The deaths of a thousand heroes

I'm watching some film about the 9/11 hijackings. They were indeed shocking, that almost goes without saying.
But Sweet Baby James, it seems that never in the history of aviation has there been any flights with so many amazingly gifted, intelligent and down right super people.

I'm watching that too, sweet baby cookiemonster. Have a look at Don Rumsfeld

Well my cynic meter went up a notch about 1 second into that video.
Conspiracy theories aside, I would see no difficulty with the plane having been shot down to protect the Penatgon or the White House. Indeed, had it been safe to do so I think having either or both the planes which hit the Twin Towers shot down before they had hit would have been a better option to what did happen.

Well the first plane wouldn't have ever been shot down I'd say as there was no historical precedent for something like that happening before so the Americans wouldn't have risked taking the plane down even on intelligence. Or would they ?

Where was flight 93 going or was it lost ? I have an image of it getting sunk into the capitol building dome ...

It was lost at Shanksville in Pennsylvania but was on the way to DC, I would imagine they were heading for the White House.

I would imagine had the intelligence services known what was happening that the planes wouldn't have come anywhere near any population centers.

A lot of people don't trust their own government in the US it seems and a whole industry is growing up based on that.

cactus flower wrote:

A lot of people don't trust their own government in the US it seems and a whole industry is growing up based on that.

Huh?

cookiemonster wrote:

It was lost at Shanksville in Pennsylvania but was on the way to DC, I would imagine they were heading for the White House.

I would imagine had the intelligence services known what was happening that the planes wouldn't have come anywhere near any population centers.

For fear of biological or worse warfare? A dirty bomb?

Auditor #9 wrote:

cookiemonster wrote:

It was lost at Shanksville in Pennsylvania but was on the way to DC, I would imagine they were heading for the White House.

I would imagine had the intelligence services known what was happening that the planes wouldn't have come anywhere near any population centers.

For fear of biological or worse warfare? A dirty bomb?

For the fear of exactly what happened. While the loss of almost 3000 lives was truly tragic the symbolic effect was much greater. Had the planes been shot down prior to hitting the towers that symbolic blow to the US would have been avoided and the death toll would have been a 10th of what it was.

cookiemonster wrote:

For the fear of exactly what happened. While the loss of almost 3000 lives was truly tragic the symbolic effect was much greater. Had the planes been shot down prior to hitting the towers that symbolic blow to the US would have been avoided and the death toll would have been a 10th of what it was.

10th of the death toll - you're probably thinking of the million or so who died in Iraq too.

Auditor #9 wrote:

cookiemonster wrote:

For the fear of exactly what happened. While the loss of almost 3000 lives was truly tragic the symbolic effect was much greater. Had the planes been shot down prior to hitting the towers that symbolic blow to the US would have been avoided and the death toll would have been a 10th of what it was.

10th of the death toll - you're probably thinking of the million or so who died in Iraq too.

260 or so people dies who were passengers on the 4 planes. Just a shade under 3000 died altogether in the 9/11 attack.

cactus flower wrote:

A lot of people don't trust their own government in the US it seems and a whole industry is growing up based on that.

Would you trust the US government? Or indeed any government? They all have grey areas where candid truth seems to be unacceptable.

They may well have shot down that plane and if they did what would be better to hide the truth or admit. There is also a small matter of how much they knew prior to this, or these incidents. I am not suggesting that they deliberately allowed this to happen, but that security information that they had may not have been acted upon.

If something goes wrong in a business venture you want some candid answers. We all make the wrong call from time to time, and in my book fine, but hiding the error or misjudgement is nothing but a hindrance to proper progress. It is compounding the initial error.