I can't believe that this post is still going on.
1.) The Vice President and the Secretary of Defense are immune from lawsuits in the performance of their official duties of office. Unless, it can be
proven that they acted unlawfully, or were derilect in their duties. That is a tough one to prove. In hindsight we might say that the Pentagon
"should have been evacuated", but it is not unlawfull not to do so. It was a judgement call. What if the incomming plane had plowed through hundreds
of unprotected people in the parking lots of the Pentagon?
2.) As I pointed out in a previous post. The evacuation of the Pentagon was not the Vice President's call to make. He is not in the direct chain of
command. It would be like Alexander Haig when he declaired that he was, "in charge here", when Reagan was shot. It was Donald Rumsfeld's call and
he chose not to evacuate the Pentagon, and he himself was at his desk when the plane hit. It's a pretty poor conspirator that sits at his desk while
he "knows" that an incomming airplane could take him out. There is nothing unlawfull here.
3.) While it may be true that the airplane was being tracked on radar, it would be impossible to tell which building was the target. There are so many
good ones within a two mile radius of where the airplane hit. There is the Capitol, the White House, the Treasury, the Washington Monument, Jefferson
Memorial, Smithsonian Institute, to name a few. It would be impossible to evacuate all those sites in the few minutes that they had. In fact the
buildings provided far better protection than thousands of people out in the open, or on the road. The mass evacuation of the area would have created
an immediate traffic jam with thousands stuck in it. Just stop by that area around 4:30pm on a weekday.
4.) The alert jets could not get there in time. The very best option available was to intercept and shoot down the incoming plane. However, it has be
documented dozens of times that the alert jets were not ready to intercept (had no weapons loaded), and were too far away to reach the site before
impact. This is not the fault of Cheney or Rumsfeld. These jets were normally used to escort Russian planes down our east coast. Since the end of the
Cold War, these jets are unarmed. This was SOP up until 9/11.
5.) The first time in history when multiple planes were highjacked and flown into buildings was on 9/11. The first plane had hit the WTC about 45
minutes earlier. Several planes were being tracked at the time of the Pentagon impact. Is it surprising that our response was less than timely? Is it
surprising that some bad decisions (in hindsight) were made? The best decision made that day was probably the decision to order all aircraft to ground
themselves at the nearest airport and to revoke all clearances to take off. Who knows how many lives were saved by this move?
Here's a good link for the timeline and the who did what when stuff.
www.historycommons.org...
Why would we expect that the military, FAA, NORAD, the President, etc. would perform flawlessly to a "bolt from the blue" attack? Especially when
such an attack has not happened before?
Last of all, I would like to point out that we had more warnings about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. We had much more military in the area of
the attack. The attacks were spread out across a longer timeline. Yet, we did just as poorly against that attack. So, I am not at all surprised that
we failed to stop the airliners, or that we failed to recognize the threat sooner. I am also not surprised that we are still debating the "root
cause".
