Doesn't it make you wonder how a plane crashed into the pentagon? I mean, this was stopped over three miles from the White House. How did 9/11 go so wrong?
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
Yes, the evacuation was brief, but I bet we hear about this on the news ad nauseum.
CNN was playing where I ate lunch and true to form they spent the whole hour saying the same 2 minute bit of news over and over in different words.
Posted by dawnmaria (Member # 4142) on :
I don't think anyone really thought it could happen here before 9/11. We thought we were invulnerable. I don't think they had as many safeguards or protocols in place before that happened. I know I wasn't as afraid of things before 9/11. Now I question everything. Especially here so close to DC. My husband and I have plans on what to do and where to go in case of an attack or something else happening. Five years ago I would have called that paranoid, now I'm not. I think more like a Boy Scout now. Always prepared.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"CNN was playing where I ate lunch and true to form they spent the whole hour saying the same 2 minute bit of news over and over in different words."
I read a comic strip the other day that pretty much summed it up:
"It's so hard to stay informed now that we have all these 24-hour news channels. How do you do it?" "Comedy Central."
Posted by Kayla (Member # 2403) on :
Um, not really. 94 planes were in White House space between 1992 and 2002. And don't forget the plane that crashed into the South lawn in 1994.
While the media has done a great job of brain-washing most of the public, don't fall for it. They knew full well the risk of terrorists using planes as weapons.
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
Well, just because it is a small plane doesn't mean it couldn't have an intended purpose. Sure, it wouldn't do much as a moving bomb -- but it could have biological weapons, etc. on board. You never know. (Of course not in this incident). I'm just saying never underestimate the threat due to the size of the plane..
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
I watched the White House briefing on this, the question the press kept asking was why they didn't get a higher priority evacuation.
Hobbes Posted by scottneb (Member # 676) on :
quote: I mean, this was stopped over three miles from the White House.
In the aviation world, three miles is nothing. In Air Traffic Control, three miles is the MINIMUM separation between two light aircraft. Throw in a heavy aircraft and the separation goes up to seven miles.
Posted by Kayla (Member # 2403) on :
Yeah, but they were unable to even get planes off the ground after the world trade center planes hit. For, what, like an hour?
Actually, at 8:54, Flight 77 veered off course. At 9:27, Cheney and Rice, in their bunker, were told there was a plane 50 miles outside Washington. The plane crashed at 9:38.
So, less than an hour, but still, by there, there had been two planes that had crashed into the Twin Towers, so. . .
I'm just saying.
And it's not like they couldn't get the planes off the ground. They just were in town.
quote:Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke, directing a video conference with top officials, asks Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Richard Myers, “I assume NORAD has scrambled fighters and AWACS. How many? Where?” Myers replies, “Not a pretty picture, Dick. We are in the middle of Vigilant Warrior, a NORAD exercise, but … Otis has launched two birds toward New York. Langley is trying to get two up now [toward Washington]. The AWACS are at Tinker and not on alert.” This may be a mistaken reference to the on-going war game Vigilant Guardian (see (6:30 a.m.)). The Otis base is in Massachusetts, 188 miles east of New York City. Langley is in Virginia, 129 miles south of Washington. Tinker Air Force Base is in Oklahoma. Clarke asks, “Okay, how long to CAP over DC?” CAP means combat air patrol. Myers replies, “Fast as we can. Fifteen minutes?” Note that according to Clarke, Myers is surrounded by generals and colonels as he says this.
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