Draugnar, I'm not sure if you know this but you just admitted my point in basic fact #1. You'll have to forgive me for stopping to read there. :)

Also, seems I forgot to address this: "This is why forts, bunkers, trenches, fallout shelters, castles, et cetera have always been built"

Those things are all built for specific reasons to defend against specific things. Schools are not.

"The school was a defensible location"

You have no idea it is because you don't know what is coming.

Basic fact #1: You can't get the President to a safe location without moving him.

That doesn't admit your point. If anything, it *refutes* your point. I never said the school was safe. I said it was safer than moving him. Yes, an unkown location is safer than a known one. But Basic Fact #1 out that you have to get him there to make him safe end *every* security expert will tell you the highest risk to the President is in transit.

How about this...

Basic Fact #0: Moving the President incurs the highest risk to his life while in transit.
Basic Fact #0.1: Tracking the President's movements is always easy because we always know where he is.

Logical Conclussion #1: If we move the President - he will be at extreme risk the entire time he is in transit and his position may still be known when he gets there because we can't be sure there won't be someone tracking the caravan.

Logical Conclussion #2: Staying put controls the factors because we already know this building is secure and we know the layout of the building and can control complete access to it.

The only risk to Bush that day in the school would be from one of the rogue airplanes and that is greatly reduced by the fact that noone outside of the school knew his relative location in the school so even the best pilot wouldn't know wher in the school to target.

I'll refer you back to the map I sent sometime back. It is one big elementary school. An airliner crashing into it would only take out 20%-25% of the school, meaning the President had a 75%-80% chance of surviving *unscathed* even if a plane crashed into the school.

That is an acceptable risk when compared to the additional unknown risk factors moving him to the limo and then caravaning down the road.

That is *exactly* how the Secret Service evaluated the situation. And that is exactly what the SITREP would have been between the head of the Secret Service and the President.

"I never said the school was safe. I said it was safer than moving him"

You absolutely cannot know this!

"The only risk to Bush that day in the school would be from one of the rogue airplanes"

No, Draug...you absolutely cannot know this.

Draug - I'm sorry, you just aren't getting the point at all. I cannot address your questions if you don't even understand my point...and clearly, you don't understand.

"we already know this building is secure"

And the skies of America were secure just a minute ago...

""The school was a defensible location"

You have no idea it is because you don't know what is coming. "

I may not know exactly what is coming, but I have a pretty damn good idea what isn't coming.

There won't be a tank crashing through the wall.
There probably won't be a heat-seeking missile (or any other kind of missile) coming through the wall.

In fact, I know what is most likely coming, if anything:

An airplane may crash into the school - An airplane could just as easily crash into Airforce One. The only safe place from an arial attack of the nature experienced that day is on the road, never stopping for more than to refill the fuel tanks.

A sniper may be waiting outside the school.
A mobile assault "team" (i.e. a rolling fertilizer bomb like McVay used in Oklahoma City) may be tracking his movement.
A group of heavily armed men may storm the school.

And I know this about the school:
It is brick.
It is big.
I have my best agents and a platoon of Marines surrounding it. The Marines have fully automatic weapons and everyone is equipped with radios and on the ready should an assault occur.
The President can quickly be moved to the basement of the school should an armed assault occur.

Conclussion:
Risk analysis suggest that there is a 75-80% chance of survival for the President shoudl a plane come his way while he is still in the school.
Risk analysis suggests that there is less than a 50% survival rate should whoever is crashing planes truly be determined to get the President and use either a sniper or a mobile fertilizer bomb.
Risk analysis suggest that there is less than a 1% chance of an assault on the school being successful.

All that said, risk analysis suggests that the PResident is safest staying where he is at.

And don't say I wouldn't know this info at that time, because I absolutely would know most of it, and could make a well informed deduction as to the aspects like "they won't have tanks or missiles". It's not called intelligence gathering for nothing, you know.

"There probably won't be a heat-seeking missile (or any other kind of missile) coming through the wall."

Sept 10 - "There probably won't be airliners crashing into buildings tomorrow."

Go back and reread this thread, because you don't get it. At all.

"The only safe place from an arial attack of the nature experienced that day..."

This reveals your false assumption and use of hindsight...

wasnt this 10 years ago

lol

"Sept 10 - "There probably won't be airliners crashing into buildings tomorrow.""

Not true, not only had airplanes already been used in attempted Presidential assassinations, Bush had also already received a memo titled "Terrorists plan to use airliners as bombs." The Presidential security team was already aware of these risks and accounted for them.

Oh and the one who isn't getting it is you. The CIA and the FBI were and are in constant communication with the Secret Service. The Secret Service would have intel that you nor I would be aware of even today. You make assumptions that other measures weren't taken. Measures like say an squadron of fighter jets out of a nearby airforce base was scrambled and in the air looking to blow anything that deviated form the norm anywhere aroudn the President out of the sky.

I'm not syaing that exact measure was taken. I don't know and that is the point. You jump to a conclussion without all the info. Info we will never have in full. Hell, for all I know transporter technology has been developer and there is a cloaked spaceship orbitting above the US at all times with a lock on the President, waiting to beam him out should something come his way. We *don't* know what other measures were in place to provide the Secret Service with theconfidence that keeping him there was the *best* course of action.

The confidence you see as conspiracy could well be the confidence of knowing that the Marines and Air Force have Helicopter Gunships, F-14/15/16/18/22s, and heat-sensing steaming satellite intel keeping them continually informed and the President as safe as can be expected.

The only "conspiracy" is that they don't tell us everything that is done to protect the President at all times and I accept that telling us everything negates the purpose of having those things in place. Just as he can't be a target if they don't know where he is at, they can't circumvent security measures they don't know about.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/13/us/crash-white-house-overview-unimpeded-intruder-crashes-plane-into-white-house.html

http://wanttoknow.info/020515post_memo_bush_white_house_bin_laden_attack_america_9-11

Hey, SD, let's just play a game and forget this fool can't understand how the Secret Service's confidence can come from sources other than some conspiracy he read on the internet and is refusing to let go of.

Besides, I'm starting to think he is being intentionally obtuse and is just trolling us.

Yeah, probably for the best, Draug.

"this fool can't understand how the Secret Service's confidence can come from sources other than some conspiracy"

Well, confidence is certainly never born from surprise.

Anyway, obviously you don't get it and you haven't even challenged my argument. You've challenged just about everything but my argument.

"he is being intentionally obtuse and is just trolling us"

Who isn't doing this to you, Draugnar? :)

And to put the final nail in the coffin of Draug's argument...

"The confidence you see as conspiracy could well be the confidence of knowing Marines and Air Force have Helicopter Gunships, F-14/15/16/18/22s..."

Could well be that they knew the targets too. So, now what? And that just brings us right back to where we started. It was a surprise, you couldn't have known or have been confident in anything.

Ok Darwyn, let's try to clarify something here.

Every time Draugnar or myself challenge your argument, your response has been "ah, no, that's not my argument, my argument is actually something else but you can't grasp it".

So let's try to pin down exactly what your argument is, ok?

As far as I can see, the basis of your position is:

1. Terrorists could have known that the President was in that school.
2. So, if they wanted to attack the President, they would target the school because that's where he was, and they knew this.
3. Therefore, the best way for the secret service to reduce the risk to the President would be to move him out of the school.
4. The fact that they did *not* do this proves that they must have known that he would not be attacked.

Is that, or is that not, the basis of your argument? If it is *not*, please clarify which bits of it I am getting wrong.

Thank you.

"As far as I can see, the basis of your position is:

1. Terrorists..."

You failed right there.

Jamie...the argument in full is in the thread somewhere...

Here...

America is under attack. The Presidents whereabouts are known to all. No one could have known the President wasn't a target.

This leads us to conclude that an attack is imminent and that no one could know how or when. This leaves us with only one option...move.

But the SS stayed. They knew he wasn't a target.

"This leaves us with only one option...move."

I should correct this to say, that staying is not an option.

@Darwyn - your assumption is faulty. There is more than one option. You *assume* the only option is to move when faced with uncertainty. The US was under attack. Whether it be terrorists, another nation, or some internal element is irrelevant to the argument. I'm sure you agree with that base on your previous posts.

Wher the flaw comes in is the assumption that *not* moving the President means they knew he was safe. *Not* moving the President means they analyzed all the risks based on known factors, intelligence gathered at the time, position in the field, and relative position to othe rlocations of safety and made a tactical decision to stay.

Your flaw is in the assumption that moving was safer than staying followed by the assumption that if they didn't move him, they must somehow have knowledge he wasn't a target. That is an assumption and, while theoretically possible, has not been proven.

A is happeneing
B might happen because of A
C could be unsafe because of B
They didn't perform D (with the false assumption D would be a safer move. We have proven with the information known at that time by security experts *outside* of the Secret Service, it was *not* the safer move)
Therefore they must know B won't happen (another false assumption as ther is more than one explanation.)

Let's put it this way. Eliminate all the other possibilities that are just as or more likely than the conspiracy and you can claim a strong likelyhood of the conspiracy. You haven't eliminated the impossible, leaving just the improbable. In fact, you haven't eliminated the much mroe likely and are asserting a less likely possibility as the only one. Epid. Fucking. Fail.

Was that simple enough for you to follow?

"I should correct this to say, that staying is not an option."

That is *not* a fact. It is just your opinion, and a woefully uninformed one at that.

Draug, we had a deal, brother.

I know. But I thought if I cut to the chase of the argument and showed that what he asserted as fact was really a possible (but not plausible) theory and definitely not the only viable alternative (and in fact not a viable alternative at all considering the added risk) that he might come around. At least he hasn't responded yet, so there is hope for him.

@ Darwyn:

First of all, thanks for clarifying. Seriously, thanks.

So let's take another look at your basic argument:

"America is under attack. The President's whereabouts are known to all. No one could have known the President wasn't a target."

This is reasonable. I have no objection to what you're saying in these three sentences.


"This leads us to conclude that an attack is imminent"

Why? An attack is possible, perhaps. But you appear to conclude that an imminent attack would be a *certainty*. How could you be so certain?


"...and that no one could know how or when."

No-one could know when? I thought you just said it was "imminent"?


"This leaves us with only one option...move."
"I should correct this to say, that staying is not an option."

Why is moving the only option? Why is staying not an option? The basis on which you reach this conclusion is not clear.

@darwyn - your whole arguement falls down because you haven't thought of what the attackers want the attacked to do. In the UK during the troubles in Northern Ireland some bomb threats were issued with the intent of getting a shopping centre evacuated and then bombs exploded where peple were being moved to. If you were a terrorist it could be a good plan to plan a huge diversion and then plan to take out a target at a time when you think they will be being moved to a secure location. I'm not saying that the secret service was right or wrong to move the president, all i'm saying is that keeping him there did not mean they knew he wouldn't be a target.

Bump (in the hope of answers from Darwyn)

Draug - "You *assume* the only option is to move when faced with uncertainty."

Actually, no. What you are facing is the certainty of attack if you stay. The uncertainty is only the how and when of said attack.

"Whether it be terrorists, another nation, or some internal element is irrelevant to the argument. I'm sure you agree with that base on your previous posts."

Correct.

"Wher the flaw comes in is the assumption that *not* moving the President means they knew he was safe. *Not* moving the President means they analyzed all the risks based on known factors, intelligence gathered at the time, position in the field"

It's not an assumption. It's very much a logical conclusion based on the facts. It's your assumption that they analyzed all risks. But they *couldn't* have! It was a surprise. No amount of intelligence is going to help defend a surprise attack set to go off at 9:06. At 9:05, you couldn't know it wasn't.

"Your flaw is in the assumption that moving was safer than staying"

Again, this is not my assumption. Also, this point is moot. All you know is that an attack on your location is imminent and that is already the most dangerous place to be.

"Was that simple enough for you to follow? "

You are actually making this much more complicated than it is...not me.


Jamie -
"But you appear to conclude that an imminent attack would be a *certainty*. How could you be so certain?...Why is moving the only option? Why is staying not an option?"

I've written about this already...Given what we know: America is under attack and the Presidents whereabouts are known, then you can't know he isn't a target. That means that the only logical conclusion is that he is a target...no one could have safely ruled that out. that means that for all anyone knows, an attack is imminent.

At 9:05 America was under attack. No one could know that something devastating wasn't going to happen at 9:06. Therefore staying is not an option.

Maniac -
"your whole arguement falls down because you haven't thought of what the attackers want the attacked to do."
I don't understand how this has anything to do with it. he was sitting at the school...with a big red target on him.

"keeping him there did not mean they knew he wouldn't be a target. "

Keeping him there proves that the secret Service knew he was safe. And there is only one way to know absolutely that he was safe...