Follow the Dots
One is Logan Airfield, Two is the South Tower of the World
Trade Center
By Bryan Zepp Jamieson
05/16/02
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Politics/dots.htm
After the disclosures of the past 24 hours, I have to conclude that George
W. is either the dumbest son-of-a-bitch to ever sit in the Oval Office, or
the most cynical.
For anyone living in a cave, the White House admitted that they had received
warning for several weeks prior to 9/11 that Osama bin Laden was planning
to hijack commercial airliners. What's more, they had even received warning
that the hijackers were going to fly the planes into the Pentagon and other
notable structures.
Well, gosh. If you're Osama bin Laden,
there really isn't much you can do with a hijacked airliner except fly it
into something. One reason there hasn't been many skyjackings over the past
twenty years – aside from the fear that half-sober minimum-wage security
guards cause in even the stoutest terrorist heart – is that nearly all
nations have signed treaties agreeing not to give in the hijacker's demands,
and to return the plane and the people on board safely, and if the hijacker
gets killed in the process, oh well. And of course, the few places you can
fly a plane that doesn't have an extradition treaty are far enough away that
you have to consider the problems inherent in a 12 or 14 hour flight, like
having the Air Force shoot you down, or a passenger insurrection, or that
you might simply run out of gas.
So you fly your hijacked plane into
something. Or at least try. If the Air Force shoots you down first, even your
failure is incredibly spectacular, likely to be caught on video, and will
still be the greatest crime in American history. But since, being a good terrorist,
you don't want to fail, you face the problem of getting to the Pentagon before
the Air Force scrambles, something it's supposed to be able to do on five
minutes' notice.
One answer, it turned out, was to hijack
several planes at once, and hope the confusion caused by such an audacious
move will allow one of them to get through. Perhaps someday we'll hear that
some official in the government considered such a possibility. Before 9/11,
I would have dismissed the notion as too far-fetched, something in a Mission
Impossible movie that would make me groan in disgust and consider asking for
my money back.
It's the extent of the "confusion"
that has me wondering just what the story is. We know that the Administration
had gotten warnings from Mossad and European intelligence agencies that bin
Laden had something big planned for the immediate future. They didn't bother
to tell Congress, but they did apparently tell various agencies. We now know
that the administration was warned that bin Laden was going to attempt skyjackings.
We know that the government, on September 10th, was bracing for an imminent
attack. We know this because on that day, they raided ISPs around the country,
shutting down 2,500 Moslem websites. That's not something that happens every
day in America, not even in the strange new post-Bush vs. Gore America.
Airlines waste no time if something
goes drastically wrong with a flight. A flight sharply deviating from its
flight path minutes after takeoff, and with no explanation from the pilot,
in the busiest air corridor in the United States at the busiest time of the
day, is of immediate concern, and airlines don't dick around with PR considerations
when something like that happens. For one thing, the FAA already knows, and
they are going to alert the government.
Within air minutes of Boston, there
are three staging areas for interceptors. They are designed to be airborne
within minutes. Even though the cold war is over and Russia isn't overtly
hostile, nobody told those guys to stand down, and being well-disciplined,
they haven't. It's a source of pride to them that they get into the air, ready
to tackle a bogey, in minutes.
So within minutes, you have two west-coast
bound flights suddenly and without explanation veering off and making a beeline
for New York.
Does anyone think that the two pilots
simultaneously decided to give the passengers a little thrill and give them
a quick fly-by over Manhattan so all those jaded commuters would all be perked
up?
I doubt that particular sequence of
thoughts went through anyone's mind.
Why weren't the fighter squadrons scrambled?
The Northeast ones never were, not until an hour after the final crash in
Pennsylvania.
Imagine that there is a sudden volley
of shots and screams out front of a major metropolitan police station. An
hour after the shooting stops, a few cops come sauntering out to see what
all the fuss was about. Are you having trouble imagining that?
Fighter squadrons are better trained
and disciplined on fast response then the best metropolitan police force.
It's unlikely they sat around to finish their morning coffee once the call
went out.
What could terrorists possibly want
by flying two planes straight at New York? Were they hoping to get a glimpse
of the scoreboard at Shea Stadium as they flew past, and find out how the
Dodgers did?
What is there in New York of interest
to Osama bin Laden? Let's see; he likes to go after symbolic targets. He was
foiled in 1994 in a plot to fly a plane into the Eiffel Tower. He likes to
blow up buildings, particularly tall ones.
Condolleezza Rice, doing spin control
today, said, "We just didn't connect the dots." Cartoonists are
having a field day with that. Here's my ASCII effort.
Hey, Condi!
1 2
. .
Here's how it's done:
1 2
. _______________ .
OK, Condi. Now you try:
1 2
. .
Even Putsch should be able to figure
that one out.
Putsch didn't even act even mildly
surprised or shocked when told of the first plane crashing into the tower.
I doubt a man who never learned to wipe a smirk off his face would ever develop
any real credible acting abilities, and I can't imagine the puerile and undisciplined
Putsch keeping his cool, wearing a good poker face for the kiddies.
So we're starting to get an idea of
what the administration knew prior to the attacks, and the answer is, quite
a bit. Indeed, at this point, the only thing that may have taken them by surprise
that day was the towers collapsing the way they did. Even Osama, if that videotape
is to be believed at all, was surprised about that.
The administration strenuously resisted
any and all efforts to have 9/11 investigated, and even those of us who aren't
into conspiracy theories found that extremely puzzling. The biggest crime
in American history, and the government doesn't want to investigate to find
out how it was pulled off?
We still don't know what prompted the
administration to divulge the information if did today. Given that Putsch
has absolutely no interest in the public's right to know, it's unlikely that
there was any sudden surges in the White House toward honesty and openness.
Something pushed them from behind.
Today's admission is the political equivalent of a back fire, a fire lit to
rob a greater conflagration of fuel. This is the same as Nixon releasing the
tape transcripts in the hopes it would calm down demands for the tapes themselves.
Something scared the White House into
making this move.
Mark my words: this story has only
just begun.