investigating 9/11

[Death_Machine]

I understand there was a report written prior to 9/11, but that was just one report out of God knows how many. The government assesses the situation and prioritizes credible threats. Were they wrong, sure. But like I said, they missed one out of God knows how many.

 

[Sharwood]

What about that guy who wrote a book where a dude flies an airplane into the Capitol? Tom Clancy had inside knowledge of the whole thing!

Actually it was Frederick Forsyth, and he specifically didn't publish it because a previous idea he had was stolen by some people who read it in one of his books: suicide bombing.

 

[Dachs]

Actually it was Frederick Forsyth, and he specifically didn't publish it because a previous idea he had was stolen by some people who read it in one of his books: suicide bombing.

It was at the end of Clancy's Debt of Honor. Pilot named Sato was pissed that his brother's destroyer got sunk during the brief war between Japan and America, so he flew his plane into the Capitol building, killed the President and most of the government and catapulted Jack Ryan, the new Vice President, into the White House.

Don't correct me on Clancy trivia, dude.

 

[Sharwood]

It was at the end of Clancy's Debt of Honor. Pilot named Sato was pissed that his brother's destroyer got sunk during the brief war between Japan and America, so he flew his plane into the Capitol building, killed the President and most of the government and catapulted Jack Ryan, the new Vice President, into the White House.

Don't correct me on Clancy trivia, dude.

Oh God, now Clancy's making Ryan the frigging President. I'm willing to bet Clancy wrote that after Forsyth wrote his book involving terrorists flying planes into THE WORLD TRADE CENTRE though.

And I have no desire to correct you on Clancy trivia. Dear God, I'm trying to unlearn most of what I already know. Except about The Hunt For Red October. That rocked.

 

[Neomega]

All you Monday morning quarterbacks love to point the finger @ Bush for this, but the fact of the matter is that this was pretty inconceivable to damn near all of us before that day.

Yeah, cuz, it was, like totally 8 years before that the twin towers were attacked... and like, who can remember anything that happens eight years ago?

It wasn't inconceivable to me, or pretty much anyone else that felt American foreign policy at the time was going to bite us in the ass.

Secretary Rice: Regarding aug 6, 2001 security briefing "I believe it said 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.' "

Also, watch:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/view/
regarding former New York head of FBI, and head of the twin tower's security team on 9/11, John O'Neill. After you are done watching this, you will see they had plenty of warning from experts, but due to internal politics, would rather railroad the guy giving distinct warning.

 

[Dachs]

Oh God, now Clancy's making Ryan the frigging President. I'm willing to bet Clancy wrote that after Forsyth wrote his book involving terrorists flying planes into THE WORLD TRADE CENTRE though.

The Clancy book came out in 1994. When was the Forsyth one released?

 

[Sharwood]

The Clancy book came out in 1994. When was the Forsyth one released?

It wasn't, he pulled it after LTTE started suicide bombing, an idea he developed. I'll try to find out what year it was due though.

EDIT:

Years before the September 11 attacks, Forsyth had planned to write a novel about terrorist strikes. He later dropped the idea, fearing that real terrorists would try to mimic the same. After the attacks, the author revealed the plot of the novel he never wrote: terrorists hijack a civilian airliner and ram the plane into their intended targets.[citation needed] (Such a plot device does occur in Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy, published in 1994.)

Doesn't have the year though. That last line is new, wasn't there last time I read it. Also, doesn't mention that it was the WTC he was gonna take out, which I've read elsewhere.

 

[Aegis]

The only part of 9/11 that I find questionable is the downed flight in Pennsylvania. I find it likely that the government shot that plane down.

Why? Because three planes had already been crashed into several buildings already and if they discovered a fourth plane was on it's way to DC, the logical thing to do was to shoot it down in order to minimize the loss of life, especially since it was over the non-populated area of Pennsylvania.

As an added bonus, they can tell us a story about how the passengers rose up and overcame the terrorists, giving the country a much-needed morale boost.

 

[PhroX]

The only part of 9/11 that I find questionable is the downed flight in Pennsylvania. I find it likely that the government shot that plane down.

Why? Because three planes had already been crashed into several buildings already and if they discovered a fourth plane was on it's way to DC, the logical thing to do is to shoot it down in order to minimize the loss of life, especially since it was over the non-populated area of Pennsylvania.

As an added bonus, they can feed us a story about how the passengers rose up and overcame the terrorists, giving us a morale boost.

Same here. That one always seemed a little suspicious to me. IIRC, didn't someone in the US government (Rumsfeld maybe?) initially announce that it had been shot down? Other elements were a bit odd. For example, I don't believe they ever let the NTSB look at the wreckage.

Still, even if it was shot down, it was a spur of the moment thing - and indeed, a pretty sensible one - not some massive conspiracy.

 

[Dachs]

Same here. That one always seemed a little suspicious to me. IIRC, didn't someone in the US government (Rumsfeld maybe?) initially announce that it had been shot down? Other elements were a bit odd. For example, I don't believe they ever let the NTSB look at the wreckage.

The NTSB did look at the wreckage. The material gained from that look yielded a major motion picture. The aircraft has been independently verified to have gone into a nosedive and crashed, the probable result of the passengers' revolt onboard.

 

[Aegis]

The NTSB did look at the wreckage. The material gained from that look yielded a major motion picture. The aircraft has been independently verified to have gone into a nosedive and crashed, the probable result of the passengers' revolt onboard.

Or a missile taking out their tail.

[Edit:] I will say that I do believe that passengers could overwhelm the terrorists, but I also believe that the Government would actually shoot down an airplane and then not tell us. Imagine the PR hit that would be.

 

[Dachs]

Or a missile taking out their tail.

Why the hell would a missile go for the tail, and not an engine? Why did none of the eyewitnesses report damage to the tail section of the aircraft?

 

[Bamspeedy]

For example, I don't believe they ever let the NTSB look at the wreckage.

Anybody know who all the guys in this picture is?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Oompa-Loompas?!

 

[Aegis]

It wouldn't have to be a missile to the tail. That's not the point. It could have been anything. My point is more than one thing can cause an airplane to go into a dive and crash. Just because it crashed that way does not mean the passengers were automatically the cause.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I understand there was a report written prior to 9/11, but that was just one report out of God knows how many. The government assesses the situation and prioritizes credible threats. Were they wrong, sure. But like I said, they missed one out of God knows how many.

It wasn't the government that didn't incorrectly assess this situation. GWB and Condoleeza Rice basically ignored the Al Qaeda threat after receiving direct intelligence of their aims and motives:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0409041pdb1.html

But did they play an active part? Certainly not. They are both simply incompetent, but this is yet another excellent example of exactly how incompetent they truly were. Even Carter warned Bush about the Al Qaeda before leavling office, and Bush decided not to pursue the programs that he had already set up:

http://www.truthout.org/article/clinton-bush-had-urgent-warnings-al-qaeda

One official scheduled to testify, Richard A. Clarke, who was President Bill Clinton's counterterrorism coordinator, said in an interview that the warning about the Qaeda threat could not have been made more bluntly to the incoming Bush officials in intelligence briefings that he led.

At the time of the briefings, there was extensive evidence tying Al Qaeda to the bombing in Yemen two months earlier of an American warship, the Cole, in which 17 sailors were killed.

"It was very explicit," Mr. Clarke said of the warning given to the Bush administration officials. "Rice was briefed, and Hadley was briefed, and Zelikow sat in." Mr. Clarke served as Mr. Bush's counterterrorism chief in the early months of the administration, but after Sept. 11 was given a more limited portfolio as the president's cyberterrorism adviser.

"Until 9/11, counterterrorism was a very secondary issue at the Bush White House," said a senior Clinton official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Remember those first months? The White House was focused on tax cuts, not terrorism. We saw the budgets for counterterrorism programs being cut."

The threat of someone hijacking a plane and flying it into critical infrastructure has long been known. It was al the talk back in the 60s and 70s when plane hijackings were frequent occurances. In fact, the WTC was specifically designed to survive such hit by a 707 either by accident or intent, and so are nuclear reactors and other buildings which would likely be targets. Unfortunately, planes have gotten much bigger and carry a lot more fuel since the original requirements were drawn up.

 

[PhroX]

The NTSB did look at the wreckage. The material gained from that look yielded a major motion picture. The aircraft has been independently verified to have gone into a nosedive and crashed, the probable result of the passengers' revolt onboard.

OK, I've been misinformed then. I had read that only the FBI looked at it and refused the NTSB access.

*sigh* Probably one of them damned BS conspiracy theories masquerading as serious reports that crop up with far too much regularity.

 

[Aegis]

Edward Felt, a computer engineer who had been on his way to a business meeting in San Francisco, may have been the last person to place a phone call from the doomed plane before it crashed on Sept. 11 near Shanksville, Somerset County.

Eight minutes before the crash, he had called 911 from an airplane lavatory and reached a dispatcher in Westmoreland County.

And so, before they joined the other relatives to hear the cockpit voice recorder tape, Edward's widow, Sandy, his brother, Gordon, and his mother, Shirley, were led to a small conference room at the Princeton Marriott Forestall Village Hotel, where they were joined by two FBI agents and a victim-assistance counselor.

Sitting around a polished wood table, the agents handed each of the Felts a typed transcript of the 911 call, and then played it.

Ed's call was made at 9:58 a.m. In a conversation with dispatchers lasting about one minute, he spoke in a quivering voice saying, "We are being hijacked. We are being hijacked."

He went on to describe an "explosion" that he heard, and then white smoke on the plane from an undetermined location.

Then the line went dead.

http://www.post-gazette.com/nation/20020421flight930421p1.asp

Do I believe passengers would try to overthrow the terrorists? Yes.
Do I believe the government would shoot down the plane? Yes.
Is it possible both happened? Yes.

 

[Formaldehyde]

It wouldn't have to be a missile to the tail. That's not the point. It could have been anything. My point is more than one thing can cause an airplane to go into a dive and crash. Just because it crashed that way does not mean the passengers were automatically the cause.

No, that doesn't make it automatically the cause. However, the multiple phone calls between people on the plane and people on the ground along with the cockpit voice recorder leaves no doubt as to what actually happened, unless you want to manufacture a conspiracy theory that the US is deliberately lying again.

There is also the data from the flight data recorder that shows the plane was deliberately put into a steep dive.

I actually think the government would have been more than willing to take the credit for shooting down one of the four planes. It certainly would have made them look a lot less incompetent, and the order to do so had been given by Cheney.

 

[Phlegmak]

I already told you why they did it, and it had nothing to do with Iraq. They wanted to unite the world into one country so that they could have one giant market for their goods to make us buy. But they couldnt do that with democratic countries so they had to turn all our countries into police states first. And they needed an enemy to scare people into giving up their freedoms and the 9/11 attacks were the way of doing that. They pretended it was a bunch of Arabs with boxcutters and suddenly everyone was afraid and would let them do what they want.

Wait a minute. "They" wanted to turn the democracies of the world into police states? I assume "they"=Bush administration. In that case, you should disbelieve your own story since the Bush administration is now out of office, and the Republicraps have a minority in two branches of the US government.