Posted on 06/18/2004 12:04:32 AM PDT by kattracks
June 18, 2004 -- Air Force jet fighters could have intercepted hijacked airliners roaring toward the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11 if only air-traffic controllers had asked for help 13 minutes sooner, the head of U.S. air defenses said yesterday. The never-heard-before declaration by Gen. Ralph Eberhart stunned the hearings on the terror attacks — with startled 9/11 commission members questioning if it was really possible, as horrified family survivors shook their heads in disbelief."If the FAA told us as soon as they knew, then, yes, we could have shot down the planes," said Eberhart.
The earliest that the Federal Aviation Administration was aware a plane had been hijacked was 8:24 a.m., according to a commission report released yesterday. That was 22 minutes before the plane, American Airlines Flight 11, crashed into the Trade Center at 8:46 a.m.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
They would've shot down those planes my @$$! Anyone who believes that would or could've happened before 9/11 is nuts....
Yeah, right...
And they certainly wouldn't have shot them down over NYC itself.
Yep shoot down 2 planes over New York that would have helped. Geeze.
The question was not "would they have" but "could they have".
Yeah, they COULD have, but there's no way they WOULD have shot down planes full of innocent people prior to 9/11. It would have been inconceivable.
And of course had they shot down those planes, the 9-11 commision would be investigating why those planes were shot down, what risk they really posed to the country and leftist law professors would demanding that Bush be impeached for ordering the murder of innocent Americans. The staff of the 9-11 commission would have announced today that they were not able to conclusively determine if all the shot down planes had been hijacked nor whether any of them would have been used as missles. Certainly there were discussions of using them as missles but the commision could find no conclusive evidence, no paper trail that these planes would have have been used as missles and if they were what they would have attacked.
This is CYA BS...would NOT have happened prior to 9/11. No way!
This Eberhart is serving up crap and calling it prime rib.
There is NO WAY that anyone, and I'll say it again, ANYONE would have issued a shoot down order against a hijacked aircraft unless and until it became known that they intended to use the plane as a missile. Even then, such an order would have been slow in coming, because of the natural reluctance to accept such a notion.
Forget that, though, because until the first plane hit, no one had such a notion. The FAA certainly did not.
Don't forget, the radio traffic had indicated that the hijackers were returning the plane to the airport. No one had any reason to doubt that, and take it to the bank, the press would have the skin of any general or any PRESIDENT who ordered a civilian airliner with passengers aboard shot down under those circumstances.
Can you imagine the field day the New York Times would have had with this. Had it been ordered by a General, he be cashiered the next day. Had Bush ordered such a thing, the clamor for impeachment would have been deafening.
We live in times where the press has become an instrument of evil. If it can't make its own way back to righteousnees, it will have to be shown the error of its ways by outside action.
What I really want to know is why Pedro got left on the mound. And where's BillyBuck?
If people think the media went after the Bush Administration because of naked prisoners with bags over their heads what do you think the media would've done with 3-4 jetliners full of passengers shot down over major metropolitan areas...?
I'm trying to picture a different 9/11, one where they interrupted my regularly scheduled program to announce that a passenger plane had "exploded and crashed" over New Jersey, and shortly afterward the cameras from the traffic helicopters in Lower Manhattan gave us a live view of another plane being shot down over New York Harbor, safely distant from Tower 2.
President Hastert would still be apologizing for the trauma to our national consciousness.
Grady (be)Little(d) himself. BillyBuck didn't deserve the treatment he received by the fans or media....
When are they going to investigate Jamie Gorelick?
When she becomes a Republican....
Horrified why? Because the government didn't decide to save their relatives by pre-emptively murdering someone else's? Yeah, that's reasonable.
I don't know why I have to keep repeating this, but NO ONE KNEW THE TOWERS WERE COMING DOWN THAT MORNING!
Jeez, I am so sick of this hindsight crusade...
This monday morning quarterbacking is pathetic.
Hardly...
Never. That is exactly why she is on the commission. I will never believe anything that they put out because of it either.
A plane *crash* that could kill 25,000 people? That would certainly be one for the record books.
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