9-11 experts : I had a forehead-smacker today

but I don't know whether this scenario has been discussed.

I'll call it IHOP (it happened on purpose)
They didn't exactly *make * it happen nor exactly *let* it happen.
Those two acronyms imply more control over the tragedy than they really had.

Anyway, here's my thought:
The BFEE knew there was going to be an incident *but* had understood that it was going to be a *small* plane

They were surprised as we all were that it was, in fact, such a largescale, co-ordinated effort.

Remember when we first heard about it? It was "a small single engine plane.."

More telling were gwb's clearly rehearsed comments about it having been a small plane :"that's one bad pilot" (that has always sounded awkward to me)

They did indeed know something was going to happen that day but were skunked on the scale.

An occurrence of terrorism was necessary for all the reasons we now know (PNAC, Iraq, pulling the admin out of the freefall, et al)

9-11 was a good date because:
distraction from the 2000 election announcement
catch-phrase-ready "nine one one"/emergency
election day in NY
etc etc etc

I also think that there had been a demonization pr campaign in progress to make osama our latest bogeyman (like we're now so used to).
Does anyone else remember the photo and feature article about him in the NYT the preceeding weekend? i remember laughing to my partner about how this dude looked like he came from Central Casting.
..............
Like I said, I don't know if this scenario has been discussed before but it is new to me. Seems to fit in with all of the other fishy stuff.

Any of you 9-11 scholars care to comment?

were surprised by the scale of the attacks. I actually thought this for a while.

However, foreknowledge of a "small" attack by Bush/Cheney doesn't mean there was no government complicity. Bush/Cheney undoubtedly were left out of the plans on purpose. But they had to know something was up. And there is fairly strong evidence that the attacks were not purely Al Qaeada-- lots of CIA connections plus the whole NORAD hijacking drill thing.

9/11 was probably a coup of some degree by the neocons with the aid of some of rogue military personnel-- but the whole thing was planned to look like Al Qaeda though it was a set-up.