Sibel Edmonds' claims that Bush ignored pre-9-11 "warnings" that al Qaeda would "hijack airlines" to "attack" cities with "skyscrapers" exemplify half-hindsight.

April 3, 2004: #00 Political Satire/Commentary where satire is always commentary but commentary isn't always satire ™·2004.
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Sibel Edmonds' claims that Bush ignored pre-9-11 "warnings" that al Qaeda would "hijack airlines" to "attack" cities with "skyscrapers" exemplify half-hindsight.·

Among people professing expertise in matters pertaining to counter-terrorism, half-hindsight is becoming pandemic. News reports are awash with articles fawning over allegations by Mrs. Sibel Edmonds, one of a number of mid-eastern-language translators hired after 9-11 by the FBI to translate intelligence data collected, but not translated, before 9-11. Edmonds alleges that before being fired, she saw data which she claims to prove that months before 9-11, the Bush administration had knowledge of intelligence warnings that al Qaeda would "hijack" planes for the purpose of "attacking" unspecified cities "with tall buildings." Implicit in her allegations is the contention that such information was sufficient for Bush to have prevented 9-11.

Bush-haters are so cravenly eager to prove that he either knew too much, or too little, before 9-11, they embrace such allegations without bothering to apply rudimentary common sense to determine whether they have any value in the real world. That such is the case with respect to Edmonds' allegations become self-evident to anyone performing a common-sense thought experiment predicated upon assumptions (for purposes of argument) that her allegations are 100% correct. What should one charged with preventing terrorists attacks do in response to such information?

Decades of doctrine on how to deal with hijacking of airliners stressed the importance of minimizing risks to passengers by complying with, rather than physically resisting, hijackers' demands. Given the then-recent event in India in which Islamic terrorists hijacked an Indian airliner for the purpose of demanding release of some of their jailed leaders, could one have responsibly ignored clues indicative of risks of "traditional" hijackings and instead restructured warnings and instructions to airline crews to operate only on the assumption that failing to physically overcome hijackers would mean certain death for the passengers and people in buildings intended to be targeted by hijackers?

One could not issue both kinds of instructions-- i.e., one would need to instruct airline crews either to resist at all costs or to comply at all costs. In any particular incident, no crew would have sufficient information at the time to know whether hijackers ultimately intended to conduct a suicidal mission or a hostage-taking/demand-making mission. Without the precedent of 9-11 (in contrast to the then-recent hostage-type hijacking in India), would any airline crew have refused to comply with demands of hijackers slitting the throats of attendants and/or passengers to induce compliance? Would Todd Beamer and his fellow heroes have adopted their "let's roll" strategy if they were to have believed the hijackers intended to land and negotiate rather than to crash the plane into a building?

The only "safe" choice would be a third one: To ground all passenger flights until intelligence could be sufficiently refined to determine with a high degree of confidence whether such possible hijackings would constitute the traditional hostage-taking, negotiation-oriented type (like the then-recent hijacking of the Indian airliner by Islamic terrorists allied with the Taliban) or the suicidal kind not previously experienced despite having been previously predicted as a possible change of tactics. How long would it take to achieve such degree of confidence about the nature of such threat? Would it ever have been possible (before 9-11) to have achieved the requisite degree of confidence?

Sibel like Cybil or Sibel like Libel?

For translating needs that were dire,
'twas post-9-11 we hired
some mid-eastern speakers
|as translating readers
of mid-eastern data acquired.

The backlog in which we were mired
was mid-eastern data acquired
remaining unleavened
before 9-11
in oceans of dots we'd acquired.

And one who is named "Sibel Edmonds"
is claiming before 9-11
the data explained
'twas hijacking planes
to crash into buildings envisioned.

Assume, arguendo, she's right
that Tenet and Dubya and Rice
had learned there were clues
that airlines they'd use
as missiles by hijacking flights.

Assume you were told, "Make a plan
to stop such attack on our land,"
but also assume
there also were clues
of hijackers planning to land.

Assume you must furnish the clues
as warnings to airliner crews.
Should warnings prescribe
"resist or you'll die"
or "let 'em prescribe where to land"?

Without 9-11 as hindsight,
you'd not know which warning's designed right,
so which would you choose:
"Resist or you'll lose"
or "Let them take-over the flight"?

Following the "safe" choice would make us perpetual hostages to such threats. In the pre-9-11 world, to have relied upon clues such as those alleged by Edmonds as justification for immediately instructing all airline crews to resist to the death any hijacking attempt (and thereby doom the passengers on the assumption that such hijacking necessarily must be the suicidal type) would have been irresponsible. As difficult as it is, we simply must face the reality that those barbarians outsmarted us.

We must also face the likelihood that in some context not fully anticipated by us, they will outsmart us again. We cannot realistically expect to ultimately prevail in this war between civilization and medieval barbarism without taking more casualties. Rumsfeld repeats it, but few pay attention: On defense, we must succeed 100 times against every 100 attempts against us, but the barbarians need to succeed only one time in a hundred to achieve a victory. We cannot protect every bridge, every length of railroad track, every building where people congregate, every shopping mall, every office building, every airplane, every boat, every inch of shoreline, every inch of our northern and southern borders, every inch of every highway, every school, every sporting event, every church, every government office, etc. 100% of the time. No matter what event were to occur, it's a certainty that somewhere in the oceans of dots, there will be dots whose connections will be rendered discernibly connected only by hindsight from the vantage of future events.

Is there any consolation? At least in the post-9-11 world, potential hijackers now know that passengers (such as those who helped subdue Richard Reid) will resist on the assumption that they will die anyway if they were to remain passive. That's the effect of full-hindsight in contrast to the self-serving, self-important, half-hindsight theories of "experts" such as Edmonds (and Clarke).

--Jim Wrenn, Editor@PoliSat.Com.

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