30 Responses to “Packer on Rubin on the Upcoming Iran-Bombing P.R. Campaign”

1. Craig Says:
   September 6th, 2007 at 11:05 am

   Fourth-hand conversation, in which two levels are unidentified? To answer your question….HELLLLOOO paranoia!

2. jbc Says:
   September 6th, 2007 at 2:19 pm

   Heh. Except that I’ve seen three articles from the right-wing press touting exactly this position already this week, and I haven’t been looking very hard.

3. knarlyknight Says:
   September 6th, 2007 at 7:10 pm

   there’s been so many cries of wolf about an Iran attack that even some of the paranoid may be starting to get skeptical (that would be me.) I think there may be enough intelligent people in the upper military command structure that an ill-concieved (and essentially political) order to attack Iran will be honorably refused. Yes, I am so naive.

   For fresh paranoid fears (that might help you forget about such possible pending events half way around the world) check this out:
   http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=4185

4. Sven Says:
   September 7th, 2007 at 10:52 am

   hmmm

   http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran8sep08,0,4001470.story?coll=la-home-center

5. shcb Says:
   September 9th, 2007 at 11:58 am

   What idiots, we are at war with the Muslim world, a judge fines Iran and he and the families think they are going to pay for what they consider a legitimate military target, which it is by the way. The only way they are going to any money is if we go get it.

6. enkidu Says:
   September 9th, 2007 at 2:44 pm

   You may be at war with anyone who doesn’t agree with you, but the sane folks are at war with a tiny slice of the Muslim population. The Islamic Extremist Nut Jobs. rwnjs continued calls for Muslim genocide are revolting. shrubco has inflated osama bin forgotten and AQ into a monster that justifies throwing out the Constitution and Bill of Rights, reason and sanity, decency and morality.

   Plus I love how you label these folks “idiots” (apparently) without irony.

7. shcb Says:
   September 10th, 2007 at 1:14 pm

   No, we are at war with the people who were killing us by the thousands, I don’t want genocide, I just want to kill enough to deter the rest from killing more of us. No one has thrown anything out. Certainly not the Constitution. You are just blowing anything I say out of propotion, but hey, it’s your ink, splatter it wherever you want, you will just make a mess that someone else will have to clean up.

   I even got my new Dutch friend to agree with me tonight on the trip back from Rotterdam that we will be in Iraq for decades after he made as disparaging a remark against Bush as you would have during dinner an hour before. You are right, the rest of the world thinks we are stupid to be in Iraq, until you reason with them a bit.

   Good night Kid

8. Sven Says:
   September 10th, 2007 at 5:44 pm

   shcb: the huge flaw in your post is that those who killed us “by the thousands” on September 11, 2001 were not from Iraq or Iran. Osama Bin Ladin (the one who did attack us, remember?) was from Saudi Arabia, and it would seem is perhaps now hiding in Pakistan. There he apparently has the luxury of being able to go to a salon to get his beard dyed. Yet we won’t attack either of those countries because supposedly they are our allies. The rest of the world is right. We are stupid to be in Iraq.

9. knarlyknight Says:
   September 10th, 2007 at 10:11 pm

   shcb,

   I would bet $100 that your new Dutch “friend” agreed with you to get you to stfu.

   If you are at was with the Muslim world that means you are at war with the 6.3 million Muslims in America too. Boo! ha u flinched.

   No question, America will be in Iraq for decades or longer if that is how long the oil remains strategic and if the present empirist mentality continues to reign in Washington and if the military situation remains at all tenable.

   “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
   — James Madison

   As for Iraq being a fight against Muslims, hahaha you are a funny fellow shcb. Sure Iraq may be 99% Muslim or so, but Saddam was as Muslim as Bush is Christian (mere costumes for political effect) and Saddam’s Baath party regime was as secular as could be hoped for in that country, no?

   Remember what Paul O’Neal reported about the plans to attack Iraq? No? Here is a sappy refresher (complete with annoying Alan Parson’s chords and a dopey political campaign conclusion for your amusment) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inyCkCvqRO0&v3

10. shcb Says:
    September 11th, 2007 at 9:30 am

    Hey guys,

    Knarly, I wouldn’t take that bet, I know me to well, and you could very well be right, but I didn’t bring it up, we were driving back to Oudenbosh where we are staying and he was translating the news of the General’s report since I don’t speak Dutch. If he wanted to avoid the subject all he had to do was not say anything, I wouldn’t know if they were talking about Iraq or selling soap. By the way Marc and I have had several political discussions since I have been here and we know which side of the fence we are both on, and it isn’t the same side. But we enjoy the give and take of it all.

    I have decided, if the rest of the world doesn’t think the Muslims are a threat, Allah be with them. It seems so elementary to me I have a hard time understanding the reluctance to people who won’t take threats seriously, although I realize it is certainly easier. We aren’t at war with all of Islam, just a tiny part of it, with a large number (maybe 50%) sympathetic to the radicals. And yes that includes whatever portion of the American Muslim population that includes. This isn’t a war against a particular country the battle field is in Afghanistan and Iraq currently, and will be in Iran soon but the war encompasses the world including the Saudis. If we allow the threat to grow we will simply have to kill many more of them to get the problem under control in the future, I don’t care. If that is what the “rest of the world” wants that is what it will get.

    And yes if oil were not an issue, we would let them kill each other but oil is in the equation, I can’t change that. We still would not let them throw our own planes at our buildings, nor yours, without killing a bunch of them. And I have no doubt that if those planes had hit Toronto, we would still be in Iraq.

    That is a good Madison quote, however we are not fighting under the “guise” of war, we actually are at war, big difference. And if you don’t think we are, well Allah be with you.

    Sven, we wouldn’t attack France or Canada if he were in hiding there either, this isn’t a war against one man or one country, he is just a single character, one of hundreds or thousands of leaders of the Islamic faith that want us to convert or die. Not much more difficult than that.

11. knarlyknight Says:
    September 11th, 2007 at 12:07 pm

    Guess you didn’t watch the video then, did you?

    The Madison quote is spot on. The war in the middle east is due to the American invasions in the middle east. Those invasions were based on… the best (but spectacularly wrong) intelligence available at the time and everychanging rationalizations (to be overly generous). As the justifications for the wars are fictitious, and you are not actually fighting any recognizable state sponsored political foe, you are in fact operating under the guise of “war”. Honestly, American military might and the resources of the security apparatus (CIA et al) that back it up are so awesome that to call these asymetrical fights with al qaida “war” is glorifying the American role to a ridiculous level. What you have now is a police action on massive scale, and now it also involves trying to put down rebellions by people who do not want foreign infidels occupying their lands. Simple, really.

    Aaah, yes, but you think it is a real war because rinj’s attacked first in a long string of terrorist actions culminating in the events that occured six years ago today, and which have still not been officially investigated by anyone but Bush administration lackeys. Unfortunately, the terrorist acts do not constitute “war”, they constitutes criminal acts. To say otherwise is to invoke a “guise”. Since the evidence against the supposed perpetrators of 911 is sorely lacking, to say the least, and the Patriot Acts plus Bush’s signing statements, plus American use of torture and eavesdropping on citizens are grim realities (i.e. “tyranny” and “oppression”) all undermining your own Bill of Rights, it is clear the Maddison quote is spot on.

    That seems to be the opinion also of this and staunch Republican and former Treasury Secretary in the Reagan administration:

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18353.htm

12. knarlyknight Says:
    September 11th, 2007 at 12:08 pm

    Guess you didn’t watch the video then, did you?

13. knarlyknight Says:
    September 11th, 2007 at 12:08 pm

    The Madison quote is spot on. The war in the middle east is due to the American invasions in the middle east. Those invasions were based on… the best (but spectacularly wrong) intelligence available at the time and everychanging rationalizations (to be overly generous). As the justifications for the wars are fictitious, and you are not actually fighting any recognizable state sponsored political foe, you are in fact operating under the guise of “war”. Honestly, American military might and the resources of the security apparatus (CIA et al) that back it up are so awesome that to call these asymetrical fights with al qaida “war” is glorifying the American role to a ridiculous level. What you have now is a police action on massive scale, and now it also involves trying to put down rebellions by people who do not want foreign infidels occupying their lands. Simple, really.

    Aaah, yes, but you think it is a real war because rinj’s attacked first in a long string of terrorist actions culminating in the events that occured six years ago today, and which have still not been officially investigated by anyone but Bush administration lackeys. Unfortunately, the terrorist acts do not constitute “war”, they constitutes criminal acts. To say otherwise is to invoke a “guise”. Since the evidence against the supposed perpetrators of 911 is sorely lacking, to say the least, and the Patriot Acts plus Bush’s signing statements, plus American use of torture and eavesdropping on citizens are grim realities (i.e. “tyranny” and “oppression”) all undermining your own Bill of Rights, it is clear the Maddison quote is spot on.

14. knarlyknight Says:
    September 11th, 2007 at 12:08 pm

    That also seems to be the opinion also of this and staunch Republican and former Treasury Secretary in the Reagan administration:

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18353.htm

15. knarlyknight Says:
    September 11th, 2007 at 12:11 pm

    That also seems to be the opinion also of this and staunch Republican and former Treasury Secretary in the Reagan administration:

    9-11, Six Years Later

    By Paul Craig Roberts

    09/11/07 “ICH” — — On Sept. 7, National Public Radio reported that Muslims in the Middle East were beginning to believe that the 9-11 attacks on the WTC and Pentagon were false flag operations committed by some part of the U.S. and/ or Israeli government.

    It was beyond the imagination of the NPR reporter and producer that there could be any substance to these beliefs, which were attributed to the influence of books by U.S. and European authors sold in bookstores in Egypt.

    NPR’s concern was that books by Western authors questioning the origin of the 9-11 attack have the undesirable result of removing guilt from Muslims’ shoulders.

    The NPR reporter, Ursula Lindsey, said that “here in the U.S., most people have little doubt about what happened during the 2001 attacks.”

    NPR’s assumption that the official 9-11 story is the final word is uninformed. Polls show that 36 percent of Americans and more than 50 percent of New Yorkers lack confidence in the 9-11 commission report. Many 9-11 families who lost relatives in the attacks are unsatisfied with the official story.

    Why are the U.S. media untroubled that there has been no independent investigation of 9-11?

    Why are the media unconcerned that the rules governing preservation of forensic evidence were not followed by federal authorities?

    Why do the media brand skeptics of the official line “conspiracy theorists” and “kooks”?

    What is wrong with debate and listening to both sides of the defining issue of our time? If the official line is so correct and defensible, what does it have to fear from skeptics?

    Obviously, a great deal considering the iron curtain that has been erected to protect the official line from independent examination.

    Some may think that the 9-11 commission report was an independent investigation, and others will protest that we have the National Institute of Standards and Technology analysis, which explains the collapse of the Twin Towers as a result of airliner impact and fire.

    The 9-11 commission was a political commission run by Bush administration insider Philip Zelikow. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the head of which is a member of President Bush’s Cabinet.

    Zelikow was a member of President Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a neoconservative stronghold. In February 2005, Zelikow was appointed counselor of the U.S. Department of State. Obviously, there was zero possibility that the 9-11 commission would hold any part of the Bush administration accountable for the numerous failures of U.S. government agencies on Sept. 11, much less would the commission investigate for any complicity.

    If one looks at the credentials of skeptics compared to the credentials of defenders of the official line, it is impossible to dismiss skeptics as kooks. There are many people with strong imaginations on the Internet, but serious skeptics stick to known facts, known violations of standard procedures and the laws of physics. The vast majority of the people who call skeptics “kooks” are themselves ignorant of physics and have little comprehension of the improbability that such an attack could succeed without either the complicity or complete failure of government agencies.

    Over the past six years, the ranks of distinguished skeptics of the 9-11 storyline have grown enormously. The ranks include distinguished scientists, engineers and architects, intelligence officers, air traffic controllers, military officers and generals, including the former commanding general of U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, former presidential appointees and members of the White House staff in Republican administrations, Top Gun fighter pilots and career airline pilots who say that the flying attributed to the 9-11 hijackers is beyond the skills of America’s best pilots, and foreign dignitaries.

    Dr. Andreas von Buelow, former West German minister of research and technology and former state secretary of the federal ministry of defense, said: “The planning of the attacks was technically and organizationally a master achievement. To hijack four airliners within a few minutes and within one hour to drive them into their targets with complicated flight maneuvers! This is unthinkable, without years-long support from secret apparatuses of the state and industry.”

    Gen. Leonid Ivashov, chief of staff of the Russian armed forces, said: “Only secret services and their current chiefs — or those retired but still having influence inside the state organizations — have the ability to plan, organize and conduct an operation of such magnitude. … Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida cannot be the organizers nor the performers of the Sept. 11 attacks. They do not have the necessary organization, resources or leaders.”

    Americans might concede that it is unusual that U.S. airport security would fail four times within a few minutes, that U.S. air defenses would fail across the board to intercept the hijacked airliners and that hijackers lacking in flight skills could conduct the exotic flight maneuvers that top gun fighter pilots say are beyond their own skills. Still, there is some possibility, however remote, that Allah could have blessed the hijackers with unbelievable luck.

    But when we come to the explanation of the collapse of the Twin Towers, the official story lacks even a remote possibility of being true. Architects, engineers and physicists know that powerfully constructed steel buildings do not suddenly collapse at free-fall or near-free-fall speed simply because they were impacted by airliners and experienced short-lived, low intensity and limited fires.

    Physicists also know that there was not enough gravitational energy to pulverize massive concrete into fine dust, to cut massive steel beams into appropriate lengths to be loaded and removed on trucks, and to eject dust and steel beams hundreds of yards horizontally. Physicists know that if intense fire were present throughout the towers sufficient to cause steel to weaken and suddenly collapse, such fires would not have left unburned and unscorched hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper, which floated all over lower Manhattan.

    Physicists have raised unanswered questions about the official explanation’s neglect of the known laws of physics. Recently, Dr. Crockett Grabbe, a Caltech trained applied physicist at the University of Iowa, observed: “Applying two basic principles, conservation of energy and conservation of momentum, the government explanation quickly unravels. NIST conspicuously ignored these principles in their reports. NIST also ignored the observed twisting of the top 34 floors of the South Tower before it toppled down. This twisting clearly violates the conservation of both linear and angular momentum unless a large external force caused it. Where the massive amounts of energy came from that were needed to cause the complete collapse of the intact parts below for each tower, when their tops were in virtual free fall, is not answered in NIST’s numerous volumes of study.”

    Some of NIST’s own scientists are questioning its reports. Dr. James Quintiere, former chief of the fire science division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, recently said that “the official conclusion that NIST arrived at is questionable” and called for an independent review of NIST’s investigation into the collapses of the WTC towers.

    Quintiere has called attention to many problems with NIST’s investigation and reports: the absence of a timeline, failure to explain the collapse of WTC 7, the spoliation of the evidence of a fire scene, reliance on questionable computer models, the absence of any evidence for the existence of temperatures NIST predicts as necessary for failure of the steel and a Commerce Department legal structure that instead of trying to find the facts “did the opposite and blocked everything.”

    On Aug. 27, 2007, a prominent member of the National Academy of Sciences and recipient of the National Medal of Science, Dr. Lynn Margulis, dismissed the official account of 9-11 as a “fraud” and called for a new, thorough and impartial investigation.

    On Sept. 5, 2007, U.S. Navy Top Gun fighter pilot and veteran airline pilot Ralph Kolstad said that the flight maneuvers attributed to the 9-11 hijackers are beyond his flight skills. “Something stinks to high heaven,” declared Kolstad.

    When faced with disturbing events, the Romans asked a question, “Cui bono?” Who benefits? This question was conspicuously absent from the official investigation.

    Who are the beneficiaries of 9-11? The answer is: the military-security complex, which has accumulated tens of billions of dollars in profits; U.S. oil companies, which hope to get their hands on Iraqi and perhaps Iranian oil; the Republican Party, which saved a vulnerable newly elected president, George W. Bush, viewed by many as illegitimately elected by one vote of the Supreme Court, by wrapping him in the flag as “war president”; the Republican Federalist Society, which used 9-11 to achieve its goal of concentrating power in the executive; Vice President Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives, who used the “new Pearl Harbor” to implement their “Project for a New American Century” and extend American hegemony over the Middle East; and right-wing Israeli Zionists, who have successfully used American blood and treasure to eliminate obstacles to Israeli territorial expansion.

    In addition to American troops and Iraqi and Afghan civilian casualties, a casualty of the neoconservative “war on terror” is the civil liberties that protect Americans from tyranny. President Bush and his corrupt Department of Justice (sic) have declared our constitutional protections to be null and void at the whim of the executive.

    The greatest benefactors of 9-11 are the authoritarian personalities that John Dean says have taken over the Republican Party.

    Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.

    www dot informationclearinghouse dot info/article18353.htm

16. shcb Says:
    September 12th, 2007 at 8:25 am

    Knarly,

    No I didn’t watch any of the videos or read the long cut and paste, was there anything important there? Winning an argument like we are having is easy if you ignore what the enemy is doing and saying, then when you need to bolster that, simply make the assertion that we are not at war because we are not fighting an established country. Well we weren’t when we fought the Pirates of the Barbary Coast, we weren’t fighting the Chinese in Korea or the Russians in Vietnam, or the Cubans (Russians) in Grenada and on and on, not a very persuasive point when you play by the rules of reality and history.

    We are back to it is not a fair fight since the American military is so much more powerful than our enemies, so we should use less of our resources to make it a more fair fight, resulting in more loss of American soldiers….

    Finally, read the FISA law, I would cut and paste it in a torturously long post but that isn’t my style, it is illegal to warrantless wiretap on a US citizen unless there is evidence they have connections to a terrorist organization. All legal and precedented, we have always listened in our enemies conversations.

    Your points as usual are rubbish my good man, pure rubbish.

17. ethan-p Says:
    September 12th, 2007 at 10:06 am

    That is a good Madison quote, however we are not fighting under the “guise” of war, we actually are at war, big difference. And if you don’t think we are, well Allah be with you.

    SHCB, I’m not sure whether or not we’ve been through this before, and I certainly don’t mean to pick on you…but I’ve got a problem with your statement.

    Are we at war? Were there any articles of war drawn up? Did the Congress ever declare war? If I remember correctly, Congress gave the president authority to use military force, but they did not waive their constitutional power to declare war. Is it just semantics? Perhaps. We have people fighting and dying over there, and this isn’t meant as as disrespectful to their sacrifice, however, there is a cold hard truth to this.

    If you consider the “War on Terrorism” an actual war, what are the conditions set forth to achieve victory? Are they attainable? How is the War on Terrorism more of a war than the War on Drugs or the War on Poverty? Do you feel that our utter failure in other ‘wars’ on non-proper-nouns (also without any meaningful or realistic victory conditions) reflects on this war on a non-proper-noun?

    I’m not as paranoid as most of the folks here, but I definitely feel like we’re (as a nation) sailing in uncharted waters, and headed for trouble. Perhaps there is some merit to the Madison quote.

18. shcb Says:
    September 12th, 2007 at 11:59 am

    Ethan,

    Don’t worry about picking on me, I to some degree thrive on it. Any Madison quote is worth a listen, same with Hamilton, I just think this situation is more serious than most here. I have a long flight home tomorrow so I will make this brief since sleep is more a premium than debate.

    Let me deposit this thought and perhaps we can discuss more this weekend when I get back to Denver. This war will be over when the Arab states and the Arab population in non Arab countries start to villainize, catch and punish Muslim terrorists as we do with domestic terrorists. At that point I would be content to say this is a police matter.

    As to a declaration of war, the best I have heard is that the congressional approval you refer to amounts to a declaration of war, since there is no one or even two or three nation states that are overtly supporting these groups there is no practical way for congress to say ”we declare war on…”. This happened with the Pirates of the Barbary Coast as well. War was effectively declared on a ragtag group of nationless profiteers. That doesn’t mean we kept the fight to the ocean, we did invade countries that were sympathetic to the pirates cause, remember “to the shores of Tripoli”?

    One last thing, I despise those uses of “war on…” it dilutes the meaning of the word, like calling teachers or sport figures “heroes” so on that I think we agree. But yes this situation can get to the point that it can be managed by police, but no it will never end, like the war on poverty can never be won, but it can be mitigated.

    I don’t think I will have time to respond to anything you say tomorrow morning but I will respond in due course

19. NorthernLite Says:
    September 12th, 2007 at 1:23 pm

    The last couple of days I have started to hear a lot on the various news outlets about Iran. Now they are saying that Iranian weapons are being found not only in Iraq, but in Afghanistan, which is probably true.

    But I honestly don’t think the US military can take on Iran, especially being so bogged down in Iraq. I guess we shall see…

20. shcb Says:
    September 12th, 2007 at 8:00 pm

    NL,

    I think Iran has been the problem since the start, and we are doing whatever we can to avoid an invasion of Iran, I am sure this small pullout is partially to send a message to Iran that our work in Iraq is about over, we are coming for you next unless you stop making war on the US. But I think you are right, we are too tired for a full scale invasion unless they would do something monumental.

21. Craig Says:
    September 17th, 2007 at 9:25 am

    Must we keep talking about BS like the 9/11 conspiracy? These people are living in a fantasy world in which they sat that they “simply want answers to questions”, but in truth, simply discard the volume of scientifically-solid answers as coming from compromised sources who receive government funding or are part of the conspiracy itself. And when that isn’t good enough they will promote lies and twisted statements to pump up some kind of validity as coming from an authorative source. Such as below:

    “Take James Quintiere, a former member of NIST and an expert in fire science, for example. He says he does not accept NIST’s findings that the airplane crashing into the could have ever stripped enough of the fireproofing from the steel girders because his studies show the fireproofing was substandard to begin with. He specifically says these “controlled demolitions” conspiracies are silly, but nonetheless requests NIST to examine his scenario more closely.

    Now, the conspiracy people will take this statement and completely distort it. They exaggerate his disagreeing with NIST, they discard the fact he simply has an alternative reason why the fires brought the towers down as well as his saying he does not support any of these silly conspriacies floating around, they embellish his pretty sounding title, and add a healthy dose of paranoia concerning his disagreement with NIST. ”

    Oh, and Dr. Lynn Margulis may be a respected scientist, but it is omitted that she is a biologist, which is like a structural engineer questioning the studies on human viruses.

    Reams of data from studies by hundreds of experts in directly related fields of study are dismissed out of hand as being puppets of the government. It’s all classic delusional thinking.

    I expect to have a flurry of links to truther sites thrown at me, with survey data and various red herring anecdotal arguments. But the very basic science that has been shown to be the explanation for the disaster has never been refuted with any equally scientifically sound alternative explanation. Scientists and engineers are not shy about calling out BS theories because its about the facts and the science to them, not about following a government story. So, the day the broad scientific community in the areas related to physics and engineering decide to do a 180 and support this demolition crap, is the day I will give it the seriousness it would then deserve.

22. knarlyknight Says:
    September 19th, 2007 at 8:17 am

    Craig, with all due respects, you need an education.

    Here are established architects and engineers putting their necks on the line to get the official explanation investigated, in keeping with the wishes of a majority of the population who believe that the official explanation is not satisfactory:
    http://www.ae911truth.org/

    Likewise, here are the scientists many of who are physicists, such as this physicist picked at random: David Griscom Ph.D. Physics Naval Research Laboratory, Wash., DC 1967-2001 Research Physicist
    http://www.stj911.com/members/index.html

    Re: Lynn Margulis, her bio does not omit that she is a biologist, nor does it fail to represent her extensive accomplishments that give her far more credence than YOU to comment on what is a scientific explanatino and what is not:

    Lynn Margulis, AB, MS, PhD – Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts – Amherst. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983. Former Chair, National Academy of Science’s Space Science Board Committee on Planetary Biology and Chemical Evolution. Recipient of the National Medal of Science, America’s highest honor for scientific achievement, in 1999, presented by President William J. Clinton. The Library of Congress, Washington, DC, announced in 1998 that it will permanently archive Dr. Margulis’ papers. President of Sigma Xi, the scientific research society, from 2005 – 2006. Recipient of the Proctor Prize for scientific achievement in 1999 from Sigma Xi. Prior to moving to the University of Massachusetts, Dr. Margulis was a faculty member at Boston University for 22 years. Her publications span a wide-range of scientific topics, and include original contributions to cell biology and microbial evolution. Dr. Margulis is best known for contributions to evolution, especially the theory of symbiogenesis. For more information on Dr. Margulis’ career, please visit http://www.chelseagreen.com/authors/LynnMargulis and http://www.sciencewriters.org.

    Author of over 130 scientific works and numerous books. Recent publications include Mind, Life, and Universe (2007 with Eduardo Punset), Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the Nature of Nature (2007, co-authored with Dorion Sagan), Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution (1998), Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species (2002, with Dorion Sagan), Early Life: Evolution on the Precambrian Earth (2002, second edition with Michael F. Dolan), Luminous Fish: Tales of Science and Love (2006), What is Sex? (1997, with Dorion Sagan), What is Life? (1995, with Dorion Sagan), Mystery Dance: On the Evolution of Human Sexuality (1991, with Dorion Sagan), Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution From Our Microbial Ancestors (1986, with Dorion Sagan), and Origins of Sex: Three Billion Years of Genetic Recombination (1986, with Dorion Sagan), Kingdoms and Domains: Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth (4th edition, co-authored by Michael J. Chapman, Academic Press, 2008 in press), Symbiosis in Cell Evolution (second edition, 1993).

23. Craig Says:
    September 20th, 2007 at 7:17 am

    I will NOT get into a debate with you on this issue, as you have your mind set, and I certainly am convinced in what I believe. It is ironic however, that I am told that I am in need of education on the explanation for 9/11.

    I will note the red herring that you provided in your answer regarding Dr. Margulis (I notice that there is no answer regarding the distortions involving James Quintiere). I could list all the accomplishments of an esteemed, world-recognised structural engineer, but that still would have no weight, in itself, of assessing the validity of that person’s question regarding a well-accepted finding within the world of human viruses.

24. knarlyknight Says:
    September 20th, 2007 at 12:12 pm

    Thank you for admitting that you have a closed mind on the subject. You wrongly assume that my mind is also closed. I would like to believe that the buildings fell due to the reasons cited by NIST et al. Alas, the flaws in those official analyses are so outrageous. The evidence that supports other conclusions (some of which NIST et al purposefully ignore) is solid enough to totally undermine the official conspiracy theory (OCT).

    Ironic? In my hope to find things that made sense of the stories the administration were telling about 911, I have educated myself far, far more I ever anticipated (or initially wanted). Briefly, I have followed the circumstances leading to the creation of the 911 Commission, the questions that were asked then and the limited number that were chosen to be addressed, reviewed the official reports, the criticisms of same, read about the crazy and not so crazy alternative theories, the debunking of the alternative theories, reviewed the papers and letters set out for review at http://www.journalof911studies.com/index.html; the debunking of the debunkers, and have viewed some of the so-called debates and noted the tactics of the OCT defenders was “Rethuglican” while those asking questions and presenting alternative evidence were forthright.

    For brevity I did not address James Quintier’s statement, as it speaks for itself. Anything beyond that is conjecture. For example, yes it may well be that he actually thinks the controlled demolition idea is silly or yes it may well be that he astutely set a limit on how much risk he was willing to take in stating his opinion that the OCT was lacking and in calling for further investigation. If he thought that was enough to put his weight behind getting the ball rolling for a real investigation, why would he go further and risk getting crushed by retaliating, overbearing rwnj’s?

    You may be correct that a structural engineer would have little to add to an accepted finding in the field of human viruses, but the reverse is not true. Structural engineering is an engineering discipline based upon fundamental science: mathematics, scientific principles (e.g. physics and the components of matter) and the uncompromised application of the scientific method, especially in relation to forensic analysis of structural failures. These items are fundamental to all the sciences.

    The relevance in Dr. Margolis statement is that she has an undeniably exhaustive expertise with the scientific method. In as much as her comments say that that the investigation into 911 was fundamentally political and the official government forensic studies veered so far from the scientific method as to render the government’s conclusions invalid , that is relevant.

25. shcb Says:
    September 20th, 2007 at 2:53 pm

    But if she doesn’t know anything about structural engineering and she is being fed crap and doesn’t know enough to instinctively know she is being fed crap, all the knowledge of the scientific method is useless, since the data is flawed. Like the data the pilots for 911 truth were using, they say 2 plus 2 is 5 and you say “hey they are the experts, they know”. Unless you have the technical knowledge to say no, it is a lot closer to 3.9. Or the people who said the plane couldn’t fit through the hole in the Pentagon, the hole was an EXIT wound.

    As usual, you conspiracy nuts start with a conclusion and work your backwards through the evidence until it fits, discarding the parts that don’t fit. Then you say your opponents aren’t using the scientific method. It’s the Dick Morris method of claiming your opponents are doing what you are doing, at the very least you distract your opponents while they defend themselves, if you are really good or lucky, the masses look at your opponent suspiciously and let you off the hook at least temporarily, if you are ruthless, you scream bloody murder and your opponent gets blamed for something they didn’t do and you did.

26. knarlyknight Says:
    September 20th, 2007 at 3:38 pm

    Wrong again, shcb. Your comments contain erroneous conclusions hanging on dubious assumptions, analogies that do not reflect the facts and carefully placed inflammatory and defammatory insults (“conspiracy nuts”). Yours are arguments rely on the continued beating of straw men far from the immediate issue (e.g. the “Pentagon exit hole” and your failure to get your flight theory validated by ANY expert pilot have no bearing on the previous posts) In short your comments are fit for the uneducated masses; it is hardly any wonder that YMATT refuses to debate with you.

27. shcb Says:
    September 20th, 2007 at 7:35 pm

    Knarly,

    You crack me up sometimes, I’m an engineer, you want me to find “experts” to check my 7th grade math? Then you want me to use the very people I’m calling charlatans as those experts? “Beating straw men far from the immediate issue”, discrediting you conspiracy nuts any way I can IS the immediate issue. Matt and John don’t debate anyone, they get the conversation started and sit back and watch us flail, it’s what they do. I’m not that special. At one point you tried to ignore me but you couldn’t help yourself, you’re not as disciplined as Matt, and even he has his weak spots.

    I guess I don’t know what is erroneous, I’ve heard Dick Morris say that is what he did with Clinton, my OPINION is you are doing the same thing, I can’t read your mind, I can only judge you by what you write, and I stand by my opinion, take it or leave it.

28. knarlyknight Says:
    September 20th, 2007 at 7:56 pm

    I just do not think that you took the right information to start your calculations or to conclude your calculations, seems to me you did the calculations on a few assumptions and without the key co-ordinates as recently released from the flight data records which contradicted the 911 commission flight path. That’s why I suggest you need to align your calculations with the pilots. Beleive me, I would love it if you could show them to be wrong, but it is you who says you are capable of doing that, not me. Whatever… I have belabored this point with you forever, the Pentagon crash is weird to a large extent because withheld and destroyed evidence is weird, but without a real investigation that requires that evidence to be released there are more convincing avenues like the NORAD games mirroring actual events, the WTC7 collapse as reported ahead of schedule and the explosive collapses of W1&2…

29. Craig Says:
    September 20th, 2007 at 9:22 pm

    Wow.

    I’m not sure what my favorite part of Knarly’s comments are, but the irony in the following is so thick you have to cut it with a machete:

    “Your comments contain erroneous conclusions hanging on dubious assumptions, analogies that do not reflect the facts….”

    You can carry on with this topic, but I’ve said all I care to on this goofiness.

30. shcb Says:
    September 21st, 2007 at 8:53 am

    Craig, sometimes when I debate Knarly I get a kind of out of body experience sort of like when I take vicoden, since I don’t have a house keeper with connections and a bunch of lawyers to keep me out of jail like Rush, I find the high of these silly debates is cheaper.

    Knarly, I was using the numbers you presented in your post or link, just as if they were a story problem in school, I didn’t make any assumptions or add anything. I’m making such a big deal out of this because it is indicative of the whole conspiracy nut argument, all the little pieces have to fit so if I can knock out this piece then this whole section of the argument falls down. A plane couldn’t have hit the Pentagon because the hole is too small, the hole was on the other side of the building, now a plane could have hit the building, most of that conspiracy was crushed in one fell swoop, that is not insignificant. A plane could not have made that maneuver, it had to be a missile, I show a plane could have made that maneuver, most of that conspiracy was crushed in one fell swoop. And these are things you are quoting as absolute. If the pilots say “a person of his ability probably couldn’t have made that maneuver” well, they may have a point, but that is so much less helpful to your arguments as an absolute so you turn everything into an absolute and only listen to folks who claim that their findings are absolute. It is very frustrating, but like most games that is what makes it a challenge and the challenge is what makes it fun.

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