I've always believed that United Airlines Flight 93, the 9/11 plane that crashed in Pennsylvania(and who's valliant passengers have become American folk heroes) was shot down by the US armed forces.

People respond to this by thinking I'm some sort of conspiracy nut. But I don't see it that way at all.

Look at the situation. Already that morning, three flights, all leaving from the northeast coridor, looped back and targeted sites in New York and Washington. All commercial air traffic had been grounded. This one plane was still in the air, was not responding to ground contact, and had also looped back around from a departure from the northeast corridor, and was now 20 minutes from Washington and on direct course for that city.

Given all that, I hope we DID shoot that plane down. It would seem the prudent thing to do. How do you NOT shoot that plane down? Presumably by now you have air force jets guarding Washington air space, and this plane was about to encroach that space. Surely the orders would be to take down any rouge airliner targeting Washington DC. No? (This guy seems to think so, and he has the quotes to back it up.)

Yesterday in the Mossaoui trial, tapes from the cockpit of that plane were played. Reports from the courtroom suggest that the tapes depict the hijackers deciding to "take it down" or "put it down," presumably referring to the plane.

So now I don't know if they did actually crash the plane before the fighter jets got to it. But I remain certain that, if we didn't shoot that plane down, we were moments away from doing so.

Labels: The politics