Look like one of the infamous photos of Flight 11 or Flight 175 snapped just before they slammed into the World Trade Center buildings on September 11, 2001?

Wrong. It’s “Air Force One” buzzing Manhattan island without warning, right over Liberty Island and the Battery Park/Ground Zero area, at an elevation as low as 1,000 feet.

Actually, the title of “Air Force One” technically applies to any plane containing the president at that moment. So if he boarded any random American Airlines flight, that would be “Air Force One” for the time being. That being said, this is one of the planes, the VC-25, that actually serves as Air Force One quite frequently, complete with war room and presidential paint-job. I get a kick out of the media calling it just an “Air Force One lookalike,” as if some bozo bought a 747 and painted it to replicate Obama’s personal-use plane.

It was Monday, when thousands of forever-scarred New Yorkers looked up and stopped breathing at the sight of a 747 jet airliner flying lower than the skyline, straight towards the city. Not only that, but it was being followed by two F-16 fighter jets. First, let’s remember exactly what we saw happen just over seven years ago.

Now let’s take a look at what these poor people saw earlier this week. What in the world do you expect them to think? Just listen to the reactions in the background.

There’s a lot going on here to talk about.

First of all, I think this is possibly the stupidest thing to happen under the Obama administration yet. No one was alerted! The mayor didn’t know, the public didn’t know, and no one thought that this might cause some concern? The few ‘authorities’ who were informed were explicitly told not to inform the public! Several high-rise buildings were evacuated! At least two people were even treated for minor injuries in Jersey City! [Source]

Ellen in Bayonne, N.J. described what she saw to WCBSTV.com: “I saw the jet flying very very low over the Hudson river, it looked like it was going to fly through our office window. Then it banked sharply toward New Jersey. But our building was evacuated because it did this 3 times. A photo shoot should have been communicated to the building in the area. We haven’t forgotten 9/11, people were in a panic, lots of rumors, not a good situation.”

David Frank of Jersey City wrote: “I work in 30 Hudson, which is the largest building in NJ and is right on the water facing the Statue of Liberty. I ran out of the building after a stampede of people began running out of the building as they saw the jumbo jet being followed by two fighter planes veer sharply towards our building and climb right over it. By the time I got outside, it was coming around for its THIRD pass, and I watched it level off below building height over the water and then once again veer sharply towards the building. Several hundred of us began to run away fearing for our lives before it climbed steeply and flew over our building. Whoever thought that this ‘photo op’ was a good idea should be removed from command…why couldn’t this simply be done with Photo Shop? Hollywood can create an entire armageddon on film but the US military can’t photo shop a plane by the Statue of Liberty?”

Amy in Jersey City wrote: “I work in the 30 Hudson building in Jersey City, on the side that faces the Statue of Liberty. Our group is on one of the top floors and needless to say we probably had some of the best views of this incident. We were conducting work as normal when all of a sudden we see this huge commercial plane coming at us. People were ducking and on the floor because it came so close. The plane flew right over us and couldn’t have missed the building by more than 100 feet. Then we heard people scream it was coming back. The plane literally looked like it was going to barrel into our building coming straight at us until it turned upwards at the last minute. I can’t believe I saw the underbelly of a plane fly over me. When it started coming back a 3rd time, we ran for the stairs. It’s safe to say we are pretty angry about having to evacuate and go down 30+ flights of stairs for a ‘photo shoot.’ What a start to the week.” [Source]

Also, NYC Mayor Bloomberg was rightly pissed at the incident, calling it “insensitive”:

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was “furious” when he learned from a message on his mobile device about the flight, which was planned to photograph the plane near the Statue of Liberty. The plane flew as low as 1,000 feet (305 meters), the mayor said at a City Hall press conference. “Why the Defense Department wanted to do a photo op right around the site of the World Trade Center catastrophe defies imagination,” Bloomberg said. [Source]

Second, Obama claims that he was totally unaware that this happened. I’m not some conspiracy theorist, but I’m sorry, I have a hard time believing that. I mean, this is the president’s plane! Are we supposed to believe that a few staff members just up and borrowed it without asking? I doubt this plane goes anywhere without the president’s approval. Of course, Obama made his denial after having time to hear the public outcry.

So resign, Barry.  You’ve blamed George Bush for everything that happened under his administration and then continued to blame him for everything that has happened in yours.  Take a little responsibility for your own damn mess for once in your life.  This is YOUR team screwing up, and using YOUR damn plane to do it.  Is this fiasco supposed to be Bush’s fault, too? Some in the crowd were undoubtedly terrified of a terrorist attack because they didn’t know that it was actually Air Force One flying around for a photo op.  But I wonder how many Americans looked up and saw Barry Hussein’s jet  barreling down on them and thought, “I knew it!” This IS the guy who just released memos showing terrorists how to resist future interrogations, after all. [Source]

Third, the reason was apparently a “photo shoot” to get a picture of ‘Air Force One’ behind the Statue of Liberty.

An Air Force One lookalike, the backup plane for the one regularly used by the president, flew low over Manhattan on Monday morning, accompanied by two F-16 fighters, so Air Force photographers could take pictures. But a lack of awareness about the flyover led to the evacuation of several buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City, and perplexed officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and other authorities were inundated with calls from anxious ferry passengers, office workers and residents. [Source]

I can’t word it much better than this blogger:

One thing this incident shows is Obama’s blatant hypocrisy.  His administration could have easily photoshopped Obama’s fancy new jet against the Manhattan skyline, and nobody would have been the wiser.  But no.  Instead, the people who perennially lecture the rest of us on energy consumption and greenhouse gasses spend several hundred thousand dollars on jet fuel that dumped dozens of tons of greenhouse  gasses into the atmosphere for a stupid photo op.  Kind of like the one Obama took when he flew to Iowa so he could stand in front of a damn windmill on earth day. Apparently, the worst thing that can happen to our environment is for Barack Obama and Al Gore to preach about the threat of global warming doing their version of “the midnight ride of Paul Revere” from carbon-spewing jets.Keep that in mind the next time you hear a finger-wagging lecture.  Make Obama buy his own damn cap-and-trade carbon credits.  With his own damn money.

This little stunt cost we the taxpayers at least $328,835 , in addition to a bit of fear and anxiety of course. I bet they won’t even use the pictures now due to all the controversy! Furthermore, just think of the costs and losses incurred by the businesses that had to evacuate for the day!

Fourth, “this is a case study in a PRE-9/11 mentality.  Nobody at the Obama White House is thinking about a terror attack…absolutely nobody in their right mind would even contemplate flying a passenger jet at low altitude over New York if they were even remotely thinking about 9/11.” [Source]

I guess the administration had ONE thing right with all its politically correct euphemisms: Obama’s fly-by wasn’t a “terrorist attack”; it was a “man-caused disaster.” [Source]

Fifth: can you only imagine if this had happened under the Bush administration? They would be calling for blood!

And finally, let’s look at the potential consequences of this incident overall. Remember the incident earlier this month where a Muslim man “steals a plane in Canada, flies into US airspace and is not confronted by US fighters for 20 minutes. He fails to obey commands and is not shot down. He lands when nearly out of fuel and is apprehended running on foot?”

Berke is obviously an experienced pilot and could have easily been testing-out the policies of a new president, who has softened his approach to the Muslim world and no longer even speaks of terrorism.

It is highly possible that Berke’s flight was a well-planned dry-run for future terrorist attacks. If a terrorist organization wished to see if it was now possible to fly a small plane well into the interior of the U.S., without the pilot responding to warnings from authorities, even approaching population centers without being shot out of the sky, Berke’s flight made this vulnerability known.

This would not be the first dry-run by Muslim terrorists performed in this country. In 2004, passengers on a Northwest Airlines flight became upset as a group of 13 Syrian men began acting suspiciously as they stood up in unison and walked around the plane speaking in Arabic, even though many members of the group pretended not to know one another.

The group claimed to be a band traveling around the country. Initially the government dismissed the passengers’ accounts and claimed the reports were prompted by “hysteria” from the 9/11 Attacks. However, an inspector general report released in 2006, confirmed the frightened passengers’ stories.

As it turned out, eight of the Syrians had criminal backgrounds, and the entire group had come under the scrutiny of Air Marshals before they boarded the plane.

The report read: “Prior to boarding, one of the air marshals noticed what he later characterized as ‘unusual behavior’ by about six Middle Eastern males, who arrived at the gate together, then separated, and acted as if they did not know each other.”

“According to the air marshals, these men were sweaty, appeared nervous and arrived after the boarding announcement. The air marshals made eye contact with one another to ensure they were aware of this behavior.”

In 2007, an Air Marshal based in Las Vegas told the Washington Times that he has personally witnessed many so-called ‘dry-runs’ and they were almost always ignored by Homeland security.

Marshal P. Jeffrey Black told the Times: “Agency management was not only covering up numerous probes and dry-run encounters from Congress and other federal law-enforcement agencies, it was also hiding these incidents from their own flying air marshals.”

It was a pending dry-run in 2006, which resulted in the capture of 24 Muslim terrorists in London, and foiled a major plot to blow up several passenger jets bound for the U.S. The terrorists planned to use liquid explosives disguised as bottled drinks, designed to be ignited by a camera flash.

It is not much of a stretch to believe that a 31 year-old Muslim immigrant flying a small plane near or over U.S. cities was testing our resolve. I don’t expect the left-leaning news media to suggest this possibility, out of fear that they may offend those who have vowed to kill us. However, it is the federal government’s responsibility to protect us “from all enemies both foreign and domestic.”

If Yavuz Berke was testing us for a future terrorist attack, we failed miserably. Have we all forgotten the horrors witnessed on September 11, 2001? [Source]

Combine all this with the Air Force One incident and you know that terrorists are now trying to figure out how to purchace a 747, paint it like Air Force One, and fly it in over the border. After the New York incident, when people see the plane flying low towards a major city escorted by fighter jets, no one will panic! “Oh, it’s just our crazy president again!” This might be a strech, but before 9/11/2001, so was the idea of hijacking four commercial airlines at one time and flying them into the WTC, the pentagon, and the capitol building (the assumed destination of Flight 93)!