I just finished Richard Dawkins’ book The Greatest  Show on Earth, in which he explains the evidence for evolution. In fact, that’s the subtitle: “The Evidence for Evolution.”

I’ll mention here that I’ve long been a “believer” in evolution, although it turns out that my understanding of the theory and knowledge of the evidence were sadly lacking. Not to worry. The first few chapters corrected both of those shortcomings.

The first part of the book explains the large concepts on which the theory of evolution is based: non-random natural selection of random mutations over a very long time. Evolution, as Dawkins points out multiple times in the first few chapters, is a slow process. There are no “revolutionary” changes over short time periods. It takes thousands of generations to evolve significant change, and even longer to evolve a new species.

After explaining the basic concepts, Dawkins begins on the evidence: how we know this is what has happened. As it turns out, the evidence for evolution is much stronger than I thought it was. We have radioactive clocks, DNA, tree rings, many different experiments, the fossil record, and many other sources of evidence, all of which agree on the fact of evolution. There might be disagreements on some particulars, but all of the evidence points to the conclusion that life on this planet evolved from one common ancestor.

Something that’s long bothered me about others’ reactions to science is their assertion that “it’s only a theory.” As a result, I was pleased to see that the title of the first chapter is “Only a Theory?” In it, Dawkins’ explains exactly what a scientific theory really is.

The Oxford English Dictionary, as Dawkins points out, gives two definitions of the word “theory:”

1. A scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts; a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed.
2. A hypothesis proposed as an explanation; hence a mere hypothesis, speculation, conjecture; an idea or set of ideas about something; an individual view or notion.

The “disconnect” when uneducated people say, “It’s only a theory,” is that they’re using the second definition of “theory”–the common usage that we hear every day. To them, a theory is an hypothesis or just idle speculation. A scientific theory, on the other hand, is much more rigorously defined. A scientific theory is the first sense of the word, above.

The theory of evolution is much more than idle speculation. It is an explanation of observed phenomena that has been confirmed by further observation and experiment. It is accepted by all serious scientists as accounting for the known facts.

The theory of evolution is no more and no less of a “theory” than the theory of gravity, the theory of continental drift, or Einstein’s special theory of relativity. All of these are based on observation and experiment, and serve as explanations of the known facts (observations).

One very important feature of a scientific theory is that it be disprovable. If you can find evidence that contradicts the theory, then at least part of the theory is incorrect. We’re seeing this right now with the recent experiments at CERN, where experimental results seem to show that some subatomic particles can travel faster than the speed of light, which contradicts Einstein’s special theory of relativity.

So far, all of the observations and experiments agree with evolutionary theory. There is no credible evidence to support any competing theories, and no evidence to contradict the idea that life on this planet evolved over billions of years, from very simple forms to the many and varied forms of life that you see today.

Dawkins spends some time (I think too much time) beating on what he calls “history deniers:” those people who, for one reason or another, deny the evidence for evolution. I’ll grant that I was amused by it early on in the book, but by the time I got to the end I was tired of hearing about it. There’s a fine line between showing how “competing ideas” don’t match the evidence, and ridicule. I think Dawkins crosses that line, and in my mind it detracts from the otherwise excellent explanations that he provides.

I sympathize with Dawkins’ desire to correct the collective ignorance that people cling to so dearly. If I didn’t run across it every day, I’d find it inconceivable that so many people deny the fact of evolution. It happened. It’s still happening!

I highly recommend The Greatest Show on Earth. If, like me, your understanding of the theory is based on the watered down explanation you got in your high school science class and the vehement denials that you get from others, then you’ll undoubtedly learn something from reading the book. It sure opened my eyes, giving a much better understanding of what the theory says happened, and the evidence that scientists use to back up that explanation.

Call me Jeb.

In the course of years hoarding books of all description I have acquired quite a large number. It is perhaps unsurprising that I have not yet read through my entire library, as often a new volume will be added that I must needs read most hastily. The list of unread titles has grown to such proportions that were I to consume one per day–a most unlikely achievement considering that the bibliography consists of tomes penned by such writers as Stephen King, Leon Uris, James A. Michener, and others for whom the word “edit” apparently has no meaning–I would be reading for more than a decade and would in the intervening years surely bypass the opportunity to consume manuscripts of much greater value than what I currently possess. However, with such a variety from which to choose, never am I at a loss for something with which to entertain myself.

It came to pass that my high school English instructor–some 30 years after that worthy individual and I had last communicated in person–mentioned the book that forms the title of this entry, and I realized that in all my wide ranging reading I had failed to digest that particular novel. A most grievous omission, I’ve been told, as it seems that any well read American must be able to list this story among the best that he has read. So being, I took it upon myself to seek out and correct this deficit in my admittedly haphazard education.

Obtaining a suitable copy of Mr. Melville’s most famous work turned out to be a matter of just a few minutes, as the title existed in the aforementioned library that my wife and I maintain in our home, correctly placed on the shelf in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. When one has only a handful of books, one can haphazardly place them hither and yon, and recall with little effort the location of a particular volume. As one ages and the number of books grows, memory becomes a more unreliable device and thus requires that some artificial order be placed on the positioning of things lest they be lost but for a volume-by-volume search that would without question occupy more time than the actual reading.

In the nearly half-century I have been blessed with existence on this mortal plane, I have heard many things, mostly good, about Moby Dick. I do not recall, however, any mention of the book’s great weight. At five hundred forty three pages (in the faux-leather-bound edition that graces our collection), the volume is much larger than I had expected. Size, of course, is no indication of a story’s quality although it has often been noted that a longer story must needs be better than a short one, if only to hold the reader’s interest for such a duration. Boring is never forgivable, but at least one can endure an exceedingly dull story if it is short.

On an aside, I’ve often heard that Moby Dick starts with the words, “Call me Ishmael.” Perhaps the story itself starts with those words, but at least in my edition the book starts with a dozen or more pages of historical quotes–some quite obscure–about whales. In retrospect a quote or two or perhaps one full page at most would have been sufficient, I think, to give the impression that the author was intending. But filling fully two percent of the book with such drivel tries the reader’s patience at the very beginning. Had I not been convinced over years of positive reviews that I was in for a delightful read, I would have taken this early waste of time as a warning. But I soldiered on, putting aside my annoyance at the gratuitous quotes, and began the story proper.

Ishmael begins his tale quite engagingly, describing the conditions under which he found himself signing on to a whaling vessel in the great whaling capital of the world: Nantucket. With but few exceptions, the story of his trip to Nantucket, his meeting and new friendship with Queequeg, his initial interview with the owners of the good ship Pequod, and everything leading up to departure was interesting and entertaining. By the time the lines were cast off and the Pequod was leaving Nantucket harbor, I felt as one would be expected to feel at the start of a great voyage; looking forward to the promised adventure on the High Seas.

Sadly, as so often happens with grand adventures, the reality is much less than the anticipation. After preparing for much excitement, the ship is loaded, crew aboard, farewells shared, lines cast, and once the mast disappears over the horizon, it becomes apparent that the “grand adventure” amounts to day upon dreary day of nothing but the sea, the wind in the sails, and endless drudgery: working, eating, sleeping, and perhaps from time to time hanging on for dear life as Mother Nature does her best to capsize, crash, rip apart, or otherwise destroy the ship and thus leave you stranded in the boundless sea, clinging to the flotsam hoping against all odds that another ship will come by to extract you from the waves before your strength gives out and you slip into the deep, never to surface again.

After the first one hundred pages, the good ship Pequod sets sail and Ishmael becomes tiresome, regaling us with page upon ponderous page of information about whales, whaling, and all manner of things tangentially related, occasionally returning to the ship and crew as if reminding himself that there is a story in here somewhere, and along the way relating one or two mildly entertaining bits that ultimately leave the reader unsatisfied. The experience is reminiscent of being stranded at the old sailors’ home, listening to its most seasoned occupant who has perhaps three teeth left and half that many brain cells still functioning as he alternately sips his ale (“Avast! In my day we had proper grog, not this watered down swill that passes for ale among you landlubbers”) rambling tirelessly on about his career on the sea.

One could forgive the asides and the occasional insertion of a fact or three about the business of whaling but for a few egregious errors that the author, a supposedly well regarded writer in his time, should have known better than to commit so voluminously. Whereas it’s important that the reader understand at least some small amount of nautical and whaling jargon, such information should overall be brief, and be presented to the reader in an engaging style. The author’s presentation here is atrocious; as though he took essays written for popular periodicals of the time and slapped them into the text, arranging and lightly editing them so that they seem to fit into the story, but to anybody giving it more than a cursory glance–say, the attention required to actually read the book–the story looks like a cartoon ransom note. Furthermore, and more to the author’s discredit, those informative asides are too often filled with speculation, half truths, and downright fabrications all of which are presented as fact.

Throughout, Melville illustrates his facility with language by never letting a simple word do the work of a convoluted sentence. Nor does he skimp on the long, rambling, and ultimately incoherent paragraphs, as if the value of the writing is increased by having to read over the passage four or five times just to pick out a simple concept that could have been related in one or two short, simple, and interesting sentences. One can hardly escape the thought that the Levianthanic prose is a great joke played on the reader by the author. A grand joke it is, too, as countless learned scholars and critics continue to lavish unctuous praise on the book a century and a half after it was penned, despite the offenses so blatantly committed by the author.

Finally, after wading through hundreds of pages of irrelevant asides with a few colorful anecdotes (related, of course, with cetacean ponderosity) thrown in, and an occasional reference to Captain Ahab and perhaps a half-dozen queries of, “Have you seen the white whale?” we reach the end of the journey: the spotting and chase of the book’s eponymous antagonist–or, depending on your point of view, protagonist. This climax, too, is muted by the less than exciting writing, and the reader is left at the end wondering why he wasted countless precious hours (and, before the advent of electricity, one must conclude, precious candle wick or lamp oil) struggling with the tome and hoping against all reasonable expectation that there was some redeeming value to be found in the book.

I find it curious and more than a bit humorous that in a book about whaling–an occupation in which the primary goal is to keep the blubber and throw out the meat–the author (it’s unlikely that any reputable editor would have allowed this manuscript to leave his desk unscathed) decided to keep the meat and the blubber as well. It is little surprise, considering that the book is easily more than three-fifths blubber outright, and the meat is so marbled with fat that even a light trimming would reduce it by half, and a further treatment by a skilled editor would complete the job of turning this overweight, ponderous and ultimately dull sperm whale of a novel into a sleek and playful dolphin of a story that one could read and enjoy in less than two hours.

As a cure for insomnia, a condition that seemingly afflicts ever more people as time goes on, I would heartily recommend Melville’s Moby Dick. Other potential uses would be casual placement in a conspicuous location in order to impress visitors with the quality of your reading material. The tome would also serve well as a paperweight or, in a pinch, fireplace kindling. I would not, however, recommend it for the stated purpose–reading–unless you are compelled to do so by some outside force (say, a school assignment). Perhaps those who study mass delusions, too, would like to read the book in an attempt to understand how, after one hundred and sixty years, people still cling to the ridiculous notion that the book’s unsubtle and superficial symbolism, use of language, and incoherent exploration of sometimes controversial themes qualify it as a treasure of world literature.

When I was in the airport on Friday I picked up Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out The Shovel–Why Everything You Know Is Wrong, by John Stossel of ABC’s 20/20.  What a great book!  In it, Stossel takes on many common myths to determine if they’re at all true.  Usually, we find that “conventional wisdom” is bunk.

Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity is a follow-up to Stossel’s earlier Give Me a Break : How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media…, which I haven’t yet read.

By now, just about everybody knows that the stories of people causing fires by using their cell phones at the gas pump are untrue.  There’s not one documented case of such a thing happening.  How about the idea that we have less free time now than we used to?  Or that people are less happy today than they were in the past?  Does the lack of price limits on drugs help or hurt the poor?  Does the threat of lawsuits really make the world a safer place?  Is bottled water better than tap water?  His conclusions, which usually contradict the conventional wisdom, are backed up by good research.

His section on “Stupid Schools” is especially interesting to me because I think my exorbitant property taxes are being wasted on a pathetic school system.  If they’re going to charge me that kind of money, they could at least give the kids a reasonable education.  Primary education isn’t rocket science.

Some people will be put off by Stossel’s decidedly Libertarian bent.  No, I’m not talking the modern anarchist Libertarians, but rather people who embrace the ideas of John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and Adam Smith–people who believe that government has a small but legitimate role that does not include sticking its nose into my business or protecting me from myself, cradle to grave.

Regardless of his politics or yours, you have to admit that Stossel does a very good job of making his case.  But don’t take my word for it.  Visit his Web site and see some of his articles and some of his news shows.  It’s good reporting and food for thought.

Highly recommended. 

I finally made my way through History Lessons: How Textbooks from around the world portray U.S. history.  It’s an interesting and sometimes amusing read, but not terribly enlightening.  Not surprisingly, most of the selections portrayed the U.S. involvement in world affairs negatively.  This is especially true of selections from North Korea, Cuba, and the Middle Eastern countries.

Most “approved” history texts smack of propaganda, even here in the U.S. where textbook approval is left to the states (and in some places to the individual school boards).  The books from North Korea and Cuba are really bad.  For example, North Korean junior high school students learn:

The troops of the People’s Army defeated the American bastards over and over again on every battlefield.  Cornered in a dead end, the American bastards didn’t know what to do.  The quick-tempered Americans finally signed the armistice on July 27th of the Juche calendar (1953) and kneeled down before the Chosun People.

The great victory of having beaten the Americans, this proud triumph and honor of our people, was the glorious accomplishment of our great leader (Kim Il-sung).

The North Korean descriptions of the Pueblo incident are similarly one-sided.

Cuba’s students learn that the U.S. is actively engaged in biological war against their country:

Among the most criminal aggression that the US has carried out against Cuba [was] the spreading of toxic substances and germs over the island, causing the outbreaks of diseases that have affected people, plants, and animals.  Only a deliberate enemy action could [have] caused these epidemics in a country whose high level of public health care and flora and fauna protection is recognized by the most competent, specialized regional and international organizations.

To be fair, the book does shed some light on incidents that aren’t well-covered in U.S. textbooks.  At least, not in any textbooks that I remember seeing.  The Spanish-American War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Philippine-American War (yes, there was one), and U.S. involvement in Latin America are just some of the topics that U.S. textbooks either ignore or mention only briefly.

The book does give some useful background information into what was happening in other countries during the time periods discussed.  That’s something that often is lacking in U.S. history textbooks, and gives some insight into the reasons for many conflicts.  The views are understandably slanted, but that’s to be expected.  After all, our textbooks tend to portray the U.S. in the best possible light.

Recommendation?  Mild.  I learned a few new things, which is always good, but not enough to justify the time I spent reading the book.  A history buff might get more out of it–especially some good laughs at some of the more slanted viewpoints.  But I suspect most people are better off spending their money and time on something else.

I finished Asimov’s Foundation series today, all but Foundation and Earth, which I somehow missed when I picked up the rest of the books.  I was left mildly disappointed.

I liked the beginning of the series:  Prelude to Foundation, Foundation, and the first half of Foundation and Empire, but after that it was disappointing.  The addition of a Second Foundation that works in secret was a good idea, I think, but it causes problems.  With the “mentalist” abilities of the Second Foundationers and others, every character’s actions and motivations are under question.  Once it’s been established that the mentalists can affect anybody at any time in just about any conceivable way, then all the rules are out the window and anything can happen.  It’s not as bad as Harry Potter, with magic everywhere, but it’s close.

I also read Asimov’s Robot novels interspersed with the Foundation series.  I’m pretty sure that I read the first one, The Caves of Steel, when I was a teenager.  Once I got started on the book this time I remembered much of the story.  Somehow I missed the second one, and by the time Asimov wrote The Robots of Dawn, I’d given up on science fiction because it seemed to have been overrun by fantasy.

All three of the Robot novels are thinly disguised mystery stories set far into the future.  That’s fine, seeing as how I like a “whodunnit” as much as the next guy.  I like how Asimov envisioned the societies on each of three different planets.  His discussions of social taboos make the reader sit back and contemplate just how much of what we consider “wrong” or “bad” (or “good”) is based solely on how we were brought up.  The intolerable is intolerable just because we think it is.

I’m glad he didn’t go any further with the mind reading and mind changing robot, though.  Sure, he touches on it a bit in Prelude to Foundation and again in Forward the Foundation, but fortunately he doesn’t pursue that line too far.  The whole idea of humanity’s destiny being controlled by a small number of robots with mind control capability is vaguely unsettling.

Debra inherited about a thousand books a few years ago when her friend passed away.  As with most personal libraries, it’s a somewhat eclectic collection with books about the old west, Arizona ghost towns, geology, mystery novels, and many that are hard to classify.  Debra’s friend Dee apparently was a big customer of Time Magazine’s reading program, as her library included several of their collections.  That’s where I found Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

My formal education, what little there is of it, didn’t include much in the way of literature.  I’d certainly heard of the book and I had some idea what it was about, but I’d never taken the time to read it, mostly because I figured it was another one of those “classics” that the critics loved but has no redeeming value (i.e. Catcher in the Rye).  As you might expect, I was pleasantly surprised by Brave New World.

The book is short, only 227 pages in the edition I have, not nearly long enough to fully describe the Utopian society and the clash of values that occurs when members of that society encounter non-Utopian “savages.”  Huxley’s genius is in his selection of language and scenes to place the reader inside that society; to give us glimpses of what things are like and allow our minds to expand on the vision.  The book is more disturbing because of it; because many of the images we see are created in our own minds.

Too many writers from the school of “more is better” produce 800-page tomes that describe every minute detail, leaving little room at all for imagination.  I’ve read many a book that would have been much better had the writer exercised a little restraint in his description, forcing the reader to engage his brain and visualize the scene.  There is a fine line between enough and too much description.  Too much is junk food for the mind and the words wash over the brain like a television sitcom.  Just enough description forces the reader to pay attention, to pause periodically and consider what he’s read before moving on to the next scene.

There are nits I could pick with the book, and I could laugh at the many things Huxley got wrong about future technology.  But I can’t fault his writing.  On the contrary, I was delighted by the book.  It got the author’s point across very clearly, and gave me plenty to think about.  It was a joy to read, and I’ll probably read it again in a few years.  Highly recommended.

I read Michael Crichton’s new novel State of Fear over the weekend.  Boy, does that give you a bit to think about.  In some ways it’s a pretty typical techno-thriller, with car chases, gun fights, intrigue, murder, and the requisite technobabble thrown in.  The short version:  eco terrorists are planning a series of catastrophic events that will demonstrate the dangers of global warming.  The events are scheduled to coincide with a conference on abrupt climate change.  The Good Guys trip to the plan and race around the globe trying to avert disaster.  It’s fun ride.

Crichton always gives a little more than a thrill ride, though.  In this case he weaves in a whole bunch of stuff about the theory of global warming, and the footnotes he provides are real.  At the end of the book he gives us a short piece on his beliefs and also a good essay on why politicized science is a bad thing.  He finishes with a detailed and annotated bibliography so you can go check out the material for yourself.

I find it somewhat funny that the best treatment I’ve seen anywhere on the subject of global warming is to be found in a popular novel.  Everything else seems to be partisan cries of “yes it is” and “no it’s not.”  State of Fear presents a more rational and probably more realistic view, although I’m sure that the global warming fundamentalists have already decided that Crichton was paid off by big polluters or some such.

It really is a good techno-thriller, up to the standards you’ve come to expect from Crichton.  I recommend it both as a novel and as food for thought.

The middle part of the 9/11 Comission Report (Chapters 2 through 8) are a rambling discussion of how Usama Bin Laden and his al Qaeda group formed, what made them able to attract a following, their early attacks, our responses, and finally a detailed (although still rambling) account of how the 9/11 attacks were planned and carried out.  There are few surprises here.  The most important thing I got out of those chapters was an appreciation for how well planned and organized the operation was.

When information started leaking out of the 9/11 Commission investigations, some people made a lot of noise about missed opportunities to capture or kill Bin Laden and some of his chiefs during President Clinton’s second term.  The Report details some of those opportunities, and explains very well why they weren’t taken.  The reasons fall into three categories:  insufficient information on his location, insufficient resources to carry out the attacks, and negative political consequences.  In almost all cases, the political consequences were negative for the country as a whole, not for the President.  On the contrary, Clinton’s approval rating domestically would have climbed quite a bit if we had managed to capture or kill Bin Laden.  But the international repercussions for the United States would have been staggering, although one wonders if they would have been any worse than what’s happened in response to our Iraq venture.

I often wonder if Bin Laden miscalculated our response to the 9/11 attacks.  Given our responses to their previous attacks, he had every reason to believe that our response to 9/11 would be weak and ineffective.  When al Qaeda carried out the embassy bombings in Africa, we lobbed a few cruise missiles at a manufacturing plant and a couple of terrorist training camps.  We did nothing after the USS Cole bombing.  I suspect that he expected some response to 9/11, but I doubt he imagined that we’d send troops to invade Afghanistan looking for him.

The Report spends a lot of time detailing missed opportunities or “failures” on the intelligence side–information that different agencies had, but that we didn’t put together prior to the attacks.  The report is quick to point out situations in which, had we been able to put the information together, we might have or could have prevented the attacks.  The members of the Commission recognize (in writing, at least) that these things that are obvious in hindsight weren’t so obvious at the time.  I question whether they actually believe that.

There’s no doubt that had the right people in the right agencies been able to share information, we would have learned of the attack plans and prevented them.  However, the relevant information was in bits and pieces spread out over many different agencies, many of whom were prevented by law from sharing information.  Those restrictions on information sharing evolved over the last 20 or 30 years to prevent or lessen abuse and government intrusion into our private lives.  The question isn’t whether or not we could have identified the threat and prevented the attacks, but whether we want a national intelligence structure that has the capability to tie together the few bits of information that we did have.  Granted, it would have been nice to prevent the attacks, but at what cost to our own privacy?  The intelligence structure that could have detected and prevented the attacks is a frightening thing in a free society.  More on that when I talk about the Commission’s recommendations.

The first chapter of the 9/11 Commission Report gives a very detailed account of what we know occurred before the hijackers boarded the airplanes, the events that unfolded on the airplanes, and the responses of the different corporate and government agencies that were involved.  Our understanding of when the individual flights were hijacked is based on several things:  unguarded transmissions from the airplanes by the hijackers (who apparently thought they were communicating with the passengers), transponder data or lack thereof due to the transponders being turned off, radar records showing course deviations, lack of response to instructions by FAA controllers, and communications from flight attendents and passengers to people on the ground.  In addition, we have varying degrees of detail about happenings aboard from those cabin-to-ground communications.  Finally, the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorders that survived the crash of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania provide some additional insight.

A look at the timeline of events answers one of the biggest questions I’ve heard expressed about the events of the day:  Why didn’t the military do anything about it?  The simple answer is that there wasn’t enough time between the flights’ being taken over and the crashes for controllers to determine that the flights were hijacked, and for that information to be communicated to people responsible for deciding what to do about it.  For example, American Airlines Flight 11 departed Boston at 7:59 A.M.  The last routine radio transmission occurred fifteen minutes later at 8:14, and takeover occurred within minutes after that.  At 8:19, a flight attendant notified American Airlines of the highjacking by making a call from one of the seat phones in the rear cabin.  Boston Center learned of the hijacking five minutes later.  At 8:38, Boston Center notified the military, which scrambled fighters at 8:46–less than a minute before Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

United Flight 175 took off from Boston at 8:14–the same time Flight 11 was being taken over.  Flight 175 was taken over sometime between 8:42 and 8:46 while controllers and others were trying to figure out what to do about Flight 11.  The first indication of anything wrong with Flight 175 was at 8:47, when the transponder code was changed.  A flight attendant notified United of the hijacking at 8:52.  It crashed into the South Tower at 9:03.

Thirty two minutes (the time between likely takeover and crash of Flight 11) is an astonishingly short amount of time for information to flow from controllers to decision makers to alert fighter crews who then have to scramble and find an aircraft.  Otis Air Force Base where the fighters were based, is 153 miles from New York City.  At the F-15’s maximum published speed of 1,650 MPH, it would take almost six minutes to cover that distance.  Obviously they had no chance to stop Flight 11 which crashed just as the fighters were taking off.  It’s possible, although highly unlikely, that they could have located and engaged Flight 175 before it crashed at 9:03.  In addition, it’s unlikely that anybody would have given the order to shoot down a domestic passenger aircraft over a major metropolitan area, especially with less than 15 minutes in which to make that decision.

American Flight 77, which departed Washington Dulles at 8:20 is a somewhat different story.  It was taken over sometime between 8:51 and 8:54, when it made an unauthorized turn to the south.  The transponder was turned off at 8:56, making the aircraft very difficult to identify on radar.  Although American Airlines was aware at 9:05 that the flight was hijacked, there is no indication that the FAA knew about the hijacking.  The FAA did learn that the flight was “missing,” and notified the military of it at 9:34.  A National Guard C-130 that had just taken off for Minnesota saw the aircraft, identified it as a Boeing 757, and began to follow.  Three minutes later, Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.  There were fighters in the air near Washington, but due to the mass confusion caused by the first two crashes, they were looking in the wrong place for the wrong thing.  And again, it’s doubtful that they would have engaged the airplane over metropolitan Washington.

In my opinion, the only reason the hijackers didn’t go four for four was that United Flight 93 was 25 minutes late departing.  It didn’t leave the ground until 8:42.  The pilots actually received a warning about increasing cockpit security just minutes before the flight was taken over.  The passengers ultimately revolted and attempted to retake the airplane after learning of the first two hijackings and crashes.  Had the passengers not revolted, it’s unlikely that the military could have located Flight 93 and received authorization to shoot it down in time to prevent it from striking its target (likely the Capitol or the White House).  There’s no doubt in my mind that the hijackers would have been successful had the flight departed on time from Newark.

At the time of the hijackings, our nation’s air defense was designed to repel a military attack from outside.  There hadn’t been a domestic hijacking in over 10 years, and in any case a hijacked aircraft wasn’t considered a dangerous weapon.  As the 9/11 Commission Report states:

NORAD and the FAA were unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States on September 11, 2001.  They struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improvise a homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge that had never before encountered and had never trained to meet.

This is a common theme throughout the Report:  al Qaeda studied our defenses, identified our weaknesses, and exploited them to the fullest advantage.  More later.

I spent a lot of time reading and studying the 9/11 Commission Report that I picked up at Borders back in November (see November 25).  At 450 printed pages, plus over 100 pages of notes, it’s a huge amount of information.

The Report consists of 13 chapters.  The first chapter starts on the morning of September 11, 2001, and describes what we know of the hijackers’ actions, the actions of the flight crews, FAA controllers, passengers, and government officials throughout the day.  Chapters 2 through 8 trace the creation and evolution of “The New Terrorism” in general and al Qaeda in particular, and outline what investigators have been able to put together regarding how and when the attacks were planned.  Chapter 9 describes events at the World Trade Center buildings after the crashes, focusing primarily on the problems that first responders had communicating with their own units and among different units.  Chapters 10 and 11 discuss the aftermath and lessons learned.  Chapters 12 and 13 explore options and make recommendations about what to do to prevent future such attacks and how to restructure government in order to effect those changes.

I was surprised by the thoroughness of the Report.  I was less surprised by what appears to be a completely non-partisan feel to the writing, although I was somewhat annoyed in a few places where the authors were a little heavy handed with their political correctness.  All things considered, though, the Report is quite a good read and appears to present the information fairly.  I’ll post my thoughts on the Report here over the course of the next week or so.

I thought that “permanentize” was bad.  The authors of the 9/11 Commission Report managed to include not one, but two that are worse.  In the same sentence!  In Chapter 11, when discussing the failure of imagination that prevented us from envisioning anything remotely resembling the attacks that occurred, the authors write:  “It is therefore crucial to find a way of routinizing, even bureaucratizing, the exercise of imagination.”  Routinizing?  Bureaucratizing?  What’s wrong with “It is therefore crucial to find a way to make the exercise of imagination by bureaucrats a routine occurrence.”  Of course, when you can understand what they’re saying, you can see that what they’re asking is impossible.

Such is the nature of government reports.  Still, it’s a good read if you’re interested in that kind of thing and don’t mind a fair amount of bureaucrat-ese.  Cautiously recommended.