In an argument w/ a 9/11 revisionist, and ran into a corner.

[DarkMagician]

Yeah, I've been one of the head arguers in a facebook group with a 9/11 revisionist, and I've ended up in a bit of a bind. I'm wondering if someone here can either tell me what I can't find, or tell me that he's jumping the gun or something:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-18-norad_x.htm
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/04/19/norad.exercise/

These links have been brought up by the revisionist. In it, he declares that NORAD accounts for a situation much like 9/11. He also declares that one of the results of the 9/11 commission is that the major problem is a "failure of surprise". He crosses these two to declare that the 9/11 commission is lying. I know there's a mistake he's made or a conclusion he's jumped to, but my research isn't coming up with anything. Can anyone shed some light on this?

[bignickel]

Well, I suspect that the relevent portion from USAToday is:
The exercises differed from the Sept. 11 attacks in one important respect: The planes in the simulation were coming from a foreign country.

Until Sept. 11, NORAD was expected to defend the United States and Canada from aircraft based elsewhere. After the attacks, that responsibility broadened to include flights that originated in the two countries.
I've seen many posts by CTs indicating their disbelief that the air force couldn't shoot the airplanes down. One of the exercises, of many, dealt with 2 airplanes out west being hijacked. But the exercises didn't have anything like 4 politically important targets being attacked at the same time, from internal hijackers. He's making a big mistake if he's trying to compare those exercises to the 9/11 hijacker's targets.

[Gravy]

Yeah, I've been one of the head arguers in a facebook group with a 9/11 revisionist, and I've ended up in a bit of a bind. I'm wondering if someone here can either tell me what I can't find, or tell me that he's jumping the gun or something:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-18-norad_x.htm
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/04/19/norad.exercise/

These links have been brought up by the revisionist. In it, he declares that NORAD accounts for a situation much like 9/11. He also declares that one of the results of the 9/11 commission is that the major problem is a "failure of surprise". He crosses these two to declare that the 9/11 commission is lying. I know there's a mistake he's made or a conclusion he's jumped to, but my research isn't coming up with anything. Can anyone shed some light on this?
A key point is made in the USA Today article: that most of these exercises involved simulated hijackings of airliners coming from other countries, and the ones that didn't weren't simulated planes-as-weapons scenarios, although that remained an option, at the discretion of the "scriptwriters."

With hijackings within the continental US, NORAD had to rely on the FAA for notice that there was a problem. On 9/11, the most notice NORAD had from the FAA, before each of the planes crashed, was 9 minutes. Put that in perspective with the one notable example of an intercept over US soil in the previous decade, that of Payne Stewart's plane, which took 76 minutes to intercept after contact was lost.

Another point is that there is no reason that I can think of that Condi Rice or other bigwigs in the Bush administration would need to know about the NORAD planes as weapons excercises. Richard Clarke may have known about them. I've seen no evidence of any specific warning of an attack.

[DarkMagician]

Thanks, you two. I knew something smelled fishy.

[CurtC]

You didn't mention them, but CTers who talk about excercises of planes crashing into buildings also usually bring up the Pentagon's MASCAL excercises that they do regularly, and the National Reconnaisance Office's excercise of the morning of 9/11.

In case that comes up, the Pentagon's MASCAL is meant to test the response of emergency personnel to overwhelming numbers of casualties. They sometimes pretended an airliner inadvertently crashed into the Pentagon, which is reasonable because the Pentagon is only about a mile from a major airport. No MASCAL excercise was done on 9/11, but it still comes up, often in relation to Charles Burlingame, the pilot of Flight 77.

The NRO's office did have a drill on 9/11 where a plane supposedly crashed into their building. This was not a test of any NORAD-type response ability, but was simply equivalent to a fire drill where they pretended a stairwell was inaccessible, and they were seeing if building occupants could evacuate quickly. The NRO's office is located fairly close to Dulles airport, so again, a stray plane crashing into it is an obvious choice for an excercise.

[TellyKNeasuss]

Another tack might have been to turn around the argument and ask how they would have expected the USAF to react. To the best of my understanding (I will try to find references later in the week) domestic hijackings are considered to be a crime and the US military is prohibited from engaging in law enforcement activities. All the USAF would be allowed to do is keep an eye on the planes. I also understand that at the time military airplanes were prohibited from flying at supersonic speeds over land. In any event, given that the hijacked planes were flying thru very crowded air space, chasing after them at high speeds would have endangered the other planes that were in the air. And shoot down the planes? Pretty drastic to kill a bunch of people just because someone hijacked the airplane they were on. Unless the USAF was in on the plot, would there have been any reason for them to take drastic steps (like shooting down a civilian airliner) to prevent it?

[LashL]

Another tack might have been to turn around the argument and ask how they would have expected the USAF to react. To the best of my understanding (I will try to find references later in the week) domestic hijackings are considered to be a crime and the US military is prohibited from engaging in law enforcement activities. All the USAF would be allowed to do is keep an eye on the planes. I also understand that at the time military airplanes were prohibited from flying at supersonic speeds over land. In any event, given that the hijacked planes were flying thru very crowded air space, chasing after them at high speeds would have endangered the other planes that were in the air. And shoot down the planes? Pretty drastic to kill a bunch of people just because someone hijacked the airplane they were on. Unless the USAF was in on the plot, would there have been any reason for them to take drastic steps (like shooting down a civilian airliner) to prevent it?

Have you been "controlling gravity" while skateboarding recently?

[MG1962]

The arguement I used was along the lines. How many people have NORAD on speed dial - or even who to speak to.

On another forum. A chap does talk to one of the Norad sections. They track space junk and compare notes or something. Nothing too dark and mysterious. Anyway he said he gets through in under 7 minutes - and that is with a speed dial.

from NORAD themselves http://www.norad.mil/about_us.htm

The events of September 11, 2001 provide evidence of NORAD’s continued relevance to North American security. By quickly adapting its traditionally outward-looking focus to meet new threats posed by terrorists to the interior of the continent, NORAD provides a potent military response capability to civil authorities to counter domestic airspace threats.

--------

As you can see. NORAD was designed to look out - not in

[Beerina]

Another tack might have been to turn around the argument and ask how they would have expected the USAF to react. To the best of my understanding (I will try to find references later in the week) domestic hijackings are considered to be a crime and the US military is prohibited from engaging in law enforcement activities. All the USAF would be allowed to do is keep an eye on the planes. I also understand that at the time military airplanes were prohibited from flying at supersonic speeds over land. In any event, given that the hijacked planes were flying thru very crowded air space, chasing after them at high speeds would have endangered the other planes that were in the air. And shoot down the planes? Pretty drastic to kill a bunch of people just because someone hijacked the airplane they were on. Unless the USAF was in on the plot, would there have been any reason for them to take drastic steps (like shooting down a civilian airliner) to prevent it?

In other words, the military and the executive branch would have had to quickly forge new territory to realize the planes were being used as a weapon, and that they should take the (what would appear, prior to 9/11, as a) potentially politically disasterous step to decide to shoot one down.

Prior to 9/11, the SOP (standard operating procedure) if you were hijacked was to hunker down and await being carried to Cuba or wherever the heck they were taking you. That the people on one of the planes, in conjunction with their phone calls with loved ones, were able to put 2 and 2 together and mount a counterattack "since they were gonna die anyway/or else" is stunning in and of itself. You were supposed to sit there, try not to piss off the hijackers, and wait for the plane to land somewhere and, more likely than not, a swat team to burst through the doors guns blazing.

To fight back against the hijackers, or to (bring about the possibility to) shoot down a loaded passenger plane, which was also underway (if never actually materialized in time) were huge and rapid paradigm shifts in thinking for both passengers and the government.

[defaultdotxbe]

In other words, the military and the executive branch would have had to quickly forge new territory to realize the planes were being used as a weapon, and that they should take the (what would appear, prior to 9/11, as a) potentially politically disasterous step to decide to shoot one down.

Prior to 9/11, the SOP (standard operating procedure) if you were hijacked was to hunker down and await being carried to Cuba or wherever the heck they were taking you. That the people on one of the planes, in conjunction with their phone calls with loved ones, were able to put 2 and 2 together and mount a counterattack "since they were gonna die anyway/or else" is stunning in and of itself. You were supposed to sit there, try not to piss off the hijackers, and wait for the plane to land somewhere and, more likely than not, a swat team to burst through the doors guns blazing.

To fight back against the hijackers, or to (bring about the possibility to) shoot down a loaded passenger plane, which was also underway (if never actually materialized in time) were huge and rapid paradigm shifts in thinking for both passengers and the government.
this is one of the instances were you really see how much spin CTers put on everything

for example, they will often claim that if someone tried to hijack thier plane with a box cutter they would "laugh in their face" (dylan) or "beat them to death with their luggage" (fetzer), of coruse as you stated with was directly contrary to standard procedure in a hijacking

and when you point out that the passenger of flight 93 DID fight back (perhaps even with their luggage) you will be informed that none of those passengers existed

so, to quote a phrase i beleive someone here coined:
"when they ddint fight back they should have, and when they did, they didnt"