Posted on 08/08/2002 11:02:16 PM PDT by sourcery
If fighters were zipping around the stratosphere chasing bogeys, there should have been more than just one. In fact, they should have left a trail of broken windows.
Why would NORAD misrepresent where their fighters were if they didn't shoot it down?
In light of the discrepancy between the empirical evidence and the official statements, and also considering the initial reports that the plane had been shot down, and the Vice President's statement that orders were given to shoot down any plane that headed toward Washington and refused to change course, suspicion that we are being lied to is quite justified.
The presense of a bomb is quite plausible. Whatever the case, the official story no longer is beyond criticism. Which is puzzling, since there is no reason to believe that the government didn't honestly think that Flight 93 was about to be crashed into the White House (for example) when they shot the plane down (if they did).
But I don't buy the idea that the government would have any need or reason to "cover up" the presence of a bomb. Other planes have been destroyed by bombs, and the public knows this. All luggage is subject to search, partly due to the danger of bombs--and the public knows this. The fact that there was a bomb on Flight 93 would not by itself have much affect on the public's willingness to fly. This is because it is not obvious to the average airline customer that preventing planes from being blown up by bombs planted in the luggage (or other freight) is at all problematic--and a bomb on Flight 93 would not change the perception. The supposed bomb on Flight 93 would be easily explained away as a one-time fluke, using the same propaganda techniques that are being used so successfully to prevent the public from panicking over other matters.
Actually, that's what I'd like to know. Bush could easily have emoted to the Nation his sorrow that there just wasn't time, after the mutiny onboard commenced, to rescind the order to shoot down the plane. The entire Nation would have deeply sympathized with Bush's anguish over the matter. People would have commended the administration for its willingness to make hard but necessary choices in defending the country against the apparently-pending atrocity. Pundits would have soberly commented on the fact that the shoot-down put the terrorists of the world on notice that the United States was willing and able to take whatever actions were necessary to foil their evil schemes. And it would, in fact, have made it quite clear to the terror lords that the US had no intention of playing the game by European rules.
Objection: "Hey. Annapolis isn't on the way to D.C...."
This is just poor writing on my part, and I apologize. It's been pointed out to me that yes, the Naval Academy isn't on the way to the beltway. I'm mixing two issues here. The idea, or threat assessment, was that UAL 93 was on course for D.C., which it was at first; there was, according to the FlightExplorer data, a minor course correction shortly before the flight was lost from radar. I spent some time following the line the new course could have made, and one of the places it would overfly was Annapolis. I decided to put a note here, rather than rewrite the sentence. My apologies.
However, I'm skeptical for another reason: The pilot(s) and the chain of command involved in any such shoot down order would be a source of leaks by now. IMO.
Not unless the official time of the crash is off by more than half an hour.
At the political level there is just too much to lose by not being forthcoming. And, besides, it's not W's style.
As for the coverup, please get real. I am an FAA air traffic controller at a major east coast airport. If an F16 had shot 93 down, the controllers responsible for that area would have known about it and I would have heard or read about it through some of our communication channels. You can't keep something like that quiet!
Thank you.
Why would at least one civilian air traffic controller necessarily have known that a plane was shot down?
The Pentagon was hit around 9:40, which is about when Flight 93 stopped responding. Nobody has ever suggested that Cheney ordered Flight 93 shot down before that moment. But at that point, by the author's timeline, the Toledo F-16s had already reached NYC. Why on earth would NORAD dispatch F-16s from New York to shoot down a plane near Cleveland, when there were three F-16s already in the air over DC?
If you want to believe in a conspiracy theory, it's much, much simpler to posit that NORAD sent one of the three DC CAP planes north to shoot it down. That theory only requires the DC CAP pilots and their commanding officers to be in on the conspiracy, and is at least plausible. The author's theory drags in everyone from the entire staff of that airfield in Toledo to the air traffic controllers in New York City, way too many people. I'd sooner believe the 9:22 sonic boom was caused by a deorbiting UFO than that the government could keep hundreds of people quiet about shooting down a civilian airliner.
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