The Thomas Confirmation Hearings
I still remember the visceral reaction I had to the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. They were televised, and a lot of people watched them as the controversy over his alleged sexual harassment of Anita Hill was explored. And in watching the parade of people testifying for and against Thomas, in particular in watching Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas themselves testify, it became increasingly clear to me that she was telling the truth, and he was lying.
That was shocking enough. But then came the double-whammy: watching the senators on the judiciary committee close ranks behind Thomas, vilifying Hill and making speech after speech that (again, to my eyes and ears) was so out of touch with the reality I’d just watched as to leave me breathless.
I lost a lot of respect for elected officials generally, and those senators in particular, during those hearings. You young whippersnappers can relive those moments courtesy of this blog posting from Scout of First Draft: Anita Hill responds. Or you can go whole hog, and read the transcripts themselves: Hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.
October 2nd, 2007 at 11:10 am
Are you saying that such allegations of sex acts and/or harassment should disqualify someone from public service?
OT - It’s been four months since the last graph comparing casualty numbers in Iraq to those of Vietnam. Is the data no longer pertinent?
October 3rd, 2007 at 6:26 pm
I’ve been wondering about the Vietnam monthlies as well.
October 4th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
It looks like JBC is busy, here are those numbers you guys have been looking for.
http://www.shcb.blogspot.com/
October 4th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
I didn’t include the Vietnam numbers, JBC has those. It doesn’t look like they are really very meaningful since these are two completely different wars fought in two completely different ways. The only real similarity between them is that liberals want to lose, just by a little mind you but they surely don’t want to win.
October 5th, 2007 at 9:06 am
Americans want to win.
Liberals, conservatives, independents we all want America free, proud, leading the world. Saying libtards want to lose (jes a lil bit pshaw!) is exactly why I am coming to despise 13%ers like dear ol rwnj. They listen to Rush Dimbulb and hate radio, read LGF and think Drudge is kinda left of center, espouse ridiculous divisive political and religious doctrines while exempting themselves from any of their own strictures or espoused morals.
Do you think torturing guys you pick up at a traffic stop is AOK?
then you are a right wing nut job
Do you think we found teh WMDz(!!!!!) in Iraq?
then u r a rwnj
Do you think nuking Mecca is a swell idea?
then u r a rwnj
Do you think Iranian President Unpronouncable is teh new Hitler!!!1!11! ? then u most definitely are a rwnj
Do you think invading Iraq was a Great Idea?
etc
-
I want my country to change course from the right wing disaster that is gwb/rwnj ideology. I find it ‘interesting’ that Magical September has the lowest casualty rate of the entire year. And the sudden drop in wounded from your chart rwnj? also very ‘interesting’
Other than making tons of money for corrupt croney’s of the current regime, Iraq has been a giant disaster. And a huge win for ienjs everwhar.
Oh, and re: Clarence Thomas? when Scalia thinks you are a nut bag, you are a very kooky nut indeed.
October 5th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
JBC’s vietnam comparison has never been about military similarity, only political similarity. I think it’s extremely relevant in that light.
October 5th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
enkidu,
Liberals want a free, proud, world leading America, they just don’t want to fight a war to get to that end and if you don’t fight, you won’t win. Therefore liberals want to lose, just a little mind you but they surely don’t want to win.
I give up what is LGF?
Answers:
No
Some
No
No, but his bosses are
Yes
How did I do?
The fatality number isn’t that that much lower than average so I’m not getting all that excited but the wounded number is great, but we have had single months that dropped suddenly, so we’ll just have to see. If these trends continue I think we can say that Iraq is turning into quite a successful operation wouldn’t you agree? Of course you don’t, you don’t want to win.
October 5th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Matt,
Very few aspects of these discussions have ever been about military anything, they are all political. I can’t read JBC’s mind but I think his intention when he started those charts was to draw a comparison to the Vietnam war, now you say duh! If I recall, when JBC started these charts we had been in Iraq about the same amount of time as we had been in Vietnam when the soldier and casualty count began to rise significantly (in Vietnam). The Democrats were trying to scare everyone into thinking we were going to start drafting young men, all the experts were saying we went in there with way too few troops, feeding the draft rumor, and talk was beginning in regards to the surge.
The comparisons to Vietnam were so seductive. Vietnam was the first war the American left had won, if all wars would end that way perhaps America would give up its warring ways and spend that money on….. So JBC wrote that piece in anticipation of the Iraq war going very badly for us, the US. This is where liberals have a conundrum, JBC isn’t a bad guy, he doesn’t want our boys hurt, but for his wish for this war to go badly for this administration 47,000 would have to die. So he was somehow hoping for the political fallout of 47,000 dead Americans without a single body bag. This is not possible of course but that never stopped a liberal. The average dead per month is 68, we have only doubled that amount twice and then just barely. This war has been one of the most successful in terms of low loss of life in relation to duration. When I saw his graph the first time I was amazed at how even the Iraq line was and I could see no reason save an attack with WMD’s or some sort or an attack where a large number of explosives got into the center of the Green Zone. Yet there was JBC pontificating that we were about to turn the corner to Vietnam like losses. It didn’t happen, and now that the war is in the wind down stages it is unlikely to happen except for the two exceptions above. That is why I say the comparison is irrelevant. JBC was simply so very wrong.
But as an engineer you know numbers should never be wasted so I am simply looking at them in other, more constructive ways. Why do they seem to go up in September through December? Why were they so high in 2004? What are we doing right in September?
My vision isn’t to see the numbers go so high that we crawl home with our tails between our knees, it is see the numbers go so low we can come home with our heads held high.
October 5th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Correction;
When I saw his graph the first time I was amazed at how even the Iraq line was and I could see no reason THE TREND LINE WOULD CHANGE save an attack with WMD’s or some sort or an attack where a large number of explosives got into the center of the Green Zone .
October 5th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Actually, the consistently decreasing number of combat-related casualties in the last five months is remarkable.
May… 120
June…. 93
July….. 66
Aug….. 56
Sept…. 43
Of course, that trend could suddenly reverse, as could the similar trend of fewer civilian casualties, if we increased our troops numbers in combat zones… or… wait… we already did that… and it resulted in lower casualty numbers. How confusing…
shcb, you’re missing one other possibility:
The administrator of our local left-wing blog recently wrote, “We need a Gander-style incident to drive the casualty figures higher, since that would certainly increase the support for our opposition to Bush’s war.” Of course, he frequently proclaims his “patriotism” and his support of the military, and finds it hard to believe that posters don’t believe his hollow words to that effect. He removed the article (which had received no posted responses) after leaving it on the site for 3 days. Either he sobered up and read his own words, or he received lots of phone calls - probably from personnel at nearby Fort Campbell.
I have no reason to doubt that some of the frequent anti-Bush posters on this site share his wishes, and would actually celebrate such an occurrence.
October 5th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Good point TV, I had read that the combat deaths were in the low forties, which shows how well we are making the transition to the Iraqis handling their own destiny. When 1/3 of the casualties are non combat related, you are on the right path.
I’m sure there are some who would like to see us actually loose the old fashioned way, by incurring massive losses, but I really don’t think that number is very high. Hillary wants to give every newborn $5,000. In an interview, a woman said that every person in America has a $27,000 stake in the national debt and it would be nice if the government would give the kids five grand to mitigate a portion of that $27,000. Investors Business Daily pointed out in the story that the $5,000 would have to come from the general fund and would simply be added to the current debt with interest, then that amount would have to paid by that child when he was old enough to pay taxes.
One of the Democrats in congress, don’t remember which, said the SCHIP program would be paid for with cigarette taxes, but that would require an additional 20 million people start smoking 2 packs a day.
Most liberals aren’t bad people and don’t want bad things to happen to good folks, they just don’t look at the consequences, conservatives look at the consequences and accept them if they are unavoidable or manageable. Are there more terrorists now than before we invaded Iraq, probably, but that is unavoidable, we just have to deal with it. I’m sure you have scars from you reconstructive surgery that have virtually ruined your modeling career, but you had the procedures anyway.
October 6th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
shcb, I’m sorry to break it to you but I beleive you are wrong again.
When all is confirmed, projected US wounded in Iraq will be about 400 for September. Better than average, but too close to normal variations to break out the Cognac just yet.
Teachervet, I believe your numbers and related comments are wrong too, as deaths for September will likely be 71 once all is confirmed.
The projected figures are in the graph at the bottom of this page:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties.htm
Or, since you guys seem not so good with figures, here are some visuals:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/takeaction/wounded.php
http://www.michaelmoore.com/takeaction/deaths.php
Or, there is this eerily insightful depiction:
http://www.obleek.com/iraq/index.html
October 6th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
knarly, I think you argue only to see your name on the screen. I used the source link provided by jbc for his charts:
http://icasualties.org/oif/US_chart.aspx
Icasualties identifies 66 troop casualties, by name, with the date, location and circumstances. Your source gives only 62, with no identification or other data, plus 9 “pending” deaths. Neither source refutes the only numbers I cited for May through September, with 43 combat related casualties in September.
I know the numbers are more “impressive” if you choose to include accident victims, deaths from illnesses or natural causes, etc., but doing so doesn’t accurately (or honestly) reflect the number of deaths that are related to the war effort.
Lets suppose that someone wishes to illustrate a need to crack down on gun control by graphing a monthly mortality rate from firearm deaths over a span of several years. Would it provide a more accurate picture to (a) include only gunshot victims, or (b) to use figures that reflected all deaths (from all causes) over that period of time? Michael Moore and obleek.com would use the (b) option for shock effect and self-fulfilling entertainment value - but it wouldn’t be honest. Of course, that never stopped MM in the past.
Speaking of Michael Moore… come on, now. Even the 911″truthers” have a little bit (albeit a very little bit) more credibility than MM.
October 7th, 2007 at 8:59 am
Knarly,
The reason I used the 62 number is because it more closely matched the reports I was reading in news reports. Maybe AP is playing it safe or maybe they are lazy I don’t know. I put another graph on my page to show the two columns added together and the confirmed dead only. As you can see there is little difference. For this conversation the difference is irrelevant since we are discussing trends not actual numbers. I’m a little confused with Global Security’s numbers. For instance they still show 12 reported dead in April 2004, does that mean there are 12 guys who never had their families notified? The number of dead for October has risen from 1 to 4 since we started this discussion 4 days ago so they evidentially keep that number updated on a day to day basis but I don’t know if they keep some of the other items updated. As to the projected wounded chart, that obviously is just as it says, it is a projection based on past months. At some point they will get around to updating that chart and it will show a big downturn. I don’t think there are going to be 400 unreported wounded soldiers out there.
I wouldn’t get my hopes up that you will get a lot of help on this thread from any of the libs on this site. As you just illustrated it is hard to take an opposing view to TV and I on this issue without looking like you are siding with the enemy hoping for more carnage to our soldiers.
http://www.shcb.blogspot.com/
October 7th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
They explain their methodolgy here:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties_notes.htm
It would be good for you Americans if your casualty figures are going down, maybe it is a turning point where internecine warfare amoungst middle east locals will be the dominant theme and the foreigners in the green zone and those who venture out will not be so much the focus of violence.
October 7th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Knarly,
Thanks for the link, I’m not sure it answered my questions but it was interesting.
I hope we can leave Iraq in better shape than you are projecting, leaving it in a state of civil war won’t exactly be successful. My fear is if we leave it like that we will be returning to fight Iran on Iraqi soil after a nasty bloodbath. There seems to be some good political progress reported in the last week or two, but who knows, they could be sandbagging us, the Iraqis that is.
October 7th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Knarly, your source begins with a comparison between Iraq War casualties and those in the Spainish (sic) American War. They seem aghast that there were more KIA in the 1st year of the Iraq War than in the entire Spanish-American War - without mentioning that the entire campaign in 1898 only lasted 109 days. After reading that introductory paragraph, I immediately suspected that their intentions were to simply promote an agenda. That suspicion was confirmed with further reading.
“In most cases we had pretty high-quality reporting at the time that these deaths had occurred…” The language of that statement doesn’t exactly enhance their credibility for me.
Regarding April 2004 casualties, “By the end of the month the Pentagon had named 120 who had been killed, while we counted over 150 deaths. With closer analysis, we were able to conclude that some of the apparent 35[?] unidentified were probably multiple reports of single incidents.” Again, this is hardly a credibility enhancing statement. Later they added, “It is nonetheless possible for a few casualties to have been double-counted.” But they publish the figures as factual data…
I had to suppress a laugh when I first read this one: “Surely many of these [3 dozen "unidentified" casualties they include in their figures from one particular month] are due to some point of confusion in the initial reports [from their various sources] , but we are having a real hard time figuring out which ones. If anyone can spot any duplicates, please let us know.” Perhaps if they had spent five minutes to alphabetize the names for that month, they wouldn’t need the assistance of their readers. Of course, they would have to include the “unidentified” troops to make their numbers add up - many of whom have remained unidentified for at least 3 years. I think the relatives and friends of those assumed dead troops would have missed them by now. These folks need to read their own disclaimers, then remove the “double-counted” unidentified casualties from their lists, even if it makes their numbers less spectacular.
Regarding the difficulties they encountered in gathering data, many statements are prefaced with such phrases as “The first problem is…,” “Matters are further complicated by…,” “Another complication arises…,” etc. They appear to be making excuses for their subjectively inflated figures.
I think I’ll reject the antiwar truthers and stick with the verified numbers provided by the Icasualties site.
October 8th, 2007 at 4:55 am
TV
I’m not sure what to make of the Global Security people, I’ve read other articles on this site that seem to justify the campaign in Iraq. There are going to be slight differences in counts depending on how you base your methods, a guy gets shot on the 29th and doesn’t die until the 2nd, do you put him on this month or last? That type of thing. But as long as you are consistent the numbers will even out.
I read the bio’s of the principles in this group, it looks like this is an offshoot of The Federation of American Scientists. I’ve used FAS as a source for technical military data for almost a decade but I’ve never been on the same page with their analysis, they are a little anti war for me. But not kooky bad. Their credentials are pretty serious as well, no pajama clad bloggers here. One of them was a fellow at Cato and another worked at a medium high level position for the Clinton administration. So that should give you an idea of where they sit before they tell you where they stand. Probably more libertarian than right or left.
As to the disparity of these numbers, I think it is more that they are over analyzing than they have a want to inflate the numbers. Several of the top guys in this group have had high ranking military careers. I’m guessing they have many sources and sometimes they conflict, that is when the over analyzation sets in.
October 9th, 2007 at 9:12 am
TV,
Next time you have “to suppress a laugh…” when people are being honest about the background behind the data and the assumptions that have to be made, try pondering all the hidden assumptions that influence reports that you take for granted as being from authoritative sources but that are not explained in such detail.
shcb,
You probably are not going to find a totally unbiased source for these data, the best you can do is to choose one source and stick with it as long as they maintain the same methodoloogy and they make that and their assumptions known. Continuing jbc’s dataset as you did seems totally appropriate. Have their figures for September been finalized or are they still preliminary?
October 9th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Knarly, Icasualties doesn’t rely on assumptions in accounting for casualty data, and I’ve encountered no instances of double-counted casualties in their lists. I understand and respect the GlobalSecurity.com desire to insure that all casualties are counted, but, by their own admission, their methodology of reliance on many varied sources inevitably results in over-estimates.
Temporarily that’s fine, but I think their own disclaimers should justify adjusting their figures accordingly. As I stated earlier, some of those unaccounted-for casualties from months or years ago had to have been double-counted, since some friend or family member of those many troops (still shown as unaccounted for) would have long ago questioned why their loved one never came home or was not identified as a casualty.
I visit the Icasualty site via AntiWar.com; hardly a site that is tilted in favor of my own position, but one that uses Icasualty figures to support their very biased stance. The data for September appear to have been finalized, although, as evidenced in the past, they will later add any deaths that were the result of oversight. Their data is based on the date of death, not the date of the injury that eventually led to the death
October 9th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Knarly,
Actually TV is using the site JBC uses in his graphs. Your are right, everyone has a bias but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use accurate facts in your biased arguments. I can point to the sixty odd deaths last month and say that many were killed on Iwo Jima every day, and you can point less than that killed in Bosnia in the entire war, those statements may not be true, I’m just using them as examples. But if those statements are true, we would both be accurate with totally different views.
October 9th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
shcb - I agree.
TeacherVet - blah blah blah right back at you.
This is getting boring. You guys need something to chew on.
Here’s an email received today from an anonymous local for your consideration. Ignore it, read it and consider another viewpoint, read it and tear it to shreds: I do not care, but hope you enjoy…
October 9th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Knarly, sorry if I struck a nerve.
October 10th, 2007 at 4:37 am
Knarly,
I simply don’t have the hours it would take to deconstruct all the blather in this piece. This reminds me of the blanket email that goes around every few years that says don’t buy your gas from Shell/Conoco/Mobil/SevenEleven… because they buy their oil from Iran/Iraq/Saudi/Mexico…. By people who don’t understand the fungibility of commodities.
The first mistake is his comparison with the knights and kings and peasants. The kings and knights were strong, America is strong. The kings and knight brutalized the peasants, America brutalized the peasants, this is of course poppycock. The rest of the piece follows this same pattern of building a point from bad comparisons and false facts.
You did a good job of finding a piece that illustrates the flip side of what you and I were just talking about. This person is using false information, or comparisons in this case, to make his points. So we really can’t discuss these issues using this article as a springboard since so much of it is false. Much as the people who don’t want you to buy your gas from certain stations don’t understand basic economics, this person doesn’t understand basic history or logic. About all we could do is discuss his false assertions.
October 10th, 2007 at 11:23 am
shcb - re: brutalize the peasants, you could learn a thing or two by relating America’s “Shock and AWE” campaign to Naomi Klien’s study works released as “The Shock Doctrine”. There are strong similarities between the brutal treatment of people which you deny.
October 10th, 2007 at 11:23 am
TV, thank you (my nerves are fine but I appreciated the sentiment).
Shcb I understand your points, and your reluctance to address all the issues contains in this anonymous opinion piece of moderate length. Indeed, why bother?
Technically speaking, of course, you are correct in pointing out the inaccuracies, and you would win, fairly, such arguments if debating them in a structured venue.
Here there is little structure yet I do not wish to debate or belabour the arguments put forth in the original opinion piece. It is quoted mainly for T.V.’s & your amusement. We can probably agree that nothing you or I could say to each other would change the fact that I agree in general with the piece while recognizing its shortcomings and that you fundamentally reject it as wholly inaccurate and misleading.
Part of our different views are due to conflicts between your belief that (1) the aerial bombs (especially the “shock and awe” campaign) , depleted (sic) uranium munitions and troop actions are necessary to protect America and (2) are generally intended for the Iraqi’s own good and my belief that they are (1) fundamentally unnecessary and (20 wholly counterproductive in this situation to improving the welfare of humanity. I think we can agree to disagree on that.
We can probably also agree that the information we receive about the Iraq war, or choose to receive and/or believe, comes from different sources with different biases, which may be in large part due to your being an American living in America who enjoys right wing talk radio and me being the polar opposite. I have no problem with that as long as we can find a way to respect each other and not interfere with each other’s way of life. If Canada ever develops into a grave security problem or our Prime Minister declares a dictatorship, please do not automatically assume that we want bombs dropped on our infrastructure or US troops to invade, as you did to the Iraqi population. Canadians can work out our own solutions (e.g. we could compromise with the security threat using excess funds from our employment insurance program and we could bury any dictator under red tape.)
To me, the troubling part of our disagreement is your black and white thinking, of breaking everything down to either good or evil, (a.k.a. reductionism) and ignoring of subtleties that define most of what is. True, sometimes such an approach is the best, especially as it relates to specific disciplines in science or tangible problems such as building things, hence it is the stereotypical mindset of engineers. Yet engineers in general make lousy psychiatrists and political scientists because they usually fail to understand that their problem solving training (reductionism) does not always transfer well to other disciplines. Logically this is hard to explain, but some problems are not addressed best by stripping away all the uncertainties and non-central items to concentrate on the core (reductionism). Some problems are best addressed by gaining an appreciation of how infinitely intricate and myriad interactions of all the parts combine into an even greater whole and then adding a little something extra, a touch of magic or acts of kindness into that complexity to nudge it along in the general direction that you want it to go. Iraq was such a problem, a complex society with a myriad of tenuous linkages between sects, tribes, etc. which was analyzed by foreigners (US) using a two dimensional reductionistic model, acted upon with such great force that all but the most basic linkages were broken and now only fragments of the people remain to suffer intolerable conditions.
It is unfortunate that the opinion piece was not technically correct enough to withstand even your rudimentary reductinistic dissection of its basic assumptions. Your prior post about comparing fatality statistics from Bosnia, Guam and Iraq to make your point noted a possible technical inaccuracy in such figures, yet the point was still made. That lulled me into a subconscious assumption that, even though the opinion piece is a further step away from technical accuracy, you might still consider the truth within the opinion piece from a deeper and more metaphorical perspective.
October 10th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
rwnj, can you please point out where these false assertions may be?
thx
Most US casualties are caused by Sunni guns, bombs etc.
The Sunnis are backed by the Saudis.
The Shia are backed by the Iranians. Other than al Sadr, they have pretty much left US/coalition forces alone (ps - when the largest coalition partner - Britain - is just 3% of US forces deployed, can we stop pretending the rest of the world backs us on this boondoggle? hell, Iceland just yanked their one guy! coalition of the easily bribed and/or stupid)
We invaded a country ostensibly to prevent them from using all the WMDs and gigadeath our mis-leaders insisted were north, south, east and west of Baghdad and Tikrit (a direct quote from Don von Rumsfeld). Yet we haven’t found any significant quantities of any of that stuff.
October 10th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
stop it enkidu, reason will get you nowhere with these people. They believe in a fiath based way that the WMD are either yet to be discovered, are buried forever or were pulled into neighboring countries by Saracens on Camels or dark skinned tribesmen riding elephants.
October 10th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Knarly,
If you would like to have a civil discussion as you suggested, I’m game.
Enkidu,
I really didn’t want to go into this piece issue by issue, I really don’t have the time and we’ve gone through this a million times but I will. It’s late so it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.
Knarly,
The correct response to the Kid would have been to either keep quiet or say “shut the f*&% up, Rick and I were about to have a civil conversation.” Now you are going to have to wait until I’m finished with the Kid.
October 11th, 2007 at 8:42 am
shcb, you misunderstood again. Sigh. My post to Enkid was a joke. I appreciate the direction Enkidu was taking this, as I am getting tired of explaining things that you either fail or intentionally refuse to understand for fear of it bursting your pre-school comic book rosy picture of a noble and valiant America fighting evil wherever it finds itself, and refusing to consider aspects that suggest the reality falls closer to an America that is the big kid in Lord of the Flies.
October 11th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Knarly,
So this is the way I see it, you were going on as usual and thin I made this statement:
You suddenly got civil when you thought no one had your back, as soon as Enkidu slipped in one of his acidic misspelled posts (at least when I misspell something it is because of ignorance), at that point you decided you had help so you piled on. Now I don’t care, I’ve dealt with bullies and their sycophants most of my life, I’m pretty immune at this point, I just thought it was worth mentioning.
I’ll deconstruct the 4 pages of blather tonight and we’ll see where we go from there.
Remember the old Warner Brothers cartoon with the bulldog and the little kick me dog that bounced around the bulldog saying “George is my friend, George is my friend”?
October 11th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
shcb, I think you fail to understand once again, good try though and not your fault this time. My being “civil” or not so civil on this thread has had more to do with my mood over the last few days for external reasons rather than anything happening internally on this thread. You had no way of realizing that of course. Anyway, deconstruct the 4 pages if you must, but I’ve grown tired of this tediousness, so if Enkidu wants to point out the errrrrors of your RWNJ fanaticism I’m happy to leave it to him. If not, at this point I’m not inclined to join in (just as you were hesitant to bother with debating the opinion piece originally point by point.)
shcb, it seems you failed to notice that I had agreed with your initial reluctance: “indeed, why bother?” I wrote. I set out much of what we should agree to disagree with, since we should realize by now that our opinions are unlikely to change (my Oct 10, 11:23 post laid it all out, you might want to actually read that before wasting your time constructing arguments for deaf ears.)
In any event, I stand behind these words of my Oct 9 post that preceded the opinion piece:
To clarify, when I wrote: “… I do not care,… I meant I was so apathetic about what your response might be that I am unlikely to respond.
Sorry if I’m not being civil enough, I’ve got other things to do and I’m getting fed up with your defending of torturers and “knights” who drop “smart” (sic) bombs from the sky, or who have fired tons of “depleted” (sic) uranium ordinance.
October 11th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
I did find this amusing though!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa8sVGllQI
October 12th, 2007 at 4:34 am
Sorry if this reposts, my entry last night didn’t go through. I had hoped to get into a discussion of the differences of linear thinkers like myself and nuanced thinkers like yourself, but we can have that discussion anytime. When things settle down in your life maybe we will discuss it. Take care.
October 12th, 2007 at 5:23 am
Enkidu,
I went through the whole Anonymous piece and margin noted it all but I’m just going to pick a few items.
In this first statement you can already see which direction he is going to take you, he has shown his bias. The rich and powerful are bad, the poor and weak are good, no matter what their intentions or actions.
In this section he continues this theme of the powerful being bad. Now of course if you read this without the first section, you would think he was talking about our enemies since these are the tactics of the Arabs, control the masses with brutal terror. This is why it is so important for him to get this America is big and strong, the rest of the world is small and weak established before he used this example. He continues this theme throughout the piece having established his false premise. This is why I said this piece is hard to discuss since the whole thing is built around that false premise.
Maybe in WWII, but we use guided bombs now for the express purpose of limiting these losses.
Completely inaccurate, the highest number I have heard from legitimate sources is 80,000 but more than likely 30,000 and most of those at the hands of our enemies through the use of land based indiscriminate bombs and the habit of hiding behind women and children.
Have fun.
October 12th, 2007 at 8:07 am
well, that didn’t go thru, so here is my reply in pieces:
October 12th, 2007 at 8:07 am
So, you dispute that the victor always tells their side of the story as virtuous and noble? What planet do you live on again? Because that isn’t the way things have worked for millennia here on Earth (3rd stone from the sun, Sol system, Milky Way galaxy… mb you live in some magical faith based universe of unicorns and whatnot). Forgive me if I bring up a famous dictator from Earth’s recent history, but Hitler made the German people out to be the oppressed and the defenders of Christiandom. That didn’t work out so well, eh?
So in your 3rd paragraph, you rail that the author’s description of the Norman invasion is false. Again, do you actually read history? Understand? Because his description pretty much matches historical accounts of William the Conqueror. What exactly is false? That power = bad? Well, that is an opinion one way or the other, so ‘truthiness’ is only a measure of belief. go read Against the English Resistance on wiki entry William the Conqueror, or this link for a historical account of The Harrying of the North.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrying_of_the_North
October 12th, 2007 at 8:08 am
True, guided bombs are more accurate, but they still kill lots of innocent people (like women and children). Especially if you don’t know who you are bombing and are getting the intel from suspect sources. This was recently in the news:
Today the number of dead is over 25 from that airstrike (2 actually, one heli and one fixed wing). If you bother to read anything other than Mann Coulter, you could try the wiki’s page on Iraqi casualties. The numbers range from 1.2 million to about 70,000 to 80,000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_conflict_in_Iraq_since_2003
Another interesting item this page points out is that the causes of death were as follows: “601,027 deaths (range of 426,369 to 793,663 using a 95% confidence interval) were estimated to be due to violence. 31% of those were attributed to the Coalition, 24% to others, 46% unknown. The causes of violent deaths were gunshot (56%), car bomb (13%), other explosion/ordnance (14%), air strike (13%), accident (2%), unknown (2%). from Lancet.
That breakdown is echoed by other Iraqi casualty studies, but rwnjs just won’t believe anything that doesn’t fit their blinkered partisan worldview.
A third of Iraqi deaths are due to ‘Coalition Forces’. Better work on your aim there Tex.
So where exactly are the falsehoods?
Your opinion doesn’t match the facts. You don’t ‘believe’ the ORB, the IBC, the UN or the Lancet studies, instead ‘believing’ some wishful thinking and outright bullshit.
October 12th, 2007 at 8:08 am
Oh and take a good look at the trend lines here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:DoD_PERSONNEL_%26_PROCUREMENT_STATISTICS_-_Personnel_%26_Procurement_Reports_and_Data_Files_-_GLOBAL_WAR_ON_TERRORISM_-_OPERATION_IRAQI_FREEDOM_by_month_March_19%2C_2003_through_September_1%2C_2007_-_killed_in_action%2C_died_of_wounds%2C_accidents.jpg
October 12th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Enk,
Interesting trend lines, pretty clear evidence that deaths and injuries have beein increasing rather than decreasing over the broader time period. Let’s hope that recent declines continue but we’ll let shcb and TV be the ones to hold their breath.
October 12th, 2007 at 11:39 am
shcb, (i’ve tried to post versions of this 4 times already, this is try #5)
Have you had any further thoughts on why there was molten metal exhibiting molten steel characteristics below all 3 demolished WTC buildings, or the implications of that reality and the implications of the official investigations studiously ignoring it?
I had thought the weakest evidence of 911 being a flase flag operation was the controversy over the cell phone calls from airplanes on 9/11/2001; however, recently the FBI has directly contradicted the Justice Department in a most damning manner about these phone conversations. The implications are even more profound than the molten metal evidence.
Please take your time to read this carefully and deliberately (just copy into your browser and replace the “dot” with a “.”) :
www dot rinf.com/alt-news/911-truth/new-evidence-that-the-official-story-about-911-is-indefensible/1449
October 12th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Philip Zelikow was a virtual member of the Bush administration? Huh? As a “virtual” member of the administration, was he able to control the members of the commission?
The “temperature required to melt steel” is getting old - because it’s bogus. The steel only had to be heated sufficiently to weaken it before that weakened state, combined with the massive weight above the weakened area, resulted in the domino effect we witnessed on 911.
Voice morphing? Was this author a writer for Star Trek, or for Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone? Now we can add more folks to the thousands who were needed to remain silent following the mass murder of 3,000 of our citizens.
Something I’ve always wondered… If all the speculative possibilities of the “truthers” is to be given any credibility (and I give it none), what evidence have they ever given that Bushco members were the only possible culprits? In particular, the planted explosives scenario: Have they explored the possibility that members of an existing al Qaeda cell in the U.S. had gained accessibility to the building to plant explosives prior to the events of 911, or does exploration of that potential scenario not fit into their agenda? Yeah, I know, I’m committing the Cardinal Sin of questioning the validity of “official truther” excogitation, and I’ll probably pay for it with volumes of redundant, required reading.
October 12th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
TV,
Your ignorance is so vast one hardly knows where to begin with you.
Re: Philip Zelikow …
That is an ignorant question. An intelligent question would have been whether he had any influence on what was and what was not investigated? The answer to that is yes, he had enormous power in directing the researchers to investigate this and not to investigate that.
Re: Steel melting. You show an ignorance of galactic proportions here. It has been established: (a) temperatures were not achieved sufficient to melt steel; (b) large pools of molten metal exhibiting all the characteristics of molten steel were present below all 3 demolished buildings; (c) there is no explanation in the official account of 911 for where the energy required to produce these molten pools came from. High explosives is the best explanation (and currently the only viable explanation) for the molten metal pools. TV, you seriously need to a read a good book.
Re: your Voice morphing? The author has demonstrated how utterly simple this is with the technology available in 2001, and has provided a sufficient overview for even you, with your all-encompassing ignorance, to understand. Re-read the article and if you still fail to comprehend then research his original sources.
Re: your repetition of the bogus and tired old claim that thousands of people would need to remain silent, you need to read David Ray Griffin’s rebuttal to that (educate yourself) or for a hint at why you are so wrong review “Scenario 404” to which I have provided references to in a couple previous discussions with shcb.
Re: what evidence have they ever given that Bushco members were the only possible culprits? In particular, the planted explosives scenario: Have they explored the possibility that members of an existing al Qaeda cell in the U.S. had gained accessibility to the building to plant explosives prior to the events of 911, or does exploration of that potential scenario not fit into their agenda? TV, glad you are at least wondering. The answer is yes, that has been considered, and no, no-one knows whether Bush was involved or not. Cheney appears quite guilty, there is less of a consensus on Bush’s role. Al Qaeda did not have the MEANS to alone access the buildings in the manner required nor to manipulate the responses of the way events transpired on 911 to have been acting independently without some assistance. And remember, al Qaeda is also known as Al-CIA-duh in some circles for good reason.
Seriously man, you are very uneducated in these matters I am embarrassed for you to be making such ignorant comments in public. Get a clue before you mislead or waste anyone else’s time further with your pathetic denials of basic facts like molten metal pools.
October 12th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
I can think of one source of energy that could account for some melted metal under the buildings. Maybe when massive amounts of steel fall hundreds of feet there can be enough kenetic energy built up to cause massive amounts of friction and resultant heat when they slam into the ground (or lower floors ‘pancaking’?). Without a thorough investigation, including fringe theories, we may never really know the science of what happened to those buildings.
On the other hand, you would expect if the airliner did such catastrophic damage (they were designed to take a full 727 (707?) and stay up) to one side of the tower, wouldn’t you expect it to topple to one side rather than to fall into its own footprint? Why did all three buildings demolish themselves from highly asymmetric damage profiles? One of the WTC buildings took it in the corner, pretty much avoiding the central structural service column mesh, yet it collapsed into an amazingly small footprint. That just does not compute.
Modern buildings are not built to withstand centuries, but specific loads and finite tolerances. Weakening a steel frame building that is pushing the envelope like WTC1 and WTC2 could be enough to make it fall.
The simplest answer is usually the right one: a small cabal of ultra-right-PatrIDIOTS wanted this to happen to help them consolidate power. So they made it happen or let it happen. It doesn’t take a cast of thousands. Why did they do it? For the power of course, and to make a ton of money: oil is now $85 a barrel. Can any rwnj recall when it was $9 to $10 a barrel under Clinton? No? Reality must be awfully painful for rwnjs these days.
If the bushco junta just stamps their feet hard enough and threatens loud enough, I am sure they can get it over $100 a barrel. Bombing Iran would definitely do it. The Saudis are really enjoying this whole Democracy in the Middle East thing!
October 12th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
A couple new graphs showing a different trend line.
http://shcb.blogspot.com/
Intelligence is not only seeing what you see but understanding what you see.
October 12th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
so you show a trend line going down for the year so far
without magical September that line would still be going up
I note you don’t site your source
the overall trend line for the war is going up, as per the DoD data I linked to. You seem to be saying Glorius George’s Surge o Glory is working, but it is also grinding down our Army.
Your numbers don’t match the DoD data…
and your numbers don’t match this link
(of course your KIA # is much lower, surprise surprise surprise!)
http://icasualties.org/oif/
October 12th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
shcb,
LOL, you shrink the time period to find a trend line that fits your wish to show falling fatalities.
Understanding what you see is what I would call subaverage to average intelligence. Understanding that there is more, much more out there than what we can see is slightly above average intelligence. Understanding what one cannot see is real intelligence. By your own admission, you rate as subaverage to average intelligence on that scale.
Enkidu, friction, even of the sort from a skyscraper building collapsing, cannot create the molten pools present. Your theories about the strength of the buildings relative to the damage done are light years behind the architects and engineers determinations, you are best not to express your ignorance on those matters - read up on their findings first.
October 12th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Globalsecurity.org
The first graph was with October numbers, 4 so far, of course the month is young this is how Michael Moore gives data. The second graph is without October, September was magical on wounded, not deaths, try and keep up. September was only a few deaths off the war average. But the trend line is going down this year and up for the war as a whole no matter whose numbers you use. Do you realize if you guys got your wish and we pulled the troops out at the end of the month and we have a slightly below average month this month it will be the end of March before that trend line levels out. To push the absurd to its limits, if all the months after this month had a goose egg, it would be the end of March 2010 before that trend line crossed the base line of 0. (the graph is on my blog of course)
When I put a trend line in my numbers for the whole war it matches the line in your example, they may not jive exactly but the trends match.
The point of this pointless exercise is that we have to use statistics to determine progress and trend lines are an important tool but you have to know when and how to interpret them.
Knarly,
On your intelligence scale, I can live with that, it’s about two steps above what my wife would give me.
October 12th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
shcb,
To digress back to those melted pools of metal under the demolished WTC #1, #2, and #3: DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU SEE?
Anyway, if I may draw your attention back to D.R. Griffin’s findings:
www dot rinf.com/alt-news/911-truth/new-evidence-that-the-official-story-about-911-is-indefensible/1449/
…has thus far not been reported by any mainstream publication. not been reported
So shcb, are you starting to understand that there is more going on than you can see, and are you starting to understand a little of that which you can not see?
No? Or perhaps you disagree? Okay. Let’s try something a little simpler. If “Intelligence is not only seeing what you see, but understanding what you see,” then can you use your intelligence to help me with something?
The FBI says there were five Arab hijackers on flight 77:
1.Khalid Almihdhar
2. Majed Moqed
3. Nawaf Alhazmi
4. Salem Alhazmi
5. Hani Hanjour
My problem is that I can not see any Arabs on flight 77. Perhaps you can see them, or can use your intelligence to tell me where they are? This is the American Airlines list of passengers for flight 77: www dot edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/AA77.victims.html
I can’t see them, and I must not be very smart because in this case I do not understand that which I can not see. Maybe you can help? I looked into what others were thinking about this, such as this guy who even cross checked the Airline list with the autopsy report, but he doesn’t seem to have any answers:
www dot sierratimes.com/03/07/02/article_tro.htm
Maybe you have an answer?
If you do, then maybe you can answer me this: Why didn’t the FBI make up a phony cell call list for the court?
October 12th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
A little house cleaning:Enky, 8:07amI don’t dispute victors tell their side of the story as virtuous, so do losers, that is why it is so important that historians be as unbiased as possible. I don’t have a problem with the authors historical correctness, although I don’t know enough about that period to say he is right or wrong, I have a problem with his comparison of us to the bad guys in his story. Here is how it goes one more time.Kings and Knights = power (a)Peasants= weakness (b)America=power (c)Arabs=weakness (d)Kings and Knights=brutal pillagers, rapists, and thugs (e)America=brutal pillagers, rapists and thugs (f)But just because a and b are correct and resulted in e doesn’t mean that just because c and d are correct f is also correct. And the rest of his piece is built around that assumption.Power can be used for good or bad, in this case we are using it for good, and at times in our history we have used it for bad. Now on to the 650,000 dead. The war started March 30 2003 the Lancet report came out October 11 2006, 1301 days. So get your calculators out boys and girls, 650,000 divided by 1301 equals 499.61, we’ll call it 500. So in your story of collateral damage, which I’m not disputing, there were 15 innocents and 15 bad guys, I’ll give you both, so 30, back to the calculators 500 divided by 30, this tragedy would have to be repeated over 16 times EVERY SINGLE DAY for three and a half years. I think that would get noticed.TV,Wouldn’t it be a hoot if Knarly were partially correct and there were hundreds or thousands of pounds of thermite wrapped around columns in the WTC, but it wasn’t placed there by Bush or Cheney but by Arabs before the first bombing of the WTC in the Clinton administration. Unfortunately the terrorist bosses put Richard Reid in charge of detonating those charges because he insisted on using the traditional methods of Mohammad, no fancy cell phone detonators for Reid, no sir, only a fuse lit by the holy book of matches that had been blessed by the holy man in Mecca with holy water would do. So some secretary named Marge sat and filed her nails with nothing but 5/8 inch of drywall between her and enough explosives to down the building for almost a decade.Question, I think I remember in one of Knarly’s links a picture of the mysterious molten metal and sparks were just below the hole where the plane entered the building, this was supposedly the thermite charge. But earlier there were reports of “hundreds” of people that heard explosions on the first several floors, is that correct? Bush being in better shape than Cheney probably took the upper floors when they were setting the explosives.
October 12th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
sorry that didn’t post right, for some reason it missed all the returns, I repasted it in the submit box and was right so it probably won’t do any good to repost.
October 12th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
I put it over on my site if it is too confusing
October 12th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Knarly,
You are always talking about the “scientific method”, I doubt you have ever used it, don’t worry most people haven’t. A scientist (or engineer) doesn’t have to have an answer to every question to advance a theory. As more information is available your theory either gets stronger or weaker, but the one thing you don’t do is assume information is more valid that it actually is, no matter how seductive it is in making your theory stronger. If there is something we don’t understand, well, we don’t understand it, but someday we will. Faith based entities like religion and conspiracies try and fill those gaps for people who have to have all the answers. I don’t know what caused the molten metal, I think the friction theory is the most viable, the thermite sustaining heat for weeks doesn’t make sense, Photo Shop is another possibility.
My best guess on the flight list is they used fake id’s? Of course that would be the first time a criminal tried that.
October 13th, 2007 at 7:08 am
KK, if uneducated and ignorant describes one who has not devoted years of their lives to study of the redundant “truther” speculation, I’m certainly uneducated and ignorant. I’m quite content to stay that way, and will easily reject any temptations that might lead to such an obsessive disorder.
October 13th, 2007 at 7:14 am
Btw, since last night Icasualties posted 3 more troop deaths from this past Wednesday, with no names given until notification of next-of-kin.
October 13th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Just for kicks I put a chart out there comparing Icasualty to Global Security
http://www.shcb.blogspot.com/
October 13th, 2007 at 8:45 am
shcb,
Fake Ids? Are you a complete idiot? 1. Take a look at the flight list, it does not take long to scan the bio’s of each. Can you find ONE person on that list (let alone FIVE) that the five hijackers could possibly impersonate??? ! 2. The autopsy report verified each and every crew member and passenger, so there were no imposters. shcb you should not be so flippant with such important matters, it highlights your willingness to be deceived by your political masters.
October 13th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Knarly,
The fake ID’s could have matched
Mj Booth
William Caswell
Eddie Dillard
Charles Dros
Richard Gabriel
…
Since none of them have bios
….or it could have been one of the 8 souls not mentioned on the list.
I used the scientific method and counted the names, 56.
Like shoot’n ducks in a barrel.
Or maybe CNN didn’t think it proper to include the Arab murderers in the list of good folks going about their business of leading productive lives. Hats off to CNN
October 13th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
From your other link;
These names weren’t in the original list, plus the five Arabs, 64. All accounted for.
October 13th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Been working on a reply all night haven’t you? Looking through all your notes, burning a hole in Google. Your political masters couldn’t have let you down again could they? First it was the maneuver that a plane can’t make, but this dumb farm kid from Kansas proved it could, then the hole you couldn’t fit a pane through is on the wrong side of building, now they can’t even count to 64. Start’n to rethink the thermite aren’t you? Were there reports of explosions on the lower floors and the upper floors? I don’t know about you but I haven’t seen that much explosives in one place since I was at the Promontory plant (that is where they refill the shuttle boosters). So the question you have to ask yourself is how strong is your faith, if your masters have been lying to you what is next, maybe you’ll have to admit Bush isn’t such a bad guy? Nooooooooo!!!!!!!
October 13th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
oops, forgot about those 600 or was it 650, or was it 700 thousand dead civilians
October 13th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Oops, forgot about that Palestinian woman and the highway of death absurd body count and those poor Palestinian tourists that got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
October 14th, 2007 at 12:55 am
shcb,
I’m just getting around to your response to my asking if you were a complete idiot for suggesting fake Id’s. It has been a long day, we had to put our old dog down this afternoon.
So let’s address your two theories. The first is your FAKE ID THEORY. Besides contradicting the 911 Commission Report, your theory might mean that Hani Hanjour would have used fake Id saying he was, to pick one of your suggestions, the supposed passenger MJ Booth?
That would mean MJ (Mary Jane) Booth was not on the flight. That would be a relief for Mary Jane’s relatives: http://www.september11victims.com/september11victims/VictimInfo.asp?ID=96
Likewise:
Majed Moqedprobably may have been pretending to be William Caswell, the US Navy Physicist
Khalid Almihdhar might have used Eddie Dillard’s Id
http://www.september11victims.com/september11victims/VictimInfo.asp?ID=104
Nawaf Alhazmi could have pretended to be William Droz http://www.september11victims.com/september11victims/VictimInfo.asp?ID=105
Therefore Salem Alhazmi pretended to be Richard Gabriel. http://www.september11victims.com/september11Victims/VictimInfo.asp?ID=113
Guess that is just another of your wild conspiracy theories, huh shcb?
That leaves your other theory, which is that the American Airlines passenger list (flight manifest) is not one list but several.
AA originally announced that there were 58 passengers, 4 flight attendants, 2 pilots, TOTAL : 64 persons on Flight 77 (no names published). Then AA handed the flight manifest over to the FBI (AA did not release the actual manifest.)
The FBI then released the list of names for the crew and passengers, which totals 56 people. The FBI supplies the names (complete with pictures) of hijackers and it contains 5 people. Total so far is 61 people on board.
Then, we have the forensic list, compiled by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in complete secrecy with no independent oversight, and they identify 55 of the 56 original passengers listed on the flight manifest (couldn’t find the remains of a young child) plus an additional three (non-hijacker) passengers, so, because either (a) AFIP will know better than AA who was on their flight (?) or (b) the FBI screwed up the first list, we can now revise the AA passenger list to a total of 59 people plus the 5 hijackers that the FBI say were on the plane, for a total of 64 persons.
That matches the number that AA originally said were on the flight, except at the beginning AA told us that there were 58 passengers plus 6 crew to total 64 and now the FBI tells us it is 59 passengers and crew plus 5 hijackers.
Let’s recap:
AA announces that there were 58 passengers, 4 flight attendants, 2 pilots, TOTAL : 64 persons on Flight 77.
The FBI releases a list of 56 names including the crew plus 5 named hijackers (total 61 people).
AFIP adds 3 names, so the list of names balances out at 59 including crew, plus 5 hijackers (total 64 people) the same total as the original reported by AA, except that in the beginning it was 58 passengers (apparently including the 5 hijackers) but not including the 6 crew (64 total.)
The figures add up but still don’t make any sense. I’m ready to give up on the flight 77 tally, and thanks for your help.
Which brings us full circle:
Remember?
I had thought the weakest evidence of 911 being a flase flag operation was the controversy over the cell phone calls from airplanes on 9/11/2001; however, recently the FBI has directly contradicted the Justice Department in a most damning manner about these phone conversations. The implications are even more profound than the molten metal evidence. Please take your time to read this carefully and deliberately (just copy into your browser and replace the “dot” with a “.”):
www dot rinf.com/alt-news/911-truth/new-evidence-that-the-official-story-about-911-is-indefensible/1449
October 14th, 2007 at 1:00 am
Sorry to repost, but it is germain to the preceding:
Anyway, if I may draw your attention back to D.R. Griffin’s findings:
…, the FBI had in 2006 presented, as evidence in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui (sometimes called “the 20th hijacker”), a report on phone calls from the four airliners. According to this report, there were only two cell phone calls from United 93, and they were made at 9:58, shortly before the plane crashed, when it was down to 5,000 feet. When the FBI had to present evidence in a court of law, therefore, it would not claim that any high-altitude cell phone calls had occurred.
(These two low-altitude calls from Flight 93 were, according to the FBI report, the only two cell phone calls made from all four flights).
The most well known of the reported cell phone calls from Flight 93 were four calls that Deena Burnett reported receiving from her husband, Tom Burnett.
She knew that he had used his cell phone, she reported on several TV shows and later in her book, because she saw his Caller ID number. However, as I reported, there are now devices, such as “FoneFaker,” that will produce the person’s Caller ID as well as his or her voice. Deena Burnett and the others, I believe, were not lying; they were duped.
The most famous of the reported calls from the flights supposedly came from Barbara Olson, the well-known commentator on CNN who was married to Ted Olson, who was then the US solicitor general. Olson reported that his wife had called him twice from American Airlines Flight 77, stating that hijackers with knives and boxcutters had taken over the plane. Besides providing evidence of hijackers, this call also provided the only evidence that Flight 77 was still aloft (it had disappeared from radar and there had been reports of an airliner crash nearby).
… new evidence, including a statement made by American Airlines in 2006 that their 757s in 2001 had had no onboard phones, so that anyone calling out from Flight 77 had needed to use a cell phone. …
However, the evidence from the Moussaoui trial ruled out this possibility. In its report on AA 77, it listed one attempted call from Barbara Olson, which was “unconnected” and hence lasted “0 seconds.”
This was an astounding discovery. The FBI is part of the Department of Justice. And yet it had undercut the testimony of the DOJ’s former solicitor general, saying in effect that the two calls that he reported had never happened. The implication is that unless Ted Olson had, like Deena Burnett, been duped, he had lied. Although this should have produced front-page headlines, it has thus far not been reported by any mainstream publication.
www dot rinf.com/alt-news/911-truth/new-evidence-that-the-official-story-about-911-is-indefensible/1449/
October 14th, 2007 at 6:22 am
Knarly,
Sorry to hear of your old dog, I may have mentioned my wife breeds Shepherds, so we are dog people. We have one old gal that probably won’t make it more than another year or so, putting her down will be the hardest thing I have ever done. As hard a time as I give you I consider you a friend, you have my sympathies.
Now back to the fight. This is what drives me crazy about conspiracy nuts, they take a bunch of reports that were probably just partial lists, or lists that were haphazardly put together by airlines that were going through the craziest days of their lives. Four planes downed, many crew killed, friends and co workers, are there going to be more? Will I be on the next plane? All flights were brought to the ground at once, that had never been done, there was no procedure to bring them all to the ground at once and turn the international flights around. Now we have to get them back up in the air and back on schedule, and I have a funeral for a friend that died in the towers today and one for Captain_____ tomorrow, need to call his wife too….
And the FBI had more important things on their plates than passenger lists, keeping this from happening again two days later for one.
Three years later the pajama clad bloggers take these reports and turn them into the conspiracy that will prove beyond a doubt that Cheney had to go to the tall and big man’s shop to get his ninja suit. As far as I can see this whole 911 conspiracy is built around a few facts that together don’t mean anything with a bunch of garbage tying them together. Think of a classic spider web, the threads of the web that extend out from the center are actual facts, all the little concentric circles that tie those threads together are the garbage. The web needs the garbage to be complete, without that garbage the web is a few useless threads splaying into space. If a theory is to be plausible all the garbage has to hold up to scrutiny, at that point it is no longer garbage, it becomes the nuances of the black and white part of the argument.
What I am doing here is systematically removing the garbage one thread at a time until there is nothing left holding your web together. And it seems to be working, as you run out of arguments you typically say that that was not an important part of the theory, that “as usual” I picked up on the smallest detail, the easiest to defeat and attacked it, welcome to warfare Sun Tzu style.
October 14th, 2007 at 6:47 am
Since this didn’t fit in my last post, I split it out.
You just saw how the proper vetting of facts takes place. Provided all the information you gave me was true, I was given a set of evidence. It was a passenger list, my challenge was to determine who among the passengers were the Arabs. I gave the first 5 names that appeared to be men, one of them turned out to be a woman later but I didn’t know that at the time. Fake ID’s was my first theory because that would be the most plausible. If one of us gets caught with our box cutters the rest of us don’t want to be implicated so we get fake ID’s.
Theory two was the disparity of counts. You provided more information later that filled in some of those gaps as to the bio’s of the passengers and even eliminated one of them because she was a woman, that now makes theory two more plausible than one with a conspiracy way down the list. But I didn’t marry myself to theory one and jump through hoops to show it was right.
Even if we were to take this portion of the huge 911 conspiracy as a separate item a cover up by the FBI would be way down the list, possible but not even remotely plausible. At the very least we would have several layers of human error to cut through and then possible criminal connections by airline personnel. The FBI would be down the list around 20 or 30 I would think.
October 14th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
shcb, Regarding your last post, I agree with paragraph 1 and 2 (the difference between your “proper vetting of facts” and what you call the conspiracy theorists who hold dogmatically to their theories is simply (a) a tremendous number of facts have been withheld and evidence destroyed and (b) that what appears to be facts to you are fairy tales to others.
As for your third paragraph, I would agree with all, but in the present circumstances with all we know about the Sibel Edmunds case, etc. and everything else that begs proper answers it raises the suspicion over the FBI a whole bunch of notches.
October 14th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Re: the passenger list for flight 77.
Flown recently? Ever flown before 2001? Don’t tell me that American Airlines do not know who every person on every single one of their planes identified themselves as being and to which seat they were assigned. Any other major domestic US crash in living history had passenger lists. Next of kin are notified and the passenger list is vital evidence and put into the public domain.
We’ve hashed back and forth about flight 77 and determined a discrepancy: American Airlines originally said they had a total of 64 persons on Flight 77 comprised of 58 passengers and six crew members yet, months later after the forensic report at the Pentagon, the FBI tells us that actually there were 59 passengers and crew plus 5 hijackers. It still sounds fishy to me, but tomato/tomoto you say? Perhaps, even perhaps likely, but given the cloud of suspicion the least that American Airlines or the FBI could do would be to hand over the original list AA provided to the FBI.
In any event, your self-congratulations about debunking a conspiracy is inappropriate because I had only stated that it was something that I did not understand and humbly asked for your assistance. My exact words were:
So, Sherlock, you think you solved the “simpler” passenger list problem (well maybe you have or maybe you have not, but at least we’ve taken it as far as we can and determined it is a dead end.) That is much better than where we started. So what about the conflicting evidence from the FBI vs. Dept. of Justice (refer to a previous post for the full quote, its context and implications) :
October 15th, 2007 at 5:18 am
Knarly,
This one is baffling, I’ve been looking into it this weekend and I just don’t know. One of the problems with researching this on the net is that anything you search for gives you mostly hits for you conspiracy guys and the same quote you just offered, you have to go to page 5 or so before you get anything else and then you’re in that area where Google is picking up words from phrases that aren’t relevant. I don’t take anything I hear from truthers with a grain of salt, I take it with a fifty pound bag, just so you know where my bias starts from.
One guy said a plane acts as a shield that keeps the signal from leaving the plane, sounds reasonable. In an unrelated article I think it was CNN had an unscientific poll asking people if they had ever made a call from a plane, 7% said they had, they didn’t go into how high they were or even if they had left the ground. But it looks like it is at least possible. Another unrelated article was of a guy that called his wife from Everest, it was the highest cell phone call ever made, “except for calls from planes, hey it happens” as the author says.
One of the truthers asked why were only a few calls made from the planes, wouldn’t everyone be making calls? Maybe they were and only a few got through. That would make both statements true. It is nearly impossible to get a call out of a plane, and only a few calls got out.
It seems the rule of no cell phones in planes is more to protect the planes electronics and it seems a plane flying at high speed at a moderate altitude confuses the tracking circuitry of the cell network, causing a cascade effect that crashes the network.
As to Olsen, he is talking to his wife, she has just told him she is on a plane that is going to crash, she will die, “are you calling from your cell phone or a seat back phone dear?” If my wife were on that plane, and it landed safely and that is the final question I asked her, she would kill me, and not a jury in the land would convict.
All that said, we’re back to why make this so damn difficult? Voice morphing? Come on, this is like Austin Powers where Scott says “just shoot him, I’ve got a gun in my room, we’ll do it together” “you just don’t get it do you Scott?” set some explosives around the supports, throw a truck bomb in the basement for effect, knock the building down and blame the Arabs. Why all the theatrics?
So, nothing conclusive on this one, but given your track record I will say this is nothing but hogwash for now.
October 15th, 2007 at 11:51 am
shcb,
Thank you, but it seems you are a little off track. It might be helpful to focus on:
(a) the importance of the phone calls in establishing the storyline of the official conspiracy theory (the whole Arabs with boxcutters thing); and,
(b) why the FBI would not only fail to submit evidence in court to support the existence of the phone calls but in fact the FBI actually submitted evidence that shows such phone calls did NOT take place.
October 15th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Let me help you out, shcb.
This link shows that the presentation at trial showed five other calls (four which were connected calls) from unknown callers on the flight. So no, the FBI didn’t submit evidence that Barbara Olson could only have made one unconnected call. She could have made any of the verified but unidentified calls.
http://haloscan.com/tb/screwloosechange/4127821633852375151
The same website also includes an interview with the inventor of voice-morphing technology, who debunks the idea of simulating specific voices in this scenario. Also this fonefaker product does not claim that it can simulate a specific voice, just that it can alter the caller’s voice in general.
Don’t let knarly draw you into these window-dressing arguments. The only important thing is how the towers fell. And numerous professionals in the engineering field have submited overwhelming amounts of researched papers (that have been peer-reviewed by real authorities and published in real, world-renowned authoritative journals (not “friends of wackos” faux journals) that have agreed upon the plane/fire/weakened steel resolution.
Carry on.
October 15th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Thanks Craig,
I’ll read the site cover to cover if I have to. I don’t know why I torture myself by continuing with these conversations. I guess I have never liked to leave a job unfinished even though I know I will never convince these truthers (what a joke of a name), it has become a religion for them and you cannot convince religious zealots. As I eluded in the last post, it is so difficult to find information debunking these guys, they dominate anything I search for. I prefer to refute using information that is independent of the argument but sometimes you just have to have dueling experts.
October 15th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Craig,
That link didn’t work, do I have to be a member?
October 15th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
The website is “screwloosechange.com”. A free site.
October 15th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
thanks
October 15th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Craig,
that was a pretty useless site
October 15th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
That site tends to be a mix of snarky comments about some truther personalities and some good reference points. Other sites are more focused on direct refuting of conspiracy points (911debunking.com).
October 15th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
what am I doing wrong, I get “search results for’911debunking.com” and get listings for real estate and dating services, same thing happened with screwloosechange.com? I think I’m pretty computer literate, but…
October 15th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
I think i got it it’s debunking911 not 911debunking
October 16th, 2007 at 12:13 am
So, Websites that point out contradictions and that ask questions are annoying and bad, but websites that advertise their unscrupulous and biased intention right at the front of their name are good, such as “Screw” loose change?
Despite that, I actually agree with Craig on this one. Calls from airplanes are window dressings, and who can ever verify speculation like that, especially when statements or phone records or what have you can be so easily faked? Or how could one ever verify wild speculation like this entertaining post by Julie7: