quote:
Originally posted by Solar:
[BI have to say that I, too, am stunned that we didn't see this coming. If Tom Clancy, a novel writer, could predict an airliner being used as a terrorist weapon, why the hell is American Intelligence scratching their collective heads saying "Gee...I dunno. We never really thought about this kinda thing."[/b]
You are way off the mark here. Of course our intelligence operations thought about this sort of thing happening. But thinking about it and preventing it are too different things.
In the days and weeks to come we are going to hear tons of reports of information that someone should have been able to see this coming. Some of this will be rumor, but some of it will be true. But none of it changes the fact that it's very hard to infiltrate an organization such as this and discover their plans. And nearly inpossible to stop them once they have been put into motion.
How do you infiltrate an orginization who's members have dedicated their lives to. Not only that they are willing to die, but that their goal is to die in the performance of their mission?
And if you decide that's too hard, how do you stop an operation like this once it's started?
Strip searches at airports?
Armed guards on every airplane?
Fighter escorts for every airplane flying over populated areas, with orders to fire upon a fully loaded plane with innocent passengers if they deviate one iota from there prescribed flight plan?
We could move the airports 100 miles from any major city I guess.
The only way to stop things is to punish those responsible so that they they cannot do such things again.
If Bin Laden turns out to be responsible as most early indications point too, then the way we could have prevented this was to punish him for his terrorist activites over the Last 10+ years.
At the very least hounding him and pressuring other governments to not allow him sanctuary would have kept him on the run and unable to plan and execute this acts.
Geoschmo