why do you take the word of the bbc who has a blurry video over the eyewitness account of people who were there? Where are the people on the flight. You'll have some credibility when you can produce the flight and people not a poor quality video of something that may or may not be the nose of a 757.
I don't take the word of the bbc, and from your post i see you don't believe the video that your goverment released as prof of a boeing 757 hit the pentagon either.
Eye witnesses change there story like the wind all it takes is a few leading question by the right people to make them say what you want.
Again i will not discuss what may or may not of happened to passengers on a plane as anything i say will merely be speculation. I would rather discuss something that we can all watch and come to conclusions on. People disapearing and supposed dead does not mean they died at the penatgon.
Keep on rockin in the free world!!!!
The economy has polarized to the point where the wealthiest 10% now own 85% of the nation’s wealth. Never before have the bottom 90% been so highly indebted, so dependent on the wealthy.
The video I have seen doesn't show anything. I ask the question if we had no video of the two planes hitting the towers would we be discussing that they were missles instead?
What is the theory, if the people died and the plane never landed, then where is it? Are we saying it was shot down somewhere and then a missle was fired into the Pentagon to create the cover up?
Try freezeing it and watching frame by frame. And then come back and tell me it's the nose of the boeing 757.
Keep on rockin in the free world!!!!
The economy has polarized to the point where the wealthiest 10% now own 85% of the nation’s wealth. Never before have the bottom 90% been so highly indebted, so dependent on the wealthy.
Ravenna Seattle - are you a white supremist, or do you merely subscribe to their websites?? answer please
What website are you refering to?
Keep on rockin in the free world!!!!
The economy has polarized to the point where the wealthiest 10% now own 85% of the nation’s wealth. Never before have the bottom 90% been so highly indebted, so dependent on the wealthy.
None of this has anything to do with the fact that the Government had detailed information of the plans for these attacks and chose to allow them to take place. It also doesn't explain the stand-down of the airforce on that particular day, among other things.
I don't take the word of the bbc, and from your post i see you don't believe the video that your goverment released as prof of a boeing 757 hit the pentagon either.
Eye witnesses change there story like the wind all it takes is a few leading question by the right people to make them say what you want.
Again i will not discuss what may or may not of happened to passengers on a plane as anything i say will merely be speculation. I would rather discuss something that we can all watch and come to conclusions on. People disapearing and supposed dead does not mean they died at the penatgon.
please don't infer from my post that i don't believe the video. I believe a 757 flew into the pentagon not a missile not some elaborate gov't plan.
make sure the fortune that you seek...is the fortune that you need
please don't infer from my post that i don't believe the video. I believe a 757 flew into the pentagon not a missile not some elaborate gov't plan.
Did i say a missile flew into the pentagon NO, or that it was a elaborate goverment plan NO.
The object in the video that you now say you believe, still looks nothing like the nose of a boeing 757. So if it looks NOTHING like a boeing 757 nose what is it?
What part of my questioning the video do you find so hard to deal with?
Keep on rockin in the free world!!!!
The economy has polarized to the point where the wealthiest 10% now own 85% of the nation’s wealth. Never before have the bottom 90% been so highly indebted, so dependent on the wealthy.
Did i say a missile flew into the pentagon NO, or that it was a elaborate goverment plan NO.
The object in the video that you now say you believe, still looks nothing like the nose of a boeing 757. So if it looks NOTHING like a boeing 757 nose what is it?
What part of my questioning the video do you find so hard to deal with?
don't get so defensive. I didn't say you believed that. I said I think it's a 757 since that is what flight 77 was. I also said I don't believe it was a missile or a huge gov't conspiracy; nowhere did i say YOU believed that.
i don't have a problem questioning the video...question away. But again, how clear is the video? I wish we had better quality videos to base such claims on.
make sure the fortune that you seek...is the fortune that you need
None of this has anything to do with the fact that the Government had detailed information of the plans for these attacks and chose to allow them to take place. It also doesn't explain the stand-down of the airforce on that particular day, among other things.
neither things are true. government had intelligence that el queda wanted to use planes to attack us. they had no idea when and where it would take place. america got beat that day.
neither things are true. government had intelligence that el queda wanted to use planes to attack us. they had no idea when and where it would take place. america got beat that day.
and there was no stand down order
Doesn't matter whether they knew exactly when and where the attacks would place. They should have acted on the intelligence. They chose instead to do nothing.
As far as there being no stand down order. Dick Cheney himself issued a stand-down order. It was the first one issued after a year of over 100 previous incidents of a similar alarms during which routine procedure was followed - i.e, the automatic scambling of military aircraft in the instance of passenger aircraft losing radar contact.
Coincidence?
Doesn't matter whether they knew exactly when and where the attacks would place. They should have acted on the intelligence. They chose instead to do nothing.
As far as there being no stand down order. Dick Cheney himself issued a stand-down order. It was the first one issued after a year of over 100 previous incidents of a similar alarms during which routine procedure was followed - i.e, the automatic scambling of military aircraft in the instance of passenger aircraft losing radar contact.
Coincidence?
We've been over all of this before on this board. Why do i need to repeat myself?
Why were planes not scrambled immediately following loss of radar contact? This is standard operating procedure.
Why was Dick Cheney placed in charge of proceedings only after the second plane had hit the twin towers? This was unprecedented.
Cheney recalls taking charge from bunker
September 11, 2002 Posted: 9:51 PM EDT (0151 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As horrified Americans watched the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, unfold on their television sets, Vice President Dick Cheney directed the U.S. government's response from an emergency bunker.
The actions included moving key members of Congress to a secure location and having the Secret Service bring his wife, Lynn, to the bunker.
Cheney was in his West Wing office when he received word that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. He watched TV and hoped that his instincts were wrong.
"It was a clear day, there were no weather problems, and then we saw the second airplane hit in real time," Cheney told CNN's John King in an interview in the vice president's office.
"At that moment, you knew this was a deliberate act. This was a terrorist act."
He called President Bush in Florida and spoke with top aides. Then his door burst open.
"My [Secret Service] agent all of a sudden materialized right beside me and said, 'Sir, we have to leave now.' He grabbed me and propelled me out of my office, down the hall, and into the underground shelter in the White House," Cheney said.
In White House terminology, it is the PEOC, short for the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.
"I didn't know that it existed until I was actually down there, and I'm sure I could find my way back there to this day," said Mary Matalin, a counselor to the vice president.
A relic of the Cold War, the deep underground bunker became the vice president's base of operations on the first day of a new war.
After the planes struck the twin towers, a third took a chunk out of the Pentagon. Cheney then heard a report that a plane over Pennsylvania was heading for Washington. A military assistant asked Cheney twice for authority to shoot it down.
"The vice president said yes again," remembered Josh Bolton, deputy White House chief of staff. "And the aide then asked a third time. He said, 'Just confirming, sir, authority to engage?' And the vice president -- his voice got a little annoyed then -- said, 'I said yes.'"
It was a rare flash of anger from a man who knew he was setting the tone at a White House in crisis.
"I think there was an undertone of anger there. But it's more a matter of determination. You don't want to let your anger overwhelm your judgment in a moment like this," Cheney said.
Word came that Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania. Aides frantically called the White House to find out whether a military jet had shot it down.
"The vice president was a little bit ahead of us," said Eric Edelman, Cheney's national security advisor. "He said sort of softly and to nobody in particular, 'I think an act of heroism just took place on that plane.'"
Cheney and staffers watched in horror as the first tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. Matalin remembered the moment.
"Oddly everything just stopped. Not for long, but it did stop totally at that moment," she said. "[Cheney] emoted in a way that he emotes, which was to stop."
After the brief lull, Cheney and the White House staffers got back to business, which included checking the tail numbers of the last airplanes unaccounted for when national air traffic was ordered to halt.
"It was about 12:15 or 12:20 [p.m. ET] when I said to the vice president, 'Mr. Vice President, all the planes are down, and he said, 'Great, thank you very much,'" Edelman said.
Some aides suggested that Cheney was a possible target and should not stay at the White House. He said no.
"I had communications with the president, communications with the Pentagon, Secret Service and so forth. And we could continue to operate there, and if I left, I'd lose all that," Cheney said.
Lynn Cheney was a constant presence. She leaned in at one point to tell the vice president that their daughters were fine.
"It's something you think about, but again, it's not so much a personal consideration at that point. It may have been for people who didn't have anything to do," Cheney said.
It was the bunker's first test in an actual emergency, a day of crisis with some hitches.
Cheney wanted to track TV reports of the devastation and listen in on communications with the Pentagon.
"You can have sound on one or the other and he found that technically imperfect," Matalin recalled.
Cheney returns to the White House by helicopter from a secure undisclosed location on September 12, 2001.
The vice president had a few words with the president just before the latter's address to the nation. CIA Director George Tenet watched from the bunker, waiting for Bush to convene a late-night meeting of the National Security Council.
"I guess the thing I was struck by was the extent to which he had begun to grapple with these problems and to make decisions, that we were in a war on terror," Cheney said.
Cheney spoke once more to the president, and then took a nighttime ride past the Pentagon, heavily damaged in the attacks.
"I recall watching the vice president, who was staring out the window at the Pentagon, and wondering what he may be thinking about, the responsibilities he would have in the future. A pretty sobering moment," said Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.
It is a memory that Cheney said has shaped every day since then.
"As we lifted off and headed up the Potomac [River], you could look out and see the Pentagon, see that black hole where it'd been hit. A lot of lights on the building, smoke rising from the Pentagon," he said.
"And you know, it really helped to bring home the impact of hat had happened, that we had in fact been attacked."
'It is routine procedure after 3.5 minutes unable to establish to radio contact, or when a plane deviates from its flight plan to call in the military. There will be a plane up to investigate within 15 minutes. The flight controller does this all on this own. He does not need the president's approval.
Yet the first plane was in the air for a hour without any action to stop it. Dozens of flight controllers would have seen the renegade planes, yet none ordered planes scrambled? Really?
Andrews air force base is home to a squadron of F16s and FA18s. It is only 12 miles from the Whitehouse. One of its main functions is to protect Washington. Yet it sent up no planes until the evening.
You would think everyone would be on high alert after the first plane hit for the second and third planes. Yet again, no planes were scrambled to investigate or intercept them. Somebody had to have ordered them not to. Bush.'
NORAD Stand-Down
The Prevention of Interceptions of the Commandeered Planes
It is standard operating procedure (SOP) to scramble jet fighters whenever a jetliner goes off course or radio contact with it is lost. Between September 2000 and June 2001, interceptors were scrambled 67 times. 1 In the year 2000 jets were scrambled 129 times. 2
There are several elements involved in domestic air defense. The air traffic control system continuously monitors air traffic and notifies NORAD of any deviations of any aircraft from their flight-paths or loss of radio contact. NORAD monitors air and space traffic continuously and is prepared to react immediately to threats and emergencies. It has the authority to order units from the Air National Guard, the Air Force, or other armed services to scramble fighters in pursuit of jetliners in trouble.
Routine interception procedures were not followed on September 11th, 2001.
Layered Failures
The air defense network had, on September 11th, predictable and effective procedures for dealing with just such an attack. Yet it failed to respond in a timely manner until after the attack was over, more than an hour and a half after it had started. The official timeline describes a series of events and mode of response in which the delays are spread out into a number of areas. There are failures upon failures, in what might be described as a strategy of layered failures, or failure in depth. The failures can be divided into four types.
Failures to report: Based on the official timeline, the FAA response times for reporting the deviating aircraft were many times longer than the prescribed times.
Failures to scramble: NORAD, once notified of the off-course aircraft, failed to scramble jets from the nearest bases.
Failures to intercept: Once airborne, interceptors failed to reach their targets because they flew at small fractions of their top speeds.
Failures to redeploy: Fighters that were airborne and within interception range of the deviating aircraft were not redeployed to pursue them.
Had not there been multiple failures of each type, one or more parts of the attack could have been thwarted. NORAD had time to protect the World Trade Center even given the unbelievably late time, 8:40, when it claims to have first been notified. It had time to protect the South Tower and Washington even given its bizarre choice of bases to scramble. And it still had ample opportunity to protect both New York City and Washington even if it insisted that all interceptors fly subsonic, simply by redeploying airborne fighters.
Failures to Report
Comparing NORAD's timeline to reports from air traffic control reveals inexplicable delays in the times the FAA took to report deviating aircraft. The delays include an 18-minute delay in reporting Flight 11 and a 39-minute delay in reporting Flight 77. The delays are made all the more suspicious given that, in each case, the plane failed to respond to communications, was off-course, and had stopped emitting its IFF signal.
Failures to Scramble
No plausible explanation has been provided for failing to scramble interceptors in a timely fashion from bases within easy range to protect the September 11th targets. Fighters that were dispatched were scrambled from distant bases. Early in the attack, when Flight 11 had turned directly south toward New York City, it was obvious that New York City and the World Trade Center, and Washington D.C. would be likely targets. Yet fighters were not scrambled from the bases near the targets. They were only scrambled from distant bases. Moreover there were no redundant or backup scrambles.
New York City
Flight 11 had been flying south toward New York City from about 8:30 AM. Yet no interceptors were scrambled from nearby Atlantic City, or La Guardia, or from Langley, Virginia. Numerous other bases were not ordered to scramble fighters.
Washington D.C.
No interceptors were scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base to protect the capital, at least not before the Pentagon was hit. Andrews Air Force Base had two squadrons of fighters on alert, and is only 10 miles from the Pentagon.
Failures to Intercept
Even though the interceptors were not dispatched from the most logical bases, the ones that were scrambled still had adequate time to reach their assigned planes. Why didn't they? Because they were only flying at a small fraction of their top speed. That is the conclusion implicit in NORAD's timeline.
Otis to the WTC
The first base to finally scramble interceptors was Otis in Falmouth, Massachusetts, at 8:52, about a half-hour after Flight 11 was taken over. This was already eight minutes after Flight 11 hit the North Tower, and just 9 minutes before Flight 175 hit the South Tower.
According to NORAD, at the time of the South Tower Impact the two F-15s from Otis were still 71 miles away. Otis is 153 miles east-northeast of the WTC. That means the F-15s were flying at: (153 miles - 71 miles)/(9:03 - 8:52) = 447 mph
That is around 23.8% of their top speed of 1875 mph.
At 9:11 the F-15s finally reached the World Trade Center. Their average speed for the trip was: 153/(9:11 - 8:52) = 483 mph
That is around 25.8% of their top speed.
Langley to the Pentagon
The F-16s from Langley reached the Pentagon at 9:49. It took them 19 minutes to reach Washington D.C. from Langley AFB, which is about 130 miles to the south. That means the F-16s were flying at: 130 miles/(9:49 - 9:30) = 410.5 mph
That is around 27.4% of their top speed of 1500 mph.
Andrews to the Pentagon
Andrews Air Force Base, located on the outskirts of the capital, is just over 10 miles from the Pentagon. One would have expected interceptors to be scrambled to protect the capital within a few minutes of the 8:15 loss of contact with Flight 11. Instead, no fighters from Andrews reached the Pentagon until 9:49, several minutes after the assault.
Failures to Redeploy
Fighters that were in the air when the attack started were not redeployed to intercept the deviating planes. When fighters scrambled to protect Manhattan arrived there too late, they were not redeployed to protect the capital even though they had plenty of time to reach it before the Pentagon was hit.
Long Island to Manhattan
Two F-15s flying off the coast of Long Island were not redeployed to Manhattan until after the second tower was hit. 3
WTC to the Pentagon
By the time the two F-15s from Otis reached Manhattan, the only jetliner still flying with its IFF transponder off had just made a 180-degree turn over southern Ohio and had been headed for Washington D.C. for 12 minutes. It was still 34 minutes before the Pentagon was hit. Had the fighters been sent to protect the capital, they could have traveled the approximately 300 miles in: 300 miles/1875 mph = 9.6 minutes
They even could have made it to the capital in time to protect the Pentagon if they had continued to fly at only 500 mph.
'It is routine procedure after 3.5 minutes unable to establish to radio contact, or when a plane deviates from its flight plan to call in the military. There will be a plane up to investigate within 15 minutes. The flight controller does this all on this own. He does not need the president's approval.
Yet the first plane was in the air for a hour without any action to stop it. Dozens of flight controllers would have seen the renegade planes, yet none ordered planes scrambled? Really?
Andrews air force base is home to a squadron of F16s and FA18s. It is only 12 miles from the Whitehouse. One of its main functions is to protect Washington. Yet it sent up no planes until the evening.
You would think everyone would be on high alert after the first plane hit for the second and third planes. Yet again, no planes were scrambled to investigate or intercept them. Somebody had to have ordered them not to. Bush.'
this proves nothing. as said before, intelligence agencies did not work well together prior to this event. america failed on multiple levels.
So, going by your reasoning, on 9/11 the air force commanders just simply decided that they couldn't be bothered to follow routine procedure, despite having followed it 129 times in the previous year?
this proves nothing. as said before, intelligence agencies did not work well together prior to this event. america failed on multiple levels.
"intelligence agencies did not work well together prior to this event".
O.k, now it's my turn: Where's your evidence? You don't have any. So why are you making shit up?
Edit: By the speed at which you've been typing your groundless responses, it seems obvious that you've not bothered to read any of the articles i've posted above. Why does the term 'pissing in the wind' come to mind?
So, going by your reasoning, on 9/11 the air force commanders just simply decided that they couldn't be bothered to follow routine procedure, despite having followed it 129 times in the previous year?
it was a colossal fuckup. it didnt happen because cheney was in on the attack and let it happen
"intelligence agencies did not work well together prior to this event".
O.k, now it's my turn: Where's your evidence? You don't have any. So why are you making shit up?
Edit: By the speed at which you've been typing your groundless responses, it seems obvious that you've not bothered to read any of the articles i've posted above. Why does the term 'pissing in the wind' come to mind?
Our national intelligence community is beset by a number of serious
problems. There is a lack of leadership at the top and the absence of a
coordinated national intelligence policy that gives us agencies with
priorities, missions, and resources that do not necessarily complement
one another.
Our national intelligence community is beset by a number of serious
problems. There is a lack of leadership at the top and the absence of a
coordinated national intelligence policy that gives us agencies with
priorities, missions, and resources that do not necessarily complement
one another.
Kean and failure on 9/11
by John Judge
19 December 2003
It's important that they are finally admitting it was preventable and pointing to accountability. However, if the thesis is that the system "failed" then it is a slippery slope. The theme of the Joint Inquiry in Congress was that 9/11 represented an "intelligence failure", and of course the solution is to give the agencies more funds and more power, reward the error in other words and unleash the spying.
A recent Washington Post article noted that the FBI now works directly with intelligence agents in their counter-terrorism and that the old rules preventing the excesses of the past have been abandoned again, with increased surveillance of those not suspected of actual criminal activity. NORAD/FAA activity on 9/11 cannot be explained as a "failure" in the sense of lack of readiness or incompetence. Why?
The whole system knew that planes had been and could be used by Al Qaeda as weapons, and had worked to prevent that happening in Genoa at the summit that summer when warning signals were high, protecting Bush specifically against planes.
Warnings from foreign intelligence agencies of such a plot were received all through the summer and early fall, as well as specific forewarnings not to fly on 9/11 to Pentagon Brass, foreign officials and the mayor of San Francisco.
Exercises and preparations were taken in 1998-2000 to secure the Pentgagon against a plane attack with radar and cameras, and to test emergency response procedures.
NORAD was on full readiness alert, with planes waiting on the runways as part of an exercise that day called Vigilant Guardian. There had been earlier exercises involving planes used as weapons as well. NORAD is capable of tasking any available plane.
Standard operating procedures in any single, even private plane air emergencies for an immediate FAA/NORAD response were not followed at all on 9/11 despite multiple large commuter planes off course, without transponders and not communicating with towers, which later were clearly known to be hijackings.
Not only were no NORAD intercept planes scrambled for well over half an hour after the first plane gave indications of trouble at 8:17 am, NONE were ever scrambled to defend DC and P-56, the most protected air space in the country.
Available planes in Canada were not scrambled, which regularly protect New York air space.
Available planes at Andrews AFB and Anacostia NAS proximate to DC were not scrambled.
Planes scrambled from Langley AFB, 130 miles south of DC, were sent to NYC and asked to confirm the hit on the Pentagon on the way there.
In addition, planes scrambled from Otis AFB in CT, sent too late to intercept the two NY attack planes, turned to intercept Flight AA77 headed to DC and were called back.
Fighter pilots from Pomona AFB in Atlantic City, NJ, on military maneuvers, within sight of the first tower burning in NYC were called back to base.
Planes in the air over North Carolina, based out of Andrews AFB were not tasked.
Normal response time in over 65 other air emergencies in the year before 9/11, in far less serious circumstances, was an average of 6-10 minutes. On 9/11 the time stretched to over an hour.
Army Brigadier General Montague Winfield, in charge of the the National Military Command Center (the Pentagon War Room) on the morning of 9/11, and in an open phone bridge communication with FAA, NORAD, White House and other agencies, getting real time information on the planes as they went off course, said on a CNN special anniversary program that the US Air Force did not respond right away because the FAA was tracking four seemingly unrelated hijackings. This makes no sense.
We realized that the seemingly unrelated hijackings that the FAA was tracking were actually a part of a coordinated terrorist attack against the United States. [Specific quotes of Winfield include: "We realized that the seemingly unrelated hijackings that the FAA was tracking were actually a part of a coordinated terrorist attack against the United States", Inside the Pentagon on 9-11, NEXT@CNN, CNN.com Transcripts, 9/7/02; "When the second aircraft flew into the second tower, it was at that point that we realized that the seemingly unrelated hijackings that the FAA was dealing with were in fact a part of a coordinated terrorist attack on the United States", "Moments of Crisis, Part 1: Terror Hits the Towers - How Government Officials Reacted to Sept. 11 Attacks, ABC News, 9/14/02 --ratitor]
Even though the Pentagon was attacked directly, the headquarters of the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, none of its own internal defense mechanisms were used that day. In addition, not a single investigation, court of inquiry or courts-martial has ensued following the attack to determine responsibility.
Richard Meyers, the officer in charge of the Joint Chiefs that day spent well over an hour in private conversation with Congressman Max Cleland, apparently uninterrupted despite the fact that he had been informed about the first plane hitting the WTC and the fact that the country was clearly under attack by 9:05 am. Testifying to Congress the following week he answered questions about military response to the attacks wrongly, claiming that no planes were scrambled until after the Pentagon was hit.
The problem was that the planes scrambled that day were directed away from the areas that needed defense the most, and called into or back to the areas already hit instead.
Similarly, the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, reportedly sat in his office doing paperwork, oblivious to the attack until he felt the plane hit the Pentagon.
Even the Commander-in-Chief showed a lack of any urgent concern, despite having known about the first plane hitting the WTC before he joined an elementary school class in Florida for story reading, and despite being informed by aide Andrew Card of the second building being hit. Instead, Bush sat with the students and read until the entire scenario had unfolded.
According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon went to an Alpha security and defense alert once news of the WTC attack was reported, and after their building was hit, they went to a Charlie level of security. This is a scale from A-Alpha to B-Beta, C-Charlie, D-Delta. However, in 1999, facing phoned bomb threats, the Pentagon was on Delta alert, it's highest level. Why would it not have risen that high once they were under attack, or previous to the attack that day?
I have been trying hard to get public advocacy and policy groups here in DC involved in the Commission process. Chairman Kean told me at the last hearing that if anyone wants to be heard, they should contact him. I think our best strategy will be to compile a list of credible experts with alternate messages to the majority of witnesses who have testified so far, most of whom are directly involved with FBI, CIA and Pentagon intelligence, currrently or in the past. We could then push publicly for the National Commission to hear from credible witnesses on sane alternative policies relating to 9/11, as well as the historical and physical evidence of what really happened that day and who is its ultimate sponsor.
If they refuse all these witnesses, they will only discredit themselves. We don't need "theorists" about 9/11, we need real experts with good credentials. Mel Goodman would be an example, from Ambassador White's policy group. A former DoD official, Goodman has openly challenged Zelikow's conflicts of interest and called for him to step down as Commission director, as did the families. The Commission's official response was that they knew of Zelikow's conflicts, and that he was prepared to recuse himself in discussions relating to the NSC and Condalleze Rice. Kean went on to say that "all of us will have to [recuse ourselves] in relation to some issues". In other words, every single one of them is conflicted and compromised.
Accountability is key, but "failure" is a tricky concept. Did Haliburton "fail" to charge the right price for gasoline, an "error" that can be corrected merely by repayment, as Bush suggests. Any other contractor would face cancellation of contract, bar from future contracts for a period, possible jail time, and repayment of all defrauded funds. But Kellog/Brown & Root gets a slap on the wrist, a subsidiary of Cheney's former employer. The other subsidiary is DI or Dresser Industries, an oil and defense contractor that gave Bush Sr. his first job in Texas. Did the Bush neocons "fail" to heed ample warnings about 9/11, or did they intentionally ignore them?
Our national intelligence community is beset by a number of serious
problems. There is a lack of leadership at the top and the absence of a
coordinated national intelligence policy that gives us agencies with
priorities, missions, and resources that do not necessarily complement
one another.
This admission of incompetence doesn't wash.
Why was standard airforce operating procedure abandoned on 9/11? You can't answer my question because you don't have an answer.
This admission of incompetence doesn't wash.
Why was standard airforce operating procedure abandoned on 9/11? You can't answer my question because you don't have an answer.
the reasons why it happened doesnt wash with you so whats the point of even debating it.
Comments
http://groups.msn.com/PearlJamNirvana/messages.msnw
I don't take the word of the bbc, and from your post i see you don't believe the video that your goverment released as prof of a boeing 757 hit the pentagon either.
Eye witnesses change there story like the wind all it takes is a few leading question by the right people to make them say what you want.
Again i will not discuss what may or may not of happened to passengers on a plane as anything i say will merely be speculation. I would rather discuss something that we can all watch and come to conclusions on. People disapearing and supposed dead does not mean they died at the penatgon.
The economy has polarized to the point where the wealthiest 10% now own 85% of the nation’s wealth. Never before have the bottom 90% been so highly indebted, so dependent on the wealthy.
Try freezeing it and watching frame by frame. And then come back and tell me it's the nose of the boeing 757.
The economy has polarized to the point where the wealthiest 10% now own 85% of the nation’s wealth. Never before have the bottom 90% been so highly indebted, so dependent on the wealthy.
What website are you refering to?
The economy has polarized to the point where the wealthiest 10% now own 85% of the nation’s wealth. Never before have the bottom 90% been so highly indebted, so dependent on the wealthy.
please don't infer from my post that i don't believe the video. I believe a 757 flew into the pentagon not a missile not some elaborate gov't plan.
Did i say a missile flew into the pentagon NO, or that it was a elaborate goverment plan NO.
The object in the video that you now say you believe, still looks nothing like the nose of a boeing 757. So if it looks NOTHING like a boeing 757 nose what is it?
What part of my questioning the video do you find so hard to deal with?
The economy has polarized to the point where the wealthiest 10% now own 85% of the nation’s wealth. Never before have the bottom 90% been so highly indebted, so dependent on the wealthy.
What the hell are you talking about? Who's being racist?
http://www.reverbnation.com/brianzilm
don't get so defensive. I didn't say you believed that. I said I think it's a 757 since that is what flight 77 was. I also said I don't believe it was a missile or a huge gov't conspiracy; nowhere did i say YOU believed that.
i don't have a problem questioning the video...question away. But again, how clear is the video? I wish we had better quality videos to base such claims on.
neither things are true. government had intelligence that el queda wanted to use planes to attack us. they had no idea when and where it would take place. america got beat that day.
and there was no stand down order
Doesn't matter whether they knew exactly when and where the attacks would place. They should have acted on the intelligence. They chose instead to do nothing.
As far as there being no stand down order. Dick Cheney himself issued a stand-down order. It was the first one issued after a year of over 100 previous incidents of a similar alarms during which routine procedure was followed - i.e, the automatic scambling of military aircraft in the instance of passenger aircraft losing radar contact.
Coincidence?
again, there was no stand down order
We've been over all of this before on this board. Why do i need to repeat myself?
Why were planes not scrambled immediately following loss of radar contact? This is standard operating procedure.
Why was Dick Cheney placed in charge of proceedings only after the second plane had hit the twin towers? This was unprecedented.
Cheney recalls taking charge from bunker
September 11, 2002 Posted: 9:51 PM EDT (0151 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As horrified Americans watched the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, unfold on their television sets, Vice President Dick Cheney directed the U.S. government's response from an emergency bunker.
The actions included moving key members of Congress to a secure location and having the Secret Service bring his wife, Lynn, to the bunker.
Cheney was in his West Wing office when he received word that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. He watched TV and hoped that his instincts were wrong.
"It was a clear day, there were no weather problems, and then we saw the second airplane hit in real time," Cheney told CNN's John King in an interview in the vice president's office.
"At that moment, you knew this was a deliberate act. This was a terrorist act."
He called President Bush in Florida and spoke with top aides. Then his door burst open.
"My [Secret Service] agent all of a sudden materialized right beside me and said, 'Sir, we have to leave now.' He grabbed me and propelled me out of my office, down the hall, and into the underground shelter in the White House," Cheney said.
In White House terminology, it is the PEOC, short for the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.
"I didn't know that it existed until I was actually down there, and I'm sure I could find my way back there to this day," said Mary Matalin, a counselor to the vice president.
A relic of the Cold War, the deep underground bunker became the vice president's base of operations on the first day of a new war.
After the planes struck the twin towers, a third took a chunk out of the Pentagon. Cheney then heard a report that a plane over Pennsylvania was heading for Washington. A military assistant asked Cheney twice for authority to shoot it down.
"The vice president said yes again," remembered Josh Bolton, deputy White House chief of staff. "And the aide then asked a third time. He said, 'Just confirming, sir, authority to engage?' And the vice president -- his voice got a little annoyed then -- said, 'I said yes.'"
It was a rare flash of anger from a man who knew he was setting the tone at a White House in crisis.
"I think there was an undertone of anger there. But it's more a matter of determination. You don't want to let your anger overwhelm your judgment in a moment like this," Cheney said.
Word came that Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania. Aides frantically called the White House to find out whether a military jet had shot it down.
"The vice president was a little bit ahead of us," said Eric Edelman, Cheney's national security advisor. "He said sort of softly and to nobody in particular, 'I think an act of heroism just took place on that plane.'"
Cheney and staffers watched in horror as the first tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. Matalin remembered the moment.
"Oddly everything just stopped. Not for long, but it did stop totally at that moment," she said. "[Cheney] emoted in a way that he emotes, which was to stop."
After the brief lull, Cheney and the White House staffers got back to business, which included checking the tail numbers of the last airplanes unaccounted for when national air traffic was ordered to halt.
"It was about 12:15 or 12:20 [p.m. ET] when I said to the vice president, 'Mr. Vice President, all the planes are down, and he said, 'Great, thank you very much,'" Edelman said.
Some aides suggested that Cheney was a possible target and should not stay at the White House. He said no.
"I had communications with the president, communications with the Pentagon, Secret Service and so forth. And we could continue to operate there, and if I left, I'd lose all that," Cheney said.
Lynn Cheney was a constant presence. She leaned in at one point to tell the vice president that their daughters were fine.
"It's something you think about, but again, it's not so much a personal consideration at that point. It may have been for people who didn't have anything to do," Cheney said.
It was the bunker's first test in an actual emergency, a day of crisis with some hitches.
Cheney wanted to track TV reports of the devastation and listen in on communications with the Pentagon.
"You can have sound on one or the other and he found that technically imperfect," Matalin recalled.
Cheney returns to the White House by helicopter from a secure undisclosed location on September 12, 2001.
The vice president had a few words with the president just before the latter's address to the nation. CIA Director George Tenet watched from the bunker, waiting for Bush to convene a late-night meeting of the National Security Council.
"I guess the thing I was struck by was the extent to which he had begun to grapple with these problems and to make decisions, that we were in a war on terror," Cheney said.
Cheney spoke once more to the president, and then took a nighttime ride past the Pentagon, heavily damaged in the attacks.
"I recall watching the vice president, who was staring out the window at the Pentagon, and wondering what he may be thinking about, the responsibilities he would have in the future. A pretty sobering moment," said Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.
It is a memory that Cheney said has shaped every day since then.
"As we lifted off and headed up the Potomac [River], you could look out and see the Pentagon, see that black hole where it'd been hit. A lot of lights on the building, smoke rising from the Pentagon," he said.
"And you know, it really helped to bring home the impact of hat had happened, that we had in fact been attacked."
http://mindprod.com/politics/bush911scramble.html
'It is routine procedure after 3.5 minutes unable to establish to radio contact, or when a plane deviates from its flight plan to call in the military. There will be a plane up to investigate within 15 minutes. The flight controller does this all on this own. He does not need the president's approval.
Yet the first plane was in the air for a hour without any action to stop it. Dozens of flight controllers would have seen the renegade planes, yet none ordered planes scrambled? Really?
Andrews air force base is home to a squadron of F16s and FA18s. It is only 12 miles from the Whitehouse. One of its main functions is to protect Washington. Yet it sent up no planes until the evening.
You would think everyone would be on high alert after the first plane hit for the second and third planes. Yet again, no planes were scrambled to investigate or intercept them. Somebody had to have ordered them not to. Bush.'
http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/analysis/norad/
NORAD Stand-Down
The Prevention of Interceptions of the Commandeered Planes
It is standard operating procedure (SOP) to scramble jet fighters whenever a jetliner goes off course or radio contact with it is lost. Between September 2000 and June 2001, interceptors were scrambled 67 times. 1 In the year 2000 jets were scrambled 129 times. 2
There are several elements involved in domestic air defense. The air traffic control system continuously monitors air traffic and notifies NORAD of any deviations of any aircraft from their flight-paths or loss of radio contact. NORAD monitors air and space traffic continuously and is prepared to react immediately to threats and emergencies. It has the authority to order units from the Air National Guard, the Air Force, or other armed services to scramble fighters in pursuit of jetliners in trouble.
Routine interception procedures were not followed on September 11th, 2001.
Layered Failures
The air defense network had, on September 11th, predictable and effective procedures for dealing with just such an attack. Yet it failed to respond in a timely manner until after the attack was over, more than an hour and a half after it had started. The official timeline describes a series of events and mode of response in which the delays are spread out into a number of areas. There are failures upon failures, in what might be described as a strategy of layered failures, or failure in depth. The failures can be divided into four types.
Failures to report: Based on the official timeline, the FAA response times for reporting the deviating aircraft were many times longer than the prescribed times.
Failures to scramble: NORAD, once notified of the off-course aircraft, failed to scramble jets from the nearest bases.
Failures to intercept: Once airborne, interceptors failed to reach their targets because they flew at small fractions of their top speeds.
Failures to redeploy: Fighters that were airborne and within interception range of the deviating aircraft were not redeployed to pursue them.
Had not there been multiple failures of each type, one or more parts of the attack could have been thwarted. NORAD had time to protect the World Trade Center even given the unbelievably late time, 8:40, when it claims to have first been notified. It had time to protect the South Tower and Washington even given its bizarre choice of bases to scramble. And it still had ample opportunity to protect both New York City and Washington even if it insisted that all interceptors fly subsonic, simply by redeploying airborne fighters.
Failures to Report
Comparing NORAD's timeline to reports from air traffic control reveals inexplicable delays in the times the FAA took to report deviating aircraft. The delays include an 18-minute delay in reporting Flight 11 and a 39-minute delay in reporting Flight 77. The delays are made all the more suspicious given that, in each case, the plane failed to respond to communications, was off-course, and had stopped emitting its IFF signal.
Failures to Scramble
No plausible explanation has been provided for failing to scramble interceptors in a timely fashion from bases within easy range to protect the September 11th targets. Fighters that were dispatched were scrambled from distant bases. Early in the attack, when Flight 11 had turned directly south toward New York City, it was obvious that New York City and the World Trade Center, and Washington D.C. would be likely targets. Yet fighters were not scrambled from the bases near the targets. They were only scrambled from distant bases. Moreover there were no redundant or backup scrambles.
New York City
Flight 11 had been flying south toward New York City from about 8:30 AM. Yet no interceptors were scrambled from nearby Atlantic City, or La Guardia, or from Langley, Virginia. Numerous other bases were not ordered to scramble fighters.
Washington D.C.
No interceptors were scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base to protect the capital, at least not before the Pentagon was hit. Andrews Air Force Base had two squadrons of fighters on alert, and is only 10 miles from the Pentagon.
Failures to Intercept
Even though the interceptors were not dispatched from the most logical bases, the ones that were scrambled still had adequate time to reach their assigned planes. Why didn't they? Because they were only flying at a small fraction of their top speed. That is the conclusion implicit in NORAD's timeline.
Otis to the WTC
The first base to finally scramble interceptors was Otis in Falmouth, Massachusetts, at 8:52, about a half-hour after Flight 11 was taken over. This was already eight minutes after Flight 11 hit the North Tower, and just 9 minutes before Flight 175 hit the South Tower.
According to NORAD, at the time of the South Tower Impact the two F-15s from Otis were still 71 miles away. Otis is 153 miles east-northeast of the WTC. That means the F-15s were flying at: (153 miles - 71 miles)/(9:03 - 8:52) = 447 mph
That is around 23.8% of their top speed of 1875 mph.
At 9:11 the F-15s finally reached the World Trade Center. Their average speed for the trip was: 153/(9:11 - 8:52) = 483 mph
That is around 25.8% of their top speed.
Langley to the Pentagon
The F-16s from Langley reached the Pentagon at 9:49. It took them 19 minutes to reach Washington D.C. from Langley AFB, which is about 130 miles to the south. That means the F-16s were flying at: 130 miles/(9:49 - 9:30) = 410.5 mph
That is around 27.4% of their top speed of 1500 mph.
Andrews to the Pentagon
Andrews Air Force Base, located on the outskirts of the capital, is just over 10 miles from the Pentagon. One would have expected interceptors to be scrambled to protect the capital within a few minutes of the 8:15 loss of contact with Flight 11. Instead, no fighters from Andrews reached the Pentagon until 9:49, several minutes after the assault.
Failures to Redeploy
Fighters that were in the air when the attack started were not redeployed to intercept the deviating planes. When fighters scrambled to protect Manhattan arrived there too late, they were not redeployed to protect the capital even though they had plenty of time to reach it before the Pentagon was hit.
Long Island to Manhattan
Two F-15s flying off the coast of Long Island were not redeployed to Manhattan until after the second tower was hit. 3
WTC to the Pentagon
By the time the two F-15s from Otis reached Manhattan, the only jetliner still flying with its IFF transponder off had just made a 180-degree turn over southern Ohio and had been headed for Washington D.C. for 12 minutes. It was still 34 minutes before the Pentagon was hit. Had the fighters been sent to protect the capital, they could have traveled the approximately 300 miles in: 300 miles/1875 mph = 9.6 minutes
They even could have made it to the capital in time to protect the Pentagon if they had continued to fly at only 500 mph.
this proves nothing. as said before, intelligence agencies did not work well together prior to this event. america failed on multiple levels.
Somebody had to have ordered a stand down.
So, going by your reasoning, on 9/11 the air force commanders just simply decided that they couldn't be bothered to follow routine procedure, despite having followed it 129 times in the previous year?
"intelligence agencies did not work well together prior to this event".
O.k, now it's my turn: Where's your evidence? You don't have any. So why are you making shit up?
Edit: By the speed at which you've been typing your groundless responses, it seems obvious that you've not bothered to read any of the articles i've posted above. Why does the term 'pissing in the wind' come to mind?
it was a colossal fuckup. it didnt happen because cheney was in on the attack and let it happen
That lame hypothesis doesn't wash with me.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_cr/graham020304.html
Our national intelligence community is beset by a number of serious
problems. There is a lack of leadership at the top and the absence of a
coordinated national intelligence policy that gives us agencies with
priorities, missions, and resources that do not necessarily complement
one another.
Kean and failure on 9/11
by John Judge
19 December 2003
9/11 Chair: Attack Was Preventable
CBS News, 17 December 2003
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/17/eveningnews/printable589137.shtml
It's important that they are finally admitting it was preventable and pointing to accountability. However, if the thesis is that the system "failed" then it is a slippery slope. The theme of the Joint Inquiry in Congress was that 9/11 represented an "intelligence failure", and of course the solution is to give the agencies more funds and more power, reward the error in other words and unleash the spying.
A recent Washington Post article noted that the FBI now works directly with intelligence agents in their counter-terrorism and that the old rules preventing the excesses of the past have been abandoned again, with increased surveillance of those not suspected of actual criminal activity. NORAD/FAA activity on 9/11 cannot be explained as a "failure" in the sense of lack of readiness or incompetence. Why?
The whole system knew that planes had been and could be used by Al Qaeda as weapons, and had worked to prevent that happening in Genoa at the summit that summer when warning signals were high, protecting Bush specifically against planes.
Warnings from foreign intelligence agencies of such a plot were received all through the summer and early fall, as well as specific forewarnings not to fly on 9/11 to Pentagon Brass, foreign officials and the mayor of San Francisco.
Exercises and preparations were taken in 1998-2000 to secure the Pentgagon against a plane attack with radar and cameras, and to test emergency response procedures.
NORAD was on full readiness alert, with planes waiting on the runways as part of an exercise that day called Vigilant Guardian. There had been earlier exercises involving planes used as weapons as well. NORAD is capable of tasking any available plane.
Standard operating procedures in any single, even private plane air emergencies for an immediate FAA/NORAD response were not followed at all on 9/11 despite multiple large commuter planes off course, without transponders and not communicating with towers, which later were clearly known to be hijackings.
Not only were no NORAD intercept planes scrambled for well over half an hour after the first plane gave indications of trouble at 8:17 am, NONE were ever scrambled to defend DC and P-56, the most protected air space in the country.
Available planes in Canada were not scrambled, which regularly protect New York air space.
Available planes at Andrews AFB and Anacostia NAS proximate to DC were not scrambled.
Planes scrambled from Langley AFB, 130 miles south of DC, were sent to NYC and asked to confirm the hit on the Pentagon on the way there.
In addition, planes scrambled from Otis AFB in CT, sent too late to intercept the two NY attack planes, turned to intercept Flight AA77 headed to DC and were called back.
Fighter pilots from Pomona AFB in Atlantic City, NJ, on military maneuvers, within sight of the first tower burning in NYC were called back to base.
Planes in the air over North Carolina, based out of Andrews AFB were not tasked.
Normal response time in over 65 other air emergencies in the year before 9/11, in far less serious circumstances, was an average of 6-10 minutes. On 9/11 the time stretched to over an hour.
Army Brigadier General Montague Winfield, in charge of the the National Military Command Center (the Pentagon War Room) on the morning of 9/11, and in an open phone bridge communication with FAA, NORAD, White House and other agencies, getting real time information on the planes as they went off course, said on a CNN special anniversary program that the US Air Force did not respond right away because the FAA was tracking four seemingly unrelated hijackings. This makes no sense.
We realized that the seemingly unrelated hijackings that the FAA was tracking were actually a part of a coordinated terrorist attack against the United States. [Specific quotes of Winfield include: "We realized that the seemingly unrelated hijackings that the FAA was tracking were actually a part of a coordinated terrorist attack against the United States", Inside the Pentagon on 9-11, NEXT@CNN, CNN.com Transcripts, 9/7/02; "When the second aircraft flew into the second tower, it was at that point that we realized that the seemingly unrelated hijackings that the FAA was dealing with were in fact a part of a coordinated terrorist attack on the United States", "Moments of Crisis, Part 1: Terror Hits the Towers - How Government Officials Reacted to Sept. 11 Attacks, ABC News, 9/14/02 --ratitor]
Even though the Pentagon was attacked directly, the headquarters of the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, none of its own internal defense mechanisms were used that day. In addition, not a single investigation, court of inquiry or courts-martial has ensued following the attack to determine responsibility.
Richard Meyers, the officer in charge of the Joint Chiefs that day spent well over an hour in private conversation with Congressman Max Cleland, apparently uninterrupted despite the fact that he had been informed about the first plane hitting the WTC and the fact that the country was clearly under attack by 9:05 am. Testifying to Congress the following week he answered questions about military response to the attacks wrongly, claiming that no planes were scrambled until after the Pentagon was hit.
The problem was that the planes scrambled that day were directed away from the areas that needed defense the most, and called into or back to the areas already hit instead.
Similarly, the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, reportedly sat in his office doing paperwork, oblivious to the attack until he felt the plane hit the Pentagon.
Even the Commander-in-Chief showed a lack of any urgent concern, despite having known about the first plane hitting the WTC before he joined an elementary school class in Florida for story reading, and despite being informed by aide Andrew Card of the second building being hit. Instead, Bush sat with the students and read until the entire scenario had unfolded.
According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon went to an Alpha security and defense alert once news of the WTC attack was reported, and after their building was hit, they went to a Charlie level of security. This is a scale from A-Alpha to B-Beta, C-Charlie, D-Delta. However, in 1999, facing phoned bomb threats, the Pentagon was on Delta alert, it's highest level. Why would it not have risen that high once they were under attack, or previous to the attack that day?
I have been trying hard to get public advocacy and policy groups here in DC involved in the Commission process. Chairman Kean told me at the last hearing that if anyone wants to be heard, they should contact him. I think our best strategy will be to compile a list of credible experts with alternate messages to the majority of witnesses who have testified so far, most of whom are directly involved with FBI, CIA and Pentagon intelligence, currrently or in the past. We could then push publicly for the National Commission to hear from credible witnesses on sane alternative policies relating to 9/11, as well as the historical and physical evidence of what really happened that day and who is its ultimate sponsor.
If they refuse all these witnesses, they will only discredit themselves. We don't need "theorists" about 9/11, we need real experts with good credentials. Mel Goodman would be an example, from Ambassador White's policy group. A former DoD official, Goodman has openly challenged Zelikow's conflicts of interest and called for him to step down as Commission director, as did the families. The Commission's official response was that they knew of Zelikow's conflicts, and that he was prepared to recuse himself in discussions relating to the NSC and Condalleze Rice. Kean went on to say that "all of us will have to [recuse ourselves] in relation to some issues". In other words, every single one of them is conflicted and compromised.
Accountability is key, but "failure" is a tricky concept. Did Haliburton "fail" to charge the right price for gasoline, an "error" that can be corrected merely by repayment, as Bush suggests. Any other contractor would face cancellation of contract, bar from future contracts for a period, possible jail time, and repayment of all defrauded funds. But Kellog/Brown & Root gets a slap on the wrist, a subsidiary of Cheney's former employer. The other subsidiary is DI or Dresser Industries, an oil and defense contractor that gave Bush Sr. his first job in Texas. Did the Bush neocons "fail" to heed ample warnings about 9/11, or did they intentionally ignore them?
it may be lame but its the truth.
fucking WWII was probably preventable but it happened.
This admission of incompetence doesn't wash.
Why was standard airforce operating procedure abandoned on 9/11? You can't answer my question because you don't have an answer.
the reasons why it happened doesnt wash with you so whats the point of even debating it.