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‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’

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Re: ‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’

#91

Post by cryptonector »

not2b wrote: post #88

Dick Cheney basically pulled off a coup that day. George W Bush wasn't incapacitated. He never put Cheney in charge. But Cheney just took over. He started giving orders and everyone else was too stunned to do anything but follow.

It wasn't even a coup attempt because no one, but no one, thought of it as such then, as as soon as POTUS was back in town, no one, but no one, challenged his authority. A coup attempt would have ended with the VP in chains or the President deposed.

No, this was an emergency that everyone was unprepared for, so they winged it. And they did alright, even though it was utter chaos. If the President has been at the WH, or in good enough communication with the WH, I'm pretty sure the VP would not have been anything like "in command", though the President might have delegated some authority to him. As it was, POTUS had to get to AF1 first, then in the air, and probably a lot of work had to be done to get connectivity back to the WH makeshift situation room.

You have to go back to Reagan getting shot for something just slightly closer to a coup attempt, when the Secretary State ran around saying he was in charge (but no one gave him the time of day). That must have looked rather strange to a lot of people, but since no one took him seriously, and since it wasn't that long after the JFK assassination, which meant everyone remembered the basic chain of succession, the fact that no one took Alexander seriously was exactly as it should have been. Alexander, however, really had no clue, and showed he was not capable in a crisis.

Re: ‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’

#92

Post by 7952 »

colordrops wrote: post #39
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." -Hanlon's Razor

Was Hitler just "stupid"? Hanlon's razor is used by the malicious to fool the stupid.

Although Hitler was monumentally stupid. There are numerous stories of how Germany's war effort was undermined by Hitler and his top men making terrible decisions. For example on the night of 5th June 1944 Hitler gave strict instructions not to be woken. As a result he was not told about d day. And due to existing orders the Panza divisions could not be deployed without his approval.

So what about the Holocaust? Well the Nazis believed that the world's was under attack from Jewish and socialist aggression. They believed that it was a massive and imminent existential threat. And that their actions were defending their country and humanity from evil. From this twisted perspective the Nazis actions were logical. They saw themselves as the good guys. The basis for all this evil are a few insanely stupid beliefs.

Re: ‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’

#93

Post by 01100011 »

throwbrow wrote: post #41

I was riding the 7 train from Astoria, Queens, to my job at the big Citigroup tower in Long Island City. It was after the first plane hit and, with the 7 being an outdoor subway line with a great view of the Manhattan skyline, we in the first car could see the gaping hole and smoke billowing. I assumed it was an accident. When I got to work I said dismissively to colleagues, “That must be the dumbest pilot ever.” We…

It's hard to communicate the sense of paranoia that gripped the nation in the years after 9/11. The DC sniper didn't help. It was hopefully the closest thing to mass hysteria that I'll ever face.

I remember people bingeing CNN for days, feeling like the next attack could come at any moment. Every attack scenario you could dream up seemed like a real possibility.

Re: ‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’

#94

Post by fit2rule »

Its one thing to read this story and understand the tragedy that occurred on that day.

But its another thing to understand the tragedy that has been standard fare for hundreds of thousands of people around the world, every day, as Americas illegal wars continue.

One bomb dropped every twenty minutes for the last twenty years, is the context we need to understand - mostly on innocent people.

Americans cannot ask for sympathy while ignoring their own aggression. It is high time for the war criminals that put us in this position to feel justice. That means Cheney, it means Bush, and it means Rice. America has become a criminal thug nation, and its people callously ignore the victims of America's illegal wars while demanding justice for the blowback suffered by the entire country on 9/11.

If 9/11 upsets you, consider Mosul. Consider All Raqqah and Aleppo and Baghdad. These places have suffered 100x worse than any New Yorker ever did. And the reason it continues is because the American people don't have the courage to face the truth: America has illegally invaded, and utterly destroyed, civilization around the world.

Re: ‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’

#95

Post by malandrew »

simonh wrote: post #83
toomanybeersies wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure someone more qualified and experienced with phone networks can chip in, but from memory this is by design on the phone network, when it gets overloaded it just starts to connect randomly to reduce load. I can't remember exact details, because it's not my area of expertise, but I vaguely remember my father (who's a telecommunications network engineer) talking about it years ago.

That doesn’t seem to make sense on the face of it. Connecting to the wrong number doesn’t reduce load, because the network still has to carry the call. Why not just fail to connect? I know you’re not a network engineer, but it just doesn’t look right.

Well it could reduce load if making a call is a much more expensive than a connected call. If the call, fails, I’ll try calling back and so will others. If I’m connected, I first need to establish comms with the person on the other end and determine it’s a misconmection before I can hang up and try again.

Re: ‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’

#96

Post by hencq »

01100011 wrote: post #93
throwbrow wrote: post #41

I was riding the 7 train from Astoria, Queens, to my job at the big Citigroup tower in Long Island City. It was after the first plane hit and, with the 7 being an outdoor subway line with a great view of the Manhattan skyline, we in the first car could see the gaping hole and smoke billowing. I assumed it was an accident. When I got to work I said dismissively to colleagues, “That must be the dumbest pilot ever.” We…

It's hard to communicate the sense of paranoia that gripped the nation in the years after 9/11. The DC sniper didn't help. It was hopefully the closest thing to mass hysteria that I'll ever face. I remember people bingeing CNN for days, feeling like the next attack could come at any moment. Every attack scenario you could dream up seemed like a real possibility.

Yeah, to me it felt that's when the 90's with its optimism were truly over.

Re: ‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’

#97

Post by simonh »

koonsolo wrote: post #84
plutonorm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, it seems a little convenient that they didn't have to shoot the plane down. Do we have any evidence that they didn't shoot the plane down and then construct the passengers saving the day story after the fact?

You got downvoted, but still there is no certainty on this. Fighter planes were there, they knew where they were headed. Shooting down the plane above non-residential area seemed like the best option. On the other hand, passengers overmastering the terrorist through the cockpit door already seems unlikely, and more unlikely still once overmastered, not trying to land safely. So yeah, bringing news that you shot down…

I'm comfortable there is certainty. There is considerable evidence that the passengers attacked the hijackers, from multiple different sources including mobile calls from passengers to family, air traffic control and the plane's black box. Each one of these lines of evidence involved at least dozens of people who would know there was a cover up, maybe hundreds. None of the people involved in accumulating that evidence have any vested interest in supporting a cover story. So the cover up would have to encompass civilian, government and military personnel, employees of multiple companies and victim family members. That's way too many for me to accept as remotely reasonable, especially when much of the evidence came out very quickly, before any possible cover up operation could have come into play.

As with any of these conspiracy theories, it's useful to consider who would know about the cover up, who would have to be actively involved in promoting it, and what their motivation would be. Take the flat earth as an example. There are tens of thousands of aircraft in the air at any given moment, all of them navigating using systems that assume the earth is a globe. Before modern systems, pilots and navigators calculated routes by hand. They all assumed the earth is a globe and if they were wrong their calculations would all have been massively in error. So essentially every single aviator in all of history and every nation on Earth would have to be in on the conspiracy. I've not even started on marine navigation.

Re: ‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’

#98

Post by MrGilbert »

I just came home, and my mom had the TV running, saying that "there is something going on in New York". I remember seeing the burning tower, and heard the voice in the TV say something like "a plane hit the tower". My first thought was that this wasn't an accident, but that a fighter jet might have attacked this building. Then the events unfolded, and the next day in school, I remember our history teacher saying something like "I was up all night - as most of you probably too, trying to grasp every bit of information you can get." We feared the response these events might cause.

I was 15 years old at that time, and I remember precisely what I did. I was born, raised, and still live in Western Europe.

Re: ‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’

#99

Post by jacobush »

throwbrow wrote: post #41

I was riding the 7 train from Astoria, Queens, to my job at the big Citigroup tower in Long Island City. It was after the first plane hit and, with the 7 being an outdoor subway line with a great view of the Manhattan skyline, we in the first car could see the gaping hole and smoke billowing. I assumed it was an accident. When I got to work I said dismissively to colleagues, “That must be the dumbest pilot ever.” We…

I was working on a large airport in Europe, on-site. We got notice that US-bound planes were diverted to turn back over the Atlantic and come back to us. Then the news started trickling in. I immediately thought "they are going to hit Iraq for this".

Re: ‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’

#100

Post by Wildgoose »

What amazed me was how quickly the responsible parties were identified. Just about the only website that kept up in England was Slashdot and the discussions about who and what was happening very rapidly provided the disparate pieces of information required.

Truly the Wisdom of Crowds.

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