Hi NGC2736

Good OP & a pretty good thread, with some intelligent and interesting responses.

On the subject of NORAD etc. on 9/11, I invite consideration of the following. You don't have to accept it, but consider the possibility of a mundane explanation which fits all the facts as known.

Originally posted by NGC2736

... the ability to hijack a plane and then have the time to pilot it for some time thereafter in the skies of America, unmolested in any way by the USAF.

If you really look into the SOP of NORAD, the command structure and available resources, then unpreparedness and incompetence really are a more likely explanation of why the USAF did not immediately identify, intercept and shoot down four civilian passenger airliners over American airspace, murdering all the passengers on the strength of a suspected hijacking.

On 9/11 there were only 14 fighter jets on alert in the contiguous 48 states. No computer network or alarm automatically alerted the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) of missing planes. "They [civilian Air Traffic Control, or ATC] had to pick up the phone and literally dial us," says Maj. Douglas Martin, public affairs officer for NORAD.

Boston Center, one of 22 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regional ATC facilities, called NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) three times at 8:37 am EST to inform NEADS that Flight 11 was hijacked; at 9:21 am to inform the agency, mistakenly, that Flight 11 was headed for Washington (the plane had hit the North Tower 35 minutes earlier); and at 9:41 am to (erroneously) identify Delta Air Lines Flight 1989 from Boston as a possible hijacking.

The New York ATC called NEADS at 9:03 am to report that United Flight 175 had been hijacked — the same time the plane slammed into the South Tower. Within minutes of that first call from Boston Center, NEADS scrambled two F-15s from Otis Air Force Base in Falmouth, Mass., and three F-16s from Langley Air National Guard Base in Hampton, Va. None of the fighters got anywhere near the pirated planes.

Why couldn't ATC find the hijacked flights? When the hijackers turned off the planes' transponders, which broadcast identifying signals, ATC had to search 4,500 identical radar blips crisscrossing the country's busiest air corridors

And NORAD's sophisticated radar? It ringed the continent, looking outward for threats, not inward. "It was like a doughnut," Martin says. "There was no coverage in the middle." Pre-9/11, flights originating in the States were not seen as threats and NORAD wasn't prepared to track them

Of course, it might all be a big conspiracy involving all the command staff at NORAD, the entire USAF and thousands of others working in ATC & other agencies. But it honestly doesn't look like it.

Let's think about something for a moment. Even if you knew for certain that four aircraft had been hijacked (and this was not known with any certainty until after some of the planes hit), were able to very rapidly identify four aircraft amongst hundreds of identical radar blips, were able to vector interceptors onto them within minutes (fat chance) with say a 70% certainty of a positive ID, would you give the order to shoot them down?

What if you got it wrong? How would you sleep for the next 30 years? Imagine what the media are going to do with you. 'The man who gave the order to murder 300 airline passengers, who didn't even wait for the planes to land somewhere and have a negotiated end to the hijack...blah blah'. It would go on for decades. Have you any idea how vilified you would be by the relatives of the murdered? I bet a few of them would take out a contract on you.

Years after an event, it's easy to sit in your armchair and be a 'Monday-morning quarterback'. 'Why didn't 'they' do this, why didn't 'they' do that? It's onviously a conspiracy, because I don't understand it...'

With only minutes to make big decisions in an uncertain situation with all the usual business of a normal day clouding everything up, delay and decision-paralysis usually takes over.

There are those who always see conspiracy in everything, often keenly embracing ignorance on the flimsiest of evidence. Usually the truth is accessed by remaining more skeptical and looking at how things happen in the real world and how humans behave in crisis.

Beware those with the certainty of a 'cause'. They are dangerous indeed.

When I read your first post, I was about to say "thank you for your valued input. You seem to really know your stuff." However, you rapidly degraded into a character attack.

We're here for information sharing. Your original information added to the discussion and that was appreciated. Your personal attacks add nothing to the conversation.

I'd like to apologize for even adding to this thread's derailment because it was a fantastic OP and strayed off-topic, not by my hand, but nevertheless, my post didn't rein it back on track. Personally, I'd love to see this topic back in focus instead of becoming another thread derailed/disinfoed. I think this topic is vital to understanding our world as it is today... in a political sense at the very least.

bovarcher and weedwhacker, Your posts do add to the understanding of 9/11, and while not exactly on the topic of the thread, it does have enough bearing that I would like to put it in perspective before we return to the main gist of our intended conversation.

I agree that there is no logical reason to think that the entire FAA or NORAD were a part of any plot, or in any way "in" on anything.. I agree that confusion was certainly the order of the day, and that no one, down to the pilots of fighter craft, would have wanted to engage civilian aircraft and kill American civilians without 1000% proof it was unavoidable.

However, I think you will agree that this being said, there are still some nagging questions that have not been answered. How did a group of terrorists gain the needed information to know precisely which Air Force bases had the duty that day, so that they would be "out of the picture". From their perspective, it would have been logical to shoot down the planes, yet they obviously counted on having over an hour of flight time to complete their mission.

And aside from just asking, a notoriously unreliable method, how could they "case" for these vulnerable "light loads" in the time they had to coordinate their attack? They should have not only had a difficult and time consuming task in this, but no way to be sure that a late arrival by a soccer team wouldn't totally fill the plane before takeoff.

And lastly, you're omitting the fact that the government has admitted that there had been prior planning for exactly this type of scenario. I do not this instant have to hand the link to this, though I feel sure others do. It was one of the things that struck me as extremely odd in the denial phase of the government.

It is not that there seems to have been so much a grand plot spanning thousands of people, but that certain key pieces of information was transmitted to these people, provided we once are sure that they in fact were the ones that flew the planes that day.

[edit on 26-11-2007 by NGC2736]

I'm wondering if we should be discussing the fact that the same thing is going on, essentially, with the Iraq occupation. Again, Islamic extremist terrorism is only being encouraged.

Granted, the US was able to dispose with a tyrannical dictator, but the result is an entirely new entity, the "Al Queda in Iraq" and the Mahedi, etc. So, once again, under the auspices of spreading democracy (or whatever we're doing there) the conclusion leaves us with a new region breeding new terror.

Another example of "The War on ____" causing more "____." And yet still costing us billions.

I know this thread is about the historical significance of American involvement in the Middle East, but it seems to me that either we didn't learn from the history (even the recent past, e.g. Afghanistan) or it is being repeated on purpose.

Originally posted by flashback

I know this thread is about the historical significance of American involvement in the Middle East, but it seems to me that either we didn't learn from the history (even the recent past, e.g. Afghanistan) or it is being repeated on purpose.

To some it would seem that keeping "a few Muslims stirred up" is an ongoing goal for the CIA and whoever controls and directs their actions. While it doesn't bear directly on the creation of Islamic terrorists, it certainly seems to show that these terrorists are still an operational idea within certain factions of our nation.

NGC2736, you are the moderator of this thread.

My laptop just stopped working...am I being paranoid? Ctrl/Alt/Del would not work. Powering off and re-booting would not work. I had to remove and replace the battery (even though I am on A/C power) to get it to reboot.

Am I paranoid? Or, has anyone else expericenced this?

Wondering...

Hey, OP. Custer made the decision on his own. He didn't do what the government expected of him. He was to head off a revolt. Instead he ignored the radicals and attacked the whole lot of them. Much unlike 911.