Cheney Issued Orders To Shoot Down Jets

"What has become of the media?"

It is made up of merely human ppl, same as ever. It hunts in a pack, same as ever. Most journalists were glued to the same TV screens we were, for the same reason. Myth of golden age of bold independent mainstream journalism = completely mysterious to me.

i've been blogging about these spaces inbetween, mike moore mentioned in his official emails yesterday the high suspicion, indymedia etc have been keeping up the questions - mainstream media works according to power relationships - if, for example, cnn focussed on the planes being shot down, the us govt would've refused them access to fbi releases, press spaces, etc - shifting, constraining yet power- generating/recycling...

perhaps a more intriguing question is why did cheny give the orders when George W, as head of the forces, was the only one with the constitutionally-enshrined authority to do so? Should cheny now be tried for murder, or at least gross-abuse of his position?

Should cheny now be tried for murder, or at least gross-abuse of his position?

Murder? I have to agree with Momus' implicit point -- given the *very* extreme circumstances, which would you rather, everyone on the plane dead or everyone on the plane plus people at the intended target dead? That's a hard decision to make, to put it *very* mildly. And consider -- let's say all four planes had been taken out first. Wouldn't there have been some astonishing outcry over that fact alone even though in fact it *would* have saved thousands of lives, and wouldn't everyone automatically assuming the absolute worst of the government not want to believe or credit an announcement that the planes had been hijacked in the first place?

This was not a situation that in the heat of the moment was going to be subject to moral debate from Cheney. If anything, I credit him for actually making the damn decision, and like Momus wonder why only one out of four planes was hit. If there was no time, though, there was no time.

aha, so justice shifts - bush was authorised, cheney wasn't, how do we slip around that, mroe to the point, is it now apparent who runs the country?

Yes there was little news about f 16 attacks. Maybe the journalists were just too busy with all the other things that were going on. SO the on e in Penn. WAS shot down then? Its confirmed? He must have authorsed teh hootin gdown AFTER the first on e was used as a missle, or else why do it?

where's yr blog?

is it now apparent who runs the country?

What, it wasn't already? I wasn't looking to Bush for leadership in the first place.

blog is http://home.iprimus.com.au/laurapalmer/blog.htm.

sure we all knew cheny was in charge, but did we _know_ cheney was in charge? Just read an article on the sydney morning herald site (www.smh.com.au) that suggests any armed retaliation against another nation breaches a number of UN treaties, as self-defense can only be invoked if another antion attacks ie if afghanistan knew this was going to happen/trained soldiers etc - what a weird few days this will be.

armed retaliation against another nation breaches a number of UN treaties

Since when has the US ever paid any attention to UN treaties when they contradict its own interests?

ok, so i give up on the legal avenues - i ain't a lwayer;-)

the lack of media coverage fully lined up with my expectations about the government.

CNN version here.

It quotes Cheney as saying the president made the decision and he concurred. It also states that none of the planes were ever hit by military fire.

Beat me to it. But yup, that's the version being presented now. Hmm...

Not to put too fine a point on it, but far too much is being made of this. it is the lead headline on the NY Times online edition. Reporters, and not just the Guardian ones, were in fact asking what was the government policy on shooting down commercial aircraft, and they answer they heard (widely reported) was that one existed, but understandably, the government didn't want to start talking about how it could have, in theory, participated in the slaughter on Tuesday. I'm no apologist for the US government, but I can entirely understand waiting for some of the shock to subside before acknowledging this miserable contingency plan.

Clearly if you're an anarchist, things are different, but it seems pretty clear to me that anarchism and air traffic control aren't commensurable.

i do not go to CNN for news. If i want vauge American agitprop i go to CNN. If i want the same pictures over and over again with music , i go to CNN. If i want useless commentary and mawksih sentiment , i go to CNN. News never. WE kenw that the plane was shot down. Did CNN report it, of course not. Moral Ambiguity would never work in a situtation like this. As well Bush has all his Dadduies Advisors for a reason. WE know and _know_ he doesnt govern. However his speechwriters are getting better !

So what you're saying, Anthony, is that you're not fond of CNN. Am I right? ;-)

basically that and Bush doesnt govern, his daddies advisors do, we shouldnt be suprised

Jesus, Anthony -- if you feel that way about CNN, I'd hate to hear what you'd think of Fox Cable News.

MSNBC's coverage, while not perfect, has been far superior to CNN. They keep reporting bogus 'facts' for hours on end... the 800 dead at the Pentagon, the airlines losing 300 BILLION a day (umm NO).. A military aircraft intervention was the first thing I thought of when I heard that the fourth plane had 'just crashed' and I could be slightly off, but I beleive that it's true that they didn't actually get the chance... there was an interview with a few eye-witnesses that described erratic flight patterns in line with a struggle for the controls, but no mention of other aircraft. I agree with Momus that it *is* troubling that the possibility was not even mentioned, but it seems that there's some real heavy pressure to toe the line.. apparently in times of emergency, all major news networks have an agreement to pool their access to film footage and coverage... makes sense in the practical but it does seem to be creating a certain homogeneity. I'm a bit scatter brained today, a good friend of mine from LA that sometimes goes to New York to visit family at this time of year is still not answering his emails... and i can't find his phone number... :( i hate this.

CNN kept reporting bogus facts that is. sorry.

And I'm seriously thinking of writing a letter to the CBC for their absolutely absurd graphics, superimposing the burning towers over everything. Even parliament hill! It's total garbage.

The plane wasn't shot down, anthony. Enjoy shoot-down denials from ABC, CBS, Reuters, or MSNBC, if you like.

We do not get MSNBC or fox news up here. CBC has disappointed me . But the Gaurdain and the Globe and Mail, both newspapers. Have been Brillant !

There are conflicting reports here. The Pentagon denies shooting the jet down, the FBI are saying they're 'not ruling anything out'. Cheney began by saying he himself issued the orders to shoot down, but is now saying Bush issued them (presumably because Bush complained).

Cheney is also preparing some spin to make further questions on the subject look unpatriotic and disrespectful to surviving relatives: the NY Times reports 'Mr. Cheney guessed that "some real heroism by Americans" aboard that plane had prevented the hijackers from crashing it into the Capitol in Washington.'

Do we know for sure it was only Americans who wrestled for control of the plane? And if it turns out that these heroes were gay people (the flight was between NY and SF), will Cheney praise the courage of homosexuals?

The FBI wasn't ruling anything out because they hadn't gathered enough evidence to do so. They didn't say they had evidence that anything was shot down, just that they weren't ruling anything out.

Cheney says the President gave the order to target the hijacked jets on his recommendation.

We don't know yet what happened to bring that jet down. That doesn't mean we're being deceived.

i thought it was general knowledge by now that f-16s were sent after the two planes headed towards the wtc? maybe i've just been watching too much of the news, but since at least friday, there's been mention that the planes had just gotten off the ground when the planes struck. of course, if they'd gotten there...then what? shanksville, pa is one thing -- open spaces, not too many people -- and manhattan is quite a different thing entirely. (which, of course, assumes that the plane was shot down in pennsylvania, which is still a leap though goes to show just how little we know about what's really going on.)

fwiw, cnn has the most nondescript coverage, msnbc has a lot of "human interest," and, for my money, fox news is the most 'enjoyable' for paranoids like myself.

for the record, three men reportedly took on the hijackers on that crashed flight. two were americans (with wives!) and not much is known about the third (by me, at least.)

Still don't really see what "the story" is here, apart from a desire to harass and embarrass Cheney: A nasty piece of work, to be sure, but we're not going to find the smoing gun for that in THIS incident — quite the opposite, I suspect — and meanwhile there are many more substantial, less intrinsically cloudy issues to be exploring than govt hot-potato juggling over what all agree was an impossibly difficult triage decision? If you really want to get the ins and outs, who exactly did what when will play out at length in the US courts when the first insurance claims start to come in... Meanwhile most of the above is evidence of an administration being rollercoastered by events totally out of their control, and (and this is something I really really don't say much about decisions of state) I doubt any of us would have managed better.

fwiw, g.w. was just on tv. asked by press whether or not he'd ordered f-16s to attempt to take down pennsylvania plane, he said that yes, it was a difficult decision to make, but necessary, and so forth.

who exactly did what when will play out at length in the US courts when the first insurance claims start to come in...

I'm holding out hope -- illusory, sure -- of Congressional hearings as well. Essentially between the lawsuits and the probes, while it will be interesting to hear what *doesn't* get talked about, we're likely to hear much anyway -- though it will be fascinating to see if anyone anywhere actually owns up to any blame, whether we're talking a security guard at the airport or Bush himself. I have my doubts.

On a vaguely related subject, my own thoughts also tend towards this -- for financial reasons alone now (a cold rationale, but hear me out) all the airlines worldwide are going to be so security conscious and paranoid from here on in that flying will, mechanical worries set apart, be safer than before. The combination of the financial hits they're all reporting right this second and the inevitable lawsuits means that the CEOs are all going to look at each other and realize that the best way they can sell themselves from here on in is to say that they follow every last rule in the book to the letter blah blah blah etc. All it takes is somebody reviewing them on that claim to point out false advertising to put them under.

I doubt any of us would have managed better.

That's for damn sure.

I don't claim I would have done better, but I really don't believe any of this would have happened under Gore. He wouldn't have bungled the Middle East so badly, he wouldn't have torn up the stabilising missile treaties and torn recklessly into Star Wars, he wouldn't have pulled the US out of just about every piece of international legislation, isolating the US the way Bush has. I really believe that, but for that one shady supreme court vote cast in the interests of the 'business candidate', those towers would still be standing today.

= Momus's way of saying "Yes, you're right, I'm sorry, this jets thing IS a bit of a non- story, what really bugs me is [etc]"

And if it turns out that these heroes were gay people (the flight was between NY and SF), will Cheney praise the courage of homosexuals?

If it turns out?: www.gay.com/news/article.html?2001/09/12/1

I really believe that, but for that one shady supreme court vote cast in the interests of the 'business candidate', those towers would still be standing today.

If it weren't for the fact that preliminary evidence suggests pilot training for those guys was going on well before the election, I might be inclined to agree more, but as it stands...

Did anyone see Gore at the prayer service? That guy is in a funk, and I don't mean the slap bass kind. It looked as if he was going to crack open a beer. Apparently he was in the UK on 9/11, flew to Canada by himself, rented a car (so close to being in charge at the time but instead he's in, like, an Ontario Hertz with just him and his beard), called Clinton in NY who invited him to drive down. ("It's Al, he already knows I'm here. What do I say?) They hadn't seen each other in eight months.

This whole thing has actually made me feel a bit odd about voting for Nader. Imagine in some parallel universe if he were president right now, with no congressional support or foreign policy experience?

Still don't really see what "the story" is here, apart from a desire to harass and embarrass Cheney

I'm 'harassing and embarrassing Cheney' in this thread? What planet are you from, Sinker?

To me, even the slightest possibility that the US air force shot down a civil airliner is one we should examine... while we still can, I might add. Ashcroft is already moving for legislation to sweep aside judicial limitations on police powers, and www.nme.com reports that the Rage Against The Machine bulletin board has been shut down by the US secret service because of 'inflammatory comments'. Be afraid, but above all be vigilant.

This has to have gone much farther back than Bush.

www.nme.com reports that the Rage Against The Machine bulletin board has been shut down by the US secret service because of 'inflammatory comments'.

Now wait, of all people you shouldn't be trusting the NME, right? ;-) And you shouldn't -- I was actually checking out the board for the last few days before the shutdown, and here's what the current (and most up- to-date) message from Tom Morello says if you go to the website:

"The official RATM message board has been temporarily closed.

We thank Infopop for their generosity during the past year. Unfortunately some news agencies have reported INCORRECTLY that Infopop pulled the hosting due to "anti-American posts" which is simply not true. Infopop pulled the message board due to arising difficulties they faced when governmental authorities contacted them regarding VIOLENT THREATS that appeared on the BBS. RATM nor Infopop would never support threats of violence, and we here at RATM.com fully understand and agree with Infopop's decision to release themselves from this huge liability of hosting the bbs.

We are endeavoring to correct the situation and get your free exchange of information and ideas up and running as soon as possible."

So there you go. The threats in question appear to have been promises to 'kill Bush' or the like, but it also has to be said that there were a fair amount of expressions of happiness (tempered by the deaths but not totally absent) over the destruction of the buildings in question, as well as a slew of unfortunate bigotry towards Arab-Americans. Personally I think Morello is grandstanding a bit, but is also trying to get a lot of people on his boards to sit back and think before posting anything more.

Don't assume this board is not being watched too. Here's an alert message I got on the 11th when composing a post about the anthrax rumour. I have never hit the page www.nyc.gov in my life, or tried to call it up. But here an alert was telling me, in the middle of a post, that the site was unavailable, just as if I had asked to submit something to it. Very weird.

http://www.demon.co.uk/momus/nycgov.jpeg

I rechecked that entire thread, Momus, and found this message:

Here is a dreadful irony for you.

-- DG (rgreenfield@btinternet.com), September 11, 2001.

The 'here' being a link to a site at -- you guessed it! -- www.nyc.gov, which was about the city's Emergency Management office. Maybe you had briefly clicked on it or something? Either way, that's my guess as to what happened to you there.

I'm sorry, perhaps I'm being really dense here, but if the choice is between [x] people dying (= a plane-full) and [x+y] people dying (= a plane-full + a building-full) , the "impossibly difficult triage" decision is to strive that it be [x], however that is achieved. If the means of achievement goes against procedure or the Constitution or natural instinct, then the decision is obviously harder. What is the factor I am missing that makes THIS the issue of the moment? Plainly all facts about all elements should be in the public eye, but I can't grasp what you think the dastardly crime committed here IS. If shooting the plane down — utterly horrible as that must be to consider, in many different ways — SAVED lives, then where's the story? If it didn't, but Cheney mistakenly believed it did, excuse me, what's the issue? Are you suggesting he took this opportunity to shoot down a plane anyway, even though he knew [I know not what], because this was something he'd always secretly wanted to do, and he'd never get the chance again? What's the STORY, Nick?

To be honest my feelings about the Bush administration are this: I have every possible problem with their behaviour up till about 9.10 New York that Tuesday morning; and grave reservations about their behaviour since about 5.00 that Tuesday afternoon — but actually as the Towers burned and fell, I'm gunna cut them a lot of slack, even Cheney, who ordinarily I keenly loathe and despise. That was a hard horrible day. Unless you're digging for something you haven't said yet, Nick, the smoking gun is not the downing of that plane, HOWEVER it happened.

Phew! Thanks for that. Getting a bit jittery here. Got a visa renewal coming up soon too... To any INS officers reading this, I just want to make it clear that everything I'm saying in these posts goes back to my wholehearted support of the US constitution. I'm not joking. The US Constitution is perhaps the most beautiful and luminously just document produced by the Enlightenment.

Phew! Thanks for that. Getting a bit jittery here.

No worries, m'friend. :-) But this is one reason why nobody should ever jump to conclusions. ;-) The US Constitution is perhaps the most beautiful and luminously just document produced by the Enlightenment.

Yowsa. Now if it only always worked as intended.

Why, Momus, that's awfully nice of you to...oops.

Mark: while our luminous prose may sometimes suggest otherwise, it's not my impression that threads on ILE have 'stories'. I mean, 'I love Snickers Peanut Butter' -- is that a 'story'? These threads are just to get people talking about whatever shit they want to talk about, no? And, watching BBC World over breakfast at a friend's house in Brooklyn this morning, that Cheney admission was what I really, really wanted to talk about. I do apologise for his feelings of harrassment ever since I raised the matter.

By the way, did anyone in the UK see the Question Time that reduced a US official to tears, so vehement was the anti-US bias in the audience's questions? Greg Dyke apparently had to apologise on behalf of the BBC.

There was a mention on the thread about Question Time about that. Something about how a woman pointed out that Israel's actions could be seen as terrorism in turn? If it gave the guy a wake-up call on that front, then that's a good thing, frankly...

I think we're getting all heated over not that much anyway: what I'm getting at is this. If the story is not some great revelation about a sinister crime/plot/conspiracy in re the plane being shot down, but rather that the Bush administration was all a panicked chaos that day trying to work out who was in charge and what could and should be done, well, you know, this is a real tactical loser of a way to "get" Cheney, because you're getting him for merely being human in an impossible situation. Get him for actual crimes before or since. That day he has a free pass from public opinion forever: that day ppl were allowed to fuck up.

The press should be free to cover all angles of the story, obviously: and should persist until they know everything about everything. They won't, but then they've never been as great at this as they think they have.

The oil story has legs, politically: I really don't think this jet one does.

On a different note, this lead photo, like many others, has captivated me due to its nature. If it were any other context, it could be seen as beautiful, and even *in* context it actually is, like a ruined cathedral. Somehow I eventually a predict a study on the aesthetics of the day itself, for better or worse.

Incidentally on a related point I heard that during his presidency Clinton had set up a committee chaired by Gore to look into security on US domestic flights. (BBC 11/9) The committee recomended strongly that security should be considerably improved, but the airlines were able to talk Clinton out of it. Is there any talk of this in the U

A couple of mentions here and there, not much. The airlines' weaseling out of the security upgrades will eventually become important given the lawsuits (it may sound like a strange thing to keep mentioning them, but the basis for a massive series of class-action lawsuits is all around -- all that has to happen is for all the financial firms who lost employees, office space, money, records, etc. to unleash their lawyers on the subject, and they'll take the airlines, the airports, the security firms and very likely the government to the wall).

Funny, I was just thinking of starting a thread to compare notes on airport security experiences. I flew a lot during the nineties, and it seems that after some terrorist attack or other - I don't know if it was OK City or something else - there was a lot of talk about cracking down, and the next time I went to the airport (in Lincoln), which was about a week after this, things were *really* strict. But I noticed a definite loosening in the following years. I also noticed that O'Hare was pretty strict for the international flights but kinda lax on the domestic ones, unless there was some threat or other in the news.

Steven Byers talking about having an armed guard on each flight as well as banning hand luggage from the plane now.

Well they shoudl definately look for KNIVES anyways, not guns and bombs. THe hijackers always use knives becasue bulletholes in cabin walls cause uncomfortables plane rides what with decompresion, and apparently up til now its been ok to take knives on board. And Momus, I'm glad you talk to us about things you feel like talkin g about, do carry on. I shall expect a thread from you soon about the film "Songcatcher" and how it relates to Folktronic.

Momus, what's interesting to me about this thread isn't whether you should raise such questions (which are certainly worth raising) but that something within you wants it to be true that the Air Force shot down the airliner. This was all over your posts on this subject even back on thread one. Now, I recognize this in myself - not on this particular issue, since I want the story of the cockpit struggle to be true, but in other instances. Like when I first heard about the Columbine shootings, along with my other reactions there was a little grin inside me, as if to say "So there!" This despite my wondering what my girlfriend was going to tell her three little girls to make them feel at ease, my knowing how much grief so many people around here were going to feel, and so on. I interviewed a kid from a high school near Columbine who'd had the same kind of reaction and who'd felt a letdown when it turned out that only 15 not 25 people had been shot - even though he knew that he himself could have been shot, if the attack had been in his school and not several miles over at Columbine. So there's something in people like me that wants some fact - some truth - some hurt or evil or dishonesty - to be revealed and made LARGE so everyone has to see it; it's my vengeance, to have this truth blow up big and hurt people hard. This impulse isn't necessarily bad: it produces great music and no doubt some good reporting and maybe some good political action. But if the impulse goes out of control it destroys the ability to analyze and the ability to politically organize effectively. It drives people away, basically. (Though I notice that on this board it's a subject that draws people in: 52 responses here while the main thread languishes, even though over in the main thread we could be discussing the fact that the Bush administration had originally asked Congress to authorize unlimited funds to prosecute the war on terrorism (if Congress had gone along it would have effectively ceded its own authority for appropriating money) and had asked Congress to authorize Bush to "deter and preempt any related future acts of terrorism and aggression against the United States," which would have given him blanket authority to go to war almost anywhere he saw an enemy. Or we could be discussing the fact that Ned inadvertently suggested a similarity between Jacques Derrida and Nguyen Van Thieu. But instead, we're here going on about a quasi-conspiracy theory.)

Going off at a tangent, but still on the "what's become of the media" theme, does anyone else think the BBC coverage of NYC etc has gone totally downhill over the last few days (after a good start on Day One)? Culminating in Jeremy "live from Ground Zero" Bowen on Breakfast News this morning - I thought they were supposed to be giving priority to transatlantic passengers with compassionate reasons for travelling, not self-obsessed media types. The Beeb now seems to be vying with the US networks in the voyeurism/wallowing in tragedy stakes.

At least CNN this morning were covering the latest stories - the Pakistan delegation's mission to the Taliban, CIA admitting it will employ "unsavoury characters" and try and get the ban on political assassinations lifted.

Perhaps the Beeb's top brass are trying to make up for their Question Time embarrassment. Another example - that Panorama programme last night, supposedly a straight piece on bin Laden (mostly rehashed from 1998 in the event), but they just had to intercut his story with the most dramatic and distressing clips and interviews from Tuesday, didn't they? Thus leaving the viewer in no doubt who was "responsible" for the attack, when even GW will only admit bin Laden is only "a prime suspect". Sadly, this sort of thing is par for the course for Panorama these days.

The only interesting thing to come out of it was the observation from one of bin Laden's contemporaries that the oft-repeated images of the planes impacting with the WTC and the towers crumbling were having the effect of impressing upon the Arab world that the US is vulnerable and can be defeated, as the Soviets were in Afghanistan.

I'm not impressed with the BBC, to be honest. Half way through the afternoon I discovered Channel 4 was better, but then it finished. It was a bit tiresome of the BBC to show the same bit of footage all afternoon, to be honest, at least the ITN news programmes had a bit of variety. As for now, I don't see why Jeremy Bowen is pleased that he's got himself some tacky T-shirs with dreadful 'patriotic' slogans on, I'm sure any of the NYC contingent would tell us there are squillions of stalls selling that tat all over the city.

Momus, what's interesting to me about this thread isn't whether you should raise such questions (which are certainly worth raising) but that something within you wants it to be true that the Air Force shot down the airliner.

I don't think I want it to be true, but I'm as susceptible as anyone else to conspiracy theories, not least because they're interesting. I think one of my faults is possibly that I put being interesting ahead of being right. I am, of course, free to do this because I have no power.

I'm an artist, an entertainer, not a politician or academic or company employee. I'm expected to be stimulating, amusing, thought-provoking, even subversive and disloyal, but not necessarily right. Actually, that's what a Momus is, in the original definition: a carping, cavilling critic. Now, some people (a few have been signing my website guestbook with comments not far removed from 'go home, commie fink') think that in times of crisis critics should belt up and buckle down. I think the opposite. I think it's precisely now that we need to brainstorm, not desert storm.

Well, I think that conspiracy theories are boring (which unfortunately doesn't preclude their being right). But if you're interested, my friend Mark Fenster wrote a book on conspiracy theories called (appropriately enough) Conspiracy Theories (U. of Minnesota Press) - though in the book I think he's actually more interested in conspiracy theorists than in conspiracy theories.

Just like John Lennon and Yoko in 1970 NYC.

[spam]

ugh

Best choice of thread by spamming cunt EVAH

CAN WE GET A CLEAN-UP IN THIS AISLE PLEEEZ?

[spam]

I akshully clicked that last one. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, Soma.

Fuck! Is dud!

are you drunk?

Yes.