Well, I just saw your last document and that is good enough for me. If you worked as a components technician thats counts as working on aircraft to me.

I apologize for assuming you were full of it before. Its just when you dodged the subject the first time around I figured you for a poseur.

My bad. :(

Apology accepted. I have hope for you yet.

I'm off to the eye doctor. . .I can't believe what I'm seeing. :cool:

Hey, as rarely as it may occur I am am always willing to admit when I am wrong. ;) http://www.tamparacing.com/forums/ta...iles/laugh.gif

Now if only the bush supporters could do the same . . . :p

Stupid ****ing pilots is what I think I heard you say.....
 

Yep, I am a (according to you) a stupid ****ing pilot. So were the pilots of four heavy Boeings that September Day. I will pass along your sentiments to the families and the remaining friends that still (in spite of the stupidity at the airport) fly so you can travel freely around this country.

I am so encouraged by upcoming youth these days, having such a forum to so throughly embarass yourself in.

Do yourself proud. Vote. My vote will cancel yours out.

Sing, are you still posting here? I thought you said you were joining the 'silent majority'?

I think stupid is a harsh word, oblivious might be a better term. As nostatic mentioned I would think even some WWII history and your time in the military would have given you an idea that planes can be used as weapons. I didn't think a memo from the government was required to gain such knowledge.

That being said I don't think whether the hijacked pilots of the knew that their planes could be used as weapons would have changed anything on 9/11.

I think that is information that would have been better utilized by our national security personel but wasn't.

BTW - If you think that I used the phrase 'stupid ****ing pilots' anywhere in any of my posts (which I didn't) how about you point it out to the rest of us?

sing, I don't blame you or any of the pilots for not "connecting the dots." My comment about history was to the "intelligence" community (jumbo shrimp anyone?). Again, I know hindsight is 20-20, but you've got a memo talking about attacks inside the US, knowledge that hijacking is a favorite ploy of terrorists, and a history of aircraft being used as weapons. And even Hollywood writing scripts about it. Of course there are movies about all sorts of crazy things...again, I'm acknowledging the 20-20 hindsight, but I think it is reasonable to ask why the connections weren't made...after all, that is what these people get paid to do.

Todd, I agree.

I changed / deleted the previous post because I realized after reading it that it is not my business or place to say what happened that day.

Yes, failures happened. The 5 or 6 major players (intel agencies) didn't necessarily even talk to each other. Their formats and computer systems didn't talk to each other. That structure thing Condi talked about again.

Am I trying to support one presidential candidate over the other based on what happened that day? Hell no. Will what happened that day affect the way I vote? No. Will any of the diatribe I hear in here affect it?

Could be.

But it will take more than posts from the Worker's Daily to do it.

350's post about Prescott Bush was eye-opening news to me. I laughed my ass off. Prescott had some real balls to think he could get away with that.

Is little Georgie following in Opa's ways? I doubt it. Too much at stake.

I just rail when I see stuff I know is not true promulgated as gospel in here. Especially when one small tidbit is used to make some giant leap that comes back to lies, bull and spin.

I saw your post about the TV thing. The dates are scary. I am in that industry. Was I aware of it? Nope. Was I concerned about someone taking over control of my airplane? Nope.

Who do we blame? I don't care. Take your pick. There's certainly enough to go around, and lots of places to hang it. Will it make a difference finding the right person to blame? Nope.

As long as we close the loop and try to stay one step ahead of the bastards. Do I think that is happening? Yes, so long as this country has the stomach for it and the leaders with the scrotal fortitude to actually do it. That might even mean having a scrotal heritage to fall back on. Do I think any of the presidential contenders have that heritage? Nope. The incumbant does.


350HP? you are right, you didn't use those words, I felt like you did.

I wont put words in your mouth if you won't do the same to me.

Another apology proffered, I'll go back to being silent again.

Tod,
One heck of a lot of folks knew the information that was in that memo prior to 911. The community had known most of it for years. Certainly the previous administration did. No one connected those dots that seem so obvious in hindsight. Even the one FBI agent who seems to have gotten it right could not make the case well enough to their superiors to even get a search warrant. If you expect GW or Condi to connect dots that the full time, trained intelligence officers did not see...you must think them even more brilliant than I do.

I think sing hit the nail on the head...we've got all these great agencies and none of them talk to each other in any constructive way. Their data systems can't be pooled in any constructive way. Google can come up with algorithms to make sense out of amazing diverse data (as can Grokker and others), but we can't seem to do the same with intel.

Yes, I know its hard. I'm involved in trying to do something similar on a smaller scale (ie get different silos to talk to each other and know what the other is doing) and it is very difficult. But my sense is that there are plenty of people who don't see the problem, or refuse to admit it (egos and budgets are on the line after all).

Again, I know it looks obvious with hindsite. So do a lot of things. But smart people learn from it, small people point fingers. Lots of small people (dems and republicans) in DC and elsewhere these days...

And no, I don't think GW or Rice more brilliant than you do. Trust me on that one...

I agree, there are lots of turf battles by petty bureaucrats. I spent a over a year on a large govt "commission" to solve a serious high-level communication and procedural problem between different agencies. We mapped out a new way to do things that had many fail-safes. We got agreement from all interested parties on the new proceedures and even wrote regulations to govern the process. I lobbied for the funds and manpower to implement the new process and recieved them. I left the program one week from implementation. I find that through, IMHO, incompetence it still has not been implemented almost 2 years later. The funds and manpower have been wasted and most of the involved agencies have new leadership..and one would have to start all over again to get agreement. Managers hired a bunch of unqualified friends of theirs to do the work and spent the money on travel and "redoing" the offices and changing the new furniture.

with our tax dollars? No...say it ain't so ;)

Same sort of thing happens in academia...although generally there is less at stake. It amazes me how hard people will fight over small dollars, and stonewall change just because it either wasn't their idea, or takes an iota of control away from them.

On the bright side, the system does work. The highly paid senior managers were investigated and removed . Sadly, they managed to fire the whistleblower first....

Bushs reply to the August 6 PDA is very interesting.....and shows to me that they really weren't concerned about Osama threat. I just wish Bush would admit he dropped the ball.

FORT HOOD, Texas (CNN) -- President Bush said Sunday that an intelligence memo he read shortly before September 11, 2001, contained no "actionable intelligence" that would have helped him to try to prevent the 9/11 attacks.

"The (August 6, 2001, memo) was no indication of a terrorist threat," Bush said during an Easter Sunday visit to Fort Hood to decorate wounded soldiers.

"There was not a time and place of an attack. It said Osama bin Laden had designs on America. Well, I knew that. What I wanted to know was, is there anything specifically going to take place in America that we needed to react to."

But a member of the independent commission investigating the September 11 attacks said Sunday the memo -- the president's daily briefing, or PDB -- should have alerted Bush to the strong possibility of such an attack.

Richard Ben-Veniste the memo and other reports and incidents made up a "substantial body of information" about Osama bin Laden's possible plans.

The briefing was headlined, "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US."

"The CIA was reminding the president -- with the headline ... 'don't just look overseas for the possibility of this spectacular event that everyone was predicting,' " Ben-Veniste told reporters.

"It certainly updates the information that bin Laden was determined to strike within the United States," said Ben-Veniste, a former prosecutor who worked on the Watergate case in the 1970s.

"It talked about sleeper cells here. It talked about terrorists coming and going out of the United States. It talked about a support system for al Qaeda within the United States."

The briefing also said that bin Laden, after U.S. missile strikes on his Afghanistan base in 1998, said he wanted to retaliate in Washington.

During the summer of 2001, an FBI agent in Phoenix, Arizona, wrote a memo about a number of young Middle Eastern men attending flight schools, possibly for terrorist purposes.

Ten days after the August 6 briefing, the FBI arrested Zacarias Moussaoui on immigration charges after he raised concerns by attending a Pan Am Airlines flight school in Minnesota.

Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent who is in federal custody in Virginia, is the only defendant facing prosecution in the United States in connection with the attacks.

"[The August 6 briefing] talked about how [bin Laden] planned years in advance for his operations," Ben-Veniste said.

"So if you're talking about '98 and you're talking about in the context of the most extraordinary threat environment that we had ever experienced in the United States, then this is put into context."

Ben-Veniste also took issue with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the committee Thursday that the White House had no inkling al Qaeda would use planes as missiles.

Ben-Veniste said al Qaeda had a "history of using planes as weapons."

He said he would "be surprised if Dr. Rice didn't know" about a no-fly zone in place over Genoa, Italy, for the spring 2001 G8 meeting, spurred by fears terrorists could crash planes "into the buildings where the leaders were meeting."

"In fact, there was a specific 1999 National Intelligence Council report that proposed the possibility of jihadist, al Qaeda, suicide squad members crashing explosives-laden planes into the Pentagon, the CIA and the White House," Ben-Veniste said.

Ben-Veniste's colleague on the commission, Slade Gorton, said he was concerned about reports the FBI may not have "connected the dots" on its own investigations.

The Phoenix memo and the Minnesota information reportedly went to the same agency task force.

"The most important feature [in the briefing] is the line that the FBI was conducting 70 full field investigations," Gorton said on "Fox News Sunday."

"I don't know where those 70 field investigations were. The FBI didn't put them anywhere. Nobody in Washington knew about them."

Gorton, a former Republican senator from Washington, said the most interesting bit of information from the committee's meeting with Bill Clinton were the former president's statements that the White House has little ability to give direction to the FBI.

"It seems to me, the FBI has more questions to answer than Condoleezza Rice or [former White House counterterrorism adviser] Dick Clarke or anyone we've had testify before us so far," Gorton said.

Hart, Rice talked security before attacks
Former Democratic Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado, who was co-chairman of an earlier bipartisan commission that studied national security, said Sunday that he met with Rice five days before the September 11 attacks because he was concerned that the Bush administration was not moving on his panel's call for action against al Qaeda.

The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, created by Clinton in 1998 with congressional approval, released its final report in January 2001 and predicted "Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers."

"What this administration has done ... is to say that until someone tells us that 19 men are going to hijack four airplanes and fly them into the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon at 9 a.m. on September 11, we are not accountable," Hart said on CNN's "In the Money."

Hart was co-chairman of the commission with former Republican Sen. Warren Rudman of New Hampshire.

Among the Hart-Rudman commission's proposals was one "for a new Cabinet-level National Homeland Security Agency that would combine the Federal Emergency Management Agency with several other agencies," Hart said.

The commission also called for an overhaul of the State and Defense Departments to reflect the changing security environment.

Hart said he asked for and got a meeting with Rice on September 6, 2001.

"She was a supporter of mine when I was a presidential candidate in '84 ... and has been a friend over the years," he said.

"I asked to see her in September because I didn't see any movement from the administration on our suggestions.

"She simply said, 'I'll talk to the vice president about it.' "

Yeah, why is that? . .. .what would that achieve?

btw, were you one of the people, back during the 'Intern Monica allegations' wishing Clinton "would admit he dropped the ball" . . .er'ah. . .his load on a Blue dress?

Hasn't it been said countless times in threads like this (and on bumper stickers, placards and various other print media) that one blowjob doesn't equate hundreds of American lives?

I'm no great fan of Clinton, but I have to say equating Monica to a preoccupation with Iraq in the face of numerous terrorism threats from people other than Saddam Hussein is one of the most proposterous arguments I've seen in a long time. And anyway, to be fair, Clinton dropped two balls in comparison to GW's (supposed) one.

But then, hey, in Clinton's defense, who'd pass up the opportunity to get blown in the Oval Office?

I think Clinton should have come clean (and not dry clean).

I also think that getting a hummer from an intern and the largest attack on US soil should have slightly different levels of interest and focus...

I have to agree with dd74 and nostatic. All that Clinton witch hunting was a waste of time and money.
I don't want to waste more time and money witch hunting Bush. I feel it would help restore some confidence to the American people if he would admit they didn't do a very good job on this issue. Damn, Bushs acts like it was a big deal to let Condi Rice testify! Wow, she spoke to us.
Did she reveal much, hell no. I watched and then listened to the radio of her speaches because thats what they sounded like to me. prescripted speaches, without revealance to the questions.
Oh now you are going to say this will admit weakness on our part, but soo what! Bin Landin knows where they will strike next and we never will unless by shear luck. This is the nature of terrorism.
Geoff

You know, if he had only said that...I might have backed him too. The problem is, as the highest official in the land, he lied under oath to prevent a private citizen from having their day in court.
As Monica would say, Its just a matter of taste.

Where do you get that? (it's like you're making a link between binladen & saddam:cool: )

Bleyseng wants Bush to "admit it" in front of the whole world, that he(bush) dropped the ball (regarding 9/11)"

btw, 9/11 is the (supossed) theme of the hearings and this thread.

So, as I've wrote before; when a certain dem pres. was backed into an "admit it, or else" cornner; the big difference was, our national security wasn't so obviously on the line. . . .the embarasment of a, ahem, well rounded intern's blue dress, pales in comparision of giving binladen browny-points infront of the world.