Reply #10: Shooting down a hijacked passenger airliner cannot have been SOP [View All]

[unschooler]

prior to 9/11. Certainly it had never been done before in response to a hijacking. In most cases, the lives of many or most passengers were saved after long negotiations. I understand Griffin's point that the fighters could have "intercepted" at least Flights 175, 77 and 93 (and possibly did, at least wrt 93). However, according to the timeline on cooperativeresearch.org, the planes that were scrambled to go after 175 did not go directly to NY but went out to sea, where most interceptions (of foreign military aircraft) take place. I think this is an understandable mistake on the part of the pilots or their local commanders as this is what pilots typically do. Here on the west coast, fighter pilots used to "intercept" Soviet fighters probing our air space on a fairly regular basis. I also think that the fact that some fighters at some bases were not armed on 9/11 is not surprising, as I think they often fly without live missiles. I'm not saying 9/11 wasn't in some ways different than described in the "official" account or even that it wasn't a "conspiracy," involving some US officials (maybe, maybe not). I just don't think we can be so certain that the military's failure to shoot down the first couple of jets is such a huge deviation from SOP. WRT Flight 77, I've read Griffin but am not deeply enough familiar w/ the facts to have an opinion (yet). I just think that as to flights 11 and 175, if we put any burden of proof on ourselves, we are hard-pressed to say there was an official or unofficial "stand down."