We shoud have anticipated this attack--and more could easily happen

myself | 9/13/01 | myself

[johnandrhonda]

Woke up this morning with a few thoughts about our National tragedy--a mass murder of Americans in our own country--by terrorist, and how we should have anticipated it.

Item: News yesterday said two of the terrorist were trained as pilots in Florida from July 2000 to Janurary 2001--about 7 months. The place they trained specializes in training Arabs and of Middle Eastern people.

Item: Suicide attacks by extremist have become common in the Middle East.

Item: Ashcroft said 4,000 FBI agents and 3,000 support people are now working on this case.

Item: Remember the movie "Day of the Condor" where a group of CIA "readers" read books, magizine articles, technical journals, whatever, anticipating plots and senarios that might be copied in real life? Does the CIA or FBI ever anticipate that fictional stories might give rise to real life actions?

Item: Tom Clancey wrote a book a few years ago about a Japaneese pilot that crashed a 747 into the Capitol buliding during a joint session of congress, killing all Senator, Representatives, President, Vice President, etc.

Item: Movie "Black Sunday"--terrorist with a blimp loaded with explosives decends on a football stadium on game day with horrific results.

Item: the Kamikazee pilots of WW II

So put it together and the idea of training piolts that are suicide terrorist hijacking planes and crashing them into targets in the USA doesn't sound far fetched at all. In fact, suprising someone didn't try it sooner.

I suppose the toughest part was hijacking the planes, and that the planes were hijacked so the terrorist didn't have to buy them. Want a new senario ? Consider the idea that some terrorist purchase a plane or several capable of flying the Atlantic--like some old Boeing 707 , for example. How much explosive could one of those carry? They could call it a charter flight--fly a regular and normal route to the USA and crash it into a football stadium on a Saturday or Sunday--80,000 to 100,000 people.

Somebody please tell me how this simple idea can't happen. Tell me Bin Laden or Sadam Hussein can't afford a plane that can fly the Atlantic. Tell me they don't have any more suicidal pilots. Tell me the US military would shoot them down because they didn't like the paperwork they filed for the flight.

I hope those 7,000 FBI agents are considering some senarios of their own now that his has happened. What were they working on last year--drug busts, I suppose.

[eccentric]

Many of us (especially those in small towns) have trouble comprehending the size of the World Trade Center. All I could tell my kids is that our whole "city" wouldhave fit into a few floors of a tower. We used an atlas to look at Manhattan. Could someone please refer us to a website that shows maps, etc, so that we can understand the news better?

[newzjunkey]

Item: News yesterday said two of the terrorist were trained as pilots in Florida from July 2000 to Janurary 2001--about 7 months. The place they trained specializes in training Arabs and of Middle Eastern people.

This information (which you're using to make a grotesque, and perhaps racially or anti-Islam motivated generalization) appears to be false. I saw an interview on MSNBC just this Thursday morning with the very articulate school owner. He said they get a few Middle Eastern students ever 3 months or so while they certainly to have large numbers of foreign students.

Further, the school specializes in light, single engine aircraft. Not jets, certainly not large commercial airliners.

Those two you mention went on elsewhere to get jet training (I've heard it might have been a Boeing-specifc school, or in the Tampa area) after being granted gov't-issued pilot licenses. He also confirmed they had verified their passports (to ensure the applicants were in the country legally) and copies of those were turned over to the FBI.

He recognized Atta and stated that he hadn't liked him. It wasn't anything specific, simply that he just didn't like him as a person. He stated he often finds them 'odd' and puts that down to cultural and religious differences. He mentioned that Atta and the other, as typical with foreign--especially Mid-Easterners--students, did not socialize with the rest or with staff. The reported mentioned a student familiar with Atta had also said he wasn't terribly likeable.

[Alien2k]

SCARY THOUGHT FOR EVERYONE!!

[johnandrhonda]

Nothing racist or "anti-islam" about it. The points were made: These two guys are terrorist involved in this horrific act. They got flight training in the US--if one school or two hardly changes this fact. If they were checked-out by the FBI, the FBI screwed up. If they are middle-eastern, well, that's their parents fault, not mine.

[Kermit]

All of Mt Pleasant, MI would have fit into the WTC.

[johnandrhonda]

And check this out

Man linked to World Trade Center plane crash studied at Daytona Beach's ERAU News/Current Events Breaking News News Keywords: DAYTONA, WTC, Source: Daytona News Journal Published: 9-13-01 Author: By LAURA ZUCKERMAN (laura.zuckerman@news-jrnl.com) Posted on 09/13/2001 05:07:25 PDT by RedBloodedAmerican

[meenie]

With all the discussion regarding flight schools, Daytona Beach is getting all the headlines. Boeing has schools all over the world for familiarizing pilots for their aircraft. The American military has trained Saudi pilots by the score at our different fighter pilot schools.