sorry if i am late with the news, but what about those fighter planes bein

[A HERETIC I AM]

scrambled to intercept the light civilian plane that was in restricted airspace in D.C. Today? (11/10) Has it been mentioned and does anyone else find it interesting that fighters were scrambled from Andrews AFB (Where Air Force One is based) to this threat but two years ago a Civilian Jetliner was able to circle downtown Washington AT LEAST TWICE before crashing into the Pentagon WITH OUT A SINGLE INTERCEPTOR?? Now i try and take my conspiracy theories with a grain of salt, but damn.....it certainly seems curious that on 9/11 not a single fighter was able to confront the plane the crashed into the DOD even though it was what? 30 MINUTES AFTER the 2nd tower was hit, yet today, they are able to scramble and intercept a Cessna 182 (Or whatever it was) putting near the whitehouse in no time flat. just kind of strange, thats all.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24333-2003Nov10.html

[Nlighten1]

1. It is interesting.

Anyone have data on how long the scramble took?

[Old and In the Way]

2. NO

it was 52+ minutes after the 2nd WTC crash.

And yes, it is unbelievable.

[JackRiddler]

3. correction

8:20 AA11 definitively known as hijack by ATC
8:46 WTC 1 crash
8:55 AA77 "disappears"
9:03 WTC 2 crash
9:32 Bush leaves school.
9:37-9:43 various claimed AA77 crash times (9:41 seems correct).
10-10:06 claimed UA 93 crash times.

[Minstrel Boy]

4. "Is it the case, then, perhaps,

that there was some sort of a stand down? I have a few indications of that. There is a 177th Air National Guard based out of Pomona, New Jersey, near Atlantic City at the Atlantic City Airport. They're about equidistant, actually a little closer to DC. They could cover both Manhattan and DC. They have fighter-ready intercept jets. But one investigator that talked to them said that they were told two weeks prior to the event to stop putting the jets up in the air on a regular basis.

"I also talked to an independent journalist investigator at the Pentagon whose response to my stand down thesis that I'm giving you, he said, 'Didn't you read in the New York Times' -- and I've not been able to find this article so it may be he mis-cited it -- 'that three days before September 11th half of the combat ready planes in the United States were taken down offline.' I said, 'I did not. Are you making your argument or mine?'

"And then there's a third indication I have from someone whose son is stationed at Otis Air Force Base. The son has talked to pilots who were in the air the hour that the second plane was hit, scrambled out of Otis, who turned their attention to Flight 77 (the Pentagon flight) and made clear that they were going to go to try to intercept that flight coming back across from Ohio to DC and were called back -- according to these pilots -- were called back off the flight by the Command.

"So was there a stand down and no response? Were there call backs? These are not questions that I ultimately have the resources to answer but they're questions that stand and that raise, for me, a much deeper level of this scenario than is being addressed. But was there a point at which they knew ahead? There certainly was and for forty minutes everybody in DC knew the plane was coming and we didn't do a thing.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/UQPC061002.html

[drfemoe]

5. At the time

I read that rather than planes being taken "offline", there was a big preparedness exercise going on at one of those bases. They were all ready for mock scrambles .. like when they finally were scrambled, they didn't know for sure it was the 'real' thing. --or they wouldn't have known..

[Art_from_Ark]

6. I wouldn't buy that story with a plug nickel

But even if the story were true, then the next question would be, How did the hijackers know that 9-11 would be the day of the exercises?

[izzie]

7. We were led to believe this.....

If you lived near bases that their were men in suits ready to leave at a min. time. I knew some of these men and their wife, and they were not happy but it is how they lived. Now a jet can go pretty fast so why could one not get from Otis to that plane? Dc has bases all around it and by then they should have been no second guessing if that stopped the NYC planes. If fighters can go with air force one they can watch a city the size of NY or DC.This has always smelled to me.

[Jawja]

8. I wondered that, too

when I saw the news last night about that plane over D.C. Where were the jets on September 11?

[Postman]

9. I was in the navy on an aircraft carrier...

there was always what was called an "alert" status applied to certain types of aircraft in case of an emergency. For instance, an F-14 would be in an "alert 5" status which means it could be off the deck in 5 minutes to counter any incoming threat.

That was the navy, during cold-war conditions, at sea.

The Air Force in CONUS could be a whole different matter.