mvscal wrote:Sudden Sam wrote:So you're comfortable with the fact that on September 11, 2001, the United States of America was incapable of scrambling fighters to protect the nation's most heavily populated city (thanks MS) and its capital?
How, exactly, would these scrambled fighters have protected our most densely populated city from hijacked airliners?
Why won't any of you assholes even
try to answer that question?
THis is actually a perfectly valid and important question. But just because it presents a nest of perplexing and disturbing implications certainly doesn't make its answer any less clear.
First, are we to assume that if the NORAD system works properly--jets scrambled in minutes, just like during the DOZENS of "false alarms" the previous year--that there's nothing they can do to stop a lumbering airliner?
Sure, if it's right over Wall Street the idea of shooting it down appears just about as bad as letting it take out the towers. But that's not the real propspect at all.
If the NORAD jets were properly dispatched, they could have intercepted the hijacked airliners way out in the countryside--over the Catskills, let's say. Further, if the Atta and his fellow amateur pilots suddenly had airforce jets buzzing all over them, would they really have stayed so cool? Are we really to assume that EVEN IN LIEU of shooting them down, that no significant and telling interference could have been rendered?
Okay, so the hijacked airliners surge on towards N.Y., undeterred, well, the option is front and center to drop them. Sure, it would be excruciatingly painful--the utter shame--of having to kill innocent Americans without any positive proof that the WTC attack was forthcoming. But the option should have at least been there.
What's the excuse for the biggest failure in security in America's history?
88 insists that there were
ONLY FOUR fighter jets available to protect the entire eastern seaboard (due to Clinton's cuts, etc).
Do you actually believe this for one second? Apparently, the Rovian/Limpdick style is simply to offer the most preposterous reversal of reality--and then watch as a LOT of people passively swallow it. Those who object just get the standard smear treatment.
In point of fact, seven airstations were on FULL ALERT to protect the continental U.S. on 9/11.
The Air National Guard maintains seven alert sites with 14 fully armed fighters and pilots on call around the clock. Besides Tyndall AFB, alert birds also sit armed and ready at; Homestead Air Reserve Base (ARB), Homestead, Florida; Langley AFB, Hampton, Virginia; Otis Air National Guard (ANG), Falmouth, Massachusetts; Oregon ANG, Portland, Oregon; March ARB, Riverside, California; and Ellington ANG, Houston, Texas. Obviously the western U.S. bases here were not a factor.
But here's twenty-eight more airstations that were well within range to scramble fighter jets, but, astonishingly, didn't:
Andrews AFB 11 miles SE of Washington D.C.
Bolling AFB 3 miles south of US Capitol
Dover AFB Dover, DE
Hanscom AFB 17 miles northwest of Boston, MA
McGuire AFB 18 miles southeast of Trenton, NJ
Wright-Patterson AFB Dayton, OH
Cape Cod, MA AFS
New Boston, NH AFS
Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve Bases
Atlantic City Airport, NJ 10 miles west of Atlantic City
Barnes Municipal Airport, MA 3 miles northwest of Westfield
Bradley International Airport, CN Windsor Locks
Byrd Field, VA 4 miles southeast of Richmond
Eastern West Virginia Regional Airport 4 miles south of Martinsburg
Frances S. Gabreski Airport, NY Westhampton Beach
Greater Pittsburgh International Airport, PA 15 miles nw of Pittsburgh
Harrisburg International Airport, PA 10 miles east of Harrisburg
Martin State Airport, MD 8 miles east of Baltimore
New Castle County Airport, DE 5 miles south of Wilmington
Pease ANGS, NH Portsmouth
Quonset State Airport, RI Providence
Rickenbacker ANGB, OH Columbus, Oh
Stewart International Airport, NY Newburgh, NY
Toledo Express Airport, Swanton, Ohio
Westover ARB, MA 5 miles northeast of Chicopee
Willow Grove Naval Air Station, PA 14 miles north of Philadelphia
Yeager Airport, WVA 4 miles northeast of Charleston
Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport ARS, OH 16 miles north of Youngstown
Also, there is an Air Defense Intercept Zone just off shore for the entire Atlantic Coast. This zone is constantly being patrolled. In general fast movers would not need to be scrambled. They can be diverted from routine patrol and training flights for the intercept. The odds are that on a beautiful blue morning in September many flights would be on patrol just off shore. It would be most improbable that even one commercial flight could go more than fifteen minutes without being intercepted.
But as it was, NO JETS were scrambled. And moreover, the 9/11 Commission Report shamelessly avoids this glaring series of facts. The mealy excuse trotted out well after the fact--something about a large War Games excercise somehow cunfusing ALL of the military personel, is patantly pathetic.