Saturday, September 02, 2006
On Native Soil-...umentary. Are the dots "doc" or "crock?"
Having just watched this purported documentary I'll go with crock. This thing takes every possible sound-bite or portion of testimony to nitpick 9/11 with the finest of hindsight and the obligatory Bush bashing. There is a bit near the beginning where you hear that this is not just one administration's problem it's both. That is the be all and end all of anyone but GWB taking the hit. Case in point, after alluding that the Clintonistas might have shared the blame they go on to portray Jamie Gorelick as a thoughtful, tender fact-finder.
When it comes to the instructions to those in tower 2 to go back to their work stations, they portray that as a huge error in judgment. They even show a few family members saying they would certainly leave their house if the next door neighbor's house was on fire. OK, it was an error. If you knew this was an attack and another plane was going to hit then telling someone to go back up might even make you a part of the plot. If you thought it was an accidental crash into tower one, however, then the instruction is fully justified. How are the responders going to cope with all the extra people in their way? I know I would have left the building and encouraged anyone I saw to do the same, but following the advice of well meaning security at the time can't legitimately be dismissed.
When it comes to flight 93 they make a huge deal out of the timing of scrambled military aircraft. It's a little disconcerting to think they mean the plane crashed before we had time to shoot it down, but I digress.
In this instance they highlight the communication problems between the FAA and the military. Alright I can see that if you are saying that by the time flight 93 was heading toward Washington you should have been ready to take military action. That isn't what thishit piece movie does. No, they again show family members saying how incompetent the government was not to have military planes up to intercept this flight. What the hell do they think was going to happen if our F-16's would have been there to save their loved ones? Make the argument that Washington wasn't protected quickly enough and maybe I'll play along, but trying to convince me that you wish the Air Force would have shot you down first is a non-starter.
The other thing that this "documentary" does is to show an isolated computer graphic of one plane and it's flight path while they complain that enough wasn't being done to track it and know it's status. They have quite the grand old time telling you how the FAA and the military, both run by George W. Bush, can't deal with this one plane without ever mentioning the thousands of planes that were showing on the controller screens. The unbelievably heroic job that was done that morning to land thousands of planes at unscheduled locations with no certainty of the status of the particular flights is completely ignored.
Did I mention I'll go with "crock?"
When it comes to the instructions to those in tower 2 to go back to their work stations, they portray that as a huge error in judgment. They even show a few family members saying they would certainly leave their house if the next door neighbor's house was on fire. OK, it was an error. If you knew this was an attack and another plane was going to hit then telling someone to go back up might even make you a part of the plot. If you thought it was an accidental crash into tower one, however, then the instruction is fully justified. How are the responders going to cope with all the extra people in their way? I know I would have left the building and encouraged anyone I saw to do the same, but following the advice of well meaning security at the time can't legitimately be dismissed.
When it comes to flight 93 they make a huge deal out of the timing of scrambled military aircraft. It's a little disconcerting to think they mean the plane crashed before we had time to shoot it down, but I digress.
In this instance they highlight the communication problems between the FAA and the military. Alright I can see that if you are saying that by the time flight 93 was heading toward Washington you should have been ready to take military action. That isn't what this
The other thing that this "documentary" does is to show an isolated computer graphic of one plane and it's flight path while they complain that enough wasn't being done to track it and know it's status. They have quite the grand old time telling you how the FAA and the military, both run by George W. Bush, can't deal with this one plane without ever mentioning the thousands of planes that were showing on the controller screens. The unbelievably heroic job that was done that morning to land thousands of planes at unscheduled locations with no certainty of the status of the particular flights is completely ignored.
Did I mention I'll go with "crock?"
