great googily moogily -- thats just silly.

..man..

were it that easy, OF COURSE it would have been done. why wouldnt it?

but like i said above, there was no reason to anticipate such an event. threats are made all the time (since before we were born, to sept 11, to yesterday, to next week. ALL THE TIME.) if we acted on all of them, we'd have no country to speak of. rather, we'd be running away from the sky on any given moment.

but, here we go. lets say (god help us) you're right. lets play out the scenario for ya:

osama calls up dubya on the bat-phone, and tells him of the impending attack, tomorrow morning.

dubya acts how you want him to, interrupts 'friends' and announces a threat on our country in the form of airline hijacking on public tv.

instantly (INSTANTLY) the airlines 'take a hit' as you put it. we spend billions of dollars fortifying every airline in our states, spooging up security.

but, more importantly, sept 11 comes and goes as just a normal day, and george is a hero for saving thousands of people.

right?

you're absolutely right -- that does sound easy.

unfortunately, that never was, nor never will be, how things work.

thats not being an armchair quarterback, thats knowing the future and planning accordingly for it. miss cleo would be proud.

more realistically, if dubya did all of the above, it woudl turn out like this:

he'd be relentlessly blamed for spending billions of needless dollars and needless man hours on protecting the airports (dont forget, he was already being picked on for building our defenses in the summer of 2001, 'needlessly')

he'd be blamed for ruining the air industry. he'd be considered a "punk" for "bowing" to terrorists. terrorists, everywhere, would see that they could now have an effect on the US by making threats and not even having to support them.

further, the existing psychotic terrorists would just concentrate on finding some other way to kill innocents. 'insanity' doesnt just go away. instead of sept 11th, we might have october 11th go down in history as the day of horrible attacks.

yer right. thats much better.