Tag: 9/11 Terrorist Attack

Should We Have Sent the Ninjas After Al Qaeda?

Henry Hanks provides a link to one of the more bizarre 9/11-related stories. It seems a couple of Clinton-era National Security Council folks have written a book, Sacred Terror, which tries to portray the president as wanting to do nothing more than go after Al Qaeda, only to be foiled time and again by entrenched interests in the Pentagon.

But in their book, the former-NSC staffers make the mistake of outlining what they claim was a serious plan by Clinton to go after Al Qaeda,

He approached Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and said, according to the book, “It would scare the (expletive) out of al-Qaida if suddenly a bunch of black ninjas rappelled out of helicopters in to the middle of their camp. It would get us an enormous deterrence and show those guys we’re not afraid.”

The Pentagon feared a debacle similar to April 1980 when President Carter dispatched helicopters to Iran in hopes of rescuing 52 American hostages. The result was the incineration of two helicopters and the deaths of eight servicemen.

The authors suspect that Pentagon reservations about the Clinton plan ran deeper. The Pentagon, they point out, had an uneasy relationship with Clinton virtually from Day 1, when the White House began pushing to end discrimination against homosexuals by the military.

. . .

Clinton’s “black ninja” plan never got off the ground.

Okay, let me get this straight. Clinton suggested sending in the ninjas, and the reason the Pentagon dismissed the idea was not because it was (and is) completely nutty, but rather because they were still pissed about don’t ask, don’t tell?

Can you imagine the headlines if Bush made this sort of boneheaded proposal and it was leaked to the media?

And this is in a book intended to reassure us of Clinton’s competence in fighting terrorism?

Source:

Book Looks at Clinton Presidency: Clinton Had Little Success in Getting Pentagon, FBI to Pursue bin Laden Terror Network, Book Says. The Associated Press, November 13, 2002.

Were There Plans for a Fifth Hijacked Plane

Henry Hanks links to this New York Times article that suggests the planning for the 9/11 attacks may have originally included five planes, with the fifth plane targeting the White House.

Ramzi Muhammad Abdullah bin al-Shibh, who is now in custody in Pakistan, applied to enter the United States to obtain training at a Florida flight school but was denied entry into this country. While living i n Germany, bin al-Shibh shared an apartment with Mohammed Atta.

According to The Times,

But investigators said suspicions were growing that Mr. bin al-Shibh may have intended to lead a fifth hijacking group. Their belief is based on other information, including interviews of other Qaeda detainees and Mr. Lindh, the American who was sentenced on Friday to 20 years in prison for fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan and whose credibility is still being weighed. Mr. Lindh told the authorities that he had heard that five attacks were planned.

. . .

In addition, investigators have examined more closely Mr. bin al-Shibh’s unsuccessful efforts to obtain a visa to enter the United States, where he had signed up for flying lessons at a Florida aviation academy. In August 2000, he paid $2,200 as a deposit for flight training, an amount officials said was enough to convince them that Mr. al-Shibh seriously intended to learn to fly.

Source:

9/11 Inquiry Eyes Possible 5th Pilot. David Johnsont on and Don Van Natta Jr. The New York Times, October 11, 2002.

More 9/11 Nonsense Statements

First Presbyterian Rev. Gretchen Graf managed to create a predictable controversey with a speech she gave at a memorial for 9/11 in Grand Forks, North Dakota. At that event, Graf opened her speech by saying,

One year ago today, 19 young men on a mission profoundly changed our lives and the life of our nation. This was an act of faith and courage, a carefully planned statement against what they saw as the evils of a corrupt and oppressive nation. They were willing to give their lives so that the world would see their outrage.

I suppose she thinks nutball fanatics who torch abortion clinics are engaging in acts of faith and courage as well.

Anyway, Graf tries to convince a reporter at the Grand Forks Herald that this quote needs to be understood in the context of her entire speech, but her other comments suggest it stands alone pretty well.

From the final two paragraphs of the Grand Forks Herald Story,

She avoids referring to the terrorists and their actions as evil, Graf admits. “I will say what they did does not promote good. But I want to make it clear, in no way do I condone what they did. But I think we miss the opportunity if we don’t try to understand why they did it.

“We may disagree with what they believe their faith has led them to do, but for them, it was a faith-based action,” Graf said. “I’m not brave enough to hijack an airplane and fly it into a building, knowing that I would die. They gave their lives to make their point. It may be misplaced courage, but it wasn’t an act of weakness.”

That is the worst possible reaction, and I don’t see how non-brain dead adults can make such an argument.

Okay, a small group of men feel they’re not getting enough attention for their pet cause. So they blow up a building, and then Graf and those who agree with her suddenly do all they can to understand the pet cause.

What’s the message? Terrorism works. As Alan Dershowitz told Salon.Com recently, this is the one of the reasons that Palestinian terrorism has escalated so much over the past 30 years — because it worked at drawing the world’s attention (especially in Europe).

Sorry, but I don’t think Al Qaeda’s slaughter of civilians requires us to think deeply about their cause anymore than Timothy McVeigh’s slaughter of civilians requires us to think deeply about his cause.

Source:

REMEMBERING SEPT. 11: Pastor’s speech at 9/11 observance sparks woman’s outrage. Stephen J. Lee, Grand Forks Herald, September 12, 2002.

Unloading on Salon.Com’s Scott Rosenberg

Salon.Com’s managing editor Scott Rosenberg made the mistake of castigating weblogger Damian Penny, who was the first to draw attention to Salon’s 9/11 feature that includes dozens of tasteless and crass thoughts about the terrorist attacks. In one letter, for example, an anonymous writer complains that he hates his dad and wishes he hadn’t survived the World Trade Center attack. Another letter simply says, “2001 was a great year for me; I hated the twin towers and I hated the Taliban and now they’re both gone!”

Rosenberg offers an extremely lame justification for running this feature on the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks, and the warbloggers are unloading on him in the comments section of his weblog.

Penny asked what Salon.Com could have been thinking running this, and Rosenberg responds that,

We were thinking precisely this: That an orthodoxy has coalesced around 9/11, and that one good role of journalism is to puncture orthodoxies. That the range of human response to 9/11 was a lot wider than that reflected in the media orgy of 9/11 retrospectives. And that it’s probably a lot healthier to air such responses than to pretend that they don’t exist.

The “one good role of journalism is to puncture orthodoxies” is a standard excuse used by journalists to justify bad decisions. I’m surprised that Rosenberg didn’t follow it up with the other standard excuse, that the American public has “a right to know” (you know, CBS had to show the Daniel Pearl videotape — the public had a right to know. Didn’t have anything to do with ratings, no sir).

Rosenberg then takes issue with Penny’s suggestion that it would be a good thing if Salon.Com went bankrupt.

But before you wish that Salon goes bankrupt, may I ask how you pay your bills, and how you’d feel if someone wished the same on the source of your livelihood? When did political disagreement turn into a license to wish that your opponents lose their jobs, or worse (cf. Ann Coulter’s comment, “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building”)? Good night.

See, this is where it’s obvious that the whole “puncturing orthodoxies” line is nonsense. When Salon.Com publishes dozens of tasteless letters about 9/11, it’s simply doing its job. But when someone directs a mildly offensive statement at Salon, all bets are off the table. How dare this mere weblogger try to puncture Salon.Com’s orthodoxies. That’s just uncalled for.

9/11 Was a Gift?

I will never be able to understand how Dave Winer can write this sort of nonsense,

An event like 9-11 brings us to gather, and events that do that, no matter how much grief they create, are wonderful, rich, powerful, enlivening, and believe it or not, healing. It’s easier to see that one year later. We’ve been through so much, together, we were able to weep for the dead, close the wound, reunite, and move forward.

. . . In a way 9-11-01 was a gift. It gave us a shared memory, a real one, a heart-reaching one. Yesterday we did normal stuff. But we also paused to reflect and share, to think, to remember.

It was a terrorist attack, Dave, not some sort of goddamned New Age therapy session.

Did Osama Bin Laden Realize the Towers Would Collapse?

One of the questions immediately after the 9/11 attacks was whether or not Osama bin Laden realized that he might be able to bring down the World Trade Center Towers with passenger jets.

CNN has a story which quotes from a video featuring bin Laden that was apparently released last November, though this is the first time I remember this particular quote being mentioned,

“Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all we had hoped for,” bin Laden said on the tape.

So, apparently bin Laden hadn’t realized that by collapsing the floors above the impact zone that he could bring down the entire tower.