posted on September 11, 2002 09:51:52 PM new
Did you see Tom Brokaw's show tonight, one hour, about the role of the air traffic controllers on 9/11? I was absolutely riveted to my couch, and a few times I had trouble breathing. Talk about real life drama. They were true heroes.
posted on September 11, 2002 10:14:45 PM new
I was busy watching the TLC channel, which had at least four hours of riveting 9-11 drama, including a computer analysis of the history of the towers and how they ended up failing and falling down; the Pentagon hit, which you usually don't see, and other stuff.
posted on September 11, 2002 10:16:45 PM new
I would have liked to have seen that.
I was watching a documentary this evening on Canadian T.V. which consisted of a series interviews with the political decision-makers here in Canada of their recollections of that day.
The Transport Minister told of walking into the room where there is a map with lights showing every single aircraft in the air anywhere in the world. He said the tragedy struck home to him as he watched the lights go out one by one on the map until there were no lights at all over the U.S.
Then our Prime Minister talked about the decision he had to make that afternoon. The Korean passenger aircraft in the air was sending out coded signals that it had been hijacked.
U.S. jets forced the aircraft into Canadian airspace and away from American airspace. So the Prime Minister was faced with the prospect that this plane might be carrying a bomb and could be headed to one of our heavily populated areas. He gave permission for the two(?) American jets following it to come into Canadian territory on the condition that it would be Canadians not Americans who would shoot the plane down.
He also gave orders ( "on principle" ) that the plane be shot down if necessary. He said it was a decision he knew he had to make, but it was hard, because he knew it might mean the death of hundreds of innocent passengers.
There was quite a sigh of relief when the plane landed without incident in the Yukon. It turned out the code signal was a mistake on the part of the pilot - a language problem.
Irene
[ edited by stockticker on Sep 11, 2002 10:20 PM ]
