After being briefed by then CIA director Tenet on 7/17/2001 (a week after the one that Rice didn't remember), describing the threat as "as a '10 on a scale of 1 to 10,'" John Ashcroft immediately switched from commercial flights to a chartered plane. When asked by reporters why the switch, his reply was "based on a threat assessment." Here is the news report on 7/26/2001: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/26/national/main303601.shtml So if it was a threat serious enough for Ashcroft to change his planes...
Newsweek reported a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next day (sept 11th), because of security concerns. And where was NORAD? Running drills of hijacked planes in the northeast...
i'm mystified by the lack of NORAD response and readiness. here you had an administration completely aware of a system that was 'Blinking Red', your DCI is frantic about it, anti-terror advisor is freaking out, calling meetings with everyone he can, your attorney general stops flying commercial. you go on vacation ... long after the fact you pretend you're not even sure if the meetings took place meanwhile (assuming Newsweek didn't make that up out of thin air) you've got pentagon leadership cancelling flights on the 10th, someone warning Willy Brown, the information seems to have definitely concentrated in severity on the 10th, and where the F* was NORAD in all this? why weren't F16s on 24 hr patrol over nyc, or at least on the ground as close as possible if the threat information got that specific by the 10th? aegis, anything? nothing
Typical 20/20 hindsight. If one indeed knew that hijacked planes might be flown into buildings, specifically in NYC and D.C. then I'd say why not have NORAD "patrolling". But what's the "usual" method of airliner terror? Either just blowing one up ala' the shoe-bomber or hijacking one, landing safely and then demanding something in return for the release of hostages. As it was the response was pretty darn quick considering that the hijackers had turned off the transponder. http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/060801fege01 Obviously the EASIEST thing to do would have been to allow screeners to make Middle-Eastern men strip down to their shorts. But you can't do that. God knows you wouldn't want to profile anyone. In fact 9 of the 19 hijackers were stopped by security on 9/11.
there were several publicly known precedents where islamic terrorists were apprehended and discovered to have intended kamikaze attacks on landmark buildings using hijacked aircraft, not to mention the WTC was a known target http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_2692_131/ai_96268286 "crashing planes into structures is not new. The Israelis shot down a Libyan jetliner they said was headed for a building in Tel Aviv in the 1980s. A Cessna 150 fell 50 yards short of the White House in September, 1994. French commandos prevented a jumbo jet, hijacked in Algeria by the Armed Islamic Group, from crashing into the Eiffel Tower the following December. In the mid 1990s, terrorist Ramzi Yousef plotted to have his friend Abdul Hakim Murad fly a light plane loaded with chemical weapons into CIA headquarters at Langley, Va."
Then, why not just shut down the WTC and Pentagon? Outlaw hi-rises. Easier than shooting down planes, unprovoked, eh? I'd just LOVE to have seen your reaction without the benefit of hindsight, if the military had taken out Flight 11 over Westchester County. In the aftermath if discoveries were made pointing to a suicide attack on the WTC there'd me the same moonbats saying, "attack on the WTC? Bullshit! This is just the G concocting a hoax to justify the panicked shooting down an airliner that was merely being hijacked." The next attacks will be bombs on subways and bombs in malls. Do you have any doubt that someone could hop on a Lexington 5 train and take out two cars with an explosive strapped to their body? Everyone knows it's coming. Now go stop it AC.
what we see is an administration that keeps having to backtrack and revise their story on what they knew and what they did to prepare for 911. they even fiercely resisted the creation of an investigatory panel, insisted on creating it themselves which plainly lacks objectivity. if they keep backtracking as the story develops, why should a reasonable person believe they're being honest with us about any of it? i can't say for sure what my view would be if it had gone down in your hypothetical scenario. i'd like to think i'm not a knee jerk partisan moonbat, but who knows, maybe you're right. all i know is that the administration's approach to the issue seems focused on covering their asses, not on their duty to the american people yes pabst, shit does happen. MANY terrorist attacks have been prevented around the world by dedicated intelligence organizations. in this case, my personal opinion is that Bush got in the way of dedicated competent efforts to handle this threat, and in the way of objective analysis in the aftermath the whole thing stinks to me of a much larger untold story
So the excuse for doing nothing is that it would not have prevented the attacks anyway. First of all, that is a questionable excuse. The lower parts of the government were actually doing their jobs. We had Moussaui in custody a month before the attack. Tenet was warning everyone that he could get a hold of that the threat was a "10." The very top of the government, Bush, Rice, Ashcroft, dropped the ball. They did nothing. We cannot say whether there would have been a difference if they did something, for example, forming a task force to study the threat. If such a task force were formed, and didn't find the connection between Moussaui and the WTC plot, then the blame goes to the task force. But the fact is, Bush, Rice, and Ashcroft did nothing. So they should shoulder the blame. Even if they reacted immediately, but due to the human's inability to see beyond past experiences and focused on (for example) international flights, and failed to prevent the attacks, at least they could claim that they tried. But they didn't even try. Trying does not require hindsight. Not trying is unforgivable.