If the Prez knew we were going to be hit in Sept, what should he do?

[Chuckiechan]

Let's just say intelligence data pretty well suggested that aircraft would be used as missiles sometime in September, but we don't know where.

What should he do?

[super gerbil]

good question.

and if nothing were to happen then he would get yelled at by everyone

[Chuckiechan]

I'm kinda thinking about the political heat when nothing has really happened. It took quite a while to get security up to high levels after 9-11.

[Mike]

But did any of that high security really work? Especially now, the extra "security" is more of a hassle...

[MTAtech]

At the very least, make pilots and crew aware. Give them the authority that if any incident occurs while in flight, take the plane up and decompress the cabin. No terrorist can take the plane without air. Then the plane can land with the terrorists unconscious.

Second, compare the ticketing information with the database of known terrorists. When the FBI saw the names of the people on the 9/11 flights, they recognized their names. These guys used their real names and were able to book flights.

[Knothead]

Chuck, you have raised this (most interesting) question before.

Yes, indeed, what should GWB's administration have done to prevent the 9/11 disaster?

In hindsight, lots and LOTS of things!

But at the time, hell, we were all wondering what just happened to the freakin' ECONOMY when GWB first took office (answer: into the toilet) (for reasons I can't figger out, but still...)

Then the attacks happened.

There wasn't anything that could have been done to prevent it, unless we had a Dept. Of ESP'er's whose warnings were ignored.

Our Intelligence may have had some gleaning of a suggestion of an imminent attack, but please remember, the Intelligence Community is routinely inundated with "3rd party info" and so forth.

The fact that it took Bush as long as it did to realize the severity of the attack is easy to understand:

Nothing like it ever happened before 9/11!

[Chuckiechan]

I don't know if the pilot can decompress the plane voluntarily. Suppose someone died and sued the airline? No one wants them to carry guns, so I doubt a rapid decompression lever would be allowed without a precident, either.

Second, compare the ticketing information with the database of known terrorists. When the FBI saw the names of the people on the 9/11 flights, they recognized their names. These guys used their real names and were able to book flights.

Why didn't the FBI have mechanisms in place to do this? This is kind of "big brotherish" especially to a Californian who's cops can't even ask if an alien is illegal.

Edit: BTW, what happened to the economy was Alan Greenspan was raising inerest rates to slow an "over exuberant economy". He felt a lot of the economy was built on BS, and started a tigher monetary policy to slow it down. That led to the bursting the internet bubble.

[f1oored]

I choose option 6
Find out who is going to do it and turn their homes into piles of ash. Attack them before they attack us. Ever since the US has been on the offense we haven't seen any terror attacks on our soil. Maybe if we had been on the offense during the clinton years we would not have seen 9/11.

[brandon184]

The whole convoluted airline security processes really baffle me. It seems as if they're intentionally set up to be completely inefficient.

Give a monkey 72 hours and the right resources - it'll come up with a more effective system.

Brandon