For a second I thought it was that bonehead Patton again.
Posted on 07/07/2004 8:57:50 PM PDT by Brian Mosely
The top general at the North American Aerospace Defense Command was on the telephone and prepared to order an F-16 fighter to shoot down an unidentified plane that turned out to be carrying the governor of Kentucky to President Ronald Reagan's funeral last month, according to two federal security officials briefed separately about the incident.
The tense incident June 9 ended after the twin-engine Beechcraft King Air carrying Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) turned to land at Reagan National Airport. But the close call caused officials to reassess safeguards for the airspace around Washington and prompted calls to expand the no-fly zone beyond its current 16-mile radius.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The left laughs at this incident but if we are to believe that President Bush should have been doing "more" on the morning of 9/11/2001 when he was at the school, then the only course would be to shoot things out of the sky (with all the ramifications that means, including increased chances for ERROR).
If the prodedures had indeed been changed, the plane should have been shot out of the sky.
You mean like they did with Wellstone's plane?
It's got to be true, I read it on duH.
a fighter plane sent to intercept Fletcher's plane initially could not make visual contact because of cloud cover.
As a result, Eberhart did not issue the order to shoot down Fletcher's plane,
a. Return to KY on discovering the transponder problem, and change planes.
b. Land at an alternate airport in the DC area (not Reagan National, for Pete's sake).
c. Take personal responsibility to get on the radio and inform every agency and everybody and his brother that your transponder is broken. Then reconfirm again with everyone on your list. Repeat until wheels touched down.
So9
Maybe the Governor thought he was exempt. Politicians get like that.
The pilot is a member of the State Police and flying his Commander in Chief, and thus triply arrogant.
So9
And if we had shot down all four planes on 911, what do you suppose would have happened? How would you know that you had done the right thing?
Prompted calls by whom, democrats who were unhappy a Republican governor wasn't shot down???
I just don't understand the reasoning. Okay, maybe I should've read the whole article . . . Except that I have no intention of registering with the WP.
Did the pilot of the plane recieve any formal FAA reprimands or fines?
Terrorists in airplanes are going to have trouble finding THEIR targets on cloudy days.
The understanding of hijackings in the past was that planes would land at some point, demands would be made, and passengers would be murdered or released.
These pilots had no intention of landing.
I don't know that anyone in America would have conceived of the horror that could be accomplished by crashing a transcontinental flight into a building after takeoff.
If you shoot down a plane, you have shrapnel falling (and you'd better not miss).
I mention the left in my previous post because they thought it was hilarious that people scrambled "just because a flight was off course". The same left finds it so damning that President Bush didn't "save more lives" when the WTC attacks occurred. He'd given the shoot down order. The DC plane got overlooked (there was confussion among the air traffic controllers/military).
I have not seen Michael Moore's feature length smear campaign but it is an issue he tries to make a point with. As I understand it, Mr. Moore draws no conclusions in the film (he leaves those the audience although he strings them along) so I assume that Mr. Moore doesn't explain just what it was that President Bush should have done differently that morning.
Mr. Moore's only point is that George Bush was on watch when it hit the fan.
I would agree With Moore to this extent: the invasion of Iraq was an optional decision. We were not forced to do it. (I think we were forced to invade Afghanistan.) George Bush and his presidency will be judged in history primarily by the long term results of the Iraq war. No on really knows what that will be, but it is fair to vote in November based on what you expect the outcome to be.
I think the majority of Americans think that overthrowing Saddam was a worthy and moral action, and will vote accordingly. I think Michael Moore is a political Hail Mary that has about a five percent chance of succeeding.
For a second I thought it was that bonehead Patton again.
Moore was also against invading Afghanistan. And the Gulf war.
Excellent point. The only way we knew they were flying the planes into targets was after they had done it. And libs are still in denial over that. Before the whole story came out, I wondered if we had shot down the plane in PA, and just covered it up to avoid bad press. If we had shot that plane down, it would have been the right decision. Do you think the press would admit that?
It is always possible that the Penn. plane would have been shot down even if the passengers hadn't revolted. There is no question that they revolted, but they might have been doomed anyway.
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