>Either that, or the decades of old boys appointing other old boys into various places, paying each others campaigns and generally taking care that loyalty overrides competency and that skimming overrides efficiency, have eventually produced such levels of dysfunctionality that 9/11 caught the system with its pants down... as down they usually are.
>
>So we have a choice between criminal plot and criminal negligence.

One of the things nagging me from the start was that 3 planes hit their target and a fourth one crash landed - and it became known that the passengers were the one responsible for aborting a fourth crash.

Where was the air force ? The explanation was that they could see/watch something coming to the US, but had never considered to watch their own air space. Such an explanation must be true in my book, or one of the retired guys would babble about "we could at least find xxx planes in 198x" - it is ridiculous, it is probably true.

regards

thomas