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Another of those What if?s Here on Samizdata we seem to make a point of remembering things that happened on today’s date but in an earlier year.
So does the New York Times. Their “ON THIS DAY” section today contains this poignant and thought provoking item:
On Feb. 26, 1993, a bomb exploded in the garage of New York’s World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others.
It’s a cruel thought, but suppose that if, instead of killing six people, this explosion had killed, say, three hundred and fifty. Given that it injured a thousand, it presumably might have killed many more. Had it done so, that actually might have saved quite a lot more lives, come a certain later date, in September 2001. Not that anyone would ever have known.
Which of course also gives rise to the even crueller thought that, when it comes to the actual body count on that later date, America might even then have got off quite lightly. Once again, we will never know.
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Although they didn’t actually stand a chance of doing so, the terrorists’ aim was to topple one of the towers into the other and thence into the rest of Manhattan. Had they succeeded, the death toll would have been 250,000 – 400,000 and we’d probably still be feeling the effects of the recession it would have triggered.
It also seems quite plausible that this attack was sponsored by Saddam Hussein.
The tragedy of September 11 will only have prevented still greater tragedies if the U.S. continues to follow President Bush’s lead in prosecuting a vigorous and comprehensive war on terrorism.
Rick is correct. We got off relatively lightly this time, awful as it feels to say that about such a death toll, but if we go to sleep again the future butcher’s bill will be unthinkable. The thought of a President Kerry (the man hasn’t even been nominated and he is already negotiating with the blood-soaked Iranian mullahs!) is keeping me up nights.
Actually, I thought the prevailing wisdom is that the 1993 bomb saved thousands in 2001.
The logic is that the bombing pointed out some *serious* flaws in the safety and evacuation procedures– it was six or seven hours before the towers were evacuated. In 1993, therefore, they took a good look at the procedures and did a few very significant things: they made sure that there were independently powered emergency lights in the stairwells, they started having evacuation drills, and they made sure that evacuation paths were clear an evident to the tower residents.
If evacuation had taken six or seven hours in 2001, thousands more would have died. Instead, almost everyone below the point of impact lived.
I hope someone has made that irony very, very clear to the 1993 terrorists.
Another reason why the 1993 bombing helped during 9/11 is because that first event convinced a lot of companies to move *out* of the WTC. The biggest reason for the relatively few deaths caused by 9/11 is that the WTC towers were largely vacant.