Quote:
Originally Posted by WTF
And we did not suspect that the Towers would be a target? The WTC had been targeted before. Nothing was done.
We are still on some stupid alert for flying in this country. Orange? Do you know how many false alerts there are?
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No, we didn't suspect it. That is just 20/20 hindsight.
BTW, doesn't the second paragraph in your post kind of refute the first paragraph? There were a lot of false alarms in 2001, also.
With as many targets as we have in a continent-sized country of 300+ million, there is no reason to assume they would have hit the same target again. Even if we DID think they would go for the WTC again, why wouldn't we be looking for another car or truck bomb? And the WTC had already changed the parking security to make sure no more big vehicles could get near the WTC.
Even if we suspected plane hijacking, why would we have suspected IN 2001 they would crash the planes into anything? Sure we do NOW, but that's because we have seen it happen. In 2001, we would have assumed it would be hostage taking, just like all of the plane hijackings in the 1970s and 1980s. The ragheads had never done kamikaze missions before and the default position of security personnel is always to assume this crisis is like the last crisis and to act and negotiate accordingly.
And if we did suspect a plane on a kamikaze mission, would we not IN 2001 have suspected an attack on the White House or the Capitol Building while Congress was in session, or the Pentagon (that one WOULD have been true)?
Sure we know NOW what Al Queda is capable of. But not then.
Also, there are about 10,000 flights a day in this country. Even NOW we cannot defend them all. Even if we had specific information that AQ was going to attack a US commercial plane some time later this year, what would we do? Search everybody twice? Cut liquids down from 3 ounces to 1 ounce?
The truth is, we could only warn people to be on extra alert. Many wouldn't fly and the rest would be looking to kill any passenger that causes problems
Speaking of which, the only REAL defense is passengers rising up and killing hijackers with their bare hands. And frankly, that happened once already when some crazy guy tried to kick in the cockpit door on a plane. The passengers "subdued" him and in the process choked him to death.
And that is probably why AQ hasn't tried more hijackings. Even they know if won't work again. Which is why they have switched to shoe bombs and underwear bombs.
The current failures in security are nothing like the 9-11 failures. This was much more preventable. I don't mean we could have stopped the rioters, but we could have evacuated and cleared out the secret documents and files. And probably saved lives.
