Quote:
Originally Posted by Cimarron29414
The number of uncontrollable factors that lead to that death toll could not have been anticipated or managed to ensure a low death toll - meaning, if one only wanted to make an impression but not actually kill a lot of people...why not just do the attack in the middle of the night, or at 6:00 am?
Hence, one must assume they went on general population of the buildings and hoped to kill as many as possible.
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I disagree with your conclusion-drawing, there.
I know this may be heresy for some of you, but I think the attack was VERY carefully timed for two objectives: maximum media impact, and as little human casualty as possible. Doing it when most of the country is asleep would lose the primary objective of any mass terrorist attack, and that is a CRAPLOAD of attention RIGHT NOW. Doing it at around 9:00am ensures the media folks are awake and at work, and there ARE victims in the buildings, but the buildings are, at that time, about 1/10th full, as you point out.
I've always assumed that the hijackers weren't actually interested in killing more people than they needed to, and my evidence for that has been the relatively early-in-the-day timing of the attack. If I were timing such an attack and wanted to keep my body count as low as I could, I'd pick some time between 8:00 and 9:00am (the first building was hit at about 8:45, the second at like 9:03). Otherwise, why not sleep in a little and do it in the early afternoon when the buildings are full?