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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
There was apparently a misunderstanding of what was "real" and what was exercise, that day.
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I've never read that.
Both the FAA and the US military was completely unprepared for what happened on 9/11. The FAA was not able to track the hijacked jets - the first thing they did was turn the transponders off. This is how the FAA tracked airliners and plane flights, and without it there was a lot of guesswork. They were unable to guide the military to the flights. And even if they were, what exactly did we expect them to do? Start shooting down airliners?
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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
In the Wikipedia timeline, which is probably based on the 9/11 Commission, for what that's worth, only two jets are available for scramble.
It claims the jets took off and couldn't find the first hijacked jet, but doesn't source the claim. Other timelines have the alert jets sitting on the tarmac, waiting.
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I don't know what the US Air Force has on standby at any given time. However, I would imagine prior to 9/11 those would be looking for an external threat, not tracking and attacking airliners over NYC.
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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
So was this "too many chefs spoil the stew" or are you saying this somehow helped? (And btw I don't recall ever seeing anywhere that they were staffed at "twice their normal")...
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There really isn't any such thing as "too many chefs" when it comes to the US Military. There is a highly defined chain of command, and everyone knows that chain of command all the way up to the very top. Your making it sound like they were overwelmed that day before the attacks, when the truth is they were over staffed for training and they were instantly able to drop the training and move to the real life problems.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the military here - they were caught with their pants down. It blows my mind that at any given time on the eastern seaboard there was only a handful of jets able to scramble. But again, this goes back to the entire civilian / military issue - generally speaking, civilian authorities don't call on the military for support in emergencies.
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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
I don't know why you keep typifying me as "so called truth movement" or mentioning them in your replies. Since the 9/11 Commission and NIST are also based on partial "truths" and findings, as well largely on hypothesis, why don't you lump them in with the "conspiracy theorists"? Because you agree with their theory?
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Your line of logic is very similar to the "so called truth movement". In this case, your implying that the US Military was having an unusual amount of drills that day when the truth is it's very normal. (In fact, one such drill is being conducted today in NYC with their Office Of Emergency Management.)
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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
I mean, you do realize that four hijacked jets were able to fly loose around the North East for up to an hour and a half without being intercepted in any way, right?
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Yes, I do realize this, but your taking things out of proportion here.
With flight 11, the first indication of a problem was at 8:15am when the plane failed to acknowledge a request and it crashed into a tower at 8:46am. That's about half an hour, not an hour and a half.
The first indication of a problem with flight 175 was at 8:51am, when the plane changed it's transponder code. Less then ten minutes later it slammed into the second tower.
Do you see what you did there? You made it sound like these planes were running around unsupervised for an hour and a half, when the truth is one fight was hijacked for half an hour before crashing and the second flight was hijacked for ten minutes before crashing.