Thanks for posting the VF link - I doubt I would have seen that one otherwise. I'm impressed that the producer of the movie Flight 93 has taken his research effort so seriously. I've heard good things about the movie but, ironically enough, each time they show it around here I seem to be in an exercise of some sort.

I had planned to go into the Pentagon that day to find out if some paper work was ready for me to pick up - I knew it wasn't but would use the opportunity to expedite it. I had been assigned there for about eight months but during the previous week I made the jump across the river to a job at a new location. Picking up the paper work would have effectively closed out any further need to go there again.

That morning I walked outside in front of my house to take in the weather without checking the news - a first, since I am a news junkie - the sky was amazing but that moment of enjoyment came to an abrupt end when my neighbors came running and yelling about the Pentagon and the towers. Normally I would have gone there hours earlier in the day but they did not know of my job change and new schedule. They thought I had been there when Flt 77 had hit, of course nobody new the flight numbers yet.

I had friends and co-workers at the Pentagon though and my efforts to contact any of them were fruitless as all phone connectivity was just about lost from call density.

When I read the accounts of the people dealing with the crisis as it unfolds, I am naturally very sympathetic. I've spent years on watch floors and I've been in jobs where trying to untangle radio chatter is nearly impossible when the pace picks up. Hearings are necessary, if for only to find out how to avert future failures but from my reading of the 9-11 Commission Report, the Commission hasn't added much value to the task of defending the country - nothing that matches the efforts of individuals like the personnel that were grilled by stuffed shirts Ben-Veniste and Farmer. "I know what spin is", says Farmer. I'll bet he does and the sad fact is that too many people conducting the hearings were there to do just that or just couldn't resist the glow of the media floodlights.

Didn't know you were in DC that day.

Every once in a while, the Russians would exercise themselves (and us) by lining up at the border and turning all their engines on. Of course I have sympathy for the Zoomies and whoever else were on the floor that day at NORAD. I wasn't posting it to criticize -- it's there so people can listen to the audio.
If you were writing the after-action report though, what would you say?

I didn't see your comments or the article itself as being critical of the personnel on duty that day. I think the article was even-handed, a rare thing today and totally unexpected from VF, Valerie Plames' magazine cover of choice.

I, like just about everyone else on the ground on 11 Sep 01, was just another by-stander. If asked to provide an AAR, I would ask to do so only in the context of the training the personnel had received and their performance as it applied to their given mission.

Nobody in the intel community had suggested that such an attack was imminent and personnel had not been trained or otherwise directed on how to deal with this type of problem. Under the circumstances, with so little lead time with which to respond, I'd say NORAD and NEAD personnel did as well as we could have been expected.

To this day, many of our political leaders refuse to see that we are at war. How in the world anyone thinks that the country could have been prepared and positioned to shoot down it's own civilian air traffic on a morning five years ago is beyond consideration.

What I would like to give is an AAR on the 9-11 Commission but I'll save that for some other time.