GUEST, I read/process the information differently from you. And there are a number of assumptions you are making that don't seem substantiated in the links.

* Two minute launch alert? Where did you read that?
* A fighter jet was alongside Payne Stewart's plane ready to shoot it down if need be in 12 minutes? It is my understanding no one knows just when the cabin pressure failed, so where do you get the 12 minutes?

* Concentration camps? Did you know there are and have been large camps held in readiness all across the country for years? There is one at Florence, Arizona, I'm told, (I went by there in 1969) and supposedly there are six altogether; I was told it had to do with potential rioters. It is nothing new.

* Ralph E. Eberhart's career. Did you read his vitals? A long steady upward climb. His appointment to NorthCom would not be unexpected nor undeserved, on the basis of his recorded accomplishments.

* In reading his speeches, one of the things that appears to come through clearly is that no one - at least no one official - thought anything like 9/11 could happen. Eberhart said that they were all focused on the potentiality of bombs and sabotage- that no one thought of domestic airliners as being in danger.

* I agree with you that it's unconscionable that no one did- the scenario had been posited in Hollywood and had even been proposed politically as a possibility- but no one was listening.

I gather you are an American; your anxiety comes through clearly. But mind your blood pressure. Seriously. Remind yourself we will all die only once, but die we must, however it comes about.