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Gold9472
05-12-2008, 07:38 PM
Conspiratorially Speaking: United Flight 93 and 9/11

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorblog/089

(Gold9472: He says, "9/11 was not an inside job" (a phrase I particularly hate), but states it as an opinion. Then goes on to say, "The reality is that the Bush White House covered up much about 9/11, including its own incompetence. How much we don't know." If we don't know how much they're covering up, then how can he state emphatically that "9/11 was not an inside job" (a phrase I particularly hate)?)

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG
by Mark Karlin
Editor and Publisher
May 12, 2008

As we take a reprieve from the 2008 elections for a day, we wanted to take note of a Chicago Tribune editorial that repeats the story of how Dick Cheney approved the shooting down of United Flight 93 on 9/11:

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, after planes had crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Vice President Dick Cheney was in the White House bunker and had to make a momentous recommendation to President Bush, who was in flight aboard Air Force One: that Bush authorize the military to shoot down any civilian airliners that might be hijacked and headed for other targets.

Bush concurred—and shortly after, the moment of truth arrived. A military aide approached Cheney: "There is a plane 80 miles out," he said. "There is a fighter in the area. Should we engage?" Cheney had thought through the complex implications of that question, had discussed it with his boss, and didn't hesitate to answer: "Yes." That plane was United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania before fighter jets could reach it.
The account originally appeared in the Washington Post years ago and came up in other stories about the post 9/11 frenzy, but nothing much was made of it. (Although whether Bush really had any role in the decision remains open to question.) The mainstream media accepted the White House account that United Flight 93 crashed before it was shot down, even though once Cheney gave his approval to shoot it down, it would probably only take a brief time before it was executed.

We're not passing judgment upon whether Flight 93 should have been shot down or not. That is, indeed, a very difficult decision. But BuzzFlash was watching contemporaneous reports come in at the time, and the first wire service stories strongly indicated that it had been shot down based on witnesses in the area and the details that they provided.

It was only later that a heroic narrative emerged that included a line that became part of the standard Bush "American Spirit" of battle theme: "Let's roll."

BuzzFlash can't say conclusively that Flight 93 was shot down, as Cheney had directed, but it certainly looks that way.

We have often taken issue with the 9/11 Truth Movement because it takes the fact that there are many unanswered questions about 9/11 and tries to answer them with often bizarre speculation. 9/11 was not an inside job, but it was something that probably could have been prevented in August of 2001 if Bush and Rice had listened to a CIA warning about Al-Qaeda preparing hijackings in the U.S. But Bush and Rice did nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to put airports on a heightened security alert.

The reality is that the Bush White House covered up much about 9/11, including its own incompetence. How much we don't know. But we do know that -- if you recall -- Bush would only be interviewed by the 9/11 Commission (which was stacked with white-washers) with Cheney at his side, and with no notes or minutes taken, and with their not being sworn in under oath, and with the "interview" occurring in the Oval Office. That sort of scenario does not inspire a great deal of credibility.

The entire reign of manipulated fear that we have been living under since 9/11 goes back to George W. Bush's cavalier indifference (along with Rice's malfeasance) to clear alarms in 2001 about Al-Qaeda coming our way.

We bring this up today because the item about United Flight 93 emerged so casually in a Chicago Tribune May 12th editorial about the need for Vice Presidents who can stand the heat. (Of course, Bush was off in a Florida elementary school classroom for a long time reading "My Pet Goat" and waiting for his handlers, including Cheney and Rove, to tell him what to do.)

Like the JFK assassination, we may never know the truth about the circumstances surrounding 9/11. The shredders have long since done their work.

But the Tribune editorial reminded us that the likelihood that Flight 93 was shot down, given the first reports and the account of Cheney ordering it shot down, is quite high. Any U.S. government, whether Democratic or Republican, would probably not want to admit that it was responsible for blowing a commercial airliner with U.S. citizens aboard out of the sky.

So a heroic narrative was, it appears, crafted to cover up the reality of what happened. At the time, we speculated that Flight 93 may have been headed for the infamous Three-Mile Island nuclear plant, just a short air distance away from where it went down. Or it may have indeed been flying back with terrorist plans to crash the plane into Congress or the White House.

We'll never know.

But on a scale of 1 to 10, BuzzFlash would put it at an 8 likelihood that Flight 93 was indeed downed by an American missile.

This is one decision, probably the only one, that we can't begrudge Dick Cheney. (If the plane had crashed into Three-Mile Island and set off a nuclear reaction, the death toll could have been catastrophic.)

But perhaps from the next president, we can be treated as adults and told the truth.