Iraq War Dead for February and March, 2007
Here are the updated graphs for February and March. As always, I’m comparing the US military casualties in Iraq to those from the Vietnam war at a similar point in each war’s political lifetime (which some have charged is misleading; see disclaimer below). The data come from the advanced search tool at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund site, and from Lunaville’s page on Iraq coalition casualties. The figures are for the number of US dead per month, without regard to whether the deaths were combat-related.
The first graph shows the first 50 months of the comparison. (Click on any image for a larger version.)
Next, the chart that gives the US death toll for the entire Vietnam war:
Disclaimer: I’ve been accused of comparing apples to oranges in these graphs. For the record, here’s what I am not arguing:
- I’m not saying that Iraq is somehow deadlier per soldier-on-the-ground than Vietnam. For both wars, the number of fatalities in any given month tracks pretty closely with the number of troops deployed (along with the intensity of the combat operations being conducted). There were more troops in Iraq in the early going than were in Vietnam during the “corresponding” parts of the graphs. Similarly, for later years in Vietnam, when the monthly death toll exceeds the current Iraq numbers, there were many more troops in place.
- I am not saying that Iraq is somehow “worse” than Vietnam. I include the first graph mainly because I wanted a zoomed-in view of the Iraq data. And I include the second graph, which shows the entire span of the Vietnam war, because I want to be clear about what the data show about overall death tolls — where any rational assessment would have to conclude that, at least so far, Iraq has been far less significant (at least in terms of US combat fatalities) than Vietnam.
I was just curious how the “death profile” of the two wars compared, and how those deaths played out in terms of their political impact inside the US. For that reason, I chose as the starting point for each graph the first fatality that a US president acknowledged (belatedly, in the case of the Vietnam graph, since US involvement in the war “began” under Kennedy, but the acknowledgement was made only later by Johnson) as having resulted from the war in question.
As ever, you are free to draw your own conclusions. And for that matter, you’re free to draw your own graphs, if you have a way of presenting the information that you believe would be better. In that case, feel free to post a comment with a URL to your own version. Thanks.
April 12th, 2007 at 3:09 am
Hi JDC – “Tank you” for continuing these stats! Hopefully soon the troops will be out and the Iraq line will be at zero again.
The following posts present some related snippets:
April 12th, 2007 at 3:09 am
THE THREE US ARMIES IN IRAQ
American forces in Iraq are still far short of the military deployment the United States had in Vietnam. U.S. troop numbers in Vietnam increased from less than 20,000 in early 1964 to more than half a million by 1969. But THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO FORCE LEVELS – AND THE TWO SITUATIONS — IS A LOT LESS THAN PEOPLE THINK. THERE IS, AFTER ALL, NOT JUST ONE U.S. ARMY IN IRAQ…
(January 2007 Source: http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3931 )
April 12th, 2007 at 3:10 am
HOW MANY HAVE GONE TO WAR (since 9/11) ?
Well over 1 million U.S. troops have fought in the wars since Sept. 11, 2001, according to Pentagon data released to Salon. As of Jan. 31, 2005, the exact figure was 1,048,884, approximately one-third the number of troops ever stationed in or around Vietnam during 15 years of that conflict.
More surprising is the number of troops who have gone to war since 9/11, come back home, and then were redeployed to the battle…
The data sheds new light on how all-consuming the post-9/11 wars have been for the U.S. military, and suggests a particular strain on U.S. ground forces…
“Unless things start to improve, we will start to see a serious problem in six to nine months,” said Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine Corps three-star general and a former Marine Corps deputy chief of staff under Ronald Reagan. “I think they [the Pentagon] are betting that things are going to get better. But that could be a miscalculation,” said Trainor. “This crowd has been pretty good at miscalculating.”
(April 2005 Source: http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2005/050412-gone-to-war.htm )
(Ignoring for a moment the other two US Armies in Iraq)
…As a percentage of the total number of troops deployed, the numbers of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Vietnam are comparable. A deployment of 8.7 million U.S. troops in Vietnam, relative to 58,000 fatalities, yields a ratio of seven-tenths of 1 percent. In comparison, the Iraq figures to date are approximately 500,000 deployments and 2,500 fatalities, a ratio of five-tenths of 1 percent…
http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/bg1954.cfm
April 12th, 2007 at 3:11 am
Deployments: The Real Numbers
Baghdad, March 22, 2007: There will soon be more American soldiers in Iraq than at any point in the war so far. The incoming surge of 21,500 troops is only part of that picture; in addition, the U.S. commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has asked for an additional Army aviation brigade, as well as a couple thousand military police. Other support troops will be coming in to Iraq as well, and they weren’t all included in the original 21,500 estimate announced by President Bush last month. When all this is complete, sometime in July, the grand total of U.S. troops in Iraq will be 173,000, U.S. military officials here confirmed on background…That’s only part of the picture, however; the total number of U.S. troops deployed into the war theater, that is, Iraq and neighboring countries, may be as much as 100,000 more than that. Last August, for instance, the Congressional Research Service, quoting the Department of Defense’s Contingency Tracking System, put the total deployment at 260,000, while the number actually in Iraq was at 140,000 to 160,000. (Other estimates by government-oversight bodies have put the total deployed in the theater at 202,000 to 207,000.)…
THE TOTAL BILL FOR THE IRAQ WAR WILL SOON RIVAL THE ESTIMATED $600 BILLION COST OF THE VIETNAM WAR [inflation adjusted!]. So far, $351 billion has been spent or appropriated between 2003 and 2007, and the president’s additional budget request … the total direct cost of the war will [by 2008] top half a trillion dollars, $532 billion in all. That naturally does not even begin to take into account indirect costs, from veterans’ care to oil-price rises. (see also: http://majorityleader.house.gov/docUploads/BushBudgetIraq0708.pdf )
April 12th, 2007 at 3:15 am
… the surge in military spending in recent years is leading to the demise of State supported social programs in America.
More than a quarter of what you pay in taxes goes to finance Washington’s military adventure in the Middle East and the deployment, around the World, of an extensive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
These figures do not include the various black budgets allocated to the mliary and intelligence apparatus, which do not appear in US public accounts.
The surge in defense hits Education. For every dollar spent on education, more than five dollars are spent on what is euphemistically referred to “defense”…
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070409&articleId=5307
April 12th, 2007 at 3:16 am
THE IRAQ WAR IMPACTS AFGHANISTAN NOW… According to the Baltimore Sun, “a U.S. Army infantry battalion fighting in a critical area of eastern Afghanistan is due to be withdrawn within weeks in order to deploy to Iraq.” Apparently this battalion is about to become a key part of President Bush’s surge strategy. However, the results in Afghanistan could be dire:
According to Army Brig. Gen. Anthony J. Tata and other senior U.S. commanders here, that will happen just as the Taliban is expected to unleash a major campaign to cut the vital road between Kabul and Kandahar. The official said the Taliban intend to seize Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city and the place where the group was organized in the 1990s.
….”It is bleak,” said Col. Chris Haas, commander of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan.
“The gains we have made over the past few years are mostly gone,” said a bearded Special Operations officer, fresh in from advising Afghan army units in battle with 600 to 700 well-equipped Taliban fighters.
More troops in Iraq will almost certainly not make any noticable difference there. More troops in Afghanistan might, but they aren’t available because of Iraq. It’s worth keeping in mind that Bush’s resistance to withdrawal in Iraq is likely to lead to the United States losing not just one war, but two. I’m not sure if any American president has done that before.
(January 2007 Source: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_01/010530.php )
Another detail from the Pentagon report: electricity generation has been averaging 10 hours a day nationwide, and only 6.6 hours a day in Baghdad, in the last quarter of 2006. Overall production of electricity was about where it was in 2004, although demand had greatly increased.
One slightly reassuring statistic: since the surge began, and the Baghdad Security Plan started pouring much larger numbers of troops onto the streets, the death toll among American soldiers has not risen significantly, averaging 2.8 deaths a day from Feb. 15 to March 21, about the same as the daily rate in January and February. On the other hand, it hasn’t gone down, either.
(March 2007 Source: http://checkpointbaghdad.talk.newsweek.com/default.asp?item=536357 )
April 12th, 2007 at 3:17 am
About 4 times as many Afghans and 252 times as many Iraqis have been killed in these wars and occupations than the 2,973 people who were killed in the ghastly attacks of September 11, 2001.
More than SIXTEEN times as many people have been killed in these wars and occupations, than the 46,986 people killed in all terrorist attacks worldwide SINCE 1968. SINCE 1968. Since 1968.
(Feb 2007 Source: http://www.unknownnews.net/casualties.html )
April 12th, 2007 at 3:39 am
and now it gets interesting:
…Just remember, that without the attacks of 9/11, there would have been NO WARS in Iraq or Afghanistan, no PATRIOT ACT, no NSA spying, no huge corruption by HALLIBURTON and other contractors, no ABU GHRAIB, no GITMO, no WAR POWERS for the DICTATOR, and most probably no PNAC people in high places by now.’
http://tvnewslies.org/blog/?p=597
After reading the challenge at that post, you won’t want to miss the first comment by “rabbit” in response to “abyss” (SHCB in disguise?)
(Footnote: This week Visibility 9-11 welcomes retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Guy Razer. Col. Razer has publicly stated:
“After 4+ years of research since retirement in 2002, I am 100% convinced that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were planned, organized, and committed by treasonous perpetrators that have infiltrated the highest levels of our government. It is now time to take our country back..”)
April 12th, 2007 at 5:22 am
Knarley,
From your 3:15 post
“… the surge in military spending in recent years is leading to the demise of State supported social programs in America.”
The primary mission of the US government is to protect this nation, social programs are what you do with the money left over
“More than a quarter of what you pay in taxes goes to finance Washington’s military adventure in the Middle East and the deployment, around the World, of an extensive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.”
This number is slightly high, but not grossly. It only includes federal taxes, not state, local, or “sin” taxes
“The surge in defense hits Education. For every dollar spent on education, more than five dollars are spent on what is euphemistically referred to “defense”…
Education in America is only partially funded by the federal government, about 6% of money in k-12 education comes from the feds. The rest is funded by state and local funds, in most states almost all property taxes go to k-12 education. In Colorado about half of the 94% of education is funded by property taxes and half from the state general fund with about 85% of that money going to salaries, since construction of new schools is funded by bond issues. So k-12 education is not impacted by defense spending. Higher education is a more complex issue. Remember this war has only caused about a 1% change in defense spending as a percentage of GDP.
Again, your stats are not wrong, so no lie was told, they are just oversimplified and biased.
April 12th, 2007 at 8:59 am
Hi SHCB,
Thanks for the clarification.
Yes some of those stats were oversimplified and biased, and I suspected there was a problem with the ones relating to fiscal matters but I posted them anyway. That meets most definitions of lying. I suspected what I was presenting might not be the full truth (yet I did so anyway knowing it had the potential to deceive.)
My rationale was that I highly suspected that you would set the matter straight, which you did, and I calculated the impact of repeating potentially false information as being nil or miniscule. That might make it a small lie, but a lie nonetheless. Any government official who breaks the public trust with even this small type of lie should be held to a far higher standard.
What is fascinating is that by giving you the opportunity to legitimately rebut less than a tenth of the content I presented, more than 9 tenths of legitimate concerns become tarnished and fade away as also being unreliable. Perhaps that is the way it should be, and I recognize my credibility has been compromised (I’ll earn it back.)
My point about losing credibility is that GWB & Co. have seriously misled Americans on so many issues since voted into power in 2001 but when they are confronted with facts they (a) ignore it, (b) attack the messenger, or (c) change their story, Americans have sometimes recognized and quickly forgotten that they were misled and kept trusting everything else this gang of thugs presented to them. Honestly, the rest of the world is absolutely amazed at the naivety of Americans, but I do recognize a growing portion of Americans seem to be awakening.
To summarize, I copied misleading information on the fiscal points shcb, you showed your intelligence and alertness by noticing that and calling me on it, so why don’t you celebrate by grabbing yourself a cup of coffee and awaken the rest of the way?
http://tvnewslies.org/blog/?p=597
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-649993991751648213&hl=en
April 12th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Knarely – We lost 8 of our finest in Afghanistan in the last 4 days… not going good there eh? I’m curious, what do you think about this mission we’re leading over there?
April 12th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Knarley,
Thanks for the clarification, in a lot of these cases, I’m not trying to be overly critical of you or your information. I just want to tell the other side of the story, especially since so many here are from Canada, and we do things differently here than up there. It doesn’t mean anyone is doing anything wrong, just different. Both countries make sure all their children get a good basic education, and probably spend close to the same amount of money, it just comes from different sources. I also like to clarify where stats come from when I can, then let people make up their own mind about what is the proper level of funding (in this case), especially where the information is so biased.
Sorry I didn’t address the other 9/10s of your comments, I scanned them and they seemed to be mostly about the 911 conspiracy theories, and I just don’t have the time right now to readdress them every time you bring them up. I am designing a new house for my sister so we can start building in a couple weeks so I have to limit my blog and research time. If some new information comes up I would be happy to look at it, but if it is just the same old arguments, I will probably just ignore it.
A quick hit and run comment, I think this administration has actually been quite honest with the American people in comparison to other administrations. Much of what has been said has been distorted and misreported by the mainstream press so it seems like they are dishonest, but if you look at what they have said without the emotional rhetoric, you will see a different picture. A quick barometer of this is that none of many “scandals” involving GWB & Co (like that, has a nice ring) have amounted to anything, they for the most part have been fishing expeditions.
I know there are some time differences involved, but I want what you are drinking if you can be up at 3:15 am writing on a silly blog.
Have a good day my friend
April 12th, 2007 at 10:52 am
Sorry Knarley,
I guess you didn’t make that many references to 911 conspiracies, I must have gotten mixed up with another thread. I will read closer.
April 12th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Don’t worry about reading the other ones any closer on my account, I’d prefer if you jsut focussed on understanding where the truth on BOTH sides of the 911 debate exists.
The tv news lies rant and “rabbits” comments that follow may not be 100% accurate, but even if only half of it had substance well, then, Dorothy, I do not think we are in Kansas anymore.
As for what I’m doing up at 3 am, sometimes I fall asleep when I put my daughter to bed at 8 or 9 pm, so then I’m up for a couple hours in the middle of the night and reading stuff online is one way to stay quiet. Sorry to disappoint you I know you would have preferred me to lie and say I was up late making tinfoil hats or I ‘d just got back from a sorority party…
April 12th, 2007 at 11:48 am
NL – what do I think about Canada taking a fighting role in Afghanistan?
Initially I was utterly dumbfounded that we could be making a similar mistake as the Soviets and all the other countries that have tried to exert influence there through force.
Then my feeling changed to a seething anger at Harper that in the blink of an eye he could change the unwritten compact between Canadians and our government to use the armed forces for PEACE keeping activities only. I have never felt so betrayed by a federal government. I want the sponsorship scandals back instead of this gigantic debacle. My greatest fear is that we will become more and more militarized as a society until we start to resemble the USA on the world stage.
All in all though, I recognize that my disgust at Harper’s foreign policies is so overwhelming to me personally, that it is best, for me, to remain quiet on those issues for now. Simply put, I am way too emotionally distraught over this change in direction to get involved, for if I do I fear it would become all consuming to me. For that reason I even avoid newspaper accounts except to glance at the headlines and what I see from that on a day to day basis is that the Murdochs and the Blacks are trying to drum up support for neverending wars.
When they were in a peacekeeping role, I supported our troops fully. Now I pity those who had signed up before the change in focus and have little sympathy for anyone who signs up or otherwise contributes to their offensives.
April 12th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Hi shcb,
Sorry, but the jury of world public opinion has reached a nearly unanimous verdict that your current administration is dishonest. I won’t waste my time arguing with you other than to do a quick cut/paste of the following as this is something that might be of benefit to you. Apparently it is a good compilation of the more heinous lies and it is scheduled to be released to the American people in an upcoming PBS special. Here’s a sneak peak:
Record of Iraq War Lies to Air April 25 on PBS
By David Swanson
t r u t h o u t | Guest Columnist
Thursday 12 April 2007
Bill Moyers has put together an amazing 90-minute video documenting the lies that the Bush administration told to sell the Iraq war to the American public, with a special focus on how the media led the charge. I’ve watched an advance copy and read a transcript, and the most important thing I can say about it is: Watch PBS from 9:00 to 10:30 PM on Wednesday, April 25. Spending that 90 minutes will actually save you time because you’ll never watch television news again – not even on PBS, which comes in for its own share of criticism.
…
Landay at Knight Ridder did report the facts when it counted, but not enough people paid attention. He tells Moyers that all he had to do was read the UN weapons inspectors’ reports online to know that the White House was lying to us. When Cheney said that Hussein was close to acquiring nuclear weapons, Landay knew he was lying: “You need tens of thousands of machines called ‘centrifuges’ to produce highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. You’ve got to house those in a fairly big place, and you’ve got to provide a huge amount of power to this facility.”
…
Colin Powell’s UN presentation comes in for similar quick debunking. We watch a video clip of Powell complaining that Iraq has covered a test-stand with a roof. But AP reporter Charles Hanley comments, “What he neglected to mention was that the inspectors were underneath watching what was going on.”
…
Powell cited a UK paper, but it very quickly came out that the paper had been plagiarized from a college student’s work found online. The British press pointed that out. The US let it slide. But anyone looking for the facts found it quickly.
…
the rest of this article is at:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041207D.shtml
April 13th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
I don’t agree, KK, I think the mission in Afghanistan is just; it was mandated by the UN after their government (the Taliban) provided OBL and AQ a place to flourish and attack our friends. Don’t get me wrong, I am a little worried about the miltary / development spending ratio, but overall I think they want us there and things are improving little by little. I mean, it’s nothing like Iraq.
April 14th, 2007 at 3:24 am
Hi NL –
Fair enough. I know a guy who spent about 18 months in Kabul (2004 ish?) establishing government administrations – his opinion is much like yours. Further, I loathed the Taliban.
I’m not sure though whether we can achieve anything in that country that will justify the costs and lives lost and to be lost (if history is any guide, and it seems to repeat itself consistently in Afghanistan, then this is just the beginning.)
Also, consider this:
Why do the Afghans not recognize much difference between American forces and those under NATO? (yet.)
Too bad that the Americans and NATO didn’t have the weapons technology nor satellite systems necessary to take out OBL and the AQ training camps in more surgical strikes and instead had to launch an all out war that destoyed so much infrastructure that the civilians need(ed). I’d be freakin mad if my pathetic mud hut got destroyed and I were living with thousands of other displaced people in tent cities on barren plains in that inhospital climate.
Hypothetically of course, if OBL and AQ were not the key players responsible for the attack on our friends, would there be any reason for America and NATO to be on this mission instead of greater humanitarian crises elsewhere?
How’s the trans afghan pipeline progressing, who’s building it and who benefits?
April 16th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Actually, KK, I just watched a documentary on the recent history of Afghanistan last night (last 50 years?), and I must say it, and along with the story I just read on Lies.com, has destroyed some of my confidence in this mission.
April 16th, 2007 at 11:41 am
sorry to hear that, I really would like to beleive that I am wrong on this one.
April 17th, 2007 at 11:13 am
NL – Afghanistan –
Ugh. Your question has got me reading more about Afghanistan and it is not uplifting:
“The invasion of Afghanistan was marketed to Americans as an “anti-terrorist” mission and an effort to implant democracy. It was sold to Canadians as a noble campaign of “nation-building, reconstruction, and defending women’s rights.” All nice-sounding, but mostly untrue.
“…The U.S. and NATO are not fighting “terrorists” in Afghanistan and they are certainly not winning hearts and minds. They are fighting the world’s largest tribal people. The longer the Westerners stay and bomb villages, the more resistance will grow. Such is the inevitable pattern of every guerrilla war I have ever covered.
Western troops stuck in this nasty, $2-billion daily guerrilla conflict will become increasingly brutalized, demoralized and violent. This is precisely what happened to Afghanistan’s second to latest invader, the Soviet Union. …”
“…If 160,000 Soviet troops and 240,000 Afghan Communist soldiers could not defeat the Pashtuns in ten years, how can 50,000 U.S. and NATO troops do better?
Those generals and politicians who claim this war will be won in a few short years ought to study Maiwand.”
(Maiwand was the site of the epic 1880 Afghan victory against British colonialism by the Pashtun tribes – what we call the “Taliban” is actually a loose alliance of Pashtun tribes and clans, joined by nationalist forces and former mujahedin from the 1980s anti-Soviet struggle … Now, a century and a quarter after Maiwand, Pashtun warriors of southern Afghanistan continue to resist another mighty world power and its allies, who have been faithfully following the imperial strategy of the old British Empire.)
“What we …see is a war by Western powers seeking to dominate the strategic oil corridor of Afghanistan, directed against the Pashtun people who comprise half that nation’s population. Another 15 million live just across the border in Pakistan. What we call the “Taliban” is actually a loose alliance of Pashtun tribes and clans, joined by nationalist forces and former mujahedin from the 1980s anti-Soviet struggle. …”
Full article here:
http://www.wpgsun.com/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2007/04/15/4023666-sun.html
April 17th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Iraq – History – a few highlights from a recent article:
“A bit of modern – by Iraq standards – history destroyed this week is the Al Sarafiya Bridge, built by the British in another Mesopotamian adventure, in the early 1900’s. Unlike many of Iraq’s wondrous bridges spanning the Tigris and the Euphrates, it survived the 1991 carpet bombing, but not now the invasion. Whilst accounts differ, from a truck bomb (and there are plenty of reports of trucks, vans, cars being stopped the allied troops and their owners LATER finding bombs in them)…”
…”Today it is Kerbala, site of one of the two most revered Shia shrines, resting place of Imam Hussein Bin Ali and his brother Abbas who left their mark on Islamic history at the Battle of Tuff (622), Imam Hussein mercilessly slaughtered, who is believed to have died with a Koran in one hand and a sword in the other. His words: ‘Death with dignity is better than a life of humiliation’, have not only a deep resonance with his Shia followers, but throughout Iraq. Or indeed, would strike resonance with any invaded nation. As I write they will be gathering the body parts…”
“…Before the invasion, suicide bombings were unheard of in Iraq. The 1990’s had some car bombs in Baghdad, which bewildered Iraqis and it would seem were generated by former US darling Iyad Allawi’s Iraq National Accord. American spokespersons have a mantra: ‘Al Qaeda’. But there was no Al Qaeda (anyway a CIA creation) in Iraq before the invasion. Has the most powerful army on earth no ability to control Iraq’s borders? Saddam Hussein never had a problem [keeping Al Qaeda out of the country]. Anyway, the US military itself has stated that only a minimal percentage of attacks are by foreign fighters and Iraqis have lived together for centuries. When a friend – and many others – said, just prior to the invasion: ‘Let them come, we have been fighting invaders for centuries’, she was talking about just that.”
‘Even in the Iran-Iraq war, our archeological sites, our history and theirs were respected’, said a near tearful archeologist in 1991, referring to the indiscrimate destruction from the air, of humanity’s history and utter disregard for civilian life,.. but ‘stuff happens’, throughout the region – to quote Rumsfeld after the invasion’s looting and decimation – that was not happening before 9th April 2003. British Forces (some of whom were caught in Arab dress with a carload of explosives last year, who were arrested and for whom the British demolished a police station to rescue) are due to hand over Kerbala to Iraqis later this month. They had to hand it back after invading it in 1915 too…”
full report by Felicity Arbuthnot here: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070414&articleId=5384
April 17th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
KK,
One counterpoint to your 11:13 post, the coalition forces are to one degree or another capitalistic. The Soviet Union was communistic, note I didn’t say socialistic. Communist states by their very nature are imperialistic. Because of their repressive nature, communist countries must always expand. Capitalistic nations do not have to expand their landmass to succeed, they do however rely on the free flow of commerce.
You may be right, we may loose this war like the Soviets, I don’t know if enough of them know we don’t want to conquer them, but hopefully enough do understand our intentions and will convince the others.
April 18th, 2007 at 4:02 am
shcb, I understand where you are coming from, meaning that I understand your language be it as it is a construct of your America-centrist education (yes?) and particular modern dialect of Newspeak (or is it Foxnewspeak now?) (Don’t be offended, I myself am a product of Cdn-centrist education and liberal newspeak, which might be worse eh?)
As such I agree with you, although I also cringe at its gross simplification, which does more to obstruct enlightened thought than it does to explain. I apologize if that is derogatory, but the Newspeak that I am hearing most everywhere hinges on gross oversimplification of terms such as capitalism and communism. Such simplifications dumb down debate and result in simplistic, error ridden conclusions. For example, “Iraqis will welcome American soldiers in the streets as liberators, like the Europeans in WWII!”
Let me explain how I agree with your statement.
But first, please take some time to understand a better, um, dialect than yours or mine. Then we can better understand what we are both talking about. For example, and this may seem radical at first, it is not a slam-dunk fact that capitalism is the opposite of communism. This should provide a good understanding of what this means: http://www.answers.com/topic/anti-communism (By the way, I find the context of the introduction of the term “Liberalism” in that link interesting and their definition of it enlightening.)
Now if you have a grasp of that, then you will not misunderstand my response.
I agree that a fair capitalist system – with enough government oversight to restrain excessive concentrations of corporate power – does not need to expand landmass to succeed, and the [completely] free flow of commerce, while not necessary, is in the long run the theoretical (and thus likely also the practical) optimal economic solution (but not necessarily the optimal overall situation). Ethical capitalism good; dictatorial communism or nazism is bad, & long sentences are worse.
The Afghans will not recognize (or care) about the difference between being conquered militarily and being economically “revitalized” (to borrow from Newspeak) with American capitalism. Especially when the economic “revitalization” comes via bombs and uranium tipped munitions pointed at them by foreign (very foreign) troops.
I’m not saying that military and economic conquest are the same thing, even though both are being attempted simultaneously in Afghanistan now. Being a Canadian I fully understand how being conquered economically does not necessarily mean full, immediate surrender to America.
What I am saying is that the unfettered introduction of the western world’s “trans-national” corporations into their economy profoundly impacts their culture.
Yes, it would probably increase their standard of living and you might think that a higher standard of living, or democracy, would or should be their paramount goal. But just because you may think they should think that does not mean that they do (or ever will) think that.
Different cultures and peoples, once basic needs are met, have different priorities. That is part of what makes life on our one and only shared planet so fascinating. It may be a radical idea to many Americans (like Bush), but different cultures and peoples, once basic needs are met, have different priorities than America’s priorities.
A MacDonald’s in every marketplace in every country of the world might be comforting to a midwesterner, but it does little to enrich the beauty and vitality of the cultural heritage and traditions in other countries.
Many (most?) peoples on earth believe the stereotypical view of America as it is described in a plethora of commentaries lamenting how consumerism has corroded the fabric of American society. Peoples of the world wonder if the corporate greed that ran amuck at Enron is indicative of most of America or if it is just indicative of Wall Street and Washington values?; or more to the point: what is Christmas in America now?
For many (most?) peoples on earth, “things” beyond necessities are not all that important. What is important is relationships and how honorably a person lives their life. They just do not understand the honor in being a loyal K-Mart shopper.
That may seem a trivial cultural distinction to us, but it is profound to other peoples. If we do not understand that, then we do not understand what the fighting is about. From the messaging of the conflict to the Canadian / US public by our news organizations (mostly a parroting of military news releases), the news media does not understand what the fighting is about either. Either that, or they do not want the public to think about what the fighting is really about.
That’s all I have to say on that. Which brings me to this:
“An unbiased observer doesn’t need to look beyond what’s happening on the ground today in Iraq and Afghanistan to conclude the War on Terror has been a brutal, manipulative means to a transparently self-serving end.” Read the rest of this fascinating article from a newspaper published in the most right-wing conservative city in all of Canada: http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/2007/04/18/4055871-sun.html
April 18th, 2007 at 4:52 am
KK,
Your last post is quite possibly the most profound I have seen you write so far, I think I agree with you on almost every point to a point. I want to give you my perspective, America’s perspective, and the distorted liberal media’s perspective as best I can, but I don’t have time this morning, so if you can, don’t muddy this great piece by tying it to conspiracy theories until I can respond this evening, (shy little grin).
Thanks
April 18th, 2007 at 9:06 am
shcb, it’s not so profound. It’s simply allowing cultural awareness into the forefront of decision making. There is a similar concept in biology known as bio-diversity, which is explained to elementary school children in grossly over-simplified terms as “the web of life.” Basically, for the kids it is a nice concept, for the adults who have studied bio-diversity in detail (I’m talking at least second year biology at University) it is the difference between a healthy abundance of everything humans need to survive and death (or at least a rather barren existence.) Just like cultural awareness helps us live rich lives in peace, the lack of it results in war (“blowing things up and killing people”) and a more barren existence than if war did not occur.
For more perspective on the mounting death tolls, consider 33 people killed at V-Tech yesterday (unrelated), and this from todays news:
“ — Bombings in Baghdad kill 127 people, including 82 in an attack at a market, the Iraqi Interior Ministry says. Watch the latest video now on CNN.com.” (if you are bloodthirsty)
127 people bombed in Baghdad today, 33 shot at V-tech yesterday, around 3000 innocents were killed on 911 in what could have been, but may now never be, the best country ever.
shcb, Don’t tell me that trying to get at the truth about that day is “muddying the waters.” IT IS THE WATER. And don’t ask me to believe silly conspiracy theories promoted by your government either. I don’t want anything to do with their silly conspiracy theories except to see them exposed for what they are in the trials of its perpetrators for their crime(s) against humanity. Thankfully, the truth is starting to come out. Again, don’t miss this:
http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/2007/04/18/4055871-sun.html
April 20th, 2007 at 4:35 am
well, I guess we’re heading down that raod again.
April 20th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
No point, we’ve been there and back too many times.
This is new though, it is a good explanation of why it has been so hard for the facts to cut through the mud:
http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2005/10/hit-them-with-truth.html
April 21st, 2007 at 7:47 am
KK,
I actually read a large portion of the link you provided. It has been said “conspiracy theories give easy answers to complicated problems, but they are the wrong answers”. Could the reason people who think 911 was an elaborate plot are branded anti patriotic and kooks is because they are unpatriotic and kooky? This is one of the beauties of a conspiracy, you have already crossed the line that most rational people think you are goofy, so it is easy to simply move any one who doesn’t believe you into the conspiracy.
I find it interesting that there is this great group of editors and press outlet owners that are out to get the 2 or 3 percent of reporters that think the towers were brought down by GWB & Co to get approval by the American people so they can do something they don’t need the approval of the American people to do. Could it be that the 98% are right and don’t want their reputations soiled by a few kooks.
And then there is the great government cover up, didn’t Michael Moore get an award for criticizing this administration, didn’t we start this conversation a month or so ago because of a movie that was produced and distributed and seen by like a hundred million. Aren’t there a zillion blogs and websites devoted to this silly conspiracy. Can you give me the name of one person that has been arrested for spouting this nonsense?
The one I really liked though was the “people have been arrested for criticizing the government” and then gave a lesson of how a president that owned slaves repealed those laws, no deception there.
I don’t think people like you mean to be crazy, you just hate the reality on the situation and the solution to the problem so much you will grasp at anything to avoid what you hate. Like a cancer patient that doesn’t want to endure the pain of chemotherapy, so they try a cocktail of vitamins, meditation, exercise, and pilgrimages to holy places to avoid the pain. I worked with a fellow once that hated manual labor, he would expend more energy trying to figure anyway he could to not work, ending up making more work that the original job. You hate war and will grasp at any straw to make the side you have some control over stop, you then hope the other side will stop too, but they won’t. You will have your hands pressed against your ears screaming “mommy make then stop” as the sword slices through your forearms and neck.
April 22nd, 2007 at 12:55 am
Shcb,
Have you ever heard of “projecting” your fears? That’s what you just did in your last sentence. Seriously, if you thought that was a powerful way to end your post, then you really need to learn about the psychology of projecting and examine why that scenario appeals or is otherwise ipmortant to you. Because it is just silly.
So you think that people hate war so much they`ll do anything to make it stop, hoping naively that the other side will stop too. Sounds like a deep fear: did George tell you that them Arabs are going to follow your troops home if you do not let the troops kill em all first? Number one: after Vietnam, the commies did not continue their guerilla warfare in Colorado, they did their brutal business at home to finish up on the war chaos and America tried to forget about it.
Second: it doesn`t matter how long you stay in Iraq killing the people – who are now fighting just to get you out (and they were not linked to terrorism and the CIA`s al Qaeda before, but 5% or so might be loosely linked now) – terrorism will always exist as long as peoples FEEL they are so subjugated that they have no legitimate means to resolve what they see as injustices. That speaks to terrorist groups but the exact same could be said for the motives of Cho Seung-Hui, America’s most recent terrorist.
Third: I don`t really care if the other side stops or not – (do you mean Iraqi`s, Afghans, terrorists, people who want to buy oil with Euro`s, or foreign competitors to Starbucks?) – America can handle anything that the downtrodden terrorists or others think they can throw at her and America’s retaliation again would be brutal (no more free passes for guys like OBL, yup, if he attacks America one more time then by golly America will hunt him down and will not stop until he is dead or brought to justice!) Terrorists do not threaten America to any significant extent except in America`s paranoid psyche. ASIDE: Rather than being paranoid about what FOX tells you to be paranoid about, maybe you should consider that there might be a problem now that George has done such a heckuva job protecting America, so now you`ve got a lot of people getting complacent, asking questions wondering if Terrorists are really the bogey men they`ve been made out to be, and to stop that, some former cheerleader might agree that another home-grown Anthrax attack or other false flag is in order, just to put the public back on edge. There`s no telling what a former Ivy League cheerleader and Vietnam War Avoider is capable of, he might even be carrying a boxcutter (with safety guard, TM.)
So you read the article? You missed this part:
“As Air Force Colonel and key Pentagon official Karen Kwiatkowski has written:
“I have been told by reporters that they will not report their own insights or contrary evaluations of the official 9/11 story, because to question the government story about 9/11 is to question the very foundations of our entire modern belief system regarding our government, our country, and our way of life. To be charged with questioning these foundations is far more serious than being labeled a disgruntled conspiracy nut or anti-government traitor, or even being sidelined or marginalized within an academic, government service, or literary career. To question the official 9/11 story is simply and fundamentally revolutionary. In this way, of course, questioning the official story is also simply and fundamentally American.”“
And you missed this: “don’t forget it was outsider family members who forced the insiders in a reluctant government to even mount the 911 investigation. Their tone is far angrier than most of the coverage, even as many of these researchers disagree with each other as much as they do the Bush Administration.”
You asked if I could give you the name of one person that has been arrested for spouting “this nonsense.” Well, maybe I could if you would tell me what the charge would be? Understand? Unfortunately, before you stopped reading the article before you understood: people don`t get arrested, they get ridiculed or fired or banished or any combination of the three or maybe other things. Here are two who lost their jobs for criticizing the president about his actions on 911: journalists Dan Guthrie and Tom Gutting, see http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-morrison19apr19,0,3983124.column?coll=la-util-opinion-commentary Aside: some people go so far as to point to the Patriot Act provisions that give the president the discretion to detain indefinitely any person deemed by the president to be a threat to national security, and makes it a crime for people to even report that the detention has taken place (I don`t know about that.)
Your first point was pure propaganda. Like all good propaganda you take something that has been said and twist its meaning for your purpose. Yes, “conspiracy theories”, like the one promoted by your government, are far, far more “easy” to accept and believe than the unknown. The difficult part for people is the shock they go through when they start to realize that the evidence presented to support the government’s version of events does not stack up, that the pursuit of real investigations have been stymied, and that massive amounts of evidence were quickly destroyed. At that point there is a fear of the unknown. It is actually easier for many people at this point to say, “hey this is crazy to make myself so uncomfortable with these ideas, but when I listen to George Bush he makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and by golly it sounds like he’s got a “good” war going now so we better get on board with that.”
But for others, when there is a demonstrably failed case to support the Arab fanatics acted alone conspiracy theory, they want to start presenting alternative hypothesis, that is human curiosity. I.e. We saw this, George said it happened because of this, but that seems flaky, so what else might it be?
Some explanations (theories or hypothesis) fit better than others, I wouldn`t subscribe fully to any particular one with regards to who did it or even exactly how it was done. What I`ve been impressed with is the number of EXCELLENT QUESTIONS the Victims` Families and the rest of the Truth movement have asked, and it’s been alarming that the government refuses to answer or that Popular Mechanics and others publish such ridiculous hit pieces quoting NIST when even the underfunded NIST report relied on a paper published by the Journal of Engineering Mechanics by Bazant and Zhou which itself is full of fatal flaws: e.g. “In stage 1 (Fig. 1), the conflagration caused by the aircraft fuel spilled into the structure causes the steel of the columns to be exposed to sustained temperatures apparently exceeding 800°C.” This assumption is crucial to the entire analysis, and there is no basis for it. Actual tests of uninsulated steel structures exposed to gas and diesel fuel for sustained periods never exceeded 360°C [partly due to steel heat conductivity[, the smoke color indicated cooler fires, etc. The full critique of Bazant and Zhou is available at the 911Research site.)
Those were my words, Barry Zwicker is more concise: “despite the drumbeat of the official story, and despite the nearly utter failure of the mainstream media to raise questions about the absurdities and impossibilities of the official story, ordinary, decent people, using their own senses and adding two and two, smell something fishy. Especially because the people promoting the official story, namely the White House and the big media, also promoted the lie of WMDs in Iraq, and have lied and covered up on other large issues. What I call the apologist community has more and more to answer for. ”
Hypothetically, WHAT IF YOU DEBUNKER ARE RIGHT!!! Why have you all muffed around saying “oh, gee whiz, sure was a lot of big stupid mistakes defending America, huh?” yup sure was. yup. Well them arabs sure are sneaky. Yup. Yup. Yup.” Well, here is what a more intelligent person (Lee Iacocca) thinks:
“On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It’s all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn’t safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day — and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.
That was George Bush’s moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he’d regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq — a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn’t listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn’t scare the crap out of you, I don’t know what will.”
So SHCB , take note because AMERICANS ARE STARTING TO SAY THIS ABOUT PEOPLE LIKE YOU:
“Debunkers claim massive incompetence caused 911. They claim a former disgruntled CIA [operative – OBL] and his 19 underlings [sneaked up on America] and hijacked four Boeings and blew up eight buildings (Seven WTC buildings and the Pentagon).
However, these debunkers spend far more time lambasting critics of the 911 Big Lie than they do goading the incompetent and criminally negligent administration to pursue and capture Osama Bin Laden. If OBL really masterminded 911, why haven’t these so-called “debunkers” petitioned their incompetent government to get Osama, whatever the cost? Why aren’t these debunkers at the gates of the White House with their signs and megaphones?
Because debunkers are phonies and frauds, cowards and fakes. Debunkers are enablers, not critics, of this…government. …”
“If debunkers, and the government of incompetents, cannot even capture the mastermind of 911, but allow him to escape and have forgotten him since, how much more criminal and inept can you debunkers and your government appear?”
“Debunkers accepted the fraud of Condolezza Rice and her statements that nobody imagined terrorists would hijack planes and smash them into tall buildings. Even when that statement was proven a lie. Indeed debunkers were so Uncritical of Rice, they allowed her to be promoted from National Security advisor to Secretary of State. Indeed, all the incompetents of 911 were promoted, praised or profited by the 911 attack.”
“In the debunkers’ world view, the government was negligent on 911 but benign, a victim of unfortunate circumstances. Never mind that not ONE single government official ever suffered for their negligence. ”
“Debunkers fail to comprehend the seriousness of their crimes. And it is a felony to be an accessory to a high crime, such as 911. By defending the official government version of 911 events, they have allowed all the culprits to escape punishment for their crimes. ”
“… But it is 911 debunkers who provide a justification for the war criminals to conduct their illegal wars. By compounding the lies, by compounding the deception, by preventing a complete investigation of the 911 massacre, debunkers contribute to the ongoing war crimes.”
And on the “lighter” side, here’s where your military farces in Iraq have taken you:
http://www.exile.ru/2007-April-20/war_nerd.html
Or go find this, he offers lots of great advice:
Had enough?
By Lee Iacocca
Scribner
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Knarly,
When you have listened to talk radio as long as I have, one thing you learn to expect out of liberals is their reluctance to concede a point. I haven’t had a debate class since the Nixon administration, but you dodged my point using a couple techniques I can’t remember the names of. You first try and minimize my point by attributing my making it to a serious psychological ailment, you then just dismiss it as silly since a silly man made the statement. It was a rather clumsy attempt. Later you do something similar with Bush, bringing up his war record and his college life as proof of ??? America has had presidents that have been great generals and presidents that had no military experience, some have been great at both others not so good at either, and everything in between.
The rest of this is going to be a little disjointed since you have peppered me with so much, as usual. You may need a program to keep up.
The commies were never coming after us in America, the Arabs already have, or were you absent on 911, it was in all the papers. Yes GWB & Co told me they were coming, so did Bill and Hillary, Nancy Peloci, Harry Reid, John Edwards, John Kerry and a bunch more Democrats have said the same at one time or another. Not to mention the presidents of Iraq (may he rest in peace) and Iran (may he soon do the same). In the third paragraph “Terrorism will always exist as long as peoples FEEL they are so subjugated that they have no legitimate means to resolve what they see as injustices.” I think that is why we got rid of Sadam, so the Iraqi folks can resolve issues themselves.
Fourth paragraph; I know America can handle anything the terrorists through at us, that is what we are doing now, I am more fearful of you liberals, if we wait and ignore the problem we may get hit really hard and have to hit back even harder, killing millions, I would like to avoid that. Paragraph five, I read it, Karen is just wrong, and the families got the 911 commission, and they said Arabs did it.
Sixth, losing a job is private matter, not a first amendment issue. I suppose the charges would be something like treason. Were Dan or Tom charged with anything? Presidents have always had similar powers, Lincoln and Roosevelt among others used that power. I think the Federalist Papers even addressed that issue, I will see if I can find out which paper. In the seventh paragraph you are setting up a false dilemma (or premise) using your conspiracy to justify your conspiracy.
Eighth through eleventh; it is ok to question, but at some point things may just be as they seem.
On Iacocca, I have all the respect in the world for his business savvy and management skills, but it doesn’t surprise me he would sign on to this absurdity. I would imagine he sees himself standing in front of those children saying the exact right thing, then move forward saving the world just as the Hollywood writers would cast him. But this is the real world, I guess Roosevelt took 45 minutes to react to the news of Pearl Harbor. The fact is that at times like 911, procedures take over for a while, get the president and vice president to safety, same with congress, planes are scrambled, information is gathered. The leader whether he is a corporate CEO, a general, or a head of state is giving orders, getting information and advise while on the move, as he is being secured, it is all very hectic, taking time to tell America what they already know would not be a good use of time and could be a security breach. I also lost a lot of respect for Lee when I read his book. He went on for page after page about his involvement with the Mustang and gave his involvement with the exploding gas tank in the Pinto a couple paragraphs. In this case I think Lee’s rants are a little self serving. What I think we saw from Bush is how real people react to these situations, and sometimes it isn’t flattering.
Paragraphs 13 on are just crap.
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:08 am
shcb-
I guess my last post was too complicated. For your own good, please set aside tendentiousness and attempt to understand that the ideas of others might have merit.
For example, I suggested that you look into “projecting”, but you are still clueless, as evidenced by your thinking that it is a “serious psychological ailment” rather than a common thing that all people do (less so if they are more aware of it.)
On all those points where you simply state that this is wrong or that is just crap, well, to use your rule (or was it Teachervet`s?) from previous posts, I win those points.
Your belittling of Lee Iacocca was worthy of your talk radio hero. Glad you think it is fine that Bush went into shock (actually he looked like the only one not in shock that day!) then he and or his secret service bodyguards failed to follow standard and critical procedures to secure his safety and avoid collateral deaths if he was to have been a target on 911 while he was reading my pet goat.
But he was not considered to be in danger then even though authorities knew that America was under attack and that 4 and possibly as many as 11 airliners were currently hijacked.) I can logically deduce that because he had watched the FIRST plane crash into the North tower (or so he said and repeated saying even though the first video was first released by the shooter by giving it to the media a full 13 hours later) as evidenced by his own repeated statements joking about the lousy pilot (suggesting a psychopathic quality, his first reaction was a joke, not “OMG how many people have just died?”) so that would mean that he had access to private filming of the first plane hitting the tower. Who shot that film? That may be one of the zillions of unanswered questions. Questions that freedom loving free thinkers want to have answered.
Remember, many of the most loyal, most respected `good` Germans thought they were honorable Christian Nationalist Socialists in 1939 of the most powerful Nation on earth, and they were hanged in 1947 as complicit co-conspirators to ghastly crimes against humanity. People wondered why they did not question more about what was really going on, and the answer to that is that well, they would have been fired, beaten up, or shot. At least they could be forgiven to an extent because they themselves were victims of propaganda, people now have near full access to information via internet so they ought to know better. I don’t think willful ignorance through voluntary exposure to right wing talk radio will be much of a defense.
By the way, here is another guy that was fired: Kevin Ryan. He was fired more or less for doing his job by simply QUESTIONING an incongruence between what Underwriters Laboratory certified the melting point for the WTC steel and what the NIST report stated, and then refusing to remain quiet when faced with refusals to answer his questions.
(Kevin Ryan is a former employee of Underwriters Laboratory which certified the steel components used in the construction of the World Trade Center. Ryan wrote a letter to Frank Gayle of NIST, questioning the incongruence between laboratory testing, and conclusions drawn in the official government NIST report. After Ryan’s questions became public, he was terminated.)
A recent open letter from Mr. Ryan about FIGHTING LIES will be my next post.
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:11 am
“In fact, Underwriter Laboratories does not certify structural steel.”
David Dunbar, executive editor of Popular Mechanics [1]
We now know that US Government scientists were not able to produce evidence for “widely dislodged” fireproofing within the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. Because of this, the distinction between the fire-based hypothesis of collapse and the demolition hypothesis centers on one question. Were the steel assemblies used to construct those buildings tested for fire resistance as required by the New York City code? [note: actually, many other questions too including that the nature of the collapses violate laws of physics under any official explanation, etc.]
As I have stated many times in public, UL made it clear to me and others that they performed this testing. Of course I have their statements on the subject in writing, and I would have been a fool to have made such claims publicly without possessing such documentation. In contrast, Mr. Dunbar of Popular Mechanics does not seem to mind acting like an irresponsible fool in public, as his statement above indicates. His statement is foolish because it is widely known that UL does test and certify structural components for buildings such as the World Trade Center towers.
Even beginning students know that UL is one of the few important organizations supporting codes and specifications because they “produce a Fire Resistance Index with hourly ratings for beams, columns, floors, roofs, walls and partitions tested in accordance with ASTM Standard E119.” [2] The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) itself made this point clear in their WTC report by saying “the UL Fire Resistance Directory …is the major reference used by architects and engineers to select designs that meet the building code requirements for fire resistance ratings.” [3]
Additionally UL’s own Tom Chapin, the Chemist and manager of their Fire Protection division, with whom I was in contact, admitted to UL’s involvment in testing steel for the WTC in a letter to the New York Times editor published April 15, 2002. In this letter, Chapin said “The World Trade Center stood for almost an hour after withstanding conditions well beyond those experienced in any typical fire. In that time, thousands of people escaped with their lives. ASTM E-119 and UL’s testing procedures helped make that possible.” [4]
Popular Mechanics’ poor editorial practices and weak understanding of conformance testing are not the only reasons behind the false “UL does not certify structural steel” statement, however. UL made a similar statement themselves, shortly after firing me for speaking out and asking for clarification. They denied their own responsibility even after admitting publicly that their testing was related to the WTC tower’s performance. To make matters worse, UL exacerbated this denial with the additional claim that there was “no evidence” that any firm tested the steel.
Why would UL need to make this secondary claim of “no evidence” if they were never involved? Better yet, why would UL lie to the public at all, and how could they get away with it?
The “why” is easy enough to understand. UL is a tax-exempt organization (we pay their taxes for them), and requires good government relations to maintain this status. Additionally, given the fire-based explanation for collapse, whatever firm tested the WTC tower’s assemblies for fire resistance was at risk for a huge liability.
The question of how they could get away with such obvious lies is a matter of semantic deception. It is simply a cowardly distinction between “structural steel” and “steel assemblies used within a structure” that is behind these false remarks by UL and Popular Mechanics (PM). But these liars know that willing listeners, looking for easy answers that divert attention away from the painful evidence for the demolition hypothesis, will buy just about anything to avoid the truth.
I often wonder what UL might have said if 3,000 people had died from water contamination on 9/11/01. If it had been clear that the water testing division I managed was responsible for the compliance testing required to avoid such a catastrophe, it’s likely that UL and PM would have said something like ”UL does not test water”. Of course that misleading statement could be used only if one resorted to deceptive semantics again. That is, UL tests for contaminants in the water, they don’t test the water itself.
Those lying to us about 9/11 may feel that they have no reason to fear retribution. For example, we can choose to buy Popular Mechanics’ lies or not buy them, depending on whether we are looking for easy answers or truthful ones. In choosing, we can guess at UL’s motivations for lying, and we know the Hearst Corporation (Popular Mechanics’ parent company) has a long history in the business of propaganda.
But we can’t choose whether or not we care to pay UL’s taxes for them. As long as UL remains in good standing with the government, the American public must dole out the corporate welfare that supports them.
My ongoing lawsuit against UL will not only hold them accountable for their responsibility to public safety, it will help determine the future of our country.[5] Can someone openly speak obvious truths, no matter how sensitive, in America today? We may soon find out. At the direction of the US Federal Court in Indianapolis, lawyers representing myself and UL have begun mapping out a case management plan. It is already clear that UL made a significant mistake in firing me, as indicated by the fact that they have hired several very large law firms to support them instead of handling this simple “water-tester” with the team of attorneys already on their payroll.
How about Democracy Now and Popular Mechanics? Will they allow me to defend myself against their libelous claims in a public forum? It is doubtful, but I will offer an open invitation to David Dunbar to publicly debate me on the merits of the official conspiracy theory, and the evidence for the demolition hypothesis, whenever he feels that he finally has his facts straight.. I’m sure that Democracy Now would be glad to put us on the air.
In the meantime, we should all remember that over two thousand Americans, and countless thousands of others, have died in the 9/11 Wars since I was fired for speaking out. And only the lies of cowards like UL and Popular Mechanics stand between an escalation of those wars and the chance to pursue a lasting peace.
For the victims of 9/11, the victims of the 9/11 Wars, and for future generations, I will continue fighting those lies. You can count on it.
1. Debate between editors of Popular Mechanics and the makers of the film Loose Change, Democracy Now, September 11, 2006 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/11/1345203
2. Samuel H. Marcus, Basics of Structural Steel (Reston, Va.: Reston Publishing 1977), 20
3. Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), “World Trade Center Building Performance Study,” May 2005, Appendix A
4. J. Thomas Chapin, General Mgr., Fire Protection Div.
Underwriters Laboratories, Letter to the editor entitled Fire Test is Sound, New York Times, April 15, 2002.
5. Legal Defense Fund for Kevin Ryan, http://www.ultruth.com/
April 24th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
I just heard that they were making up phony war stories about that Tillman guy and that the “heroic” rescue of Jessica Lynch was a bunch of bullshit (that came from Lynch herself). Straight out of a god damn Hollywood movie!!
Seriously, has this administration ever told the truth about anything?
April 24th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
During Katrina, Bush said that Brownie was doing a heckuva job. If you take that literally, i.e. he was doing a hellish job, that is sort of like truth.
Seriously NorthernLite, maybe we are too kind to call them liars. Maybe it would be more accurate to call them lying thieves. Here are a few paragraphs from this article ( http://www.just-international.org/article.cfm?newsid=20002132 ) which I think illustrates the point beautifully:
“The [Iraq War] bill is rising so fast because the level of war profiteering is unprecedented. …
Cheney himself is also taking in war profits, contrary to what he told Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” in 2003, when he denied making any money off his former employer. “Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush’s vice president,” he said, “I’ve severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest.”
“I have no financial interest in Halliburton,” Cheney told Tim, “of any kind and haven’t had, now, for over three years.”
Those statements were proven false when financial disclosure forms showed that Cheney had received a deferred salary from Halliburton of $205,298 in 2001, $262,392 in 2002, $278,437 in 2003, and $294,852 in 2004.
In 2005, an analysis released by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), reported that Cheney continued to hold over 300,000 Halliburton stock options and said their value had risen 3,281% over the previous year, from $241,498 to more than $8 million.
Cheney may be the most visible profiteer to those who find it difficult to follow the war on terror money trail, but many other members of the administration with insider knowledge set themselves up to profit early on as well.
For instance…”
On a side note (actually the central theme of this thread) there is also this gem in that same article:
“After Bush’s speech on January 10, 2007, about the plan to send more troops, retired Army Col Doug McGreggor, a former advisor to Don Rumsfeld in 2003, said in a broadcast interview, “There seems to be a complete failure to understand that we have been trying to suppress a rebellion against our occupation.”
“As long as we are there,” he warned, “we are the number one public enemy for the Muslim-Arab world.”
“We were after all,” he points out, “a Christian army occupying a Muslim Arab country, something which in the Middle East, is essentially a disaster.”
This decorated combat veteran says Bush’s strategy will never work. “We did not go to Iraq originally,” he explains, “to dismantle the state, dismantle the army, the police, and the government, to occupy the place with the object of changing the people that lived there into something they did not want to become.” ”
As for what started it all, here is a new article that pokes some holes in the Big Lie:
http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2006/09/jones.html
April 25th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Hi Guys,
Knarly, you are absolutely right, I should not have called your stuff crap, you get the points. It is really frustrating to make a good point like refuting this is an illegal war and have you guys just keep on using that phraseology. And then I get accused of engaging in propaganda. Your post wasn’t too complicated, as you condescendingly pointed out, I was just making the point that you were ducking my assertion that liberals hate war so much they will believe anything they think will stop the conflict. By the way, you’re still ducking, I wouldn’t expect anything more from a liberal, I just like pointing it out.
You are giving me examples of people who have been fired, not arrested, not censored by the government, remember the bill of rights restricts the powers of government not private enterprise. That pretty much takes care of your next post. Not that it has anything to do with this subject, but I always find it interesting how economically illiterate people are, he mentions UL’s tax exempt status several times. Fact is, no corporation pays taxes, the cost of taxes are simply passed on to the consumer as a cost of doing business. He also makes mention of UL being somehow liable for the collapse of the buildings. Unless the tests of the steel were forged why would they be liable for anything. UL just certifies that tests are performed to lawful specifications. If the structure were not designed to withstand the damage it incurred from an event out of the ordinary, no one but the Arabs flying those planes were at fault.
The Tillman and Lynch situation, as far as I can tell there isn’t anything new here, all this has been known for years. To drag it up again is just the Democrats doing what they do best, assassinating characters. Not a fresh, helpful idea among the bunch. I was surfing past c-span the other day and there was old Harry Reid, somber face, looking at his papers, frowning, sighing, pregnant pausing, slowly raising his head, big frown, Clint Eastwood eyes glairing at Alberto, stopping after every few words for effect. Telling the Attorney General he had never in all his years on both sides of the isle witnessed such a travesty of justice, one so great he didn’t know if the Republic would survive. Guess he must have been absent when Clinton fired all 93 in one day, giving them 10 days to clear their desks. Yup, 8 vs 93. Poor ole Alberto could barely control himself, he very respectfully shook his head in the affirmative, giving the impression he gave a shit what this blow hard had to say. Every now and then a smile would start to form in the corner of his mouth. What a bunch of crap.
April 26th, 2007 at 4:06 am
Arrests:
I’ll give an example, but my point was that arrests are unnecessary. Destruction of a persons reputation, wiping out their economic means of support and subjecting them to onerous investigations (e.g. tax audits), and/or slapping a gag order on their public statements or reporting of these statements are usually more than sufficient to stifle dissent. Example of arrests (you have to go outside the mainstream media to find the arrests, they do not get reported there): http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2006/150906whistleblowerraided.htm
Also, if you understand the Sibbel Edmunds story, that helps explain the point. She was not arrested, but her testimony on key FBI officials who actively suppressed reports was silenced:
http://www.breakfornews.com/Sibel-Edmonds.htm
“Edmonds was hired shortly after Sept. 11 to translate intelligence gathered over the previous year related to the 9/11 attacks. She says the FBI had information that an attack using airplanes was being planned before Sept. 11 and calls Condoleezza Rice’s claim the White House had no specific information on a domestic threat or one involving planes “an outrageous lie.”
“Although Edmonds is officially barred from revealing the specifics of what she found out, she has revealed that she was hired to find and cover up the prior knowledge intercepts. She refused to go along with the cover up. Of course only small criminal elements of the government were involved on 9/11, the majority of those working for the FBI, the CIA and the NSA are good people who would have picked up on the pre-intelligence.
“Firstly Edmonds was keen to stress that information relating to pre 9/11 terrorist activity was intentionally blocked by elements of the intelligence agencies.
“I started reporting these cases together with documents and other witnesses in the department, within two months after I started working for the bureau, around November/December 2001. I went to my superiors, to their superiors and even all the way to the top of the chin, to Director Mueller himself within the FBI headquarters. Initially they were asking me not to push through this and in return they offered to give me a raise… When I did not continue reporting these issues, in about February 2002, they accused me of reporting these issues to the Congress via email.”
“At this time Sibel was not attempting to do this, she was attempting to raise the issues internally. The FBI then sent several agents to her house and confiscated her home computer and took it apart to check exactly who Edmonds had been contacting.
“They then forced her to take a polygraph test to determine whether she had been speaking to anybody outside the agency. This was the last straw for Edmonds who decide it was time to blow the case wide open and go to Congress with her vital information.
“So I went to these people within the Senate Judiciary Committee, I briefed their staff who had clearance, I went inside the secured facility and gave them documents, and about two weeks after that I was terminated without any reason being cited, in fact the letter I received from the Department of Justice said that ‘your contract is being terminated as of this date purely for the convenience of the Government.”
“Ms Edmonds went on to talk about the specifics of what elements of the Government are now doing and covering up.
“Starting with the revelation that forces inside the Congress and the FBI confirmed that House Speaker Dennis Hastert was illegally receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash bribes from foreign lobbying organizations in exchange for political favors.
“Other Senators and Congressmen have also been exposed in the activity of taking illegal cash.
“She then went on to talk about former Attorney General John Ashcroft who in an unprecedented move officially gagged the Congress over her case in order to “protect certain diplomatic relations of the United States and to protect sensitive US-foreign business relations. In the most bizarre and Orwellian twist, Ashcroft “retroactively classified” many of the statements Edmonds had already made. This included information published in the press prior to the gag order.”
“Ashcroft did not elaborate at all and many have come forward to suggest that the gagging order was wholly illegal.
“Edmonds then made an analogy, as she often does when she cannot reveal specific facts. She suggested that there could be a so called “war on drugs” but it is an unwritten rule that you only go after the lower end drug dealers and leave alone the middle men and those at the top because the government can directly profit from their activity. This is how things were handled with terrorism in the lead up to 9/11. “
“The Justice Department’s inspector general ultimately determined that Edmonds’ firing was due “in part” to her whistleblowing activities. But there have been no consequences for those responsible, and her efforts to get the gag order lifted have been frustrated in court. “
And this, from: http://www.disastercenter.com/911_11.htm excerpt below:
“On September 13, 2004 a group of 25 former Federal employees directed a letter to the Congress of the United States of America. The purpose of the letter was to address serious shortcomings in the 911 Report. These former Executive branch employees, whom are not permitted to speak publicly about the specific wrongs that they reported to the 911 Commission, write of the existence of serious problems and shortcomings within the bureaucracy.
Part of their concern is that, in the Commission’s 911 Report, no one within government was held accountable. They maintain that in order to understand the underlying problem the Commission needed to take account of systemic errors in the operation of the Executive branch, which are dictated by motives other than the security of the people of the United States. “The errors were not due to a “lack of imagination” or “human error”, but due to clear negligence and/or a dereliction in the performance of their duties to the nation.” The Commission’s failure to assign blame, “is to play the political game.” They warn us that, “If these individuals are protected rather than held accountable, the mindset that enabled 9/11 will persist, no matter how many layers of bureaucracy are added.”
It must be understood that many of these former employees came forward with warnings related to the United State’s terrorism policy and other serious problems prior to 9-11-01. Much about what we know is because after 9-11-01 these individuals came forward and provided information to the Commission. They are whistleblowers, who “put the safety of the American people above their own careers and jobs even though they had reason to suspect that the deck was stacked against them,” and it was. The Commission neither acknowledged their contributions, nor faced up the urgent need to protect such patriots against retaliation. All were ostracized, others were put under gag orders, and some were fired.
…
“There is no experience in life like that of being a whistleblower. The individual puts the object of coming forward to prevent or stop a wrong from taking place and every aspect of their life is affected by that choice. It is a choice that frequently results in the loss of income and causes irreparable damage to one’s relationships both at work and at home. The individual is often stigmatized for life, their future prospects limited. In not addressing the issue that they raise here the Commissioners failed in their duty to them and to the people of the United States. An individual should not have to feel ashamed for harm that they caused those they love for having coming forward to save us from ourselves.”
April 26th, 2007 at 4:06 am
Here’s a more global view of the problem, many whistleblowers mentioned are here
http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2006/09/11/911-whistleblowers-ignored-retaliated-against/
Then you get censorship over these kinds of questions: http://digg.com/world_news/9_11_Whistleblower_Poisoned_Dies
Not to mention the censorship of the first responders who are at odds with the official story:
NYC Firefighters, trained and experienced in critical observations during cataclysmic events report hearing multiple massive explosions, going off in a sequence that they actually attribute to what a controlled demolition sounds like. Since that time, all Firefighters and Police actually witnessing these events have been slapped
with a government-mandated gag order. http://www.tyrannyalert.com/nyfd.htm
April 26th, 2007 at 4:08 am
For pure entertainment, don’t miss this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzIzoD-MhIE
April 26th, 2007 at 4:08 am
Arrests:
I’ll give an example, but my point was that arrests are unnecessary. Destruction of a persons reputation, wiping out their economic means of support and subjecting them to onerous investigations (e.g. tax audits), and/or slapping a gag order on their public statements or reporting of these statements are usually more than sufficient to stifle dissent. Example of arrests (you have to go outside the mainstream media to find the arrests, they do not get reported there): http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2006/150906whistleblowerraided.htm
April 26th, 2007 at 4:09 am
Also, if you understand the Sibbel Edmunds story, that helps explain the point. She was not arrested, but her testimony on key FBI officials who actively suppressed reports was silenced:
http://www.breakfornews.com/Sibel-Edmonds.htm
Edmonds was hired shortly after Sept. 11 to translate intelligence gathered over the previous year related to the 9/11 attacks. She says the FBI had information that an attack using airplanes was being planned before Sept. 11 and calls Condoleezza Rice’s claim the White House had no specific information on a domestic threat or one involving planes “an outrageous lie.”
Although Edmonds is officially barred from revealing the specifics of what she found out, she has revealed that she was hired to find and cover up the prior knowledge intercepts. She refused to go along with the cover up. Of course only small criminal elements of the government were involved on 9/11, the majority of those working for the FBI, the CIA and the NSA are good people who would have picked up on the pre-intelligence.
Firstly Edmonds was keen to stress that information relating to pre 9/11 terrorist activity was intentionally blocked by elements of the intelligence agencies.
“I started reporting these cases together with documents and other witnesses in the department, within two months after I started working for the bureau, around November/December 2001. I went to my superiors, to their superiors and even all the way to the top of the chin, to Director Mueller himself within the FBI headquarters. Initially they were asking me not to push through this and in return they offered to give me a raise… When I did not continue reporting these issues, in about February 2002, they accused me of reporting these issues to the Congress via email.”
At this time Sibel was not attempting to do this, she was attempting to raise the issues internally. The FBI then sent several agents to her house and confiscated her home computer and took it apart to check exactly who Edmonds had been contacting.
They then forced her to take a polygraph test to determine whether she had been speaking to anybody outside the agency. This was the last straw for Edmonds who decide it was time to blow the case wide open and go to Congress with her vital information.
“So I went to these people within the Senate Judiciary Committee, I briefed their staff who had clearance, I went inside the secured facility and gave them documents, and about two weeks after that I was terminated without any reason being cited, in fact the letter I received from the Department of Justice said that ‘your contract is being terminated as of this date purely for the convenience of the Government.”
Ms Edmonds went on to talk about the specifics of what elements of the Government are now doing and covering up.
Starting with the revelation that forces inside the Congress and the FBI confirmed that House Speaker Dennis Hastert was illegally receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash bribes from foreign lobbying organizations in exchange for political favors.
Other Senators and Congressmen have also been exposed in the activity of taking illegal cash.
She then went on to talk about former Attorney General John Ashcroft who in an unprecedented move officially gagged the Congress over her case in order to “protect certain diplomatic relations of the United States and to protect sensitive US-foreign business relations. In the most bizarre and Orwellian twist, Ashcroft “retroactively classified” many of the statements Edmonds had already made. This included information published in the press prior to the gag order.”
Ashcroft did not elaborate at all and many have come forward to suggest that the gagging order was wholly illegal.
Edmonds then made an analogy, as she often does when she cannot reveal specific facts. She suggested that there could be a so called “war on drugs” but it is an unwritten rule that you only go after the lower end drug dealers and leave alone the middle men and those at the top because the government can directly profit from their activity. This is how things were handled with terrorism in the lead up to 9/11. “
“The Justice Department’s inspector general ultimately determined that Edmonds’ firing was due “in part” to her whistleblowing activities. But there have been no consequences for those responsible, and her efforts to get the gag order lifted have been frustrated in court. “
And this, from: http://www.disastercenter.com/911_11.htm
On September 13, 2004 a group of 25 former Federal employees directed a letter to the Congress of the United States of America. The purpose of the letter was to address serious shortcomings in the 911 Report. These former Executive branch employees, whom are not permitted to speak publicly about the specific wrongs that they reported to the 911 Commission, write of the existence of serious problems and shortcomings within the bureaucracy.
Part of their concern is that, in the Commission’s 911 Report, no one within government was held accountable. They maintain that in order to understand the underlying problem the Commission needed to take account of systemic errors in the operation of the Executive branch, which are dictated by motives other than the security of the people of the United States. “The errors were not due to a “lack of imagination” or “human error”, but due to clear negligence and/or a dereliction in the performance of their duties to the nation.” The Commission’s failure to assign blame, “is to play the political game.” They warn us that, “If these individuals are protected rather than held accountable, the mindset that enabled 9/11 will persist, no matter how many layers of bureaucracy are added.”
It must be understood that many of these former employees came forward with warnings related to the United State’s terrorism policy and other serious problems prior to 9-11-01. Much about what we know is because after 9-11-01 these individuals came forward and provided information to the Commission. They are whistleblowers, who “put the safety of the American people above their own careers and jobs even though they had reason to suspect that the deck was stacked against them,” and it was. The Commission neither acknowledged their contributions, nor faced up the urgent need to protect such patriots against retaliation. All were ostracized, others were put under gag orders, and some were fired.
…
There is no experience in life like that of being a whistleblower. The individual puts the object of coming forward to prevent or stop a wrong from taking place and every aspect of their life is affected by that choice. It is a choice that frequently results in the loss of income and causes irreparable damage to one’s relationships both at work and at home. The individual is often stigmatized for life, their future prospects limited. In not addressing the issue that they raise here the Commissioners failed in their duty to them and to the people of the United States. An individual should not have to feel ashamed for harm that they caused those they love for having coming forward to save us from ourselves.
April 26th, 2007 at 4:10 am
http://www.tyrannyalert.com/9-11%20fairy%20tale.pdf
For pure entertainment, don’t miss this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzIzoD-MhIE
April 26th, 2007 at 6:09 am
This was the first time I heard Jessica Lynch saying her “rescue” was fabricated to raise support for the mission. Was this already known (officially) to the American people? Is the US military engaged in the same type of propaganda campaigns as people like, the Taliban, Al Qaeda?
If that’s so, good luck winning the hearts and minds of muslims, let alone your own people.
April 26th, 2007 at 9:56 am
shcb/tv
I would like to point out that Clinton fired those attorneys at the start of his term, just as dumbya fired the Clinton attorneys at the start of his term. The 8 we are talking about are decent folk like Carol Lam, who was pursuing the Duke Cunningham case (she was fired before they could raid Dusty Foggo’s house – bet those papers have been burnt, the emails erased from the servers and tons of unicorns have just shown up in Iraq). Not much news about further investigations into the Dukster’s connections since she was canned… mission accomplished! They wouldn’t play partisan ball to the level of corruption that KKKarl and Ko. wanted, so they were canned for no damn good reason.
Abu Gonzales and the entire dumbya crew have so politicized every aspect of our government it will be decades before we learn just how bad the damage really is.
But just keep swallowing rush’s load of partisan crap day in and day out. Keep the rage fresh. Thinking would hurt too much now.
It is people like Sibel Edmonds and Katherine Gunn, Scott Ritter and Cindy Shehan who are the heroes. rush windbag is a waste of air. I can’t wait to see Cheney in leg irons. And dumbya pee his pants on national tv.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Hi NL,
Yes it was out in the news- I don’t think mainstream carried it or if they did it was buried deeply under more important matters (whatever the hot topic was before Anna Nicole, Britney Spears etc.)
Some of the sources I read had me filled in on that ages ago. Rense is great for uncensored news, I read about 10% of what he posts, and discard about half of that as being too unreliable, but that 5% that make sense / is reliable is well worth the minor effort to scan throug h the crap. Much rather do that for myself than let some guy taking orders from Bill Orally decide what I should be reading.
April 26th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Updates on the surge:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6575717.stm
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/042507.html
April 26th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
SHCB,
You never convinced anyone that this was not an illegal war. All you did was convinced us that you agreed with the war criminals.
You assert that “Liberals hate war so much they will believe anything they think will stop the conflict.” That’s like saying Republicans love war so much they will believe anything they think will continue the conflict. Neither statement is worthy of a response.
You belittle other’s economic literacy, and then make a grossly erroneous statement that corporate taxes are irrelevant because they are just passed on to the consumer. Corporate taxes matter because they REDISTRIBUTE wealth (from the consumers who are willing to pay for the particular corporate goods or services in question) to Government revenue accounts (supposedly for a societal benefit or a higher moral purpose.) We haven’t even considered how corporate taxes on an entity like Underwriters Laboratories (with few consumers, themselves insurance companies?) might be markedly different in impact than corporate taxes on a particular retail industry; and, you have made no distinction between the effects of corporate taxes on books or children’s toy manufacturers/retailers compared to say, handgun or gasoline manufacturers/retailers. I guess for you it doesn’t matter.
As for the liability issue with UL, like usual you missed the point. So no need to argue that one. More observant readers will get it.
To say the Tillman and Lynch stories are being dragged up again is not accurate either. It was reported earlier, but in such a manner that probably 90% of Americans did not even hear about it or when they did they wouldn’t realize that it was a really bad thing – and that it wasn’t about the Military lying to the dead families so much (reprehensible as that is) as it was about the ADMINISTRATION’S role in creating and using the stories for their own political purposes to glorify the war. People are trying to bring LIES to the surface. You live in an Orwellian society shcb and you don’t even realize it.
Maybe this will start to awaken you: “Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.”
“They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy – but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.”
“As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.”
“Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we …“
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=WOL20070425&articleId=5487
April 26th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
And that, the better article, serves as an introduction to this: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=THO20070421&articleId=5454
April 27th, 2007 at 5:30 am
It’s funny how these conspiracy theories take on the same look after a while. They usually are more complicated than the “official story” involving a sinister plot with someone at the top directing the minions at the bottom.. Then there are the whistle blowers, people who can’t tell specifics, but can tell only vague references of what has happened, fore if they tell everything, the powerful will ruin their lives, even though in a lot of cases part of the vague references is how the powerful have already ruined their lives. The 911 conspiracy is classic in that it takes a simply explainable event, a well planned, well executed, military operation that was only partially successful but do to redundancies built in to the plan fulfilled the objective, in this case exceeded it.
One of the reasons, these theories get so complicated, is as questions are asked that can’t be answered by common sense, the story by necessity gets more and more complicated, soon unraveling into an overcomplicated maze of bits and pieces that taken as small snippets may make sense, but put together could (probably) never happen. You are taking an event that would be extremely hard to pull off due to it’s complexity and then propping it up with people who won’t tell the whole story. One last time, the administration didn’t need 911 to attack Iraq, they had all the reasons they needed prior. If they wanted to take down the buildings with explosives, why not just do it? Wouldn’t a half dozen car bombs in the parking garage be a simpler and more believable method of diverting attention from the shaped charges on the sixth floor?
Other items, small point but I don’t believe the rescue of Lynch is where the exaggeration was, it was how the platoon handled itself during the initial battle. Those details as I recall were quickly corrected as more information was acquired. As I recall Lynch didn’t even get out of her truck with a weapon and the rescue, while heroic was fairly uneventful in that the hospital was lightly guarded, and those guards were pulled away by a diversionary action a short distance away.
The unpresidented aspect of Clinton firing the prosecutors is he fired them all at once, usually they are allowed to finish cases and be replace in a more organized manner over a period of a few months or longer. Duke has plead guilty so it seems this case won’t be affected. Correct me if I am wrong, but it would seem there would be a transition phase that Dusty, whoever that is (sorry, haven’t kept up with this case), could be raided. If you knew about the impending raid don’t you think Dusty did?
Ah, Washington by it’s very nature is politicized, that is what they do. The Cindy Shehan’s of the world may be heroes to you, but their ideals would be suicidal if adopted as public policy. What would Cheney’s crimes be?
April 27th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Being a grumpy ole bastard that helped draw up the war plan for Iraq, you know, the war that “would last days, weeks, I doubt six months.”?
April 27th, 2007 at 11:53 am
shcb, I think NL reasons are about enough to hang the bastard. But don’t take my word for it,
why don’t you ask all the municipal and state and private citizens who have or are now drawing up the impeachment proceedings? The map on this website might be a place to start your education: http://www.a28.org/
or you can look at what George Tenant says now:
“In book, ex-CIA chief assails Cheney on Iraq invasion Tenet contends he was scapegoat.
George J. Tenet says Bush administration officials pushed the country to war.
Ex-CIA Chief, in New Book, Assails Cheney on Iraq War
By Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti, New York Times News Service | April 27, 2007
New York Times: WASHINGTON, April 26 – George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.
The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.
“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.
Mr. Tenet admits that he made his famous “slam dunk” remark about the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he argues that the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on President Bush’s decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war. ”
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2007/04/27/in_book_ex_cia_chief_assails_cheney_on_iraq_invasion/
April 28th, 2007 at 6:34 am
I doubt I will ever convince you of anything but I’ll try anyway. Here is my assertion in regards to the phrase “illegal war”; on an international level, there is no international government to create a law so there can be no illegal war, perhaps an immoral war but not illegal. On a national level, congress can declare war (article 1, section 8) which they did in essence a few days after 911 and then again a couple months before the invasion of Iraq the constitution doesn’t specify the wording of that declaration. The president is the commander in chief (article 2 section 2) this was expounded on in Federalist 69 by Hamilton. So tell me please what is illegal about this war?
I didn’t say all liberals hate war… I said you do, and a certain percentage on the far left. NL and Matt have both said there are times war is ok, they just don’t think this case rises to that level, but they don’t subscribe to your 911 theories much more than I do. Conservatives don’t love war, we just see the utility in it and would rather use the military option earlier than liberals so as to minimize the need for more force at a later date.
Liability issues, if there is no liability, there is no point to miss. Only less observant readers would have missed your false premise and taken your non point at face value. Good try, but you missed. As a bonus you tried to dismiss it when caught. UL is closer to a government agency than a traditional not for profit like a church or charitable organization, kind of like the Federal Reserve Board so lumping it into the same category as a charitable organization is a little disingenuous. You are right that I don’t think it matters whether the corporation is making baby nipples or 5.56mm ammunition, I don’t think any corporation should pay taxes, a corporation is nothing more than a self-selected group of people banding together to accomplish an objective they can’t do alone. Guess what, no corporate taxes, no corporate tax write offs. You are also correct that when a customer buys a product they are selecting who they want to pay their taxes, but it just goes into a big bucket anyway, you don’t buy Winchester ammunition, and I don’t buy Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, but neither company is going broke and they both pay our taxes (if you live in the US anyway). The government’s role is not to redistribute wealth in a capitalistic society. Number one priority is defense, redistribution is way, way down the line and should only be used as a final safety net. Families and local communities that take care of themselves are much healthier.
As to the Tillman and Lynch issue, I am just saying the story was vetted years ago, this is just a single item in a long line of Democratic strategies to trash Republicans, now this is bare knuckled politics and this tactic of throwing as much crap against the wall as you can and see what sticks was perfected by Dick Morris in the Clinton administration. I like Morris a lot, he is a mercenary and brilliant in his tactics. I just wish the Republicans would respond in kind, but they can’t without getting trashed in the media, oh well. To make soldiers bigger a hero than they are in real life, now there is a high crime and misdemeanor. I’m guessing Alvin York didn’t think he was doing anything special in the Argonne Forest on 8 October 1918.
I wonder if Thailand has a version of our second amendment or a Militia Act of 1792
Sorry to break it to you, but Boulder, Madison, and Berkley can scream all they want, they can’t impeach a president who is just doing his job, only the Senate can do that, but they won’t, because he is just doing his job. (article 1 section 3, Federalist 63 and 65)
I have always though Tenet was a scapegoat, but I am glad the administration pushed the country to war, to do less would have been a dereliction of duty. We had to go somewhere to kill Arabs, they hadn’t surrendered yet, if you want to win a war you keep going until your enemy cries uncle.
A little prediction on the Washington Waltz, congress has passed a supplemental spending bill with a withdrawal timetable. Bush will veto, Republicans will call Democrats unpatriotic, Democrats will blather about the will of the people, congress will pass a bill with a “non-binding” timeframe somewhere close to the election, more pontificating from both sides, a supplemental bill will be signed by the president without a timetable, but a lot of pork for both sides. When it gets close to the election, if things aren’t going exceptionally good in Iraq, the Dems will say “see, we would be out of this quagmire if Bush had signed our bill” if things are going well, they will say, “things would not be going this well if we had not forced Bush’s hand”.
April 29th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Looks like all the excuses are already prepared! Whatever you do, don’t hold Bush and his administration accountable for any of this, that would be just crazy.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:53 am
NL, I especially chuckled at the excuse “we had to go somewhere to kill Arabs” as it revealed the shcb neo-con pathology:
– extreme racism justifying murder (much like the Nazi’s mindset in attacking the Jews in WWII),
– lumping vast geographical and extremely varied cultures into one demonic scapegoat “Arabs”,
– willfully ignoring or ignorance of the context when the USA invaded Iraq (already at war in Afghanistan ostensibly to violently overthrow the Taliban from power and to kill Osama bin Laden and his followers who were not in Iraq), and,
– a bloodthirsty need for revenge and domination rather than for justice.
shcb, other than your rather lame excuses, consider this
Re: international law, from wiki:
Public international law
Main article: Public international law
Public international law (or international public law) concerns the relationships between sovereign nations. It is developed mainly through multilateral conventions, though custom (state practice with opinio juris) can play an important role. Its modern corpus started to be developed in the middle of the 19th Century. The two World Wars, the League of Nations and other international organizations such as the International Labor Organization all contributed to accelerate this process and established much of the foundations of modern public international law. After the failure of the Treaty of Versailles and World War II, the League of Nations was replaced by the United Nations, founded under the UN Charter. The UN has developed new standards, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Other international norms and laws have been established through international agreements; e.g. the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war or armed conflict, as well as by other international organizations such as the ILO, the World Health Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the International Telecommunication Union, UNESCO, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund. Thus later law is of great importance in the realm of international relations.
After a conflict has ended, persons who have committed or ordered any breach of the laws of war, especially atrocities, may be held individually accountable for war crimes through process of law. Also, nations which signed the Geneva Conventions are required to search for, then try and punish, anyone who has committed or ordered certain “grave breaches” of the laws of war. (see GC III, Art. 129 and Art. 130)
In looking into another matter, I was amazed to discover how many armed conflicts the usa is involved with. It would seem that this equation USA = War is not too far off the mark:
http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-united-states-military-history-events
re: Underwriter’s Labs – that’s your opinion, most people in civilized countries disagree.
Re: Jessica Lynch / Tillman – Let’s hope we can all live up to a higher standard of truth than that which existed during WWI (and WWI). But you mention Alvin York – how does that relate to Tillman & Lynch?
Re: George Tenant:
There are some good thoughts here about “Lessons Learned”
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042907Y.shtml
and it includes the full text from which I have pulled these excerpts:
“The following was sent to George Tenet today in care of his publisher. The letter, written by a group of former intelligence officers, reflects disgust with George Tenet’s effort to burnish his image with his new “tell all” book.
This is not a case of Monday morning quarterbacking. You helped send very mixed signals to the American people and their legislators in the fall of 2002. CIA field operatives produced solid intelligence in September 2002 that stated clearly there was no stockpile of any kind of WMD in Iraq. This intelligence was ignored and later misused. On October 1 you signed and gave to President Bush and senior policy makers a fraudulent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) – which dovetailed with unsupported threats presented by Vice President Dick Cheney in an alarmist speech on August 26, 2002.
You were well aware that the White House tried to present as fact intelligence you knew was unreliable. And yet you tried to have it both ways. On October 7, just hours before the president gave a major speech in Cincinnati, you were successful in preventing him from using the fable about Iraq purchasing uranium in Africa, although that same claim appeared in the NIE you signed only six days before.
Although CIA officers learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden an enemy of the Baghdad regime, you still went before Congress in February 2003 and testified that Iraq did indeed have links to Al Qaeda.
You showed a lack of leadership and courage in January of 2003 as the Bush Administration pushed and cajoled analysts and managers to let them make the bogus claim that Iraq was on the verge of getting its hands on uranium. You signed off on Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations. And, at his insistence, you sat behind him and visibly squandered CIA’s most precious asset – credibility.
You may now feel you were bullied and victimized but you were also one of the bullies. In the end you allowed suspect sources, like Curveball, to be used based on very limited reporting and evidence. Yet you were informed in no uncertain terms that Curveball was not reliable. You broke with CIA standard practice and insisted on voluminous evidence to refute this reporting rather than treat the information as suspect. You helped set the bar very low for reporting that supported favored White House positions, while raising the bar astronomically high when it came to raw intelligence that did not support the case for war being hawked by the president and vice president. “
April 30th, 2007 at 1:19 am
The main example of shcb & neo-con justifications for endless war is 911 yet they refuse to look at the evidence objectively and shcb again derided a fact-based approach to determining what happened on 911.
This excerpt from a recent article might be helpful:
“The fact that some questionable PhD scholars exist in the world has absolutely no bearing on the fact that physics can and DOES tell us definitively why three buildings collapsed in New York. The issue here is not how many PhDs are on one side or the other of this issue, or how reputable they are.
The issue is: What does a serious qualitative and quantitative analysis of the forces and energies involved in this event tell us? What does a serious chemical analysis of samples from “Ground Zero” tell us?
Look at this photo: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/wtc1nenw.html
Every one of those rectangular pieces of debris is a massive segment of steel girder. My cursory examination of the photo puts the minimum size of those girders at about the same size as the distance between each floor of the building. Probably 10-12 feet? 9 feet, conservatively. This would be a reasonable guess, since logically steel elements would have to be at least as high as each floor. Now what does a 10 foot steel girder weigh?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22weight%22+%22structural+steel+gi…
From what I can tell, I good MINIMUM estimate for those pieces would be about 4,000 lbs. Ok, so how much energy does it take to toss a 4000 lbs. piece of steel 70 meters? Mind you, they’re not gliding away from the building on the wind! Whatever distance those beams travel laterally, the energy to put them there has to have been generated at the point of origin. What is the energy source? Air pressure being squeezed out of the building? Laughable. Reaction to the downward kinetic force of the upper floors? This is the only real option if we remain in complete, irrational denial of the possibility of explosives. Well, the hypothesis that this energy was transferred from the downward kinetic (purely gravitational) energy of the upper floors CAN BE TESTED MATHEMATICALLY.
Here is another big problem with the gravitational collapse hypothesis. Steel and concrete account for nearly all of the mass of these buildings. Drywall is a small fraction, other building materials and office contents are negligible.
Now look at these photos:
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/wtc2exp9.html
We see a significant fraction of the steel being ejected OUTSIDE THE PROFILE OF THE BUILDING. We also see the progressively growing dust cloud. (No that isn’t smoke, we saw the black smoke of the fire, that is light grey dust.) This dust cloud is the pulverized concrete, drywall, furniture, bodies… Chemical analysis can verify this. Also, photos of the aftermath show that nothing but steel and this dust remained. Anyway, as I was saying, we see a significant portion of the steel ejected outside the profile of the building, and a huge portion of the other building materials pulverized to dust. Look at the cloud in the last photo. That is a MASSIVE amount of material suspended in the air. That dust contains much or MOST of the non-steel mass of the building. Look how much of it is outside the profile of the building. Also, even within the profile, dust doesn’t provide any mass with which to crush a building. It floats in the air! Getting to my point… If much or most of the mass of the building is outside of the profile or pulverized to dust, WHAT IS CRUSHING THE REST OF THE BUILDING?!?!? If the mass going straight down the axis of the building is getting smaller, the crushing would slow, then stop. It didn’t. It proceeded at nearly the speed of gravitational accelleration, all the way to the ground.
Please explain to me how this is possible. I don’t want to hear anything about hijackers, or Osama, or conspiracies, or planes. I want to know how a gravitational collapse can produce this result.
http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/index.html
“
May 1st, 2007 at 5:01 am
NL,
I’m sure the Democrats have their excuses lined up people who don’t do anything but criticize others willing to take action always do. Why would I or anyone hold the Bush administration accountable for doing the right thing, just because you guys think it is wrong to reach out and touch someone who wants to do you harm doesn’t mean it is incorrect, maybe we should hold the people giving aid and comfort to the enemy accountable. What do you think Hitler would have done if in say September 1944 the congress said they were going to pull all American troops out of Europe in 1945 whether the war was over or not.
Knarly,
I haven’t a clue what Sergeant York had to do with my point, I must have zigged when I should have zagged.
I’m not a neo-con, I have been a conservative all my life, there was no need to come over from the dark side, I saw the light at an early age. Funny how I am a racist whenever I point out that Arabs attacked us and Arabs aren’t speaking out when Arabs attack us or other Arabs, purposely targeting women and children. It is also queer that you brought up Nazi’s and Jews, when at least once in our discussions one of you guys hinted that maybe it was Israel’s fault and maybe it would be better if the Jewish state didn’t exist. Bloodthirsty may be a bit strong, but yes I want revenge, I also want justice, and I want them to die over there than us to die over here. It’s harsh, but I would rather their children die in the crossfire than mine. We didn’t ask to be attacked for the last 30 years and we tolerated it to an extent, justifying that if an American went over there they were taking a chance with their life, but that was a decision they could make themselves, but when the Arabs come over here and attack us, we are going to kick their ass until they never dare touch us again. Tell me again how we are dominating anyone, careful, that is a loaded question.
I think the Wiki definition of “international law” is pretty much right, it is a hodgepodge of treaties, associations, and alliances without any real force of law unless they win the war, whichever war that may be. So far the good guys have won most all the wars. All this collective holier than thou moxy is predicated on one thing, the US military. Don’t believe it? When was the last time the UN enforced any of its resolutions without the US military. Why aren’t Ellen and Shawn and Sigourney and her little boyfriend screaming at Belgium to please stop the slaughter in Darfur. Maybe because only 10% of their 40,000 man army is usable, the rest are mainly using the military for the pension. Oops, I’m sorry one side of the Darfur conflict there is Muslim Arab, those peace loving folks that are just so misunderstood.
You’re right, we in the US are proud of out warrior status, we have saved Europe from herself twice and the world from Soviet domination in the last century alone, not to mention countless times the UN has stepped in to stop conflicts.
I don’t think most people in the civilized world really care the tax status of UL. But it shows the economic illiteracy of the guy who most likely has an axe to grind with UL. So explain to me again how UL would be liable for anything that happened on 911?
The letter from the former intelligence guys is a classic, since you guys are all about catching people telling lies I’m surprised you missed a few things. No one said Iraq bought yellow cake from Niger, just attempted. There are prisoners of war that have said they trained in Iraq. Iraq was giving money to families of homicide bombers, he had vowed to defeat America. Again, no one has ever said Sadam had met personally with bin Laden just that they were allies, and allies don’t have to like each other, just hate their mutual enemy more. Was the intelligence by a few field operatives ignored or overridden by more convincing information, like the rest of the civilized world’s intelligence community? If Tenant was this bad a guy, maybe you should be giving Bush kudos’ for firing him.
See how this is done? When you have an opponent, Bush in this case, and you don’t have any real evidence he has done anything wrong, maybe because he hasn’t, but you still hate what he has done or will do, you kill him by a thousand bites. None of the above lies are that far off the mark, just a little, did Sadam try and buy yellow cake, or did he buy yellow cake, little tiny difference to the casual observer. The neat trick is it takes a long time to get the convoluted story of how he tried to get the yellow cake, but the bumper sticker remark can be made of where is the yellow cake if you turn the facts into a little tiny lie by saying he actually bought it. I have heard the statement that this is the most scandal ridden administration of all time, one small problem, they have all been alleged scandals, not a single one has amounted to anything. You guys have a website devoted to all the lies this administration has perpetrated, and yet after repeated requests, I have not had anyone give me an example, the best anyone has come up with is deceptions, and then a lame attempt to redefine deception as a lie.
Come to the side of light my friends, come to the side of light….
May 1st, 2007 at 5:11 am
knarly,
The dust, while large in volume is light in weight. The dust is just the dust, not all the steel and concrete that took months to haul away. There is another example of a false assertion that all the non metal material was in the air in the form of dust. The crushing force of the unsupported upper floors falling onto the fewer and fewer lower floors would have gotten larger and larger, making the building’s collapse speed up. That speed adds more force (exponentially) and so on. Whether the building was brought down by planes or a small amount of explosives. There cool, rational thought.
May 1st, 2007 at 6:04 am
FYI SHCB, When you said, “we had to go somehwere to kill Arabs”, I stopped listening to you. Sorry, but I really have no respect for people like you.
Peace!
May 1st, 2007 at 8:12 am
I agree with NL.
As for the dust, that’s from the explosion, as for the rubble, that’s from the floors that were not exploded. There’s both, and if you can’t understand that then maybe your federal government SHOULD be funding education instead of weapons of mass destruction.
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Sorry to hear you guys didn’t read the rest of my post, it was absolutely brilliant in it’s delivery and substance. School children will read the profound words I have written for centuries to come. Women will swoon, men will bow their heads in honor. Wow that was fun! I’m guessing you guys have read it by now, curiosity getting the better of you, but there is just no way to refute the brilliance so you run and hide.
So let me get this straight, that huge cloud of dust that could be seen for miles and miles was produced by the ninja’s that set those perfectly placed charges to knock the legs out of the buildings. It would take hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives to make a cloud that large. Now we’re back to the huge conspiracy. See how this stuff just circles back into itself. Face it Arabs killed Americans, now Americans are killing Arabs. And so it goes.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:20 pm
http://911research.wtc7.net/materials/posters/airtop.pdf
http://911research.wtc7.net/faq/index.html
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:58 am
Hi JDC – I heard tale that April was bloodiest month yet for America in Iraq, is that true?
NL – you think this is going to end soon?
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:59 am
Acording to Global Security.org the April death toll was was less than or equal to 5 other months so it would certainly be accurate to say it was ONE OF the bloodiest months.
The war won’t end soon, it may move to a different venue, most likely Iran, but it won’t end for at least 5 to ten years, maybe 30. but it will end, they all do only to be replaced by another.
It could end sooner, but that would entail escelating the violence by a factor of maybe 20, with a large loss of civilian life, but that would not be acceptible at this time.
May 3rd, 2007 at 10:26 am
kk, will it end soon?
Paul Berton (a conservative columnist) wrote this the other day of the Iraq war:
—
It was a shameless publicity stunt. Four years ago today, U.S. President George W. Bush swept onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in a Navy S-3B Viking, jumped out of the cockpit and declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq.
Saddam’s statue had been toppled in Baghdad, and the man himself was on the run. Military experts, government officials and media commentators declared victory in the cradle of civilization.
At that time, little more than 100 U.S. soldiers had died. Many observers still believed weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq. Some Iraqis said now they “could start living.” Despite popular belief, al-Qaida was not — yet — operating in Iraq.
Four years later, more than 3,000 U.S. soldiers are dead, and some 24,000 wounded. Bush administration claims that Iraq harboured weapons of mass destruction have been revealed as outright lies, swallowed unquestioningly by the media. The war costs U.S. taxpayers $200 million a day and $1 trillion so far.
And terrorism, in Iraq and around the world, is fueled like never before by propaganda and the impression Americans are occupiers not liberators, bullies not saviours.
The heroic work of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is rendered suspect by the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere.
Iraq is a mess. Infrastructure is devastated. Death and injury are commonplace. Doctors have fled. Westerners cower behind barricades. Iraqis fear for their lives. Corruption is rampant. Sectarian violence is out of control. Terrorism flourishes. Democracy, if ever possible, is today a ridiculous notion.
Civil war is inevitable — if not already tragically apparent.
And the “mission” whatever it may once have been, will never be “accomplished.”
Most ominously, this conflict threatens to draw in the region, destabilizing the entire Middle East.
Democrats, despite insisting U.S. soldiers be brought home, should realize with the same mounting horror as everyone else there is but one sad reality: the U.S. cannot stay, and it cannot leave.
The Sept. 11 attackers have finally accomplished their mission.
—
I think that says it all.
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:34 am
NL – Yes, that pretty much says it all (& if OBL was responsible for 911 then the USA rushed into his trap and he has now become victorious beyond his wildest dreams.)
That the USA “cannot leave” is open for debate. On that note, I would suggest that all the Americans who support this war should “put up or shut up” and go to Iraq to do some good Christian work to protect the innocent, instead of supporting Satan and the troops in killing people and blowing things up.
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:55 am
NL – As I said,
“That the USA ‘cannot leave’ is open to debate”:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6618075.stm
“if OBL was responsible”:
http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2006/09/911-fact-sheet.html
Just thought you’d find those interesting NL. Cheers.
May 4th, 2007 at 11:56 am
US troop war deaths for April seems to be over 100… and the USA is there in part to fight “terrorism” that is created in the American psyche by a pack of LIES – just like lies told by this NIST engineer on this short video… WOW! For anyone who still places faith in the NIST report, watch this short Q & A with a lead NIST engineer (TOTAL LIES):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7180303712325092501&hl=en
further background…
“The Bush Administration employed a number of such credentialed experts to give us multiple explanations for the unprecedented destruction of three tall steel-framed buildings at the World Trade Center (WTC). Unfortunately, all of those explanations have proven to be false, and this fact reminds us that academic credentials don’t necessarily make a person more capable of, or more likely to, tell the truth.
Exactly how they could find so many experts on the fire-induced collapse of tall buildings is not immediately clear, considering such an event had never happened before. But it did help that the questions were quickly framed as being solely matters of structural engineering, a sub-field of civil engineering, because structural engineers … (the rest of this lengthy analysis here: http://stj911.com/ryan/TruthInCredentials.html )
… and some further items to consider until May 8 when D. R. Griffins “Debunking 9/11 Debunking” is released:
http://911review.com/articles/ryan/lies_about_wtc.html
May 4th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
For anyone who still places faith in the NIST report, watch this short Q & A with a lead NIST engineer:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7180303712325092501&hl=en
“The Bush Administration employed a number of such credentialed experts to give us multiple explanations for the unprecedented destruction of three tall steel-framed buildings at the World Trade Center (WTC). Unfortunately, all of those explanations have proven to be false, and this fact reminds us that academic credentials don’t necessarily make a person more capable of, or more likely to, tell the truth.
Exactly how they could find so many experts on the fire-induced collapse of tall buildings is not immediately clear, considering such an event had never happened before. But it did help that the questions were quickly framed as being solely matters of structural engineering, a sub-field of civil engineering, because structural engineers … http://stj911.com/ryan/TruthInCredentials.html
and further items to consider until May 8 when D. R. Griffins “Debunking 9/11 Debunking” is released:
http://911review.com/articles/ryan/lies_about_wtc.html
May 4th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Thanks, KK, they were interesting.
Btw, if you don’t mind me asking, what part of Canada are you from?
I live in the Greater Toronto Area, near Niagara Falls, ON.
May 4th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Cute. I’ve been shunned by better men than you guys, I’ll just keep writing, eventually something I say will get you reengaged.
Poor Mr. Berten has bought into one of the biggest lies perpetrated by liberals concerning George Bush, that he declared victory on the deck of that aircraft carrier. I say lie advisedly, There is enough information easily available to see he never said the war in Iraq was over, quite to the contrary, he said in the speech there was a long way to go. The other lies, by the way, are that he stole the election in 2000 and that he lied to the American people about going to war.
The celebration on the Lincoln and the prominent banner was for the successful mission of the Abraham Lincoln. She and her crew were on their war home from six months at sea when they were called to the gulf to engage in the Iraqi invasion. After toppling the regime they were finally returning home. As the President said in his speech, the major conflict was over, that part of the operation that required big equipment, what was left was year after year of slogging through the streets killing one terrorist at a time, read the transcript. Of course propaganda is much easier if you ignore facts (lie?).
Sir Michael Page, how sad. “The catastrophes that were predicted after Vietnam never happened.” I guess he was absent during the killing fields part of history. Takes care of his credibility. But just for fun, his premise is not quite right. In this war the two sides are the US with our allies, which include the UK and the Iraqi army. The enemy forces include former Baathist party members, Al Qaeda, Syrian and Leboniese mercenaries etc. A more accurate comparison with the American Revolution would be to compare the Baathist and Al Qaeda forces to the British and the American forces of today to the French forces of the Revolution. With the Iraqi forces being the Colonists. We, as the French at that time are not fighting for imperialistic reasons; we are fighting with the patriotic Iraqi forces because we share a common enemy. As the French did in the last of the 18th century, when our patriot friends’ win and can sustain that win, we will leave. The lines in this war are a little muddier of course since in the American Revolution we were fighting a foreign power whereas in this war it is countryman against countryman, more like a civil war.
May 4th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Hi NL greetings from Victoria BC.
I think you mentioned the NIST report earlier & I think you will be interested in this. I came across this short Q&A session with a NIST Engineer that just blew me away:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7180303712325092501&hl=en
That short video it gives some credence to other claims, such as these (most people, like me, won’t have the time or inclination to read it all, but I think I got the gist from the first page or two):
http://stj911.com/ryan/TruthInCredentials.html
May 4th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
But NL, here is the JEWEL- this definitive article, first published in the March/April 2007 Issue of the Jewish Magazine “Tikkun” requires a person needs to read through the first five or six short introductory pages to get to the real gems:
http://journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/DavidRayGriffin911Empire.pdf
May 4th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
In 2002, Iraqi oil production based on agreements with Russian, Chinese, French companies and a smattering of other countries. Enter the US Military. Now it is 100% American and British firms. Previous contracts with the old regime null and void, to bad so sad Russia, China and French firms lose, America gets the prize. Is that economic or military warfare or both? And if Americans get to write the revenue sharing law, what a prize that will be! http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2007/03/iraqi_oil_agreement.html
May 4th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Or, as was said in 2002:
“US and UK companies long held a three-quarter share in Iraq’s oil production, but they lost their position with the 1972 nationalization of the Iraq Petroleum Company.(6) The nationalization, following ten years of increasingly rancorous relations between the companies and the government, rocked the international oil industry, as Iraq sought to gain greater control of its oil resources. After the nationalization, Iraq turned to French companies and the Russian (Soviet) government for funds and partnerships.(7) Today, the US and UK companies are very keen to regain their former position, which they see as critical to their future leading role in the world oil industry. The US and the UK governments also see control over Iraqi and Gulf oil as essential to their broader military, geo-strategic and economic interests. At the same time, though, other states and oil companies hope to gain a large or even dominant position in Iraq. As de-nationalization sweeps through the oil sector, international companies see Iraq as an extremely attractive potential field of expansion. France and Russia, the longstanding insiders, pose the biggest challenge to future Anglo-American domination, but serious competitors from China, Germany and Japan also play in the Iraq sweepstakes.(8) ”
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2002/08jim.htm
May 6th, 2007 at 6:45 am
One of the things I have always noticed about liberals is their ability to just ignore important factors of a situation, or to shove off responsibility to someone else for a task they felt was beneath them of something they found repulsive. After reading a few of the links you have provided and watching the pattern develop in your writings I am seeing the same “if I ignore it, it will go away” pattern. There are other cousins of this pathology; rewriting history, have someone else do it, then if they screw up they get blamed, and just leaving out chunks of a story that are inconvenient or detrimental to the truth.
Sir Michael Page ignores the killing of ¼ of a countries’ population by communists just as Truman ignored Stalin, the Global Policy piece conveniently leaves out the Food for oil scandal, (I searched for “food” without a match). I then searched “food for oil scandal” and came up with several pieces written by Joshua Holland on Alter Net, in one “Iraq and oil-for-food: the real story” he downplays the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in the first gulf war, calling it a small oil dictatorship and tries to say the real reason was because we were worried about Saudi Arabia, a large oil dictatorship. He then twists himself into knots trying to equate that with this second invasion of Iraq. Then you guys won’t admit we are at war, won’t admit we are at war with Arabs, and think the victim, America is the bad guy in all this, even blaming it’s government of the crime itself.
Which brings up another tendency of liberals, you blame the victim, or at least defend the bad guy. In the food for oil story, The UN requested America kick Sadam out of Kuwait (Joshua says Sadam withdrew as if he had a choice). The UN asked us to secure the north and south air space and nothing more. We did that, the UN then engaged in the time honored but less effective sanctions and diplomacy. Diplomacy with someone like Sadam of course never works, and the sanctions were starving the little people because in a state like Sadam’s the little people come way last. And of course America was somehow to blame for those deaths, not Sadam. In comes the food for oil program. France and Russia sign on to the program, then ignore it and continue to buy oil from Iraq outside the program and then they bitch when they are not included in the spoils of war, a just war they opposed because it would upset and expose their treachery.
Reality and truth are inconvenient sometimes, accepting that and meeting the challenge head on is one of the curses of becoming an adult. You will never defeat evil by taking it’s side, it will use you until good has been defeated, then it will squish you like a bug unless you become as evil as it.
May 6th, 2007 at 9:12 am
bad Arabs targeted a market today killing at least 30 other Arabs, another bomb at a police HQ killed more good Arabs including the chief. When will the silent Arabs stand up and say enough is enough.
May 6th, 2007 at 10:25 am
I disagree with a lot of Gary Brecher’s ideologies but have to admire his humour, matter of fact presentation, and knowledge of geo-politics that is far superior to the typical Bush supporters:
Article pasted below, but go to this link for the original with pictures: http://www.exile.ru/2007-May-04/war_nerd.html
FRESNO, CA — A funny thing happened on the floor of the Senate last week. Somebody asked a serious question: “If the war in Iraq is lost, then who won?”
Of course Sen. Lindsay Graham, the guy who asked the question, didn’t mean it to be serious. He was just scoring points off Harry Reid, the world’s only Democratic Mormon. Reid had made a “gaffe” by saying in public what everybody already knows: “The war in Iraq is lost.” When you say something obviously true in politics, it’s called a “gaffe.”
So Graham, McCain’s bitch, jumps in to embarrass Reid with his question.
But let’s take the question seriously for a second here: who won in Iraq? To answer it, you have to start with a close-up of the region, then change magnification to look at the world picture. At a regional level the big winner is obvious: Iran. In fact, Iran wins so big in this war that I’ve already said that Dick Cheney’s DNA should be checked out by a reputable lab, because he has to be a Persian mole. My theory is that they took a fiery young Revolutionary Guard from the slums of Tehran, dipped him in a vat of lye to get that pale, pasty Anglo skin, zapped his scalp for that authentic bald CEO look, squirted a quart of cholesterol into his arteries so he’d develop classic American cardiac disease, and parachuted him into the outskirts of some Wyoming town. And that’s how our VP was born again, a half-frozen zombie with sagebrush twigs in his jumpsuit, stumbling into the first all-night coffee shop in Casper talking American with a Persian accent: “Hello my friends! Er, I mean, hello my fellow Americans! Coffee? I will have coffee at once, indeed, and is not free enterprise a glorious thing? Say, O brethren of the frosty tundra, what do you say we finish our donuts and march on Baghdad now, this very moment, to remove the Baathist abomination Saddam?”
It took a couple for Cheney-ajad to get his American accent right and chew his way into Bush Jr.’s head, but he made it like one of Khan’s earwigs, got us to do the Ayatollahs’ dirty work for them by taking out Iraq, their only rival for regional power. Iraq is destroyed, and Tehran hasn’t lost a single soldier in the process. Our invasion put their natural allies, the Shia, in power; gave their natural enemies, the Iraqi Sunni, a blood-draining feud that will never end; and provided them with a risk-free laboratory to spy on American forces in action. If they feel like trying out a new weapon or tactic to deal with U.S. armor, all they have to do is feed the supplies or diagrams to one of their puppet Shia groups, or even one of the Sunni suicide-commando clans.
All these claims that Iran is helping the insurgents really make my head spin. Of course they’re helping. They’d be insane if they weren’t. If somebody invades the country next door, any state worth mentioning has to act. If Mexico got invaded by China, you better believe the U.S. would react. We’d lynch any president who didn’t.
Gentlemen’s bet: which leader’s country will benefit more from America’s idiotic wars?
What really amazes me is how patient Iran has been about it, how quiet and careful. They’ve covered their tracks carefully and kept their intervention to R&D level: just enough to keep Iraq burning, and patiently test out news IEDs.
But that’s the Persian way: behind all the yelling, they’re sly, clever people. If Iranian intelligence really wanted to flood Iraq with weaponry that would turn our APCs into well-insulated BBQs, they could have done it long ago. It’s clear they’re not doing that. They’re smart enough to follow Napoleon’s advice not to interfere with an enemy in the process of destroying himself – and stockpiling the new IED designs on their side of the border in case we’re stupid enough to invade.
The situation in Iraq right now is optimum for Iran. Iraq is like a nuclear reactor that they can control by inserting and removing control rods. If Shia/Sunni violence looks like cooling off, Tehran’s agents, who’ve penetrated both sides of the fight, play the hothead in their assigned Sunni or Shia gangs and lobby for a spectacular attack on enemy civvies or shrines – whatever gets the locals’ blood up. Then, if things get too hot, which would mean the U.S. getting fed up and leaving, they drop a control rod into the reactor core by telling Sadr to call off his militia or letting the Maliki regime stage some ceremony for the TV crews, the kind that keeps the Bushies back in Ohio convinced it’s all going to come out fine.
They need to keep us there, because – makes me sick to say it but it’s true – our troops are now the biggest, strongest control rod the Persians are using to set the temperature of this war. They want us there as long as possible, stoking the feuds and making sure nobody wins. That’s what we just did under Petraeus: switched sides, Shia to Sunni, because the Shia were getting too strong. Yeah, God forbid we should be unfair to the Sunnis, God forbid we should do anything to let somebody win. Let’s just make Tehran happy by keeping the feud going another few centuries.
One thing Iran is pretty clearly not scared of is every American amateur’s dream: a punitive U.S. invasion of Iran. In fact, like North Korea, their partner in the Axis of Evil, Iran is all but begging us to invade. Guys in junior high used to hold their chins out, tap them with a finger and say, “Come on, fucker, come on, hit me!” That’s Iran now, chin out and begging for a right hook. Because with all the anti-armor know-how they’ve gained by now, they have traps waiting for us that would make Lara Croft’s cave expeditions look like a backyard tea party. Even Cheney’s team knows that, which is why they’re talking about air raids on Iran these days, not invasion.
Another way countries can win in a regional war like this is from the money flooding in. The big winners of the Vietnam War were Thailand, Malaysia and Hong Kong. Thailand went from a failed state with a half-dozen insurgencies everywhere outside its central valley to a rich, happy tourist paradise during Nam. Modern Thailand is a country built on the backs and, uh, other body parts of its bar girls. Every time a GI spent his pay at the ping-pong shows in Bangkok, Thailand gained foreign exchange. The neon got brighter, the huts went split-level, and the Commie rebels swatting mosquitoes out there in the elephant grass started to feel a little foolish. Finally they said the Hell with it, bought suits and went Yuppie.
That’s one way to beat an insurgency: bribe it. Unfortunately, the two neighboring states likely to benefit from the Iraq war are…yup, those twin towers of evil, Syria and Iran. Just imagine how much money is flowing into their border provinces right now. Need any U.S.-issue supplies, weapons, toilet paper, or GPS units cheap? Just ask at any bazaar in Damascus or Tehran. Uncle Sam’s guarantee of quality – fell off the back of a two-and-a-half ton truck.
See, this is why I keep thinking Cheney’s got to be an Iranian mole. How could he not see that a war in Iraq benefits noncombatant neighboring states? He had to know. He can’t be that stup – Wait, I withdraw the comment.
Some paranoids want to list Israel among the winners, but I don’t see it. Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz thought invading Iraq would help Israel, or rather Likud, but like everything else these geniuses predicted, it didn’t happen. Iraq was never a threat to Israel. Iran is. And Iran is much stronger now. Last summer’s war with Hezbollah was one the Israelis didn’t really want to fight, but Cheney insisted. That was the deal, I guess: the U.S. takes out Saddam, then you take out Hezbollah. Instead, the IDF looked scared and weak in South Lebanon, so now Hezbollah and Iran are the poster-boys of every red-blooded Muslim kid on the planet.
Turkey, America’s one real ally in the Middle East, is a huge loser in this war. We slapped them in the face, gave the Kurds a base to destabilize southeastern Turkey, and helped elect the first Islamist president in what used to be a proudly secular country. Happy now, Cheney, you Khomeini-loving, anti-American mole?
When you zoom farther out to look at the global picture, the question “Who won Iraq?” doesn’t have such an obvious answer. It’s much easier to see who lost: Us, and anybody who backed us. We looked invincible after taking out the Taliban. Not no more. If you use armored columns as stationary cops in enemy neighborhoods, you give the locals plenty of time to figure out their weak spots. That’s what we did: gave the Arabs a trillion-dollar, multi-year seminar in how to defeat U.S. forces. Another lesson in the Brecher Doctrine: Nuke ’em, bribe ’em or leave ’em alone.
To find a winner in this war means looking outside the box, like they say – or rather outside the theater of war. Because the winners are the countries smart enough to stay out of it.
A little historical perspective first. Who won the Thirty Years War? France and England, the European powers that stayed out or just dabbled. France played that war a lot like Iran has played this one: tinkered around, tampered, spied and whispered to all the contenders, but never risked a big chunk of money or force. Every country that took part lost, and the Germans, who had what you might call the home field disadvantage, lost most of all, up to a third of their population. So if you cared about the Iraqis, which I don’t and neither do you, then they’d win the Oscar for biggest losers here. But then they had that one locked up already.
So the likely winner of a war like this is an up-n-coming world economic power that has been investing in its own economy while we blow a trillion – yep, a trillion – dollars on nothing. Not hard to figure out who the likely suspects are here.
China understands that an army is most effective when kept penned in and on parade, rather than riding around a hostile, far-away country.
The answer to “Who won Iraq?” is Iran in the short run, and in the long run, China and India.
While we flounder around in the Dust Bowl, they’ve been running up their reserves, putting the money into infrastructure and bullion. The moment you wait for in a setup like this is the inevitable alliance between the regional winner and the global winners. And voila, it’s already happened: In February Iran and India signed a pipeline deal sending Iranian oil to the exploding Indian market, bypassing Bush’s Saudi/U.S. petro-outpost. If it weren’t for Pakistan, the pipeline would already be in
place. And as you might have guessed, Iran and India are talking about how easily the pipeline can be looped over the Himalayas to China – an overland route invulnerable to U.S. sea power.
Luckily Pakistan lies right across the route and Pakistan is so hopelessly messed up that the CIA and ISI between them should be able to keep the black smoke pouring out of any section of line the Asiatics manage to finish.
But even that’s bad news: we’re reduced to a spoiler role, conspiring with the nastiest creeps in the world, the ISI, to keep our blood enemy Iran from forming a natural, inevitable market relationship with the two rising powers that have spent their money smart while we pissed it down the Tigris. A country as big and resilient as America can afford to lose a war now and then, especially when it’s in a place like Nam, way off the trade routes. But a war like this… I don’t know.
What’s worst is that the war’s made us dumber. When Sen. Graham asked his question, “Who won Iraq?” he thought he was being clever. He thought we’re too dumb and soft to face that question and its answers. Because there are answers, pretty grim ones. I just hope people are tough enough to start thinking about them.
Anyway, for those of you collecting War Nerd guidelines, here’s what I think are some general rules for “Who wins wars?”
1) In a big bloodbath like the Thirty Years War or WWI, the winner is usually the powers that don’t fight, but dabble in spycraft and wet ops, meanwhile consolidating their own economic power.
2) The biggest loser is almost always the country on whose territory the war is fought. (Note: You could argue that America entered WWII fairly early and still came out ahead, but on the European Front up to D-Day our role was supplying materiel to the Russians and letting them do all the bleeding for us. On both fronts we were far away from the action and that allowed us to pick where and when to commit money and troops, so the generalization still holds: the further away you are, the better.)
3) In a regional war, the big winner will be any neighboring states that can stay out of the war and work out supply contracts with the richer combatant (Thailand during Nam, Argentina in WWI, Switzerland in every war since Ur took on Ur South).
4) However, if there’s an ethnic spillover, like Turkey has with the Kurds, this relationship can backfire.
5) The worst thing a major power can do is go to war alone for “moral” reasons. This is how medieval France wasted its huge advantages on pointless Middle Eastern crusades that did nothing but revitalize the Muslims and drive down the price of white slaves in the Cairo market.
Damn, another unbelievably infuriating deja vu deal: we end up wasting our armies in the deserts of the Middle East, just like the French. Except even the French were too smart to fall for it this time around.
May 7th, 2007 at 11:57 am
That’s awesome, knarley! I went on vacation last year to the Island, what a beautiful place to live. I tried surfing in Tofino, couldn’t really grasp it, but it was sure fun trying! Everyone is sooooo nice out there.
Plus you get exposed to the west coast style of liberalism – the best kind.
PS – Watch out for them sasquatches!
May 8th, 2007 at 12:34 am
yes NL, this is a pretty sweet spot – if you can take all the damn flower petals littering the streets and being ogled by bald eagles when you just want a few minutes to yourself at a quiet beach; and another thing that freaks me out is that the homeless crackheads downtown are respectful and keep to themselves, and the alcoholic bums are happy and say “thanks anyway and have a nice day” when you don’t give them any change, diverse people ARE friendly here and very non-judgmental, you see lots of people smoking pot on the street and that poses no problem, the biggest problems we had was with US sailors on shore leave getting out of hand but they’ve been elsewhere the last few years so that’s been nice; I do not lock my doors (my puppies are enough of a deterance); and, I have to keep reminding myself that this place is not like the REAL world, it is almost like a make-believe place for the tourists and someday the nightmare might return and I might have to go live amoungst nutty right-wingers who think that war is more important than love or that Leo Strauss was wiser than Gandhi.
I was in Toronto & Niagara Falls four years ago and got as far east as Tadoussac Que (where my border collie out swimming in the St. Lawrence was shocked – as was I – when a gigantic whale surfaced 20 feet from him not 50 yards away from the cliffs we were sitting on!) and a circle around the Gaspe, loved all that too.
May 9th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Majority of Iraqi Lawmakers Now Reject Occupation
By Raed Jarrar and Joshua Holland
AlterNet.org
Wednesday 09 May 2007
More than half of the members of Iraq’s parliament rejected for the first time on Tuesday the continuing occupation of their country. The US media ignored the story.
On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq’s parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that…
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050907R.shtml
May 9th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
http://commonground.ca/iss/0705190/cg190_griffin.shtml
May 10th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Of course Al Sadr wants us out of Iraq, HE’S THE ENEMY. Sorry, I just don’t suffer idiots as well as I used to.
May 10th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Hey NorthernLite,
Do you think shcb is having problems living in his own skin? He never was smart enough to distinguish between the message and the messenger:
Message:
“…more than half of the members of Iraq’s parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition…”
May 10th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Heh – A lot of people just don’t like to face reality. They’ll wake up soon, most have.
May 10th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
NL – indeed it is so. I apologize in advance for co-opting your reply, but if you are not awake yet here’s a jolt of hot coffee:
http://loosechange911.blogspot.com/2007/05/statement-from-louder-than-words-and.html
May 10th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
and if that doesn’t wake anyone up, this should do it:
http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/NISTandDrBazant-Simulta…
NIST AND DR. BAZANT – A SIMULTANEOUS FAILURE
INTRODUCTION
The NIST enquiry into the destruction of the WTC towers purported to be an examination of the physical evidence. The final report includes commentary upon much of the physical evidence available from this examination but concentrates upon the time period prior to the onset of the collapse. The report does not go into much detail of the period of the collapse itself but instead relies upon the theoretical work of Dr. Bazant, to argue that once collapse was initiated then total collapse was inevitable.
[…]
CONCLUSIONS
Dr. Bazant has stated in his analysis, that his energy ratio would be increased in the event of early failure of the column end connections. This is correct and examination of the debris pile with specific regard for the numbered and identifiable columns from the area in and around the aircraft impact area could have given more precise information from a physical rather than a theoretical source.
The short cut taken by NIST in relying upon this theoretical work, allowed them to avoid a continuation of their examination to include the physical evidence available from the collapse. Such a continuation would have shown many points of evidence which cannot be readily explained by a collapse whose initiation and progression was caused as a result of aircraft impact and subsequent fires. It does however allow the authors of the NIST report to pass responsibility to Dr. Bazant for this, the most important part of the investigation.
A theory which can be so easily refuted is not an adequate foundation on which to rest the conclusions of a report on an event with such far reaching global consequences.
But since NIST relies upon the work of Dr. Bazant to justify their assertion that collapse, once initiated, would inevitably progress to ground level, this refutation of Dr. Bazant’s work and theory also serves as a refutation of this most crucial part of the NIST report.
May 10th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
I wouldn’t get too excited yet guys, you and Sadr haven’t won yet. This is from Forbes a couple hour ago.
[The measure has not yet been introduced in parliament and was unlikely to be passed in its present form. But the signatures reflected growing disenchantment among the lawmakers over U.S. involvement in Iraq and the government’s failure to curb the violence in the country.]
And later in the piece;
[Ali al-Adeeb, a senior Shiite lawmaker and confidante of al-Maliki, was skeptical about the wisdom of asking foreign forces to leave.
“Their withdrawal will not benefit anyone if our forces are not ready,” al-Adeeb said. “There must be a commitment from foreign parties to train our forces.”
Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman said he supported the draft but only on condition that the withdrawal timetable be linked to a schedule for training and equipping Iraq’s security forces.
“But the sponsors of the legislation did not include our observations in the draft. This is deception,” he said. That suggested that some who endorsed the bill will either vote against it or abstain.
The proposed bill would require the Iraqi government to seek approval from parliament before it requests an extension of the U.N. mandate for foreign forces to be in Iraq, said Nassar al-Rubaie, the leader of the Sadrist bloc. It also calls for a timetable for the troop withdrawal and a freeze on the size of the foreign forces.
The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously in November to extend the U.S.-led forces’ mandate until the end of 2007. The resolution, however, said the council “will terminate this mandate earlier if requested by the government of Iraq.”
The draft bill appeared to be the latest effort by al-Sadr to ratchet up his anti-American rhetoric in an apparent bid to maintain his stature among his followers after disappearing from public view before a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown began three months ago.]
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/10/ap3709151.html
So it apears this is just a draft, and not an honest one at that. There may be a growing disenchantment, but I wonder if anyone has a better idea than to just keep going.
May 10th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
kk, you are the information master, so many interesting links in your arsenal!
May 10th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
NL,
Where I come from the feedlots sell it by the ton
May 11th, 2007 at 12:58 am
Thanks NL,
Here’s some more shit I got from an anonymous email today:
>
May 11th, 2007 at 12:59 am
okay, that didn’t work, here it is again:
If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize — very publicly and very sincerely — to all the widows and orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. Then I would announce that America’s global military interventions have come to an end. I would then inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but–oddly enough–a foreign country. Then I would reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings, invasions and sanctions. There would be enough money. One year of our military budget is equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born. That’s one year. That’s what I’d do on my first three days in the White House.
On the fourth day, I’d probably be assassinated.
May 12th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Typical liberal utopian group hug, let’s all sing kume by ya’ll nonsense. See how this works, “let’s just ignore the part of the equation that makes us feel uneasy”. What is your anonymous friend going to do when the bad guys come to get her. I would imagine in your hometown where even the crack heads are polite, you still have police. In your vernacular paid thugs and assassins whose only purpose in life is to encroach on your god given right to do whatever you want. Do you think if you give up the bad guys will just stop being bad? If you cower well enough, they may not kill you or rape your family, but you will live under that fear. Is that what you want? Do guys kneel down every night and thank god there are people out there with more guts than you to keep you safe?
Do you remember the song One Tin Soldier? Appropriately, it was written by a couple Canadians. It told the story of the mountain people with a buried treasure and the valley people that wanted it, the mountain people offered to share their treasure, but the valley people wanted it all for themselves, so they killed all the mountain people and took the treasure that was just a piece of paper that said “peace on earth”. Now the moral was “peaceful mountain people good, warring valley people bad”. Simplistic pacifist garbage. The real moral is that if the mountain people had defended themselves, even including some offensive actions, they could have survived to preach their pacifistic lessons, now they are dead and the evil rule the kingdom.
May 13th, 2007 at 2:31 am
Lots of taunts and ridiculous rhetorical questions being posted lately.
“I yearn for a time when “good Americans” will be able to stop and reverse equally evil policies of global hegemony achieved through pre-emptive war of aggression. I know all too well that in this case the “enemy” will only be emboldened by our silence, since at the end of the day the “enemy” is ourselves…” http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070510_the_good_american/
“The Legend of Billy Jack was made in 1971 and only those of us old or stupid enough to have subjected themselves to actually watching it have to exorcise the memory. That, and the memory of possibly the absolute most Goddawful ever title song, which if you think about it, was a match made in heaven. One Tin Soldier sung by the aptly named band (or is it a person?) Coven. Yes. Coven. If you think I’m exaggerating when I tell you this song is every bit as wretched as the movie it appears in, I beg you—pay a buck and go to iTunes and listen.”
http://www.nativevue.org/blog/?p=178
May 13th, 2007 at 2:32 am
“The British government recently certified as “sound” the methodologies used by the study published in the medical journal The Lancet which estimates the number of deaths (as of 2006) that can be directly attributed to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath at 655,000. If anything, this number has grown by leaps and bounds since the study was conducted.”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070510_the_good_american/
May 13th, 2007 at 7:39 am
Ah poor wito baby, still not talking to the big bad conservative, “shhh, if we ignore him, he’ll go away”. “You tell him, I’m not talking to him until he says we didn’t have to go somewhere to kill Arabs”. “But KK, he didn’t mean all Arabs, just the ones that mean to do us harm, and a little collateral damage”, “I don’t care, he hurt my feelings, and I’m not coming out of my room until he says ‘I’m sorry’, you tell him that”. “He’s standing right here, why don’t you tell him yourself”, “because I’m not talking to him”.
You know, I thought that kind of exchange was childish when I was 8.
The next bit is about the Lancet study, don’t worry about responding I am mostly writing it for future use, no one but you and I are reading this thread at this point anyway.
The Lancet study could be correct, I emphasize could. I heard of a rental sailboat captain who brought onboard all the latest electronic gadgetry and stayed below decks playing with his toys, when the crew said they were too close to an island, the captain said they were still 2 miles from land according to his computer. Of course the crew were on the deck and could see the coconuts on the beach, the boat eventually found the bottom before the captain came on deck. The moral is while the numbers may be correct, you still have to use your eyes incase they aren’t.
The Lancet study took a sample of about 1800, found 547 deaths attributed to the war, they then extrapolated that out to get the 650,000. Not bad science to this point, they did however use Iraqi runners to collect the data, and in some cases the runners polled many people from the same general area, so the possibility of repeated accounts was increased. Not good science.
But back to the numbers, so a country of 25m, 5.5% normal mortality rate, 1.37m/year, 3.5 years, 4.8m normal deaths, 650k due to war = 13% increase. For a war torn country that seems to certainly be possible. But now look with your eyes, that would mean there have been over 500 deaths per day, every day, no exceptions.
This from a right wing blogger, his numbers differ from mine, probably because of the time frame of when it was written, but the concept is the same.
[According to this report 14% of the 655,000 people died as a result of suicide bombers, that would be about 91,700 people. When and where were these people killed? They don’t have a clue.
A bad month in Iraq is about 2600 casualties, but according to this survey, 22,800 people have died every single month.
A third, or more than 200,000 would have died in air raids. That is more than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
According to this report 57% were killed by gunfire, that would be about 373,000 people.
Where are the bodies? When and where they buried? Did the BBC and AP, UPI, Reuters, AlJazeera all conspire to help hide the truth? Are the US and the Iraqi government together with all the doctors and mayors part of the plot to hide these hundreds of thousands of dead people?]
You get the idea, determining the number of dead is hard to do in this situation, it is probably in the 40 to 80 thousand range, way too many to be sure, but over exaggerating the numbers by a factor of 8 or 10 does no one any good. One other thing, we are the good guys, the terrorist types are the bad guys, If they stop shooting, we will stop shooting, we will then help them rebuild the country and leave. But that would leave a strong independent people behind with a reason and the will to defend what is theirs, something people of this ilk can’t tolerate.
About One Tin Soldier, Do you think KK is having problems living in his own skin? He never was smart enough to distinguish between the message and the messenger.
May 13th, 2007 at 10:37 am
question, if these 650k dead numbers turn out to not be correct, are the people repeating them lying? After all so many people have said they are wrong, to keep repeating them must make you a lier.
where have we heard this logic before?
what if the WTC was actually brought down by Arabs, the vast majority of experts have said it was all along, would those people who have been saying GWB & co did it be liers or just wrong hmmm…
May 14th, 2007 at 12:38 am
The bravest Marine:
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p43/truthseeker_05/IMG_1302.jpg
And a brave American:
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v354689MGcbpamf
May 14th, 2007 at 1:10 am
From here: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=26963
Only a portion of the questions which need to be answered about the attacks on our people on September 11, 2001 are as follows:
Where are the flight recorders?
How did Bush see the first plane crash on live camera?
Why were there no photos or videos of the Pentagon plane?
Why was there no trace of the Pentagon plane after the attacks, especially the titanium around the jet engines, which were 6 tons each and resilient to volatile burning jet-grade fuel temperatures?
Why was the hole in the Pentagon only about the size of a scud missile?
Why didn’t jets intercept the airliners since they had several warnings of terrorist attacks?
Why did passengers or crewmembers on three of the flights all use the term “box cutters?”
Why was a security meeting that was scheduled for 9/11 cancelled by WTC management on 9/10?
How did they come up with the terrorists so quickly?
How did they find the terrorist’s cars at the airports so quickly?
What about media reports that hijackers bought tickets for flights scheduled after Sept. 11? Weren’t they aware the mission was a suicide mission?
Why do none of the names appear on the passenger lists UA and AA gave to CNN??
Why would the hijackers use credit cards and allow drivers licenses with photos to be zeroxed?
Which hijacker’s passport was found after the attacks in the street? How did it survive through an explosive plane crash when the plane’s black boxes did not, and come to a rest outside the building, on the street, where an FBI agent just happened to be there to retrieve it?
How could the FBI distinguish between Muslims and hijacker Muslims on those flights?
Why was there not one “innocent” Muslim on board any of these flights?
Why the strange pattern of debris from Flight 93?
Why did Bush stop inquiries into terrorist connections of the Bin Laden family in early 2001?
Why did the FBI not release the Flight Data Recorder info?
Who video-recorded the first plane hitting the tower? Why did he disappear from the media?
When was the Bin Laden Home Video found and who found the video if Northern Alliance and US troops had not yet arrived in Kandahar or Jahalabad?
Why, according to the German Magazine, MONITOR, were the most controversial statements translated incorrectly?
Why did Bin Laden state in UMMAN Magazine in Sept. 2001, that he was not involved in the WTC?`
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=26963
May 14th, 2007 at 4:50 am
KK, I’m not going to waste a lot of time here on this nonsense, but here are just a few points, I distinctly remember the line “small knife of some sort” for quite a while maybe a few hours after the attack, the whole wheel assembly and chunks of the plane were outside the Pentagon, drivers licenses to be photo copied, stupidity. Most of the rest of yours points can be attributed to good and bad police work depending on which you are talking about.
I’m guessing if a person looked into most of the items you have ticked off, they would mostly all be out and out lies or distortions, I’m not saying you are a liar, just that you have been duped and will listen to anything no matter how goofy if it progresses you enlightenment of hatred for George Bush and this war.
May 14th, 2007 at 8:57 am
I have countered every one of the following techniques on this website (e.g. #7 where NIST and Popular Mechanics were trotted out as authoritative sources when in fact they have been clearly debunked and made to look exceedingly foolish in the process – for full references to the debunking of these government rationales, google “Debunking 9/11 Debunking.”
shcb’s last point reeks of points #3 (rumours akin to lies and distortions), #4 especially (as the question was “what happened to the titanium around the jet engines which were 6 tons each?” NOT “Why were there wheel assemblies on the front lawn?”), #5 (who is “duped”?), #8 (this is not “old news” because these questions have never been answersed), …
“Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression Strong, credible allegations of high-level criminal activity can bring down a Government. When
the Government lacks an effective, fact-based defense, other techniques must be employed. The success of these techniques depends heavily upon a cooperative, compliant, controlled press and a mere token opposition party. This sums up, in totality, the press, the media and either of the political parties here in America.
1. Dummy up. If it’s not reported, it’s not news, it didn’t
happen.
2. Wax indignant. This is also known as the “How dare you?” gambit.
3. Characterize the charges as “rumors” or, better yet, “wild rumors.” If, in spite of the news blackout, the public is still able to learn about the suspicious facts, it can only be through “rumors.” (If they tend to believe
the “rumors” it must be because they are simply “paranoid” or “hysterical.”)
4. Knock down straw men. Deal only with the weakest aspects of the weakest charges. Even better, create your own straw men. Make up wild rumors (or plant false stories) and give them lead play when you appear to debunk all the charges, real and fanciful alike. Republicrat’s are masters at this.
5. Call the skeptics names like “conspiracy theorist,”
“nutcase,” “ranter,” “kook,” “crackpot,” and, of course, “rumor monger.” Be sure, too, to use
heavily loaded verbs and adjectives when characterizing their charges and defending the “more reasonable” government and its defenders. You must then
carefully avoid fair and open debate with any of the people you have thus maligned. For insurance, set up your own “skeptics” to shoot down. A classic tactic that has been used in America by both the Government and the press for a number of years now.
6. Impugn motives. Attempt to marginalize the critics by suggesting strongly that they are not really interested in the truth but are simply pursuing a partisan political agenda or are out to make money (compared to
over-compensated adherents to the government line who, presumably, are not).
7. Invoke authority. Here the controlled press and the sham opposition can be very useful.
8. Dismiss the charges as “old news.”
9. Come half-clean. This is also known as “confession and avoidance” or “taking the limited hangout route.” This way, you create the impression of candor and honesty while you admit only to relatively harmless,
less-than-criminal “mistakes.” This stratagem often requires the embrace of a fall-back position quite different from the one originally taken. With
effective damage control, the fall-back position need only be peddled by stooge skeptics to carefully limited markets. In other words, spread “disinformation”. Another classic tactic of the Government and ALL
agencies, especially the CIA, NSA, FBI, DOD and so fourth.
10. Characterize the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as ultimately unknowable. (What?)
11. Reason backward, using the deductive method with a vengeance. With thoroughly rigorous deduction, troublesome evidence is irrelevant. E.g. We have a completely free press.
12. Require the skeptics to solve the crime completely.
13. Change the subject. This technique includes creating and/or publicizing distractions. Again, the Republicrat’s are masters at this. Just look at how many times “Leaders” bombed and strafed innocent countries simply to distract attention away from the criminal diasters they had created for themselves.
14. Lightly report incriminating facts, and then make nothing of them. This is sometimes referred to as “bump and run” reporting.
15. Baldly and brazenly lie. A favorite way of doing this is to attribute the “facts” furnished the public to a plausible-sounding, but anonymous, source. A tactic practiced daily by the various Federal Agencies of
America.
16. Expanding further on numbers 4 and 5, have your own stooges “expose” scandals and champion popular causes. Their job is to pre-empt real opponents and to play 99-yard football. A variation is to pay rich people
for the job who will pretend to spend their own money.
17. Flood the Internet and ALL levels of society and business with agents, precisely as Hitler did in Germany so many years ago. Supposdely, that number (of agents) has reached a minimum of 40,000 – probably a
very low (estimate). This is the answer to the question, “What could possibly motivate a person to spend hour upon hour on Internet news groups defending
the government and/or the press and harassing and REPORTING genuine critics?” Don’t the authorities have defenders enough in all the newspapers, magazines, radio, and television? One would think refusing to
print critical letters and screening out serious callers or dumping them from radio talk shows, rarely printing the truth in any written document, would be control enough, but, obviously, it is not.”
From:
http://community.freespeech.org/without_justice_there_is_just_us
Hope everyone who comes across this thread enjoys the video posted earlier (which happens to also contain several examples of these truth suppression techniquesto thwart a brave American’s attempt to expose an infiltration of the FBI), here it is again:
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v354689MGcbpamf
May 14th, 2007 at 9:21 am
unless the 17 points above are simply true, especially #5
May 14th, 2007 at 10:17 am
No, that is still obfuscation and avoidance of the questions.
Conscientious people want to be sure that everything practical is done to ensure all perpetrators of 911 are identified and brought to justice, rather than stonewalling investigations that go beyond the Arab patsies.
May 15th, 2007 at 9:24 am
wow knarly!!! kudos
great link on Sibel Edmunds
watch that veoh link and then go visit wikipedia
please keep the video/audio links coming
I listen to em in the bkg while I work
tv/shcb/mr rightwinger
Please try to leave the ridiculous comparisons (that ‘we’ are on Sadr’s ‘side’) or the playground insults (like “poor wito baby”) if you want to have a civil exchange of ideas and viewpoints. Or perhaps you would like to discuss whether conservatives are more child molesters, deviants, morons and racists or if they are more jingoistic, small penised, nuckledragging traitors? Which do you think? I think it is a pretty equal mix these days as the swamp slowly drains and the dregs of society are left to squirm in the sunlight.
ymmv
May 15th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Another question:
http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/3/c/f/2/highres_1395602.jpeg
Propoganda attempt backfires? Good defenses by Dr. Barrett in a very difficult interview format:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kq3V0mMLqI
May 15th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
From the View, YESTERDAY & it is funny – now the “Party” and the “Proles” are saying that “volcanic” forces brought down WTC7, and that steel begins to weaken at 270 degrees (CAUTION: oops, better get my pizza out of the oven before my oven weakens and collapses in on itself!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqyYnI3jUAc&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2E911blogger%2Ecom%2Fnode%2F8563%3Fpage%3D2
May 15th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
enkidu, Here are twenty six pages that have just been added to the Journal of 911 Studies. I read them all, carefully, last night. The genious is in the detailed science and explanations about applying the Scientific process, but the illustration on page 67 ain’t bad either!
http://journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/JonesWTC911SciMethod.pdf
May 15th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
This was also updated recently:
http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2005/11/crooked-cops-and-9-11.html
Some of the comments after tha article are good, such as this:
‘Wow, George Washington, thanks for the link to Seymour Hersh’s article. I had never read it. Next time someone calls me a “conspiracy theorist,” I’ll just cite the C.I.A. official in this article that says:
“This guy sits in a cave in Afghanistan and he’s running this operation?” one C.I.A. official asked. “It’s so huge. He couldn’t have done it alone.” ’
May 15th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Actually KK, I’ve already answered all those points, you never answered some of mine though; where did the missile come from? Naval ship? Land based? Who fired it? Military? Why did it not explode? Or did it only explode out and not up? Why would the administration do this? Why did thousands of people see planes hit the buildings? If you wanted to bring the buildings down with explosives, just do it. The Arabs tried in the Clinton years, it would be easy to blame them this time.
You remind me of the battered wife that begs the police not to arrest the husband while she is still bleeding. I know such a woman, she told me she feared the unknown of living without her husband than the pain of living with him. Even though the police find the guy standing over the battered woman, even though he admits hitting her, even though he says he will do it again, she will say he didn’t do it, someone else did, she fell, whatever it takes, no matter how nonsensical.
You read and repeat reams of minutia, but you can’t explain or you reject the simple answer because it doesn’t fit what you want the world to be.
Enkidu,
I have tried to keep these discussions as adult as possible, read the comments these two morons made earlier in this thread, they preferred to talk around me than at me, and I’m the childish one. I have no problem stooping to whatever level my opponent presents himself, it is the way you win. You guys are the ones that have called me stupid, racist, childish etc. and all I did was point out the obvious, the Arabs hate us because we support the Jews and we stand in the way of them finishing Hitler’s work, and I am called racist. I will not stop referring to you as being on the side of the enemy, you are enabling them, you are giving them hope, you could very well win this war for them. Prove me wrong. Write about all the women and children they are killing, not just killing but targeting. Write about how they treat women, how they want all men to either convert or die, stand up and do something right for a change instead of cowering behind your pacifism, hoping mommy can make it stop.
May 16th, 2007 at 4:18 am
By the way, the statement that steel begins to loose strength at 260 c is correct. I am a journeyman tool maker, when heat treating steel we subject the tool steel to 260 degrees for two hours after the steel is hardened. This is called tempering, it reduces the hardness of the steel a few points on the Rockwell scale and makes the steel less brittle and less strong. This makes the tool more useable. This is the point that steel starts to turn colors, a light straw brown in this case. I am not a civil engineer but I would think mild steel would not loose enough strength to collapse at this temperature, and I can’t imagine the expert on the View saying it would, but I would think that steel would be replaced in the repair of a building that had been exposed to that temperature for anything over an hour or so. Go ahead and cook your dinner in your oven, it won’t melt in a puddle on the floor, but it won’t be quite as strong as it is at room temperature.
See enkidu, nice rational response, let’s see how the “adults” in the group react.
May 16th, 2007 at 5:00 am
Well Enkidu,
I’m going to place my faith in this guy in regards to the strenght of steel:
Stepehn E. Jones conducted research at the Idaho National Laboratory, in Arco, Idaho, from 1979 to 1985, where he was a senior engineering specialist. He was the principal investigator for experimental Muon-catalyzed fusion from 1982 to 1991 for the U.S. Department of Energy, Division of Advanced Energy Projects. From 1990 to 1993, Jones researched fusion in condensed matter physics and deuterium, for the U.S. Department of Energy and for the Electric Power Research Institute.
Jones has also been a collaborator in several experiments, including experiments at TRIUMF (Vancouver, British Columbia), The National High Energy Laboratory, KEK (Tsukuba, Japan), and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory at Oxford University.
Jones specializes in metal-catalyzed fusion, archaeometry and solar energy.[2][3]
Like many professors at BYU, Jones has an interest in archaeology and the Book of Mormon.[4] For example, he has sought radiocarbon dating evidence regarding the existence of pre-Columbian horses in the Americas.[5]
May 16th, 2007 at 8:27 am
It is a testament to pig headed thinking for anyone to make the argument that steel weakened by fire at the 87th floor of a building would cause that building to fall at near free-fall in a vacuum speed into its own footprint. To say nothing about the symetrical collapse due to random fires and damage to one side of the face of WTC 7 (compared to much heaveir damaged buildings nearby). I find it hard to believe that the scientific papers and simple logic are lost on such people, it is becoming increasingly obvious that they are agenda driven people and therefore likely complicit in the on-going cover-ups.
May 16th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
kk,
I’m going to have to take your word on this question, if 911 had just been an accident, a large plane hitting one of the towers, and the tower falling straight down like it did, would you have thought it was a huge conspiracy?
May 16th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
shcb,
First off, it sucks to be communicating with someone who has such a racist attitude towards other peoples and who lumps all arabs together and who does not understand much about the beauty and benevolence of Islam, or the incredible importance of the rich culture of countries in the former Mesopatamia, the value of historical artifacts or the sanctity of human life. Comments like `we had to go somewhere to kill arabs` really shows the shallow and cavalier nature of your, well frankly, your horrifically deadly and evil personal philosophy about how people should relate to each other in this world. You cling to a failed model of military might that has perpetuated war since time began for humans. There is a better way and I would have expected the most powerful (by several times over) nation in the world to have the maturity to follow it. Also, it sucks to communicate with such a verbally abusive bully (e.g. `suffer idiots`).
Second, no matter who orchestrated 911, it was a huge conspiracy. No matter how you look at it, the crime cost mega bucks to commit, and the hijackers had all kinds of support. You seem to think it was a wildly successful conspiracy by 19 saudi arabs and a man undergoing kidney dialasis in an Afghan cave, I seem to think it was more, much more, than that, that there must have been others who also conspired to commit mass murder and I think that there are messy loose ends all over the crime. I don’t know who all conspired, and I do not know what the conspiracy was actually all about, and I have far more questions than answers – but I am mad as hell at the subversion of investigations into the crimes (limiting the scope of the 911 inquiry, trying to put Kissinger, with his ties to the bin Ladens, in as the Chariman, etc. ad nauseum) and the false characterisation in the media that the 911 commission was full thorough and authoritative, which was certainly not.
Third, if one plane, without hijackers or with bona fide hijackers had hit the WTC 1 or 2 tower, and the tower collapsed sometime later into its own footprint I would have raised an eyebrow thinking that was strange but considering how little I knew then about how skyscrapers were constructed and depending on what else was happening in my life/the world that day – I might not have noticed. But if politicians later hijacked the attack in order to manipulate the American masses into supporting some foreign misadventure, then I probably would have become suspicious enough to dig a little deeper and as soon as I would have learned that the supporting structure of the tower offered virtually no resistance as the tower collapsed at near free fall speed when calculations suggested it should have been much longer or that there was a very good possibility that the collapse sequence would have halted at some point before hitting gound zero, well I`d want to know what the hell was going on, and if someone were to point out that the falling rotating mass of all the floors above the impact zone at the top of the (North or was it the south) tower suddenly lost its momentum and virtually turned to dust in the air, instead of continuing its motion and falling outside the building footprint, well at that point I might want to see if something else might be involved besides airplane and jet fuel, and if after the collapse the crime scene was verbotten to anyone with a camera who did not have official screening, and the evidence was carted away with virtually no forensic analysis, and the black boxes from the airplane was reportedly found by workers at the site who described how they were delivered to the FBI but later the (near) indestructable airplane black boxes were said to have not beem recovered, and etc. I think you get the idea.
May 16th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
I tried to post the following post this morning, but the server “lost“ it:
May 16th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Hey Enkidu,
It is just like I quoted: “When the Government lacks an effective, fact based defense, other techniques must be employed.”
See the list of 17 other techniques I posted on May 14 at 8:57 am, above. For example, the latest post ignored the tough questions and just asked a bunch of far fetched questions (missile? imaginary planes? who fired it? etc.) This is another blatant attempt to create and knock down straw men (#4). The Pentagon attack is recognised by people who want 911 truth as the least satisfactory set of unknowns, as there is not a satisfactory theory to fit all the facts.
(The official conspiracy theory requires the alleged pilot to have flown the plane with what experienced pilots call amazing skill but it also alleges the pilot was incompetent;
Cheney said he arrived at a Command bunker some time before the Pentagon was hit and then according to FAA Director Mineta’s taped testimony to the 911 Commission we hear that Cheney was in the bunker tracking the incoming plane and sneered to a questioning officer “Of course the order still stands, have I said anything to the contrary?!” – yet Cheney later changed the time he claims to have arrived in the bunker to be 20 minutes AFTER the Pentagon was hit;
you have Rumsfeld actually saying the pentagon was hit by a missile which just fans the speculation,
and you have a high velocity collision into heavily re-enforced concrete where six ton titanium encased engines apparently vapourized except for a small cooling fan component yet fragile DNA evidence of EVERY passenger is recovered;
there are news tapes of what appears to be a white military surveillance jet circling near the Pentagon prior to the collision, etc.)
May 16th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Since the existing Pentagon theory does not fit all the facts, people ask questions. Like, why were there no photos or videos of the Pentagon plane? (The answer to that might verify the angle of attack, as the official conspiracy theory has more than one set of data for that from reliable FAA flight data records showing a high approach and from broken street lamp poles indicating a low approach). Then the jingoistic, nuckledragging traitors come in and try to shut down the inquiries by setting up straw men theories (#4) and ridiculing those questions (#5).
Despite the lame attempt by shcb to advance the no-plane straw man theory, here is where independent investigators are currently at with the Pentagon: w3. 911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/evidence/photos/index.html
You also might want to see the other Pentagon pages by clicking the Pentagon related links on the pink left hand side bar as there are some good explanations about how the Pentagon no-plane theories are stoked by nuckledragging traitors.
May 16th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Using moronic logic through false analogies, we get another sad story this time about a battered wife (#6).
A slightly more accurate analogy would be that innocent Americans are the battered wife,
May 16th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
The husband could represent certain neo-cons in the Republican gang,
The battered wife lived in a house that was a huge liability because it was going to cost (billions of dollars) more than it was worth to remediate the asbestos used throughout the building,
people of conscience are the Sisters of the battered wife,
the attacks seem to have been conducted by terrorist janitors (islamic fundamentalists) from one of the banks (Saudi Arabia) that has big mortgages on properties in the country where the crime was committed;
the bank officers (ruling princes of Saudi Arabia) have other close business ties with the husband and his family,
many witnesses saw some people get out of a taxi (airline companies) carrying big shiny aluminum baseball bats (those would be the planes) into the house (the taxi company had been keeping lists of all their passengers for years, in fact no-one could get into one of their taxis without being on the list)
but the biggest pack of ferocious guard dogs in the world (NORAD and US Air Force) who were sitting in the front yard and scattered around the neighborhood were, due to an incredible coincidence, not under the command of their usual master that day but were instead being ”trained” by the husbands right hand man and somehow this confused the best trained attack pack in the world to the point that they let the terrorist janitors walk right past them and when finally some of the dogs were ordered to go to the slow moving janitors they were first ordered to head off down the street and then trotted back to the house so slowly that the crime was over before they arrived – see NORAD response)
witnesses saw the wife being struck with the aluminum bats and this caused the house to collapse;
the terrorist janitors were found dead by suicide in the rubble of the house next to the crying, fearful, battered and bleeding wife, who soon vowed revenge against all terrorist janitors (and secretly she did not give a damn or want to know whether any innocent janitors in other banks or their children were killed too.)
the husband alleges that the terrorist janitors had ties to a bank teller (OBL, a rich saudi arabian) who also used to do work for the police force (CIA and US foreign policy makers) but he was blacklisted from the police force due to his continued complaints against the police force using excessive force in dealing with suspected criminals the effects on the innocent children of ban janitors complaints about police corruption – see bin Laden CIA connections;
the police force blames the terrorist janitors and the blacklisted former police officer for the crimes
the police force also refuses to investigate any further despite the sister providing reams of evidence that the husband was complicit in the crime.
The sister provided evidence that:
the husband took out a 7 billion dollar insurance policy on his wife three months before the attack and specifically added in a clause to cover foreign terrorists – Silverstein WTC insurance;
unusually large bets that the battered wife would shortly suffer some horrible fate were placed with a neighborhood bookie from the husbands office telephone over the three days preceding the attack – see w3. tvnewslies.org/html/9_11_-_all_the_proof_you_need.html ;
the house security guard was replaced by the husbands brother just 6 months before the attack – research Marvin Bush at WTC security;
the husbands co-workers had written a plan for the husband before he married his wife about how he, his family and the co-workers could profit immensely by bullying some of the neighbors into submission so that they would only do business with the husband and his buddies, but that in order to get his family on-side there would need to be a pretext that could be blamed on the neighbors i.e. some catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbour or something on that scale such as a horrible beating to one of the husbands family members – refer to CFR Project for a New American Century;
and when the husband was told that his wife was being attacked he remained in the garden reading childrens book to the neighbors children and speaking to his admirers about the importance of a good education;
May 16th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
and the sister was not satisfied with the answers and did not receive other answers so she kept asking questions as to how the baseball bats caused the house to collapse, why the expensive pack of attack dogs they had been raising all their lives and which were proven to be the worlds finest could have failed so bad that day,
why the taxi company passenger list did not include any of the terrorist janitors and all the other taxi passengers were accounted for,
and how were the police able to provide their list of suspect terrorist janitors so quickly and why have they not removed the people from the list of suspected terrorist janitors who were in fact still alive and did not commit suicide that day
the sister had many more concerns, such as that the terrorist janitors did not act at all like terrorist janitors in fact they were very messy people,
but no-one would listen.
May 16th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
The husband who was also the police chief told the sister that she was a crazy conspiracy theorist and used everything at his disposal to thwart investigations that might go beyond further incriminating the dead terrorist janitors and the bank tellers and perhaps his teller accomplices from other banks.
The police force told the battered wife that they had the bank teller nearly captured!
But then the police force lost him in another neighborhood and shortly afterwards the husband said he did not care that much about that bank teller anymore, the important thing was to identify any neighbors who were terrorist janitors or scheming tellers and bully those neighbors into submission. (The husband claimed any suggestion that his business buddies had suggested doing just that except for the purposes of securing business from those very same neighbors was ridiculous. )
May 16th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
The battered wife was thinking about getting another husband. The husband sneered at her and said he was the only one who could protect her. She watched as a great flood swept away much of the backyard while her husband was away, and the husband seemed to have all his energies focused on his neighbors and did a very poor job of protecting her from that or helping to clean up the mess. She was mad and wanted another strong man to protect her, but the husband had instituted a terror alert warning system into the house and whenever the battered wife seemed to be looking at her husband the wrong way suddenly the terror alert was raised and she was scared that more terrorist janitors would hurt her again.
The sister kept asking her questions, but to her horror the battered wife defended and clung to her husband and proclaimed that her sister was a conspiracy nut.
May 16th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
I know, this is not a very good analogy. For instance it does not adequately address the psychological aspects of using planes to attack the towers while still requiring explosives to bring down the towers properly. But I think you get the point.
Enkidu, you might like this video about the ”husband”: w3 .youtube.com/watch?v=IZVHsrncd3Y&NR=1
May 16th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
End of what I had tried to post this morning :-)
May 18th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Sure is taking the mainstream media a long time to admit that they have always and continue to contribute to the cover-up of 911!
http://infowars.com/articles/sept11/ny_times_attempts_to_debunk_911_truth.htm
May 20th, 2007 at 6:23 am
KK,
Don’t hold your breath for the media to pick up your story of treachery by this administration, the problem is, there is no story here because this grand conspiracy didn’t happen. The only story is how many people are either so desperate to hang something on this president, or are so easily duped. I heard there are something like 30% of the people think the government had something to do with 911. Sad. You said you didn’t know what the motivation of the people in the government who perpetrated 911 were, or even who they were. That is the whole point, if no one did what wasn’t done, all the evidence in the world is irrelevant. There is cleaned up blood residue on our carpets from cut feet and fingers, dogs in heat etc. There are freshly fired firearms in our house as well, if the CSI guys came into my house and did all their tests and found all this incrimination, no crime was committed, nor was there even a motivation for a crime to be committed. So the evidence was just coincidental and meaningless. 57 words in that analogy, simple and to the point, only covered one small aspect of the conversation. That is how you use an analogy, you can make the most convoluted mess out of simplest thing. But I suppose that goes hand in hand with being a conspiracy nut.
I read most of Dr Jones report, I scanned through the pages where he bloviated about his credentials and all papers he has written and the discussion of the scientific method after I read his conclusion in the introduction. I wasn’t disappointed, for all his talk of just wanting to get to the bottom of what happened, he sure missed some glaring possibilities. Things like the “molten metal” planes and rooms containing burning planes have a lot more in them than aluminum and organics, magnesium for instance. Magnesium will burn with an intense light which intensifies and “explodes” if water is added to the fire, electrical sparks, maybe two wires came together. I don’t know enough of the properties of titanium, but I would certainly find out if I were writing a paper like this. I got from his piece that he thinks the “cutting charges were placed at the point of the “molten metal” which according to the pictures were near the fire, but I thought you were talking about charges on the 8th or so floor. Did our covert ninja’s place charges at both places? How did they know where the planes were going to hit? Were these pilots that weren’t skilled enough to hit the pentagon suddenly skilled enough to hit the exact spot just slightly above the charges? He didn’t mention the possibility of a blast furnace effect from super heated air being pulled up the elevator shafts by the fire increasing the temperature of the fire drastically.
He mentioned that normally they only assume 3 inches of a beam are under enough heat to buckle when doing a computer model, but they had to increase the length to 44 inches for the model to fail and this is outside the scientific method. I say that is BS, we have a unique event here. In that case it is perfectly permissible and almost required in the scientific method to go ahead and gradually increasingly tweak the model until failure and they see if that number is possible or probable. If we didn’t do this we would still think the world was flat. (one sentence in that analogy) There was also no mention of the amount of damage to the structure by the plane that would minimize the damage needed by the fire.
The best part was the free fall of the building, he admitted a building under a controlled detonation would fall at the speed these buildings fell. We use explosives in the intentional destruction of buildings as a matter of convenience. We can detonate them from a safe distance. Any method would do if all you wanted was to bring a building down. If the top section of the building were acting like a normal 15 or 20 story building being destroyed and simply collapsed into the next 2 or 3 floors, couldn’t the compressed air mixed with the explosive dust and form another small explosion knocking out the next few floors, and so on? I don’t know if this possible but in a legitimate paper I would think it would be at least explored. Then this free fall of the building would not only be possible but expected. His concluding remarks told it all though, he wants peace, not the answer to who perpetrated 911, we already know who did it they admitted it, but fixing that problem will require killing a percentage of the Muslim population, at 1.4 billion, just a single percent is a huge number, and that is a solution Dr. Jones and you can’t fathom. So you will do and believe anything to avoid the inevitable.
May 20th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
shcb is on record, again, as supporting the murder of Muslims on truly genocidal scale.
The motives for 911 are documented in the neo-con CFR’s Project for a New American Century, yet most Americans are in denial that this plan (literally signed off by all the key neo-cons) was anything more than a book.
Here are some perpetrators:
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=TArbhaU7LDc
May 20th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Here is more background on what is done behind your back:
http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2007/05/strategy-of-tension.html
May 20th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
And for those who would rather read a tried and trusted newspaper or listen to right wing radio or other major league media, consider this:
‘We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination [read as ‘democracy’] practiced in past centuries.'” David Rockefeller, Trilateral Commission. ‘
And have it all summed up in context here:
http://bigbullblog.westchester911truth.org/2007/05/20/whats-up-with-the-mainstream-media–operation-mockingbird.aspx
May 20th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Criminal investigations require that evidence – circumstantial or not – to be examined and investigated further, not discarded if it does not fit with the current accusations against the primary suspects, or because it does not fit with how the Chief thinks the crime went down. The greater the crime and the greater the uncertainty, the greater the investigation. Except for the Crime of 911.
May 20th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Liberty’s New Husband (an analogy)
At the end of an era there were two beautiful sisters, one named Liberty the other named Conscience. Conscience was not as strikingly beautiful as Liberty, but the little she lacked in beauty she more than made up for with intellect.
May 20th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Liberty was wealthy, honest, and her incredible beauty radiated from within. She was courted by an urban cowboy who went by the name of Awesome Powers, but no-one knew who he really was. Awesome’s friends called him AP, and once Liberty and Awesome were married, Liberty called him AP too. [AP represents mostly Bush (as the front man) but a blend of many who hold (or think they do) “Awesome Powers” over the rest of us – the Carlyle Group, Silverstein, Rudy Ghouli, & the complicit media conglomorates (hence”AP” = associated press), and other bad actors or spooks who we may never know.]
May 20th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
AP earned a modest income by clearing brush from the neighbours’ yards. However, AP appeared to have unlimited resources arising from business arrangements with his friends and his father’s connections. Besides AP’s brush clearing business, the group of friends controlled many other businesses and had all kinds of mysterious and complicated financial dealings.
Liberty thought she would live the good life with AP.
May 20th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
AP’s friends even included a ruling Prince in a foreign kingdom (who shared his wealth through investing, loans and the offering of mortgages to AP, his friends and neighbours!) [Prince Bandar, but there are others too]
Over time, Liberty became increasingly wary of AP’s friends because their talk was wild and reckless. Conscience called AP and his friends the Knee-cons.
May 20th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
At first that cryptic nickname made Liberty nervous. Then Liberty began to set aside her nervousness, because after all it was just Conscience, who Liberty sometimes thought was a touch neurotic anyway, who gave that nickname to them. Liberty thought, “It is so typical of my sister to invent such a silly nickname and to make such a big deal out of what was probably just a little alcohol induced boasting!”
“Silly” would not be how Conscience would describe what she had overheard AP and his friends discussing openly in a bar one night.
May 20th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Conscience would call it scary.
AP’s buddies were flirting with women of questionable morals who were sitting at another table. The Knee-cons were trying to convince them that they all could fulfil their destiny to become powerful and wealthier, if only they could use their combined talents and strengths to bring the neighbours to their knees by deception and force. Then they could make all the neighbours in the world hire them to be the brush clearers and home service providers. [PNAC plan to raise military spending dramatically to more readily promote American interests worldwide]
Conscience thought anything that brought others to their knees* by force was probably criminal and many of them could end up as convicts*, and that was when she thought of the “Knee-con” nickname.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:00 am
However, that was not what scared Conscience. The Knee-cons agreed with the women of questionable morals that they would need friends, family members, the neighbourhood police, and the local newspaper to support them in their bullying if they were to ultimately succeed in achieving their destiny.
Even that was not what frightened her the most.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:00 am
What frightened Conscience the most was that the Knee-cons agreed that this plan would require a catalyzing event, something like a publicly neutered poor barber, or something of that magnitude, such as a horrible assault on one of their own family members. [“neutered poor barber” = New Pearl Harbour]
The flirting stopped at that point, but Conscience noticed a very odd thing. Before each one of them left, they all signed their names on a paper which was then posted by the door. [signed the devil’s contract]
She looked briefly at the document as she followed them out, and even though she knew how reckless they could be and did not expect anything from these Knee-cons remotely as noble as the Bill of Rights or as articulate as the Declaration of Independence, she was still surprised at the brazen arrogance of its title. They had called it The Plan for a Needlessly Aggressive Corporatism. [or Project for a New American Century, same thing.]
May 21st, 2007 at 12:00 am
After talking to others about what she had witnessed, Conscience came to realise that she was the only one who recognised that the Knee-con plan was a conspiracy, and no-one else seemed to be bothered in the least by The Plan for a Needlessly Aggressive Corporatism.
People would usually respond to Conscience’s concerns with a question such as, “How could something silly like that possibly have any impact on you or me, Conscience?” Conscience did not know the answer and she began to wonder if perhaps she was taking things too seriously. She started to keep her thoughts to herself.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:01 am
AP got some bad news one day. His primary residence was deemed by his bank to be a huge liability because it was eventually going to cost (billions of dollars) more than it was worth to mediate the asbestos applied throughout the building during construction. [True, WTC required remediation exceeding Net Present Value of the structures]
On the morning of September 11, 2001, many witnesses saw two big limousines pull up in front of AP and Liberty’s primary residence. Some people were even filming at the time, as this was a visually oriented society. The limousines were clearly marked A & U A-lines Ltd. [American and United Airlines – the companies]
May 21st, 2007 at 12:02 am
Some people got out of the limousines and entered the house, but witnesses did not remember their faces. All that the witnesses remembered seeing that day were the limousines and the big shiny aluminum baseball bats that each person carried into the house. [Baseball bats = Airplanes]
For nearly two hours that morning witnesses saw Liberty being struck with the aluminum bats and this, together with the heat from the raging inferno on the sun, caused the house to collapse at near free-fall speed into its own footprint.
Later that same day the detached garage collapsed too – also at near free-fall speed into its own footprint – due to damage from falling house debris, the heat of the afternoon sun and a jerry can of diesel stored in a cupboard. [WTC 7]
May 21st, 2007 at 12:02 am
Liberty wondered, as she was being assaulted by the big shiny aluminum bats, “Where are my guard dogs?” For her entire life, Liberty felt safe because her grandfather and her father had bred the best dog guards in the world to protect their family and the rest of the neighbourhood. [NORAD and USAF]
This largest, best trained and most ferocious pack of guard dogs in the entire world was playing in the front yard and around the neighbourhood that morning. Unfortunately, due to an incredible coincidence, they were not under the command of their usual master during the attack. Instead, they were being “trained” by AP’s Knee-con right hand man. AP had recently put this man in charge of such training despite his lack of knowledge about guard dogs. [Trainer = Cheney]
May 21st, 2007 at 12:02 am
Somehow this training exercise confused the dogs, the trainer and the usual dog master to such a degree that for an hour and a half, they let the people walk right into the house without question carrying their big shiny aluminum baseball bats.
Finally some of the dogs were ordered to go sniff the people entering the house, but they were first ordered to head off down the street and then trotted back to the house so slowly that the crime was over before they arrived. [Interceptor jets were first ordered out over the Atlantic- my personal speculation was that they were chasing something real, perhaps something that flew over the Pentagon earlier.]
The collapsing house killed the attackers, but Liberty survived.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:03 am
The neighbourhood police soon identified the attackers as being terrorist bank janitors from the bank owned by the foreign Prince who had investments in the neighbourhood. These terrorist bank janitors were said to have been organized by a terrorist bank teller named Otto Blobak Lesson, or OBL for short. [OBL = Osama bin Laden; Bank = Mostly Saudi Arabia]; Janitors = Islamic Fundamentalists; Tellers = organizers & funders of terrorism]
When AP finally emerged from his own Limousine long after the attack had ended, he appeared outraged and rallied the people with his urban cowboy lingo about hunting down OBL and any other people behind the attack, wherever they may be, and making them pay dearly. He vowed to conduct a War on Terra that would not end until OBL, every terrorist bank janitor and terrorist bank teller on the planet was dead.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:03 am
The neighbourhood paper, The Wagging Rags, distributed these messages by AP and the neighbourhood police far and wide. Rarely printed was the more insightful news, such as that OBL used to do dirty work for the neighbourhood police but he was blacklisted by them and his own family due to his continued allegations of corruption against the police. [The Wagging Rags = mainstream pro-war media]
OBL had also alleged the police used excessive force upon innocent peoples of other neighbourhoods who were accused – usually by the police themselves – as having suspected terrorist bank janitors in their midst. OBL’s concerns about the effects of this alleged mistreatment on innocent bank janitors, and on their innocent children, were rarely if ever found within The Wagging Rags. [OBL’s statements pre-911]
Once the terrorists were identified, there was not any further investigation of the attack, and the crime scene was wiped clean. [e.g. steel carted away post haste]
May 21st, 2007 at 12:03 am
AP’s wife, now pitied by the neighbours as the crying, fearful, and battered Liberty, soon began to vow revenge against all terrorist janitors (and a small part inside of her secretly did not give a damn whether any innocent janitors from other banks or their children were killed too.) AP and Liberty moved into their other house down the street and planned to build another primary residence. Apparently AP had insurance for just the right peril. [WTC insured against acts of terrorism for the first time, by “Lucky” Larry “Pull-it” Silverstein]
The police force and the Knee-cons mobilised to smoke out the bank terrorists, and everyone gave them their full support.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:04 am
Conscience began to wonder if she still exists in the same reality in which she and Liberty grew up. Liberty, who used to be so outgoing and cheerful has become withdrawn, and rarely ventures out of her house while AP and the Knee-cons are seen everywhere, creating their own new realities & acting like kings of the world. The world is beginning to look more like a fantasy, a nightmare where reason and truth are subjugated to the cherry-picking of intelligence and war propaganda. [e.g. Colin Powell’s UN farce]
May 21st, 2007 at 12:04 am
Conscience slowly documented reams of inconsistencies about the attack on her sister that suggests something seriously amiss, and even suggests to the police that perhaps unknown others might also have been involved in the crime. For years the police refuse to investigate any further, in fact they refuse to even listen to her, but finally they agree to look into matters. Conscience is suspicious that they are only doing so to keep her quiet. [Underfunded 911 Commission gets short timeframe for final report, is limited in its scope so as not to investigate all the perpetrators, and does not receive requested documents according to “full cooperation” promise the White House initially offered]
May 21st, 2007 at 12:04 am
The inconsistencies that Conscience wanted to have investigated further included the following points.
1. The fact that AP took out a multi-billion dollar insurance policy on his house mere months before the attack and specifically added in a clause to cover acts by terrorists;
2. The fact that an unusual number of large bets were put forth that misfortune would befall the A & U A-Lines Ltd. limousine company, AP’s house and even Liberty herself. The bets were placed with a neighbourhood bookie over the three days preceding the attack. When the trail of these bets began to point toward the police department itself and AP’s office, all further investigations were cancelled; (Footnote to w3. tvnewslies.org/html/9_11_- _all_the_proof_you_need.html ) ;
May 21st, 2007 at 12:05 am
3. The house security guard was replaced by AP’s brother just 6 months before the attack; (http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/911security.html )
4. The fact that the Knee-cons had written a conspiracy called The Plan for a Needlessly Aggressive Corporatism which called for an event like the attack on Liberty to catalyze support for their agenda of aggression and domination.
Conscience even pointed out that when AP was told that his wife Liberty was being attacked, AP remained in the back garden reading a children’s book to the neighbours children for another 20 minutes and then spoke to his admirers from The Wagging Rags for another half hour about the importance of a good education. When asked about the ongoing attacks, AP briefly stated that he would be making a statement about that later, and then he departed in his limousine. [Booker Elementary video and subsequent questions from the press]
May 21st, 2007 at 12:05 am
Conscience was not satisfied with the responses to her concerns, or lack thereof. She found it painful that the more she thought about the crime the more unanswered questions arose. Questions like these:
1. How could big aluminum baseball bats cause the house and garage to collapse as they did?
2. Why did well trained, expensive guard dogs – that were proven to be the world’s finest – fail so badly that day?
May 21st, 2007 at 12:06 am
3. Why did the limousine company, with its strict rule that no-one got into their limousines without being on a passenger list, not have any of the alleged terrorist janitors on their passenger list yet all the other taxi passengers were accounted for?
4. How were the police able to provide their list of suspected suicide terrorist janitors so quickly?
5. Why have the police not bothered to remove from the list those people who were still alive and therefore obviously on the list of suicide janitors by mistake?
May 21st, 2007 at 12:06 am
The sister began to learn of even more oddities, such as the fact that the terrorist janitors did not act at all like terrorist janitors but were in fact very messy people with a lot of money to burn. Or that detectives of the police force often lived nearly next door to these terrorist bank janitors.
She tried to tell others about these things, but no-one would listen.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:06 am
AP, who had also become the police chief due to the attack, told everyone that Conscience was a crazy conspiracy theorist. AP used everything at his disposal to thwart investigations that might go beyond further incriminating the dead terrorist janitors and terrorist bank tellers.
Then the police force told Liberty that they had OBL nearly captured! [Holed up in Tora Bora, constructed in the 1980’s with support from the CIA]
May 21st, 2007 at 12:07 am
But then the police force lost OBL in another neighbourhood and shortly afterwards AP said he did not care that much about that terrorist bank teller anymore.
AP now said that the important thing was to identify any neighbours who were terrorist janitors or scheming tellers and to force those neighbours into submission. (AP also claimed it was a wild conspiracy theory to suggest that the Knee-cons wanted to do exactly that but for the purpose of securing business from those very same neighbours. He never mentioned publicly that the Plan for a Needlessly Aggressive Corporatism was still posted in the neighborhood bar.)
AP dropped the gauntlet: neighbours had to choose now to either be with the Knee-cons by capitulating to their desire to rule all the neighborhoods, or to face the wrath of being the Knee-cons enemy.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:07 am
The battered Liberty felt awkward and neglected (in this new reality) and started to think about getting another husband. AP scoffed at her and said he was the only one who could offer real protection; he said everyone else were just flip-flopping fools. [Republican name calling against Democrats]
Liberty watched as a great flood swept away much of the backyard while her husband was visiting neighbours. AP seemed to have most of his energies focused on his neighbours so he did a poor job of protecting Liberty from the flood or in cleaning up the mess afterwards.
She became angry and restless and wanted a better man to protect her, but AP had instituted a terror alert warning system into the house. Whenever the battered Liberty seemed to be looking at AP the wrong way, suddenly the terror alert was raised. This made her fearful that more terrorist janitors would hurt her again, and each time she turned to AP for reassurance.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:07 am
Conscience kept asking questions and was saddened that the battered Liberty blindly defended the Knee-cons, clung to her husband and then ultimately rejected her by proclaimed that Conscience was a conspiracy nut.
Conscience began to feel that she was losing Liberty.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:08 am
After a long time, the neighbours began to wonder where Liberty had gone. They missed her cheerful contributions to the community planning meetings.
AP told the neighbours that Liberty had to be kept in his house most of the time and that he might even need to keep her in his basement because her free-spirited ways were a danger to everyone in the neighbourhood; and, that the terrorist janitors had attacked her precisely because they hate Liberty’s freedom.
This story is not over. From this point onwards, the path that this story takes now is up to you.
This is the beginning.
Anyone wishing another introduction to Liberty’s husband might want to see this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZVHsrncd3Y&NR=1
May 21st, 2007 at 12:10 am
Criminal investigations require that evidence – circumstantial or not – to be examined and investigated further, not discarded if it does not fit with the current accusations against the primary suspects, or because it does not fit with how the Chief thinks the crime went down. The greater the crime and the greater the uncertainty, the greater the investigation required. Except for the Crime of 911, that requires you to support the troops.
May 21st, 2007 at 4:32 am
3200 words, that’s not an analogy, it’s an novel. I didn’t much read past the first few paragraphs. You can repackage your drivel anyway you want, it doesn’t make it true. (I’m still waiting for a lie from GWB) (or a motive for 911 conspiracy). You grossly exaggerated my want to kill Arabs, I don’t want to kill anyone, we are not the aggressors here, if they stop we will stop, if we stop they will not stop, they have said so. For this to be genocide there would have to be the intent to kill a large group of people no mater what their reaction is. The outcome of this will probably be that the numbers of Arabs killed will be in the millions, genocidal numbers, but that is their doing not ours. If they, the leaders of Muslim religion, would say today “all Muslims lay down your arms and shake the hand of your Christian friend standing beside you” not another shot would be fired. Do you agree?
To your last point, we have investigated what happened, the criminal has confessed, to continue wasting resources looking for the one armed man isn’t going to bring the criminal to justice, we are in the process of arresting the perpetrator, an arrest that will likely take a decade or more and cost many lives. But if we let him go because it’s five o’clock and we want to go home and have dinner he will continue committing his crimes. See, you don’t have to restate the entire argument, just a little portion of it that you want to clarify.
May 21st, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Enkidu, you still here? You might enjoy these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvrrPCkHKLw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSk4SUpWVuY
May 21st, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Those clips show two things, liberals are in denial that we have a problem with Muslims and I am so glad we have a two party system so kooks like Ron Paul can’t be elected. In a more European system, he could, although it would be a long shot. Keep ’em comin’
May 21st, 2007 at 9:12 pm
By the way, the reason we support the troops is because they are killing the arabs that want to kill us.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:20 am
Source: blogcritics.org
Written by Mike Green
Published May 22, 2007
The recent exchange between Republican presidential hopefuls Rudy Guiliani of New York and Ron Paul of Texas ought to serve as a metaphor for what’s wrong with the political process in this nation. The two were addressing the attacks of 9/11 — the elephant that has lumbered around America for nearly six years while leaders have long sought to ignore it.
The simple discourse revealed enormous complexities.
Paul: “They attack us because we’ve been over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We’ve been in the Middle East.”
An angry Guiliani responded that as someone who lived through the attack of September 11 — “that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq — I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. … I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that.”
Paul shot back that if we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. “They come and they attack us because we’re over there.”
The audience erupted in applause and cheers for Guiliani. Paul was drowned out.
The entire scenario is a metaphor for the rampant ignorance and apathy that exists, not only at some of the highest levels of government leadership, but also consumes large swaths of the American landscape where ill-informed constituents cheer on their equally ignorant candidates with zeal.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:21 am
Guiliani was wrong. Dead wrong.
The very fact that he didn’t know the U.S. had been bombing Iraq every year for over a decade prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 is a clear statement that says he’s unfit for the Oval Office. America doesn’t need or deserve a president who hasn’t a clue what has occurred before his tenure that brought about the crisis situations he will inherit. Add to that the performance he gave in requesting a retraction from Paul and you’ve got yourself yet another politician better suited for Hollywood than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Paul, on the other hand, is a brave, albeit cooked, politician. He has no chance of progressing despite the growing interest of the American people in the issues surrounding the 9/11 cover-up.
Even as the dog and pony show travels the nation and placates to the vastly varied voters across the fruited plains, the field has already narrowed, the main players chosen, and the groomed and polished finalists are already preparing to take center stage in January 2008.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:21 am
This political process is a done deal. Clinton will be the nominee for the Democrats. Obama will toss his constituency behind her (ensuring a role in her Cabinet). The Republicans will offer up a sacrificial lamb. It truly doesn’t matter who it is, whether it be McCain, Romney or Guiliani … the elephants will roam outside of the White House following the turnover of power (barring another conveniently timed “terrorist attack” that establishes a need for Bush to remain in office until he can provide safety for us all).
If the Republicans have any sense at all, they will help Guiliani figure out that he has more important duties at home “spending more time with his family.” His goose is cooked. Any intelligent opposition on the Democrat side of the aisle immediately cut and stored clips of Guiliani’s open admission that he hasn’t a clue about the history of U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, thus rendering him incompetent as a presidential candidate.
Of course, that never stopped Dubya, but Guiliani’s dad isn’t the former head of the CIA and didn’t spend 12 years in the White House at the pinnacle of political policy-making. Dubya’s dad did. And the controversial orchestration of Dubya’s assension to the Oval Office will play forever in the annals of history.
For Guiliani, his legacy will be the role he played as Mayor of New York, especially during the turbulent time in the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11. Nothing more.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:22 am
Some may argue that Guiliani’s response to Paul was in regard to the rationale for the attacks on the World Trade Center Towers. Unfortunately, Guiliani failed to address the key issue behind Paul’s statement. That is, the U.S. government cannot initiate and maintain aggressive policies that render death and destruction in foreign places without expectation of some sort of retribution. Thus, we cannot blame the victim of U.S. aggression for fighting back, unless we are willing to cast ourselves as hypocrites, since we believe in fighting back when someone initiates a fight.
The key to Paul’s premise is that the U.S. ought not be conducting its business around the world as a bully. We ought not be overthrowing governments, undermining governments, and causing death and destruction in the wake of “U.S. foreign policies.” Any candidate who stands in opposition to that premise ought to be disqualified from any leadership position.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:23 am
Guiliani’s premise is based upon the lie posed by the government tas an explanation for 9/11. That lie, to this day, continues to claim the U.S. was attacked by presumably unknown terrorists for unknown reasons … unprovoked.
(of course most Americans will not recall the fact that the U.S. government put the word on the street that SAME DAY, that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the attacks. The next morning front pages of USA Today and The Washington Post both pushed headlines that screamed Osama on the very same page with the headlines reflecting the attack and photos of the twin towers ablaze. It’s amazing how quickly U.S. intelligence was aware that Osama was the culprit. Even more amazing is the fact that not one media outlet has ever challenged the government’s immediate assertion that Osama was behind the attacks of 9/11 — an accusation made on the same day the attacks occurred.
Paul’s premise was to provide a rationale for such an attack based upon acceptance of the same lie posed by the government as the reason planes were flown into the towers. But at least he knew the history of U.S. aggression in Iraq. Unfortunately, Paul isn’t questioning the executive branch’s continued claim of Al-Qaida as the mastermind behind what we saw that day. But I would expect Guiliani to lead the charge in finding out the truth since three buildings fell on his turf.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:23 am
Indeed, if Guiliani had any credibility at all, he would have led the charge into questioning the government in regard to numerous issues being brought to the mainstream by a wide variety of credible groups and scholars. Instead, Guiliani has yet to even investigate how a third tower fell at free-fall speed in the exact same manner as the twin towers … yet never sustained enough damage from fire or debris to warrant such a collapse and didn’t have the benefit of a plane to assist in its destruction.
Guliani has failed on many levels as a leader pertaining to the events of 9/11. The four widows from New Jersey spent nearly two years of their lives pushing for an investigation. Because of their efforts — not Guiliani’s or any other political leader — the bogus 9/11 Commission was finally formed. Meanwhile, Guiliani was glad-hugging and dripping tears of fake compassion. Perhaps we ought to elect those ladies. They have shown leadership and a determination to get at the truth, which is relatively unknown in Washington political circles. Surely, they would do better than Guiliani.
We don’t need another fake leader in the Oval Office. As it is, we will get another Clinton, which, after her 8 years, will total 36 years of just two families ruling the roost. And America’s foreign policy will never waver throughout her presidency, as it never wavered throughout her husband’s. The Bush-Clinton Middle East plan has done exactly what Jimmy Carter declared America would do in January 1980:
“An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault upon the vital interests of the United States — and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:24 am
When Carter mentioned “outside” force, he hoped America would turn its attention to the Soviet Union. But the reality of the invasion of Iran (8 months later) by a U.S.-assisted Iraq and the subsequent invasion of Iraq a decade later, with pronouncements by each president of the necessity to protect America’s “vital economic interests” in that region, provides us clarity to understand the true motives of the United States at that time and every four years since.
From the time Bush (41) lied to get us into a war in the Middle East and an invasion of Iraq in 1991, to the time Bush (43) lied to get us into yet another ground invasion of Iraq in 2003 within the same war, Clinton held down the fort in the Oval Office with continued air bombing of Iraq throughout his presidency. Such was the case in Yugoslavia as well.
There is no reason to believe that with the Clintons back in the White House anything would change in America’s policy in Iraq. Already permanent bases are being built. The Taj Mahal of embassies is now being constructed in Baghdad at an initial cost of nearly $600 million. Expect that cost to spiral out of control.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:24 am
Already, the British have committed to both Iraq and Afghanistan through 2012. They won’t be alone. We are a team, and their tiny force is nothing without our huge military might. If they have openly declared a commitment for at least another five years, surely Americans must know we have also made such a commitment.
With the Clintons back in the saddle again, it will be business as usual for the Bush-Clinton clan. Perhaps after 36 years we might find other candidates suitable for leadership. or maybe by that time Paul’s warning of American aggression creating a backlash will have prophetic consequences.
The time is right for the American public to clean out its political closet and rid itself of the terrorists within who callously sacrifice our sons and daughters serving in the military to advance their clandestine goals. It is time we stopped watching what they wear and listening to the eloquent speeches they give … and began to examine closely what they do and the decisions they make.
America doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And the decisions made by our leaders have far-reaching ramifications. We would do well as a people to elect leaders who can be trusted to act according to the will of the people — who do not ignore or stonewall the people while acting in accordance with special interests that place the safety and freedoms of the people at risk.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:25 am
Above from – Source: blogcritics.org
Written by Mike Green
Published May 22, 2007
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:04 am
keep em coming knarly
we are headed to T-town (Toronto) in July
always a nice visit, may head up to cottage country for a few days with some other families. drink some strong canadian beers
mmmm mmmm m!
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:24 am
Kk, do you read what you cut and paste or is it enough to be anti American, Bush, and/or war? This Green character seems to completely ignore the fact that Iraq invaded Kuwait, signed an agreement and then didn’t honor any of that agreement. Mr. Green didn’t say what we have been bombing in Iraq for the last ten years; SAM and missile installations firing at our planes in violation of those agreements. I’m guessing he just forgot that little tidbit, because if he knew what he was saying wasn’t true and he was saying it for malicious purposes what would it be? A lie? And I’m sure no one on the left lies, as proof I offer that no one has written about it on these pages, and since this blog is the last work on who is and isn’t lying….
Rudy knows we have been bombing Iraq for the last decade, he was saying we didn’t deserve to be hit since all we were doing was enforcing the cease fire agreement. And that moron Green calls us stupid. As far as Rudy looking into 911 conspiracy, he has, spent five minutes on it, decided it was a goofy notion by silly people and moved on with important work. Just like all normal people, I just toy with you about it because it’s good practice for when I am in an in person discussion.
I noticed Green didn’t give any examples of either Bush lying, curious. I’m guessing he just didn’t want to waist space in his column, because if he knew what he was saying wasn’t true and he was saying it for malicious purposes what would it be? A lie?
[America doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And the decisions made by our leaders have far-reaching ramifications. We would do well as a people to elect leaders who can be trusted to act according to the will of the people — who do not ignore or stonewall the people while acting in accordance with special interests that place the safety and freedoms of the people at risk.]
This paragraph tells so much, our founding fathers we very careful to insure our leaders didn’t have to, but could if they wanted, follow the will of the people. Without that concept being so deeply engrained most of the civil rights movement would have been delayed or never happened. Our system provides protection of the minority from the majority. Every group is a special interest group, Green wants my special interest group, the one that wants to defeat the militant Muslims, to be ignored by the president and listen to his special interest group, the one that wants to run an hide from militant Muslims. The 911 conspiracy is just a weapon to beat the person or persons who stand in Green’s way of realizing that goal. This is why we say people like you and Green are on the same side as the terrorists, you obviously don’t want innocent Americans to die in the streets of New York, but if you succeed in your mission, it will make it that much easier for them to succeed in theirs.
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:58 am
Silence rarely equates to agreement or acquiescence.
More often on Lies.com, it is the polite response to insults and comments from people who prove themselves to be narrow minded, intransigent warmongers, whose racist and culturally insensitive remarks have convinced others that it would be best to consider them unqualified from further participation in civil discourse.
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:03 pm
I suppose that is one possibility.
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:20 pm
One of the problems with the explanation of your dodging direct questions because of your civility and politeness is that you have been neither on many occasions. Granted, I am not all that civil all the time either, but I don’t duck questions and I make no pretense of always being civil. In fact I routinely use moderate rudeness as a tool to goad you just a bit, people say silly things when they are angry, and my ultimate goal is to get you to say silly things (that is how you win). I am also not all that worried about political correctness if Arabs want to kill us, they do. I don’t believe in being overly rude, but being pc in many cases is just another way to avoiding difficult issues.
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:24 pm
shcb,
You are a master at pulling me back in and re-engaging me in debate no-matter how much I think it is a waste of time with you. If that’s your intention, well done sir.
I’m off for some family R&R at the park Now. Until later, much later, here’s some thoughts:
I would have hoped that by now we’d have moved beyond an “I win / you lose” paradigm.
Refer to Habits #4, 5, 6
http://www.quickmba.com/mgmt/7hab/
I am far from perfect, and shcb admits to much the same. That said, I would like to point out shcb’s statement: ““I didn’t much read past the first few paragraphs. You can repackage your drivel anyway you want, it doesn’t make it true. (I’m still waiting for a lie from GWB) (or a motive for 911 conspiracy)” is at odds with habits #4 and #5 .
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Motive for 911 Conspiracy: there are many. Read “Crossing the Rubicon”. Read PNAC. Investigate military-industrial complex motives (e.g. Dwight D Eisenhowers (sp) speech) There are more. Pick one or pick a bunch. It’s not my job to educate you on your own society (but it seems to be your job to do backflips to rebut nearly everything negative about the current administration.) It makes a hll of a lot more sense than the war slogans for the brain-dead “They did it cuz they hate our freedom”
By the way, the 911 Commission COULD FIND NO MOTIVE FOR THE ARAB HIJACKERS, why don’t you look into recent comments aboput that from 911 commission members? If you can’t find it in a few days I’ll be pleased to send you a link.
Also, by the way, a few comments back you mentioned Kuwait invasion without mention of the lies told to congress at that time about babies being removed from incubators,etc. You might also want to Google “madelaine Albright Kuwait” and read a few things of the more uncomfortable items that come up there.
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:03 pm
KK,
Have fun on holiday, and I really, really mean that, I think you are a good and decent person, and I only wish you and yours all the happiness and good fortune you can muster. If we ever meet in person I hope it will be with a hearty hand shake a hug and a cold beer. I won’t stop antagonizing you however, unless you ask me to of course, because I think it is good for you to see how a determined and relentless adversary just keeps coming and coming. Our back and forth discussions are similar to the terrorist tactics in that neither of us can “kick each other’s ass” we can strike and retreat at will. At this time I am unfairly blaming a large portion of the Arab world because it has not gone through the reformation the Christian religion did hundreds of years ago, and I want to error on the side of my selfish intrests. At some point the Muslim religion will go through this change of life and we will no doubt be closer to blaming the same people. Until then I hope we can remain adversarial friends (that may be a little strong, but I couldn’t think of a better word).
I know your 14 or so points stated earlier on can be a tactic to undermine legitimate arguments, but they are not malicious if they are true. If the argument presented isn’t plausible and gets more and more absurd as it is confronted with logic at some point it is appropriate to call the author “kooky”.
Straw men is only a defensive tactic if you ignore all or most of your opponents points except for the weakest and then base your rebuttal only on those weak points. I feel I address most all your points. A counter straw man tactic you employ is to state a plethora of points, so many it would be cumbersome and distracting to address all them and then claim “straw man” when they all aren’t answered.
I’ve mentioned in the past I listen to Mike Rosen on a regular basis, the flooding of questions to distract is a common tactic of liberal callers to his show. His defense is to only allow the caller to ask one question at a time, he then answers that question, the caller can then respond or ask another question. If the caller refuses to abide by these rules “mister hold button” is employed. I don’t have the luxury of Mr. Hold Button.
Have a good vacation, I think I have a copy of the 911 commission report somewhere, I’ll see if they said there was no motive for the hijackers.
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Thanks shcb. Unfortunately I am not on holidays yet… just maybe a break from the computer. Your comments about the reformation give me pause for thought, yet I find Christian fundamentalists slightly more frightening than the Islamic ones. I guess, contrary to most, I fear the devil I know more than I fear the devil I don`t know. Anyway, I understand and agree with most of your last comment. Perhaps it would be best if we only deal with one or two points at a time.
As for the motives of the hijackers, Google still seems uncensored, so you might want to see what comes up when you search “911 Commission report hijacker motive”. The tenth item on that search goes to a link summarizing the part of “Crossing the Rubicon” which deals with that. (I mentioned Crossing the Rubicon as one of many places that set out motives for 911 as an inside job) but the summary does not do the book justice. (Also, it is dated January 18, 2005 and on a quick review I think they might be mistaken on the point of Cheney being in command that day rather than Rumsfeld due to an executive order in June 2001 for command structure in such a situation, but in any event the Air Force certainly thought Cheney was the Commander on 911. )
Summary: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011805_simplify_case.shtml
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:59 pm
As for the Motive of Arabs for 911 attack not determined by the 911 Commission:
I based my comments on a transcript of an interview from last week or so of 911 Vice Chair Lee Hamilton who responded, when asked if he had any regrets about the 911 Commission, that (roughly paraphrased) he did not feel that they were able to determine any real motives.
I can’t re-locate that interview, but this throws some light on it: “This little-noticed excerpt from the official 9/11 Commission report throws the entire basis of the report’s conclusions into question. It states that the 9/11 commissioners were allowed primary access neither to the alleged Al Qaeda members involved with the attacks, nor to the investigators who interrogated them—so the commissioners had no way to “judge the credibility of the detainees [or] clarify ambiguities in the [investigators’] reporting.” That is from http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060808_robert_scheer_dont_know_enemy/
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:00 pm
And I have been surprised by reports about the forthcoming book ‘ “Without Precedent,” [where-in the co-authors] ex-Gov. Tom Kean and ex-Rep. Lee Hamilton apparently remain agnostic as to whether the Bush administration deliberately lied or was merely totally incompetent, they are clear about the obstacles placed in the way of their investigation.“ – quoted from truthdig article linked above.
There is lots of speculation, e.g.: During the 9/11 Commission hearings, Vice Chair Lee Hamilton asked, “What motivated them to do it?” FBI Special Agent James Fitzgerald answered, “I believe they feel a sense of outrage against the United States. They identify with the Palestinian problem, they identify with people who oppose repressive regimes, and I believe they tend to focus their anger on the United States.”
Also, Former CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief Michael Scheuer has bluntly stated that politicians are lying to the American people about the terrorists’ motives, “The politicians really are at great fault for not squaring with the American people. We’re being attacked for what we do in the Islamic world, not for who we are or what we believe in or how we live. And there’s a huge burden of guilt to be laid at Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton, both parties for simply lying to the American people.”
May 24th, 2007 at 12:06 am
shcb, please consider a little introspection especially in regard to Habits #4, 5, and 6 from Stephen Covey – sometimes you exhibit behaviour that suggests you are trying to empathetically listen to what the other side is saying, but I have come to realise that what you do is not listen to see if you can find some alternate view or truth beyond that what you have already decided to be in your worldview, but rather most of the time you listen for any weakness you can exploit. It sucks talking to someone like that – honestly I am offering that as friendly advice. And I realise that I have come across much the same as what I am criticising you of now, especially as I seldom acknowledge where I might agree or might be less convinced of my own position as a result of your points.
It might be helpful if we tried to acknowledge more about what we each agree about.
May 24th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Hey enkidu,
Wish I spent more time in cottage country, someone I know went there every summer growing up and it sounds great. I drove through a couple of times just stopping long enough to jump in a lake, absolutely beautiful.
I’ll try not to drink all the beer in Canada before you get here, but no promises eh.
You might find this interesting:
http://www.opednews.com:80/articles/genera_devlin_b_070521_still_playing_with_f.htm
May 24th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Odd that I should mention yesterday: “Google still seems uncensored…” and then today discover that may not be true at all: “Google had reset viewing totals for Alex Jones’ latest film Terror Storm in the past from hundreds of thousands of views on several different video versions back down to zero for each one.
Following a complaint Google admitted that the numbers had been reset by mistake, despite the fact that the error only seemed to apply to Terror Storm, and assured us that the problem would not re-occur.
Yet a week later Google Video again edited viewer statistics and BLOCKED THE FILM FROM ENTERING ITS POPULAR CATEGORIES.
Loose Change appears in the featured video section of Google Video on almost every visit to the website because of its immeasurable viral impact, so for it to suddenly disappear from the top 100 is suspicious… ”
From: http://www.infowars.net/articles/may2007/240507Censoring.htm
May 24th, 2007 at 11:41 am
Odd that I should mention yesterday: “Google still seems uncensored…”
and then today discover that may not be true at all: “Google had reset viewing totals for Alex Jones’ latest film Terror Storm in the past from hundreds of thousands of views on several different video versions back down to zero for each one. …
May 24th, 2007 at 11:41 am
Following a complaint Google admitted that the numbers had been reset by mistake, despite the fact that the error only seemed to apply to Terror Storm, and assured us that the problem would not re-occur.
Yet a week later Google Video again edited viewer statistics and BLOCKED THE FILM FROM ENTERING ITS POPULAR CATEGORIES.
Loose Change appears in the featured video section of Google Video on almost every visit to the website because of its immeasurable viral impact, so for it to suddenly disappear from the top 100 is suspicious… ”
From: http://www.infowars.net/articles/may2007/240507Censoring.htm
May 24th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Following a complaint Google admitted that the numbers had been reset by mistake, despite the fact that the error only seemed to apply to Terror Storm, and assured us that the problem would not re-occur.
Yet a week later Google Video again edited viewer statistics and BLOCKED THE FILM FROM ENTERING ITS POPULAR CATEGORIES.
May 24th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Loose Change appears in the featured video section of Google Video on almost every visit to the website because of its immeasurable viral impact, so for it to suddenly disappear from the top 100 is suspicious… ”
From: http://www.infowars.net/articles/may2007/240507Censoring.htm
May 24th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Loose Change appears in the featured video section of Google Video on almost every visit to the website because of its immeasurable viral impact, so for it to suddenly disappear from the top 100 is suspicious… “
May 24th, 2007 at 11:44 am
And the Lies server will not let me post a link, I’ll break it up on to seperate lines to see if that works:
From: http://www.
infowars.
net/articles/
may2007/
240507Censoring.htm
May 24th, 2007 at 11:45 am
I’d like to know why that link could not be posted properly.
May 25th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Hey enkidu, you will be up in my neighbourhood! I have a cottage rented for a week in August up in Northern Ontario. Make sure you bring your fishing pole (if you’re into that). Some of the best fishing in all of the world, I kid you not. There are lakes up there that can only be reached by plane or helicopter and the views are simply amazing. I hope you have a great time!
May 29th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
knarly, I dunno why some posts go into the bit bucket and some don’t
links especially
NL, you leave me some Sleemans! or that Upper Canada Dark! or Stout! or at least leave a drop of Labatts! (my wife loves how I mangle the pronunciation on that one). I don’t think we will be getting quite as remote as a heli fishin trip!
lol
enjoy!
May 30th, 2007 at 2:38 am
enkidu,
Over the past week I’ve posted some short comments without links but they do not show up. Nothing gets past the server. Know not where the problem lies.
May 30th, 2007 at 2:38 am
hmmm
May 30th, 2007 at 2:39 am
funny, it works now
May 30th, 2007 at 2:50 am
was almost going to give up completely on this site because nothing got through for days.
A while back people were asking me why no structural engineers or architects have spoken out about the 3 WTC tower collapses. I gave some reasons, or links to the reasons, one of the main ones being their professional livelihood was at stake and there is too much personally to lose in speaking out against the “common wisdom.” Well, times are a changing.
Now these professionals are speaking out http://www.ae911truth.org
May 31st, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Enkidu,
Some people with a beef about a ghoulish pres. candidate for your viewing (dis)pleasure. Careful to turn volume down as the introduction has loud lincoln park music “LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES” (i.e. the theme music to this website!!!)
Very interesting video.
http://blip.tv/file/248591
Also, you might also find this interesting, at about the 2:55 minute mark the reporter talks about “dark secrets” about flight 93 and remember, “if it isn’t vital, it doesn’t get in”. So there is some vital reason that 93’s wreckage must be kept secret. What a surprise. That despite the FBI claim they turned over the wreckage to AA. Why the hell does wreckage from flight 93 need to be held in such security? It should be examined and made public.
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=HBkJrqV2qkQ
June 1st, 2007 at 9:23 am
I can’t watch Ghouliani
I’ve lived in NYC. I held my unborn son (nestled deep in his mother’s womb) in my hands beneath those towers. We stopped on our way out of town and stood beneath the WTC towers. As we stood gazing up at those magnificent creations, I said something to the effect of “these are the new cathedrals, the new monuments to science and reason” etc etc
That Ghouliani is basing his campaign on the atrocity of 9/11 is sick.
as to flight 93
doesn’t everyone store their plane crash wreckage in Iron Mountain? gosh, you wouldn’t want them damn dirty apes n trrrists (n librlz) to get their hands on that plane wreck!
well, on the bright side the stuff is still there for future analysis.
tho I would wager the incriminating bits have been disappeared or scrubbed.
maybe they found a passport from the trrrist leader!
The more you dig in to 9/11 the fishier the whole thing becomes. If the Rethuglicans at the top thought they could strengthen their grip on power by vaporizing a few thousand, heck even a few hundred thousand or a few million people, I have a strong suspicion they wouldn’t hesitate to do so.
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:18 am
Amazing new article from the Jerusalem Post has Shin Bet organizing Palestinian patsies for a hijacking circa 1976.
“According to his information, the hijack was the work of the PFLP, with help from the Israeli Secret Service, the Shin Bet,” he wrote.
“The operation was designed to torpedo the PLO’s (Palestine Liberation Organization) standing in France and to prevent what they see as a growing rapprochement between the PLO and the Americans.”
Relevant to 911? You better believe it.
From the Jerusalem Post:
Published: June 1, 2007
The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) may have been involved in the hijack of an Air France plane in 1976 by Palestinian terrorists, according to newly declassified British government documents released Friday.
Some 100 passengers were held by hijackers at Entebbe airport in Uganda during an eight-day ordeal that concluded when General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret Matkal) troops stormed the building where captives were held.
24 people died in the shoot-out, including three hostages, 20 Ugandans and the commander of the rescue team, Yoni Netanyahu.
The hijackers, from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the German Baader-Meinhof gang, deamded the release of Palestinian prisoners.
But according to the newly released documents, the Shin Bet, and the PFLP are alleged to have teamed up in an “unholy alliance” in an attempt to change foreign policy in the Middle East.
The allegation appeared in a document written by official DH Colvin at the British embassy in Paris, quoting a contact at the Euro-Arab Parliamentary Association, as the crisis unfolded.
“According to his information, the hijack was the work of the PFLP, with help from the Israeli Secret Service, the Shin Bet,” he wrote.
“The operation was designed to torpedo the PLO’s (Palestine Liberation Organization) standing in France and to prevent what they see as a growing rapprochement between the PLO and the Americans.
“Their nightmare is that…one will witness the imposition in the Middle East of a Pax Americana, which will be the advantage of the PLO (who will gain international respectability and perhaps the right to establish a state on evacuated territories) and to the disadvantage of the Refusal Front (who will be squeezed right out in any overall peace settlement and will lose their raison d’etre) and Israel who will be forced to evacuate occupied territory.
“Hence the unholy alliance of the hijacking.”
The document also suggested that then Ugandan president Idi Amin may have been collaborating with the hijackers.
The document was released by the National Archives in London
June 6th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Enkidu, this one is for you:
Report about an American reporter arrested for asking an unfavorable question to a republican candidate. Police threaten to transfer reporter to a secret detention facility. The comments after the video are insightful too.
http://www.911blogger.com/node/9191?page=1
June 6th, 2007 at 9:41 am
This will be interesting to see watch, has CNN made a big deal about this? If they aren’t then my guess they got their credentials illegitimately, either someone in CNN who is sympathetic to their nutty cause, or they lied to CNN to get the credentials. Were charges filed? Have they been dropped? Does he have any fingernails left after his interrogation in the secret underground cell next to the bat cave?
June 8th, 2007 at 7:41 am
Oh I see your point, If it is not on CNN then it must be false. I know the answers to your questions, they are easy to find get them yourself and report them here yourself and stop casting aspersions.
Either that or stfu.
June 9th, 2007 at 11:10 am
I don’t like CNN either, I just wonder if they are owning up his “credentials”, they are for the most part respectable. I can’t immagine them joining the crazies.