Our prayers go out to the families of the airplane passengers and the victims on the ground. A special prayer for the policemen and firefighters who died in the World Trade Center attack, while trying to help rescue others.
The death toll may reach the 5 figure mark.
I also, personally feel, that the pilot of the jet that crashed south of Pittsburgh, very likely did so in order to prevent his jet from crashing in Washington. This particular plane radioed for a flight destination change to D.C., and the plane crashed shortly thereafter. The pilot was an ex-Vietnam Air Force pilot, who would have done something this courageous.
I believe that since this fourth jet crashed the most shocking attack of the day was probably avoided. If the fourth jet had made it's way to Washington, D.C. and crashed into the White House or Capitol Building, the significance would have been epic. The plane WAS bound for D.C. and those were the likely targets. Anyone else besides me remember "Executive Orders," by Tom Clancy? (A Japanese terrorist crashes a 747 into the Capitol Building!!! Sound familiar?) Maybe someone else read this book with extreme interest...in Afghanistan.
I have to contradict one of the earlier posters, the Taliban, not Osama Bin Laden, denied any involvement. The Taliban is the ruling Muslim faction of Afghanistan, the country that harbors Osama Bin Laden. Preliminary word is that there were confirmed Bin Laden "associates" on the planes, and the intelligence community intercepted a comminique wherein Bin Laden's people were heard to say that two of their targets were hit. That also means that there were/are other targets.
I think that (4) nukes, one for each hi-jacked jet, would be just about right. Would I have any regret for the Afghani citizens? No! They were walking around clapping, smiling, firing guns, and handing out candy today in celebration. It would be a good time to let them know how a world power reacts to terrorism. I think that we should give them one week to hand over Bin Laden, and then poof....
Another thought. All of the planes were apparently taken by using knives. I heard that many of the flight crew were stabbed. Many of the people who were fortunate enough to get phone calls out of the doomed planes reported that the hi-jackers had knives. Authorities can't figure out how they got the knives on board. I ran across at least one polycarbonate knife, designed by the CIA, that is advertised as being undetectable by airport metal detectors. Polycarbonate is just a hard, unbreakable plastic. These are easily available on eBay, where they are sold as "letter openers" that just happen to have been designed by the CIA. Here's what I mean:
http://www.botachtactical.com/botach/blaccolciale.html
While we're on the subject, Osama Bin Laden was trained by the CIA during the Russian/Afghanistan war. He is very familar with American security systems, and has tons of money. We gave him Stinger missles, for goodness sakes. He employs heavy transport plane pilots to ferry his people around. It is not too much of a stretch to realize that the people who piloted the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were U.S. commercially/militarily trained Muslim pilots who were working for Bin Laden. NO United States airline pilot would have deliberately crashed the planes into those heavily populated targets...period.
The United States has an official policy that disallows direct government sanctioning of the death of another person. I think that it is time that that law is reviewed and rewritten. Today's actions were an act of war, no different from the attack at Pearl Harbor, except that that was an attack against primarily a military target. The Japanese DID straife civilians. General Swartzkoff, said that the U.S. armed forces took every possible action to prevent the accidental death of civilians during Desert Storm. Bin Laden has no such morals, and views ALL American CITIZENS to be targets, as today's actions proved. Time to take him out.
This is a day that everyone will remember for the rest of their lives. Getting through airport security, without the alarm going off, will now be extremely hard in the future - except if you have a CIA issue polycarbonate knife hidden in your belt buckle. Whew! What a day!
