why were the "19 hijackers" not at all concerned

[laruemtt]

about NORAD's protocol for dealing with hijackings? we can assume they were loco but not stupid. in their years of preparation, they must have known NORAD would have fighter planes come up to meet them and if necessary shoot them down. i've never heard this angle addressed before but might have missed it. anybody?

[hack89]

1. What exactly were NORAD's protocols?

might as well know what we are discussing.

[we can do it]

46. Apparently Do Nothing While 4 Hijacked Planes Fly All Around the East US

Is that what you're implying?

[greyl]

2. Why would you believe they weren't concerned?

False inference.
They were at least concerned enough to not hijack planes taking off from California, eh?

[laruemtt]

3. i don't see that as being a false inference.

they were confident enough to believe they would be left alone long enough to crash into the towers. they would have to have thought they would not be intercepted. why go through all that training to be able to hit a target if you thought the fighter planes would take you down before then? they were not stupid. they had done their homework.

From interview with David Ray Griffin:

<snip>

Normally, the time that passes between the sign that an airplane has possibly been hijacked — you know, it goes radically of course, or they lose radio contact, or the transponder is turned off, any sign like that — within a minute the FAA controller notifies NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). That's simultaneously notifying the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon. NORAD has the assignment of ordering jets scrambled — sent up — from the nearest airport. And that normally takes another minute. And then, according to NORAD itself, jet fighters can go from scramble order to 29,000 feet in two and a half minutes. And then these jets, if they're F-15s, can fly at 1,850 mph. So, given the number of bases we have in the country, almost any plane would be intercepted with ten to fifteen minutes.

And yet on 9-11, Flight 11, according to the official story, was known to be possibly hijacked at 8:14 am. It did not hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center until 8:46. That was 32 minutes. And then, with that warning, Flight 175 was known to be hijacked certainly by 8:42, and yet another 21 minutes went by before it hit the South Tower at 9:03. And then another very long time goes by — another 35 minutes — until whatever it was that hit the Pentagon hit it. And that was actually 42 minutes from the time that, according to the official story, the air traffic controllers saw it turn around and head back towards Washington.

Flight 175 Nears the South Tower
Why Weren't Any of the Planes Flight 175 Strikes the South Tower
Intercepted?
So, these are extreme examples of not following Standard Operating Procedures.

<snip>

More: http://www.garlicandgrass.org/issue6/PerfectCircle_Griffin.cfm

[greyl]

4. Nevertheless, it is a false inference.

You have zero reason to believe that they weren't concerned, but you try to build on that false inference to reach other hasty conclusions.

On the other hand, there is reason to believe that our government wasn't concerned enough about terrorists hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings.

[laruemtt]

5. okay, let's say i want to

climb this peak in another country. now it is known the country that the peak is in guards it jealously and no one has been able to climb it yet. the security they have around that mountain is the best security in the world. nevertheless, i work out and get good in great shape. i even do altitude training. i save up all my money and come to peace with the fact that i will probably die climbing the mountain. for some reason i assume i'll be the first to get through and get to climb this mountain with no one stopping me.

this is what you say i am "inferring." what else are we to "infer" considering everything they went through to succeed in their plan.

[greyl]

6. "for some reason i assume"

The character in your hypothetical(you) is drawing a hasty and unwarranted conclusion.
Just because your character assumes rather than 'hopes' they will succeed, doesn't mean the hijackers had 100% confidence and weren't concerned about failure.

[theSaiGirl]

7. No hijackers ... no planes .... controlled demolition ... media psy-ops

But just keep tossing out those straw-man arguments.
Pretty soon people will get bored and wander off anyway.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[laruemtt]

8. i guess i'm having a

"failure of imagination" in getting their hubris on this one point when they had so many other details well thought out, prepared for and down pat. but i'll go slink off and think about it some more. just trying to figure out all the angles, just like you.

[greyl]

9. Ok, consider religious fanaticism then. Can you see hubris in that?

Also, you're speaking as though no succesful hijackings ever occurred before 9/11.

Previous success + religious insanity = hubris writ large.

[laruemtt]

12. why do i have the feeling

if we continued in this "debate / argument," i'd come out doubting my own name. problem here is, i trust my analysis at least as much as you trust yours. i'm not letting it go. maybe here for a while. but of course theory is not required to pass a test in the DU 9/11 dungeon before being fact.

[greyl]

13. It's not that big of a deal, really.

I'm pretty sure that your sense of self isn't grounded in this one idea. ;)

Just make a minor adjustment to your original extreme statement:

"why were the "19 hijackers" not at all concerned?" to "why did the 19 hijackers take such big risk?"

Then, see how religious fanaticism can answer the adjusted version. They probably knew they were going to die that day, so what did they have to lose? Compare the potential loss with what they thought they were gaining.

[laruemtt]

15. "why did the hijackers take such a big risk?"

is not jumping to a conclusion, but "they were not concerned" is? they were suicidal and fanatics but they were very methodical. i don't see them leaving such a surety as the fact that fighter planes scramble for hijackings to risk their mission.

anyhoo, you mentioned "sense of self" - what's that? i guess you'd have to have come from my extremely dysfunctional family to get the joke... :crazy:

[greyl]

17. You said "they weren't at all concerned".

You had no good reason to believe that.

You're trying to say that because it was so risky, they must have been totally unconcerned with failure in order to even attempt it.

The risk involved is a foregone conclusion.

[laruemtt]

18. with all due respect,

the original meaning of my OP is getting lost in all this parsing of words. i think my overall point was clear, even if a few of my words may have not been "concised" down enough.

p.s. are you a logic / philos. prof? Dr. Green, is this you?

[mirandapriestly]

34. That is the intent of the poster, because you make an

excellent point

[greyl]

42. No, the point you are trying to make isn't lost.

It's just that we've discovered that there is no good reason to assume that the hijackers "weren't at all concerned" about NORAD procedures.
Sloppy writing can be an indication of sloppy thinking. If it doesn't make logical sense on the page, it's usually only through self-deception and emotional bias that it 'seems' to make sense in the brain.

"p.s. are you a logic / philos. prof? Dr. Green, is this you?"

No, and it shouldn't matter if I was.

[laruemtt]

43. hey, just a moment of levity there, mon.

chill. sometimes "sloppy thinking" is in the mind of the beholder. i suppose it is too late to go back to the OP and change "weren't at all concerned" to something not so sloppy - perhaps "weren't sufficiently concerned," or is that still too general and subjective? ok, so my wording could have been more concise, but could we move on to the point of the post, which was the "hijackers" worked in methodical ways, had a specific objective and put a lot of effort into making that objective reality. i find it hard to believe that as methodical as they were and as much study they put into achieving their goal over a period of years that they would leave something as certain as the response to hijacking protocol that was in place to protect the most well-guarded building on earth - the pentagon - to chance - the chance that that day this protocol would just by luck not be functional. oy.

[hang a left]

39. Do you think they had a last meal?

Was is roast pork?

[laruemtt]

41. ya, fed to them by a lapdancer -

you know how those hyper-religiously motivated people are :silly: ...................

[theSaiGirl]

14. No security cam videos ... no hijackers ..... no NORAD stand-down

Really the simplest explanation of all, in the complete screaming absence of any plausible evidence from the FBI.

Except, of course, for the 19 pictures they broadcast all over the networks and newspapers within about 48 hours of 9/11.
Now THAT'S quick investigative work isn't it ?

Only ... it appears that some of the 19 "hijackers" in those broadcast photos turned up alive and vehehmently protesting their innocence.

Faking a false-flag synthetic "terrorist" event only required rigging the Towers (and WTC7) for demolition, manufacturing the network broadcast video for CNN Psy-Ops Central, and the use of a few drones or missiles.

And the dumb, wilful gullibility of the American television audience.
They didn't need a NORAD "stand-down" order ?

Who needs NORAD ?
Who needs real "planes" ?
Who needs real "hijackers" ?

Anyone want to open up the rotten can of worms around all the "war game" exercises, COINCIDENTALLY going on that morning ?
(Amalgam Virgo, Northern Warrior, Northern Vigilance, Tripod II, etc.)
(which incuded simulating a small "plane" crashing into a building at the NRO campus).

All spelled out here in excruciatingly painful detail:
http://team8plus.org/news.php

Cynthia McKinney nailed Rumsfeld and Myers on those war-game exercises in a Congressional hearing broadcast on C-SPAN.
But that got zero coverage in the controlled media.

But that's ok.
Just keep spinning the official Hollywood plot-line about "19 crazed hijackers with boxcutters, masterminded by a dialysis patient, from a cave in lower Afghanistan"... until people surrrender from sheer exhaustion.

Then, when people start to ask questions about NORAD's "response" (or lack thereof), "greyl" and co-thinkers (probably LARED and "Kevin Fenton") can trot out the old, tired and now-predictable refrain about "failure and incompetence" .

Yes indeed ... as the 9/11 Commission dog-and-pony show hacks Kean and Hamilton would say, 9/11 happened because of "a failure of the imagination".

[laruemtt]

16. something sure ain't like what

they're telling us. too. many. things. just. don't. make. any. sense. i'll let my mind stretch for one or two things highly improbable / impossible elements of this whole thing. but crissakes, taken from every angle, the whole thing is too too much twilight zonish.

[hack89]

20. Some questions to clear the air..

1. Prior to 9/11 how many armed F15s were on strip alert in the USA?

2. How many bases were involved?

3. How were these dedicated aircraft impacted by those exercises you talk about?

[theSaiGirl]

23. Clearing the air on NORAD

Andrews Air Force Base is 10 minutes from the Pentagon.

On a day when the President was flying in and out of DC, on a mission to Sarasota, Forida to read "pet goat" stories to school kids (no offense intended to one of my favorite posters at this thread),
it goes without saying that there would combat-ready squadrons ready to scramble within minutes, if only to guard against any possible threat to the President on Air Force One.

There have always been at least 2 combat-ready squadrons standing by at Andrews for routine diplomatic flights arriving or departing from the the District of Corruption.

If Tony Blair flies in or out, you better believe they are ready to scramble immediately.
Six minutes at most to fire-up the engines and get aloft.

I know this ... because Andrews AFB is right down the road from me.
I've broached this subject with civilian personnel who actually work there, and they reply that "we can't talk about it..."
"Privileged information", apparently.

As for the other bases in the immediate vicinity of the Pentagon (Bolling, Langley) ... what more need be said ?

But if you want to get a sense of the contantly shifting timelines, changing stories and general shucking and jiving from NORAD - to account for their inexplicable non-role that morning ...
just check out what Minnesotat Senator Mark Dayton had to say about NORAD ..
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0408/S00001.htm
http://www.infowars.com/print/Sept11/dayton_911truth.htm

You remember Senator Mark Dayton, right ?
http://dayton.senate.gov/
He replaced the late Paul Wellstone .... who I suspect got whacked in one of these periodic "accidental" air crashes, that occur so conveniently from time-to-time.
http://opednews.com/thoreau1203_wellstone_assassinated.htm
http://www.assassinationscience.com/

[hack89]

28. You don't understand.

how the air defenses prior to 9/11 worked. There were only 14 aircraft on strip alert at 7 airbases -

During the Cold War, though, some 100 sites had fighters on alert, ready to fly air defense missions. After the Cold War, that number was cut drastically—to just seven sites on 9/11. Today, the service has increased that number to around 18 alert bases. (The number may fluctuate due to perceived threats.) Each base has sitting on strip alert fighters that can be airborne, said officials, within five minutes.

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Jan2004/0104homeland.asp

Over recent decades, the air defense interceptor force defending North America had been dramatically reduced from a high of 2,600 dedicated aircraft (including the Royal Canadian Air Force) in 1958. It had shrunk to 20 ANG fighters at 10 alert locations for CONAR by February 1996.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/usaf/1af.htm

There have always been at least 2 combat-ready squadrons standing by at Andrews for routine diplomatic flights

is not believable with out some proof.

[petgoat]

33. The numbers game

After 9:06 there were only two planes, hack. How many fighters do you need to intercept
two planes?

[MrSammo1]

49. unless.....

there weren't any jets to intercept at 9:06!

[Kevin Fenton]

35. According to the official timeline...

... when was the first non-alert plane launched?

[dchill]

21. Without a stand down order...

they wouldn't have had a chance in hell. They should have had ZERO percent confidence. I don't know how much confidence they should have had in their ability to commandeer 4 airliners using only box knives, either - but apparently their "confidence" paid off, EH?

Sign me, "Hasty and Unwarranted II"

[trotsky]

11. Exactly, greyl.

You hit the nail on the head. The incompetent Bush admin probably suspected these to be "ordinary" hijackings, certainly not guided missiles, and so didn't scramble fighters the instant they went 100 feet off course. By the time the goal of the hijackers was known, it was too late.

[petgoat]

24. So your version of LIHOP requires that flight 11 hits the WTC

at 8:46, flight 175 hits at 9:06 and by 9:27 NORAD still thinks it's an ordinary hijacking?

[trotsky]

29. No, I just think that initially, they thought that.

Later, it was simple incompetence. They didn't know what to do, or just weren't coordinated enough.

[petgoat]

32. The nation was under attack from the air, and nobody thought

to put planes in the air above Washington.

"Just weren't coordinated enough"?

You mean like this?

[trotsky]

36. Yep.

I truly believe they just didn't know what to do. Think about it, this is the group of numbskulls that shelved Gore's anti-terrorism report, formed their own anti-terrorism committee, and then didn't even meet ONCE prior to 9/11! They were so totally unprepared it's ridiculous.

And it's not like just anyone can order jets into the air. The orders have to come from somewhere.

[trotsky]

37. Yup.

I do not underestimate the stupidity, incompetence, and hubris of the Bush administration.

[petgoat]

38. Well I was involved with a woman once who was stupid like a

fox. Most of the time she was cultured and charming and lucid, but she claimed to have had head
injuries and she didn't work. Sometimes she'd forget something or lose something or do something
destructive and childish. And after a while I came to understand how every one of these
"mistakes" benefited her (sometimes in rather devious ways).

I'll never look at claimed incompetence innocently again.

If it was the movies, the pilots would have seen the attacks on TV and run out to their planes
without orders yelling "Fuck the court martial! The nation is under attack!"

So your thesis is that not only was the execution of the air defense bungled, but there weren't even
any procedures to mount one at all?

Dr. David Ray Griffin discusses the procedures in The New Pearl Harbor:

"According to spokespersons for NORAD, from the time the FAA senses that something is wrong, "it takes about one minute" for it to contact NORAD, and then NORAD can cramble fighters "within a matter of minutes to anywhere in the United States." >4 "According to the US Air Forces own website," reports Nafeez Ahmed, an F-15 routinely "goes from 'scramble order' to 29,000 feet in only 2.5 minutes" and then can fly at 1,850 nmph (nautical miles per hour)."

http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2004/06/141355.php

[laruemtt]

40. just wanna say in her possible defense

as a fellow brain damaged person (almost killed in a car wreck, lifeflighted, long-term unconsciousness), maybe she's just found certain behaviors that have worked for her survival. when there aren't that many behaviors left to choose from any longer, you make do with what you've got. sometimes we try to put up what we think is a good front, leaving people to think we are capable of more than we really are. just a thought from a TBI'd person. ;)

[petgoat]

44. Thanks for that, laruemtt

It's the self-destructiveness that's the most distressing, but that seems to be what she thinks she
wants.

But the point remains that when the President goes around acting like a desperate brain-damaged
person, cutting him slack is not necessarily the right thing to do.

[laruemtt]

45. agreed.

he needs help, but not on our dime and not with our lives.

[hack89]

19. I don't think that Griffen is the guy to go to ..

about NORAD's procedures - why is there any reason to believe that what he wrote is correct? He makes several factual errors in your quote.

"And then these jets, if they're F-15s, can fly at 1,850 mph. So, given the number of bases we have in the country, almost any plane would be intercepted with ten to fifteen minutes."

First - F15 don't fly 1850 knots unless they are completely clean (ie nothing under the wings) and then they would burn up their fuel in minutes. F15 on strip alert carry 3 external fuel tanks plus weapons - that is a lot of weight and drag. They would not use afterburner in order to conserve fuel - the reason being is that there are no tankers on strip alert so they have to be concerned about fuel consumption. So they would fly at approximately mach .9 which equals 700 knots.

Secondly, there were not lots of aircraft at airfields scattered over the country. On 9/11 there were 14 strip alert F15s at seven airfields. All are on the coasts.

There are some other things to consider. He talks as it was a routine thing to intercept airplanes over the continental USA - I challenge you to find a single example using strip alert aircraft in the last 20 years. I will go further and flatly state that it never happened. One reason I know this is that there was never an Air Defense Intercept Zone over the USA prior to 9/11. All the intercept zones were over water.

Lets see some orginal sources for FAA and Air Force procedures.

[petgoat]

25. Lets see some orginal sources

Maybe you should just take a look at Griffin before you review him.

http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2004/06/141355.php#notes2

Here are some of his sources:

3The FAA's Aeronautical Information Manual: Official Guide to Basic Flight Information and Air Traffic Control (ATC) Procedures (www.faa.gov), quoted in Thompson, "September 11," introductory material.
4Congressional testimony by NORAD'S commander, General Ralph E. Eberhart, made in October 2002, and Slate magazine, January 16, 2002, both quoted in Thompson, "September 11," introductory material. Although both statements were preceded by "now," suggesting a speed-up in procedure since 9/11, there seems to be no evidence that response times were different prior to that date. That should, in any case, be easy enough for investigators to determine.
5Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The War on Freedom: How and Why America Was Attacked September 11, 2001 (Joshua Tree, Calif.: Tree of Life Publications, 2002), 151. (A nautical mile is a little longer than a statute mile.) Since this book by Ahmed is the only writing by him that I use, it will henceforth be cited simply as "Ahmed."
6MSNBC, September 12, 2001, quoted in Thompson, "September 11," introductory material.
7Ahmed 146, citing the FAA's Aeronautical Information Manual, "Interception Signals" (www.faa.gov).
8Glen Johnson, "Facing Terror Attacks Aftermath," Boston Globe, September 15, 2001, quoted in Ahmed, 148.
9Ahmed, 157-58, and Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel, "Guilty for 9-11: Bush, Rumsfeld, Myers, Section 1: Why Were None of the Hijacked Planes Intercepted?", both referring to the interview with Vice President Chcncy on NEC's "Meet the Press," September 16, 2001. The article by Bykov and Israel, along with several other articles on 9/11 by Israel, can be found at www.emperors-clothes.com/ indict/911page.htm. This particular article is listed in the Table of Contents under "Evidence of high-level government conspiracy in the events of 9-11."
10General Henry Shelton was still the chairman, but on 9/11 he was reportedly out of the country. Myers, who was vice chairman, had just been named as Shelton's replacement and was functioning as the acting chairman.
11Myers Confirmation Testimony, Senate Armed Services Committee, Washington, DC, September 13, 2001, cited in Thompson (After 8:48 AM).
12Ahmed, 167.
13Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction 3610.01A, June 1, 2001, "Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects" (www.dtic.mil), referred to in Thierry Meyssan, Pentagate (London: Carnot Publishing, 2002), 147.
14Pentagate. 110-11, quoting Department of Defense Directive 3025.15, February 18, 1997, "Military Assistance to Civil Authorities" (www.nci.org). Meyssan hence disagrees with researchers who have accepted the view that, in Ahmed's words, "only the President had the authority to order the shooting down of a civilian airliner" (167).

[sgsmith]

22. So wrong it's laughable.

If you've ever been Pilot In Command (PIC) of even a single engine airplane, you know just how wrong this Griffin guy is. Loss of communications happens fairly often. Ususally it's because someone has mistuned his radio to a wrong frequency, but it could be something as simple as a failure of the radio transmitter. That's why most airplanes, from single engine up to the jet crowd, have two or more radios and navigational devices. Same thing with transponders - they fail on occassion. There are established procedures that the controllers will use to try to contact an aircraft who's gone norad. None of those procedures happen "within a minute".

I can personally attest to this. On a cross country trip with my Dad PIC, he misset the navigational radio that he was using. It was a simple matter of not taking into consideration the greater magnetic declination in the western states, in comparison to where he normally flew. The controller called us up and gently asked "Where are you going?" The corrected course that the controller gave us was significantly different from where we were going, so we had been off course for quite a while. Nobody scrambled jets to intercept us. And we were on an IFR flight plan.

And before someone brings up the Paine Stewart intercept. That intercept was performed by National Guard pilots who were already airborne on a training mission. And it took 1-1/2 hrs since the jet went norad before that intercept occurred.

[petgoat]

26. So you think that loss of communication with

passenger aircraft operated by professional pilots and equipped with redundant radio equipment
is routine?

And airline pilots routinely mistune their radios?

[gbwarming]

47. Umm.. yes. Perhaps not routine, but at least occasional

You manually set the radio frequency the same way on a 767 as you do on any light plane, so yes, it is easy to either miss the frequency change instruction or copy the new frequency incorrectly, dial in the wrong frequency, select the wrong radio to listen to (or turn the volume too low) or the wrong radio to transmit on. It usually gets sorted out quickly.

We nearly landed a Cessna 182 at the wrong airport once. You might think that professional airline pilots couldn't do that either, but they do occasionally:
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TRAVEL/NEWS/03/15/wrong.airport/index.html
TWA jet unknowingly lands at wrong airport

March 15, 2001
Web posted at: 9:19 AM EST (1419 GMT)

CRAIG, Colorado (CNN) -- A TWA jetliner carrying 116 passengers and six crewmembers landed safely at the wrong airport Wednesday, a mistake that wasn't realized until the pilot notified puzzled air controllers he "was on the ground" and the MD-81 was stuck in mud, a sheriff's spokesman said.
...
"The pilot of TWA Flight 641 notified the Yampa Valley control tower that he was on the ground. However, the Yampa Valley Airport is about 20 miles away," said Holford.
...
=========
Dozens more wrong airport incidents
http://www.thirdamendment.com/wrongway.html

[Old and In the Way]

27. Why no air cover over Washington?

Our $400BB/year military can't protect thePentagon? Sorry, can not buy that one. Based on that flight path of 77, it looks like it was on some kind of delayed holding pattern...maybe waiting for 93 to catch up from its 20 minute unscheduled delay on thetarmac? I would think that the only chance a bunch of alledged terrorists with boxcutters would have of success would be immediate surprise and a direct route to their targets. That wasn't the case on 9/11.

BTW, I recall, right after theattacks, that there was quite a bit of speculation about ground support, that there were people who had security clearances who smuggled the weapons on the planes....I'm not aware that any ground crew has been arrested at any of the airports on the planes that flew on 9/11.

[Duer 157099]

30. What a silly question

Naturally they used their "cloaks of invisibility" don't you think?

(but in all seriousness, I agree with your point)

[MrSammo1]

31. Because there were......

no hijackers.

[mirandapriestly]

48. How did the "hijackers" know about the "radar gap"?

Just a coincidence, I guess. Gosh al qaeda was lucky that day.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node&contentId=A32597-2001Nov2

[petgoat]

50. Maybe they knew because drug smugglers know all about the

radar gaps.

[mirandapriestly]

51. enticing....nt