Aren't there ground to air missiles installed on key public buildings such as the White House, Capitol and Pentagon that are supposed to fire at missiles or planes that get too close? Why didn't the Pentagon shoot down the plane that crashed into it? Is the White House equally vulnerable?

-- Anonymous, September 15, 2001

Answers

Ask Tom Clancey

-- Anonymous, September 15, 2001

Once that thing is on terminal approach, the best you can do is to shoot it so that maybe it'll land short of the intended target. But especially in a crowded area like downtown DC, you're not going to stop if from hitting someone or something.

The best place to shoot them is while they're still many miles away in the air over relatively uninhabited territory. But that doesn't help the passengers very much ...

The best idea is to keep people with weapons from getting on in the first place.

-- Anonymous, September 15, 2001

Well, of course. But are you saying that a stinger missile fired in the last half mile (after due warnings) would not have produced a "better" outcome than what happened?

-- Anonymous, September 15, 2001

"To shoot down a plane so that it annihilated a neighborhood instead of just a government edifice of granite and marble is what we should have expected."----Rev. Jesse Jackson

Just guessing headlines here.

-- Anonymous, September 15, 2001

Carlos? Not a jackal are you? I’m confident that you, like all American’s, have been glued to the tube since Tuesday morning. In all of that time have you once seen Reverend’s Jackson or Sharpton? You see, even unthinkable tragedies come with some benefits. I have it on very good authority that both of these individuals have been, shall we say ‘instructed’, not to show up anywhere near ground zero.

-- Anonymous, September 15, 2001

Lars,

Look at a map of the DC metro area; it's very heavily populated. Just about anywhere that you'd shoot that plane down, it would kill a lot of people, anyway.

So, it depends on how you define "better result."

Our love for big crowded metro areas is the problem here.

-- Anonymous, September 16, 2001