Thoughts about Sept 11, 2001

[Ken Massa]

Like most of you, I have not been able to do any work the past two days. Instead, flipping from channel to channel on the tv and repeatedly watching in disbelief those videos of the airliner slamming into the World Trade Center. Alternating between anger and sadness has become an emotional roller coaster. It is difficult to gather much interest in handicapping at the moment.

The image that hits me the hardest is thinking about the innocent passengers on the hijacked airliners. Boarding a jet to California on a sunny day, then having to become unwilling pawns in the greatest mass murder in history. Everyone that travels by air from in the near future will be imagining the horror that those people faced in their final minutes of life. And wondering how we would have reacted (or acted) if faced with the same scenario.

I checked in with HTR subscribers in the NYC area. They are all fine. So glad to hear Greg (Hurrikane) is safe despite his very close proximity to the Pentagon crash. Our data eminates from the Lexington area and is unaffected by the events. Nearly all racetracks and simulcast areas will be back to regular operation by Saturday. Unlike the major sports, racing is largely untouched by commercial airline difficulties as most thoroughbreds travel by van. Service seems to be functioning properly on the HTR download site, although MikeD has been reporting problems. The Daily Racing Form was not so lucky and they are going to have reduced operations and problems for awhile; read about it at-- drf.com.

We'll carry on and get back to normal soon enough - but Sept 11, 2001 will be remembered as one of the darkest days in human history.

[Swope]

Ken, I've played imaginary scenarios in my head a million times, trying to imagine what
i'd do if faced with the same terror. When I heard the planes were taken over by knives i've
wondered why the passengers didn't rush these guys, I can only come to the conclusion that by the time they realized they were going to die it was too late....
I play it and play it....

[hurrikane]

Thank you for you thoughts Ken. The terror continues with bomb threats and other disturbances. I would just ask that everyone stop for a minute and remember that just because you see a middle east person or a musilim on the street does not make them the enemy. ALL I know are just as struck with dispare as Americans are. Please, do not become like the terrorist that caused this destruction.

[Gramps]

Originally posted by Swope
Ken, I've played imaginary scenarios in my head a million times, trying to imagine what
i'd do if faced with the same terror. When I heard the planes were taken over by knives i've
wondered why the passengers didn't rush these guys, I can only come to the conclusion that by the time they realized they were going to die it was too late....
I play it and play it....

I know what I would have done. I would have broken their necks. I have met very few men in which a knife wasn't a liability in their hand. Against anybody who knows how to fight against a knife, the knife just ties up the owner's hand, except possibly for a butterfly knife in the hands of a trained user.

With that macho-sounding bravado out of the way, I've also replayed the scenes in my head, and this is what I came up with. It's no accident that the terrorists chose coast to coast flights, because of the large fully-fueled planes. But it's also no accident that the terrorists chose Tuesday for their attacks. Tuesday morning is traditionally the slowest time for a transcontinental flight. Business travellers primarilly travel on Monday and Friday. Some come home on Thursdays, while others travel to a second destination on Wednesday. The terrorists wanted as little resistance as possible. All this was covered thoroughly on the news.

What I (and the authorities) believe happened was this. The terrorists convinced the passengers on the first three flights that their purpose was to fly the plane to some destination and/or make demands of the government. Since this is the usual scenario for a hijacking, and since the hostages usually escaped without harm, it was believable. And since the first three flights crashed within a half hour of each other, nobody would have been the wiser until it was too late.

But the fourth flight travelled quite a ways west. almost to Cleveland, before turning back towards Washington. By this time the news of the other three attacks was well known. One passenger with a cellphone was brought up to date on the situation by somebody on the ground. It certainly didn't take anybody long to figure out that this plane was destined for the same fate as the other three--to be used as a missile to ram some building. Facing certain death if they did nothing, they quickly decided that their only hope for survival was to overpower the terrorists. And they gathered the courage to do so, probably overpowering the terrorists. The fighting might have jarred the controls of the plane, causing it to spin out of control. With the commercial pilots probably already dead, and the terrorists probably not in much better shape, there was nobody with the knowhow to pull the plane out of its death dive. The plane was probably flying very low as it was, "in the weeds" so to speak, to avoid radar detection.

But the brave men undoubtably saved the lives of many others and perhaps the destination target of what is believed to be the White House (although the plane had been listed as unaccounted for long before the crash, and military jets were probably already buzzing the area surrounding Washington, ready to shoot down this flight if it headed that way). In any case, the men who stood up to the terrorists are to be applauded (albeit posthumously) for their heroic efforts.