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Sorry to do this, and I'd like to stress I'm not certain I believe this article, but would you believe, say, AmeriCares?
Because this lot don't. And the Sandanistas certainly didn't; they said it was a CIA front.
"Likely to be"! Thus, even though AmeriCares (actually, the name of the charity is enough to make me wonder about its motives...) is perhaps not to be trusted, I stand by the statement; news likely to be more trustworthy than government announcements, charities more likely to be trustworthy than mainstream news sources... statistics made up on the spot, but if 10% of what the government says is true, 50% of what the media says is true, and 90% of what charities say is true, the statement is reasonable. And still reasonably if those figures are 49%, 50% and 51% respectively.
[melodramatically] Trust No-One![/melodromatically] Yay, melodrama! Perhaps a little more of that is needed to make the thread more interesting. I'm tiring a little of repeating what is essentially the same argument again and again. Talking of which...
Ray Fawkes:
While a lot of people have stated that the administration had a lot of information about possible attacks, I have yet to see anything that indicates that they had (dare I say it yet again) enough information to reasonably expect to be able to prevent the attacks
Gaaaaaah! The point is, they *may* have had enough information that one might reasonably expect them to have been able to do more to impede the attacks. Plenty has been said that indicates that they *may* have done. That this is not sufficient information to make it certain, or even *more likely than not*, the fact that it is of significant probability is enough to say that it shouldn't just be dismissed.
It is entirely possible, you know, that the order was passed down not to fire on the planes because the people in charge knew that they were full of passengers and didn't want to kill them. It's possible that they had no idea the planes were about to be used as weapons and didn't want to antagonize the terrorists, worrying that they would kill more hostages. It's also possible that they didn't want to fire on them over downtown Manhattan, knowing that the flaming debris of the demolished planes would rain down on the city below. It's possible that they hesitated because they couldn't understand or believe what was happening.
Does any of this sound like reasonable doubt to you?
Why this seeming insistence that the default position, rather than neutral, is the government line or, at least, the opposite of whatever theory is being suggested? Of course there's reasonable doubt - no one has, at any point, said, "This Is How It Was!" - but simply, "This is a credible possibility." What you have effectively said just there is, "How could you consider that to be possible when there are these possible alternative explanations?"
Your theories are possible. The other theories put forward are possible. Some theories are more likely than others. That is all.
(Apparently an increased use of exclamation marks indicates an impending nervous breakdown. Four above... I'll try to aim for more next time. Maybe I could do multiple exclamation marks...)
Oo, and since writing that, Lurid's posted, so quickly:
I think the point is is that there's a procedure which dictates that fighters should be sent up to intercept and if absolutely necessary shoot down planes which go off-course... of course, shooting down is probably not too likely, but recalling the fighters before they can even intercept is far from a usual course of action. |
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