What could have been done differently

[DrFaroohk]

Seems like everyone blames 9/11 on our government in one form or another (from "They planned it" to "They should've seen it coming").

What exactly could they have done differnetly? Seems to my like it's not really all that hard to hijack a few planes, and I doubt there was like billions of people in on the plan. Unless you have psychic powers to know where and when to look, you're not going to just magically "know" about an upcoming attack.

[jackfaire]

Seems like everyone blames 9/11 on our government in one form or another (from "They planned it" to "They should've seen it coming").

It's a coping mechanism. People want to believe that if they had been more vigilant if they had done this, that or the other that it never would have happened.

People do this because they don't want to face the reality that it could happen again with as little warning. People like to justify, or categorize anything that could happen to them as something that for X reasons will never happen to them.

It's good that people do this or we would have a lot of people too scared to leave their homes.

[mikoyan29]

Yes, there were inklings that someone might try something like turning an aircraft into a weapon. Yes, there were inklings that some Arab men were interested in learning how to fly a plane but not necessarily land said plane. There was some chatter that something big was coming. But until 9/11, nobody had ever used a plane to crash into a building. There were some cases of attempting this but they were thwarted.

One thing that could have been differently is that they could have listened to the recommendations that reinforced cockpit doors be used. If the hijackers hadn't got into the cockpits, they couldn't have slammed the plane into the buildings. As for the rest of the things...I'm not sure.

[Andara Bledin]

The only thing I think could have really made a difference would have been better training for flight crews.

Does anyone here know if flight crews get any training on how to deal with a hostage/terrorist situation? And if so, was that the case 12 years ago?

^-.-^

[HYHYBT]

I believe the previous practice was "do whatever they want and they'll let you go." Which works fine when they just want to divert you to another landing site...

[Sleepwalker]

Hmm, guess I hadn't seen this sentiment much, except from conspiracy theorists.

[Greenday]

Greenday's Tips for Successfully Handling Being a Hostage:

1. Do whatever they say. This will ensure they don't shoot you.
2. When police busts down the door, hit the ground with your hands visible. Don't try to stand around shouting that you are a hostage and not a criminal. They'll figure that part out after. Don't stand around waiting to get shot by a badly aimed bullet.
3. If they ARE going to kill you, do whatever you can to survive.

As for 9/11, I don't think there was much the government could have done. Either they knew exactly what was going to happen or they didn't. If they did know exactly what was going to happen they would have stopped it.

[Amanita]

It's a well known fact that organizations like the FBI, CIA, etc don't play together or share information as well as they should. There's a lot of inter-agency squabbles, turf wars, and the like.
I do believe that as Mikoyan said, there were inklings that something was up- various goings on that people knew about. By themselves they looked sorta hinky, but not major enough to warrant going into DEFCON mode over. It was only afterward in hindsight, that the pieces could be put together. That and the aforementioned inter-agency BS might have made information sharing of the sort that might have helped harder.

I don't believe that the US government knew it all was going to go down and let it happen, much less that they outright made it happen. I've got a great book on the 9/11 truthers and conspiracy theorists in general, called "Among the truthers". It's worth checking out.

[bara]

I think there is a lot of things we havent been told about 9/11. But I dont think the government knew about it.

[Pinecone]

Apparently Robert Gates thinks it was the government's fault, but what does he know?
Just because he was Secretary of Defense and head of the CIA doesn't mean he'd know anything more than anyone else:


"In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 10, 2008, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made the following jaw-dropping statement:

“We were attacked from Afghanistan in 2001, and we are at war in Afghanistan today, in no small measure because of mistakes this government made--mistakes I among others made in the end game of the anti-Soviet war there some 20 years ago.”

[mikoyan29]

Personally, I think conspiracy theories like this one and the Pearl Harbor one come up because people can't believe that a big nation like the US could get snuck attacked. Pearl Harbor is probably the closest related because again, the US had inklings that something was going to happen....

[Gravekeeper]

Well, I guess you could ignore your own counterterrorism advisor when he warns you that Al-Qaeda is an imminent threat 9 months prior to 9/11. Then demote his office so that all further warnings they send go to your aid instead of you, and the aid returns them all. Then 1 month prior to 9/11 when the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS all come to you and say "something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon." you could ignore that too.

Then immediately afterwards you could go back to your counterterrosim advisor, demand he find a link between 9/11 and Iraq, then get pissed at him when he and all of your counterterrorism agencies say there's no link at all. Then tell them to rework and resubmit their report until it does show a link to Iraq.

Then ignore what they're all saying anyway and go to war with Iraq.

<cough>

Fact is, alarm bells were going off, loudly, for months prior but no one really listened.