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What are the odds...

Never mind a box cutter.

I once got on board with a knife that I had in my computer bag and it went through the x-ray machine! It was a pretty good sized Buck knife and I didn't realize it until I got to where I was going. Made sure I packed it in my checked bag on that way back.

If I could do it by accident, could it be that difficult to do it on purpose?
 
dirtywick said:
Geggy, I know it's been a while since 9/11 and everyone's gotten pretty comfortable with that, but do you remember what it was like before that? I remeber at airports you could walk in and go to a terminal, you didn't even need a ticket. Now, of course, you need an ID and a ticket and to be searched, you can't even send off family members. There was no security at all then. You used to be able to bring knives that were smaller than the palm of your hand, scissors, nail clippers, lighters, etc. Now you can't bring your toothpaste apparently. You used to be able to check your bags and they might do a random search, now they X-ray everything you own and run it through metal detectors.
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I remember about a year before 9/11 my wife and I were at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta heading out one of the less-used exits. As we approached, a number of security staff ran past us at full sprint. What was the problem? The only two security screeners at that location were literally rolling around on the floor in the middle of a knock-down-drag-out fight. How long they left the post unguarded is anyone's guess.

ETA: That's not to say Al Queda waited for just such a moment to smuggle weapons on the plane as much as it is to point out the quality of security that existed pre-911.
 
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Triterope said:
This sort of analysis is the equivalent of of dealing yourself a five-card poker hand, and then saying "the odds against getting that exact hand were 2,596,959 to 1!" It's technically true, but completely meaningless. The steps taken were going to lead to SOME result.

This is all a fallacy. You can take any event, and work backwards to determine incredible odds against it happening.
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Well yes and no. If you specify in advance the exact hand you're aiming for, and get it, then the odds are astronomical. If you wait until after the fact, then "specify" the hand you just dealt, indeed the probability of success is 1.

The question with 9/11 then, is whether there is something equivalent to "specify in advance". The answer is yes there is.

For example, if we knew that FEMA ran an average of one terror drill every three years for 27 years prior to 9/11, then we might be able to assign some reasonable probability to the occurence of tripod II coinciding with 9/11. If they ran terror drills every month, it would be a different probability.

If FEMA had in the past always chosen different locations for terror drills, and this time just happened to pick lower Manhattan, we could estimate some probability that this occured by chance. If FEMA had done many terror drills in lower Manhattan before, we would assign a higher probability that they would choose it again.

This is not as cut-and-dry as calculating odds of dice throws or card flips, but nor is it a totally unreasonable approach.
 
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geggy said:
...of osama bin laden and the 19 hijackers defeating the US's defense system, including the government insiders, military departments and intelligence and security agencies...?

To name a few...
NSA
FBI
DIA
CIA
NIC
DOD
NORAD
USAF
NEADS
FAA
INS
DEA
CT
DS

I'd say 100 million to 1.
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Hey geggy what were the ods for this:

September 6th 1970: Dawson's Field hijackings, PFLP members attempt to hijack simultaneously four aircraft bound for New York City. They succeed on three and force the planes to fly to the Jordanian desert, where the hijackers blow up the aircraft after releasing most of the hostages.

Now, how did they defeat all defence systems, government insiders, military departments and intelligence and security agencies? Following your logic the ods are 100 million to 1. So you now must conclude that the Dawson's Field hijackings were a conspiracy too?
 
TruthSeeker1234 said:
Well yes and no. If you specify in advance the exact hand you're aiming for, and get it, then the odds are astronomical. If you wait until after the fact, then "specify" the hand you just dealt, indeed the probability of success is 1.

The question with 9/11 then, is whether there is something equivalent to "specify in advance". The answer is yes there is.

For example, if we knew that FEMA ran an average of one terror drill every three years for 27 years prior to 9/11, then we might be able to assign some reasonable probability to the occurence of tripod II coinciding with 9/11. If they ran terror drills every month, it would be a different probability.

If FEMA had in the past always chosen different locations for terror drills, and this time just happened to pick lower Manhattan, we could estimate some probability that this occured by chance. If FEMA had done many terror drills in lower Manhattan before, we would assign a higher probability that they would choose it again.

This is not as cut-and-dry as calculating odds of dice throws or card flips, but nor is it a totally unreasonable approach.
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So where does that leave the question in the OP?

The chances are 100%, because it happened.

Of course, a lot of the references in the OP are irrelevant, even if we were calculating the odds. I mean... NORAD?! If I wanted to smuggle a box-cutter onto a plane and hijack it in 1990, then do a u-ie and smash into a nearby building, NORAD would not be on my list of concerns.
 
Piggy said:
So where does that leave the question in the OP?

The chances are 100%, because it happened.

Of course, a lot of the references in the OP are irrelevant, even if we were calculating the odds. I mean... NORAD?! If I wanted to smuggle a box-cutter onto a plane and hijack it in 1990, then do a u-ie and smash into a nearby building, NORAD would not be on my list of concerns.
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It's also making the assumption that the terrorists thought all four hijackings would succeed. They may well have been attempting four and hoping/assuming one would succeed.
 
geggy said:
All I'm asking you to do is to think like a terrorist. Pretend you're osama and the major part of planning an attack such as 9/11, especially 9/11, is to map out strategies in bypassing defense and security, let alone the US spending an average of 300 million a year on it, what odds would you think you have in succeeding?
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What´s so implausibly to the attacks? As far i know the USA didn´t see or didn´t realize any possible attacks on their soil - that´s why the security efforts were not that high. We also know that there were cells of Al-Q. in the USA who checked the security-precautions before the attacks and they also checked possible Targets - like the WTC-film they made some years before the attacks...

What´s your question about that?
 
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steve s said:
The only "defense system" they had to beat was airport security. And how did all previous hijackers throughout history manage to get past this defense system? The difference on 9/11 was that once the hijackers had control of the plane, rather than just demand ransom, they decided to crash the planes into some buildings. What were the odds of that succeeding? Pretty damn good.

Steve S.
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I agree wholeheartedly. The odds weren't very high it wasn't hard too get through airport security before 9/11. I always carried a lot of stuff with me (camera bag, diaper bag , laptop etc) and never had any bag looked into. The first two planes hit within a few minutes of each other before anyone had a clue of what the real plan was. This was followed by a short period of confusion before the next plane hit. The fourth plane didn't make its target.

What were the odds of all the other succesfull hijackings. how often have you heard of one being stopped before 9/11. Have you ever heard of the pilot refusing to do the bidding of the hijackers (like JohnDoe claims he would have). There may have been a few but I don't know of them. Maybe if the last flight had made it to its destination then you would have some point. how quickly do you think a decision such as shooting down an airliner full of passengers could have been reached.

I hate to say it but the only the only thing that surprises me is that there hasn't been another terrorist attack in the US not that 9/11 was succesful.
 
TruthSeeker1234 said:
Geggy -

Elias Davidsson has given a paper using the approach you suggest. He assigns probabilities to various aspects of 9/11 and computes the resulting odds.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/DAV504A.html

Perhaps you will find it interesting.
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Jeesh, that paper is so silly I don't know where to begin. Well, TS, I'll give you an offer: Choose the three arguments that are, in your opinion, the best from that paper, and I'll shred those for you.

Hans
 
eeyore1954 said:
I hate to say it but the only the only thing that surprises me is that there hasn't been another terrorist attack in the US not that 9/11 was succesful.
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No kidding. I remember a few weeks after 9.11 I put myself in Al Queda's shoes and tried to imagine other possible ways a group of dedicated suicide terrorists could strike again. I need not post the results online, but the relative simplicity of my ideas worried me.
 
Hmmm this could be fun from a historical sense, we could start listing all the longshots that hit.

My favorite. What are the odds that a vastly superior naval force (in both numbers and quality) would be crushed by a far smaller force that included a ship held together with rubber bands and glue? What are the chances that the smaller force would attack at the exact time when the superior force was at its most vulnerable? What are the chances that the aircraft protecting the larger force would be pulled away by the disjointed low level attacks while the high level attacks came in untouched?

I could go on for some time, but I guess in my world the longshot hit at Midway, while in Geggy's world there is a conspiracy out there somewhere.
 
For example, if we knew that FEMA ran an average of one terror drill every three years for 27 years prior to 9/11, then we might be able to assign some reasonable probability to the occurence of tripod II coinciding with 9/11. If they ran terror drills every month, it would be a different probability.

If FEMA had in the past always chosen different locations for terror drills, and this time just happened to pick lower Manhattan, we could estimate some probability that this occured by chance. If FEMA had done many terror drills in lower Manhattan before, we would assign a higher probability that they would choose it again.
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Just out of curiousity, did FEMA keeps these drills secret, or were they public knowledge?

And, geggy, as was pointed out to you on I-Mockery, most of those defenses were pointed outward. NORAD and the DoD have nothing to do with airport screening.
 
TruthSeeker1234 said:
The question with 9/11 then, is whether there is something equivalent to "specify in advance". The answer is yes there is.

For example, if we knew that FEMA ran an average of one terror drill every three years for 27 years prior to 9/11, then we might be able to assign some reasonable probability to the occurence of tripod II coinciding with 9/11. If they ran terror drills every month, it would be a different probability.

If FEMA had in the past always chosen different locations for terror drills, and this time just happened to pick lower Manhattan, we could estimate some probability that this occured by chance. If FEMA had done many terror drills in lower Manhattan before, we would assign a higher probability that they would choose it again.

This is not as cut-and-dry as calculating odds of dice throws or card flips, but nor is it a totally unreasonable approach.
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if it was an inside job why would FEMA have chosen that day to run a drill. How does that imply foreknowledge. if anything I would think the argument is stronger that they would have chosen a different day to not draw suspicion . Explain how you think having that drill implies they knew. What was to be gained by it?



Also are you going to answer this comment from Hans? Did you read the paper? and really believe it?

Jeesh, that paper is so silly I don't know where to begin. Well, TS, I'll give you an offer: Choose the three arguments that are, in your opinion, the best from that paper, and I'll shred those for you.

Hans
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geggy said:
NSA FBI DIA CIA NIC DOD NORAD USAF NEADS FAA INS DEA CT DS
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How are NORAD and the USAF different? The USAF would have been the interdiction arm of NORAD if, you know, NORAD's mission had been in any way compatable with intercepting hijacked flights originating within the borders of the US.

What the hell was the FAA supposed to do that it didn't?

And where exactly does the Drug Enforcement Agency fit in? I mean, for that matter the terrorists also slipped past the FDA and the Department of Agriculture.

I don't know what CT and DS stand for.
 
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