From the files of "Nobody could have predicted that on 9/11 . . ."

[zbdent]

Just caught part of "Bowling for Columbine" . . .

When Moore was showing clips of newscasts from the 1999 gorefest (newscasts), this little ditty came up:

(Not verbatim, but the newscaster said something to the effect of)

"In the diaries of one of the shooters, there were references to hijacking a plane and crashing it into New York City . . ."

Of course, Columbine and its investigation happened under Clinton, so "it never happened . . ."

[doni_georgia]

1. But no one could have ever imagined someone would use a plane as a

weapon. Damn, Bush* wasn't your daddy in WWII?? Ever hear of a kamikazi - not like this was a new idea or anything.

[louis-t]

2. I remember that.

No one has even brought that up until now.

[Ilsa]

3. I knew

Navy pilots in the mid 1980's that would sit around the keg, discussing the possibility of having to shoot down a civilian airliner that had been hijacked and was headed to a heavily populated area, like NYC, the WTC, or the Capitol or WH.

[unblock]

4. the whole 'caught by surprise' excuse is utterly disgusting

it exploits the facts that the american people were caught off-guard and surprised by the success and scale of the attack.

it IN NO WAY excuses the ones whose job it is to protect us from this sort of thing.

moreover, the most readily preventable parts of the attack had to do with handling HIJACKINGS which most certainly WAS 100% predicatable. increase security at airports, alert pilots, etc.

the surprising part was not the hijacking, the surprising part was the slamming into buildings part. only the failure to shoot down the hijacked planes can has anything remotely to do with surprise, here.

[bluedog]

5. sorta like Spt 12 1994

September 12, 1994
A man, flying a stolen Cessna airplane, entered the prohibited airspace around the White House just before 2 a.m. After passing over the ellipse, the man, identified as Frank Eugene Corder, crashed on the lawn just south of the Executive Mansion. The plane struck a tree near the South Portico steps and hit a corner on the first floor of the White House. President Clinton and his family were not in the residence at the time. Corder was killed in the crash.

[RafterMan]

6. To say nothing of the fact that

* a jetliner kamikaze was in a Tom Clancy book
* airspace was closed over the G8 summit in Genoa for fear of kamikazes
* NORAD had recently run a "kamikazes over Washington" simulation
* and worst of all, would it have been acceptable for people to hijack four planes if they had not crashed them into any particular target? Is that threat somehow not bad enough to merit action?

The whole administration was just in stasis.

[stepnw1f]

7. It Doesn't Matter

The real issue is, who the f*ck was in charge of NORAD!!!? I'm sick of this shit. Why did they stand down?! And who gave the order to stand down and not intercept?

[zbdent]

8. Kick - I sent this on to Air America - re O'Franken Factor

Hope they'll pick it up.

[FubarFly]

9. "Operation Bojinka"

-snip-

...The same plan, code-named Operation Bojinka (which is pronounced Bo-GIN-ka and means "loud bang" in Serbo-Croatian), was to be repeated on the 11 American commercial jetliners, with the timing devices synchronized to go off as the planes reached mid-ocean. U.S. federal prosecutors later estimated that 4,000 passengers would have died had the plot been successful. The enormity of Bojinka also frightened U.S. officials. "We had never seen anything that complicated or ambitious before. It was unparalleled," recalls Vincent Cannistraro, the former CIA counterterrorism head.

But, Philippine and U.S intelligence officials said, the Bojinka operation called for a second, perhaps even more ambitious phase, as interrogators discovered when they pressed Murad about his pilot's license. All those years in flight school, he confessed, had been in preparation for a suicide mission. He was to buy, rent, or steal -- that part of the plan had not yet been worked out -- a small plane, preferably a Cessna, fill it with explosives and crash it into CIA headquarters.

There were secondary targets the terrorist cell wanted hit: Congress, the White House, the Pentagon and possibly some skyscrapers. The only problem, Murad complained, was that they needed more trained pilots to carry out the plot.

-snip-

http://propagandamatrix.com/bust_and_boom.html

[skypilot]

10. Speaking of Columbine...

...Harris and Klebold apparently envisioned themselves hijacking planes and crashing them into skyscrapers. If a couple screwed up teenagers can imagine such a thing, I find it hard to believe that no one else did. If nothing else, after the Oklahoma City bombings the intelligence community should have been on the look out for DOMESTIC terrorists pulling a horrible stunt like that. I don't buy this whole "failure of imagination" crap.