LOL, hilarious alternate history

[Patrick Degan]

So Deegan, you think it's okay for the US president to order hundreds of american citizens to be killed by their own military on sketchy intelligence and suspicious behavior?

If so, why is it evil that Bush went into Iraq, despite some very strong signals and probable cause that Saddam was fucking with us, violating the cease fire agreements, and developing WMD?

And what strong signals were those? The aluminium tubes myth? The Niger yellowcake myth? Plagarised college term-papers and forged documents? Bullshit spewed by Ahmad Chalabi and his flunkies? The paranoid fever-dreams of Richard Pearle and co. over at PNAC?

I mean shit, U-2R imagery showing UN Weapns inspectors stopped at the gates of a suspected WMD facility, while tractor trailers full of god knows what pull away from the site, and only after the last trailer is gone, are the UN inspectors allowed in....

I've been several rounds with Comical Axi on this as has Vympel —the inspections carried out by both UNSCOM and UNMOVIC extensively examined the suspected WMD sites and found little to no indication that production was going on at any of them, and that the records turned over gelled with the evidence gathered. Furthermore, the inspection teams which have been in-country since the fall of the Hussein government have found nothing whatsoever to contradict any of the prewar inspection findings and in fact confirm that Saddam Hussein had no active nuclear weapons programme and that the overwhelming bulk if not all of his chemical and bio stocks were either destroyed unilaterally or in the 1998 airstrikes.

As for his intent... Saddam may have desired WMD, but we've seen how Iraq had degraded in its production capabilities in twelve years, and that not only did he express no desire for a war with the United States but utterly lacked the capability to present any sort of threat whatsoever.

In regards to Iraq, there was no imminent threat condition and certainly no evidence to justify a preemptive war. In regards to the terrorist hijackings, the threat-danger was far more present and the timeframe to make a decision considerably narrower. The two situations simply do not compare.

[Edi]

What Shep, Glocksman, Krauser and the rest of the rabiod right-wingers here should also note that the reason the WTC strikes were possible in the first place was the complete and utter incompetence in elementary airport security. Airline hijackings have been happening for over 20 years, so there is no excuse whatsoever letting people just stroill into planes without any kind of control on what they are bringing with them. When the government got information that there were terrorist preparations for airline hijackings going on in the US, the immediate thing to do would have been to tighten the airport insecurity into something more respectable, and if the citizen had to get to the airport two hours earlier than previously in order to catch his flight, that's just too fucking tough. Instead, a large national security issue was neglected for the convenience of passengers and the bottom lines of airlines, which says it all about what the priorities in the US were in this respect prior to September 11th, 2001.

Edi

[Glocksman]

What Shep, Glocksman, Krauser and the rest of the rabiod right-wingers here

Excuse me?
Disagreeing with Degan makes me a 'rabiod right winger'?

Sure....

Airline hijackings have been happening for over 20 years, so there is no excuse whatsoever letting people just stroill into planes without any kind of control on what they are bringing with them. When the government got information that there were terrorist preparations for airline hijackings going on in the US, the immediate thing to do would have been to tighten the airport insecurity into something more respectable, and if the citizen had to get to the airport two hours earlier than previously in order to catch his flight, that's just too fucking tough. Instead, a large national security issue was neglected for the convenience of passengers and the bottom lines of airlines, which says it all about what the priorities in the US were in this respect prior to September 11th, 2001.

As you said, hijackings had been happening for a long time prior to 9/11. Even if passenger checks had been tightened, boxcutters were not prohibited items. Shit, the old rules let you bring on pocketknives with blades of up to 4 inches.

Tighter screening under the old rules wouldn't have prevented 9/11 as too many nonprohibited items could be used as makeshift weapons. Christ, after 9/11, Richard Reid (the shoe bomber) made it past airport security in Paris, and European authorities have a lot more experience dealing with would be hijackers than the TSA.

The best thing to happen to aircraft security post 9/11 is the willingness of the passengers to fight any would be hijackers armed with makeshift weapons. If 4 Arabs pulled boxcutters on a plane full of passengers now, they'd be lucky if they were turned over to the Feds alive. Before, the advice was not to resist, now we're told to fight back.

The day after the president saw this memo, he was on vacation in Texas and what was he talking about? Saddam Hussein, WMDs, and missile defense. He was on vacation the entire fucking month. I guess the memo wasn't important enough.

Pray tell me what in this memo justifies hunkering down in the Oval Office.

For the President Only
Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate (Osama) Bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America".

After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a ...(edited)... service.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told a ... (edited) ... service at the same time that Bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.

The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Laden's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US.

Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that Bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation.

Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own US attack.

Ressam says Bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation.

Although Bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks.

Bin Laden associates surveilled our embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.

Al-Qaeda members - including some who are US citizens - have resided in or travelled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.

Two al-Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.

A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ... (edited)... service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman and other US-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Laden-related.

The CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.

The memo states that the FBI did find 'information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.'

It also stated that they are conducting approximately 70 full field investigations. They may have been looking in the wrong areas, but there were investigations going on. The information wasn't being ignored.


This memo is worthless as far as specific threats go.

[Glocksman]

If so, why is it evil that Bush went into Iraq, despite some very strong signals and probable cause that Saddam was fucking with us, violating the cease fire agreements, and developing WMD?

"strong signals and probable cause" are not synonymous with "evidence", even of the sketchy variety.

That statement applies perfectly to the statement that Bush should have shot the planes down the instant they were hijacked.

There was no evidence until the first plane hit the towers that this was a suicide mission. Jesus Christ, how thickheaded do you have to be to not understand this?

Sure there was a shitload of speculation, guesswork, theories, and plain bullshit floating around, but not one firm piece of evidence prior to the event that these were suicide attacks.

The problems that let to 9/11 not being detected have everything to do with a systemic failure of the intelligence apparatus and how information is collated and analyzed that predates both Bush and Clinton and nothing to do with Bush not acting on the vague statements in that August 6 PDB.

If someone tells me that they could have predicted 9/11 based on that memo, they're full of enough bullshit to float a battleship.

[Patrick Degan]

The memo states that the FBI did find 'information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.'

It also stated that they are conducting approximately 70 full field investigations. They may have been looking in the wrong areas, but there were investigations going on. The information wasn't being ignored.

This memo is worthless as far as specific threats go.

Hmm... so, becaue Osama binLaden didn't send a telegram to George Bush saying "my people are going to hijack planes and fly them into the WTC towers this September; stop us if you can NYAAAAH", it was utterly impossible to take precautionary defensive measures or coordinate intel, investigation and interdiction activity or for Bush to come off vacation to do his goddamn job.

Yeah. Keep telling yourself that.

[Darth Wong]

There was no evidence until the first plane hit the towers that this was a suicide mission. Jesus Christ, how thickheaded do you have to be to not understand this?

And there was no military aircraft able to shoot down the second aircraft after this point, but before it struck the towers. Why not? They had a quarter of an hour to prevent the second impact, which would not have been difficult of fighters had at least been shadowing the airliners.

[Darth Wong]

BTW, what do you think of this?

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/time ... fense.html

Relevant excerpt:

In July 2001, Bush attended the G-8 Summit in Genoa, Italy. The Egyptian government warned that al-Qaeda planned to assassinate Bush and other heads of state using "an airplane stuffed with explosives." [New York Times, 9/26/01] US intelligence also learned of this from Russia and other sources. [CNN, 3/02] The Italian government surrounded the summit with antiaircraft guns, kept fighters in the air, and closed off local airspace to all planes. [Los Angeles Times, 9/27/01] The reports were taken so seriously that Bush stayed overnight on an aircraft carrier offshore. [CNN, 7/18/01] The plot was reported in the media before the summit began, so, not surprisingly, the attack was called off. [Los Angeles Times, 9/27/01] Some media reports even mentioned that the plan was to attack Bush on the ground from al-Qaeda-controlled aircraft. [BBC, 7/18/01]

[StimNeuro]

There was no evidence until the first plane hit the towers that this was a suicide mission. Jesus Christ, how thickheaded do you have to be to not understand this?

And there was no military aircraft able to shoot down the second aircraft after this point, but before it struck the towers. Why not? They had a quarter of an hour to prevent the second impact, which would not have been difficult of fighters had at least been shadowing the airliners.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you suggesting that we have an escort for every incoming foreign flight?

[Darth Wong]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you suggesting that we have an escort for every incoming foreign flight?

When it deviates from its flight plan for no reason and they have been warned by foreign governments that Al-Quaeda has terrorist plans involving aircraft within the past few months, yes.

[StimNeuro]

When it deviates from its flight plan for no reason and they have been warned by foreign governments that Al-Quaeda has terrorist plans involving aircraft within the past few months, yes.

Would there have been enough time to warm up the jets and get the pilots ready for a simple deviation? It seems like you would need a constant CAP over at least 3 borders...

[Darth Wong]

When it deviates from its flight plan for no reason and they have been warned by foreign governments that Al-Quaeda has terrorist plans involving aircraft within the past few months, yes.

Would there have been enough time to warm up the jets and get the pilots ready for a simple deviation? It seems like you would need a constant CAP over at least 3 borders...

Yes, that would be proactive, which is the whole point Mr. Degan has been trying to make, and which the right-wingers have been attempting to exaggerate for the purpose of a rather obvious black/white fallacy.

[Glocksman]

The memo states that the FBI did find 'information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.'

It also stated that they are conducting approximately 70 full field investigations. They may have been looking in the wrong areas, but there were investigations going on. The information wasn't being ignored.

This memo is worthless as far as specific threats go.

Hmm... so, becaue Osama binLaden didn't send a telegram to George Bush saying "my people are going to hijack planes and fly them into the WTC towers this September; stop us if you can NYAAAAH", it was utterly impossible to take precautionary defensive measures or coordinate intel, investigation and interdiction activity or for Bush to come off vacation to do his goddamn job.

Yeah. Keep telling yourself that.

That memo shows that there already were 70 FBI investigations going on and that the CIA and FBI were investigating a report from the UAE about an attack with explosives.


And as far as coordinating intel goes, haven't I been stating that was one of the problems? Let me get this straight. You expected Bush to do in 230 odd days what the previous administrations had twelve years to do, but didn't?

If you could come up with a plan to totally revamp the FBI and CIA regarding terrorist intelligence and analysis and implement it (including getting it through Congress) and in the meantime not ignore all of the other duties of the President, then you should be in the Oval Office.

[Darth Wong]

And as far as coordinating intel goes, haven't I been stating that was one of the problems? Let me get this straight. You expected Bush to do in 230 odd days what the previous administrations had twelve years to do, but didn't?

Did he take any initiatives at all? You can blast the ineffectiveness of Clinton's failed attempts to decapitate Al-Quaeda (and this is a rather predictable response whenever this subject comes up), but what initiatives did Bush take? Can we look at what the evidence is to give him marks for effort, if not success?

[Glocksman]

There was no evidence until the first plane hit the towers that this was a suicide mission. Jesus Christ, how thickheaded do you have to be to not understand this?

And there was no military aircraft able to shoot down the second aircraft after this point, but before it struck the towers. Why not? They had a quarter of an hour to prevent the second impact, which would not have been difficult of fighters had at least been shadowing the airliners.

Someone screwed up, and the FAA is blaming NORAD for not scrambling fighters in time and NORAD is blaming the FAA for not telling them in time.

This is a bureaucratic fuckup.

[Patrick Degan]

The memo states that the FBI did find 'information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.'

It also stated that they are conducting approximately 70 full field investigations. They may have been looking in the wrong areas, but there were investigations going on. The information wasn't being ignored.

This memo is worthless as far as specific threats go.

Hmm... so, becaue Osama binLaden didn't send a telegram to George Bush saying "my people are going to hijack planes and fly them into the WTC towers this September; stop us if you can NYAAAAH", it was utterly impossible to take precautionary defensive measures or coordinate intel, investigation and interdiction activity or for Bush to come off vacation to do his goddamn job.

Yeah. Keep telling yourself that.

That memo shows that there already were 70 FBI investigations going on and that the CIA and FBI were investigating a report from the UAE about an attack with explosives.

Yes, we know.

And as far as coordinating intel goes, haven't I been stating that was one of the problems? Let me get this straight. You expected Bush to do in 230 odd days what the previous administrations had twelve years to do, but didn't?

Obviously, you're one of those people that thinks repetition of the same argument ad-infinitum somehow validates it. And how do you explain JFK managing to put together EXCOMM in one day? How was it possible for the Clinton White House to coordinate the effort to snuff out the Millenium plot within a month?

You can keep regurgitating Condi's spin as much as you like, but unless you can demonstrate that George Bush could not supercede the normal bureaucratic structure and assemble his cabinet and intelligence chiefs into a special working group, your attempt at whitewash is doomed.

If you could come up with a plan to totally revamp the FBI and CIA regarding terrorist intelligence and analysis and implement it (including getting it through Congress) and in the meantime not ignore all of the other duties of the President, then you should be in the Oval Office.

Executive Order. Good enough for a short-term extraordinary situation. Happens all the time.

[Glocksman]

And as far as coordinating intel goes, haven't I been stating that was one of the problems? Let me get this straight. You expected Bush to do in 230 odd days what the previous administrations had twelve years to do, but didn't?

Did he take any initiatives at all? You can blast the ineffectiveness of Clinton's failed attempts to decapitate Al-Quaeda (and this is a rather predictable response whenever this subject comes up

Actually I was blaming his Daddy as well. Look at the time frame.

It's not actually about blaming Clinton per se, but pointing out that the problem of the FBI and CIA not coordinating and jointly analyzing information predates GWB. In fact, I believe there were legal barriers to that kind of cooperation prior to 9/11 that were put into place during the 1970's as a reaction to CIA domestic abuses.

This problem has existed since before the end of the Cold War and I think it was a major contributor to the breakdown.

), but what initiatives did Bush take? Can we look at what the evidence is to give him marks for effort, if not success?

Well, if you believe Dr. Rice, they were working on a plan to undermine AQ and the Taliban.

What we were doing was to put together a policy that brought all of the elements together. It tasked the secretary of defense within the context of a plan that really focused not just on Al Qaida and bin Laden, but also on what we might be able to do against the Taliban. And that gave the kind of regional context that might make it possible to use military force more robustly, to work plans in that context.

I think without that context, you're just going to have military plans that never get used.

She's speaking of pre-9/11 of course.

[Glocksman]

Obviously, you're one of those people that thinks repetition of the same argument ad-infinitum somehow validates it. And how do you explain JFK managing to put together EXCOMM in one day? How was it possible for the Clinton White House to coordinate the effort to snuff out the Millenium plot within a month?

Do you even know what EXCOMM was?

EXCOMM was merely an ad-hoc group of advisors that JFK put together whose job it was to explore options and act as a sounding board during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Quite a different task than breaking down 30 years of bureaucratic bullshit and turf fighting, eh?

Again, the Millenium Bomb plot wasn't uncovered by the FBI until a Customs agent got suspicious. The FBI subsequently broke up the plot because the captured bomber and a coconspirator talked. The White House team didn't even raise the alert status at the borders until Ressam was already in jail.

If the FBI had captured one of the hijackers and he talked prior to the attacks and Bush did nothing, your argument would be valid.

The quality and quantity of information that let to the setup of the Millenium task force didn't exist for 9/11.

Executive Order. Good enough for a short-term extraordinary situation. Happens all the time.

Executive orders can't violate the law.

[consequences]

Executive Order. Good enough for a short-term extraordinary situation. Happens all the time.

Executive orders can't violate the law.

Executive Orders are the law, usually applied in a grey area not covered by prior precedent

[Glocksman]

Executive Order. Good enough for a short-term extraordinary situation. Happens all the time.

Executive orders can't violate the law.

Executive Orders are the law, usually applied in a grey area not covered by prior precedent

An Executive Order cannot override a law, though. If Congress passes a law and it is enacted, a future President simply cannot say 'Screw the law, I'll order it anyway'.

[Patrick Degan]

Obviously, you're one of those people that thinks repetition of the same argument ad-infinitum somehow validates it. And how do you explain JFK managing to put together EXCOMM in one day? How was it possible for the Clinton White House to coordinate the effort to snuff out the Millenium plot within a month?

Do you even know what EXCOMM was?

EXCOMM was merely an ad-hoc group of advisors that JFK put together whose job it was to explore options and act as a sounding board during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Quite a different task than breaking down 30 years of bureaucratic bullshit and turf fighting, eh?

NO IT ISN'T YOU GODDAMN IMBECILE! There were enough intel warnings coming in over the previous eight months that something major was brewing, involving Al-Qaeda attacking inside the United States, possibly using hijacked aircraft. Kindly explain to the class why it would have been utterly impossible for George Bush to put together his own ad-hoc advisory/coordination group to uncover and avert this threat.

Again, the Millenium Bomb plot wasn't uncovered by the FBI until a Customs agent got suspicious. The FBI subsequently broke up the plot because the captured bomber and a coconspirator talked. The White House team didn't even raise the alert status at the borders until Ressam was already in jail.

And again, the Ressam arrest was the beginning of the Millenium bomb-plot story, not its end. How many times must this be said and in how many different ways?

If the FBI had captured one of the hijackers and he talked prior to the attacks and Bush did nothing, your argument would be valid.

Wrong. Preliminary measures against skyjacking and air defence could have been implemented. Increased surveilance on the Arab students known to be learning how to fly but strangely not land planes in the flight schools could have been implemented. Undercover armed sky-marshals could have been assigned to commercial flights on a continuing basis. You keep trying to argue in absolutes in order to manufacture a False Dilemma.

The quality and quantity of information that let to the setup of the Millenium task force didn't exist for 9/11.

If we ignore warnings from the CIA, MI6, French, Italian, Russian, Israeli, and Egyptian intelligence, you might have an argument there.

Executive Order. Good enough for a short-term extraordinary situation. Happens all the time.

Executive orders can't violate the law.

EXECUTIVE ORDERS ARE PART OF THE LAW, moron. They empower the president to act in absence of Congressional action within the scope of the law. And in terms of organising national defences and security, the president has very broad power as Commander-in-Chief.

[Darth Wong]

but what initiatives did Bush take? Can we look at what the evidence is to give him marks for effort, if not success?

Well, if you believe Dr. Rice, they were working on a plan to undermine AQ and the Taliban.

What we were doing was to put together a policy that brought all of the elements together. It tasked the secretary of defense within the context of a plan that really focused not just on Al Qaida and bin Laden, but also on what we might be able to do against the Taliban. And that gave the kind of regional context that might make it possible to use military force more robustly, to work plans in that context.

I think without that context, you're just going to have military plans that never get used.

She's speaking of pre-9/11 of course.

You seriously think that looks like an initiative? "tasked the secretary of defense within the context of a plan that focused on" the problem?

I haven't heard that much doubletalk buzzword bullshit since the last management consultant came breezing through my old company (before leaving it a shambles, of course).

[Patrick Degan]

Executive orders can't violate the law.

Executive Orders are the law, usually applied in a grey area not covered by prior precedent

An Executive Order cannot override a law, though. If Congress passes a law and it is enacted, a future President simply cannot say 'Screw the law, I'll order it anyway'.

Um, ahem:

Linky

Executive order

An executive order is a legally binding edict issued by a member of the executive branch of a government, usually the head of that branch. In other countries, they may be known as decrees.

In the United States, Presidents have issued executive orders since 1789. There is no Constitutional law or statute that explicitly permits this, aside from the vague grant of "executive power" given in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution and the statement "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" in Article II, Section 3. However, executive orders have legal force unless in conflict with a law approved by the Legislative or a court decision by the Judicial branch of government.

Most executive orders are directed to various Federal Administrative Agencies or departments of the Executive Branch to help orchestrate those agencies in their duties. Other executive orders, called Proclamations, serve a more ceremonial purpose, such as declaring new holidays and celebrations. Others, known as National Security Directives or Presidential Decision Directives, deal with national security and defense.

Until the early 1900s, executive orders went mostly unannounced and undocumented, seen only by the agencies to which they were directed. Others have simply been lost due to natural decay and poor record keeping. However, the State Department instituted a numbering system for executive orders in the early 1900s, starting retroactively with President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. Today, only those executive orders dealing with issues of national security are kept from the public.

Until the 1950s, there were no rules or guidelines outlining what the President could or could not do through an executive order. However, the Supreme Court ruled that an executive order from President Harry S. Truman that placed all steel mills in the country under federal control was invalid because it attempted to make law, rather than clarify or act to further a law put forth by the Congress or the Constitution. Presidents since this decision have generally been careful to cite which specific laws they are allegedly furthering when making new executive orders.

Many critics have accused the Presidents of abusing executive orders, both to make new laws without Congressional approval and to move existing laws away from their original mandates. Large policy changes with wide-ranging effects have been passed into law through executive order, including the integration of the Armed Forces under Harry Truman and the desegregation of public schools under Dwight D. Eisenhower. Even entire wars have been fought upon executive order, including Bill Clinton's 1999 Kosovo War. (However, all such wars have had authorizing resolutions from Congress. The extent to which the President may exercise military power independently of Congress, and the scope of the War Powers Resolution, remain undecided Constitutional questions.) Critics fear that the President could make himself a de facto dictator by side-stepping the other branches of government and making autocratic laws. The Presidents, however, cite executive order as often the only way to clarify laws passed through the Congress, laws which often require vague wording in order to please all political parties involved in their creation.

To date, the courts have only overturned two executive orders: the aforementioned Truman order, and a 1996 order issued by President Bill Clinton which attempted to prevent the U.S. government from contracting with organizations that had "strikebreakers" on the payroll. Likewise, the Congress may also overturn an executive order by passing legislation in conflict with it or refusing to approve funding to enforce it. Because the President retains the power to veto such a decision, however, the Congress usually needs a 2/3 majority to override a veto and truly end an executive order.

[Edi]

What Shep, Glocksman, Krauser and the rest of the rabiod right-wingers here

Excuse me?
Disagreeing with Degan makes me a 'rabiod right winger'?

Sure....

In the context of this thread, yes, because you're just parroting the same argument over and over again, and specifically the one promoted by the rabid right wingers. Other threads are different case by case.

Airline hijackings have been happening for over 20 years, so there is no excuse whatsoever letting people just stroill into planes without any kind of control on what they are bringing with them. When the government got information that there were terrorist preparations for airline hijackings going on in the US, the immediate thing to do would have been to tighten the airport insecurity into something more respectable, and if the citizen had to get to the airport two hours earlier than previously in order to catch his flight, that's just too fucking tough. Instead, a large national security issue was neglected for the convenience of passengers and the bottom lines of airlines, which says it all about what the priorities in the US were in this respect prior to September 11th, 2001.

As you said, hijackings had been happening for a long time prior to 9/11. Even if passenger checks had been tightened, boxcutters were not prohibited items. Shit, the old rules let you bring on pocketknives with blades of up to 4 inches.

Which just shows even more graphically just how incompetent airport "security" in the US was prior to 9/11. If they actually bothered to use European standards, this would not have been a problem. I've been pulled out for questioning over fingernail scissors here, even before 9/11. But it would have been too much of an inconvenience for the passengers so it was unthinkable, of course.

Tighter screening under the old rules wouldn't have prevented 9/11 as too many nonprohibited items could be used as makeshift weapons. Christ, after 9/11, Richard Reid (the shoe bomber) made it past airport security in Paris, and European authorities have a lot more experience dealing with would be hijackers than the TSA.

Which just points out the incompetence of the security as the main culprit, which is the point I'm making. Reid slipped by the French, yes, but he was an anomalous case and he had the explosives concealed in a rather non-standard fashion. We don't x-ray people here, just their luggage and carry-on bags.

The best thing to happen to aircraft security post 9/11 is the willingness of the passengers to fight any would be hijackers armed with makeshift weapons. If 4 Arabs pulled boxcutters on a plane full of passengers now, they'd be lucky if they were turned over to the Feds alive. Before, the advice was not to resist, now we're told to fight back.

True enough, but the job of the hijackers would have been a lot harder if you had had European style security measures in place. I doubt they would have missed all 19 hijackers in such a situation, and as hijackers usually work in teams instead of being lone nutjobs, those flights would have been grounded, the passengers detained and questioned and quite probably a lot of lives saved. All it would have cost was an efficient screening procedure, slightly longer travel times and a little passenger inconvenience that really isn't much at all if you bother to show up in time for your flight instead of at the last minute.

As for the fighting or not fighting, 9/11 was a one-shot ploy, it will never work again for exactly that reason. Not fighting the terrorist is smart enough when they only have political demands for a political agenda, but jihadists are a different story. There is a good reason why one should make a careful distinction between politically motivated and religiously motivated terrorists, as they handle very differently. Namely, the former are usually amenable to negotiation and more predictable.

Edi

[0.1]

This is so funny. Degan says there is ample evidence of Al Qaeda planning to strike at the U.S. eight months before Sept 11.... I would think there were ample evidence long before that. Recall the first world trade center bombing, the Y2K plot to blow up LAX. I think all of those occurred long before eight months.

You read that PDB, and it tells you exactly nothing. It reads as "someone really doesn't like us, they want to attack directly in the US, but we're doing something about it... through investigations." Let's see, how is that any different from the evidence already in place. Let me spell it out in case there is a lack of understanding:

Al Qeada doesn't like us.

They want to attack us, and recent attempts include Y2K LAX plot.

We have 70 ongoing investigations looking into things.

Now, if the FBI decided something was important enough to bring to the president's attention indicating an IMMEDIATE THREAT, it wasn't in that memo. You can blame Bush for the lack of effective communications from the bottom up (FBI) and not even interagency related, which has been a systemic problem for years. But that's about all you could do. Based on history at this point, there is not enough evidence to support anything that says people would turn airplanes into suicide weapons. There may be a contigency somewhere to invade Canada because suddenly the Americans feel like the Canadians don't like us any more. But to put that plan on the front burner all of a sudden would be just a bit insane.

To blatantly say that it's a good idea to shoot down airlines that started deviating from its course is just silly, it would've meant killing innocents without any good reason. Wong, are you actually saying that this would've been your policy given that PDB?

Remember, prior to Sept 11th, hijackers weren't doing suicide attacks, they were doing it to secure release of prisoners or making some political statements. You can say the 15 minute thing about preventing the second strike, but no command and control system respond that fast without prior evidence, and they still weren't sure after the first hit it was terrorism. Everyone else thought it was an accident initially, that's how all the news media reported it. What you're saying is that on that fateful morning, had there been a country wide CAP (impossible under just about every circumstance), you would've shot down every single aircraft that went off course because it was a standing order.

You also seem to suggest that based on that PDB and "evidence", you'd have ordered a country wide CAP prior to 9/11, just how long is that supposed to last? And more to the point, how practical is that? This seems like a lot of wishful thinking without any grounding in reality.

[Iceberg]

To blatantly say that it's a good idea to shoot down airlines that started deviating from its course is just silly, it would've meant killing innocents without any good reason. Wong, are you actually saying that this would've been your policy given that PDB?

Unauthorized course deviations have caused midair collisions before because the pilot deviated course right into another aircraft. EVERYTHING involving airliners MUST be done with full knowledge and consent of the ground because American airspace is so crowded that a single rogue airplane is a danger to everything else in the sky.