No, I really don’t. I know no more about 9/11 than anyone else because I didn’t even go to Basic until November 27th of that year. And boy, is that a long story.
I certainly don’t want to take credit for any inside knowledge from that day specifically, because I simply don’t have any as I wasn’t there. However, I’ve heard the stories from the people I fly with about what they did, and I just added a dollop of common sense to what I had heard and what I have learned about the true nature of military aircraft operations.
Roger Mexico, you’re simply not funny, and certainly not worth pitting.
MEBuckner, if this weren’t such a crackpot conspiracy theory, I never would have said that. But nonetheless, message recieved.
flonks, you never know who might be reading. What with the Bush Administration taking away all of your rights and all and indiscriminately arresting people and all of those things that you guys say happen to plain old citizens, I’d be a little more careful if I were you. But say what you like.
As with any proposition, the proponent of the proposition has the burden of proof. The more incredible the claim, the higher the quality of evidence necessary for proof.
The OP fails to present any factual evidence from which a reasonable inference may be drawn that Mr. Bush knew of the attacks, or permitted them to happen.
The OP thus fails in his debate proposition. No need to reference tinfoil hats or anti-psychotic medication. No grounds for debate here.
Anyone have a link to the document I bolded? If Wolfowitz & Libby really did seriously forward these notions, I think the question may arise as to whether they are total, utter psychopaths who need assassinating forthwith in the interests of world peace.
On 9/11/01, prior to 9:00 AM, hijackers did not fly their planes into buildings. They flew them to foreign countries. They flew them to neutral countries. They held passengers hostage to get their message out or extort demands. Shooting a jumbo jet down over an urban area is not going to be a particularly popular choice.
Yes, there were CIA/FBI warnings about such things. Yes, prior plots had been uncovered/defeated. But I don’t think enough had sunk past conventional wisdom to allow us to seriously consider shooting down a civilian airliner of ours.
The obvious answer is, “they” didn’t. The only way a theory of government conspiracy makes sense is if a large number of persons, from widely differing agencies, were somehow ordered or intimidated to not do their jobs. We’re talking, at the very least, of hundreds if not thousands of people, from airports security personnel to air traffic controllers to mid-level military commanders, all agreeing, under some presumed threat by unnamed superiors, to ignore what, aftere the fact, we can call obvious evidence of hijacking for a fixed period of time.
I say, hogwash. A lot of unexpected things can happen in an airpace of thousands of cubic miles, influenced by the actions of thousands of people over the course of an hour. And a lot did.
IMO, there was a reasonable chance that someone could have put together intelligence available prior to the hijackings and figured out the general outline of the threat. It was a huge intelligence failure not to have done so, and when it was over there were plenty of, IMO, fairly typical attempts by various agencies to cover their collective asses.
But the hijackers were highly motivated, planning for the event was detailed and meticulous, and, aside from piloting skills, did not require extraordinary technology or logistics to have a reasonable chance of success. Face it, folks, the hijackers had a good plan, and it didn’t need government collusion to work.
Just because something can be imagined, it does not mean it must be so. I’m with Lissa and MMI in that this was a failure of preparedness. Maybe it involved generalized negligence in both the Clinton and Bush-2 administrations – as in, we know we’re at risk but we ain’t got the political will to deal with prevention and preparations, and after-the-fact reaction is more easily justified anyway – but it’s unlikely that there was malicious intent on the part of anyone but Al-Qaeda on the morning of 9/11.
In any case, hanza, one thing that some foreign observers cannot understand is how deep in stand-down was home soil defense of the USA in 2001. How for America’s major cities, the response time that happened on 9/11 was as much and fast as they could have expected. Most cities DID NOT have ANY fighter aircraft on standby intercept alert status nearby, and NONE that I know of except maybe DC had active SAM batteries anywhere near. Because, we were at peacetime stand-down. Heck, I live in a a US territory with a population of nearly 4 million, a major port city of 500,000, home of the main plants of several major US pharmaceutical companies, and a US Naval Station, and unless some stateside unit squadron is visiting on a training mission, there hasn’t been ONE interceptor-fighter aircraft based within range of San Juan since about 1998.
Recently in the paper I read a couple of articles regarding Bush trying to deny that he discussed the invasion of Iraq very soon after 9/11/01, although I believe they had it documented. I only skimmed through the article, though.
And then there’s my acquaintance who believes wholeheartedly that the plane in Pennsylvania WAS shot down because they knew terrorists were aboard, and the whole “let’s roll” thing and all the heroes aboard were invented as a nice story to make us all cry and love our country more.
I seriously doubt the Bush Administration knew of the attacks in advance, and allowed them to happen.
On the other hand, I do believe that some members of the Administration suspected that some sort of airline-related terrorism plot was in the works, and didn’t work vigorously enough to try and stop it. Wasn’t it John Ashcroft who abruptly refused to travel by commercial airlines several weeks before 9/11 because of those activities?
And let’s not deny that the Administration eagerly pounced on the 9/11 attacks as an opportunity to sell the neo-conservative agenda to the American public. Even before any information about the hijackers were known, senior officials were looking for ways to tie the attacks to Iraq, in order to justify a war. Afghanistan was just a detour on that road.
O.k, I admit it, maybe my paranoia got the better of me for a moment there. However, I think that full investigation of the excellent links provided by akrako1 certainly provides some food for thought.
I just can’t escape the feeling that there could be no worse time in recent memory to have such a hawkish government that is so prepared to agressively assert its interests overseas, and part of me can’t help wondering to what extent this was just the situation they inherited, to what extent it was a situation they created…
