Wouldn't stopping the hijackings have been enough?

[skjpm]

Since we had some sense that there were going to be major hijackings somewhere in about a 3-month period, wouldn't some effort to stop these hijackings have been enough to stop 9/11? I mean, if we just stop that initial phase, then the rest would also be stopped. So saying that we didn't know they were going to crash into buildings doesn't seem to be an excuse. If we know they are going to hijack, and we stop them from getting off the ground, then we've solved the problem. So why didn't Rice act on the intelligence concerning hijackings?

[freetobegay]

1. Simple solution like that

Would really baffle a neo cons mind.

[ramblin_dave]

2. If it can be shown that Bush was willing to let hijackings happen

then that alone is enough to get him executed.

[baby_bear]

3. I was wondering, too.

Specifically, how long did it take to fortify cockpit doors on all large airliners after 9/11? Not long, I believe. Couldn't that have been done during August 2001 after they had received the intelligence about upcoming hijackings?

s_m

[skjpm]

4. Let's say they check every single bag of luggage

OK, people wouldn't have been happy, but what if they took a simple step like that for a few months? If they had caught one of the sets of hijackers, they would have caught them all. I mean, four planes! A little increase in security based on even vague threat warnings could have stopped the whole thing.

[belle]

8. They didn't even need to do that. They HAD info on at least some of

the hijackers. If they'd just actually talked to each other they could have stopped that plan. But yes: the OBL thing is a red herring. They didn't need to have actually caught him to stop 9/11. Just be aware that he was planning something big and PAY ATTENTION TO IT.

[outinforce]

10. How Might YOU Have Reacted IF

Just curious about something.

How might YOU, personally, have reacted if Bush and Ashcroft had come out during the summer of 2001 and said, "My fellow Americans, we face a grave threat from within our own shores. Forces intent on killing as many Americans as possible in spectacular and terrible ways a working right now to carry out their plans. CIA and FBI intelligence point to the possibility of US Commercial jets being hi-jacked. SO we have ordered all luggage and all carry on baggage of every passenger boarding commercial jets taking off within the USA to be searched - by hand. You will not be permitted to carry on to the airplane with you anything that could possibly be used as a weapon -- including nail files, scissors, or anything with a sharp or cutting edge. Thank you and good night"?

I don't know about you, but I would have first raised the middle finger of one of my hands in the direction of the TV set with Bush and Ashcroft on it, and told them what I thougt of such a plan to restrict my freedoms. Then I would have written a letter to my congressman an Senators demanding a Congressional investigation. And I might even have made a scene if anyone had tried to tell me I could not carry a nail file onto an airplane.

But that's just how I would have reacted, I guess. I would not have been inclined to believe chimpy, especially if what he wanted to do was to restrict my freedom.

[amazona]

5. well, either they're incompetent or LIHOP is true

Clearly, if you prevent the hijackings, you prevent the fall of the towers, the attack on the pentagon, and all the rest. The hijacker we hear on the Cleveland air traffic control tape clearly says he has a bomb, not just a knife. The released call from one of the flight attendants in January revealed that on at least one other flight -- I don't have the article in front of me, but I think it was AA11, that there was a bomb as well as a knife. Ramped-up security would have caught people getting on airplanes with entire damn bombs. If I were Rice, I would have insisted on meeting with airline CEOs and FAA personally to make sure they were taking their security VERY seriously. I would have also tried to get Chimpy to get his tail off the ranch and into some of these meetings. If the CEO of American Airlines was at lunch with the President and the National Security Advisor, and they told him, you know, before the end of the year, there is going to be an attempt to hijack multiple airliners, probably on the same day -- you better believe he would have hopped on his people and kicked some tail to beef up security.

Instead, that summer the complaints were being published very loudly in the press that flights were not getting off the ground in time. Remember? It was the scandal of summer 2001 that flights were being delayed so often.

If your focus is on getting flights into the air, you are going to urge people to be a little more free-wheeling with security.

The CEOs needed to hear from the President and Rice that they should just ignore the flack and keep on with the stepped-up security precautions that they had put in place in the spring of 2001 but abandoned sometime in June because of complaints about all the flight delays.

I believe if Rice had spoken out...if Clarke had spoken out...it could have prevented one or more hijacking. If Bush had met with the airline CEOs, I don't believe these hijackings would have occurred. Especially if at the same time he asked Rove to contact the media and tell them to back the fuck off the "delayed flights" stories.

9-11 simply didn't have to happen.

If you assume that they WANTED it to happen for strategic reasons, their actions make a lot more sense. But these folks are not the best and the brightest and, for now, without more evidence, I think we can still accept "criminal negligence contributing to homicide" as a believable explanation. In other words, Rice and Bush and others belong in prison, certainly, but I wouldn't yet feel ready to charge them with capital offenses. Does this make sense?

[gbwarming]

6. Sure, if you want to just 'swat flies' nt

[slor]

7. That is my point...

why did they not try to stop the hijackings! This is the only smoking gun that is needed, though we shall see that there were plenty of warnings.

[madmax]

9. That's exactly what sticks in my craw

4 planes go off course and NO ONE does a damn thing. Hell, I will never fly again. I haven't since 9/11 and never will. Our government can't protect us.

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

11. I still wonder about that whole thing with the actor James Woods

I saw him on some show ages ago explaining that whole story how he was flying NY to LA and saw some suspicious guys, alerted the crew, and got talked to by the FBI befire 9-11. He was convinced it was a trial run. That information must have gone somewhere pretty high up! How come nobody has looked into this?

[Jose Diablo]

12. Yes, but more to the point

a reasonable person would ask themselves, "now why would a hijacker want to actually pilot the plane, after all, traditional hijackers just tell the pilot to fly me to Havana".

By asking that question, then the only answer to that question would be "because the pilot would refuse to fly into a building or deliberately crash the aircraft like the hijacker wanted".

[DoYouEverWonder]

13. The airlines weren't even following basic security

no less heightened security measures that they could have taken without the passengers hardly noticing.

Instead, on Aug. 28th, 2001, I was able to walk onto a plane at LaGuardia Airport and I couldn't even get the agent at the gate to look at my ticket. For some reason US Air didn't even open the counter at the gate until the plane arrived 45 minutes late. And when it finally did arrive they just let everyone on without checking anybody in, because they were in a hurry to turn the plane around.

If the FAA had bothered to warn the airports, you would think they would at the least make sure they checked everyone's ticket and ID?