Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

by BooMan
Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 12:39:20 AM EST

This is so perfect that I am just gonna straight up steal it from Atrios:

The President said:

that in early 2002 the United States and its allies disrupted a plot to use bombs hidden in shoes to breach the cockpit door of an airplane and fly it into the tallest building in Los Angeles.
But he got the name of the building wrong, saying the "intended target was Liberty Tower." He meant Library Tower, now the US Bank Tower, that at 1,017 feet (310 metres) high is the tallest building in the United States west of the Mississippi River.

The press asked:

Q: Scott, I wanted to just ask a follow-up about the LA plot. Is there something missing from this story, a practical application, a few facts? Because if you want to commandeer a plane and fly it into a tower, if you used shoe bombs, wouldn't you blow off the cockpit? Or is there something missing from this story?
MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know what you're referring to about missing. I mean, I think we provided you a detailed briefing earlier today about the plot. And Fran Townsend, our Homeland Security Advisor, talked about it. So I'm not sure what you're suggesting it.
Q: Think about it, if you're wearing shoe bombs, you either blow off your feet or you blow off the front of the airplane.
MR. McCLELLAN: There was a briefing for you earlier today. I think that's one way to look at it. There are a lot of ways to look at it, and she explained it earlier today, Alexis, so I would refer you very much back to what she said, what she said earlier today.

When you stop laughing your ass off, notice that they never told the Mayor of Los Angeles that they had foiled the 'blow your own feet off before you storm the cockpit' plot.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life | 19 comments (19 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (4.00 / 5)

Yeah, I saw that earlier and sent it to everyone I knew. Once I could see through the tears of laughter.

Good ol' Atrios. :)

Help me raise money for Jay Nixon, the next Democratic governor of Missouri

by maryb2004 on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 12:50:20 AM EST

Re: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (4.00 / 5)

I wonder how Scotty gets out of bed in the morning.

by growthrate on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 01:04:07 AM EST

Re: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (4.00 / 5)

I was pounding away at something or other and C-Span was on in the background when I heard the question asked. My answer was a reflex.

Q: Scott, I wanted to just ask a follow-up about the LA plot. Is there something missing from this story, a practical application, a few facts? Because if you want to commandeer a plane and fly it into a tower, if you used shoe bombs, wouldn't you blow off the cockpit? Or is there something missing from this story?

Yes,...credibility.

by rumi on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 01:26:27 AM EST

Re: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (4.00 / 2)

Hilarious.

I don't think these asshats are clever enough to plot the Cartoon Outrage. (Speaking of which, I've finally replied to your comment.)

The world's northernmost desert wind.

by Sirocco (sirocco2005 - AT - gmail.com) on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 05:28:46 AM EST

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (4.00 / 4)

Presumably the hijackers would put their feet to the cockpit door to blow it down. Then they would fly the plane without their feet? What kind of fucking idiot is our president?

by bob h (robert.hall10@att.net) on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 07:48:20 AM EST

Re: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (4.00 / 3)

Oh, BooMan, thanks for the laugh... I really needed it. Now I can go and do my Friday chores with a smile in my heart. :) :)

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.- Thomas Jefferson

by Nag on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 08:35:19 AM EST

Re: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (4.00 / 2)

What kind of drugs is he on, anyway?

by CabinGirl on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 08:44:35 AM EST

I know it's fun to laugh at this but... (4.00 / 2)

use your imagination: Suppose the shoes have very small charges in them, too small to detect but powerful enough to blow the lock off the cockpit door. And the lead hijacker takes the shoes off before using them.

by sjct on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 08:54:27 AM EST

Re: I know it's fun to laugh at this but... (4.00 / 2)

while he was taking off his shoes he would be tackled by the passengers. After 9/11 all rules are off with respect to hijackers. If you are going to die anyway, might as well die trying to save the plane and whatever building it was supposed to be crashed into.

Help me raise money for Jay Nixon, the next Democratic governor of Missouri

by maryb2004 on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 09:06:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Hate to be a buzz-killer but... (none / 0)

you're still not using your imagination. The guy would take his shoes off in the restroom where he wouldn't be seen by the passengers. I've thought thru a very detailed scenario in which this could be done but, for obvious reasons, I'm not going to post it on the internet. It could all take less than 10 minutes if it was timed just as the airplane was passing near the Library tower. There would be other hijackers who would form a human shield in front of the cockpit, if need be, but I think most of the passengers would still be in the whuh?-what's-happening stage of shock/denial when the plane struck it's target.

Sure, there are lots of ways it could go wrong and they miss their target. But, once the cockpit door was blown and the hijackers strangled the pilot and co-pilot, the plane would crash into some part of LA, sooner or later, whether the passengers fought or not.

You're absolutely right that would-be hijackers now know that they cannot expect compliance from passengers. Their planning must shift to speed of action and being close to their target.

by sjct on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 09:57:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Hate to be a buzz-killer but... (4.00 / 2)

I'd think it would be pretty obvious what was happening when you heard something go "boom" up at the front of the plane. And good luck holding a human shield against a 747-full of pissed-off, desperate passengers.

Kill because somebody was killed. Get killed because he killed. Do you think peace will ever come like that?

by Egarwaen on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 10:46:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Hate to be a buzz-killer but... (none / 1)

And one would think it would be harder to strangle pilots nowadays. They also will assume they are going to die if they don't fight immediately.

Help me raise money for Jay Nixon, the next Democratic governor of Missouri

by maryb2004 on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 11:16:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Hate to be a buzz-killer but... (none / 0)

And some of the pilots are armed. (Whatever happened to that, anyway?)

"Money ruined Democracy. Washington is lost. We only have the grassroots left." - Bill Moyers

by Knoxville Progressive (green_planet_2000 (at) yahoo (dot) com) on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 02:24:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (4.00 / 2)

All I could think of when I heard Bush, then Scottie was what a load of crap! Just Bush's speech pattern told me he was lying. They have cried "wolf" one too many times and they expect us to buy this crap? Laughing my ass off, with handcuffs in hand.

Frodo failed...Bush has got the ring.

by alohaleezy on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 09:37:03 AM EST

Re: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (none / 0)

Maybe they were just going to use the shoes as a threat. Then have Richard Reid released so they could get some matches......

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; now we know that it is bad economics;" - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

by Salunga on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 11:44:26 AM EST

Re: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (none / 0)

Doug Thompson at CHB has another bit of information here that suggests strongly the whole thing is probably just another Rove Special putup job.

Makes more sense to me than anything else I've heard yet...

Every third American devotes himself to improving and uplifting his fellow citizen, usually by force. -- H.L. Mencken

by stormkite on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 01:28:40 PM EST

I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier (none / 0)

and I'm sure the human mind is capable of many devious things, but I'm not at all sure how you would design a "shoe bomb" that would go off under conditions that are likely to exist on a passenger plane, without having it be even more likely that the explosive would detonate under the repeated percussion of having the shoe hitting the ground with at least a hundred or two pounds of force, over and over and over again.

I am also guessing that there is now a "panic button" installed on passenger airliners to silently alert the cockpit of trouble in the back of the plane, at thich point the pilots would request an emergency landing at the nearest airport, at the same time getting ready to defend the controls if someone did manage to get through the door without blowing the plane up while doing it.

This whole thing doesn't pass the smell test.

----------------------------------------------
Our Man In Redmond is now Omir the Storyteller

by Our Man in Redmond (omir.the.storyteller -DORT- gmail -ART- com) on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 01:57:13 PM EST

Re: I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier (none / 0)

I'm no expert on such matters, but a material might be stable to percussion but easily set off electrically or with a match. I think that was the purpose of inventing dynamite.

Your other points are spot-on, though.

And I love your sig line!

"Money ruined Democracy. Washington is lost. We only have the grassroots left." - Bill Moyers

by Knoxville Progressive (green_planet_2000 (at) yahoo (dot) com) on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 02:28:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier (none / 1)

Yeah, I'm sure there are other possibilities -- binary explosives that are inert until mixed, for instance -- and I know there are some explosive compounds that are stable under some conditions, but unstable under others. I know about as much about explosives as I do about 13th century sub-Saharan literature, though, so don't pay a whole lot of attention to anything I say on the subject.

It just seems like at this point the airliner-as-a-bomb thing has been done, we're watching for it, and they know we're watching for it, so if anyone really wanted to cause harm here in the US, they'd find a different way to do it. But the US public knows all about the Twin Towers, and they've been conditioned to know that planes can be hijacked since well before D. B. Cooper, so it's what they react to rather than telling us they foiled a serin gas attack in the New York subway, or broke up a ring of mad al-Qaeda scientists developing human-rat hybrids smart enough to crawl through the sewers and bite us as we sat on our toilets, or whatever.

----------------------------------------------
Our Man In Redmond is now Omir the Storyteller

by Our Man in Redmond (omir.the.storyteller -DORT- gmail -ART- com) on Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 05:40:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life | 19 comments (19 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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