Bush Ordered Downing of Planes That Ignored Warnings, Cheney Says

verfasst von Sascha, 16.09.2001, 18:57

September 16, 2001

<font size=5>Bush Ordered Downing of Planes That Ignored Warnings, Cheney Says</font>

By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN

After hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last Tuesday, <font color="#FF0000">President Bush told American military pilots to shoot down any commercial aircraft that ignored warnings to stay away from Washington</font>, Vice President Dick Cheney reported today.

In an interview on NBC's 'Meet the Press,' Mr. Cheney said he had recommended the president's decision that"if the plane would not divert, if they wouldn't pay any attention to instructions to move away from the city, as a last resort <font color="#FF0000">our pilots were authorized to take them out</font>."

<font color="#FF0000">"Now people say, you know, that's a horrendous decision to make," the vice president said."Well, it is." </font>

"As it turned out, we did not have to execute that decision," he said.

If combat air patrols had been over New York City to shoot down the planes attacking the World Trade Center, Mr. Cheney said,"would we have been justified in doing that? <font color="#FF0000">I think absolutely we would have</font>."

Two hijacked airliners slammed into the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon, leaving more than 5,000 people dead or missing. A fourth hijacked airliner crashed in Pennsylvania after some passengers tried to stop the hijackers, according to cell phone messages from the doomed aircraft.

Mr. Cheney speculated that"some real heroism by Americans" aboard the hijacked plane had prevented the hijackers from crash the plane into the Capitol in Washington.

"What they did was to foil the attack on Washington," the vice president said of the passengers. He surmised that"the target was the Capitol," and not the White House, which is less conspicuous from the air.

In the interview, near the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., where Mr. Bush is meeting this weekend with his national security team, the vice president also expressed his conviction that Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born millionaire hiding out in Afghanistan, was behind the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington.

<font color="#FF0000">"I have no doubt that he and his organization played a significant role in this," Mr. Cheney said in the interview</font>. The administration was"quite confident," he said, that Mr. bin Laden"is in fact the prime suspect."

President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had previously described Mr. bin Laden as prime suspect, but Mr. Cheney went further in attributing the"significant role" to the fugitive and his organization.

Mr. bin Laden, who is living under the protection of the Taliban in Afghanistan, was also linked to previous bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, prompting the Washington to retaliate with a missile attack on his suspected headquarters and terrorist training bases inside Afghanistan.

But Mr. Cheney stressed today that the attacks in New York and Washington last week were a"qualitatively different set of circumstances."

President Bush has called for a war on terrorism, with Mr. bin Laden and his network a primary target. But the vice president said today that <font color="#FF0000">"it's also important to understand that this is a long term-proposition."</font>

<font color="#FF0000">"It's not like, well, even Desert Storm, where we had a buildup for a few months, four days of combat, and it was over with,"</font> said Mr. Cheney, who was secretary of defense during the operation that expelled Iraqi forces from Iraq in 1991.

"This is going to be the kind of work that will probably take years, because the focus has to be not just on any one individual," the vice president said."The problem here is terrorism."

Quelle: http://www.nytimes.com[/b]

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