I saw this and got choked up. I had never heard this before.
I cannot fathom why we wouldn’t have had jets on standby that were armed at all times. Especially near the Capitol. Were our military leaders that arrogant to think we could never be attacked? How many millions of dollars worth of training and equipment would we have lost had they had to actually kamikaze that plane? Sadly, I have little faith the situation wouldn’t be the same if it happened today.
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
I cannot fathom why we wouldn’t have had jets on standby that were armed at all times. Especially near the Capitol. Were our military leaders that arrogant to think we could never be attacked? How many millions of dollars worth of training and equipment would we have lost had they had to actually kamikaze that plane? Sadly, I have little faith the situation wouldn’t be the same if it happened today.[/quote]
I thought the exact same thing. And money side, asking several pilots to die because of criminal negligence is a sad state of affairs.
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
Were our military leaders that arrogant to think we could never be attacked?[/quote]
If you feel the need to ask this question, the answer should be obvious.
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
I cannot fathom why we wouldn’t have had jets on standby that were armed at all times. Especially near the Capitol. Were our military leaders that arrogant to think we could never be attacked? How many millions of dollars worth of training and equipment would we have lost had they had to actually kamikaze that plane? Sadly, I have little faith the situation wouldn’t be the same if it happened today.[/quote]
Yeah kinda fishy huh?
It’s not really a Kamikaze Mission if they were to eject before impact. jus sayin
For some younger people here I would like to mention that the idea of planes being used to attack buildings was not an idea that was unfathomable to people at the time.
It was also not a surprise that Bin Laden would be behind it.
Fuck I hated that day.
I was already in Taiwan for 9/11 and Taiwan is 12 hours ahead of New York and I was walking around that night and the weirdest thing is I was looking at a tall building here in Taipei (the ShinKong Mitsukoshi building) I didn’t know about the terrorist events yet and thinking about what it would look like if King Kong were climbing it (goofy I know) and then I thought about the 1976 remake of King Kong where he instead climbed the World Trade Center towers. This would have been around 8:30 or so my time which was 8:30 NY time and thus only minutes before the first plane hit.
I got back to my apartment where I had two roomates and by this time the towers had collapsed, it was about 11:30PM (11:30a.m in NY) so I learned about everything all at once and even though I was 29 at the time I can’t actually recall the exact moment that I realized the WTCs were gone and the Pentagon hit. I mean I of course understood what my two roomates told me but I think they even told me backwards…as in they told me that the towers were gone and then that it happened from planes impacting them.
I do rememebr saying “Holy shit they’re fucking GONE?!”
[quote]Justliftbrah wrote:
It’s not really a Kamikaze Mission if they were to eject before impact. jus sayin[/quote]
Crawl back under your rock, child.
I can’t fathom the courage and fortitude, not to mention the remorse, it takes to undergo a mission such as this; to know that you must fly your jet into an airliner full of civilians in order to thwart an attack.
[quote]Nards wrote:
…I can’t actually recall the exact moment that I realized the WTCs were gone and the Pentagon hit… [/quote]
I do remember that day very well. I had just arrived at work and people were talking about a plane hitting the WTC. I thought they meant a small aircraft. Maybe they pilot had fallen asleep. Then came the second WTC and the Pentagon. They dismissed us from work because, as they said, “America is under attack. You need to go be with your families.” Those words were really hard for me to comprehend.
Yup, this is exactly how I felt when I watched the towers fall.
[quote]BeefEater wrote:
[quote]Justliftbrah wrote:
It’s not really a Kamikaze Mission if they were to eject before impact. jus sayin[/quote]
Crawl back under your rock, child.[/quote]
The Japanese are amused by this story.
[quote]Justliftbrah wrote:
[quote]BeefEater wrote:
[quote]Justliftbrah wrote:
It’s not really a Kamikaze Mission if they were to eject before impact. jus sayin[/quote]
Crawl back under your rock, child.[/quote]
The Japanese are amused by this story. [/quote]
Fuck off.
I was 9 years old. I didn’t understand what was happening. I was so used to seeing this stuff in movies that it didn’t occur to me that people were actually in the buildings or in the planes. I remember thinking “Okay . . . so a plane hit a building. What’s the big deal?” No one had told us kids about terrorists or bombs or the middle east. hell, I don’t think I even knew what a terrorist was until 9/11.
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
I cannot fathom why we wouldn’t have had jets on standby that were armed at all times. Especially near the Capitol. Were our military leaders that arrogant to think we could never be attacked? How many millions of dollars worth of training and equipment would we have lost had they had to actually kamikaze that plane? Sadly, I have little faith the situation wouldn’t be the same if it happened today.[/quote]
I don’t think anyone expected a severe aerial threat coming from within the U.S. proper. Pretty much any ship/missile/aircraft coming across the Atlantic or Pacific would be detected in some form, and probably we would have enough time to present a proper response.
[quote]magick wrote:
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
I cannot fathom why we wouldn’t have had jets on standby that were armed at all times. Especially near the Capitol. Were our military leaders that arrogant to think we could never be attacked? How many millions of dollars worth of training and equipment would we have lost had they had to actually kamikaze that plane? Sadly, I have little faith the situation wouldn’t be the same if it happened today.[/quote]
I don’t think anyone expected a severe aerial threat coming from within the U.S. proper. Pretty much any ship/missile/aircraft coming across the Atlantic or Pacific would be detected in some form, and probably we would have enough time to present a proper response.[/quote]
Doesn’t anyone remember in 1994 when a nutcase tried to fly a small plane into the White House and crashed on the lawn? It entered restricted airspace and almost succeeded. You would have thought protocols would have been put in place to have aircraft on standby to prevent this sort of thing again.
I’ve seen numerous documentaries on the subject of 9/11. One of them talked about the huge volume of “chatter” that was coming into the US security agencies, that we would be under attack. So much so, that it apparently was discussed within the Muslim community.
There was an incident on Sept 6th at a school in Brooklyn where a Pakistani boy was looking out the window while his teacher gave a lesson. The teacher then asked the boy what he was looking at. The boy said, “See those towers? They won’t be there by this time next week.”
The teacher brushed it off, then reported it 2 days after the attack.
[quote]CLINK wrote:
There was an incident on Sept 6th at a school in Brooklyn where a Pakistani boy was looking out the window while his teacher gave a lesson. The teacher then asked the boy what he was looking at. The boy said, “See those towers? They won’t be there by this time next week.”
The teacher brushed it off, then reported it 2 days after the attack.[/quote]
Could I get a source on this?
I know that the FBI and CIA had numerous clues about a possible terrorist attack, but they never bothered to put 2 and 2 together. This is new though.
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
Doesn’t anyone remember in 1994 when a nutcase tried to fly a small plane into the White House and crashed on the lawn? It entered restricted airspace and almost succeeded. You would have thought protocols would have been put in place to have aircraft on standby to prevent this sort of thing again.
[/quote]
No doubt the air force fucked up by not having even a single fighter plane on standby.
[quote]magick wrote:
[quote]CLINK wrote:
There was an incident on Sept 6th at a school in Brooklyn where a Pakistani boy was looking out the window while his teacher gave a lesson. The teacher then asked the boy what he was looking at. The boy said, “See those towers? They won’t be there by this time next week.”
The teacher brushed it off, then reported it 2 days after the attack.[/quote]
Could I get a source on this?
I know that the FBI and CIA had numerous clues about a possible terrorist attack, but they never bothered to put 2 and 2 together. This is new though.
[/quote]
Numerous clues? According to a documentary I saw a few days ago, there was VOLUMES of chatter, as they called it, coming into the various agencies. The incident of the boy evidently substantiates that in a way, considering that same chatter may have been going through the Muslim community in hushed tones. The boy may have heard it from a relative.
If you look into it, various government agencies had intel on it, but due to bureacracies, they were not good at sharing information and working together. This event fundamentally changed things and now you have a lot more sharing.
The government is good at a lot of things, but foresight tends to get dulled unless you have mid/senior level people who are good at networking and getting things done in a red-tape environment. Hindsight is 20/20, and now you have actual policy/procedure that is more proactive than reactionary, about 20-30 years too late.
This anti-terror attack prevention really started getting attention after the Marine Barracks bombing in 1983 and it still took 9/11 to get a system was in place to try to prevent it. Whether it works or not or is in the best interest of a liberal democracy is still debatable.