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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (23911)	7/30/2003 9:30:48 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

15: Lies about 9/11 15) U.S. air defenses functioned according to protocols on September 11, 2001. Old questions abound here. The central mystery, of how U.S. air defenses could have responded so poorly on that day, is fairly easy to grasp. A cursory look at that morning's timeline of events is enough. In very short strokes: 8:13 Flight 11 disobeys air traffic instructions and turns off its transponder. 8:40 NORAD command center claims first notification of likely Flight 11 hijacking. 8:42 Flight 175 veers off course and shuts down its transponder. 8:43 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 175 hijacking. 8:46 Flight 11 hits the World Trade Center north tower. 8:46 Flight 77 goes off course. 9:03 Flight 175 hits the WTC south tower. 9:16 Flight 93 goes off course. 9:16 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 93 hijacking. 9:24 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 77 hijacking. 9:37 Flight 77 hits the Pentagon. 10:06 Flight 93 crashes in a Pennsylvania field. The open secret here is that stateside U.S. air defenses had been reduced to paltry levels since the end of the Cold War. According to a report by Paul Thompson published at the endlessly informative Center for Cooperative Research website (www.cooperativeresearch.org), "[O]nly two air force bases in the Northeast region... were formally part of NORAD's defensive system. One was Otis Air National Guard Base, on Massachusetts's Cape Cod peninsula and about 188 miles east of New York City. The other was Langley Air Force Base near Norfolk, Virginia, and about 129 miles south of Washington. During the Cold War, the U.S. had literally thousands of fighters on alert. But as the Cold War wound down, this number was reduced until it reached only 14 fighters in the continental U.S. by 9/11." But even an underpowered air defense system on slow-response status (15 minutes, officially, on 9/11) does not explain the magnitude of NORAD's apparent failures that day. Start with the discrepancy in the times at which NORAD commanders claim to have learned of the various hijackings. By 8:43 a.m., NORAD had been notified of two probable hijackings in the previous five minutes. If there was such a thing as a system-wide air defense crisis plan, it should have kicked in at that moment. Three minutes later, at 8:46, Flight 11 crashed into the first WTC tower. By then alerts should have been going out to all regional air traffic centers of apparent coordinated hijackings in progress. Yet when Flight 77, which eventually crashed into the Pentagon, was hijacked three minutes later, at 8:46, NORAD claims not to have learned of it until 9:24, 38 minutes after the fact and just 13 minutes before it crashed into the Pentagon. The professed lag in reacting to the hijacking of Flight 93 is just as striking. NORAD acknowledged learning of the hijacking at 9:16, yet the Pentagon's position is that it had not yet intercepted the plane when it crashed in a Pennsylvania field just minutes away from Washington, D.C. at 10:06, a full 50 minutes later. In fact, there are a couple of other circumstantial details of the crash, discussed mostly in Pennsylvania newspapers and barely noted in national wire stories, that suggest Flight 93 may have been shot down after all. First, officials never disputed reports that there was a secondary debris field six miles from the main crash site, and a few press accounts said that it included one of the plane's engines. A secondary debris field points to an explosion on board, from one of two probable causes--a terrorist bomb carried on board or an Air Force missile. And no investigation has ever intimated that any of the four terror crews were toting explosives. They kept to simple tools like the box cutters, for ease in passing security. Second, a handful of eyewitnesses in the rural area around the crash site did report seeing low-flying U.S. military jets around the time of the crash. Which only raises another question. Shooting down Flight 93 would have been incontestably the right thing to do under the circumstances. More than that, it would have constituted the only evidence of anything NORAD and the Pentagon had done right that whole morning. So why deny it? Conversely, if fighter jets really were not on the scene when 93 crashed, why weren't they? How could that possibly be?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (23911)	8/3/2003 5:36:04 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Bush's Vietnam-sized Credibility Gap ___________________________ By Helen Thomas Syndicated Columnist Tuesday 29 July 2003 WASHINGTON -- President Bush has a huge credibility gap stemming from his exaggerated rhetoric that led the United States to attack Iraq. The Bush hype recalls the Lyndon B. Johnson era when LBJ's misleading statements and deceptions led us deeper into the disastrous Vietnam War. Johnson later acknowledged that public mistrust had doomed his chances for re-election in 1968. Trust and truth still go a long way with the American people when it comes to war and peace. To rally public support for an unprovoked U.S. invasion of Iraq, Bush laid it on with a shovel. There were scary warnings of an imminent, direct threat that Saddam Hussein would use nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction against us. Throughout the buildup for war, Bush and his aides repeatedly claimed that there was a link between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorists. So far, after almost four months of U.S. occupation of Iraq, none of those contentions has panned out. The Iraqis deployed none of those feared weapons when U.S. forces invaded on March 20, despite warnings that had led many U.S. military men and women to spend uncomfortable hours decked out in protective moon suits. Likewise, the occupation has failed to turn up evidence of a link between Saddam and al-Qaida. This hasn't stopped the White House message machine. White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters again last week that the weapons will be discovered and that they were a "grave threat" to the United States and the rest of the world. The administration should learn that mere repetition of a claim doesn't make it true. As late as March 16, Vice President Dick Cheney said on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press" that "we believe (Saddam Hussein) has reconstituted nuclear weapons." Now we're trying to sort out the welter of mea culpas from administration officials about who was responsible for the bogus uranium report in the president's State of the Union address. That speech contained the famous 16 words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." It turned out that this segment was based on a crude forgery. When the details of this flub started tumbling out, Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, blamed the CIA. This led CIA director George Tenet to take the blame with a deep public grovel. Later, Tenet apparently nudged the White House to reveal it had received two CIA memos last October and a warning again in January, all cautioning that the uranium report was dubious. This time, Rice's assistant, Stephen Hadley, stepped forward to accept blame for not deleting the erroneous sentence from the address. A defensive White House seems eager to change the subject. McClellan insists that the Iraqi invasion "should be seen through the prism of the war on terrorism." Cheney said Thursday that failure to act would have been "irresponsible in the extreme" and would have endangered the United States. In a Rose Garden speech last week, Bush pointed to the big picture, saying "a free, democratic, peaceful Iraq will not threaten America or our friends with illegal weapons" and "will not be a training ground for terrorists...." After a five-day tour of Iraq, deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a super hawk, came home last week and dismissed questions about the missing weapons, saying it was a question for the intelligence agencies. "I am not concerned about weapons of mass destruction," he said. "I am concerned about getting Iraq on its feet." Sorry, Wolfowitz, you can't have it both ways. You were an architect in the trumped-up strategy that deceived the American people, causing them to believe the weapons endangered their lives. On those fears, we went to war. The term "credibility gap" was coined in the Johnson era and popularized by Washington Post reporter Murray Marder. It symbolized the contrast between LBJ's rosy statements about the cost and progress of the war, with the more realistic news dispatches from Vietnam. Although the Bush administration credibility gap looks more like the Grand Canyon, don't expect the president to take the responsibility for any false claims. The week before last, he dodged the question on whether he would assume responsibility for the misleading allegations. In response, he continued to insist Iraq had sought a nuclear weapons program. "I take responsibility for dealing with that threat," he said sternly. ------- Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. truthout.org