The Capitol was not hit on 9/11. Why not?
It is the most identifiable landmark in DC, and you can see it from 10 miles away.
The Pentagon is a relatively stupid target in comparison to the WH or the Capitol.
I maintain that the Pentagon was intended to provide a sighting to the WH, via the Washington Monument. Look at a DC map to work it out.
-PJ
The Capitol was not hit on 9/11. Why not?
Oh, it's a plausable enough target, but it'd reflect pretty poor targeting, since reactor operations there are shut down. Of course there is an active reactor in the Keystone State that would have made a more intelligent target choice, as well as being near enough to the sixth-largest lock on the Ohio waterway as to have provided a neat secondary target in the event evasive action would have made the primary target unreachable.
Neither would Philadelphia have been a bad pick, with Independence Hall offering a shot at a major urban center, the Liberty Bell and an original copy of the US constitution all in one place.
The real question is one of to what extent the hijacker teams aboard each aircraft were aware of the successes of the other teams in reaching and destroying their intended destinations/targets. My guess is that just as a second plane hit the second WTC tower, so had an additional plane been planned for the Pentagon, though it may well not have been the United Pennsylvania- Cleaveland United Flight 93, which seems to have been more likely intended for a more local regional impact destination, despite the posturing by various politicians about what probable and important targets they think they were.
-archy-/-
Perhaps, but the WH sits too low and was obscured by the trees, from the angle the plane was going, maybe by the time they realized they missed the WH it was too late to hit the Capital so they got the Pentagon? Who knows, so many theories abound and they flew around and around, hard saying for sure!