posted
Was it really inconceivable that suicide bombing terrorists would fly planes into buildings? I really really don't think so.
I don't undestand what pieces were missing from this puzzle that none could have ever put it together. Obviously, someone did, as the terrorists planned it.
Tom Clancy wrote a book about it. He based this book on real American history too by making a deliberate connection to real life kamakazi pilots who planned missions around the tactics of, wait for it, flying planes into things in order to blow the up. Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it, indeed.
Why weren't we prepared for this, seriously? I'm honestly not looking to point fingers here. I want to stop the next new tactic from being so successful and leaving us wringing our hands and saying "No one (except the people who planned this) could have ever came up with this idea."
To use a cleaned-up version of one of my more colorful phrases, I know Richard about crap here, but I still have an idea. We should borrow another bit of entertainment culture. There's always this group of people in movies who break into places in order to test out the defenses. In real life, that I know of, there are "white hat" crackers, who are hired to try to break into computer systems in order to assess the weaknesses. Theoretically, we have these people in our intelligence services, but obviously they haven't done a good enough job. I'd like to see a group of some really sneaky people trying to come up with ways that, from the standpoint of the terrorists organizations, they'd go about trying to screw up the country. At least that way, the next time terrorists pull a fast one, no one would be able to say "No one could ever have thought of that."
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
The problem isn't a lack of info, but rather too much of it. There were reports outlining the possibility of these attacks, but it wasn't deemed a viable threat, at least not in comparason to other threats.
We do a pretty good job of screening threats here, but no one can stop all of them. Nothing is foolproof, as those damn fools always come up with something we didn't think was possible, or probable.
Not that there isn't any blame, but everyone involved wanted to prevent something like this from happening in the first place.
We never hear about the threats that were neutralized, as they are classified top-secret (or above); we only notice them when they fail.
Okay, I know it's morbid. But there's a class being taught here next semester on exactly that -- it's a guy who used to work at the State Department doing terror intel/analysis/policy making. The class consists of a number of projects -- you plan, to the last second and detail, actual terrorist attacks. Suicide bombings not allowed -- too easy.
Anyway, it sounds absolutely *fascinating*, and the guy really knows his stuff, apparently. I found out about it because there was a big article on the front page of the Metro section of the Washington Post. I *love* Washington D.C. This is the sort of stuff that's only available here.
Anyway, speaking to your broader point, I think there is some of that in the government -- but there needs to be more.
Posts: 1784 | Registered: Jun 2001
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There was a college kid arrested last year who had performed several successful "security audits" for his own amusement. I've long said (way before 9/11) we should have undercover agents do the same everywhere security MIGHT be an issue. Of course, last I heard they put this guy (who gave them a detailed list of what changes to make) in jail.
I don't think I've ever heard a story of hijackers being caught by preflight security. Not a single one, before or since the big events. You can't chalk it up to black ops; airports are very public places, word would've gotten out.
Nobody can stop terrorism by force. The Israeli secret guys could beat the crap out of our secret guys, but look at the effectiveness they're able to achieve even with the entire conscripted manpower of a young nation covering a drastically smaller area. If you hear otherwise, they're running for something.
I have at least one friend who calls me "Member," so your euphemism is perfectly safe by comparison.
quote:Two years ago, Pluchinsky caused a stir when an opinion article he wrote, published in The Washington Post, accused American journalists of treason for reporting security vulnerabilities of the nation's airports, chemical plants, electrical grids and other infrastructure.
quote:Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
posted
My dad, 30 years ago, was detained for hours by the FBI. He was carrying a birthday present, and had payed cash for a one way ticket, so they pulled him into the back, into the interregation rooms they have back there.
They strip searched him, and questioned him, and then released him.
I was in the Army, working with a level2 TS clearance, and let me tell you, you have NO idea of how many attempts are stopped each week. I don't really know, even, but I got a glimpse o few time.
It's not really black-ops, but just tight control over what types of things get reported.
Haven't you heard of the shoe-bomber guy? Do you really think that he is the first one to try and smuggle explosives on to a plane?
posted
Not at all. You add to my point -- he got away with it. I don't doubt lots of people are detained, especially these days, but how many actual hijackings have been stopped?
Posts: 1839 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I saw a program a few years back that interviewed a guy who broke into nuclear power plants.
He had a team of paramilitary types who staged raids on plants to get a dummy container of plutonium (which can be used to make dirty bombs). Hey said they were disturbingly successful in their attempts, even with the platns put on alert that someone was trying to breach security, succeeding like 70% of the time or more - and many times the security forces were celebrating because they thought they stopped the threat.
He said in the interview that he was going public (though his face was darkened) because repeated reports up the chain of command were ignored, and security at the nuclear power plants was not increased.
Did anyone else see this interview?
Posts: 106 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
I remember hearing on NPR about a military group back in the 60s or 70s whose entire purpose was to see how well the rest of the military responded to crisis situations. They actually kidnapped a general and held him hostage for six days. They were great at what they did, and people could have learned a lot from them.
Unfortunately, nobody wanted to learn from them, because it was too embarassing. Every time they showed where the weaknesses were, instead of trying to fix the weakness, people tried to shift blame and cover it up.
posted
Kwea, I'm not arguing against the idea that there are an enormous number of possibilities and that it can be very hard to determine which ones are worthy of attention. I completely understand that.
However, that is not what we are being told. Instead, we are being told that (as I referenced three times) "There is no way we could have conceived that they would do this." Again, my knowledge about evaulating potential security threats to America is extremely limited, but I'm acting as if I can take this statement at face value (not to say that it is true, but rather that it depicts the acutal state of intelligence readiness).
It's my understanding that there were indications that al-Queda was planning to hijcak airplanes inside the US. My suggestion is that, if we had the theoretical construct that suicide-style attackers (like the Japanese kamakazis and many Islamic terrorists) are likely to use airplanes as ballistic explosive weapons, then this sort of information could have been been evaluated in regard to this construct and yeikded the idea that we might want to watch out for people crashing planes into buildings.
As I said, my ideas are predicated on the idea that, as we have repeatedly been told, the counter-terrorist parts of our government didn't have any idea that people could plan to fly planes into buildings. They are specifically oriented towards covering this flaw in regards to other possible innovative terrorist tactics.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Kasie, As a sneaky sumbitch who really likes creative thinking, I think that's really neat. Ahhh...to be young again and be able to have my plans for world domination earn me course credit.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
I dunno. I was surprised when it happened. Though once it began to happen I was surprised that it didn't continue all day long.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Did you even read my post? My dad didn't get away with anything, nor did the shoe-bomb guy.....so how does that prove your point?
We had no idea as a country that this would happen. If anyone had definate info, I haven't heard of it.
You can't remain on stand-by indefinatly, it just doesn't work.
We knew that thee were possibilities of all of this, but we had no concrete proof that it was a viable threat. I wish we did, because then something would have been done about it.
Then they would have done something else.
Our country has pissed off too many people, and we are just too large to defend against every single possible threat. We have to catorgorize threats if we are to respond in a timly manner, and that leaves us vunerable. It sucks, but it is just the way it is.
BTW, MY point was that people get stopped all the time for being a possible threat, and we never hear of it. I KNOW (as in personal experience) that the majority of threats are stopped in their tracks before they get very far. Just because you never hear about them doesn't mean that they don't happen. It just means that the job is being done correctly.
posted
Kwea, I've met a lot of people who have said what you said. "I work/know people in the field and you have no idea!"
You know what? I've met a lot of people who think they've known what the hell is going on in other contexts, and they were wildly wrong. I've been there myself. I've been in the military and I know officers do things to facilitate making their troops look good. I know how rumours spread in the military which have no semblance of what is actually going on. Obviously, what I'm trying to say is that without proof, you might as well not even bother pointing crap out.
I know this is going to piss you off. I encourage you not to be since it won't bother me in the slightest.
I refuse to accept anyone's word on what happens. I want proof. At the very least, if you and others like you are going to make this assertion, you can go back thirty years or so and point out the number of other attacks that were foiled and never reported by the press. Something other than your says so, because that's not sufficient.
"OMG, Storm! If people talk, our security is compromised and then people will die!"
I think some kind of middle ground can be reached, where we, the people, can make some kind of judgement as to what's going on and how effective it is.
edit: I know I probably ought to delete this post because of its caustic attitude. But I'm going to let it stay, with the understanding that I am being a bit impolite. Sorry.
posted
Kwea, it's literally impossible to argue against your main point (outside of general Saxon skepticism). I don't disagree with the rest of your post so I won't try.
The "shoe bomber" got through security at least once. If he had been subdued by burly passengers at the terminal, it would have contradicted my point.
Posts: 1839 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I have a pocket knife on my key chain that has made it through ten airport security checkpoints since Christmas.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
I can't help but wonder if all those who perpetuate this political bloodlust and finger pointing about 9/11 are the same types who believe that Roosevelt allowed Pearl Harbor to happen and that the CIA killed JFK?
And why was there not this massive witch hunt and blame laying after the Oklahoma City bombing, or the first WTC attack, or the attack on the USS Cole, or the bombing of our foreign embassies..etc Could it be that because this and election year and those who play party politics have something to gain from blaming our current President?
How long has it been sinece 9/11? Almost 2 years after the event, and only now the media and the 9/11 commission are attempting to crucify the current administration. Does the timing, and fairness, of this seem conspicuous (sp?) to anyone else?
Initially our nations focus was, "How can we prevent things like this from happening again?" now it seems to be "This HAS to be someones fault" If blame must be assigned, why not blame the deluded fanatics that see nothing wrong with killing people llike this and their leaders who preach this hate?
posted
For the same reason that when someone at your job screws up, people don't not care who screwed up. As part of the solution, it's important for your bosses, ie us, to know if the person was doing their job and whether they need to be replaced. Because without some kind of oversight and checking, people tend to lie and cover up things for their own benefit. Because, ultimately, government is responsible to us, the people, and not to themselves.
The 9/11 hearings are in no way a 'witch hunt'. That's silly. Have anyone suffered any repercusssions from the hearings? Any punishments been handed out? No.
People of both the Bush administration and the Clinton administration are being questioned. I think this is fair and totally appropriate.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:anyone suffered any repercusssions from the hearings?
Of course! Bush's chances in the next election are being hurt!
It doesn't affect me, because I'm not voting for the guy anyway, but this investigation clearly has changed in tone lately into a witch hunt. The furor over what Condaleeza Rice would or would not have said on September 11th is a pretty clear indication of that.
I think that there are lessons to be learned from 9/11. I also think the Bush administration has made serious errors in the "War on Terror." But I also think that right now, Democrats are trying to gain political capital from September 11th. I agree that the purpose of this investigation ought to be to learn how to improve our infrastructure, if this can be fairly and legally done, to avoid something akin to this happening again. But I don't, for instance, believe that some other administration would have ben more efective at preventing this.
There are a lot of good reasons to be dissatisfied with Bush. But the attempts being made right now to make his administration the culprit in the Septemer 11th attacks sickens me. It might even (probably not, though) change my mind about voting for Kerry.
quote: Of course! Bush's chances in the next election are being hurt!
I disagree. First of all, the panel is bipartisan and has, up until now, been operating behind closed doors.
Second of all, it's not known that Bush screwed up. The purpose of this panel is not to crucify Bush, but to come to understand more fully whether anything could have been done to prevent 9/11. Depending on what came to light, the findings of the panel could make Bush look really good.
And on that note, third, I think that Bush allowing this panel to occur does, and has, made him look good. Remember, this administration has been fairly secretive about things that have occured within the administration (the energy meetings, the abduction of that Canadian dude, etc). By aiding this panel (now, after a lot of prodding. but anyways...)in its public investigation, the Bush administration has proof that it's not secretive. I think everyone from Bush's administration has acquitted themselves very well from what i've seen on cnn. I definitely think this has resulted in good press for the Bush team.
Finally, again referring back to current dialogue, the people being questioned are not all from the Bush administration. They had Reno and whatsisname from the Clinton administration on yesterday. Tenet today.
This is not a witch hunt.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
The 9/11 commission is remarkably bipartisan, and most of the criticism from it has been across party lines. Watch any of the multitude of news shows that have had pairs of people from the commission, one democrat and one republican. While the framing of the critiicisms vary greatly, the big criticisms are still there from both sides.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote: Unfortunately, nobody wanted to learn from them, because it was too embarassing. Every time they showed where the weaknesses were, instead of trying to fix the weakness, people tried to shift blame
This is unfortunately the problem the 9/11 committee is facing. Or at least, it is according to the media reports. From what I see on the news, I assume that all day long the commissioners ask ridiculously partisan questions designed to assign blame rather than fix the problems. I doubt this is what actually happens, but until the media gets off of its "lets report anything and everything that makes Bush look bad" kick, the commission will most definitly look like a witch hunt.
But there are some commissioners that seem to be trying to find someone to blame. It is part of our litigious culture to say that when something bad happens, there is ALWAYS someone who is directly responsible.
I think some of these guys forget they are trying to be non-partisan. In fact, I don't think it is possible to have a truly non-partisan commission, if it is made up mostly of ex-career politicians. These guys have spent their whole lives learning how to ask a leading question that does little more than express their personal opinion (if you don't believe me, watch congressional hearings on C-Span,) so to ask them to be totally non-partisan and objective is a tall order.
Posts: 786 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Prior to 9/11, there was solid mindset, fairly global in nature, about what terrorists did with airplanes. They either smuggled bombs aboard to blow them up, or hijacked them, took them to someplace sympathetic to them and made demands (and usually had to be dislodged by force).
Training and planning were done for these types of scenarios because that's the way it always worked. If the terrorist was of the suicidal bent, he used a bomb. Nothing you could do about it except try to keep the bomb from getting on the plane.
If the terrorist wanted to live a little longer, he hijacked. Most crisis response training for hijackers centered around waiting until the plane landed somewhere due to lack of fuel, and the hijackers made their demands, possibly released hostages, or started killing passengers.
That was what terrorists did with airplanes. No airline or security force in the world expected parts of the civil air fleet would be used for kamikaze purpose. Maybe that's not how it should have been, but that's how it was.
Posts: 471 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
I can imagine a terrorist injecting botulism or some other toxin into a bottle of shampoo, coming to the US, going into a school, and draining the bottle into the hot water heater, infecting the showers and killing all the jocks.
Does this mean we start checking every shampoo bottle? Imagining something doesn't mean a damn thing without intel suggesting that it might be attempted.
Posts: 1144 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
There really isn't an emphasis on finding ways we can screw up before they happen.
They were running a simulated attack on Iraq before the invasion, and the Marine general who was placed "in command" of the native forces essentially demolished our invasion force without using anything more advanced than ham radios.
He was trying to show that the US forces assume they know everything that's going on because of our superior technology... well, when 90% of the landing fleet was destroyed before it got to the beach, but seemingly private yachts and whatnot that had been strategically placed in the harbor and signaled through normal radio broadcasts... it wasn't pretty.
BUT, instead of analyzing this, and seeing how our forces would react and respond, the military decided to RESET the simulation. They said it wasn't realistic, and we would never be taken that off guard. Well, duh, they just were.
The general in charge resigned his post (retired, really), instead of going along with a simulation designed only to make our forces feel good about themselves.
Stupid. I'm sure there were simulations ran where we were hit hard by terrorists... but no one wanted to honestly address them.
Posts: 106 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
The idea that frightens me (living near some major ports) is the idea that they put a nuke in a container. It wouldn't even have to be a little "suitcase" nuke becuase a container is designed to be taken off the ship and directly attached to the back of a truck.
And how are you going to search every container in every ship before SF, LA, New York, NOLA, Mobile, or Seattle is inside the blast radius?
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Quite frankly, nukes don't bother me nearly as much as viral agents. A nuke is a limited effect weapon. Granted, the limit is huge - it encompasses a lot. But, it stops at a certain point.
Viral agents spread, and have no foreseeable limits. They could, conceivably, end life on this earth as we know it, if the were allowed to get out of hand.
Posts: 106 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Hey David, want do you want me to do, slap a "I Love Bush" bumper sticker on this thread before you'll actually try to give an honest read to my point?
I'll restate it. We have been told that the reason why there was no plans to deal with terrorists flying plane into buildings is that it was pretty much inconceivable that they would do so. I disagree with this assertion. I'm saying that, if it is true that we hadn't a clue that people would try to do this, then this indicates a serious flaw in our intelligence services. We have to opportunity to fix this flaw, especially in regards to other "inconceivable" types of tactics. Or we could just stomp around banging pots and saying "It wasn't my guy's fault!" and ignore any flaws we might find.
We can't defend against threats that we aren't looking for. While I have almost no competence to say that we should have been looking hard at the possibility that people would fly planes into buildings, I can say that it should have at least been considered a conceptual possibility. I don't even have to make this case. The big empty spot on the New York skyline and the collapsed side of the Pentagon make it for me. I won't say that people having thought of the idea that this could happen would have necessarily stopped it, but it damn well would have made it more likely.
There's an old adage that "Generals always prepare to fight the last war." I want to move beyond this to people considering that our enemies are smart, sneaky, and looking for ways to attack us that we haven't thought of.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I understand your point. You are correct. That is why I am submitting my ideas, and I'm wondering what the government could do to prevent them from happening.
If a guy wants to ship a suitcase nuke in a Corola's trunk, wired to a timer, what could we do to stop it?
You can't defend yourself against insanity: you can only stay far the f*ck away from crazy, dangerous people. And when they arm themselves and start attacking, you basically have to kill them. It sucks. Yes, it does. The only other choice is to shut it all down: let nothing at all cross our borders and police our citizens with an iron fist, bub. And that, obvious, sucks even worse. What do you want to do, Squick, once these "unthinkable" plans have been thought up? That's what I'm waiting to hear.
And for crissakes, quit pegging me as a Bush loyalist. If there were a viable alternative and not the freaking milquetoast that is John "I summered in sunny Frahnce" Kerry, I might consider dropping my support for Bush. I'm an atheist, for crying out loud, and his religious spin on everything pisses me off, as does the fact that he didn't invade the Sudan before Iraq. But screw Kerry: no way. Rather Bush call out to his God another four years than support that near-socialist.
Posts: 1144 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
I didn't say that there isn't room for improvment. What I did say is that a lot of attempts have been stopped.
The only way to be compleely safe is to remove all the freedoms that make this country special. I don't trust the millitary, or the goverment, or anyone at all with complete power over my life and liberty. Ashcroft scares the s*it out of me, because he uses systematic desensitization to remove our freedoms from right under our noses, but if we object, then we are un-American at best, and supporting terrorism at worse.
I worked for 3 years at USAMRIID, and I'm not talking about vauge rumors thrice removed. I'm saying that I have seen the security with my own two eyes, and worked with it for 3 years every damn day. I have seen people removed from the facility with improper ID's and security clearance.
I worked with top secrect documents, and I didn't have a TS clearance, so the NSA arrested me and held me for 3 days, and I was on house arrest for 9 more.....so I don't really care if you believe me. I KNOW, in ways that you never will, how serious people are about security.
In an open society there will always be weaknesses in homeland security; it's what an open society risks in order to stay open. It is impossible to guarentee complete saftey. You could spend the entire GNP and there would still be gaps; insanity is wonderfully inventive in finding ways to harm others.
Unless you want to live in a Stalinesque society, learn to deal with it. Or move to a third world country that doesn't have anything worth bombing....but keep in mind that even there, it is still a possibility..
posted
Even though I'm a Bush supporter, I have to disagree with the administration on this one. It must have been conceived that someone could fly a plane into a building at some point. Long before 9/11, my dad told me the containment building around the nuclear reactor is built to take a direct hit from an airplane. At some point, the NRC planned for that.
I will grant Bush this: it was probably never thought of anyone flying a plane into a civilian target. What would be the point? It's has no strategic value. 9/11 didn't diminish our military readiness, it didn't gain our enemies a forward base to strike from, why would they bother?
Well, we can see why now. But three years ago, who here was worried about middle eastern terrorists blowing themselves up in our grocery stores let alone destroying a couple of business towers? Personally, I was far more worried about North Korea's nuclear program or India and Pakistan starting a nuclear war. Iraq bothered me because I felt it was like Germany after World War I. They had no incentive to do better and every reason to strike again. Afghanistan was just coming to our attention for its human rights violations. Nothing there really would have given us any indication that we were about to get sucker punched by some group of psycho Saudi Arabian militants.
To go back and blame Clinton or Bush at this point is just silly. All we can do is crush the network of countries that support terrorism and build democracies in their place. It's a long row to hoe, but what else is there?
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
ElAl's cockpit doors were armored and locked-inflight -- with the cockpit crew armed and inflight air marshals installed -- by Israeli law after the 1968 PFLP* skyjacking, specificly to prevent the use of commercial jets as flying bombs against Israeli buildings and installations.
The WorldTradeCenter was specificly redesigned to withstand a hit from commercial aircraft before building was allowed to commence in 1970. And the two towers did. The reason the towers fell was because of paperwork fires melting the steel support beams: which might have survived even that unforeseen hazard had they been fireproofed with the asbestos specified in that redesign rather than the inferior replacement fireproofing.
There were bills introduced every CongressionalSession for over 30years to both the Senate and House Transportation Committees to prevent access to the cockpit of commercial airliners, to bring security up to near-Israeli standards. And killed in-committee due to strong lobbying (read bribery via campaign contributions, etc) by US airlines. Among many other safety features to prevent skyjacking and airbombings ala Lockerbie, the 1997 GoreCommission's Report on AirportSecurity specificly recommended blocking access to the cockpit, and was killed in-committee by both Houses of Congress.
Now do you wonder why the House and Senate passed a 9/11 Victims'Compensation bill specificly designed to discourage lawsuits against the airlines? To prevent court discovery subpoenas which would have led directly to the Senators and Representatives taking bribes from airlines to kill the airline safety bills?
posted
Ok, now I'm confused. If we made the buildings to withstand the attack, what more did you want them to do? Someone on the other side of the planet used the plane to hurt people thirty years ago and we should have gone all reactionary and lock the cockpit up like a safe? I think that would have been pretty tough to explain to the stockholders. "Sorry your dividend checks aren't bigger. We had to install large amounts of metal on the planes and use more fuel every flight cause terrorists on the other side of the planet have attacked people that aren't us."
I still say there was no reasonable way to expect the attacks. We did what we considered reasonable to prevent it. That wasn't enough. Now we can see there will never be enough to prevent an attack. All we can do is destroy the nations that support terrorism. And that still won't stop the psychos. It'll just slow them down some.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote:The reason the towers fell was because of paperwork fires melting the steel support beams.
Really? I didn't think paper burned hot enough. I'd always heard that it was the burning jet fuel that melted the support beams.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
While I'm not sure about the paperwork fires, either and am inclined to agree with the jet fuel causing the supports to melt, I do know that airplane hijackings,terrorism and security has been a known quantity for a long time and that the airlines have fought against various proposed measures to make the airplaines more secure. As well, it's been known for a long time that airports haven't been very secure at all.
No one is claiming that the US has to protect itself against every eventuality. However, to claim that airplanes and airports didn't have known security problems before 9/11 and that knowledgeable people hadn't called for them to be resolved before 9/11 is silly.
Is it so unreasonable to ask if our country was doing what it reasonable should have been doing to protect itself before 9/11? Is it unreasonable to ask why 9/11 happened? How in God's green earth can we not ask these questions?
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Ok, Storm. Let's play what if. Say back in 68 we had installed the locked doors and shut the cockpit off from the rest of the plane. So some wacko gets on to force the plane down somewhere. (What was the motivation for the guys who'd want to go to Cuba anyway? Why not just take another non-US flight headed there?) Anyway, he gets on the plane and sees a giant door he can't get through. What would he do next? I think he'd start killing passengers until he got what he wanted.
In that context, I can see where the airlines would feel the locked doors would do more harm than good. We were still operating in our semi-isolationist mindset. Terrorism was something that only happened far away. Why would anyone travel that far to do an insignificant (we assumed) amount of damage? I can also see how the airlines would fear lawsuits from the families of anyone hurt by their new policy. So they spent some money then to save themselves money in the future. It was a reasonable gamble. They were wrong.
Unfortunetly, all of life is a gamble. You can either be paralysed with fear or you can do your best and get on with your life. As a Christian, I don't fear death. Death is hardly the worst thing you can do to me because I believe eternity is perfect.
I stand by what I said before. All the reasonable prevention in the world will not stop terrorists. We have to accept that. We can minimize our risk, but our defenses will never be perfect. No one, no business, and no administration, can ever change that.
quote: You can either be paralysed with fear or you can do your best
How do you know whether a person or an organization is trying their best? How do you know the difference between not doing anything and not doing everything?
quote: All the reasonable prevention in the world
How do you know what is reasonable and unreasonable prevention?
posted
"...it was the burning jet fuel that melted the support beams"
That's what I heard too during the initial speculation. However I also thought I read after the official engineering postmortem that it was decided that jet fuel didn't burn hot enough and that most of the jet fuel volitalized/gassified and escaped as pollution rather than burned. For some reason, my PDF reader won't open the FEMA files linked to above, perhaps you can confirm or correct my impression.
When paperwork is heated to high temperature in confined spaces, the hydrocarbon chains are broken to produce burning gases and pollution, leaving behind less volatile carbon. Just as high temperature in a low oxygen environment turns wood into hotter-burning charcoal and coal into hotter-burning coke (used to smelt iron/steel), paper densely packed in cabinetry is turned into hotter-burning carbon (along with a residue which will become ash).
posted
3,000 gallons were burned on impact (the mushroom clouds) and they estimate about half went up as an aerosol. The other half (for some reason, 10 - 3 = 8 in their math class, because they keep talking about half the remainder being 4,000 gallons) either spilled on the floor and burned where it spilled, or it was "distributed" to other floors and absorbed by carpeting, furniture, etc. Anyway, they say that standing fuel on the ground will burn off in approximately 5 minutes. However, like they said, the fuel traveled to other floors and was absorbed by the carpeting and furniture and eventually, everything that was combustible was consumed as fuel.
I thought the point was that having that much fuel on board pretty much ensured that multiple floors would be heavily involved in fire. I don't think that it was only the fuel that burned, causing the structure to collapse. If there had been less fuel however, most of it would have burned away in the initial hit and would not have spilled out into the building, being soaked up by the carpeting and furniture.
If I drop a match in my house, I'm likely to burn a scorch mark in my carpet. However, if I soak my carpet in kerosene and then drop a match, I'm likely to burn down my entire house.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
While the site itself seems a bit too conspiracy-minded (haven't read it), it does contain an HTML-version of FEMA'sWorldTradeCenterCollapseReport, though it also contains some highlighted-in-red nonFEMA commentary by the person who originally transcribed the PDFed report.
I'm finding myself wondering more and more about why government and government-funded sites are using the costly&time-wasting-to-scroll PDF instead of the freely&quickly readable and easily transcribable HTML.
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aspectre, Adobe Reader is free. Anyone can read pdfs, and they maintain formating and graphics.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:I'm finding myself wondering more and more about why government and government-funded sites are using the costly PDF instead of the freely readable and easily transcribable HTML.
Just guessing, but you can PDF a document in a few seconds and not have to go through HTML coding to make it Web-accessible. Also, once PDF'd, the document can't be altered, unlike HTML where you can copy and alter the text before posting on another site. I hope that makes sense - I'm severely sleep-deprived.
Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote: It's my understanding that there were indications that al-Queda was planning to hijcak airplanes inside the US.
Yes, but there were also millions of other pieces of intel suggesting other types of attacks. The trick is knowing which piece of intel is correct ahead of time. It is easy to go through the stack and pick things out after the attacks, it is much harder to know which piece of paper is correct before the attack happens. You cannot act on everything that comes in...for one we would be in a police state, and secondly you would be focusing so much on things that won't happen that you might miss something else.
Posts: 1901 | Registered: May 2004
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posted
Even though people say that history repeats itself, saying that because kamakazis used planes as weapons in WWII we should have given more credence to is it laughable.
Posts: 1621 | Registered: Oct 2001
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