Well, maybe I can stay sane and calm, and still comment on this thread. Let's find out....

First, I think I said this before, there's a big difference between failing to act on the CIA's warnings of a potential hijacking, and deliberately allowing the events of Sept 11. I can easily believe the first. Can't swallow the second.

Second,about where was the air force? The U.S. has never adopted a hard line towards hijackings that would allow us to shoot down a local plane full of passengers -- not up until Sept 11. There may just have been too much indecisiveness, and too much referring of decisions up to the chain of command, for any effective action to take place. U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan watched Al Qaeda prisoners escape and took no action because they had to have permission FROM OVER HERE before shooting. Maybe the AF decision process was equally slow and cumbersome. This seems much more likely than deliberate inaction on anyone's part.

Third, about what the Arab world believes. Muslims in Pakistan told an American reporter that Israel attacked the WTC in order to stir up hatred against Arabs. The local Pakistani newspapers said so. They said they could prove this, because after all, 1500 Jews failed to show up for work at the WTC on Sept. 11. That was in their newspapers also. These accusations are implausible to us because, for one thing, it couldn't be hidden in the U.S. if such a thing had happened. But they seem perfectly plausible to many Arabs.

Being in the news -- here or abroad -- or being said in a book doesn't make it so.

When I was in college (1964!), a friend was explaining to me about government wrongdoing, and government cover-ups. He said, "You're fooling yourself if you think you're getting the straight poop from the news reports!" I agree. But I trust American news investigations and reports infinitely more than certain overseas sources.

You just have to look at probabilities since the straight poop never will be available.

To me it's a sure thing that the Bush administrtion is capitalizing on the attacks.

It's likely they failed to act on information received before the attack, because acting would be costly and unpopular, and because of a certain mindset of "it can't happen here."

But before-the-fact action seems awfully implausible.

There. I avoided all the vitriol and still said my piece.

Rita