Posted on 09/12/2001 8:27:18 AM PDT by Brian Allen
As of this moment, what is clear is that a substantial number of civilian aircraft were hijacked this morning by pilots with sufficient ability to maneuver those multi-engine aircraft into collisions with major buildings. The flights originated at a number of airports. Each incident required the presence of at least one and probably more hijackers, each prepared to die in the attack.
Mounting an attack of this sort is not simple. In the case of the World Trade Center, the collapse of the towers indicates massive delayed explosions. This means either the planes were loaded with explosives or that massive explosive charges were planted in the buildings to go off later. This is supposition, but a secondary explosion is a necessary factor for explaining the collapse.
This means many individuals had to be involved in the operation. There had to be a coordinated effort spanning several continents, timed to occur at roughly the same time. At best guess, dozens of people had to be involved. Messages had to flow, coded or otherwise. Yet no human intelligence sources appear to have been among or near the conspirators. No significant messages were intercepted or decoded.
For U.S. intelligence to have missed an operation of this magnitude indicates one of two things. First, the competence of U.S. intelligence is overrated or the willingness of policymakers to heed warnings has declined. In either case, the system is badly broken. Alternatively, the sophistication of terrorist counter-intelligence has improved to such an extent that the prior level of expertise bought to bear is simply no longer sufficient.
Whether we are facing a decline in U.S. intelligence capability or an increase in counter-intelligence blocking the United States, Sept. 11, 2001, will go down as one of the major intelligence failures in U.S. history.
George Friedman is the founder and chariman of STRATFOR
Austin Office
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http://www.stratfor.com/media
STRATFOR: Understand the globe, with intelligence.
by James Henry
New York
TNA News with Commentary
Wednesday 12 September 2001
At approximately 8.45 a.m. EST America suffered a second Day Of Infamy. The twin towers of the World Trade Center were demolished when two hijacked passenger planes were deliberately flown into them by American-hating Islamic fanatics. A third plane was flown into the Pentagon and the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania. Some estimate the death toll could greatly exceed 10,000 while the number of injured are yet to be calculated. Whatever the final figures these terrorist atrocities will scar America for decades to come.
The question being asked is: Who and why? There no mystery here. They were Middle Eastern terrorists with a pathological hatred of America. Irrespective of what most of our talking heads are saying, there is no real problem in tracking down those responsible.
It’s obvious that the terrorists piloted the planes. This led some to suggest that they were especially trained for the task. According to this line of reasoning one only has to focus the search to those few countries in the Middle East that have right kind of training simulators for these planes. This view is supported by the fact that this terrorist operation required intricate planning over a long period of time and involved a great many people. Such planning could only be successfully achieved with the collaboration of at least one state and its intelligence agency. Now this leads to the alternative conclusion that the terrorist pilots were either former airline pilots or even fighter pilots. If we consider this as a possibility, then tracking down simulators would be a waste of time.
Americans being Americans will opt for a ‘considered’ response. One which involves finding out who the culprits are and then punishing them. Very well, if those responsible are quickly found then they should be exterminated. Those states who harbored, financed or trained them should have all of their military facilities destroyed. And that means their army, navy and air bases; all their weapon-making facilities should be bombed into oblivion. This is just punishment for what amounts to an act of war against the US.
If, however, no particular terrorist group can be found responsible for their attack, an effective solution is still available to deal with these savages. The government has a list of terrorist organizations, anyone of which could have planned and carried out the raid and all of whom certainly supported it, if only in private. Therefore the government should promptly act to exterminate these groups. Those states who protect these savages should be given fair warning that if they do not summarily deal with these savages they in turn will be treated as if they had participated in the attack on the United States and treated accordingly.
America should not hesitate to impose a 21st century Carthaginian peace on its self-declared enemies. Let those Palestinians who danced in the streets and called for more massacres of American innocents face the consequences for their support for barbarism. Supply Israel with all the military hardware it needs and encourage her to retake the West Bank and exterminate all terrorist activity. Make it clear that any attack on Israel is now an attack on the United States. Before anyone balks at this suggestion let them quickly recall that it’s Israel’s enemies who attacked the United States and massacred it citizens, not Israel. So let Israel be our first line of defense in the Middle East.
These actions will be costly and require enormous reserves of moral courage and political resolve. America has demonstrated through more than 200 years of its existence that it has never lacked resolve or moral courage. The American people are slow to anger but when roused their righteousness is something to be justly feared by their enemies and greatly admired by their friends. Britain and Australia have publicly declared they will stand with America. Let France, Germany and other European countries do likewise and nail their moral colors to our mast. For on this issue you are with us or you are against us.
Over the years the editor of the TNA, Gerry Jackson, praised America as being the “sword and shield of the democracies”. The Cold War is over but the war to preserve civilization against barbarism has entered a new phase, one that more than ever requires America to not only stand between civilization and barbarism but to exterminate the latter. Just as the American Navy taught the Barbary pirates of Tripoli and Tunis a lesson in 1815, and the British Navy taught the pirates of Algiers the same lesson in 1816 when it destroyed their fleet and laid waste their fortifications. Let us deal the Barbary pirates of the 21st century the same deadly lesson. Let us make it clear there will be no sanctuary anywhere. No place to hide and no safe harbors.
Those Americans who think in terms of a measured and narrowly focused response against a specific target must learn that international terrorism is a Hydra which will quickly replace any head that is lopped off. It is a creature driven by hate and envy of the West, and a American in particular, and not any genuine sense of injustice. Therefore it can only be defeated by causing it and those states that support it so much pain that the only thing eventually left to it will be a self-imposed political exile from which there will be no escape.
AMEN!
This is professional intelligence?
The collapse of the towers was caused by structural failure due to the intense heat of the fires, as has been clearly described elsewhere.
EVERYTHING I've seen from structural engineers is that the fire was plenty enough alone to bring down the buildings.
And over the last year of reading FR, I can't even begin to count the number of egregious factual errors these sites and others that seem to be popular here have...just absolutely riduculous crap...hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops in Panama, etc.
FReepers are awfully unskeptical of anything that fits their preconceived beliefs or comes from a source that they agree with ideologically.
Again, try http://www.strategypage.com for stuff by intelligent people with a clue. Use the search function and look at "Taliban", "Afghanistan", etc. I'm sure Dunnigan and Austin Bay will have same great analysis articles up in the next few days on this incident. They're not going to rush mindless crap out.
your slur on their work is a generalization completely lacking in any specifics -- the mark of lazy mind.
Former intelligence workers are on their staff.
I suspect you don't like what they have to say, because it goes against your biases.
I challenge you to cite the reference where they claimed that there were hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops already in Panama.
However, I am happy to check out the site you suggested. Always open to good sources.
Are you suggesting our intelligence community had a good day yesterday?
(2) Where might we find the names of the high dollar folks that "just happened to not show on time this morning?
(3)I saw Chucky Schumer and Hillary Clinton {senators from N.Y.} discussing this outrage and the "steps that would have to be taken to 'fix' things no matter how 'hard' it was. Hard on WHO do you think?
(4)I watched both towers and "building 7" come down. A more controlled demolition could NOT have occurred with these buildings. Were we going to have a recession anyway, and blame needed to be placed?
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BR, Above are a short list of questions I would like t see concrete answers to. ESPECIALLY the original source of "Camp David has been hit". The timing on that report seems to have been "timely", but in egregious error because the plane crashed in Pennsylvania. I understand passengers retook the craft, but it still crashed.
I guess you can tell. I don't much trust the folks running our government anymore. This mistrust is WELL EARNED. Peace and love, George.
Did you happen to catch CNN’s Judy Woodruff interview withTom Clancy on the evening of 9/11?
Tom brought up the subject of the CLINTON decimation of US HUMAN INTELLIGENCE capabilities – that going all the way back to Sun Tsu, SPIES are a necessary part of the information gathering process. He mentioned that if we’d had a few spies and spooks out there in this increasingly dangerous world, we MIGHT have gotten one of them close to the perpetrator and been able to interdict the MURDER of perhaps 15,000 Americans in the incredible tragedy we witnessed this morning.
I think it’s safe to say that Clancy knows a bit about the subjects on which he writes.
Tom then tagged CNN by name as one of the news agencies that greeted Clinton’s decimation of the intelligence community with approval, continuing to say that they COULD have spoken out TO OPPOSE HIM but failed to do so. Tom’s rather clear implication was that CNN played a role in today’s catastrophe.
Judy VISIBLY RECOILED – and quickly concluded the interview. Her expression made it clear that she was NOT happy with Tom.
Clancy was RIGHT ON THE MARK and until we DO beef up those assets, it’s gonna happen again – and probably sooner than later.
And do you suppose there is some sinister significance to the fact that this happened on 9-11 (911!)? Are these people THAT sick? Don’t bother responding as that was a rhetorical question.
Let’s all pray – and shed a tear or two -- for the lost firefighters, police officers, innocent citizens and their families. Until this is behind us, we must put aside as many of our partisan differences as our principles will allow.
And we must also pray that our precious Constitution does not become one of the first victims of this SICKENING and senseless act.
THE HORROR! THE H O R R O R!!!!!!!!!!
DB, THAT was all I could think of as I watched Chucky Schumer and Hillary Clinton speak. My stomach churned as the hair stood on the back of my neck. NOT "fear". Peace and love, George.
First any piper cherokee pilot who has the controls of a jet "after" it has taken off and whom has no intentions of safely landing it could navigate to the visible targets.
Secondly as in the 60 minutes interview where the bomber was solicited, imagine a list being created with ten candidates, and four pilots agree? The logical extension is then send four.
The idea of sending a jet into a large visible landmark is low-tech. The idea of sending four jets is daring and opportunistic to necessarily the signature of a genuis.
The timing and targets of these types of attacks are just to numerous to effectively prevent as security exists in the USA today. Sadly ABC, CBS, and NBC have better security than many government facilities. Want a smaller government well that does has a price.
As far as infiltrating these groups with human resources the task and challenge is nearly impossible as they recruit from families and groups where trust is the essential ingredient in membership. The inability of high-tech to counter and identify a low-tech attack is no surprise.
The planning and logical extensions of this low-tech attack make these attacks nearly impossible to defend. The "only" response is to make harboring individuals and groups whom perpetuate these attacks so painful that nation states will not do so. The only response is to make the costs of providing safe harbor so expensive that it just is not an option.
Often in a world of chaos we "make sense" and impose "meaning" upon or environment through our filtered cultural lenses. What we really are confronted with is a conflict of "extremism" of different cultures. In wars nation states do not win or lose, cultures win or lose. In a cause and effect world and from a western perspective the commander takes the blame when the boat goes down, "Insa allah" it is the will of God.. in other cultures.
While I prefer Hebrews 13 to the quote from Bush I "got it."
We just need to really prove that we are the "meanest son-of-a-bitches in the valley."
The collatoral costs of this attack have to be "SO" high that it is unthinkable to allow a repeat.
If the western culture capitulates to the lowest common denominator of human cruelty our culture will become extinct. Sadly the only recourse is the one GW outlined.
Strafor has some good ideas but missed the boat, they "don't get it."
Take the pedigree, manicured, cosmopolitan, educated notions of analysis and discard them. This is a test of wills, a fight, an issue where we cannot capitulate. Your better off letting marines straight out of parris island call the shots then the diplomats.
Me too. Seven decades of "Democratic" party control of the levers of our feral-gummint's spending powers -- topped off by the recent eight years of the brazenly-criminal Clinton "administration" have placed essentially anti-American, totalitarian-fascist "Democrats" in every position of power in our every [Mostly unconstitutional, unlawful and illegal] feral-gummint bureaucracy.
Politicians are redundant and know it -- and/or are just along for the corrupt, self-serving, power-abusing ride.
Seems we are overdue for an American Revolution.
Love and Wealth.
Brian
We must take Iraq while the world is sympathetic to our plight. Pump enough oil to significantly reduce oil prices, stimulating the world economy. The lower oil prices will cause the mideast regimes to collapse so we must set up democracies there. Buy western Jordan for a new Palestinian state with infrastructure paid for by the Iraqi oil fields. Create US bases in Iraq from which to enforce regional stability. Afghanistan/Syria/Iran/Sudan are much easier to deal with once the US bases are in place with a million troops to back up our policies. And it gets rid of the requirement for US carriers over there and for massive military support of Israel.
DO IT NOW. WE MUST USE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO STABILIZE THE MIDEAST AND NEUTRALIZE TERRORISM.
BUMP
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