The Command Post - Op-Ed - Preventing September 11th

December 19, 2003

Preventing September 11th

Scientists predicted that an atomic weapon would be very powerful throughout most of the 1930's. The test in New Mexico could only be described as "unimaginable" to most of them, as the real power of the weapon was demonstrated. They were, nearly to a man, shocked and horrified by the raw power of the blast. They had not imagined that it would be that awsome.

We could imagine large airliners being used as weapons. Terrorists routinely make lists of possible weapons. The bombers of the World Trade Center made a list. One of the items on the list was the use of a plane as a flying bomb. But this type of attack had never been done before. The results could not have been imagined. Both WTC Towers collapsing? Not possible, until it happened.

The murders on September 11, 2001 were solely due to the personal choices of nineteen men, and those who supplied them. The "what-ifs" are many. What if the flight crews had not cooperated with the hijackers? What if every plane's passengers had acted as those on Flight 93 did? What if? What if? What if?

It happened. The clock cannot be turned back. Murder most foul was committed, and no amount of hindsight can change that. Acts of murder that were, in fact, too horrific to imagine, happened. The government had intelligence, had directions that it could have explored. In the end, nothing was explicit enough. There were too many other bits of data. Sorting out the correct ones and coming to a firm conclusion did not, could not, happen.

In perfect hindsight, a group of nineteen men would have been detained before boarding their planes. What would we have charged them with? Would we have had enough evidence to even hold them? In the absence of any confessions, would anyone have been convicted?

The real horror of September 11 is that we know what happened and cannot change it. Post traumatic stress disorder, in a way, reliving the murders over and over and being unable to affect the outcome. How many alerts have we had from Homeland Security since this sad day? How many actual events occurred? Lots, and none. That's what happens when you have lots of data and little information. And that is exactly what we had on September 11, 2001.

Chuck Simmins keeps a weblog here and a page dedicated to September 11, 2001 here.

Posted By Michele Catalano at December 19, 2003 06:41 PM | TrackBack

Comments

Way back in the late 80s and early 90s, I had an extended e-mail session with somone in the DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency) regarding possible threats.
I won't go into many of the scenarios we discussed, no need to give the Bad Guys ideas - though Homeland Security knows about them, and no doubt has taken some countermeasures. I'd rather not test them though.

One scenario that was considered "probable" was a Nerve Gas attack on a subway - this was only months before it happened in Tokyo. Another was the hijacking of an airliner - we thought a freighter was most likely - and using it to Kamikaze a reactor. Though the containment on US reactors is probably proof against this type of attack. Multiple strikes on the same place might work though.

We didn't predict that a co-ordinated attack using nothing but boxcutters on passenger planes was a credible threat, nor that the targets would be the WTC and Pentagon. The White House and Capitol, yes. We also didn't predict that today's large fuel loads on common airlieners would have such a huge incendiary effect. We were thinking of International 747s nearly empty, or domestic 737s or DC9s nearly full.

There are far easier attacks to make, ones far more difficult to defend against. Again, I'd rather not go into details, and I'm really glad that none of the nightmare scenarios has panned out. Yet. The only good defence is to attack the money supply and the organisational structure.

Posted by: Alan E Brain at December 22, 2003 07:26 AM

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