Top 40 Bush Lies about Iraq and Terrorism

Hi,
I'm going to post a link to something I just stumbled across merely because I'm tickled pink it gives my timeline a positive plug, but it's a excellent read overall:

http://www.citypages.com/databank/24/1182/article11417.asp

Apparently this article also made it into the Village Voice. I wish everyone at DU could read this article, as there are so many misinformed discussions about these 40 issues.

Here's the part I like best. ;)

15) U.S. air defenses functioned according to protocols on September 11, 2001.

Old questions abound here. The central mystery, of how U.S. air defenses could have responded so poorly on that day, is fairly easy to grasp. A cursory look at that morning's timeline of events is enough. In very short strokes:


8:13 Flight 11 disobeys air traffic instructions and turns off its transponder.
8:40 NORAD command center claims first notification of likely Flight 11 hijacking.
8:42 Flight 175 veers off course and shuts down its transponder.
8:43 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 175 hijacking.
8:46 Flight 11 hits the World Trade Center north tower.
8:46 Flight 77 goes off course.
9:03 Flight 175 hits the WTC south tower.
9:16 Flight 93 goes off course.
9:16 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 93 hijacking.
9:24 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 77 hijacking.
9:37 Flight 77 hits the Pentagon.
10:06 Flight 93 crashes in a Pennsylvania field.

The open secret here is that stateside U.S. air defenses had been reduced to paltry levels since the end of the Cold War. According to a report by Paul Thompson published at the endlessly informative Center for Cooperative Research website (www.cooperativeresearch.org), "nly two air force bases in the Northeast region... were formally part of NORAD's defensive system. One was Otis Air National Guard Base, on Massachusetts's Cape Cod peninsula and about 188 miles east of New York City. The other was Langley Air Force Base near Norfolk, Virginia, and about 129 miles south of Washington. During the Cold War, the U.S. had literally thousands of fighters on alert. But as the Cold War wound down, this number was reduced until it reached only 14 fighters in the continental U.S. by 9/11."

But even an underpowered air defense system on slow-response status (15 minutes, officially, on 9/11) does not explain the magnitude of NORAD's apparent failures that day. Start with the discrepancy in the times at which NORAD commanders claim to have learned of the various hijackings. By 8:43 a.m., NORAD had been notified of two probable hijackings in the previous five minutes. If there was such a thing as a system-wide air defense crisis plan, it should have kicked in at that moment. Three minutes later, at 8:46, Flight 11 crashed into the first WTC tower. By then alerts should have been going out to all regional air traffic centers of apparent coordinated hijackings in progress. Yet when Flight 77, which eventually crashed into the Pentagon, was hijacked three minutes later, at 8:46, NORAD claims not to have learned of it until 9:24, 38 minutes after the fact and just 13 minutes before it crashed into the Pentagon.

The professed lag in reacting to the hijacking of Flight 93 is just as striking. NORAD acknowledged learning of the hijacking at 9:16, yet the Pentagon's position is that it had not yet intercepted the plane when it crashed in a Pennsylvania field just minutes away from Washington, D.C. at 10:06, a full 50 minutes later.

In fact, there are a couple of other circumstantial details of the crash, discussed mostly in Pennsylvania newspapers and barely noted in national wire stories, that suggest Flight 93 may have been shot down after all. First, officials never disputed reports that there was a secondary debris field six miles from the main crash site, and a few press accounts said that it included one of the plane's engines. A secondary debris field points to an explosion on board, from one of two probable causes--a terrorist bomb carried on board or an Air Force missile. And no investigation has ever intimated that any of the four terror crews were toting explosives. They kept to simple tools like the box cutters, for ease in passing security. Second, a handful of eyewitnesses in the rural area around the crash site did report seeing low-flying U.S. military jets around the time of the crash.

Which only raises another question. Shooting down Flight 93 would have been incontestably the right thing to do under the circumstances. More than that, it would have constituted the only evidence of anything NORAD and the Pentagon had done right that whole morning. So why deny it? Conversely, if fighter jets really were not on the scene when 93 crashed, why weren't they? How could that possibly be?

Speaking of the issue of fighter pilots making it to Flight 93 or not, I'm looking for a very, very obscure reference about this.

I got this in an email lately:

"A published account of an air force pilot in the University of St. Thomas Alumni magazine that he was ordered to shoot down Flt 93. He did not shoot the plane down according to the account because it crashed before he and his fellow pilots could intercept it."

Needless to say, I'm not exactly a subscriber to the University of St. Thomas Alumni magazine! Anyone know a way to get a hold of this, if it in fact exists? That's too obscure to even get in Lexis Nexus. The person who sent me the email appears to have disappeared.

I recall Bush making aggressive overtures toward Iraq during his campaign. I told myself, "If this guy gets elected, we'll be invading Iraq."

Three years later I'm saying, "If this guy gets elected, we'll be drafting, as well as invading Syria and Iran."

I remember hearing about a very conservative, pro-Bush author writing a book about Bush, maybe it was Bill Gertz, I don't recall. Anyways, in this book he recalls interviewing Bush before 9/11, and some notes Bush had with him had "invade Iraq" written on it.

Does any else recall this, and can anyone find the reference?