Originally posted by Reheat
You seem to be very confused. There was no "shoot down authorization" from the President until after UA 93 had crashed. The fighters out of Andrews had "shoot down" authorization from VP Chaney, but there are serious questions about the legality of that. It really didn't matter as the attack was already over anyway.

You need to review your sources. Norm Mineta specifically stated in his 9/11 commission hearing testimony that there was a shoot down order before flight 77 even hit the Pentagon. He just didn't know it at the time. Here's the exact transcript:

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"MR. HAMILTON: We thank you for that. I wanted to focus just a moment on the Presidential Emergency Operating Center. You were there for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the vice president. And when you had that order given, I think it was by the president, that authorized the shooting down of commercial aircraft that were suspected to be controlled by terrorists, were you there when that order was given?

MR. MINETA: No, I was not. I was made aware of it during the time that the airplane coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, "The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to, "The plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?" And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?" Well, at the time I didn't know what all that meant. And --

MR. HAMILTON: The flight you're referring to is the --

MR. MINETA: The flight that came into the Pentagon.

MR. HAMILTON: The Pentagon, yeah.

MR. MINETA: And so I was not aware that that discussion had already taken place. But in listening to the conversation between the young man and the vice president, then at the time I didn't really recognize the significance of that.

And then later I heard of the fact that the airplanes had been scrambled from Langley to come up to DC, but those planes were still about 10 minutes away. And so then, at the time we heard about the airplane that went into Pennsylvania, then I thought, "Oh, my God, did we shoot it down?" And then we had to, with the vice president, go through the Pentagon to check that out.

MR. HAMILTON: Let me see if I understand. The plane that was headed toward the Pentagon and was some miles away, there was an order to shoot that plane down.

MR. MINETA: Well, I don't know that specifically, but I do know that the airplanes were scrambled from Langley or from Norfolk, the Norfolk area. But I did not know about the orders specifically other than listening to that other conversation.

MR. HAMILTON: But there very clearly was an order to shoot commercial aircraft down.

MR. MINETA: Subsequently I found that out."

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So the order of events was...

a) Interceptors from Langley were scrambled to cover DC

b) The order to shoot down commercial aircraft was issued by the president (NOT Cheney). Mineta doesn't know about this order or about the interceptors yet.

c) Flight 77 approached D.C.

d) Someone asked Cheney if the shoot down order still stood and Cheney confirmed it did. Mineta doesn't know what this means at the time.

e) Flight 77 hit the Pentagon

f) Mineta then finds out that interceptors were scrambled from Langley.

f) They got word that another hijacked arcraft (flight 93) went down over Pennsylvania. At the time everyone wonders if it was shot down so they went to the Pentagon to to get confirmation. Mineta is especially horrified because he knows about the interceptors but doesn't know about the shoot down order yet.

g) Mineta later finds out there was a presidential order to shoot down commercial aircraft.

If you can see any other way to interpret his testimony (that is, which doesn't include armies of sinister secret agents covering up sinister plots to take over the world), by all means let me know. When I say to the OP that he needs to read the 9/11 Commission report to learn facts like this, specifically to avoid bickering over ridiculous conspiracy claims, how am I wrong, exactly?

Originally posted by Reheat

Originally posted by GoodOlDave
If you can see any other way to interpret his testimony (that is, which doesn't include armies of sinister secret agents covering up sinister plots to take over the world), by all means let me know. When I say to the OP that he needs to read the 9/11 Commission report to learn facts like this, specifically to avoid bickering over ridiculous conspiracy claims, how am I wrong, exactly?

Apparently, you haven't noticed that the Commission Report does not include Minetta's claims. The reason is that his time line was wrong. It has been proven conclusively wrong by several different methods. I don't want to go through all of the details as it's off topic here in this thread.

We are going way, WAY beyond the topic at hand. My original statement which you responded to was that the 9/11 report documented a number of cases where procedures had broken down, one of which being that orders weren't handed down properly. I'm looking at page 43 as I type this that documents how there was considerable confusion among the NEADS commanders over the nature and effect of the shoot down order. Both the mission commander and the senior weapons director testified they didn't pass on the shoot down order to the interceptor pilots because they were unsure how the pilots would (or should) proceed with the directive. My point is that any such "facts sheet" the truthers would provide would consciously avoid including important facts like this in favor of their own "witnesses heard explosions" innuendo and you have not offered anything that shows this is incorrect.

As my agenda is to a truthful review of the events of 9/11 instead of a servile need to be pushing any particular scenario regardless of the facts, I acknowledge I was mistaken and the shoot down order was issued after the Pentagon impact rather than before, but the fact remains that even the shoot down order is a detail the truthers don't want the general public to know. How many times have we heard the truthers claim Cheney issued a stand down order, may I ask?

Originally posted by GoodOlDave
We are going way, WAY beyond the topic at hand.

I agree. There are more than one "truther" school of thought on this issue, but that's all for another thread. No need to rehash it at this time and give idiots any reason to continue with nonsense regarding the issue. It will likely come up again and I wanted to ensure that you had correction formation about it and also correct info regarding Mineta's testimony. His timeline and conclusion were simply wrong and he was very confused... The subject is dropped as of now...

Originally posted by GoodOlDave
but the fact remains that even the shoot down order is a detail the truthers don't want the general public to know. How many times have we heard the truthers claim Cheney issued a stand down order, may I ask?

That's false. The pioneer in this arena is Jimd3100 from 911blogger. The authors of "The Eleventh Day" have been jacking 9/11 research from us left and right (Paul Thompson, Erik Larson, Richard Schopmeyer, Kevin Fenton, History Commons) while at the same time sucking up to 9/11 Commission staffer Miles Kara and ridiculing the 9/11 Truth Movement in general. (Jimd3100 disagrees with me on this, he doesn't care who steals his work and doesn't credit him as long as its publicized)

They could have mentioned their book is wholly based upon work done by the 9/11 Truth Movement, just a section of the 9/11 Truth Movement they and you don't want to acknowledge exists; everybody likes to focus on the large contingent of ill-informed kooks instead, as if they carry the same weight and have the same stature.

And contrary to what Reheat says, the Mineta timeline hasn't been resolved at all, see people don't know there is a Situation Room as well as PEOC under the White House. Moreover, Douglas Cochrane (Did you know his name?) doesn't want to talk.

Sigh.... David Ray Griffin... so tired of him.

no, but here is a short summary,
several federal agents gathered in building 7 in an attempt to spread suppressed technology as fast and precisely as they could. Then there that morning threatened the peoples of space... minutes later pilot cockpits underwent hypnosis from undetermined source. The claim that they were in the trade centers was merely a distraction. when the plane hit, they knew they were out matched as far as control of the telecommunications network was concerned. So they burnt that bitch to the ground, then plan b. then the pentagon sent a missile into the accounting office in the pentagon, I ordered that, the agents then apologized and promised to listen to the overlords and the fourth plane was no longer use full, so the overlords crashed it. 9 11.
then, plan B. West.