"Was 9/11 Supposed to Be 9/18?"
Aug. 23rd, 2004 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
libertangoFascinating article in the Washington Post from Sunday (note: requires registration). It's written by Kenneth M. Quinn who is, "a retired Foreign Service officer. He served as the U.S. representative to the U.N. Relief and Works Administration for Palestinian refugees and as U.S. ambassador to Cambodia." (note again: the Post has, I think, a one week cycle before putting things in an archive. So move it. :)
Here's the lead:
"(T)here is a strong case to be made that the original al Qaeda plan was not to attack New York and Washington on Tuesday, September 11, but rather a week later, on Tuesday, September 18 -- the day on which Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, fell in 2001.
A Sept. 18 timetable would account for one of the most mystifying and disturbing incidents that occurred after the attacks: The spread of the assertion, widely reported in parts of the Arab and Muslim world, that "4,000 Jews" had been absent from the World Trade Center and that their absence was evidence of "Zionist regime involvement" in planning and carrying out the plot."
Basically, he thinks that story was planted in the Arab press in advance, and that it started coming out on 9/18, as planned. The main hypothesis as to why the attack was moved up a week is the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui. Since Moussaoui was arrested in August, why wasn't the attack even earlier? Because apparently bin Laden insisted the attack be while Congress was in session. And why exactly one week? Because Atta and his colleagues had been scouting the equipment and schedules for a Tuesday (which 9/18, Rosh Hashanah was) and couldn't be certain about equipment assigned to other days.
As I say, fascinating stuff. But it's the reported insistence of Bin Laden about Congress that got me to thinking.
It has long been hypothesized that the fourth plane -- the one that crashed in Pennsylvania -- was supposed to hit the Capitol building. Now, imagine if the attacks had come on Rosh Hashanah, and that the Capitol had indeed been hit.
That means that at all three locations -- the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Capitol -- people who would normally have been there but are Jewish would have been absent that day. Imagine if a goodly number of US Senators had been killed, but Joe Lieberman hadn't.
But this dovetails to a different story that circulated in the Arab press, soon but not immediately after the attacks -- "We Arabs could never have put together an attack this coordinated, this deadly, this clever. It must've been the Mossad, and we poor Arabs are just getting blamed for the Zionists' perfidy again."
That story didn't get much traction, in the event (at least in the West). But if it had been Rosh Hashanah, and if a number of Jews had survived because they'd taken the day off... I can easily see how the redneck element would've clutched onto it.
In retrospect, I guess we should consider ourselves lucky, if this story is true. Because the backlash against innocent Americans of Arab descent was bad enough. But this kind of thing would've been far worse, and quite possibly more virulent. It also possibly shows a level of planning deeper than originally thought.
(Link again originally found at The Volokh Conspiracy.)
Here's the lead:
"(T)here is a strong case to be made that the original al Qaeda plan was not to attack New York and Washington on Tuesday, September 11, but rather a week later, on Tuesday, September 18 -- the day on which Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, fell in 2001.
A Sept. 18 timetable would account for one of the most mystifying and disturbing incidents that occurred after the attacks: The spread of the assertion, widely reported in parts of the Arab and Muslim world, that "4,000 Jews" had been absent from the World Trade Center and that their absence was evidence of "Zionist regime involvement" in planning and carrying out the plot."
Basically, he thinks that story was planted in the Arab press in advance, and that it started coming out on 9/18, as planned. The main hypothesis as to why the attack was moved up a week is the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui. Since Moussaoui was arrested in August, why wasn't the attack even earlier? Because apparently bin Laden insisted the attack be while Congress was in session. And why exactly one week? Because Atta and his colleagues had been scouting the equipment and schedules for a Tuesday (which 9/18, Rosh Hashanah was) and couldn't be certain about equipment assigned to other days.
As I say, fascinating stuff. But it's the reported insistence of Bin Laden about Congress that got me to thinking.
It has long been hypothesized that the fourth plane -- the one that crashed in Pennsylvania -- was supposed to hit the Capitol building. Now, imagine if the attacks had come on Rosh Hashanah, and that the Capitol had indeed been hit.
That means that at all three locations -- the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Capitol -- people who would normally have been there but are Jewish would have been absent that day. Imagine if a goodly number of US Senators had been killed, but Joe Lieberman hadn't.
But this dovetails to a different story that circulated in the Arab press, soon but not immediately after the attacks -- "We Arabs could never have put together an attack this coordinated, this deadly, this clever. It must've been the Mossad, and we poor Arabs are just getting blamed for the Zionists' perfidy again."
That story didn't get much traction, in the event (at least in the West). But if it had been Rosh Hashanah, and if a number of Jews had survived because they'd taken the day off... I can easily see how the redneck element would've clutched onto it.
In retrospect, I guess we should consider ourselves lucky, if this story is true. Because the backlash against innocent Americans of Arab descent was bad enough. But this kind of thing would've been far worse, and quite possibly more virulent. It also possibly shows a level of planning deeper than originally thought.
(Link again originally found at The Volokh Conspiracy.)
