In the wake of 9-11, the Bush administration's mantra became that no one could have imagined such an attack before it took place.

I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon,

that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.

First, I must say, I knew of no intelligence during the six plus months leading up to September

11th that indicated terrorists would hijack commercial airliners,

use them as missiles to fly into the Pentagon or the World Trade Center towers.

Nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government

that it could envision flying airplanes in the buildings on such a massive scale.

But, like everything else the Bush administration told the public about 9-11, this too was a lie.

Not only had government officials envisioned flying airplanes into buildings, or using an airplane as a missile,

but multiple agencies trained for just such an event prior to

9-11. In fact, as General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2001 to 2005,

went on to tell the 9-11 commission, this precise scenario of a hijacked jet being flown into a high-value

target was drilled

by NORAD not once or twice, but five separate times in the run-up to September 11th.

On November 6, 1999, they simulated an event in which terrorists hijacked a passenger jet

flying out of JFK with the intention of crashing it into the United Nations

building in New York. On June 5, 2000, they simulated two hijackings, one in which the terrorists

intended to fly the plane into the Statue of Liberty, and the other in which the intended

target was the White House. An October 16th 2000 NORAD drill saw a hijacker once again targeting

the UN building, as did a nearly identical exercise on October 23rd of that year. One of NORAD's

pre-911 hijack drills even saw the World Trade Center itself become the intended target. Other exercises involved not just hijack jets as weapons, but tested NORAD's response to

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