This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the Americanexperience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whethersought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplacedpower exists and will persist.
Debating about this sort of hinges on the a priori view that bombs WERE present, and no one has proved that there were.
you were the one that said "let's say there WERE explosives" ... i was just playing along ...
I know. My bad. I suppose I could argue that using planes (and explosives) would have both symbolic and destructive potential. What "better" (in terms of dramatic) way to strike fear into the heart of Americans than hijacking planes full of passengers, but hey, let's rig some shit up in the buildings too just to ensure a "good result". I don't honestly know how Osama Bin Laden's flunkies think.
I know. My bad. I suppose I could argue that using planes (and explosives) would have both symbolic and destructive potential. What "better" (in terms of dramatic) way to strike fear into the heart of Americans than hijacking planes full of passengers, but hey, let's rig some shit up in the buildings too just to ensure a "good result". I don't honestly know how Osama Bin Laden's flunkies think.
absolutely - the image is very important ... without it - they probably don't make it to iraq ...
Reborn - if you say "circumstantial" one more time....
Look! Let's throw everything out except this one DIRECT piece of evidence. The building fell in 9 seconds. We can all watch any video of this. This means the building fell at free fall. It means it fell as it would in a "controlled demolition". This means the fire did not melt the joints and floors collapse on each other. Do you not get this?
And how am I not being as rational as possible here. Where is my flawed thinking? And furthur more I put no blame anywhere. Just that the official story is bullshit.
As i said earlier, I saw a program where an engineer outlined how the joint melting hypothesis could apply. Maybe he was lying. One more quick thing ... Let's say there WERE explosives planted in the buildings. How does that make it an inside job? Terrorists can't plant explosives in a building, only U.S. nationals? Don't hate me, but yeah ... Circumstantial. Place a Bush flunky in the buildings, planting shit, and then you got real evidence.
didn't 1 of bush's brothers was on the board of directors of the company that handled security at the towers and the 2 airports they flew out of? and i think it was reported somewhere that the weekend before it happened maintenance was done on the buildings which cut the power and cameras to certain floors while they performed cable upgrades or something
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
"I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied, finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] — that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need."
too bad the IAEA never issued such a report.....
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
this guy says his wife, Barbara Olson, called him twice from the plane and told him about the hijackers and that they had box cutters, in fact that is the only report of box cutters (though another passenger on another plane said they had knives and killed some people)....according to the FBI this phone call never happened
he changed his story back and forth a few times about what happened but according to the airline and FBI he is making it all up
American Airlines Contradicts Olson’s Second Version
A 9/11 researcher, knowing that AA Flight 77 was a Boeing 757, noticed that AA’s website indicated that its 757s do not have passenger-seat phones. After he wrote to ask if that had been the case on September 11, 2001, an AA customer service representative replied: “That is correct; we do not have phones on our Boeing 757. The passengers on flight 77 used their own personal cellular phones to make out calls during the terrorist attack.”8
In response to this revelation, defenders of the official story might reply that Ted Olson was evidently right the first time: she had used her cell phone. However, besides the fact that this scenario is rendered unlikely by the cell phone technology employed in 2001, it has also been contradicted by the FBI.
Olson’s Story Contradicted by the FBI
The most serious official contradiction of Ted Olson’s story came in 2006 at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker. The evidence presented to this trial by the FBI included a report on phone calls from all four 9/11 flights. In its report on American Flight 77, the FBI report attributed only one call to Barbara Olson and it was an “unconnected call,” which (of course) lasted “0 seconds.”9 According to the FBI, therefore, Ted Olson did not receive a single call from his wife using either a cell phone or an onboard phone.
Olson’s Story Also Rejected by Pentagon Historians
Ted Olson’s story has also been quietly rejected by the historians who wrote Pentagon 9/11, a treatment of the Pentagon attack put out by the Department of Defense.11
According to Olson, his wife had said that “all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed hijackers.”12 This is an inherently implausible scenario. We are supposed to believe that 60-some people, including the two pilots, were held at bay by three or four men (one or two of the hijackers would have been in the cockpit) with knives and boxcutters. This scenario becomes even more absurd when we realize that the alleged hijackers were all small, unathletic men (the 9/11 Commission pointed out that even “[t]he so-called muscle hijackers actually were not physically imposing, as the majority of them were between 5’5” and 5’7” in height and slender in build”13), and that the pilot, Charles “Chic” Burlingame, was a weightlifter and a boxer, who was described as “really tough” by one of his erstwhile opponents.14 Also, the idea that Burlingame would have turned over the plane to hijackers was rejected by his brother, who said: “I don't know what happened in that cockpit, but I'm sure that they would have had to incapacitate him or kill him because he would have done anything to prevent the kind of tragedy that befell that airplane.”15
The Pentagon historians, in any case, did not accept the Olson story, according to which Burlingame and his co-pilot did give up their plane and were in the back with the passengers and other crew members. They instead wrote that “the attackers either incapacitated or murdered the two pilots.”16
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
Pepe, this guy making up a story doesn't prove anything either, beyond suggesting the possibility that the guy is a pathological liar. I could make up lies and say I was playing on the Canadian men's Olympic hockey team when they beat Norway a few days ago, and that I scored four goals. Total bullshit, but that doesn't mean the game in question didn't happen.
Pepe, this guy making up a story doesn't prove anything either, beyond suggesting the possibility that the guy is a pathological liar. I could make up lies and say I was playing on the Canadian men's Olympic hockey team when they beat Norway a few days ago, and that I scored four goals. Total bullshit, but that doesn't mean the game in question didn't happen.
yes, i am aware of that, however, the post of yours i quoted was you talking about whether or not bush lied about iraq, not 9/11
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
A lingering technical question about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still haunts some, and it has political implications: How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds? A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center.
"In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of time, the material must have been artificially, exploded outwards," says Richard Gage, a San Francisco architect and founder of the nonprofit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
Mr. Gage, who is a member of the American Institute of Architects, managed to persuade more than 1,000 of his peers to sign a new petition requesting a formal inquiry.
"The official Federal Emergency Management [Agency] and National Institute of Standards and Technology reports provide insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers' destruction. We are therefore calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials," Mr. Gage adds.
The technical issues surrounding the collapse of the towers has prompted years of debate, rebuttal and ridicule.
He is particularly disturbed by Building 7, a 47-story skyscraper, which was not hit by an aircraft, yet came down in "pure free-fall acceleration." He also says that more than 100 first-responders reported explosions and flashes as the towers were falling and cited evidence of "multi-ton steel sections ejected laterally 600 ft. at 60 mph" and the "mid-air pulverization of 90,000 tons of concrete & metal decking."
There is also evidence of "advanced explosive nano-thermitic composite material found in the World Trade Center dust," Mr. Gage says. The group's petition at www. ae911truth.org is already on its way to members of Congress.
In this seven minute interview, Richard Gage is given plenty of time to explain the overwhelming evidence that the World Trade Center buildings were not brought down by the impact of the planes and ordinary office fires. Unlike the derision and condescension that typically greets 9/11 truth activists at mainstream outlets, these two anchors seem genuinely curious and open to the uncomfortable facts proving that explosives were detonated inside the Twin Towers.
female anchor: He’s an architect experienced in steel structures. Now Richard Gage is touring the country with a controversial message about September 11.
male anchor: Richard Gage is here to show us why he’s calling for a more thorough investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. Thank you so much for joining us.
Gage: You’re very welcome, it’s great to be here.
male anchor: Well first of all give us a little bit more about your background.
Gage: I’m an architect of twenty years, a member of the American Institute of Architects, and have been studying steel frame fire proof buildings for about that long.
female anchor: We ask that for clarification because as we get into this we want people to make sure that you’re not just somebody with a wacky idea, you come with some science to you. What is the official reason for the collapse of the World Trade Center towers?
Gage: Well we’re told that the planes hit the buildings, and there was an explosion and a fire, and about a hour and a half later, in the case of the north tower, the buildings collapsed due to structural weakening, due to the fires. The problem is that we don’t have large gradual deformations associated with collapses. And fires in high rises have never brought down a steel frame high rise building at all, ever. And what we have, unfortunately, is the evidence in the twin towers and the third skyscraper to collapse that day, which most people don’t know anything about it. We have the evidence of the ten key features of controlled demolition. In the case of building seven, it collapses straight down into its own footprint, at free fall speed, in the first hundred feet. It’s dropping, as you can see symmetrically, smoothly, at free fall speed, in the first hundred feet. Two and a half seconds. This is uncanny, there’s forty thousand tons of structural steel designed to resist this collapse.
female anchor: So, what, a forty-seven story building?
Gage: Yeah, it’s called Building Seven, a football field away from the Twin Towers.
female anchor: Okay, so what we’re showing is left, what happened in fact, and right is controlled, where you are using or the people who made this happen, used demolition, explosive devices.
Gage: Indeed, this a direct comparison. You can see that indeed, almost freefall speed, freefall acceleration, through forty thousand tons of structural steel. That is uncanny. So we have 700 architects and engineers demanding a new investigation as a result of this evidence and the evidence in the World Trade Center that is very explosive. Almost every architect and engineer we’ve showed this information to, agrees with us that these are controlled demolitions. If we can get them to look at the information, because obviously the implications of a controlled demolition are…dark for our country. Because that means somebody besides Al Qaeda was involved. Because these have to be easily, three of the most highly secure buildings, outside of the Pentagon.
Male anchor: Now if that was a controlled demolition, would there not be any evidence at the ground level of explosives within the debris that’s left?
Gage: Indeed. And what we find down there is pools of molten iron. Several tons.
male anchor: What is that doing there?
Gage: Exactly, what is it doing there? The first responders see it, the structural engineers see it, it’s documented by FEMA. The melting of steel. Normal office fires is what’s supposed to have brought these buildings down. Along with jet plane impacts. Jet fuel and office fires don’t produce molten iron or molten steel. It doesn’t begin to melt until three thousand degrees. But what we have is, the fires only produce maybe fourteen, sixteen hundred degrees. So what produced all that molten iron? Well, it has in it the chemical evidence of a special incendiary, which is thermite, a high tech incendiary used to cut through steel like a hot knife through butter.
female anchor: You found that?
Gage: Indeed, in all the dust throughout lower Manhattan, we have a four to six inch thick layer of this dust, and throughout it we have evidence of tiny spheres, billions of them, several tons of previously molten iron. Well how does that happen? If you have molten iron…the by-product of thermite is molten iron and it’s dispersed through out all this dust.
male anchor: You were allowed to go in and get samples and examine it?
Gage: Oh, there’s plenty of dust. A lot of people have this dust, and four of these samples have been sent to physicist Steven Jones, formerly of Brigham Young University. And they find in it, not only these spheres, which others have found too, USGS, RJ Lee, doing toxicology studies. These spheres have iron, aluminum, fluorine, manganese, very unusual elements associated only with thermite. And there are small chips of unignited thermite as well. This is very high-tech thermite, nano-thermite, it’s not found in a cave in Afghanistan, it’s produced in very sophisticated defense department contracting laboratories.
female anchor: Okay, well, we have an enemy here, the finger has been pointed to, this was the work of Al Qaeda, this was the work of Osama bin Laden, at least to get the planes all going into the buildings and into the field in Pennsylvania and into the Pentagon. Is there no way that they then could still be the enemy that placed those in the buildings first, and then did the incendiary device via a plane second?
Gage: What you have to ask is who had access to the buildings? Did Al Qaeda have access to these highly secure buildings? Probably not. Did they have access to sophisticated nano-thermite, where the particles are one thousand times smaller than a human hair? Probably not. Somebody else has to be investigated. That’s why we have 700 architects and engineers demanding a real investigation. We don’t have the whole theory as to how this happened, who did it, why. We just lay out the facts, like we did last night in the Veterans Memorial Auditorium, and we demand a real investigation, and they’ll find out who, why, how, et cetera.
male anchor: Now let me ask you, I’m person X, I want to place something in one of those buildings. Where would I carry it, how big would it be? Is it that visible that I would be spotted by security? Can I place it in one of my tooth fillings?
Gage: We’re talking about several tons of nano-thermite and ordinary thermite. One would have to have access through security. So the security company involved for the World Trade Center should be thoroughly investigated. It turns out to be Securi-com, Stratesec, somebody should look and see who’s on the board of those companies. Some very interestings individuals turn out to be. In addition, one would have to have the cover, of say, an elevator modernization, which was in fact going on nine months prior to 9/11, so that there were workers throughout the World Trade Center, that had access to the hoistway that was immediately adjacent to the core columns and beams in the building.
female anchor: You’re not trying to freak out the country, but you can’t help but feel a little freaked out by this.
Gage: Yeah, you’re getting it.
female anchor: And of course this is something we want to talk to you about a whole lot more, and we’re out of time. We do have a great deal of information on our website, kmph.com. Thank you very much for your time today. You’re opening up a lot to think about.
Post edited by Pepe Silvia on
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
All easily disproved by numerous scientific journals and independent (unbiased) studies... so no need to rehash.
But... WHY? This would be by far the most sophisticated cover up of all time by ANY government or organization. What is the payoff? A war? Destroying information? Come on... this is just ridiculous.
I can't understand the truthers who think "we did it." The truthers who think we knew it was going to happen and allowed it to happen... that is only mildly less confusing to me.
The easiest answer is usually the right one... a bunch of crazy dudes sacrificed themselves to fly planes into buildings in an attempt to destroy the capitalist and deplorable western culture.
One thing I have never heard a valid explanation is, if the US government was able to pull off a conspiracy as big as the one suggested, with no one finding out and no one leaking information, how come they couldn’t plant some WMD’s in the fucking desert of Iraq to justify the war?
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
All easily disproved by numerous scientific journals and independent (unbiased) studies... so no need to rehash.
But... WHY? This would be by far the most sophisticated cover up of all time by ANY government or organization. What is the payoff? A war? Destroying information? Come on... this is just ridiculous.
I can't understand the truthers who think "we did it." The truthers who think we knew it was going to happen and allowed it to happen... that is only mildly less confusing to me.
The easiest answer is usually the right one... a bunch of crazy dudes sacrificed themselves to fly planes into buildings in an attempt to destroy the capitalist and deplorable western culture.
One thing I have never heard a valid explanation is, if the US government was able to pull off a conspiracy as big as the one suggested, with no one finding out and no one leaking information, how come they couldn’t plant some WMD’s in the fucking desert of Iraq to justify the war?
obviously it didn't matter that there weren't any wmds. the government and cheney have repeated this since reagan. watch the documentary 'the panama deception' on our invasion of panama, it's virtually the same and kinda funny seeing cheney standing there while it's said...they build up a hype about a country and how they pose a threat to us and our national security, we invade and after the dust settles people start to ask how were they a threat to us? and they shrug and say 'noriega (or whomever) was a bad guy and we liberated millions of people from his oppression'
i don't know what happened but for me a lot of things don't add up and i can easily see either certain people being involved and helping it along or just not doing anything. how many troops died or were crippled from not being given adequate protection in iraq and afghanistan? they don't give a fuck about lives. no one thinks 'the us government did it', just certain people within it. as for why hasn't anyone talked? obviously if they were to do this they would pick people they were certain of and how many black and secret ops do ya think the public has no clue at all about?
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
One thing I have never heard a valid explanation is, if the US government was able to pull off a conspiracy as big as the one suggested, with no one finding out and no one leaking information, how come they couldn’t plant some WMD’s in the fucking desert of Iraq to justify the war?
obviously it didn't matter that there weren't any wmds. the government and cheney have repeated this since reagan. watch the documentary 'the panama deception' on our invasion of panama, it's virtually the same and kinda funny seeing cheney standing there while it's said...they build up a hype about a country and how they pose a thread to us and our national security, we invade and after the dust settles people start to ask how were they a threat to us? and they shrug and say 'noriega (or whomever) was a bad guy and we liberated millions of people from his oppression'
i don't know what happened but for me a lot of things don't add up and i can easily see either certain people being involved and helping it along or just not doing anything. how many troops died or were crippled from not being given adequate protection in iraq and afghanistan? they don't give a fuck about lives. no one thinks 'the us government did it', just certain people within it
I don’t see how the fact that there were no wmds doesn't matter. The fact that there were none pretty much killed Bush's popularity rating, probably cost his party control of congress and probably had a contributing factor to the democrats winning the white house. Now imagine how differently that would have went down if the US government had planted some weapons in Iraq for the army or the press to find. More people would have supported the war, it would have been way easier to get war funding and ramp things up like crazy. It just seems to me that a "planting a WMD" conspiracy would have been infinitely easier than a "planning a 9/11" conspiracy.
i don't know what happened but for me a lot of things don't add up and i can easily see either certain people being involved and helping it along or just not doing anything. how many troops died or were crippled from not being given adequate protection in iraq and afghanistan? they don't give a fuck about lives. no one thinks 'the us government did it', just certain people within it
But... why?
what is the payoff?
Justification for a war? - terrible theory. Like you said, the US doesn't need an elaborate plan to justify a war. They'll just make one up if necessary.
Destruction of evidence? terrible theory. Seems like a lot of work just to destroy some electronic or paper files.
Money? Seriously stupid theory. Profiting from war? - yes it happens but like I said the US doesn't need real justification for starting a war.... only rhetoric and propaganda. Profiting from insurance claims? Really stupid theory.
I just don't get it...
WHAT IS THE G'DAMN PAYOFF???
Everything not forbidden is compulsory and eveything not compulsory is forbidden. You are free... free to do what the government says you can do.
I don’t see how the fact that there were no wmds doesn't matter. The fact that there were none pretty much killed Bush's popularity rating, probably cost his party control of congress and probably had a contributing factor to the democrats winning the white house. Now imagine how differently that would have went down if the US government had planted some weapons in Iraq for the army or the press to find. More people would have supported the war, it would have been way easier to get war funding and ramp things up like crazy. It just seems to me that a "planting a WMD" conspiracy would have been infinitely easier than a "planning a 9/11" conspiracy.
One thing I have never heard a valid explanation is, if the US government was able to pull off a conspiracy as big as the one suggested, with no one finding out and no one leaking information, how come they couldn’t plant some WMD’s in the fucking desert of Iraq to justify the war?
obviously it didn't matter that there weren't any wmds. the government and cheney have repeated this since reagan. watch the documentary 'the panama deception' on our invasion of panama, it's virtually the same and kinda funny seeing cheney standing there while it's said...they build up a hype about a country and how they pose a thread to us and our national security, we invade and after the dust settles people start to ask how were they a threat to us? and they shrug and say 'noriega (or whomever) was a bad guy and we liberated millions of people from his oppression'
i don't know what happened but for me a lot of things don't add up and i can easily see either certain people being involved and helping it along or just not doing anything. how many troops died or were crippled from not being given adequate protection in iraq and afghanistan? they don't give a fuck about lives. no one thinks 'the us government did it', just certain people within it
I don’t see how the fact that there were no wmds doesn't matter. The fact that there were none pretty much killed Bush's popularity rating, probably cost his party control of congress and probably had a contributing factor to the democrats winning the white house. Now imagine how differently that would have went down if the US government had planted some weapons in Iraq for the army or the press to find. More people would have supported the war, it would have been way easier to get war funding and ramp things up like crazy. It just seems to me that a "planting a WMD" conspiracy would have been infinitely easier than a "planning a 9/11" conspiracy.
and yet they seem to have no problems at all in getting more and more money for these wars even without wmd being found.....and i don't think wmd had anything to do with Obama winning the election or the races in 06, i think the economy had a much larger role. why do you think they needed more support after the war? we were already committed, war appropriations and funding increases were being approved with ease and still are.
so, let's play pretend and say they planted some wmd to look better....what would change other than many people saying 'see, i told ya so!' in the end panama not being a threat to us had nothing to do with Bush sr losing the election and it's the same here. people shrug and say 'we're already there so we have to stay and finish the job'
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
i don't know what happened but for me a lot of things don't add up and i can easily see either certain people being involved and helping it along or just not doing anything. how many troops died or were crippled from not being given adequate protection in iraq and afghanistan? they don't give a fuck about lives. no one thinks 'the us government did it', just certain people within it
But... why?
what is the payoff?
Justification for a war? - terrible theory. Like you said, the US doesn't need an elaborate plan to justify a war. They'll just make one up if necessary.
Destruction of evidence? terrible theory. Seems like a lot of work just to destroy some electronic or paper files.
Money? Seriously stupid theory. Profiting from war? - yes it happens but like I said the US doesn't need real justification for starting a war.... only rhetoric and propaganda. Profiting from insurance claims? Really stupid theory.
I just don't get it...
WHAT IS THE G'DAMN PAYOFF???
project for a new american century summed it up nicely in their 2000 report rebuilding america's defenses where they push a pretty big agenda of more nukes/breaking the nuclear non proliferation treaty, militarizing space, spending the surplus on defense and vastly increasing defense spending, pre-emptive attacks, controlling regions with resources, invading iraq, "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
Through all the accounting gimmicks, defense spending has been almost perfectly flat – indeed, the totals have been less than $1 billion apart – for the past four years. The steepest declines in defense spending....As the annual federal budget has moved from deficit to surplus and more resources have become available, there has been no serious or sustained effort to recapitalize U.S. armed forces.....A sensible plan would add $15 billion to $20 billion to total defense spending annually through the Future Years Defense Program; this would
result in a defense “topline” increase of $75 billion to $100 billion over that period, a small percentage of the $700 billion on budget surplus now projected for that same period. We believe that the new president should commit his administration to a plan to achieve that level of spending within four years.
In general, to maintain American military preeminence that is consistent with the requirements of a strategy of American global leadership, tomorrow’s U.S. armed forces must meet three new missions:
• Global missile defenses. A network against limited strikes, capable of protecting the United States, its allies and forward-deployed forces, must be constructed. This must be a layered system of land, sea, air and spacebased components.
• Control of space and cyberspace.
Much as control of the high seas – and the protection of international commerce – defined global powers in the past, so will control of the new “international commons” be a key to world power in the future. An America incapable of protecting its interests or that of its allies in space or the “infosphere” will find it
difficult to exert global politicalleadership.
• Pursuing a two-stage strategy for of transforming conventional forces. In exploiting the “revolution in military affairs,” the Pentagon must be driven by the enduring missions for U.S.forces. This process will have two stages: transition, featuring a mix of current and new systems; and true transformation, featuring new
systems, organizations and operational concepts. This process must take a competitive approach,
with services and joint-service operations competing for new roles and missions. Any successful process
of transformation must be linked to the services, which are the institutions within the Defense Department with the ability and the responsibility for linking budgets and resources to specific missions.
and did they think getting this agenda supported would be an easy task?
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.
Post edited by Pepe Silvia on
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
I don’t see how the fact that there were no wmds doesn't matter. The fact that there were none pretty much killed Bush's popularity rating, probably cost his party control of congress and probably had a contributing factor to the democrats winning the white house. Now imagine how differently that would have went down if the US government had planted some weapons in Iraq for the army or the press to find. More people would have supported the war, it would have been way easier to get war funding and ramp things up like crazy. It just seems to me that a "planting a WMD" conspiracy would have been infinitely easier than a "planning a 9/11" conspiracy.
+1
so, what has changed since no wmd's were found??
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
Pepe - no one is really discounting your potential reasons... but in the end of the day, none of these things you allude too actually were necessary to go to Iraq, Afghanistan or even fissile away people's rights in our nation. It's nothing in our history that hasn't been done before through mere media blitz and propaganda.
CONservative governMENt
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
project for a new american century summed it up nicely in their 2000 report rebuilding america's defenses where they push a pretty big agenda of more nukes/breaking the nuclear non proliferation treaty, militarizing space, spending the surplus on defense and vastly increasing defense spending, pre-emptive attacks, controlling regions with resources, invading iraq, "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
but they have "4,075 active, 5,535 total" nuclear weapons, which is more than enough to kill every living creature on this planet, substantially more than any other country, and did the US ever break the treaty? Has the US increase its arsental since 2001? I can't find any evidence that they have.
there haven't been serious talks of militarizing space since 2001, or really since the Reagan administration, right?
spending on defense... again... the US does not need a rational explanation to go to war. They just make one up and use propaganda to get the dumb white people in middle-America to fervently support it. A grandiose conspiracy isn't required. Just a good story-teller.
pre-emptive attacks... same... the justification to go to Iraq was WMDs not 9/11 (although most people thought so at the time, and amazingly, some people still do think so).
presence in the middle-east... the US already has a satellite state (Israel) and essentially Kuwait is as well. And the US didn't need this sort of a conspiracy to increase the presence. Just call it "democratizing" the corrupt state or saving the "righteous state" from its terrible people (see: Nicaraugua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Lebanon, et al)
Lastly, the reason conspiracies almost never work is simple: people cannot keep secrets.
Everything not forbidden is compulsory and eveything not compulsory is forbidden. You are free... free to do what the government says you can do.
Lastly, the reason conspiracies almost never work is simple: people cannot keep secrets.
Exactly. I read this on another board before, but during Clinton's presidency he got a blow job from an intern in his office. The kind of thing that by definition only two people should know about. Yet that was all over the news. Some of the 9/11 conspiracy theories I have seen would require 100's of people to be involved, yet somehow every single one of them keeps quiet?
Lastly, the reason conspiracies almost never work is simple: people cannot keep secrets.
Exactly. I read this on another board before, but during Clinton's presidency he got a blow job from an intern in his office. The kind of thing that by definition only two people should know about. Yet that was all over the news. Some of the 9/11 conspiracy theories I have seen would require 100's of people to be involved, yet somehow every single one of them keeps quiet?
this is exactly whati was thinking. There would have had to have been dozens (if not hundreds) of people in on this. And to take the chance at assuming they would always keep quiet forever is just risking too much. Inless you could picture Georgie and Dick running around the trade centers all drunk by themselves a few days before 9/11.
The public was sold several (related) rationales for Iraq. WMDs, the tyranny and threat posed by Saddam Hussein ... I don't think at ANY point was 9-11 evoked in direct reference to this invasion, although a more general "war on terror" probably got tossed out there. And he still stands, all the "dumb white people" you refer to (I didn't realize the blacks and hispanics were smarter, silly me!) were at least somewhat skeptical about Iraq from the very beginning, and as the thing dragged on, it became and remains a highly unpopular war. So, not only did 9-11 not really get used as a direct excuse for Iraq, people didn't really buy into Bush's rationales anyway, at least not to the extent he was hoping they would.
The public was sold several (related) rationales for Iraq. WMDs, the tyranny and threat posed by Saddam Hussein ... I don't think at ANY point was 9-11 evoked in direct reference to this invasion, although a more general "war on terror" probably got tossed out there. And he still stands, all the "dumb white people" you refer to (I didn't realize the blacks and hispanics were smarter, silly me!) were at least somewhat skeptical about Iraq from the very beginning, and as the thing dragged on, it became and remains a highly unpopular war. So, not only did 9-11 not really get used as a direct excuse for Iraq, people didn't really buy into Bush's rationales anyway, at least not to the extent he was hoping they would.
yes you are right... it doesn't matter what color people are they are usually ignorant. I'm not being cynical... I just can't believe the bullshit that people buy in to. Politicians have always been corrupt but somehow people still believe in either this dude or that dude.
Also, I beg to differ about the extent that people "bought into" the concept of 9-11 causing the Iraq war. You are right... that was not the position of the Bush administration... but somehow "smart" people still believed that until very recently.
I worked with a guy that was pulling down like $80k or more as a Marketing Manager, good education, trivia whiz. In 2006 he still believed it, probably because he heard it from a conservative pundit. That is what I mean by "everyone is stupid"... these types of people that believe anything they hear. Maybe "stupid" is the wrong word. How about 'gullible.'
Everything not forbidden is compulsory and eveything not compulsory is forbidden. You are free... free to do what the government says you can do.
Lastly, the reason conspiracies almost never work is simple: people cannot keep secrets.
Exactly. I read this on another board before, but during Clinton's presidency he got a blow job from an intern in his office. The kind of thing that by definition only two people should know about. Yet that was all over the news. Some of the 9/11 conspiracy theories I have seen would require 100's of people to be involved, yet somehow every single one of them keeps quiet?
1 is dealing with a young girl who thought he loved her and then felt jilted. i mean she kept a dress with his cum on it for fuck's sake!
on the other hand you'd have people who's living is doing things secretly.
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
project for a new american century summed it up nicely in their 2000 report rebuilding america's defenses where they push a pretty big agenda of more nukes/breaking the nuclear non proliferation treaty, militarizing space, spending the surplus on defense and vastly increasing defense spending, pre-emptive attacks, controlling regions with resources, invading iraq, "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
but they have "4,075 active, 5,535 total" nuclear weapons, which is more than enough to kill every living creature on this planet, substantially more than any other country, and did the US ever break the treaty? Has the US increase its arsental since 2001? I can't find any evidence that they have.
there haven't been serious talks of militarizing space since 2001, or really since the Reagan administration, right?
spending on defense... again... the US does not need a rational explanation to go to war. They just make one up and use propaganda to get the dumb white people in middle-America to fervently support it. A grandiose conspiracy isn't required. Just a good story-teller.
pre-emptive attacks... same... the justification to go to Iraq was WMDs not 9/11 (although most people thought so at the time, and amazingly, some people still do think so).
presence in the middle-east... the US already has a satellite state (Israel) and essentially Kuwait is as well. And the US didn't need this sort of a conspiracy to increase the presence. Just call it "democratizing" the corrupt state or saving the "righteous state" from its terrible people (see: Nicaraugua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Lebanon, et al)
Lastly, the reason conspiracies almost never work is simple: people cannot keep secrets.
well, pnac (cheney, rumsfeld, wolfowitz, perle...) disagree with you, they thought to get to the level they wanted would be a long journey...they also disagree with you on needing to have a presence in iraq and other parts of the region. yeah, they could've gotten a lot of this with media blitzes and pushes, their paper didn't say "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change cannot happen absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor." they said "is likely to be a long one'' it would take them a long time to get these things through compared to the virtually instant approval many things got after 9/11. take this as an example:
that program was originally called the Total Information Awareness Program but people didn't like that because it is basically an orwellian system that would monitor pretty much everyone. they then rename it the Terrorism Information Awareness Program and it gets through
yes, we did break the nuclear non proliferation treaty by helping India decide which sites and reactors would be allowed to be inspected by the IAEA and selling them uranium (as well as the icbm treaty, pulled out of the International Criminal Court, boycotted a UN conference on a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, refused to ratify the UN Convention on Rights of the Child, rejected a UN agreement to enforce a biological weapons ban and opposed a UN initiative against torture), bush started research for new smaller mini nukes, obama has also asked for in increase in making nuclear weapons. and of course they could get increases in the defense budget but not at the high levels they thought was needed to retain our position and achieve their goals
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
The public was sold several (related) rationales for Iraq. WMDs, the tyranny and threat posed by Saddam Hussein ... I don't think at ANY point was 9-11 evoked in direct reference to this invasion, although a more general "war on terror" probably got tossed out there. And he still stands, all the "dumb white people" you refer to (I didn't realize the blacks and hispanics were smarter, silly me!) were at least somewhat skeptical about Iraq from the very beginning, and as the thing dragged on, it became and remains a highly unpopular war. So, not only did 9-11 not really get used as a direct excuse for Iraq, people didn't really buy into Bush's rationales anyway, at least not to the extent he was hoping they would.
i guess you forgot the whole Mohammed Atta met with the Iraqi government and links of al qaeda and Iraq nonsense?
or a year after saying "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday the evidence is "overwhelming" that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, and he said media reports suggesting that the 9/11 commission has reached a contradictory conclusion were "irresponsible."
"There clearly was a relationship. It's been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming," Cheney said in an interview with CNBC's "Capitol Report."
"It goes back to the early '90s. It involves a whole series of contacts, high-level contacts with Osama bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence officials."
"The press, with all due respect, (is) often times lazy, often times simply reports what somebody else in the press said without doing their homework."
Both Cheney and President Bush are strongly disputing suggestions that the commission's conclusion that there were no Iraqi fingerprints on the 9/11 attacks contradicts statements they made in the run-up to the Iraq war about links between Iraq and al Qaeda.
"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda [is] because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," the president said. (Full story)
"it's been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and that he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi Intelligence service"
dumb white people??? wtf are you talking about??
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
I think we have slowly seen the 'payoff' taking place over the last several years: The shock that Americans got on September 11 made many people feel like helpless victims. Some thought it would be great to go on the offense and bomb the hell out of the middle east. Others looked to the government to be savior and protector.
We are turning into a flock of compliant sheep, happy to "Give up our liberties for Freedom."
- The country has been in an official State of Emergency since September of 2001. The president can suspend the constitution and declare Martial Law at any moment for any reason. The PATRIOT Act was invented as a means to control the domestic population (read the MIAC report.) Citizens can be arrested and held indefinitely without habeas corpus. Our phone calls and internet usage are surveilled without warrants. Mobile phones and automobiles have GPS systems in them that can be accessed by any government agency. Phones, computer microphones, cable boxes, etc. can be listened in on. Internet censorship is being implemented because free speech is dangerous.
- Naked body scanners are the latest popular tool to make the sheep feel safe. [Michael Chertoff is making millions from his stock in the company.] As a normal person with dignity, I expected that my peers would be horrified at the thought of being strip searched. But ridiculously, stats indicate that 96% to 100% of people march right through the DNA-mangling terrahertz machines without objection, pausing only to put their arms up in the, "I surrender!! Don't shoot me!!!" position.
Comments
eisenhower 1961
I know. My bad. I suppose I could argue that using planes (and explosives) would have both symbolic and destructive potential. What "better" (in terms of dramatic) way to strike fear into the heart of Americans than hijacking planes full of passengers, but hey, let's rig some shit up in the buildings too just to ensure a "good result". I don't honestly know how Osama Bin Laden's flunkies think.
absolutely - the image is very important ... without it - they probably don't make it to iraq ...
didn't 1 of bush's brothers was on the board of directors of the company that handled security at the towers and the 2 airports they flew out of? and i think it was reported somewhere that the weekend before it happened maintenance was done on the buildings which cut the power and cameras to certain floors while they performed cable upgrades or something
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
"I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied, finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] — that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need."
too bad the IAEA never issued such a report.....
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... a&aid=8514
this guy says his wife, Barbara Olson, called him twice from the plane and told him about the hijackers and that they had box cutters, in fact that is the only report of box cutters (though another passenger on another plane said they had knives and killed some people)....according to the FBI this phone call never happened
he changed his story back and forth a few times about what happened but according to the airline and FBI he is making it all up
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
yes, i am aware of that, however, the post of yours i quoted was you talking about whether or not bush lied about iraq, not 9/11
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
By Jennifer Harper INSIDE THE BELTWAY
EXPLOSIVE NEWS
A lingering technical question about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still haunts some, and it has political implications: How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds? A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center.
"In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of time, the material must have been artificially, exploded outwards," says Richard Gage, a San Francisco architect and founder of the nonprofit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
Mr. Gage, who is a member of the American Institute of Architects, managed to persuade more than 1,000 of his peers to sign a new petition requesting a formal inquiry.
"The official Federal Emergency Management [Agency] and National Institute of Standards and Technology reports provide insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers' destruction. We are therefore calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials," Mr. Gage adds.
The technical issues surrounding the collapse of the towers has prompted years of debate, rebuttal and ridicule.
He is particularly disturbed by Building 7, a 47-story skyscraper, which was not hit by an aircraft, yet came down in "pure free-fall acceleration." He also says that more than 100 first-responders reported explosions and flashes as the towers were falling and cited evidence of "multi-ton steel sections ejected laterally 600 ft. at 60 mph" and the "mid-air pulverization of 90,000 tons of concrete & metal decking."
There is also evidence of "advanced explosive nano-thermitic composite material found in the World Trade Center dust," Mr. Gage says. The group's petition at www. ae911truth.org is already on its way to members of Congress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGCkX1wy ... r_embedded
In this seven minute interview, Richard Gage is given plenty of time to explain the overwhelming evidence that the World Trade Center buildings were not brought down by the impact of the planes and ordinary office fires. Unlike the derision and condescension that typically greets 9/11 truth activists at mainstream outlets, these two anchors seem genuinely curious and open to the uncomfortable facts proving that explosives were detonated inside the Twin Towers.
female anchor: He’s an architect experienced in steel structures. Now Richard Gage is touring the country with a controversial message about September 11.
male anchor: Richard Gage is here to show us why he’s calling for a more thorough investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. Thank you so much for joining us.
Gage: You’re very welcome, it’s great to be here.
male anchor: Well first of all give us a little bit more about your background.
Gage: I’m an architect of twenty years, a member of the American Institute of Architects, and have been studying steel frame fire proof buildings for about that long.
female anchor: We ask that for clarification because as we get into this we want people to make sure that you’re not just somebody with a wacky idea, you come with some science to you. What is the official reason for the collapse of the World Trade Center towers?
Gage: Well we’re told that the planes hit the buildings, and there was an explosion and a fire, and about a hour and a half later, in the case of the north tower, the buildings collapsed due to structural weakening, due to the fires. The problem is that we don’t have large gradual deformations associated with collapses. And fires in high rises have never brought down a steel frame high rise building at all, ever. And what we have, unfortunately, is the evidence in the twin towers and the third skyscraper to collapse that day, which most people don’t know anything about it. We have the evidence of the ten key features of controlled demolition. In the case of building seven, it collapses straight down into its own footprint, at free fall speed, in the first hundred feet. It’s dropping, as you can see symmetrically, smoothly, at free fall speed, in the first hundred feet. Two and a half seconds. This is uncanny, there’s forty thousand tons of structural steel designed to resist this collapse.
female anchor: So, what, a forty-seven story building?
Gage: Yeah, it’s called Building Seven, a football field away from the Twin Towers.
female anchor: Okay, so what we’re showing is left, what happened in fact, and right is controlled, where you are using or the people who made this happen, used demolition, explosive devices.
Gage: Indeed, this a direct comparison. You can see that indeed, almost freefall speed, freefall acceleration, through forty thousand tons of structural steel. That is uncanny. So we have 700 architects and engineers demanding a new investigation as a result of this evidence and the evidence in the World Trade Center that is very explosive. Almost every architect and engineer we’ve showed this information to, agrees with us that these are controlled demolitions. If we can get them to look at the information, because obviously the implications of a controlled demolition are…dark for our country. Because that means somebody besides Al Qaeda was involved. Because these have to be easily, three of the most highly secure buildings, outside of the Pentagon.
Male anchor: Now if that was a controlled demolition, would there not be any evidence at the ground level of explosives within the debris that’s left?
Gage: Indeed. And what we find down there is pools of molten iron. Several tons.
male anchor: What is that doing there?
Gage: Exactly, what is it doing there? The first responders see it, the structural engineers see it, it’s documented by FEMA. The melting of steel. Normal office fires is what’s supposed to have brought these buildings down. Along with jet plane impacts. Jet fuel and office fires don’t produce molten iron or molten steel. It doesn’t begin to melt until three thousand degrees. But what we have is, the fires only produce maybe fourteen, sixteen hundred degrees. So what produced all that molten iron? Well, it has in it the chemical evidence of a special incendiary, which is thermite, a high tech incendiary used to cut through steel like a hot knife through butter.
female anchor: You found that?
Gage: Indeed, in all the dust throughout lower Manhattan, we have a four to six inch thick layer of this dust, and throughout it we have evidence of tiny spheres, billions of them, several tons of previously molten iron. Well how does that happen? If you have molten iron…the by-product of thermite is molten iron and it’s dispersed through out all this dust.
male anchor: You were allowed to go in and get samples and examine it?
Gage: Oh, there’s plenty of dust. A lot of people have this dust, and four of these samples have been sent to physicist Steven Jones, formerly of Brigham Young University. And they find in it, not only these spheres, which others have found too, USGS, RJ Lee, doing toxicology studies. These spheres have iron, aluminum, fluorine, manganese, very unusual elements associated only with thermite. And there are small chips of unignited thermite as well. This is very high-tech thermite, nano-thermite, it’s not found in a cave in Afghanistan, it’s produced in very sophisticated defense department contracting laboratories.
female anchor: Okay, well, we have an enemy here, the finger has been pointed to, this was the work of Al Qaeda, this was the work of Osama bin Laden, at least to get the planes all going into the buildings and into the field in Pennsylvania and into the Pentagon. Is there no way that they then could still be the enemy that placed those in the buildings first, and then did the incendiary device via a plane second?
Gage: What you have to ask is who had access to the buildings? Did Al Qaeda have access to these highly secure buildings? Probably not. Did they have access to sophisticated nano-thermite, where the particles are one thousand times smaller than a human hair? Probably not. Somebody else has to be investigated. That’s why we have 700 architects and engineers demanding a real investigation. We don’t have the whole theory as to how this happened, who did it, why. We just lay out the facts, like we did last night in the Veterans Memorial Auditorium, and we demand a real investigation, and they’ll find out who, why, how, et cetera.
male anchor: Now let me ask you, I’m person X, I want to place something in one of those buildings. Where would I carry it, how big would it be? Is it that visible that I would be spotted by security? Can I place it in one of my tooth fillings?
Gage: We’re talking about several tons of nano-thermite and ordinary thermite. One would have to have access through security. So the security company involved for the World Trade Center should be thoroughly investigated. It turns out to be Securi-com, Stratesec, somebody should look and see who’s on the board of those companies. Some very interestings individuals turn out to be. In addition, one would have to have the cover, of say, an elevator modernization, which was in fact going on nine months prior to 9/11, so that there were workers throughout the World Trade Center, that had access to the hoistway that was immediately adjacent to the core columns and beams in the building.
female anchor: You’re not trying to freak out the country, but you can’t help but feel a little freaked out by this.
Gage: Yeah, you’re getting it.
female anchor: And of course this is something we want to talk to you about a whole lot more, and we’re out of time. We do have a great deal of information on our website, kmph.com. Thank you very much for your time today. You’re opening up a lot to think about.
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
One thing I have never heard a valid explanation is, if the US government was able to pull off a conspiracy as big as the one suggested, with no one finding out and no one leaking information, how come they couldn’t plant some WMD’s in the fucking desert of Iraq to justify the war?
i don't expect it to go very far, though.
not sure what to make of this video and a little after the 5 minute mark you hear 2 loud booms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58h0LjdM ... r_embedded
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
obviously it didn't matter that there weren't any wmds. the government and cheney have repeated this since reagan. watch the documentary 'the panama deception' on our invasion of panama, it's virtually the same and kinda funny seeing cheney standing there while it's said...they build up a hype about a country and how they pose a threat to us and our national security, we invade and after the dust settles people start to ask how were they a threat to us? and they shrug and say 'noriega (or whomever) was a bad guy and we liberated millions of people from his oppression'
i don't know what happened but for me a lot of things don't add up and i can easily see either certain people being involved and helping it along or just not doing anything. how many troops died or were crippled from not being given adequate protection in iraq and afghanistan? they don't give a fuck about lives. no one thinks 'the us government did it', just certain people within it. as for why hasn't anyone talked? obviously if they were to do this they would pick people they were certain of and how many black and secret ops do ya think the public has no clue at all about?
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
I don’t see how the fact that there were no wmds doesn't matter. The fact that there were none pretty much killed Bush's popularity rating, probably cost his party control of congress and probably had a contributing factor to the democrats winning the white house. Now imagine how differently that would have went down if the US government had planted some weapons in Iraq for the army or the press to find. More people would have supported the war, it would have been way easier to get war funding and ramp things up like crazy. It just seems to me that a "planting a WMD" conspiracy would have been infinitely easier than a "planning a 9/11" conspiracy.
But... why?
what is the payoff?
Justification for a war? - terrible theory. Like you said, the US doesn't need an elaborate plan to justify a war. They'll just make one up if necessary.
Destruction of evidence? terrible theory. Seems like a lot of work just to destroy some electronic or paper files.
Money? Seriously stupid theory. Profiting from war? - yes it happens but like I said the US doesn't need real justification for starting a war.... only rhetoric and propaganda. Profiting from insurance claims? Really stupid theory.
I just don't get it...
WHAT IS THE G'DAMN PAYOFF???
+1
and yet they seem to have no problems at all in getting more and more money for these wars even without wmd being found.....and i don't think wmd had anything to do with Obama winning the election or the races in 06, i think the economy had a much larger role. why do you think they needed more support after the war? we were already committed, war appropriations and funding increases were being approved with ease and still are.
so, let's play pretend and say they planted some wmd to look better....what would change other than many people saying 'see, i told ya so!' in the end panama not being a threat to us had nothing to do with Bush sr losing the election and it's the same here. people shrug and say 'we're already there so we have to stay and finish the job'
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
project for a new american century summed it up nicely in their 2000 report rebuilding america's defenses where they push a pretty big agenda of more nukes/breaking the nuclear non proliferation treaty, militarizing space, spending the surplus on defense and vastly increasing defense spending, pre-emptive attacks, controlling regions with resources, invading iraq, "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
and did they think getting this agenda supported would be an easy task?
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
so, what has changed since no wmd's were found??
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
but they have "4,075 active, 5,535 total" nuclear weapons, which is more than enough to kill every living creature on this planet, substantially more than any other country, and did the US ever break the treaty? Has the US increase its arsental since 2001? I can't find any evidence that they have.
there haven't been serious talks of militarizing space since 2001, or really since the Reagan administration, right?
spending on defense... again... the US does not need a rational explanation to go to war. They just make one up and use propaganda to get the dumb white people in middle-America to fervently support it. A grandiose conspiracy isn't required. Just a good story-teller.
pre-emptive attacks... same... the justification to go to Iraq was WMDs not 9/11 (although most people thought so at the time, and amazingly, some people still do think so).
presence in the middle-east... the US already has a satellite state (Israel) and essentially Kuwait is as well. And the US didn't need this sort of a conspiracy to increase the presence. Just call it "democratizing" the corrupt state or saving the "righteous state" from its terrible people (see: Nicaraugua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Lebanon, et al)
Lastly, the reason conspiracies almost never work is simple: people cannot keep secrets.
Inside Afghanistan maybe. These conspiracy theories are so fucking ridiculous it makes me sick.
Exactly. I read this on another board before, but during Clinton's presidency he got a blow job from an intern in his office. The kind of thing that by definition only two people should know about. Yet that was all over the news. Some of the 9/11 conspiracy theories I have seen would require 100's of people to be involved, yet somehow every single one of them keeps quiet?
this is exactly whati was thinking. There would have had to have been dozens (if not hundreds) of people in on this. And to take the chance at assuming they would always keep quiet forever is just risking too much. Inless you could picture Georgie and Dick running around the trade centers all drunk by themselves a few days before 9/11.
yes you are right... it doesn't matter what color people are they are usually ignorant. I'm not being cynical... I just can't believe the bullshit that people buy in to. Politicians have always been corrupt but somehow people still believe in either this dude or that dude.
Also, I beg to differ about the extent that people "bought into" the concept of 9-11 causing the Iraq war. You are right... that was not the position of the Bush administration... but somehow "smart" people still believed that until very recently.
I worked with a guy that was pulling down like $80k or more as a Marketing Manager, good education, trivia whiz. In 2006 he still believed it, probably because he heard it from a conservative pundit. That is what I mean by "everyone is stupid"... these types of people that believe anything they hear. Maybe "stupid" is the wrong word. How about 'gullible.'
1 is dealing with a young girl who thought he loved her and then felt jilted. i mean she kept a dress with his cum on it for fuck's sake!
on the other hand you'd have people who's living is doing things secretly.
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
well, pnac (cheney, rumsfeld, wolfowitz, perle...) disagree with you, they thought to get to the level they wanted would be a long journey...they also disagree with you on needing to have a presence in iraq and other parts of the region. yeah, they could've gotten a lot of this with media blitzes and pushes, their paper didn't say "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change cannot happen absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor." they said "is likely to be a long one'' it would take them a long time to get these things through compared to the virtually instant approval many things got after 9/11. take this as an example:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/opini ... ess&st=nyt
that program was originally called the Total Information Awareness Program but people didn't like that because it is basically an orwellian system that would monitor pretty much everyone. they then rename it the Terrorism Information Awareness Program and it gets through
yes, we did break the nuclear non proliferation treaty by helping India decide which sites and reactors would be allowed to be inspected by the IAEA and selling them uranium (as well as the icbm treaty, pulled out of the International Criminal Court, boycotted a UN conference on a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, refused to ratify the UN Convention on Rights of the Child, rejected a UN agreement to enforce a biological weapons ban and opposed a UN initiative against torture), bush started research for new smaller mini nukes, obama has also asked for in increase in making nuclear weapons. and of course they could get increases in the defense budget but not at the high levels they thought was needed to retain our position and achieve their goals
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
i guess you forgot the whole Mohammed Atta met with the Iraqi government and links of al qaeda and Iraq nonsense?
or a year after saying "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
or
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/ ... index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday the evidence is "overwhelming" that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, and he said media reports suggesting that the 9/11 commission has reached a contradictory conclusion were "irresponsible."
"There clearly was a relationship. It's been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming," Cheney said in an interview with CNBC's "Capitol Report."
"It goes back to the early '90s. It involves a whole series of contacts, high-level contacts with Osama bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence officials."
"The press, with all due respect, (is) often times lazy, often times simply reports what somebody else in the press said without doing their homework."
Both Cheney and President Bush are strongly disputing suggestions that the commission's conclusion that there were no Iraqi fingerprints on the 9/11 attacks contradicts statements they made in the run-up to the Iraq war about links between Iraq and al Qaeda.
"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda [is] because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," the president said. (Full story)
or how about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RytxVNM0llQ
"it's been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and that he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi Intelligence service"
dumb white people??? wtf are you talking about??
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
I think we have slowly seen the 'payoff' taking place over the last several years: The shock that Americans got on September 11 made many people feel like helpless victims. Some thought it would be great to go on the offense and bomb the hell out of the middle east. Others looked to the government to be savior and protector.
We are turning into a flock of compliant sheep, happy to "Give up our liberties for Freedom."
- The country has been in an official State of Emergency since September of 2001. The president can suspend the constitution and declare Martial Law at any moment for any reason. The PATRIOT Act was invented as a means to control the domestic population (read the MIAC report.) Citizens can be arrested and held indefinitely without habeas corpus. Our phone calls and internet usage are surveilled without warrants. Mobile phones and automobiles have GPS systems in them that can be accessed by any government agency. Phones, computer microphones, cable boxes, etc. can be listened in on. Internet censorship is being implemented because free speech is dangerous.
- Naked body scanners are the latest popular tool to make the sheep feel safe. [Michael Chertoff is making millions from his stock in the company.] As a normal person with dignity, I expected that my peers would be horrified at the thought of being strip searched. But ridiculously, stats indicate that 96% to 100% of people march right through the DNA-mangling terrahertz machines without objection, pausing only to put their arms up in the, "I surrender!! Don't shoot me!!!" position.