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Saving 3,000 Americans working in the Pentagon and World Trade Center buildings would have been a "bad outcome?" I think it would have been the least bad of all outcomes. In war there is a principle called triage. Sometimes you don't have any good options and you're called upon to decide to use force in a way that does the least harm. Preventing buildings with large numbers of people working inside them from falling down is a valid application of triage. Sure the people on the planes would have been doomed but least the country could take comfort in the knowledge their lives weren't being used to murder other innocent people. Life is a series of trade-offs and its just too bad political correctness has tried to eliminate ALL risks from life. The result of that philosophy is a lot of people died needlessly on 911. Its time to get rid of it of before we have more innocent deaths like happened on that day because we were too paralyzed to take decisive action to protect thousands when we could have.

Sure the people on the planes would have been doomed but least the country could take comfort in the knowledge their lives weren't being used to murder other innocent people.

That's assuming the planes, after being hit by missiles, would have crashed into the harbor and not several other buildings in Manhattan.

Saving 3,000 Americans working in the Pentagon and World Trade Center buildings would have been a "bad outcome?" I think it would have been the least bad of all outcomes.

Of course it would have been the least bad . . . but suppose we did have "indications" that they were headed for buildings? Not firm indications, but pretty strong hints.

And suppose Bush gave the order and our fighters intercepted the jets and shot them down?

Don't you think Bush would have caught holy hell about the decision to shoot down those planes? People would say "yes, they had been hijacked, but they probably just wanted ransom, so why kill the hostages?"

The administration would come back with information indicating that the planes were headed for major buildings.

So we'd hear, "that *could* have happened, but we don't *know* that. Besides, who's to say they could have accurately directed a plane into a building anyway?"

Frankly, Bush would have gotten fried by the media and the Democrats if the planes had been shot down. We just didn't visualize a plane being used as a weapon in that way, and without an example of it actually happening, the press, the Dems, and many in the public would have gone bananas.

I think the point of this article is that they didnt have the standing order to shoot down the planes when the attack first happend, they couldnt if they wanted to. I believe they did have the order by the time the Pentagon and flight 93 were attacked. I dont think this is a case of political correctness.

It's actually possible if they had shot down one or both NY planes that it might have killed MORE than 3000 people.

Think about it.

The plane(s) crashes down into downtown NY city streets taking out blocks of cars, pedestrians, and buildings with flaming jet fuel scattered over a wide area.