LIHOP/MIHOP for Dummies (Self Included)

[BurtWorm]

I know what the initials stand for: Let/Made It <9/11> Happen on Purpose.

What I think I am only just beginning to understand is that I probably subscribe to a form of LIHOP, and my conviction in it seems to be getting firmer. I tend to be skeptical of conspiracy theories, so this realization was a long time coming.

Here's what I find to be a plausible description of the Bushist prelude to 9/11: In 1997 or so, the PNACers (including many now in the Bush regime) cooked up a roadmap for American Empire building, focusing on the Middle East, and in particular, Iraq. The ostensible idea was to tame the wild Arabs and Muslims to make the world safe for zionism and oil futures (not necessarily in that order). For all sorts of overdetermined reasons, they settled on Saddam as the first domino to be toppled.

In 2001, the Bushists, having stolen the presidency, were in a position to follow the PNAC map. Part of the plan--and the reason why "purpose" may be le mot juste for it--was to exploit a "Pearl Harbor type event" that PNACers had been saying for years would be necessary to wake Americans up to the urgency of the PNAC agenda.

Now, I don't know if the Bushists really had any inkling that something as big as the destruction of the Twin Towers was going to happen. I can really understand why people would believe that, however. And I believe someone should be asking these questions and pushing for answers to them (as the 9/11 commission for some reason can't bring itself to), because if they aren't answered, the doubts will grow, and confidence in the government will just keep deteriorating. Conspiracy theorizing is not healthy for democracies--especially when the theory is plausible--and the only cure for conspiracy theorizing is utter transparency.

But the point is, if they even had it as unspoken policy that they were going to use any event--like a Khobar Towers or Cole disaster--to justify implementing their Iraq plan, then they did indeed LIHOP, and Bush did indeed hit some kind of jackpot he had been hoping for on 9/11. I think there's some evidence that they were not expecting quite as massive a jackpot. The wind went out of their sails for a few days. But they certainly did take to exploiting the shit out of 9/11 when they got their wind back.

I put this out here on this board because I think people like me who tend to be skeptical of conspiracy theories need to have this stuff gone over and over and over rather than having it turn into a a cryptic buzzword that only the initiated get. And also because I want to get it straight: Am I a LIHOPper after all?

[LunaC]

1. Here's how I see it (Reader's Digest Timeline)

Only when it's all put in chronological order does the full and real picture emerge.

=================================================
George W. Bush constantly reminds the nation about the threat of terrorism that began with 911 but he leaves out a few important details that you should know.........

In June 1997, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) was born. Populated by influential Movers of industry and Shakers of public opinion, the PNAC is an organization united in the vision for a global U.S. empire - "Pax Americana" - through coercion and military domination. Their philosophy can be simply summarized:

• There are countries to plunder and fortunes to be made. You have it, we want it. Do as we say or suffer the consequences.


• The U.S. already has a powerful military but we plan to nurture and grow it until it's massive and we are indominable. Resistance is futile. We are.......

Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Steve Forbes, William J. Bennett, Frank Gaffney, and I. Lewis Libby, signator's - among others - of the PNAC's "Statement of Principles".

"We need to...challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values."

"We need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future."

"It is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge."

http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm


JANUARY 1998 - The PNAC knew that he who owns the oil also owns the world so they sent a letter to President Clinton urging him to attack Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power since he put "a significant portion of the world's supply of oil at hazard". Clinton didn't grant them their wish and the PNAC was disheartened that they couldn't manipulate the military while outside of the White House power structure.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm


MARCH - APRIL 1999 - In an effort to capture and control the castle and all its warriors and weapons, the PNAC offered up members Steve Forbes, Dan Quayle and Gary Bauer to run as Republican candidates in the upcoming Presidential election.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/election/profile.htm


JUNE 1999 - Ever persistent and determined to maximize their potential for success in the Presidential campaign, the PNAC exercised their power of nepotism and member-Jeb Bush's brother George stepped up to the plate to join the race.


SPRING 2000 - The PNAC may have felt confident with their candidate's chances for winning the White House but they were absolutely smug over what they saw as a possible Fallback Plan...electronic voting machines with severe security flaws that included hidden backdoors, erasable audit trails and multiple vote totals with the potential to propel vote tampering to new heights through the magic of remote access.

How To Rig An Election In The United States
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00065.htm

Can the votes be changed?
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/access-diebold.htm

Bettter yet, Chuck Hagel - a fellow Republican loyalist - owned the ES&S voting machine company that counted 60% of all U.S. votes. He had already won one election and was part of the U.S. Senate power team in Washington.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0301/S00166.htm

Assured that the White House would soon be theirs, the PNAC debuted their 76-page blueprint to achieve world domination. "Rebuilding America's Defenses" became the PNAC's manifesto, detailing the ideal level of military power to specifically eliminate the hostile regimes of Iraq, Iran, Syria and North Korea and it endorsed pre-emptive strikes against them, tradition be damned. Iraq was given star billing as Control Central for their Mideast base of operations.

At present the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible."

"American landpower is the essential link in the chain that translates U.S. military supremacy into American geopolitical preeminence.

"We cannot allow North Korea, Iran, Iraq or similar states to undermine American leadership."

"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."

What is particularly foreboding and chilling in view of events to later unfold, is this statement bemoaning the lengthy process of rebuilding the existing U.S. military according to the heightened standards and specifications the PNAC aspired to.

...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."

http://cryptome.org/rad.htm


NOVEMBER 2000 - Saddam may have sensed an ill wind in the air when he made the first strike, turned his back on the U.S. Dollar and accepted only Euros as payment for his oil. This had the potential of seriously destabilizing the U.S. economy and the PNAC considered this an hostile act of aggression towards their personal and business interests. The heat was on for them to make their first move.

http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2000/11/01112000160846.asp


DECEMBER 2000 - In a highly contentious Presidential vote battle on the home turf of PNAC-Jeb Bush, the Supreme Court decided that George Bush was the new President.

How George W. Bush Won the 2004 Presidential Election
http://www.infernalpress.com/Columns/election.html

Bush now had the green light to seamlessly merge members of the PNAC into his Administration with no one the wiser. PNAC members elevated to the Bush hierarchy include, among others:

• Donald Rumsfeld - Secretary of Defense


• Paul Wolfowitz - Deputy Secretary of Defense


• Elliott Abrams - Member of the National Security Council


• John Bolton - Undersecretary for Arms Control and InternationalSecurity


• Richard Perle - Chairman of the advisory Defense Policy Board


• Richard Armitage - Deputy Secretary of State


• John Bolton - Undersecretary of State for Disarmament


• Zalmay Khalilzad - White House liaison to the Iraqi opposition

An Honorable Mention was awarded to Condoleezza Rice - National Security Advisor - who is a former oil-company consultant having been on the board of directors of Chevron as its main expert on Kazakhstan.

The PNAC agenda had now passed "Go". The most powerful military machine in the world stood at their ready and Saddam was in the crosshair.

"It is important to shape circumstances...... ." - PNAC Statement of Principles

In May 2001 the U.S. State Department met with Iran, German and Italian officials to discuss Afghanistan. It was decided that the ruling Taliban would be toppled and a "broad-based government" would control the country so a gas pipeline could be built there.

http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/7969.pdf.
http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/features/fex20867.htm


Even as plans were being made to remove the Taliban rulers from power, Colin Powell announced a $43 million "gift" to Afghanistan.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-091701scheer.column
http://www.cato.org/dailys/08-02-02.html


In July 2001, the private plot formulated in May for toppling the Taliban was divulged during the G8 summit in Genoa, Italy. Immediately after the conference, American, Russian, German and Pakistani officials secretly met in Berlin to finalize the strategy for military strikes against the Taliban, scheduled to begin before mid-October 2001

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1550366.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,556254,00.html


In September 2001 the "catastrophic and catalyzing" modern-day Pearl Harbor envisioned years earlier by the PNAC came to pass when the WTC and Pentagon were attacked. The finger of blame was pointed at Osama bin Laden, a former CIA operative with ties to Afghanistan. Suddenly, the U.S. "gift" of $43 million to the Taliban in May was cast in a new light. Coincidentally, Pakistan had participated in the plan to attack Afghanistan and the chief of Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence agency was later linked to a 911 hijacker after wiring him $100,00 just days before the WTC fell.

http://cryptome.org/rad.htm
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=1454238160

The PNAC had scored a home run with the bases loaded with the 911 event: shock, horror and fear gripped the nation, the war on "terrorism" had been established in no uncertain terms, attacking Afghanistan with public approval was a foregone conclusion and the stage was set for building a public case against Saddam.

Not one to let a good attack go to waste, Defense Secretary and PNAC-member Donald H. Rumsfeld sprung into action.

• He told his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq, even though Saddam wasn't linked to the attacks.


• PNAC-James Woolsey, former CIA director, was dispatched to London to look for and 'firm up' evidence of Iraqi involvement in the 911 attacks.


• PNAC-member and Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was authorized to create the Office of Special Plans.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml

"It is important to shape circumstances..........."- PNAC Statement of Principles

The Office of Special Plans (OSP) was a secret group of analysts and policy advisors with no status in the intelligence community who reported directly to the White House and National Security office with cherry-picked intelligence from questionable sources to support the case for invading Iraq. The OSP circumvented formal, well-established oversight procedures, ignored intelligence that didn't further their agenda, expanded the intelligence on weapons beyond what was justified and over-emphasized the national security risk. They became more influential than the C.I.A. or the Defense Intelligence Agency who didn't even know the ultra-secret OSP existed for at least a year.

Because they were based in the Pentagon, it was assumed that the OSP was an intelligence-gathering agency that was second-guessing the C.I.A. but in actuality it was the White House Military Marketing Machine charged with the task of writing the PNAC's "Get Saddam" sales pitch for the public. Shading and bending reality to suit their own purpose, it wasn't important for the OSP's stories about Saddam to be factual, only that the average American believed them to be - in true Hollywood fashion.

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/030512fa_fact

While the nation was stripped to the emotional bone and painfully vulnerable, the White House capitalized on the opportunity to reshape public perceptions and responses to conform with the PNAC's new American agenda. Rather than buoy the "can do" American spirit with optimism and hope for the future as Presidents before him had done in times of crisis, Bush spoke with an alarmist and pessimistic tone that served to perpetuate the high anxiety, excitability and fear in the populace.

To hear him speak, the world was a dark, evil and dangerous place....terrorism was here to stay....it would be a long struggle....America was helpless without the military might of the Government to keep the nation safe. The intent was to create a psychologically broken, weary and docile populace that would be easier to lead into war.

Fear became the Administration's strategic tactic for reprogramming the public into accepting the PNAC's militaristic designs. Still shell-shocked and exhausted from the enormity of the WTC and Pentagon tragedies, the public's panic shifted into frenzied over-drive when anthrax-laced envelopes arrived in government and media offices, killing five people. A perpetrator was never identified but the investigation eventually centered around the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, one of the nation's main anthrax research centers.

Using classic "operant learning" techniques from the realm of consumer psychology, the public was purposely kept on High Alert and continually "shaped" with ominous sound bites on the nightly news and "Level Orange Terror Alerts" at regularly scheduled but discrete intervals.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/130534_focusecond13.html
http://www.consumerpsychologist.com/#Perception

In October 2001, with flags waving, crowds cheering, and anthems playing, the "War On Terror" and the hunt for Osama began when Afghanistan was attacked right on schedule of July's secret meeting

Immediately afterwards the PNAC and White House collaboration of "GET SADDAM" played relentlessly on televisions and in newspapers across the nation and the World as the "War on Terror" waged on and the litany of lies began.


The only terrorists we have to fear are those that occupy the White House.

VOTE YOUR CONSCIENCE IN 2004

[mark11727]

2. You mean that * may have ignored warnings...

...prior to 9/11 deliberately to allow a "small" terrorist attack of maybe a few dozen casualties (collateral damage?) in order to ramp up some action against Iraq?


And when the for-real 9/11 happened, all hell broke loose, they made a half-assed stab at OBL for show, then went back to the original Iraqi plan?

It sounds crazy, but things sure look that way...

[BurtWorm]

4. It's possible.

It's possible that the groupthinkers subconsciously or consciously let something happen to give them an excuse to pursue the Iraq strategy. Yes, that's what I'm thinking. I don't know if we'll ever know how conscious or unconscious they were, but the evidence strongly suggests that a "Pearl Harbor style event" was in the plans for a long time.

[worldgonekrazy]

9. I think they let it happen and I think it will come out

Doesn't it seem like that is where the commission is going? They have pretty much proven that the Bush Admin. SHOULD have known there was a threat. And they have also established that the potential threat was NOT given to key agencies, such as the FAA. The question is: why? Its either incompetency on a grand scale OR it was by design. I tend to believe the latter, because I have come to see just how depraved this administration and the neocons in general are.

[sybylla]

3. I don't tend to buy into conspiracies, I'm mostly amused by them

But there is one glaring detail that has convinced me that it was more than incompetence that "let" the events of September 11th take place. That is the fact that no military air craft sought out the wayward airplanes the moment they left their designated flight pattern.

Most people are familiar with the Payne Stewart situation where jets were scrambled to investigate and, if necessary, take action. I have a friend who is a pilot. English isn't his first language and on a flight to LA, he misunderstood the commands from the control tower. Within moments, he had two jets on each side of his cessna to escort him back into his flight path. This is SOP.

SOP was not followed on 9/11.
Click here for more info on why no air support was called until it was too late.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/911stand.html

[BurtWorm]

5. There are lots of peculiar details like that.

It doesn't look good when the Bushists try to cover them up or gloss over them--and Democrats allow them to.

[walmartsucks]

6. They intercepted one of the planes

The one in Pennsylvania was shot down. The scattering of the debris over such a wide area leaves next to no doubt. But the public was too wrapped up in "Let's Roll" for the media to let the truth get out.

[worldgonekrazy]

10. A few points

1. If they did intercept the plane and shot it down over Pennsylvania, then how come they were not also able to AT LEAST intercept the plane that ended up hitting the Pentagon? They should have had plenty of advance warning, so even if they were really off the ball they still should have intercepted the Pentagon plane.

2. We don't know that the plane was shot down. You are right about the debris pattern, but this only tells us that the plane exploded in the air. It could have been a bomb.

3. An order WAS given to intercept the planes. Donald Rumsfeld himself said this when he was in front of the commission (in response to a question by Commissioner Gorelick). But we know that it never actually happened (except, perhaps, with just one of the four planes). Why? It seems to me that the only believable option was that a standown order was issued after the intercept order.

[Corgigal]

7. You wouldn't even need a military aircraft

the FAA could have vectored a private or commercial airline over so they could have issued a pilot report. Of course, they couldn't shoot it down but they could have given an controller a bird eye view of what they do see. They could have looked into the windows of the jet, they could have tried to established contact. Thousand of things. It almost appears that they didn't want "another" witness to that day if you ask me.

When an aircraft goes down, in say water, the nearest plane usually is vectored to the site and then circles. I mean the entire system did not-ah. BS.

[Stephanie]

8. You're right on. They had their plans, all they needed was an impetus.

This is really the time to be talking about this.

It's well established after the testimony of Clarke and Rice that they ignored all warnings.

WHY?

Because they had a well-established blueprint for establishing American global hegemony that lacked only an inciting incident to kick-start it. They had a half-assed, outdated, cynical and despicable foreign policy that they were determined to implement despite all contraindicating facts. They came into office with an agenda, and they used the terrorist threat to advance it. These people should be in jail.

These people: bush, cheney, rumsfeld, wolfowitz, perle, feith.

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