9/11 Conspiracies

[Lord Mhoram]

Are you sure? You can't view any of the posts? Hm. I am definitely not a member of that site, and I can view it.

[[Syl]]

If you're talking about the post by Phrost, yeah. All I see are two greyed boxes that say 'only registered users can see links. click here to register' and then him asking what people thought about the links.

[Lord Mhoram]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzGd0t8v-d4&mod ... ed&search=

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoDqDvbgeXM

Parts 1 & 2

Part 2 is particularly damning.

[Lord Mhoram]

I would also like to note that one of my personal heroes, writer and intellectual Gore Vidal, disagrees with Chomsky:

Vidal is strongly critical of the George W. Bush administration, as he has been of previous U.S. administrations that he considers to have either an explicit or implicit expansionist agenda. He has frequently made the point in interviews, essays, and in a recent book that Americans "are now governed by a junta of oil-Pentagon men ... both Bushes, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and so on." He claims that for several years, this group and their associates have aimed to control the oil of central Asia (after, in his view, gaining effective control of the oil of the Persian Gulf in 1991). Specifically regarding the September 11, 2001 attacks, Vidal writes how such an attack, which he claims that American intelligence warned was coming, politically justified the plans that the administration already had in August 2001 for invading Afghanistan the following October.

He discusses the lack of defense, including the delay in getting fighter planes into the air to intercept the hijacked airliners, compared with the time one might expect after a hijacking report. If, he says, these huge failures were incompetence, they would deserve "a number of courts martial with an impeachment or two thrown in." Instead, there is to be only a limited inquiry into how the "potential breakdowns among federal agencies ... could have allowed the terrorist attacks to occur." This, concludes Vidal, opens the possibility that the administration in fact let the attack happen, in order to capitalize on a catalyzing event that would enable it to achieve controversial policy goals under the rubric of a War on Terror.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_vidal

[High Lord Tolkien]

One of my personal heroes says this:

www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=911_morons

[Lord Mhoram]

Just for the record, I think Chomsky is spot-on and Vidal is full of shit (on this matter anyway). But I still think Maddox is a tool.

[Holsety]

Just so you know, Vidal should do some research on the interception stuff, he could learn something from looking in depth at maddox (by which I mean checking the sites maddox links to). It's pretty clear from the stuff below that NORAD wasn't intentionally on lower security or somehow screwed with, but rather the way that it works it was never prepared to deal with this. IMO Maddox's article is not a serious disproving of the conspiracy theory but is humorous. Also, kudos to Cail since he already listed them both, but I thought I should give a quote dealing with the various accusations against NORAD and the pentagon.

From popular mechanics

CLAIM: No fighter jets were scrambled from any of the 28 Air Force bases within close range of the four hijacked flights. "On 11 September Andrews had two squadrons of fighter jets with the job of protecting the skies over Washington D.C.," says the Web site emperors-clothes.com. "They failed to do their job." "There is only one explanation for this," writes Mark R. Elsis of StandDown.net. "Our Air Force was ordered to Stand Down on 9/11."

FACT: On 9/11 there were only 14 fighter jets on alert in the contiguous 48 states. No computer network or alarm automatically alerted the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) of missing planes. "They [civilian Air Traffic Control, or ATC] had to pick up the phone and literally dial us," says Maj. Douglas Martin, public affairs officer for NORAD. Boston Center, one of 22 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regional ATC facilities, called NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) three times: at 8:37 am EST to inform NEADS that Flight 11 was hijacked; at 9:21 am to inform the agency, mistakenly, that Flight 11 was headed for Washington (the plane had hit the North Tower 35 minutes earlier); and at 9:41 am to (erroneously) identify Delta Air Lines Flight 1989 from Boston as a possible hijacking. The New York ATC called NEADS at 9:03 am to report that United Flight 175 had been hijacked--the same time the plane slammed into the South Tower. Within minutes of that first call from Boston Center, NEADS scrambled two F-15s from Otis Air Force Base in Falmouth, Mass., and three F-16s from Langley Air National Guard Base in Hampton, Va. None of the fighters got anywhere near the pirated planes.

Why couldn't ATC find the hijacked flights? When the hijackers turned off the planes' transponders, which broadcast identifying signals, ATC had to search 4500 identical radar blips crisscrossing some of the country's busiest air corridors. And NORAD's sophisticated radar? It ringed the continent, looking outward for threats, not inward. "It was like a doughnut," Martin says. "There was no coverage in the middle." Pre-9/11, flights originating in the States were not seen as threats and NORAD wasn't prepared to track them.

Yes, clearly NORAD didn't do much, but it also wasn't prepared to. That being said it's debatable as to whether they should've been or not, but I think this debunks that part of the "Bush did it" theory.

[Loredoctor]

Interesting report relating to the theory bombs were used to bring down the towers:

www.implosionworld.com/Article-WTC9-6-06.pdf

[Avatar]

9/11 seen as 'US plot'


Ottawa - One in five Canadians believes the attacks on the United States on September 11 2001, had nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden and were actually a plot by influential Americans, according to a new poll.

The Ipsos-Reid poll, released on Monday, found that 22% of Canadians - and 26% of young Canadians - agree with the conspiracy theory.

The number was the highest, at 32%, in Quebec, which has shown the least support for the US war on terror.

The poll asked if the events of 9/11 were actually orchestrated by a group of highly influential Americans and others as part of a wider global conspiracy to profit from and gain power and who are actually protecting Osama Bin Laden from being captured."

"Conspiracy theories are popular, as we all know," said Ipsos pollster Paul Orovan.

Sixty-six per cent said the actions were carried out by bin Laden's disciples as an attack on the United States and as part of a global war of terror against Western and affluent democracies.

Twelve percent said neither or refused to answer.

The random telephone survey of 1 000 adult Canadians was conducted for CanWest News Service and Global News from August 29-31.

Such a sample is considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

--A

[Loredoctor]

Proves nothing except 1/5 Canadians think the UG govt was behind 9/11.

[Avatar]

Didn't say it proved anything. Was just posting it as another 9/11 conspiracy theory. It's credibility or lack thereof, I can't vouch for. I know what my innate cynic is whispering though...

--A

[wayfriend]

One could have the opinion that 9/11 was real, but that the subsequent handling by the administration is a US plot to garner power for the president, by keeping the country in a perpetual "state of war". The "War on Terror" has no clear lines, and might never end, meanwhile garnering more and more exective power "in war time", perpetually using the war on terror to execuse the eroding of freedom in our country and, ironically, creating opportunities to "justify" making the world "more free" through expansion of US control in the world.

Well, someone could.

It would explain a lot of things. Like why no one will ever implement the 9/11 comissions' findings - the administration doesn't actually want the war on terror to end or even fade. It has dominated the US landscape for five years, and anyone can see that it has been to the neo-conservatives' advantage, right down to getting a dunderhead re-elected as president.

[A Gunslinger]

One could have the opinion that 9/11 was real, but that the subsequent handling by the administration is a US plot to garner power for the president, by keeping the country in a perpetual "state of war". The "War on Terror" has no clear lines, and might never end, meanwhile garnering more and more exective power "in war time", perpetually using the war on terror to execuse the eroding of freedom in our country and, ironically, creating opportunities to "justify" making the world "more free" through expansion of US control in the world.

Well, someone could.

It would explain a lot of things. Like why no one will ever implement the 9/11 comissions' findings - the administration doesn't actually want the war on terror to end or even fade. It has dominated the US landscape for five years, and anyone can see that it has been to the neo-conservatives' advantage, right down to getting a dunderhead re-elected as president.

I personally think that Bush believes he is fighting a "war on TERRIERS". Didja ever see the clip of him dropping his Scottie on the tarmac?

Seriously, there is a ring of truth to what you are suggesting. Perpetual war=pertual contracts to defense contractors=perpetual donations=perpetual power.

[sgt.null]

and for this fact we ignore Osama, because catching him leads to the thought that we did accomplish our mission. and now we have broadened terrorist to mean anyone we feel it should define. where are the trials? where is the proof? where is anything?

[sindatur]

OK, I'm confused here.

I can understand those who believe BushCo bungled the response. I can also understand those who believe BushCo allowed it to happen. I can't understand anyone believing The Government did it themselves?

1. We know planes flew into the towers, we have film evidence of that
2. Osama Bin Laden has several times admitted to doing it, and we have film evidence of him watching the towers tumble, where an interpretor is saying he's surprised at how well it worked, it worked better than he had hoped.
3. They have records of folks getting on the planes, who have Al Quaeda ties, and had studied flying those planes, and are from mostly Saudi Arabia
4. We have Flight 93 phone calls telling us it was Middle Eastern Men taken over the plane.

How is it that anyone doubts Al Quaeda's involvement? To have faked any of these things would require a very massive Conspiracy, to say nothing of the other things, such as the Pentagon plane and United 93 wreckage, which could be staged, but, again would required a Conspiracy of massive proportions.

[wayfriend]

OK, I'm confused here. ... I can't understand anyone believing The Government did it themselves? ... How is it that anyone doubts Al Quaeda's involvement?

Hint: The Government did it themselves and Al Queda did it are NOT mutually exclusive.

Spoiler

Hint on Hint: OBL works for the CIA (or something).

[wayfriend]

Speaking of which:

There is a new documentary coming out, The Enemy Within, which documents how the US has "overhyped" the threat of terrorist cells in our own country, and demonstrates how in almost in all cases, news reports which proclaim that such people have been nabbed turn out to be something else, with little fanfare. (Don't quote me, I'm paraphrasing as best I can.)

Brought to you by those "Closet Terrorist Sympathizers" , PBS/FRONTLINE and the NY Times.

Link Press Release

I found out about this after seeing the Bergam interview on Colbert. (Which you can find on comedy central's website -- sorry I can't create a link.)

[sindatur]

OK, I'm confused here. ... I can't understand anyone believing The Government did it themselves? ... How is it that anyone doubts Al Quaeda's involvement?

Hint: The Government did it themselves and Al Queda did it are NOT mutually exclusive.

Spoiler

Hint on Hint: OBL works for the CIA (or something).

Well I understand the belief things are overblown or allowed to happen, but, honestly, people really do believe OBL Works for the CIA (Or BushCo in some manner)?

[sgt.null]

well the belief may stem from the inability for the admin to bring OBL to justice. and then the admin breaks up the group looking for OBL? to a cynical man it would seem that we aren'r even trying all of that hard.

[wayfriend]

... not to mention that the Taliban has old connections to the US.