Aero-Foiled
But she was so much like a child
A devil when she held me close
An angel when she smiled
--Baby Blue, George Strait
History, U.S. or otherwise, has proved one thing to us.
Man does not do anything that is not for his own good,
--Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Cameron Crowe
I am making this statement as an act
of willful defiance of military authority,
because I believe that the War
is being deliberately prolonged by those
who have the power to end it.
--Siegfried Sassoon
This is a war story that should've
been true
--The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)
______________________
The press ever so quietly released a shocking report this week on the actions of the pilot charged with taking down passenger Flight 93 on that fateful day a decade ago: The pilot -- Heather "Lucky" Penny -- was prepared to kamikaze her F-16 into the planeload of passengers.
This is the 21st Century, and we are to believe that the F-16 guarding the airspace around Washington D.C. could not even perform as well as Baron von Richthofen in WW I (F-16 Pilot Was Ready to Give Her Life on 9-11)? HELLO?
And yet what should be a horrifying reality has been morphed into a feel-good, schmaltzy tale of Jessica Lynch II, yet another blonde-blue-eyed Bambi with pluck (co-passengers Lori Piestewa and Shoshana Johnson didn't quite fit the runway look) :
Late in the morning of the Tuesday that changed everything, Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. The day’s fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it.
The one thing she didn’t have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft.
Because the surprise attacks were unfolding, in that innocent age, faster than they could arm war planes, Penney and her commanding officer went up to fly their jets straight into a Boeing 757.
“We wouldn’t be shooting it down. We’d be ramming the aircraft,” Penney recalls of her charge that day. “I would essentially be a kamikaze pilot.”
Jessica and Heather -- the Dynamic Duo, 2002-style. Better than James Bond and Miss Moneypenny, these are some fighting mothers. (Forget that true gender equality has yet to occur in marketplace earnings; we are talking Hollywood potential, here.)
Are we really to believe that a newly-minted Lieutenant pilot and her field grade (04) partner are the first -- the only -- line of defense of our nation's Capitol on 9-11-01? The U.S. has five carrier groups and an entire Air Force, and the best we have for National Defense is a pair of deuces from the Air National Guard?
Do we really believe that an armed response could not have been activated from Cherry Point, N.C., or Norfolk ... or from the hub of air bases to include Navy assets in the D.C. area? Can we further suspend disbelief to imagine that these two erstwhile kamikazes would then shift to flying cover for the Commander in Chief? This is like believing in witches.
Why does this fairy tale inspire anything but disgust at our apparent lack of a protective posture? Why have a Department of Defense if it is not defending us? Why is it heroic for two of our pilots to be suicide bombers, yet lambaste the Islamists for using the same techniques?
Why do we glory over U.S. invasions of Panama, Grenada, Iraq and Afghanistan when we can't even control our own backyard? The WaPo labels this grotesque "fact" the first "counterpuch" in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), when it was anything but.
The Bush administration had already been alerted in an August intelligence summary to the possibility that al-Qaeda would use U.S. carriers as flying bombs. Is it even conceivable that the only protection above Washington D.C. was an unarmed F-16?
Too horrifying to contemplate are the implications: That the U.S. would shoot down innocent passengers; that a lady pilot would so bravely sacrifice life and limb to keep Old Glory Flying. That our only response to an airline hijacking is to ram a plane into a passenger plane. Yet we are complacent in the face of such a story.
It is both too much, and too little.
Labels: flight 93, heather lucky penney, kamikaze u.s. flight, phony war on terror
posted by Lisa at 10:30 AM
11 Comments:
Yes Jim, way too much and way too little.
You may recall a certain V.P. at the time ordered ALL aircraft grounded at the witching hour.
Oh, except for that single aircraft that was given special clearance to exit the US forthwith.
Who was on that plane?
Members of the OBL family who were (are) rather chummy with the same V.P and those father & son ex Pres's..
What I can't believe is that they couldn't find the ammo, or didn't have the time, to load the Vulcan 20mm cannon all F-16s have! The minimum range of a Sidewinder is about 2.5 km, it would have been no problem to get close to Flight 93 and down it with just a few rounds.
Point made about the willingness to kill innocent civilians, though.
Well, I dunno. I think it's sort of reassuring that our domestic military doesn't feel the need to be locked and loaded at all times. Since, y'know, the most probable target for that ammo would be other U.S. citizens. Makes me think of the stories about the 25th Infantry having to break the locks off the arms room on 12/7/41 to shoot at the Japanese aircraft. It was peacetime, so the weapons were all safely locked away...
But it IS fairly odd that - after Pearl Harbor - the crew chief wasn't able to get the keys to the ammo bunker to haul out some sort of ordnance. Sounds less like a feel-good, "patriots spring to action" sort of story to me and more of a "bureaucratic logjam prevents effective action" sort of story.
But Lucky sure is photogenic, ain't she. Heavily armed babes; USA, fuck yeah!
Seems like the story is already morphing... the first version I saw said that she only had time to take off with 1500 rounds and no missiles.
Now those gatlings might burn through that much in short order, but I wondered at the time why even a short burst wasn't the first option.
I'm not at all shocked by the level of incompetence our leaders show. They aren't there to do any of the stuff they say, they are there to funnel money to politically preferred special interest groups.
For example, the defense industry doesn't build things that defend us, it builds high-dollar whiz-bang toys that have to be assembled in every state so that the pork gets spread to everyone.
Chief,
We ain't in 1941 and since NORAD we have zones of air protection.
I don't discuss this for opsec reasons, but my AF friends tell me that there shoulda been armed A/c on standby.
Coulda, shoulda/wooda,
jim
Ranger,
I don't think there is a combat action patrol protecting the skies, any alert 5 interceptors ready to go, and the SAC went the way of the dodo.
What's your take on this, another massive waste of taxpayers $$$$? Especially when so many are having to do with less:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2042042/U-S-hands-billions-bases-equipment--expensive-fly-back.html
jim: I have to agree w/ Grant. We have an F-15 squadron based here at PDX; my ARNG unit armory was about 5 minutes away, so we ran into the wing-wipers, and my impression was that since 1990 or so the concept of the "ready a/c" had been mothballed. All their ordnance was stored during normal operations.
That said - you're right and we SHOULD have learned the lessons of December 7. Why wasn't someone able to arm these aircraft quickly?
Carl; war is a lovely way to write stuff off. How else do all the makes get to make new ones?
I was once charged for a pair of NVGs lost in a jump in Panama in 1987. The USA chased after me for two years...until the "war" in Panama in '89. Suddenly those NVGs went bye-b`y`e. `Do you suppose someone in my old unit wrote 'em off as a combat loss? Do you suppose that that will happen to much of this Iraq dunnage?
Hmmm...
Grant,
Sac is gone but we still have air defense zones and NORAD.
jim
In 1990 when the first Gulf War kicked off. My job was shift commander in a N.E. Metro Fire department. I held a chat session with the men about possible payback from the 'Bad Guys' and ordered my men to immediately report any suspicious vehicles parked next to our HQ. Now I'd didn't get this heads up from NSA or DOD, just simple common sense.
It is well known our intelligence agency's had known of plans for hijacking of commercial aircraft being to used as flying bombs at US targets. Prior to 9/11 armed NORAD fighters routinely intercepted straying commercial aircraft on the average of 200 times a year. An intercept involved pulling along side the aircraft and dipping the fighters wings a number of times (universal code for follow me), a failure to respond sent a second attention getting response, firing tracers across the aircraft's nose.
So for anyone to believe this was a 'Black Swan' event boggles my mind. Look to history, Gulf of Tonkin 'incident', our chummy relationship with Saddam's Iraq military machine during the Iran/Iraq war. Hell, we were the only country to veto a UN resolution condemning the use of chemical weapons by Iraq.
The Bush/Cheney cabal had the 3000 (or whatever) page Patriot Act in place within days of 9/11. They sure a hell prepared for that contingency, and it passed by the Congress and Senate, which never read it. The cost to the American people is off the charts and not reversible. Penny, Lynch, Tillman...
Remember Herr Goebbles, Hitlers Minister of Propaganda thinking on lying to the masses...little lies bag you, go for Big Lie
BH out
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