2/11    Anyone saying no one could have imagined terrorists using planes
        as weapons is not fit to dress themselves, let alone be SecState.
        I mean, c'mon, Tom CLANCY used it in Debt of Honor in '96.
        \_ I would argue that this is one reason we need a few more tech people
           at the top levels of government.  A future "failure of imagination"
           would be less likely if you had people who grew up reading/watching
           sci fi and who actually understand technology calling some of the
           shots.
           \_ But it wasn't a failure of imagination. That's just a stupid line
              of crap.
           \_ Forget tech people. They need hardcore SF writers and game
              designers. Hell, I'd love to do that kind of job-- spend all
              day dreaming up worst case scenarios for security people to
              debug.
                \_ Only a sci fi geek would think that's a good idea.
                \_ Wasn't this what Jerry Pournelle did/does?  -John
        \_ Do you people not understand that the real world works a little
           bit differently than the fictional world of books and tv shows?
           Sure someone could imagine that terrorist might fly planes into
           buildings but the people who write these books and create these
           TV shows also brought you Sam Fisher (where can I get one of
           those distractions cam for my P-90?) and Dana Scully getting
           abducted by Aliens.
           In the real world things are far more complicated than on TV.
           Think about that for a minute. These terrorist somehow managed
           to get past multiple security checkpoints and then on most
           planes managed to take control w/o meeting any resistance.
           How likely is that? What would you have done had you been on
           one of those planes? Sat idly by? Maybe try to take control?
           Think about all of the variables that are present and the
           behaviors of hundreds or thousands of people on 11 Sept and
           tell me you still think that it was imaginable in the real
           world.
           \_ It's not an issue with realism or what.  Of course things are
              more complicated in real life.  The issue is that you want
              people around who have the imagination to come up with the
              really odd, improbable shit--remember Sherlock Holmes?  "If you
              have discounted all other probabilities, whatever remains,
              whatever improbable, must be the truth"?  I'd welcome having
              people around who can think outside of some bureaucratic,
              limited, wingtip-shoe "it'll-never-happen-here" mentality.
              Just having people like this on the payroll doesn't mean you
              have to jump every time they predict an alien invasion or, god
              forbid, a tsunami, but it might help you react a bit faster if
              such a thing did come to pass.  -John
                \_ While I generally agree that quicker reaction may have
                   prevented considerable loss of life, the problem is
                   that the military largely lacked any basis for knowing
                   whether or not the crashes were due to terrorist activity.
                   Had these not been suicide attacks, but rather some
                   sort of mixup/malfunction and the military had reacted
                   by destroying the planes, it is highly improbable that
                   they could have justified the action by showing that
                   there was probable cause to suspect suicde airplane
                   attacks. In retrospect is it easy to say that the ptb
                   should have known, but one must consider that question
                   in light of what could they have reasonably done w/o
                   complete proof (which they did not have on 9/11) that
                   the situation was really as they believed it to be?
                   \_ This is the fundamental problem faced by people working
                      in corporate IT security--your very job consists of
                      coming up with unlikely-but-highly-destructive scenarios
                      and selling the most effective, least intrusive pre-
                      emptive measures or countermeasures capability to these
                      you can think of.  There are wide areas of risk analysis
                      devoted to coming up with exactly this sort of crap--you
                      take _all_ imaginable scenarios, then figure out how
                      feasible they are and rate them in terms of how urgently
                      (if at all) you should do something about them.  I'm not
                      just talking about 9/11 here, but referring to a seeming
                      inability or unwillingness to consider just this sort of
                      crackpot scenario (which apparently _was_ dreamed up by
                      some pretty competent and intelligent people) or even
                      something unlikely that a sci-fi writer might cook up
                      (massive earthquake + tsunami kills 150k, asteroid hits
                      NYC, whatever) and seriously attempt to determine (a) a
                      probability for it, and (b) what to do if it comes to
                      pass.  Blowing it off out of hand does not count as
                      responsible under ANY circumstances.  -John
                      \_ I agree w/ you that the way to deal w/ the
                         problem is (a) and (b), but I what I don't
                         agree w/ is that the ppl in charge blew
                         it off b/c a determination that the prob.
                         of the event is not very great can look, in
                         retrospect, to be blowing it off. I haven't
                         read about any evid that shows that a prob.
                         assessment of a 9/11 style attack prior to
                         9/11 was greater than miniscule in anyones
                         mind.
           \_ When I first heard the news, my first thought was, "They've
              finally done it." My next thought was, why the hell weren't
              there contingency plans drawn up by the military, etc. to
              handle just such a case. And then I heard they'd crashed into
              the Pentagon, and I knew, for real, that we as a govt. are
              crippled and screwed.
              \_ One further point which I omitted is the fact that prior
                 to 9/11 a military plan which involved the destruction
                 of civilian aircraft w/o a clear showing of terrorist
                 involvement would have been impossible to implement.
                 Let us suppose that the military had a plan to destroy
                 the planes based on a suspicion that terrorist had taken
                 control. Could they have implemented that plan? In the
                 pre-9/11 world the answer is NO.
                 If the 9/11 incident had turned out to be an accident or
                 a standard hijack rather than a terrorist suicide attack,
                 military action that destroyed the plane in the air would
                 have been characterized as trigger-happy extermism, &c.
                 No lefty senator would have accepted an explanation that
                 the intelligence services felt that the planes might be
                 used by suicide hijackers on the basis that such as
                 belief was completely implausible. Prior to 9/11 this
                 objection would have been perfectly reasonable b/c there
                 was no reasonable basis (prior acts, &c.) for holding
                 w/ a view that such an attack was plausible.
                 \_ Bullshit. The Pentagon could easily have established
                    a no-fly zone around it that would trigger an automatic
                    anti aircraft response. Almost no one would object
                    to that. Remember when the USS Vincennes shot
                    down a civilian airliner for straying too close?
                    Very few objected to that. The Pentagon is a far
                    more valuable target than a carrier group.
                    \_ iirc, the Vincennes incident is sufficiently
                       distinguishable from 9/11: (1) the ship was
                       engaged in surface action, (2) the iran air
                       flight took off from a civilian/military
                       shared airfield and (3) the radar aboard the
                       Vincennes could not accurately distinguish
                       a commerical airliner from a military jet.
                       The cmdr, who was already faced w/ hostile
                       surface action had little choice but to
                       assume that the inbound was hostile as well.
                       9/11 is different. The Pentagon was not
                       "engaged" in any action, it was located near
                       commerical flight paths, the plane was known
                       to be a commerical jet, &c. If the military
                       had made a mistake and shot it down when
                       no terrorist action was involved, there is
                       no way a congressional commission pre-9/11
                       would have accepted the pentagon's threat
                       assessement.
                 \_ Disagree. 9/11 changed things in the public consciousness
                    but I would have assumed there would be procedures in
                    place for this as applied to the pentagon. Shooting down
                    a civilian airliner would be a tragedy even if it was
                    100% clear it was in kamikaze mode. But even "lefty
                    senators" who hate America would accept it. It really
                    is common sense.