9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com
This gives some of us, we who are perplexed about how the most expensive military on earth could possible have allowed two jets to fly into the world capital of capitalism, and one into the Pentagon, some idea of the moment by moment events of that tragic day.
This information is about the limitations of military protection in the face of suicide terroristm, and is, I think, worth the ten or twenty minutes investment of your time, if you're interested in this kind of thing
What the article is really telling me is this:
If the terrrorists here had launched ten planes instead of four, and if they'd targeted let's say the White House, Congress, Supreme Cpout and the Pentagon with all of them, they'd probably have effectively gotten all or most of them to hit those targets.
Not because the military/FCC coordination was botched, but because the system in place, simply could NOT gather and process the data quickly enough to prevent those planes from reaching their targets.
Since it appars that our entire system for tracking cvilian passenger jets depended on IFF beacons, and those were turned off by the terrorists, our military still didn't know what planes were hijacked, or in those cases when they knew which planes were jacked, where they were in some bases 1 hour and 58 minutes after the first highjacking was reported.
This is not a slam at the military.
The fact is that our society is more and more complex and reliant on technology, and the more complex the system, the easier it gets to monkeywrench if you understand it, and understanding it isn't really all that hard to do for some people.
Remember that:
Establishing a defence requires that one can first imagine and then create a defence against EVERY POSSIBLE avenue of attack.
Attacking only demands that you find one chink in the defensive perimeter to exploit.
Obviously, given the above, defending this nation from terrorist attacks is a monumental task which is bound to fail occassionally UNLESS, we have INTEL which gives us advanced information about the enemy (we don't, that much is obvious) to prevent such attacks AND leadership which can take that information and use it effectively, too.
Technology and the military can not give us the entire solution to protecting our nation, folks.
I know I keep hammering this home here, but that's because I think this place if rife with miltiary and propellor heads who think it is.
We need to understand the rest of the world if we're going to have a chance in hell of staying on top of things.
We need liguists, social scientists, pychologists, criminalologists, economists, historians, andthe whole host of social sciences and humanities which America seems to have abandoned (since 1958 incidently) to the ALSO RAN status of importance when compared to the hard sciences.
9-11 was a catastrophic wake up call about the failure of our educational system to provide us with the kinds of people that an empire REALLY needs to keep a lid on things.
9-11 was a failure of our INTEL community, more than a failure of our military, folks.
Our military can only really defend us effective against ANOTHER military threat.
INTEL and understanding the enemy is the ONLY defence against monkey-wrenching terrorists either of the foreign or domestic persuasion.
This gives some of us, we who are perplexed about how the most expensive military on earth could possible have allowed two jets to fly into the world capital of capitalism, and one into the Pentagon, some idea of the moment by moment events of that tragic day.
This information is about the limitations of military protection in the face of suicide terroristm, and is, I think, worth the ten or twenty minutes investment of your time, if you're interested in this kind of thing
What the article is really telling me is this:
If the terrrorists here had launched ten planes instead of four, and if they'd targeted let's say the White House, Congress, Supreme Cpout and the Pentagon with all of them, they'd probably have effectively gotten all or most of them to hit those targets.
Not because the military/FCC coordination was botched, but because the system in place, simply could NOT gather and process the data quickly enough to prevent those planes from reaching their targets.
Since it appars that our entire system for tracking cvilian passenger jets depended on IFF beacons, and those were turned off by the terrorists, our military still didn't know what planes were hijacked, or in those cases when they knew which planes were jacked, where they were in some bases 1 hour and 58 minutes after the first highjacking was reported.
This is not a slam at the military.
The fact is that our society is more and more complex and reliant on technology, and the more complex the system, the easier it gets to monkeywrench if you understand it, and understanding it isn't really all that hard to do for some people.
Remember that:
Establishing a defence requires that one can first imagine and then create a defence against EVERY POSSIBLE avenue of attack.
Attacking only demands that you find one chink in the defensive perimeter to exploit.
Obviously, given the above, defending this nation from terrorist attacks is a monumental task which is bound to fail occassionally UNLESS, we have INTEL which gives us advanced information about the enemy (we don't, that much is obvious) to prevent such attacks AND leadership which can take that information and use it effectively, too.
Technology and the military can not give us the entire solution to protecting our nation, folks.
I know I keep hammering this home here, but that's because I think this place if rife with miltiary and propellor heads who think it is.
We need to understand the rest of the world if we're going to have a chance in hell of staying on top of things.
We need liguists, social scientists, pychologists, criminalologists, economists, historians, andthe whole host of social sciences and humanities which America seems to have abandoned (since 1958 incidently) to the ALSO RAN status of importance when compared to the hard sciences.
9-11 was a catastrophic wake up call about the failure of our educational system to provide us with the kinds of people that an empire REALLY needs to keep a lid on things.
9-11 was a failure of our INTEL community, more than a failure of our military, folks.
Our military can only really defend us effective against ANOTHER military threat.
INTEL and understanding the enemy is the ONLY defence against monkey-wrenching terrorists either of the foreign or domestic persuasion.
Last edited:
