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Again, I ask you, were those two F-16's on afterburner that I saw peeling overhead that morning at about 9:20am just a figment of my imagination?

That's more than one hour after the hijacking:

8:13:31 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 11 last transmission from Boston Air Traffic Control: AAL11 turn 20 degrees right American Airlines Flight 11 responds: 20 right AAL11.
A few seconds later the Controller asks: AAL11 now climb maintain FL350 [35,000 feet] Controller: AAL11 climb maintain FL350 Controller: AAL11 Boston. There is no response from American Airlines Flight 11. 11) 8:14 to 8:20 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 11 goes off course and is hijacked.
8:21 a.m.: Betty Ong, a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, calls Vanessa Minter at American Airlines reservations from the seatback phone. "She said two flight attendants had been stabbed, one was on oxygen," said the manager on duty. "A passenger had his throat slashed and looked dead and they had gotten into the cockpit." She identifies the seats of the hijackers and confirms that the plane is descending.

Yeesh... you're still fighting that fight? There is a point where you just have to stop pushing a bad hand.

g'nite. Good luck to you.

8:21 a.m.:

So that leaves about 20 minutes for the United States to make and execute a decision to shoot down civilian airliners over the heavily inhabited northeast.

Wow. This just keeps getting better and better...

Again, we are all STILL waiting for your official source in regards to your previous statement that no air cover was in the air for several hours after the 9/11 attacks.

For that matter, what is your official source to back up your statement that fighters are scrambled within 5-10 minutes of a hijacking (prior to 9/11)? Even if that were true, unless a civilian airliner has direct contact with the US military, there would obviously be a large delay from the time a hijacking is reported to the time the information is relayed to the appropriate air intercept squadron. Even if interceptors were trailing the two hijacked aircraft to NYC, there would have been no indication AT THAT TIME to shoot them down.

As you may or may not understand, the intercept protocols have changed since 9/11. Before the attacks, the protocols had been relaxed during the Clinton administration.

Gee, if your contentions are correct, then somehow the 'non-partisan' 9/11 commission must have totally and completely missed that one. As did the media.

AGAIN, I ask you, were those two F-16's on afterburner that I saw peeling overhead that morning at about 9:20am just a figment of my imagination? I will answer it for you. They were real. They were heading south, most likely to establish a CAP over one of the cities here in the Northeast. Make no mistake about it -- any additional hijacked aircraft would indeed have been shot down that day if absolutely required. That is a decision that I hope that no interceptor pilot ever needs to make.