Ush you made it sound as if it was impossible for anyone to imagine this sort of thing. I'm saying it's not.
You said "who gives a frig what crazy scenarios Hollywood come up with over time". One of those crazy scenarios happened today.
To quote NBC- "America was warned two weeks ago that they were open to attack".
That to me sounds like the U.S.A. Not embassies.
And there was the foiled plan to crash American planes that RC spoke about.
Doesn't matter what you thin it sounded like; the warning was, with good reason, taken to mean consular targets.
Ok, it can be imagined, KJ, but that's hardly the point is it? Hollywood imagines alien invasions.
To clarify: Who would have SERIOUSLY imagined that this sort of thing would happen? The answer is no-one.
I will repeat: The credible info about an attack like this was non-existent, from what we have before us now.
USH it isn't that hard to imagine something like this. Maybe it's easier for me because I don't live that far from Lockerbie.
A terrorist bomb blowing up a plane and destryoing the town below is pretty unbelievable but it happened.
America has been warned bfore about terrorists striking on USA soil.
You're saying that the warnings last week were made about Americans overseas. The truth it, they are ALWAYS on alert. The warnings two weeks ago were about attacks on the U.S.A mainland. A lot more will be made of this in the next few weeks, so we should wait until then for the truth.
Well, if they were warnings on the mainland, then why was their global alert aimed at CONSULAR staff? There has been npothing on the news about this; only about warned attacks on embassies.
The American Intelligence services aren't stupid. If they'd had credible info on a home attack they WOULD have acted on it, you can be sure.
This is an unbelievable attack, KJ, and that's what the world thinks.
BTW, bomb attacks on aircraft have happened many times before and are credible. NOTHING like this has ever happened. The scale of it is mindboggling; a terrorist organisation training up pilots just so they could kill themsleves like this... shockingly strange.
Still, in any case, it shows us that an open society is always open to attack, regardless of available resource.
As for the coming days and weeks, I am certain we are going to see the internal blame game and I am certain that it will be totally unfair, nor appropriate. They would have stopped it if they had known it was coming.
They are getting the pictures in from the wreckage now. It's grim viewing. There has been nothing really like since WWII.
It is unbelivable KJ, who would imagine comercial airliners crashing into buildings. These where planes hijacked on US soil. And they chose planes headed for the west coast for one reason only: The amount of fuel in those planes.
Kj you live near Lockerbie, but I cannot compare those events
I find it hard to imagine todays events, it takes a lot of planning and resources to execute such acts. And that will limit the numbers of suspects.
It is either a group supported by a nation, Bin Laden, or US militia groups, but they usually target federal buildings so I count them out of the picture. That leave us with Bin Laden or a group acting on the behalf of a country.
Hmm, some speculation now over just how trained the suicide pilots would have had to be. It depends on how far the proper pilots flew them and how much the terrorists were willing to leave to chance.
They are still saying 4 planes were hijacked but I am also hearing the Pittsburgh crash was an accident caused by the panic as everyone was ordered to land.
Well, that's what people were syaing at first, bvut the reasonable point has been made:
Standard proceudre is to acceed to hijackers, get the plane down safel and let the ground guy deal with the terrorists. So if the hijakcers had said 'Take this plane to New York', the crew would have assumed it was a 'standard' hijacking, done all the difficult navigation part and got the plane to NY airspace, and THEN the hijackers take over and crash them, which CAN be done without that much training.
The crew could never have known until the last moment just how suicidal the terrorists were
It's becoming total chaos!
Now they are suggesting that Brussels will be next with the NAVO and the European Head there now...
I think that (whitout being funny- which I'm definetly NOT) that if
Bush overreacts and begins using Bombers and stuff, we could be here on the virgh of a WWIII (so Nostradamus was correct?)
Well, at least they weren't cursing the US and all it stood for.
I wouldn't be too hysterical right now. In any case, if it IS Bin Laden, they are a terrorist organisation in Afghanistan; you can speculate whether there are state links but the fact remains that you can't exactly go to war with a group, rather than a country.
The US already treated the Bin Laden group as hostile. Of course, now we can expect to see some decent international co-operation here; but that's hardly a war...
Hey, I'm watching it now and I still can't believe it happened! But a terrorist attack from within the U.S.A isn't the most inconcievable thing in the world. How it happened maybe, but even that's been written about a lot. Don't forget that the WT building has been targeted before.
Ush, I've heard on NBC, the BBC and Ch5 news that the U.S.A were warned last week that they were open to attack. US embassies are ALWAYS open to attack so it's clear they were talking about the mainland.
You're already seeing terrorist experts on T.V who can't believe that this happened so easily.
I just saw a terrorist experts say that this was too complicated to be carried out by terrorist and he says that a Government was behind it. Iraq is who he said.
Yeah, they'll be speculating for a while. If it isn't a country it will have to be a conglomeration of groups.
Well, there's never been a serious terrorist attack on American soil carried out by a group (last WT attack was a minor attack, Oklahoma was a single man), while there have been in most European countries, so that is the surprise value. But yes, there were a lot of people thinking that this was inevitable.
In any case, it'll never be the same again.
KJ, those rumours last week, seriously, were treated as threats against Embassies. They may be always under threat but that doesn't mean their ears are closed to more specific ones. That's how THEY treated them, anyway, and thery have a lot of experience in this sort of thing. It's easy to judge in hindsight.
They have SO clearly stated that they had no warning that it cannot be doubted unless you think they are lying.
Ush watch ITN. I just saw a report and an interview with a guy called Andrew Rithnal(I think). He was asked if there were warnings and he said "There most certainley was". He then said that the Security Forces were warned but the problem was that they get so many warnings.
They will show this interview again and I've seen this guy on CH5 and NBC. That's where I'm getting this from.
'Warnings'- vague term. There WERE wanrings, but nothing like this.,
Right now I trust the Foreign office who made a VERY clear declaration. Still, I guess this will be argued out for quite a while, and you never know how things will end up.
But all I can say is that they were not prepared for this sort of attack, and I am certtain that if they had received good information they WOULD have been.