New bombshell: on 9/11 Pentagon conducted live-fly hijacking wargame

[Minstrel Boy]

Just heard this from Mike Ruppert last night at the Toronto inquiry, so no link yet. He based his information upon confirmation, in writing, from a NORAD official, though the wargame remains classified.

This was one of five wargames/simulations on the morning of 9/11, many with confusingly similar names (the confusion no doubt intentional): "Vigilant Guardian", "Northern Vigilance", "Vigilant Warrior", etc.

We already know that the CIA, through the National Reconaissance Office, was conducting a simulation of planes flying into buildings on the morning of Sept 11. This was called a "bizarre coincidence": http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

Well here's one more: on the same morning, the Pentagon, under the auspices of the Joint Chiefs, was running a live-fly exercise of a response to multiple hijackings. Numerous aircraft, military and civilian, were used in the exercise.

Do you remember that day, hearing that a dozen or so other aircraft were thought hijacked? This is why.

With many fighters already committed to other wargames, the number remaining to respond to a threat were outnumbered by the number of apparently hijacked planes. With the transponders switched off, identities of the genuine threat from the simulated became confused.

Remember reading remarks of officials who wondered at first whether the hijackings were part of a wargame? This is the game.

This game actually did receive some press - a small mention in USA Today soon after 9/11 - which most have missed. The White House denied knowledge of the game, but NORAD says different.

Ruppert noted also the change in the standing orders for shoot down on June 1 2001, after 26 or so years, which took the decisions out of the hands of the field officers and gave it solely to the Secretary of Defense (you know who). Ruppert suggests that confusion was sewn to blind commanders who might be anticipated to send fighters into the sky and seek approval after the fact. This, in fact, did happen.

So, an actual order to "stand down" wasn't necessary because:

Most fighter units were committed, some to Alaska and Northern Canada, to wargames;

On June 1, Donald Rumsfeld took upon himself sole authority to authorize a shootdown;

The skies were to confused with real and simulated hijackings, thwarting any fighter pilot who might take authority for himself.

[jeff30997]

1. This thing gets more and more complex.

[indepat]

6. More curiouser and curiouser

[PATRICK]

2. That in itself

would be a massive embarrassment which would trigger a reflexive cover up. Also, under scrutiny who would believe such a coincidence. Either they are hoisted on the petard of their own secrecy policy or scrutiny makes people howl and investigate various deeper problems.

In the end, however, Bushco has not been held to account for anything at all.

Now to whether this was a "coincidence". I doubt it very much. I would very very much like to pin down who and how this whole game was authorized and planned, the very top, the ones whose Intel or suggestions in regards to date and scope put all this in motion.

One's darkest suspicions that groundwork was laid to enable the Al Qaeda stooges to succeed are simply growing with each reluctant tidbit pried loose. It looks more credible because none of the game participants who otherwise also look suspicious and strange that day need to have known anything at all about the real possibility of an attack on 911.

For my money(not a theory or declaration, just a bet) I think the high inner circle of Bushco knew date, means and targets pretty accurately.

Were there any other dates when a paralyzing scramble panic was induced because Bushco thought terrorists might strike? They need not always be sure of an attack, only the wonderful possibilities if a threat succeeded. Ugly, ugly, but I grant them no virtue they have never demonstrated. Too bad Powell, with a devious imagination of his own can't connect some dots to the inner circle and realize the horror.

[Q]

3. The problem with not trusting someone...

...is that you can't believe anything they say. The RWingers didn't trust Clinton because they hated him and he received a BJ. America doesn't trust Bush*&Gang because they've been CAUGHT in so many lies that no one EXPECTS them to tell the truth. RWingers have excused these lies and deceptions as necessary in a 'time of war'. That the Bushies lied their asses off BEFORE a time of war doesn't seem to bother the Bush* Faithful.

- There are conspiracy theories and coincidence theories. Is it a coincidence that so many things fell into place FOR THE HIJACKERS on that day? Not just one or two coincidences...but a whole string of them 'prevented' the Bush* government from detecting or impeding the hijacked airliners AND finding those who planned it afterwards.

- But if there's one thing the Bushies know from experience...it's that Americans have very short attention spans and can be manipulated to believe anything. The bushies have a public relations team to die for...along with dozens of talking head pundits that will keep the 'plausible deniability' gambit going for as long as it takes. When that fails...they can always fall back on 'national security' to hide their trail of complicity and corruption in the highest levels of government.

[w13rd0]

4. So let's review...

...if the Bush WH, knowingly or unknowingly, were passing information to organizers and financiers of terrorists, would there be a better morning, a more opportune time, to stage the attack?

Remember: "The match is lit, the wedding begins tomorrow"

What wedding? A match as in a flame? Or a match as in a contest/test?

Who knows? Not as if I anticipate any truth emerging from the 9-11 Whitewash Commission (that Bush wanted to appoint Kissinger to chair, you know, Kissinger, recently revealed to positively be a key player in the overthrow of democracies and authorizer of assassinations)...

[teryang]

5. This was the tactical cover and deception plan

...undertaken to insure the success of the attacks.

[indepat]

7. Surely you realize what this means if your assessment is valid: and it

only makes sense, makes the implausible plausible.

[teryang]

8. I should add the caveat that

...this is an anecdotal post concerning Ruppert's report at this stage. Who knows what may come of it.

However, I am willing to base my opinion on just one such government exercise taking place on 911 and being reported in the mainstream press, to which the poster above has provided a link.

As an old tactical intelligence hand once said, one is provided with shards, don't expect the entire pot. Others, may however accept that one such reported exercise is a "coincidence." I don't. Particularly in light of the fact of the many misrepresentations have poured out of the government attempting to obscure the fact that attacks on buildings by hijacked aircraft were specifically anticipated by the CIA and the Pentagon, and that this has been corroborated. Why bother lying about it on such an extensive scale?

[DoYouEverWonder]

9. Here's one of the flies in the ointment

"With many fighters already committed to other war games, the number remaining to respond to a threat were outnumbered by the number of apparently hijacked planes."


Actually, wouldn't the opposite be true? With many fighters already committed to war games, that means they were already up in the air. They may or may not have been armed but there were alot of military jets flying that morning.

Now, add in all the other fighters flying that morning, that were just out doing regular practice. I remember reading a statement by Gen. Myers saying there were a lot of fighters in the air practicing up and down the East Coast, because it was such a beautiful and clear morning. It was a perfect day for flying.

My point is, that there was no need to wait for fighters to be scrambled from Andrews or Otis or anywhere else, because if we had a CIC who wasn't too busy to bother, he could have order any or all of the fighters already up in the air, to chase down most of the planes that were off course.

One thing is for sure, there is no good reason why Flight 77, that hit the Pentagon, was not intercepted. And if SOP had been followed, it is very likely that WTC 2 could have been spared as well. Yet the gov wants us to believe, that they couldn't even get a visual on any of these planes? Give me a break.

[Minstrel Boy]

11. I think the answer is that

some of the war games, notably Northern Vigilance, which was staged in Northern Canada and Alaska, pulled fighters away from the North Eastern seaboard. So the war games might have had more planes up than usual, but they were out of position. The remaining scramble-ready fighters were outnumbered by suspected hijacked aircraft.

[DoYouEverWonder]

13. How fast do these fighters fly?

Even with one game out over Alaska, there were still plenty of planes flying on the East Coast. Especially since the CIA operation was practicing on the East Coast for an attack on the DC area.

Even if the fighters were scattered all over the country, how long does it take for one flying at top speed to travel 500 - 3000 miles? Assuming that the closest fighters already in the air were within the 500 miles and the furthest being out on the west coast or about 3000 miles away? I would guess that even within the 500 mile radius there would have been enough planes in the air to intercept most of the planes that went off course.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

29. Top speed is 1400 to 1500 mph. None of the four planes dispatched....

...on the morning of 911 exceeded 640 mph. Additionally, those four planes were not notified by NORAD to scramble until a minimum of 30-35 minutes had passed from the first realization by the FAA air traffic controllers that hijackers had control of the first airliner.

Regardless of whether or not the FAA was late in making the notification to NORAD, or if NORAD was late in getting the planes into the air, those 30-35 minutes are difficult to understand.

Add to the situation on 911 the following facts:

*Two of the planes were dispatched from Otis Air National Guard Base south of Boston, about 130 miles east of New York City;

*Two additional planes were dispatched from Langley Air Force Base south of Hampton, VA, about 130 miles SSE of Washington, DC.

*There was an eight-mile trail of debris, including an engine, leading to the impact crater of Flight 93 in the Pennsylvania countryside. Nowhere in the "official" report on Flight 93 is anything mentioned about an onboard explosion that would have created that trail of debris...but there are eyewitnesses on the ground who saw the plane flying overhead trailing fire from the fuselage before it impacted. Was another intercepter dispatched from a Midwestern air base with orders to shoot down Flight 93? How better to cover for that event than by instantly creating the mythology of an heroic passenger revolt leading to the plane crashing and thereby saving Washington, DC, from another hijacked airliner impact?

[MasonJar]

28. We only needed 3 or 4. What kind of military would not keep

that small a number for emergencies?

[Old and In the Way]

10. This is interesting.

"the Pentagon, under the auspices of the Joint Chiefs, was running a live-fly exercise of a response to multiple hijackings."

But the JCS was heading to Europe that day and acting JCS Meyers was in Max Cleland's office all morning?

[DoYouEverWonder]

14. Makes you wonder

what those guys in the chain of command really do for a living? It seems they're always too busy for the hands on stuff.

[readmylips]

12. The more I read about that criminal Chalabi...

the more I believe that Chalabi, who wanted to kill Saddam with a passion as much as bush junior, is responsible for the 911 catastrophe. Only Chalabi had world influence and money to have paid the hijackers and blamed it on AlQuada. Chalabi already had his niece and Judith Miller in the media, repeating whatever came out of his PR Washington, DC office. His great coverup. After 911, Chalabi closed down his PR DC office and fled to Saudi Arabia.

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Justice]

15. I may have missed this but

are you saying that the hijackers picked 9/11 because they KNEW about the wargames/simulations - and predicted there would be confusion?

Or just that this was an amazing sad coincidence?

[tinanator]

16. I think you are short a few options there

because neither is very likely. Chalabi couldnt stand down US fighters. figure it out.

[Minstrel Boy]

17. Given what else we know, such as Pentagon brass cancelling

their commercial flights for Sept 11, the surveillance of the hijackers and ECHELON's eavesdropping of bin Laden and others (including a phone conversation between "mastermind" Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Mohammed Atta which gave the final go ahead), and the very specific, high-level warnings we know the White House received which, when compiled, point to a massive attack using aircraft as weapons in early September, I'm saying the date for the wargames was chosen because senior military figures KNEW when the hijackings were to take place.

[wiggs]

18. Rice

It is unlikely the Pentagon or the CIA were running these hijacking simulations. Condileeza has already said she didn't think anyone could have anticipated that planes would be used as they were on 9/11.

And even if the CIA and Pentagon were running these simulations in bizzare coindicidence to 9/11, it was probably the result of some lower level people blowing off some steam and having fun. Because otherwise the White House would have known about it....daily meetings with CIA's George Tenet and OSP connections would have ensured it.

This topic seems quite important. More press please. Exactly what was the nature of the games? Were these the first games of this type? Why was the CIA involved and not the FBI? Would Sibel Edmonds have anything to say about this? What does Rice have to say about it?

[Minstrel Boy]

19. Yes, as the Good Ship Condileeza said,

toot toot!

[Octafish]

37. Vigilant Deniability

Incredible stuff, Minstrelito! A million thanks!

BTW: Chevron's renaming the supertanker. Don't they know that's bad luck?

[teryang]

20. Not likely?

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/2002-08-22/usw_plane...

Agency Was to Crash Plane on 9/11
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
Associated Press Writer

<WASHINGTON (AP) — In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings. But the cause wasn't terrorism — it was to be a simulated accident.

Officials at the Chantilly, Va.-based National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled an exercise that morning in which a small corporate jet would crash into one of the four towers at the agency's headquarters building after experiencing a mechanical failure. >

http://www.politrix.org/modules.php?name=News&file=arti...

<War On Error: US Army crashed a plane into the Pentagon in 2000
Posted on Friday, April 02 @ 18:51:56 EST
Topic: AmeriCONNED
Washington, D.C., — The fire and smoke from the downed passenger aircraft billows from the Pentagon courtyard. Defense Protective Services Police seal the crash sight. Army medics, nurses and doctors scramble to organize aid. An Arlington Fire Department chief dispatches his equipment to the affected areas. Don Abbott, of Command Emergency Response Training, walks over to the Pentagon and extinguishes the flames. The Pentagon was a model and the "plane crash" was a simulated one. The Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise, as the crash was called, was just one of several scenarios that emergency response teams were exposed to Oct. 24-26 in the Office of the Secretaries of Defense conference room. >



Here's an excerpt that was apparently removed from an Aviation Week website.

<"Part of the exercise?" the colonel wondered. No; this is a real-world event, he was told. Several days into a semiannual exercise known as Vigilant Guardian, NEADS was fully staffed, its key officers and enlisted supervisors already manning the operations center "battle cab." >


http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=new...

On edit: here's the Aviation Week version of the impact of the exercise:

http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/200...


Here is an even weirder coincidence:

http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/0514_coinciden...

<Barbara Honegger, who worked in the White House under Reagan, points out another coincidence. Rsearching press reports, she found a 9/16/01 Washington Post story about the pilot of AA flight 77 that, on the morning of 9/11, was said to have crashed into the Pentagon.

The pilot, Charles Burlingame, an ex- F4 Navy flyer, had, as his last Navy mission, helped craft Pentagon response plans in the event of a commercial ariliner hitting the Pentagon.

Pilot drafts plan for response to Pentagon hit. Pilot winds up on plane that hits Pentagon.

Honegger states that Dick Cheney was ultimately in charge of the NRO exercise on the morning of 9/11. He was in the White House Situation Room for that purpose.>

On edit: Cheney's actions per Mineta:

http://anderson.ath.cx:8000/911/pen11.html

<The testimony of Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta on May 23 about Cheney's actions is revealing. Mineta said he arrived at the Presidential Emergency Operating Center (PEOC) at 9:20 a.m. where he observed the Vice President taking charge:

Mineta: 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.

Hamilton: The flight you're referring to is the.

Mineta: The flight that came into the Pentagon.

After some discussion of whether Cheney's orders meant to shoot down the hijacked aircraft, it was clearly stated on the record that there were no such orders to do so, which raises the obvious question of what "the orders" were:

Hamilton: And so there was no specific order there to shoot that plane down.

Mineta: No, sir.

Hamilton: But there were military planes in the air in position to shoot down commercial aircraft.

Mineta: That's right. The planes had been scrambled, I believe, from Otis at that point...>

[wiggs]

35. likely....

Re my last post I should make the sarcasm a little stronger I guess...

snip from post above:

<WASHINGTON (AP) — In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings. But the cause wasn't terrorism — it was to be a simulated accident.

Officials at the Chantilly, Va.-based National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled an exercise that morning in which a small corporate jet would crash into one of the four towers at the agency's headquarters building after experiencing a mechanical failure. >

The report makes a point to say that the excercises were not in anticipation of terrorism....that the drill supposed an "accident" would cause a plane to strike, coincidentally, a CIA tower. This seems an unlikely supposition. Although, maybe they also drill for an accidenal dropping of a bomb on the CIA...or an accidental suicide car bombing at the front gate....an accidental anthrax attack.....an accidental drive by shooting....

If the drill wasn't for an "accidental" plane strike, then the possible reason for stressing that the excercises were not terrorist related is puzzling. On the one hand, the administration has stated in public that the notion of hijacked planes being used as missles was not foreseeable. Clearly, the conducting of drills on precisely this eventuality would undermine this statement. On the other, such excersises would give the appearance that the administration was on top of the threat, preparing for suspected attacks.

Who knows....and that is the point.

wiggs

[Rockasan]

22. The REAL problem with all of this...

...is that to read all of these conspiracy theories leads one to a point of absolute numbness. That and the fact that so many of these tie into so many past events, during which Presidents of both parties can be nailed from so many angles that the only response is "who cares, since nothing I do even matters." That's assuming that even a tenth of these theories have any basis in truth which leads naturally and logically to the further assumption that just about EVERYTHING we have ever been taught, by our parents and grandparents, from elementary school through college, from any and all media sources, is all complete and abject B.S.
Of course, we could just simplify our lives and reduce our stress levels by getting off our asses, pushing away from the computer screen, and doing some positive thing, like calling our local Democratic Party Headquarters and asking them if they need any volunteers to help out with the mundane tasks of voter registration, phone canvassing, yard sign distribution, etc. Not as sexy as spending valuable time posting a thousand messages full of theories and counter-theories designed to make us all seem so much smarter than those saps who are out there living day to day without a clue as to how f---ed up and useless all this really is.
I'm sorry, I'm tired and this is probably the wrong state of mind in which to try to respond to anything. But electing a President is going to take a lot of energy directed in positive ways toward the real objective, that undecided person working for peanuts in a non-union under-the-table construction job, or something like it, who doesn't know from Freemasonry, and Tri-lateralists, and secret cabals.
If you are already doing something positive to elect Democrats in November, just ignore this with my apologies. If not, then give it a shot. There are some pretty decent looking singles out there doing volunteer work and it's almost as good as church for starting a relationship. Mine is going on 27 years.
Peace and Victory.

[teryang]

24. 3 posts and he's numb n/t

[RamboLiberal]

23. Richard Clarke in his book confirms Vigilant Warrior on 9-11

was going on 9-11, but makes no mention of what the exercise was. Page 5 in the Situation Room on 9-11 in teleconference with Gen Myers.

(Clarke) I turned to the Pentagon screen. "JCS, JCS. I assume NORAD has scrambled fighters and AWACS. How many? Where?"

"Not a pretty picture, Dick." Dick Myers, himself a fighter pilot, knew that the days when we had scores of fighters on strip alert had ended with the Cold War. "We are in the middle of Vigilant Warrior, a NORAD exercise, but...Otis has launced two birds toward NY. Langley is trying to get two up now. The AWACS are at Tinker and not on alert."

"Okay, how long to CAP over D.C.?"....

"Fast as we can. Fifteen minutes?" Myers asked...It was now 9:28.

Now someone needs to find out exactly what the exercise of Vigilant Warrior was that day and how it played in to why those planes, especially the one in to the Pentagon was not shot down.

[kiahzero]

30. Where would they shoot it down?

I live in the DC metro area, so I'm pretty familiar with the density of the area.. Let's pretend the fighters had gotten there a little earlier, before the plane hit the Pentagon. Where would they shoot it down?

DC is built up for miles and miles surrounding the city core. There's not exactly a whole lot of open fields you can shoot a plane down in to.
The number of deaths and injuries in the Pentagon pale in comparison to the number that would have happened if a plane was shot down into the city in the middle of the morning. Most buildings are not built like the Pentagon.

On Edit: Clarity

[Media_Lies_Daily]

31. Take a look at the flight paths of Flights 77 and 93....

...Flight 93 left an eight-mile trail of debris over some pretty open countryside over Pennsylvania before it impacted. IMHO, that plane was shot down, otherwise one is left with a lot of questions as to why a perfectly fine airplane would suddenly start to shed parts, including an engine, before it finally hit the ground. The official story on Flight 93 doed NOT include an onboard explosion, but eyewitnesses on the ground saw flames trailing from the fuselage as it flew overhead.

Take a good look at the flight path of Flight 77. How many places could 77 have been shot down and NOT hit a populated area?


<http://a188.g.akamaitech.net/f/188/920/15m/www.washingt... >


In fact, ALL FOUR PLANES, HAD THE INTERCEPTORS BEEN DISPATCHED AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE, COULD/SHOULD HAVE BEEN INTERCEPTED AND SHOT DOWN BEFORE THEY EVER REACHED A MAJOR POPULATION CENTER.

[kiahzero]

33. There was no reason to shoot them down before they hit the Towers

Any chance you could get one of those maps with timestamps on them, so we can see where the planes were at various times? That'd be really helpful for addressing this.

[Sterling]

39. There was a lot of time between the first WTC attack and the DC attack

www.cooperativeresearch.org

[RamboLiberal]

32. They would've had to take their chances

After all they didn't know exactly what the plane was trying to hit. I would assume they'd have shot it down to protect the government from being decapitated via a hit on the Capitol building or the Pentagon.

You know the military would've let Joe Citizen take his chances with falling debris vs. a major government building being hit.

[kiahzero]

34. I think it's hard to say on that

I don't think it's possible to play "What if" on this... deciding to shoot down a civilian aircraft would be an incredibly difficult lose-lose decision.

If it had turned out that the plane was not going to hit the Pentagon, and they shot it down, many would have attacked the Administration for jumping the gun.

[DoYouEverWonder]

40. So how the heck is it possible for Myers

to have been in the WH Situation Room at 9:28 AM, when he testified in his Senate confirmation hearing, that he had been in Sen. Cleland's office at the time and didn't know what was going on until he came out of the meeting after the Pentagon was hit? Then he testified that he headed straight for his battle station at the Pentagon?

[The Backlash Cometh]

25. If true, it sounds like Al Qaeda had good intelligence.

I think it's too much to be a coincidence. And, though an unpopular opinion, I still have to wonder what was in John O'Neal's briefcase which was stolen for a few hours from a Tampa hotel just a few months earlier.

[Alerter_]

26. I remember this story immediately after 911

I think the "drill" was mentioned in the Washington Post as well.

[lockdown]

27. Press release on Northern Vigilance

http://www.norad.mil/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.news_rel...

September 9, 2001

NORAD Maintains Northern Vigilance

Contact: [phone]

CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN AFS, Colo. – The North American Aerospace Defense Command shall deploy fighter aircraft as necessary to Forward Operating Locations (FOLS) in Alaska and Northern Canada to monitor a Russian air force exercise in the Russian arctic and North Pacific ocean.

“NORAD is the eyes and ears of North America and it is our mission to ensure that our air sovereignty is maintained,” said Lieutenant-General Ken Pennie, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of NORAD. “Although it is highly unlikely that Russian aircraft would purposely violate Canadian or American airspace, our mission of vigilance must be sustained.”

NORAD-allocated forces will remain in place until the end of the Russian exercise.

NORAD conducted operation Northern Denial from December 1 to 14, 2000 in response to a similar, but smaller scale, Russian deployment of long-range bombers at northern Russian air bases. NORAD-allocated forces were deployed to three FOLS, two in Alaska and one in Canada. More than 350 American and Canadian military men and women were in involved in the deployment.

----------

First I've heard of that, isn't that something. Anyone know about those Russian exercises? Are they routine and routinely reponded to in that way, besides the one mentioned from a few months earlier?

[daleo]

36. If this is really true, then it means one of two things

"Al Queda" found out when these games were scheduled, and scheduled their attack for the same day to take advantage of the confusion that it would create.

or

Some variation of LIHOP/MIHOP (which may be similar to above). I can't take another coincidence.

[FreakinDJ]

38. This determines the difference of LIHOP vs: MIHOP

How could the Administration determine the date they struck unless they were part of the planning

[PATRICK]

42. decisive detail

How could any Intel agency be so stupid as to schedule such an event on the anniversary of the day when a terrorist attack blew planes up in the desert, when Bush Sr. gave his victory speech to Congress for Gulf War I.

In fact, the government never has admitted that significant dates for the TERRORISTS is what determines a lot of attacks. Instead they touted July 4th just as they do today.

The very choice of 911 is a "coincidence" that set off air raid sirens by its merest contemplation. BFEE went full scale LIHOP with so much aiding and abetting as to constitute high treason. It's so bad that MIHOP is irrelevant and unnecessarily risky. So why on earth did the mainline CIA go along with this exercise on such a bad choice of dates? They at least must have known better on this one detail. Or is Tenet really as witless as he sometimes looks? Or, since that day he IMMEDIATELY said "Al Qaeda!" he knew about the possibility and had been outvoted?

[9215]

41. If and when the Bushies are pressed for

answers on why the Air Force stood down that day, this little war-game can be pulled out as the reason. Then Bushboy can "humbly" acknowledge the confusion, blah, blah. If the US Public will allow a cakewalk in Iraq to turn into an endless undeclared war what else are they capable of accepting?