So what....
I would only be worrying if I was a terrorist.

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According to the US government's ever broadening definition of a "terrorist,"
you very well might be.

Ok....
just what is the US Government's "ever broadening definition" of a terrorist?

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"A man who would give up liberty for security deserves neither"Ben Franklin

"All we have to fear is fear itself"Franklin D. Roosevelt

I fear that this nation has lost it's collective mind and manhood in the wake of the 911 attacks.

Can you imagine what our forefathers would have thought about grown men allowing themselves to be hijacked and killed by some punks armed only with BOXCUTTERS?
rx

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If demons did not exist, government would find it necessary to invent them.

I'm speechless.

. The misconception: We know how the hijackers seized the planes.

Within days of Sept. 11, Americans believed they knew how the planes were grabbed: Terrorists had taken control by stabbing pilots, passengers, and flight attendants with box cutters and knives.

What's wrong with the story: It's incomplete and misleading. We don't really know what happened on the planes. The cockpit voice recorder survived neither New York crash and was damaged beyond salvage in the Pentagon crash. The Flight 93 voice recorder doesn't start until several minutes after the hijackers took the plane. What little we know about tactics and weapons comes from phones calls made by passengers and flight attendants. As [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. has pointed out, the evidence is incredibly paltry. No one on United Flight 175, which crashed into the World Trade Center, reported anything about weapons or tactics. One flight attendant on American Flight 11, which also crashed into the World Trade Center, said she was disabled by a chemical spray, while another flight attendant said a passenger was stabbed or shot. On the Pentagon plane, American Flight 77, Barbara Olson reported hijackers carrying knives and box cutters but did not describe how they took the cockpit. And on United Flight 93, passengers reported knives but also a hijacker threatening to explode a bomb. The box cutter-knives story isn't demonstrably false, but it serves to divert attention from the other weapons and to mask the fact that we don't have any idea how the hijackings happened.



[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link.

Regardless of the weapons brandished Flight 93 didn't arrive at it's intended target because there were American MEN on board- men with courage enough to stand up and say "f*** you, you punks aren't getting away with this; Let's Roll". 19 little men-19! How many passengers? People who just chose to be too scared to act- to save their own lives. Victims? Sure, but certainly not heroes by any means.
The only heroes here were the 348 New York City Firefighters who selflessly laid down their own lives.
*If you're not gonna be terrorized, there can't be terrorists. Frankly Ron, I'm no pacifist but I am getting sick to death of all this fear mongering- especially by some of these folks who seem to be so ignorant about Middle Eastern history, the history and root causes of terrorism, why these people seem to hate us, and what can constructively be done about it.

RECOMMENDED READING: "All The Shah's Men- an American coup and the roots of Middle East terror" by Stephen Kinzer
2003 Wiley & Sons ISBN 0-471-67878-3
rx

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If demons did not exist, government would find it necessary to invent them.

No one has any real idea what happened on those planes.

The FDNY lost 343 firefighters and the chaplain. That's 344 total.

Yes, you are a pacifist in my book.

Rex, "these people" don't "seem" to hate us, they do hate us.

Ignoring the threat is not very constructive, is it? Do you suppose they will stop hating us if we pull our troops out of Iraq?

The Shah was deposed in 1979, almost 30 years ago, seems to me they need to get over it.

Well, lets review the bidding here because you are making some assumptions about the filights that simply don't ring true. Prior to the morning of 9-11, any traveler with any knowledge of hijacking knew that the safest method of surviving a hijacking was to remain quiet and allow the negotiators to do their jobs. The purpose of hijacking any plane prior to that morning was to take the passengers as hostages, and then trade their release for whatever the goals of the hijackers turned out to be.

However, on the morning of Sep 11 2001, the goals were changed, The hijackers had little use for the passengers on the plane and had no plans to place a value on their lives as a bargaining chip. In fact, they were after the physical machinery of the aircraft itself, planning to use it as a weapon.

The hijackers made a major mistake when they allowed the various passengers on the planes to use their personal cell phones to make and receive calls while in flight. The information coming off of the planes was transmitted to the people onboard the Pennsylvania flight, and once the passengers found out that there would be no landing and negotiation for their release, only then did they decided to take action.

As long as the passengers were the goal of the hijacking, the smart money was in being quiet and complying with the hijackers wishes. Except in very rare cases, like the navy diver killed in a hijacking, (Robert Stethem) most passengers merely experienced some discomfort as a result of a hijacking, and very few ever were injured or died. But once the planes themselves took on more value as weapons than the passengers as hostages, the rules changed and the best strategy for the passengers was to fight back.

And note, since that day, hijacking of aircraft has almost disappeared, because those that would hijack an aircraft now know that the passengers are likely to rise up regardless of what weapons or threats they may have available. We have even had one or two passengers make a nuisance of themselves on a flight, and end up dead as a result of the over enthusiastic use of force by their fellow passengers.

To make out the flight 93 people as heroes who rose up when everyone else failed to is a failure to understand how the dynamics of hijacking changed in the first few hours of that day. When the first two planes were over run, the old rules were still in place and being followed by the passengers. By the time flight 93 hit the ground, the old rules were no longer in effect. Different scenarios, different reactions, changed by the information they had received.

Had the hijackers cut off phone access, the flight would have probably reached it's intended target without the passengers fighting back at all. It failed to reach it's goal because the hijcakers on all 4 flights handled things as amateurs.

very eloquently put.