i dont wanna do a full rant about 911comm but suffice to say the whole story is
simply made up - heres what theyve come up with about the plot
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5224099/

i will take a few cheap shots tho
1. myers (ex-head of norad who was promoted soon after 911) was able to take
questions from only two commissioners before he had to leave the hearing. (heres
thu's transcript
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49429-2004Jun17?language=printer)

2. out of all the discussion about the confusion of norad et al - at no point
did anyone discuss how fast the planes were going or what the topspeed was or
any of that. given that the ability to get somewhere at a certain point in time
is a function of both distance and speed, its odd that the speed bit is ignored.

3. theres no mention of those faa tapes of 91101 that we recently found out were
destroyed by a 'quality assurance manager'

4. all the new news abuot the confusion of that day is rubbish - ie they thought
they were tracking a plane after it had crashed and all the other detail is a
complete smokescreen - most of it has 'come to light' since the may03 hearings -

EBERHART: The Northeast Air Defense sector apparently had a tape that we were
unaware of at the time. And you're -- and to the best of my knowledge, what I've
been told by your staff is that they were unable to make that tape run.
Though they were later able to -- your staff was able, through a contractor, to
get that tape to run.
BEN-VENISTE: In order to clarify it, When I asked the question, "Let me ask you
whether there's a regularly made tape recording of these open line indications?"
General Arnold answered "Not to my knowledge," and General McKinley answered,
"Not to my knowledge." It was through the painstaking investigation that we
discovered these tapes and then our staff listening to those tapes which
assisted us in being able to provide the level of detail and accuracy which
we've done today.

5. re the 'tropes' email that arose in april, i sed:
"e) the email says to 'hijack a commercial airline (foreign carrier) and fly it
into the pentagon'. 100 bux says that a guy who is writing an email saying 'we
warned against this but they rejected us' just a week after 91101, in a mere 60
word email, goes to the effort of specifying, parenthetically, that the airline
was specified as a 'foreign carrier' (is trying to plant something). that detail
is sooo unimportant. which begs the awkward question, why bother trying to plant
the 'foreign carrier' idea? praps its that same dodgy lon or cdg flight over
vegas again..."
http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2004/04/thankyou-thankyou-thankyou.html

"GORELICK: "And the response of NORAD is that NORAD was not postured to defend
us domestically unless someone was coming at us from abroad.
Now, that's why I come back to this word "posture." We were postured against an
external threat... (but) if you go back and you look at the foundational
documents for NORAD, they do not say "defend us only against a threat coming in
from across the ocean or across our borders."
It has two missions, and one of them is control of the airspace above the
domestic United States, and aerospace control is defined as "providing
surveillance and control of the air space of Canada and the United States."

i dont follow these things closely, but this 'external posture' idea seems to
have only come up since that email, and Gorelick seems to have highlighted the
fallacy/folly in the 'external posture' argument.

6. on sep 10, the dc hijackers moved from their hotel 20 miles away from Dulles,
to a hotel near the airport, presumably so they would minimise the risk of
missing their flight the next morning. conceivable caution. however, then we get
this
"Atta continued to coordinate the teams until the very end. On September 7, he
flew from Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore, presumably to meet with the Flight 77
team in Laurel, Maryland. On September 9, he flew from Baltimore to Boston. By
this time, Marwan al Shehhi and his team for Flight 175 had arrived in Boston,
and Atta was seen with Shehhi at his hotel. The next day, Atta picked up Abdul
Aziz al Omari, one of the Flight 11 muscle hijackers, from his Boston hotel and
drove to Portland, Maine. For reasons that remain unknown, Atta and Omari took a
commuter flight to Boston during the early hours of September 11 to connect to
Flight 11. As shown here, they cleared security at the airport in Portland and
boarded the flight that would allow them to join the rest of their team at Logan
Airport.

The Portland detour almost prevented Atta and Omari from making Flight 11 out of
Boston. In fact, the luggage they checked in Portland failed to make it onto the
plane. Seized after the September 11 crashes, Atta and Omari’s luggage
turned out to contain a number of telling items, including: correspondence from
the university Atta attended in Egypt; Omari’s international
driver’s license and passport; a video cassette for a Boeing 757 flight
simulator; and this folding knife and pepper spray, presumably extra weapons the
two conspirators decided they didn’t need."
hopefully we are all sufficiently rehearsed to point out the holes in these
words - the obvious one being the unasked question about why a suicider needs
luggage (and who doesnt ask that question?). but praps more significantly,
given that the dc crew were moved to the airport area, why were atta&omari
willing to risk missing their flight, and putting the entire operation in
jeopardy? (and not taking the same precautions taken by the DC 'cell'). its
always nice to see disciplined suicide murderers leaving a bunch of
incriminating evidence around unnecessarily - weapons that they didnt need and
such - it reminds me of the whitevan with koranic tapes and sweaters in madrid...

and separately, given that we are trying to understand the detail of that day -
why not give the flight times/details of that portland/logan flight - 'early
hours of sep 11' doesnt give us much information - espegiven that we are talking
about nearly missed flights that could have saved us all. a quick orbitz check
for this coming tue shows one flight only - leaving 6am, arriving logan at
6.45am http://www.orbitz.com/App/ViewFlightSearchResults?z=ib6i&r=e2

7. i love this bit "The so-called muscle hijackers actually were not physically
imposing, as the majority of them were between 5’5” and
5’7” in height and slender in build."

8. ive grabbed some of the interesting bits from the last coupla daya at these
posts
http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2004/06/on-east-coast-in-may-and-june-2000.html
http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2004/06/ben-veniste-let-me-direct-my-remaining.html
http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2004/06/in-addition-to-assisting-newly-arrived.html
http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2004/06/year-later-mr-mohammed-joined-yousef.html