. If this isn’t your idea of what a President in that particular circumstance should do in such a crisis, then you tell me what YOU think he should have or could have done Elvis. What would YOU have done?

-XT

27

There are plenty of reasons to shoot down hijacked jets now that we know they may be being used as weapons.
It is very unlikely that a shot down jet will cause anywhere near as much damage as a well aimed jet, especially if there is time to chose where it will be shot down.
It denies the terrorists the ability to claim the success of hitting an important target.
It is a signal of power and being in control, rather than being the target and victim of the terrorists.
I don’t think their was the slightest chance of doing this pre 9/11 the common wisdom at the time was to allow hyjakers to do whatever they want with a plane, fly them wherever they request, and deal with them on the ground when the plane lands.

28

xtisme, would you have panicked if the president had calmly left the classroom and headed to AF1?

29

Here’s the link to the Commission report and timeline. First step, let’s all read this so we can agree on the sequence of events.

http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/STSI/State_Info.cfm?Year=2002&State=MO&Accessible=0

According to the report, the first indication NORAD had that there was a second hijacked plane was 9:03 a.m., one minute after the second plane actually hit the WTC. NORAD didn’t receive information that the second tower had been hit until 9:08 a.m.

Now, everyone in the U.S. who was sitting in front of a TV set at 9:01 a.m. may have seen the second plane hitting, but the air controllers and NORAD weren’t watching TV. That information had to get passed from NORAD through channels to the White House and finally to the Bush party in Florida.

So GWB had his first phone call with Cheney at 9:15 a.m.? Sounds like a reasonably good response time to me. Fighters at Langley AFB in Virginia were scrambled at 9:23 and in the air at 9:30.

Regarding United Flight 93 – in another section of the report (also available at the above web site) the Commission explained the protocol in place on 9/11 for hijacked airplanes.

**The protocols did not contemplate an intercept. They assumed the fighter escort would be discreet, “vectored to a position five miles directly behind the hijacked aircraft,” where it could perform its mission to monitor the flight path of the aircraft.

In sum, the protocols in place on 9/11 for the FAA and NORAD to respond to a hijacking presumed that:
(1) the hijacked aircraft would be readily identifiable and would not attempt to
disappear;
(2) there would be time to address the problem through the appropriate FAA and
NORAD chains of command; and
(3) the hijacking would take the traditional form, not a suicide hijacking designed toconvert the aircraft into a guided missile.

On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen.**

At the moment Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, the nearest interceptors were over Washington. In fact, NORAD didn’t even know didn’t even receive word about Flight 93 until four minutes after it had crashed.

So let’s base our debate on what was “officially” known at the time. And at the time, no one know one knew there had even been a second hijacking until the after the second plane had crashed, and only minutes before the third plane crash. Except for a handfull of air traffic controllers, no one knew that four planes had been hijacked until after the fourth one had already crashed.

30

Ok, found this link to an article by the same name which isn’t registered.

I’m unsure about what I’m supposed to get from this thats different than all the other stuff I’ve read about it in the past Elvis. Perhaps you would care to explain? I’ll assume you are talking about this series of paragraphs:

[QUOTE=Cheney Authorized Shooting Down Planes
]
At 10:39 on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Vice President Cheney, in a bunker beneath the White House, told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in a videoconference that he had been informed earlier that morning that hijacked planes were approaching Washington.

“Pursuant to the president’s instructions, I gave authorization for them to be taken out,” Cheney told Rumsfeld, who was at the Pentagon. Informing Rumsfeld that the fighter pilots had received orders to fire, Cheney added, “It’s my understanding they’ve already taken a couple of aircraft out.”

Cheney’s comments, which were soon proved erroneous, were detailed in a report issued yesterday by the commission investigating the terrorist attacks. The comments are part of the considerable confusion that surrounded top government officials as the tense drama unfolded.
…

Bush and Cheney told the commission that they remember the phone call; the president said it reminded him of his time as a fighter pilot. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who had joined Cheney, told the commission that she heard the vice president discuss the rules of engagement for fighter jets over Washington with Bush.

Within minutes, Cheney would use his authority. Told – erroneously, as it turned out – that a presumably hijacked aircraft was 80 miles from Washington, Cheney decided “in about the time it takes a batter to swing” to authorize fighter jets scrambled from Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va., to engage it, the commission reported.

Only later did White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten suggest that Cheney call Bush once more to confirm the engagement order, according to the commission. Logs in Cheney’s bunker and on Air Force One confirm conversations at 10:18 and 10:20, respectively.

…

But the commission determined that the Langley fighter jets sent to circle Washington never received the shoot-down order. It was passed down the chain of command, but commanders of the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s northeast sector did not give it to the pilots.

“Both the mission commander and the weapons director indicated they did not pass the order to fighters circling Washington and New York City because they were unsure how the pilots would, or should, proceed with this guidance,” the commission reported.

“In short,” the report added, "while leaders believed the fighters circling above them had been instructed to ‘take out’ hostile aircraft, the only orders actually conveyed to the Langley pilots were to ‘ID type and tail.’ "

[/QUOTE]

Ok, what exactly does this mean to you Elvis? Or am I looking in the wrong areas? To me it only continues to confirm the general confusion happening.

No, probably not to be honest. However, would that have been the right thing to do? Could the President have done anything more by moving to another location right then that he didn’t do by waiting until more data came in? Not like he has some super secret way to communicate from Air Force One (where he went too afterwards) that he didn’t have access too where he was.

Were the Secret Service urging the President to move or stay put? If they were urging him to move, who decided that he shouldn’t? Bush? Chaney? Someone else? The President is the decision guy, but he can’t make a decision if all the facts aren’t in. And he can wait for his people to compile the facts just about anywhere, no? He doesn’t have to be involved before that…in fact he SHOULDN’T be involved before that. He has other duties (even stupid ones like reading to kids and doing presidential things).

Look at the article above…a decision to shoot down planes wasn’t made until 10:39am. Would the President leaving that classroom (either calmly or in a hurry with the SS with guns out) instead of waiting that 5-7 min. REALLY have made any difference at all? Again, I think this time Bush did the right thing by not rushing off, by continueing to sit there calmly (with the cameras rolling btw) until more was known.

-XT

31

I can think of nothing good to say whatever about any aspect of the Bush administration, their policies, their handling of the war on terror or Iraq. But I will cut them this one piece of slack: I don’t think anything could have been done differently on 9/11, including when and where jets were scrambled, and how long Bush took to read to the kids. The tactics and magnitude of the attack were that far beyond our realm of experience.

32

It’s a damn shame that it has become virtually impossible to hold a discussion on nearly any topic in Great Debates without members of The Brotherhood of Bush Bashers[sup]TM[/sup] trying to turn it into another stupid Bush-bashing thread.

Don’t y’all have enough of them going on already? Some of us may be interested in the OP and don’t care to read of your political opinions for the ten-thousandth time. sigh

Now, the idea that any person in authority would have ordered an airliner loaded with civilians shot down prior to the attacks of 9/11 is simply not valid.

I don’t think they would give such an order even today. Imagine giving it yourself: Are you certain the hijackers intend to use the plane as a weapon? If not, how would you justify giving such an order? How could you be totally certain?

I think if this is tried again in the future the passangers and pilots will splash the aircraft and there will be no need for military intervention.

Perhaps a small private airplane loaded with explosives could do the terrorist’s job, but in that case how could the authorities know until after the fact?

This is a tough question, but I don’t think it is reasonable to place blame for not shooting down planes on 9/11.

Thanks for an informative post, kunilou.

33

And in a nut shell thats all I’ve been trying to say. I also have little use for Bush or his administration. But to me, this hindsight second guessing is just ridiculous and it completely ignores both the timeline of events…and basic human nature in a crisis that is so completely beyond the pale. It also ignores how unexpect crisis like this happen in a democracy…not exactly the most responsive of government models when this kind of wierd shit happens.

-XT

34

This maybe one extreme and not expected from a President, but what GW did was the other extreme. What is being meant is that the knowledge of 2 planes have hit the WTC should be sufficient for a President to calmly call off his reading, excuse himself with a smile and leave the school. Who said anything about “throwing the book down and rushing”?

A normally dumbass does is unlikely to suddenly shine as a smartass, especially under stress. That actually is therefore proof that he actually did what he did because he was dumb!

35

Wisernow this is why I posted the 9/11 Commission link, and the timeline.

Yeah, Bush was sitting in a classroom reading to kids for 15 minutes after the second tower was hit, but he didn’t know it and no one there knew it, either. At that moment, all anyone knew was that one plane had hit one tower, and it was thought to be a "small, private plane’ (I distinctly remember the news bulletin I heard on the radio said “possibly a DC-3”) NORAD didn’t receive word about the tower being hit until 9:08. Then they had to notify the White House, which had to get word to Florida, which then had to be passed to GWB. And then, he did calmly call off his reading, got the hell out of there, and was on the phone with Cheney by 9:15.

I thought this thread was supposed to be a debate over the order to shoot down the hijacked planes. As for what GWB should have been doing between 9:01 and 9:15, that’s not just hindsight, but if people would actually read the damn timeline, they’d understand it’s a complete red herring.

Let’s move on.

36

I just realized my link went to an entirely different site. Here’s the correct link to the 9/11 Commission report.

http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing12/staff_statement_17.pdf

My apologies. Now, let’s everyone read the timeline.

37

And this is the systemic breakdown I’m talking about. Again, this is not a partisan attack. But during any of the last several presidential administrations, one of the many people in various organizations whose job it is to protect the country from attack ought to have realized how easy (in many ways) the 9/11 plan was, and taken steps to render it more difficult, or at least prepare the groundwork for dealing with it.
Again, I’m not attacking Bush here. If Clinton or Gore had been president on the morning of 9/11, reading to those kids in that school, I doubt he would have taken any actions that resulted in anything different happening. (It’s conceivable that more energetic pursuit of terrorism in the months previous would have turned up the plot, but unlikely, and outside the scope of this thread).
When something truly unexpected, like 9/11, happens, it’s tempting to say “no one could have foreseen that”. But it’s rarely true. If you’d paid me a decent salary and told me to sit in a room for a year with 3 creative people and come up with ways that terrorists might damage the US, I guarantee you that we would have come up with 9/11, or something like it. Someone should have been doing that. And someone should have been paying attention to what that group of people came up with, and so forth.

(Beginning partisan attacks)
As for what Bush should have done, he certainly should not have jumped up and started firing off orders. However, he certainly should have started gathering information, discussing contingencies with his advisers, etc. Being a leader doesn’t mean instantly making decisions the moment the first hint of an emergency crosses your radar screen. But it also doesn’t mean sitting around, fiddling while Rome burns, waiting until everything has been settled before you even start to think, discuss, etc.

38

Well, he is the President of the United States, so inevitably everything to do with running the nation has to involve him somewhere. And his handling of 9/11 (or lack thereof) is also an inevitable part of that analysis.

39

That’s pretty much how I see it. Had any plane crashed into the WTC for whatever reason I would expect the prez to calmly excuse himself to the kids, telling then he has something important to attend to, and leave to go somewhere he could be effective if needed. But that’s past. What about next time.
Speaking of effective, I really have a hard time thinking of a scenario where shooting down a passenger plane would be truly effective and justified. As pointed out above, such an action simply is not practical. Of course, if the hijackers call in, while circling over the Mojave desert, and say that in 30 minutes they’re going to dive bomb the Pentagon, well, maybe that’d be a different story.

40

Good. Now to the real topic of debate.

Yes, I agree with the order to intercept and if necessary, shoot it down. After two planes had crashed into the WTC and then another into the Pentagon, I wouldn’t have any worries about shooting at anything that didn’t respond.

And if it should ever happen again? Well, at this point I’d have to assume that anyone hijacking an airplane in U.S. airspace wants more than just money.