When I was in the Army from 1968 to 1975, I worked on an air defense system that was part of NORAD, the Nike-Hercules air defense system (the precursor of the Patriot system used now). The system incorporated a system call IFF (Identification Friend or Foe). This system sent out a signal to every plane flying, and if a plane had a transponder working, once it received that radar signal from the ground, it would reply with a signal of it’s own. This would mean that there would be a circle around the plane’s blip on the radar-scope. If the plane had no transponder on, or if it was an enemy plane with no transponder with the secret code that was changed from time to time, then the target on the radar would have only a half circle around it. The bottom of the circle which was our half circle that we sent to the plane, but with no top half of the circle which would be completed by the suspect plane’s transponder
The Patriot system has essentially the same system. The FAA has the same transponders. The History Channel showed 4500 planes in the air all-over the country. Listen, one acquisition-type radar in a given area will only have at most a hundred planes on it. If they turned their IFF on, or used the Patriot system that’s based around Washington DC, it would have been child’s play to find those missing planes. If they didn’t do that, then they were criminally remiss. If they don’t have IFF in the FAA systems then they also are criminally remiss. They should have IFF systems in FAA systems for a hijacking event in any case.
Also, why is it only now that anyone has tried to answer the myriad questions that have arisen since the tragedy of 9/11? You know that the History Channel had to have had the cooperation of the Federal Government to ask the questions that they did and show the equipment that they did. Why didn’t they state their case earlier?
The most insidious thing that happened through all of this is defiantly the Federal Government’s fault. They should have explained everything long before now. The incidents that led to this 9/11 Truth Movement were perpetrated by our own government that seems to have declared war on the rights of the American People in the wake of this terrible tragedy. So many of our rights that are written in The Constitution and The Bill of Rights, even the Magna Carte have been trashed. Is it any small wonder that the American people don’t trust their own government anymore? They lied their way into a war in Iraq, what’s the difference between lying about an incident where 3,000 American were killed and this War where Hundreds of thousands of Americans and Iraqi’s have been killed? It’s not such a leap of the imagination to believe that 9/11 was part of the total picture, and I don’t call anyone that suspected it a “whack-job” or a “basement conspiracy-nut that has a connection to the Internet”. I believe that even if they are wrong, they are well-intentioned patriotic Americans that just want clear answers that up until last night, they were not getting.
I’m not taking sides. I want my questions answered though. I also am more concerned with this new unlimited power that the government has taken from the people than I am concerned about the specifics of 9/11. Maybe someday we will all know the truth, every detail, or maybe not. We still wonder how Lee Harvey Oswald managed to do the damage he did with one well-placed shot in Dallas in 1963. We still have people on both sides saying that it was a physical impossibility, and people saying that yes, it could have happened. Unless someone gives a deathbed confession, or other evidence turns up, we will never know. Just as we will never know who sink the Maine, or who killed MLK or conspired with the man charged.
We should concentrate on getting our rights returned to us. It wasn’t the American people that were responsible for 9/11. Senator Leahy today called for Cheney to release documents on the wiretaps that the government asked for or to be held in contempt of Congress.http://thinkprogress.org/2007/08/20/cheney-leahy-subpoena/ That is the way it should be. No one is above the law. Not Bush, not Cheney. If Congress wants to exercise their oversight role, that is part of their job. I only hope that they don’t back down again. That’s the way I see it.
