patrick.net

A much simpler example for most of your objections exists: we were unprepared, lazy, complacent, and woefully unorganized.

possibly. altho FBI agents were warning about this for months ahead of time. the departing clinton adminstration had also warned the bush admin of the threat by OBL of some such event. there was a stink about that as well.

the systems are in place to intercept wayward jetliners, i have read that it happens 100 times a year. only this time, they were off doing exercises in another area. so not necessarily disorganised, complacent or lazy.

it also explains why the administration would fail to go after the wrongdoers, via a process of diplomatic investigation, and instead chose to directly invade an oil rich country or two, one of which had no ties to OBL or 'al Qaida', the other of which had thwarted the PNAC's pipeline ambitions. just opportunism?

We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says '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.'.... it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested. It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that 'al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House'... Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners. When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002). All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate. Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: 'The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence.'..... the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into 'tomorrow's dominant force' is likely to be a long one in the absence of 'some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor'. The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the 'go' button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement. The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity."

This war on terrorism is bogus
The Guardian, 6 September 2003

i guess lee harvey oswald got off 5 good shots from a 6th floor window, including mixing in a dum-dum bullet favoured by professional assassins to make sure of the job, and jack ruby was just pissed off with him...

maybe i just obsess about conspiracy theories to avoid sex with my g/f...

If they were to have “engineered” a new Pearl Harbor, they could have picked something a lot more immediately relevant and incontestable by Americans and our reluctant allies. I mean, why not just frame Iraq directly, and have them attack Europe too?

actually, on this, they did frame iraq - with the alleged WMD. i don't really need to say any more about that one, given all the contrary intelligence supplied... if you think conspiracy theories are implausible, what about beating up intelligence around WMD? (as per Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski and the OSP - LA Weekly - Soldier for the Truth)

regarding attacking europe -- germany and france (and russia) were getting good oil contracts and exploration contracts from iraq under oil-for-food, so things were not too bad. however, you have to ask why a dutch newspaper would suddenly publish insulting cartoons depicting mohammed inside europe - was it to provoke incidents and thus sway public opinion? interestingly, no such incidents occurred inside europe.

but how else would you frame iraq (and afghanistan), including getting them to attack europe? maybe this was good enough...

gore vidal believes 9/11 was an AQ response to the known timeline of invading afghanistan in Oct 2001 - so the conspiracy theories don't always agree... this would controvert the idea that it was an inside job that was either 'let it happen' or 'make it happen'...

enough conspiracies for a while...

alright, one last post:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/reynolds/reynolds12.html

(no relation)

Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D., is professor emeritus at Texas A&M University and former director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis headquartered in Dallas, TX. He served as chief economist for the US Department of Labor during 2001–2, George W. Bush's first term.

Just saw on CNBC a very brief interview with N.A.R. president Tom Stevens, who says "there is no national housing bubble, just pockets of slowing."

Meanwhile, his house has been on the market for over a year, and he just lowered his asking price. The explanation he gave for the difficulty in selling his home - "I've been out of town a lot, and haven't been home."

WTF, he's been too busy to sell his home? Does he really believe his own bullshit? Even the commentator on CNBC laughed and said it's hard to argue against the recent stats regarding housing.

DS,

I like a lot of what you write and enjoy our occasional end of thread debates. The 9/11 conspiracy theory stuff is something you'll regret having given attention to someday when you come to your senses.

Answering your most prescient question directly: Yes, conspiracies do exist. There are plenty of historical examples. Grand conspiracies, however, always prove to be nothing more than paranoid rantings of disturbed people. The references you cite could just as easily read as The Protocols of The Elders of Zion. These grand conspiracy theories aren't just some innocent curiosity. They can end up getting a lot of people hurt or killed.

The 9/11 conspiracy theory stuff is something you’ll regret having given attention to someday when you come to your senses.

As I have said, some people still believe that moon landing was a hoax. I guess if one has his mind set, he is not going to regret because he will never come to his senses.

I seriously think there is something to the 9/11 thing. There are a number of plausible explanations, including the 'official' one. An alternative take is that the neocon Bush administration not only goofed up big time in national defence, but then took advantage of a situation to carry out an agenda. That's the most innocent of all the explanations, and he's currently paying for it in the popularity ratings. The scenarios only go down from there. The evidence won't really shift from here though, the towers were hastily packed away for recycling in China in GPS-monitored trucks before serious metallurgical analyses could be done, rather than storing all the beams somewhere for a while for serious analysis of the reasons for structural failure. (I've done some engineering studies myself and my father is a steel metallurgist who often analyses structural steel failures.) The videos and photos that were taken are what they are. The independent videos of the Pentagon impact remain unreleased for some strange reason. Skyscrapers twist and buckle at worst in fires, they don't just collapse straight down at freefall speeds with little exploding sounds, shearing through massive steel and concrete cores. If you look at the size of the central columns of the WTC while under construction or in blueprint, well... And WTC7 and WTC6 take some explaining, in that WTC7 is officially held to have collapsed from a small fire! There is no implication of a demolition, which would imply malfeasance, altho Silverstein of Westfield America made a recorded remark to that effect. A Secret Service guy was found to have suffocated from inhalation in the building while no-one was in there, possibly stoking the fire -- but he was lauded as a 'hero' supposedly getting people out from an evacuated building...

Under the evidence that has been presented, and the 9/11 Commission report which itself can't 'explain' the collapse of WTC7 and other events, and is full of vague remarks on a lot of engineering impossibilities (just follow the link above for one treatment of some of the issues), I think it will always be indeterminate in my mind about what has happened. The implications for humanity and civilisation are horrendous and unthinkable if the conspiracy is true.

Of course, some of the conspiracy theorists are wacko, and read exaggerated intent and alternative meanings into everything that is said and done... and I don't normally subscribe to these things, someone else put me onto it, and I was quite incredulous at first, but there is definitely some substance to it. I certainly don't believe in illuminati and grand masonic networks, I only see the desire for power and money and control behind most things...

For instance, Jack White's 'expose' of the moon landing is pretty dodgy, he is not a photographic expert at all, and all of his takes can be explained by ordinary geometric photographic illusions, tricks of distance, camera positioning or flares in camera lenses, etc. e.g. his 'alignments' of distant mountain ranges are not aligned at all, they are taken several hundred metres apart, etc.

What's your take on the JFK assassination? :P

oh, and there is not and never has been any mafia activity in america either, j. edgar hoover told me so, and he should know... no mafia activity! it's official...

DS

Crime and political opportunism have and will continue to spawn bona fide "conspiracies". No one contends that. A well planned bank robbery is a conspiracy, by definition. A well planned military action is as well, depending upon whether you're the bomber or the bombee. But all that junk about the WTC is so complex, involving so many people and so much clandestine, cross-boarder cooperation, that it's just practically implausible.

Planning stuff is hard.

Planning stuff and keeping it secret is very hard.

Planning stuff and keeping it secret amongst lots of people is extremely hard.

Planning stuff and keeping it secret amongst lots of people despite obvious moral, ethical and often spiritual personal conflicts for many involved is impossible.

But the X Files was a cool series.

It's difficult to maintain the "911 conspiracy" when theorists require the usage of CIA "voice morphing" to explain the cell phone calls. With that said my pilot friend says that only an advanced test pilot could have flown into the WTC at that speed and embankment. I listen to UK radio and the acceptance of a conspiracy is near universal.

Might as well add in a very plausible explanation I've heard regarding the classification of Pentagon-related photos & video. What I've heard from some former defence intelligence (retired) guys is that it's very likely that videos and some photos of the Pentagon attack capture the facility's automatic air defence measures in action. And, that those measures proved faulty, inadequate, or simply ineffective. This evidence would be immediately classified as a threat to national security just as fast as someone discovering maps of secret steam tunnels into NORAD. The DoD doesn't really want functional videos of "how to destroy the pentagon" posted on every anti american website, after all.

these are all post hoc explanations (about file footage, etc). and the explanations certainly haven't come from the defence establishment themselves. there are plenty of photos of the pentagon out there -- that explanation sounds particularly unlikely to me -- they could even edit out or blur superficial details they wanted to hide... i really can't see that footage realistically becoming a primer to so-called 'terrorists' at any time in the future -- besides which , you can see the pentagon up close just driving past to DC... plus all the photos taken of the actual fire and damage. what protections are there, anyhow? thickened and reinforced walls, which is the work that was being done at the time -- and the late-scrambling fighter planes are meant to be the protection...

i take your point that it's hard to plan something like 9/11 -- it seems implausible -- and yet... there are Black Ops teams in the CIA, and we don't know what they get up to. Clearly they are expert in using explosives, also. plus a willing Mossad with divided loyalties getting involved to precipitate a middle-eastern crisis. There seem to be a lot of threats of people losing their jobs and gags being applied too... a metallurgist working for the labs that did some of the steel analyses lost his job for writing a letter saying he didn't see how it was possible... the firefighters were gagged...

it's reached the point where Zoo! magazine just published 3 or 4 pages reiterating all the 9/11 conspiracy points in their last issue, by a coincidence...

a friend of mine who lived in the states for a while said that most of the people they met there thought the X-files was a documentary... ;)