<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by bp888:
Isn't it just plain convenient (and duplicitous on the part of those who continue to perpetuate the above myth) that we're blaming the airport security companies for a combination of failures by airlines (cockpit entry policy before 9/11), by the intelligence community and by the government at large (failure of imagination -- that some people would actually use commercial airplanes as missiles)?</font>
Oh, come on now. The security companies have made some major mistakes, such as not denying employment to felons, allowing people to carry things that were not permitted with them after the attacks, and so on. They've screwed up big time. Yes, the things that were used to hijack the planes were permitted, so you can blame them for that, but you sure as hell can blame them for all the other mistakes they've made.
As for the intelligence community, if I told you on September 10 that terrorists would hijack planes and use them as guided missiles, you'd have laughed at me and called the men in the white coats to commit me to a mental hospital.
Finally, when it comes to the airlines, you can't blame them for following procedure that worked in the past. You let the hijacker take the plane to some place, land, and negotiate from there. You figured he'd hold the hostages and want to free some of his terrorist colleagues and so on. They negotiate, and either they surrender or the plane is stormed by commandos. In any case, the airlines were told to not fight back.
There is really nobody to blame for the attacks. They were inconceivable.
Now, if you say, well, we should have gone after bin Laden before it came to this, you're right. But nobody really cared.