dear PM, why is 9/11 conspiracy theory 'obviously' stupid?

Byrnzie

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/ ... 7356.shtml

'Clarke says that as early as the day after the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for retaliatory strikes on Iraq, even though al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan.

Clarke suggests the idea took him so aback, he initally thought Rumsfeld was joking...


After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.

"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.

"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking.

"I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection."

Clarke says he and CIA Director George Tenet told that to Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Clarke then tells Stahl of being pressured by Mr. Bush.

"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."

Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'

"I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it, because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don't think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don't think he sees memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer."

Hugh Freaking Dillon

:shock: but not

Byrnzie wrote:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml

'Clarke says that as early as the day after the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for retaliatory strikes on Iraq, even though al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan.

Clarke suggests the idea took him so aback, he initally thought Rumsfeld was joking...


After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.

"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.

"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking.

"I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection."

Clarke says he and CIA Director George Tenet told that to Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Clarke then tells Stahl of being pressured by Mr. Bush.

"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."

Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'

"I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it, because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don't think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don't think he sees memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer."

OutOfBreath

Byrnzie. (Dont wanna quote several screens of text)

What you reference here is frankly merely the exposure of spin, and diverting of a crisis down a road the adminstration wanted. There's no doubt or surprise anymore that the Bush adm deliberately used this as an unfounded justification for the Iraq war they wanted regardless.

Hindsight is 20/20, which is important when considering when the unexpected happens. Some sort of attack may have been expected, and the intelligence people was onto it. However, they failed at finding out exactly what and where. This is embarassing, looks really bad in hindsight, and poses more than sufficient justification for administration cover-up/spin/diversion/lies. However, nothing referenced in the texts you quoted explicitly says anything about what actually happened. It says Bin Laden was up to something, and the use of airplanes was something floating around.

The scandal is the spin of the Bush admin and the use of this for justifying invading Iraq. But the scenario looks a lot more like spinning a disastrous event to their advantage in doing something else, than it looks premeditated.

Peace
Dan

Byrnzie

OutOfBreath wrote:

Byrnzie. (Dont wanna quote several screens of text)

What you reference here is frankly merely the exposure of spin, and diverting of a crisis down a road the adminstration wanted. There's no doubt or surprise anymore that the Bush adm deliberately used this as an unfounded justification for the Iraq war they wanted regardless.

Hindsight is 20/20, which is important when considering when the unexpected happens. Some sort of attack may have been expected, and the intelligence people was onto it. However, they failed at finding out exactly what and where. This is embarassing, looks really bad in hindsight, and poses more than sufficient justification for administration cover-up/spin/diversion/lies. However, nothing referenced in the texts you quoted explicitly says anything about what actually happened. It says Bin Laden was up to something, and the use of airplanes was something floating around.

The scandal is the spin of the Bush admin and the use of this for justifying invading Iraq. But the scenario looks a lot more like spinning a disastrous event to their advantage in doing something else, than it looks premeditated.

Peace
Dan

If they had nothing to hide then why did they lie repeatedly and also block any independent inquiry?

OutOfBreath

Byrnzie wrote:

If they had nothing to hide then why did they lie repeatedly and also block any independent inquiry?

They had something to hide. The fact that the intel system fucked up (or at least doesnt work as well as TV shows would have you believe), and a bit further down the line, that they were spinning this dizzy trying to get the green light for invading Iraq.

It's not about having/not having something to hide. The question is what are they hiding. I find what I just outlined a lot more likely than their active participation in the event. Negligence, perhaps. Criminal negligence, not unlikely. (Negligence arguably also brought us the current financial crisis, so not that unlikely really of people believing themselves to be in control when they really aren't).

So I'd say that the likely elements here are:
1. Negligence - Which has to some degree been confirmed in retrospect, in that the intel community doesn't exactly cooperate that well.
2. Spin - They spun like hell to get the Iraq war. It is pretty clear now that they lied like hell to get it.
3. General panic at the time - They really needed to not look responsible for this. And they needed to ensure the public that they were in control.

Active participation is a completely different cup of tea, and not something that can be inferred by the usual blame avoidance/spin politics.

Peace
Dan

Byrnzie

OutOfBreath wrote:

So I'd say that the likely elements here are:
1. Negligence - Which has to some degree been confirmed in retrospect, in that the intel community doesn't exactly cooperate that well.
2. Spin - They spun like hell to get the Iraq war. It is pretty clear now that they lied like hell to get it.
3. General panic at the time - They really needed to not look responsible for this. And they needed to ensure the public that they were in control.

Active participation is a completely different cup of tea, and not something that can be inferred by the usual blame avoidance/spin politics.

Peace
Dan

I didn't say active partipation.

What the evidence points to is a conscious decision by those in power at the time to do nothing. Why did they choose to do nothing? I think it's prettty obvious why. They needed an excuse to implement their already stated aims and ambitions, and they were gonna make sure they got that excuse.
It's not negligence when you deliberately ignore information presented to you. They made a conscious decision to ignore the information and the warnings given to them.

And when questioned about their decisions at the 9/11 commission they lied through their teeth about it.

OutOfBreath

Byrnzie wrote:

I didn't say active partipation.

What the evidence points to is a conscious decision by those in power at the time to do nothing. Why did thwy choose to do nothing? I think it's prettty obvious why. They needed an excuse to implement their already stated aims and ambitions, and they were gonna make sure they got that excuse.
It's not negligence when you deliberately ignore information presented to you. They made a conscious decision to ignore the information and the warnings given to them.

And when questioned about their decisions at the 9/11 commission they lied through their teeth about it.

An important aside to this is "how many warnings do the US get daily/weekly/monthly that someone is plotting something against them?". Easy to see and say in hindsight "You got a warning", when in reality they got tons of warnings about different stuff all the time, among which this was one of them. I'll bet you they dont do anything about a lot of those warnings, some they poke abit into, and some they go into full force. It's about priority on a daily basis, and you could definitely say that they misprioritized this one. But that's easy in hindsight to say, and not so easy to see in the everyday.

Most of what happens afterwards is just usual politics and spin, although the Bush admin took it some steps further with invading Iraq on pretty clear lies. Taking advantage after the fact is what is always done. By active participation, I include "knowingly choosing not to act". They didn't not act knowing the twin towers would be hit and demolished. They may have chosen not to act on what wasn't deemed as sufficient intel to do so. (As I imagine they must do on a daily basis) That's not premeditated, that's mainly a fuckup and a reminder that one rarely has as much control as one imagines. (Which in politics can be worth covering up in itself)

As I said, the scandal is what they chose to do afterwards concerning Iraq. They did lie a lot to get that. But I find the "knowingly allowing the attack to happen" to be very unlikely. They did lie their pants off, but not to conceal their fiendish plot (at least not that one), but rather to gain the momentum to go for Iraq. If they wanted to use a false flag, they could have gotten it a lot cheaper and better. Faking an attack on US ships in the persian gulf for instance...

Peace
Dan

Byrnzie

OutOfBreath wrote:

...they got tons of warnings about different stuff all the time, among which this was one of them.

Really? Do you have anything to support this theory?

What are these 'tons of warnings' you're referring to?

catefrances

Byrnzie wrote:

OutOfBreath wrote:

An important aside to this is "how many warnings do the US get daily/weekly/monthly that someone is plotting something against them?". Easy to see and say in hindsight "You got a warning", when in reality they got tons of warnings about different stuff all the time, among which this was one of them.

Really? Do you have anything to support this theory?

What are these 'tons of warnings' you're referring to?

one would imagine it would be dependent upon where the intelligence came from as to whether it was acted upon or not. we have reason to believe an unknown number of terrorists are planning to hijack planes and fly them into buildings thatd be enough to get me tightening security and looking a little closer at people. there really was no duty of care.

Byrnzie

catefrances wrote:

one would imagine it would be dependent upon where the intelligence came from as to whether it was acted upon or not. we have reason to believe an unknown number of terrorists are planning to hijack planes and fly them into buildings thatd be enough to get me tightening security and looking a little closer at people. there really was no duty of care.

We're not talking about a mere hunch either. We're talking about an intelligence assessment of an imminent threat of attack based on evidence accumulated over a period of at least 10 months.

OutOfBreath

Byrnzie wrote:

OutOfBreath wrote:

...they got tons of warnings about different stuff all the time, among which this was one of them.

Really? Do you have anything to support this theory?

What are these 'tons of warnings' you're referring to?

Ehm, the fact that the US is a world major player and as such, lots of different groups see benefit in striking a blow against them, will indicate that threats from someone somewhere are pretty commonplace. It's why CIA etc exists at all.

And I'm certain they get memos, warnings, reports etc from their thousands of employees and field agents on a daily basis. (Not everyone reporting every day, but something being delivered on something every day). This is straight from what I've read of press coverage of a report (sic) on how the US intel works, that found that it was far too many reports from too many people from too many different places for anyone to keep up. It's why they're reforming and why they established a department of homeland security.

A warning in this system will be just another piece of data, which a lot of dedicated employees are crunching and deciding on what to put in (the far too many) reports, that then are delivered to the political heads. Bin Laden was on their radar, but he had been for a long time, as doubtlessly many others have been and are. You get reports every time someone has heard something. I can easily imagine that top political leaders will just ignore the warnings after a while, especially since little materializes for a long time. (Was quite a spell there between embassy bombings and 9/11.

As my support I posit all the reports and media that has been about and around the american intel system and it's reform. Secondly I apply my general knowledge about how large government bureaucracies function, since I'm working in one. I've been around enough leaders at various levels in the organization that I have an idea about how they tick and what they react on. (Also how they may easily tune out if their attention is repeatedly drawn towards something they dont see the immeniate danger in.)

My point isn't that noone did anything wrong or that nothing hsould and could have been handled better. I also say that they did lie about the scandal that was Iraq.

What is your source that the intel system and army were "told to stand down".

Peace
Dan

OutOfBreath

catefrances wrote:

one would imagine it would be dependent upon where the intelligence came from as to whether it was acted upon or not. we have reason to believe an unknown number of terrorists are planning to hijack planes and fly them into buildings thatd be enough to get me tightening security and looking a little closer at people. there really was no duty of care.

You hear similar stories daily, you might not take them that seriously after a while. Not smart, but it happens.

Peace
Dan

catefrances

OutOfBreath wrote:

catefrances wrote:

one would imagine it would be dependent upon where the intelligence came from as to whether it was acted upon or not. we have reason to believe an unknown number of terrorists are planning to hijack planes and fly them into buildings thatd be enough to get me tightening security and looking a little closer at people. there really was no duty of care.

You hear similar stories daily, you might not take them that seriously after a while. Not smart, but it happens.

Peace
Dan

actually no i dont. i hear about some singular fool who got caught either on a plane or at the airport.


but you know if i had heard intelligence about a possible terrorist attack i d be thinking back a few years to when terrorists tried to blow up the tallest building in NYC and maybe just be that little bit more alert. i know itd be quite the operation to have all airports on guard, but id def be thinking about what would be involved in such an attack, worst case scenario. at the least id have put sky marshalls or some sort of security personnel on planes just in case you know. and yes its so easy to sit back with the benefit of hindsight at and speak of what we would or wouldnt have done. i just think the US govt dropped te ball big time on this and im not all that confident they wouldnt drop the ball again. all that can be done now is to learn from the mistakes made. it might also help to rejigger that foreign policy too.

OutOfBreath

Indeed. Balls were dropped, and foreign policy also has something to say.

The point is you can't be on alert all the time. If you are, you aren't alert.
They have lots of people that think worst case all the time, but you can't listen to worst case people all of the time. Nothing would ever get done that way. My point is still that I find it far more likely with negligence (even criminal negligence if you will), than any plot allowing it to happen deliberately.

Peace
Dan

Byrnzie

OutOfBreath wrote:

And I'm certain they get memos, warnings, reports etc from their thousands of employees and field agents on a daily basis. (Not everyone reporting every day, but something being delivered on something every day). This is straight from what I've read of press coverage of a report (sic) on how the US intel works, that found that it was far too many reports from too many people from too many different places for anyone to keep up.

And what report is that? Care to share it with us?

Whenever a report of a planned terrorist attack is discovered it's immediately plastered all over the media and is the front story for the next 24 hours - like the alleged planned attack against the Pope's visit to London a couple of weeks ago, which subsequently turned out to be just a bunch of cleaners who who were overheard talking about his visit and not terrorists at all. Yet you're trying to make us believe the government gets handed hundreds of such reports daily? Sorry, but there is absolutely no truth in that at all.

OutOfBreath wrote:

What is your source that the intel system and army were "told to stand down".

I didn't say anyone was told to stand down.

N.O.R.A.D was engaged in training exercises on 9/11 and was unable to perfom it's duties. This was the first time it had ever been rendered ineffective. It was also the first time that Dick Cheney had been placed in command of N.O.R.A.D and it was the first time it failed, despite hundreds of false alarms that same year prior to 9/11 when N.O.R.A.D worked and planes were dispatched without any delay.

Byrnzie

OutOfBreath wrote:

You hear similar stories daily

No you don't.

Byrnzie

OutOfBreath wrote:

I've been around enough leaders at various levels in the organization that I have an idea about how they tick and what they react on. (Also how they may easily tune out if their attention is repeatedly drawn towards something they dont see the immeniate danger in.)

But the government wasn't repeatedly drawn to any threats of terrorism. They didn't ignore the report entitled 'Bin Laden determined to strike in US' because they had been receiving such reports every day. This is just something you've made up.

OutOfBreath

Byrnzie wrote:

OutOfBreath wrote:

You hear similar stories daily

No you don't.

That's quite a snipping of what i said there.

In any case, I wasn't suggesting that YOU or I hear this everyday. I am suggesting the people in charge hear this every day (or regularly enough). And when the same worry warts come up with the same things for months and months on end without anything actually happening, you may ignore what you shouldn't.

So that "nothing" got done (or rather not enough) is not any good indication of a plot. It does indicate that the information flow should be differently organized, which they promptly adressed with a new department.

So this is a poor indicator of a plot in itself. It can be easily and sufficiently explained by bureacratic quirks, too much information perhaps, and (if you will) a few people not being alert at the time. Stuff that now looks obvious, look obvious because we know what ended up happening. We dont know all the info they get about stuff that doesnt happen. So applying a bit of slack in the 20/20 hindsight, doesnt paint it as obvious that someone "let" it happen.

Peace
Dan

OutOfBreath

Byrnzie wrote:

OutOfBreath wrote:

I've been around enough leaders at various levels in the organization that I have an idea about how they tick and what they react on. (Also how they may easily tune out if their attention is repeatedly drawn towards something they dont see the immeniate danger in.)

But the government wasn't repeatedly drawn to any threats of terrorism. They didn't ignore the report entitled 'Bin Laden determined to strike in US' because they had been receiving such reports every day. This is just something you've made up.

My point isn't that there aren't reports. The question is how many other reports circulate about other things, and what is ultimately done about what is reported.

Too many people think of government as a single person or something. When in fact everything the government does involves a host of people for the simplest tasks. Stretching a bit to do what the people in the organization think is right or necessary can be done. Blackops targeted at people "we" generally dont like happens alot. However, for a state organization to actively break every barrier it's members will have spectacularly like this, requires way more control over the organization than they ultimately have. The state cannot infact do anything "on it's own". It is staffed to the rafters with "regular people".

So if the warning was so undeniably clear and imminent, the leaders could not possibly have put a lid on it which wouldn't explode in their faces at some point in the rather near future. It seems the warning report wasn't that clear and imminent. You can't start to close down the entire US airport system because someone think that Bin Laden might do something in the future. You'd need pretty rock solid evidence for that. It appears it wasn't viewed as that. Now, also in big complex organizations, you have people who then goes out and says "told you so!", because to them it looked clear. But that's rather akin to all the "I told you the world economy was gonna collapse" people that turned out right after the financial crisis was a fact.

Peace
Dan

Byrnzie

OutOfBreath wrote:

I wasn't suggesting that YOU or I hear this everyday. I am suggesting the people in charge hear this every day (or regularly enough).

I know that's what you were saying, and I'm saying that they don't. You're suggesting that the leadership receives reports daily warning of an imminent threat of attack from terrorists.

They don't.