Considering Cockburn

[mhatrw]

After thinking and rethinking Cockburn's newest 9/11 screed, I've come to the conclusion that a subset of the US left requires 9/11 to have been the result of a successful foreign operation against US interests -- much like the right does, albeit for completely different reasons. Of course, the right needs a substantial, diabolical enemy to indulge its penchant for authoritarian excesses. On the other hand, the Cockburnian left seems to suffer from a strange case of hero worship of a powerful al Qaeda capable of striking hard within the US. To them, 9/11 is the righteous retribution that confirms both their warnings against US imperialism and their faith in the oppressed to rise up against their oppressors.

[Make7]

1. Oh..... that's a guy's name. ( n/t )

[John Q. Citizen]

2. That's an interesting analysis, mhatrw. It rings true. n/t

[Grateful for Hope]

4. I second that mhatrw. n/t

[dailykoff]

3. When the PNACers start quoting Counterpunch,

you know they're really desperate.

p.s. Herman Soifer, Cockburn's "retired structural engineer," neglects to mention the WTC core columns in his bogus analysis.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[dailykoff]

8. Link please.

And in case you feel an urge to edit your unwise post, this is what you wrote:

You've been quoting ultra-RW sources for months.
How desperate does that make you?

[Taxloss]

9. You know the sort, Alex Jones, Rense, WRH.

A search would probably be futile, thanks to the diligence of DU's mods, as this sort of site is of course banned from DU. The forensice evidence is in DU's equivalent of Fresh Kills, if you like. But if you consider the dearth of reputable sites that propagate MIHOP and your cute non-denial, I'm confident in my assertion.

Do you miss KOS?

[dailykoff]

10. That's not a link. You made a false claim. Now prove it

or apologize. Thanks.

[Taxloss]

11. Consider imitation to be the most sincere form of flattery.

A brief survey of your existing contributions indicates that you're extremely loath to post any sources at all for your assertions, reputable or otherwise, while criticising others for relying on known RW shills like Noam Chomsky and the MIT. Please take my apology in the heartfelt spirit it is intended. I can understand your horror in being associated with that sort of site, and I'm sure that you came to your opinions through your own independent field research. The fact that your findings should coincide with theirs is an unfortunate, er, coincidence.

[dailykoff]

12. Tortured apology accepted. (n/t)

[LARED]

5. Let me see if I get this correct

The far right thinks the government did it, Some from the far left think the government did it, Cockburnian lefties are infatuated with an oppressed minority that rose up to strike the oppressor and believe the acts of 9/11 were righteous but committed by outsiders. Your run of the mill Democrat or Republican believes al Qaeda did it for various reason. Probably many in the middle feel the government has not been completely forthright in accounting for 9/11 in varying degrees, but do not believe the government was complicit or facilitated 9/11.

So politically speaking the far left CT'er is just like the far right wing-nut CT'er. I've alway viewed the political spectrum like a circle rather than a line, as once you get to either extreme it is difficult to tell them apart.

[Taxloss]

6. Consider the contradictions inherent in mhatrw's opinion.

It's a commonly used charge among the MIHOP brigade that it is "racist" to blame Arab terrorists for 911. This charge must stem from the belief that no one in the Arab world could possibly wish harm to the United States. Yet now we have a MIHOPer saying that, on the contrary, it's not "racist" to believe Arab terrorists did it, it's actually the product of misplaced "Cockburnian" Occidentalism. Meanwhile, we have the dismissive attitude of MIHOPers towards the hijackers, dismissing them as druggies with boxcutters who were incapable of outwitting the USA's defences, which sounds similar to the US exceptionalism we hear coming from the far right, and is an argument of equal worth to "sure, a handful of drunk guys dressed as Indians running around Boston harbour could never have outwitted the British Empire!".

[mhatrw]

15. I'm not a MIHOPer.

And neither race nor American exceptionalism has anything to do with my post, nor anything to do with my 9/11 outlook.

Every police detective knows that inside jobs are always easier to pull off than outside jobs. What does this have to do with race? The only racial component to 9/11 is the historical fact that it's easier to persuade the masses of the heinous and diabolical nature of a desired enemy if that enemy can be successfully portrayed as inhumanly "other."

[Taxloss]

16. You're not a MIHOPer, but think it was an "inside job"?

Please explain how.

[mhatrw]

19. I think inside jobs are always easier to pull off than outside jobs.

How about you?

I'm openmindedly agnostic about what happened on 9/11, from criminal negligence to a purposeful "stand down" to an inside job with 19 Arab patsies.

[Taxloss]

21. Fair enough.

But patsies for whom? Wouldn't that count as a form of MIHOP?

I personally think that the hijackers were terrorists motivated by a desire to harm the USA. An "inside job" would require a single entity to be on the "inside" of - which would be what in this case? The US government, the WTC, the Pentagon, the airlines and al-Qaeda? That's at least three "inside jobs", not one, with the concomitant decline in likelihood.

[mhatrw]

13. The far left and far right are more apt to distrust the motives

of our Demopublican governors. Blacks are also apt to share this trait. Would you care to offer any insightful generalizations about the racial composition of those most apt to distrust their government? Do you think the KKK circles up with the NAACP because members of both organizations tend to distrust government more than white moderates?

[LARED]

42. What are you talking about?

I make a general statement about how I perceive the extremes of the political spectrum and you interject some baloney about the KKK and the NAACP meeting up politically because supposedly blacks distrust the government more than whites.

Dude, turn on your brain. First of all a majority of people in the world have a basic distrust of their governments so it is rather difficult to make your argument (I'd comment on your argument at this point if I could figure it out). Secondly the KKK is a extremist organization that attracts a very small piece of society, while the NAACP is an organization that is supported by millions of people.

The ideology of the KKK and the NAACP could not be further apart. While the ideology of the extreme left and extreme right tend to be difficult to distinguish. An example of that is the anti-semitic element found in both extremes.

[mhatrw]

47. Both the far left and the far distrust both our government and AIPAC

more than manufactured consensus of the "middle." So does the Rainbow Coalition and the KKK. What does this prove again? That all of these groups are difficult to distinguish from each other? That was your original smear, wasn't it?

[greyl]

48. If you think the NAACP and Rainbow Coalition are far left,

then I'm convinced you aren't grasping this issue in the least.

[spillthebeans]

14. There are different views on political spectra

a Left-Right Spectrum

Dictatorship--------------Democracy------------------Dictatorship

Communism--------------Fabian Socialism-------------Fascism






a more rational Spectrum

Totalitarian
Government-----------------------------------------//////Cons./////////----Anarchie---


Communism------------------------------------------Constitutional
Fascism--------------------------------------------Republic
Socialism------------------------------------------Limited Government
Pharaoism
Caesarism



The last one is the one most people, who started this "Patriot-Movement" thing would agree with and would like to see.

[LARED]

43. Thank for the graphics

I do appreciated that there are many ways to view the political spectra, I was making a very general observation

[John Q. Citizen]

17. Once again Lared you got it wrong

The OP said;

After thinking and rethinking Cockburn's newest 9/11 screed, I've come to the conclusion that a subset of the US left requires 9/11 to have been the result of a successful foreign operation against US interests -- much like the right does, albeit for completely different reasons. Of course, the right needs a substantial, diabolical enemy to indulge its penchant for authoritarian excesses. On the other hand, the Cockburnian left seems to suffer from a strange case of hero worship of a powerful al Qaeda capable of striking hard within the US. To them, 9/11 is the righteous retribution that confirms both their warnings against US imperialism and their faith in the oppressed to rise up against their oppressors.

You wrote "....the far right thinks the government did it...."

See that's not what the op said. You miss characterize the OP

Your analysis, LARED is blatantly and provably false. Zogby's polling showed that a few years back, 49% of respondents in New York City believes that some part of the US government was either directly responsible for or had specific fore knowledge of the attacks and consciously chose to do nothing to stop them.

For your analysis to be correct, one would have to believe that 49% of New Yorkers are either far left or far right. That's pretty silly, isn't it? Even for you?

You still haven't weighed in on the OP's original analysis, which is that some on the left "suffer from a strange case of hero worship of a powerful al Qaeda capable of striking hard within the US. To them, 9/11 is the righteous retribution that confirms both their warnings against US imperialism and their faith in the oppressed to rise up against their oppressors."

Perhaps you might want to discuss that instead of making up demographically ridicules assertions.

[LARED]

44. One day you will be in the moderators "Hall of Fame"

You correctly discerned that I did not address the OP comments, but drifted off topic and made some general comments.

The Zogby poll is meaningless (in context) as my comments were directed at the aggregate of political views across the country, not just NYC. NYC is very left leaning, and is quite (understandably so) emotional about the attacks. Also, the poll question itself was (in my view) poorly designed.

On the eve of a Republican National Convention invoking 9/11 symbols, sound bytes and imagery, half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall say that some of our leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act,"

My reason for being uncomfortable how the question was asked is the "and" qualifier in the question. The "and" is easily misunderstood, and I think many people do not actually believe that our leaders knew in advance AND consciously failed to act. I think many interpreted that question as "leaders knew in advance OR consciously failed to act." I don't believe there have be other polls taken to validate the result found in 2004. If there were please share.

As for commenting on the OP's original analysis, which is that some on the left "suffer from a strange case of hero worship of a powerful al Qaeda capable of striking hard within the US. To them, 9/11 is the righteous retribution that confirms both their warnings against US imperialism and their faith in the oppressed to rise up against their oppressors."

Sure

I am sure there are some folks that trust in that rationalization. It is unfortunatel that there is no clear indication as to how the OP believes this fits into the bigger 9/11 picture.

[William Seger]

18. Speak for yourself

How about addressing something you should be more familiar with: Why do 9/11 conspiracists "need" to pretend that 19 radical Islamist "martyrs" couldn't possibly hijack 4 planes and manage to get 3 of them pointed at buildings? Why do you pretend that it would take a very "powerful" group of radicals -- whether we call then al Qaeda or something else -- to be "capable of striking hard within the US" with a simple plot like that? Why do you pretend that the sluggish response can't possibly be explained by a combination on negligence and incompetence, when there is evidence of that in virtually everything else the government does? Why do you "need" to accuse people of "hero worship" for simply noting that radical Islamists really are part of our real world, when we can see such people blowing themselves up nearly every day in the Middle East, with only the hope of taking maybe a half-dozen infidels with them?

What I see in all that nonsense (and also in the way conspiracists present their "evidence") is an implicit recognition that the scenario they're promoting as a substitute for the "official story" is so preposterously implausible that their only hope of selling it is to insist that the "official story" is totally impossible. And then when I look to see how they justify claiming that impossibility, if I reject the the demonstrable bullshit there seems to be nothing left but simple denial.

Cockburn spoke pretty well for himself, but I'm just trying to give you a little insight into why I consider 9/11 conspiracists to be irrational.

[mhatrw]

20. What's easier to believe?

1) 19 Arabs pulled off 9/11 with every insider doing his or her best to stop them, or

2) 19 Arabs pulled off 9/11 with the help of a few powerful well-placed insiders?

Why?

[William Seger]

23. 3) 19 Arabs pulled off 9/11

... because, for whatever reason, we were manifestly unprepared for that kind of attack. Now, why that was so is a damn good question, considering the warnings. If you must have your conspiracy theories, there's no need for imaginary technologies like holographic planes and Death Star beam weapons, and there's really no need to suppose they had "help" with the plot to fly planes into buildings, either (unless you have some evidence, of course); all they would need is a lack of attention to known vulnerabilities for reasons other than negligence and incompetence.

[spillthebeans]

25. How is it possible that the Pentagon trained for this type of incident on that day? nt

[William Seger]

26. Your point?

There apparently was an exercise at the Pentagon 11 months earlier (not "that day") in which emergency personnel practiced how they would deal with the fires and casualties of such an attack. As I said, "why that was so {that we were unprepared} is a damn good question, considering the warnings," so I can't quite figure out what you're getting at.

[spillthebeans]

27. there were a lot of drills on 911 2001

Associated Press
August 22, 2002

WASHINGTON -- In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft crashed into one of its buildings. But the cause wasn't terrorism -- it was to be a simulated accident.

Officials at the Chantilly, Va.-based National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled an exercise that morning in which a small corporate jet crashed into one of the four towers at the agency's headquarters building after experiencing a mechanical failure.

The agency is about four miles from the runways of Washington Dulles International Airport.

Agency chiefs came up with the scenario to test employees' ability to respond to a disaster, said spokesman Art Haubold. To simulate the damage from the plane, some stairwells and exits were to be closed off, forcing employees to find other ways to evacuate the building.

"It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into our facility," Haubold said. "As soon as the real world events began, we canceled the exercise."

Terrorism was to play no role in the exercise, which had been planned for several months, he said.

Adding to the coincidence, American Airlines Flight 77 -- the Boeing 767 that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon -- took off from Dulles at 8:10 a.m. on Sept. 11, 50 minutes before the exercise was to begin. It struck the Pentagon around 9:40 a.m., killing 64 aboard the plane and 125 on the ground.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/cia-simulation.htm




One for example

[William Seger]

28. Very interesting. But do you or do you not have a point to make?

[spillthebeans]

29. You were asking

"because, for whatever reason, we were manifestly unprepared for that kind of attack"


And I'm telling you that the whatever reason is the huge amount of drills on that day, simulating hijackings sending intercept planes to Alaska,Iraq and elsewhere.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x126074

[quicknthedead]

30. His point is...

His point is the coincidence of drills happening at the same time as the actual terrorist attack is unusual.

The same thing happened in London on 7/7/05.

Now that is VERY unusual (what with these two governments aligned together in the never-ending "War on Terror").

The coincidences of both governments running drills that just happen to coincide with the actual attack goes beyond the pale, especially when considering the fact the drill makes the proper response to the attack that much harder to do.

Of course, you knew that all along, didn't you?
(BTW, playing dumb to the obvious erodes one's position.)

[William Seger]

31. I've been down that dead end before, if that's what you mean

"...especially when considering the fact the drill makes the proper response to the attack that much harder to do."

In the first place, show me that the drills actually had your speculated effect. According to the military, when they learned that there were real hijackings going on, they took some fairly sensible action: they canceled the exercises. I keep hearing about how "false blips" on the military radar screens "confused" their response, but it seems they had a pretty effective way of dealing with that: they turned the simulator off. How long do you think it took for them to figure that out? Did the conspiracy plotters just assume that they were too stupid to do that?

But the biggest problem with this whole "military drills" thing is that, despite the fact that the FAA and the military have both been so busy covering their own asses that it's hard to get an accurate picture now, it's fairly clear that the military did not get information that was timely and accurate enough to prevent the WTC collisions, at least, and the blame for that has to fall on the ATCs and the FAA, not the military drills. Why the military wasn't unable to intercept AA 77 before it hit the Pentagon is a different matter -- and a good question -- but if the Pentagon hadn't been hit on 9/11, it wouldn't have made any significant difference, with WTC already attacked.

Anyway, you appear to be determined to drag the original point of my posting off on a tangent. What's so impossible about believing that 19 Arabs hijacked 4 planes and managed to point 3 of them at buildings?

[quicknthedead]

36. Controlled demolitions, for one thing. n/t

[William Seger]

37. Thoroughly debunked, for one thing

... and completely unnecessary in the first place -- unnecessarily complicated and risky for any supposed "inside job" hypothesis and not necessary to cause the towers to collapse. (And no, please, that's not an invitation to waste time telling me that some conspiracists don't consider it to be debunked; I already know that. However, I can assure you that after examining the "evidence," I certainly consider it debunked, so until you've got something that resembles actual evidence, I'm not interested in wasting any more time on that one. I hear rumors that, after the beating they took over the first two versions, even Loose Change Final Cut may back off on "controlled demolition" and settle for some LIHOP/MIHOP-lite innuendo, while Scholars for 9/11 Truth have splintered into factions debunking each other over the thermite and the Death Star scenarios.)

[quicknthedead]

39. Debunked because you say so?...Hardly! Here's your evidence.

Evidence of contrlled demolition on 9/11:

1) WTC7

2) The sound analysis from the video "9/11 Eyewitness
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6498070204870579516&q=9%2F11+Eyewitness>

3) “Seismic Proof – 9/11 Was An Inside Job (Updated Version II)”
Link: http://www.studyof911.com/articles/mirrored/craigfurlong/
By Craig T. Furlong & Gordon Ross, Scholars for 9/11 Truth: http://www.st911.org

The US Government, incriminated by its own facts, the perfect evidence—how ironic.
Summary:
News Tip: A real 9/11 smoking gun…that no one can debunk (these are facts, not theory).
Airplane “Impact” Times: Incriminating Evidence of 9/11 Coverup & Complicity

The official times for plane "impact" as declared by the US Government, from both the 9/11 Commission and from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), are different and yet both are true and accurate times. What can this factual contradiction mean? Looking exclusively at WTC1, there is found an indisputable causal link:

One World Trade, September 11, 2001
American Airlines Flight 11 “impact” time:
8:46:30 UTC, per LDEO seismic data (National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2005)
8:46:40 UTC, per FAA last primary radar contact (9/11 Commission Final Report, 2004)

Q- What caused the 8:46:30 seismic event that occurred 10 seconds before the actual air crash?
A- The only possibility is huge explosions, as corroborated by many witnesses at the time.
Q- Who caused these explosions before the plane hit?

Notes:
In 2004, the 9/11 Commission avoided addressing the earlier seismic time (which had been attributed in error by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, originally in 2001 as plane “impact”).
In 2005, NIST avoided addressing the 9/11 Commission’s later time for the aircraft’s actual impact.
Both the 9/11 Commission and NIST avoided addressing the many witnesses who testified of explosions in the sub-basements before the plane crashed.

Summary:
This precision data has yet to be refuted. It is from the two highest governmental entities charged with looking into what happened on 9/11. Both declared these times as accurate, and in doing so corroborate William Rodriguez and the many witnesses the morning of 9/11 who experienced explosions in the sub-basements of WTC1 before American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building. This is indicting evidence of governmental coverup, and thus implication of complicity.

Demand a new, truly independent, criminal investigation of 9/11, this time a real one.
Justice waits...{and there is no statute of time limitation on murder}

[mhatrw]

41. What does that mean?

What do you think caused all three towers to collapse, and what hard, physical evidence supports your conclusions?

[William Seger]

45. I'll take "Stupid Questions" for $100, Alex

[mhatrw]

46. What are uninformed posters?

You are correct:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=45315&mesg_id=45315

[Old and In the Way]

40. Another erie coincidence about 77

Charles Burlingame, the pilot, was involved in anti-terrorist planning at the Pentagon.

I was looking for info on Burlingame and came across this site. http://www.truthhub.com/forums/func,view/catid,5/id,11/

Now some of the items are silly (numerology) and many don't have links, but the statements seem like they could be easily refuted or confirmed. These I found interesting and hadn't heard before-

* August 25, 2001, Raytheon and the U.S. Air Force successfully auto lands a pilot-less FedEx Boeing 727 six times at Holloman AFB, New Mexico using a military GPS landing system that will enable ground control to take control of a hijacked airplane and force land it.

* Raytheon personnel were on 3 of the 4 planes. (I had thought only on 77)

* All of the five alleged Flight 77 hijackers lived in a motel right outside the gates of the NSA, the U.S.'s most powerful spy agency.

* At 6:47 AM, World Trade Center Building 7's fire alarm system was placed on "TEST" mode for an eight hour period for "maintenance or other testing" in which any alarms that are received from the system are not shown on the operator's display and are considered the result of the maintenance or testing and are ignored

* George's cousin, Jim Pierce, escaped death from the World Trade Center thanks to a "schedule change" the night before.

* Jackie Chan escaped death on September 11th. He was set to do a film shoot on the roof of the World Trade Center when he was excused due to a "late script".

[mhatrw]

32. You didn't answer the question.

Why not?

[William Seger]

34. I answered your question

... by refusing to accept your ridiculously short list of "allowed" answers. You don't like my answer? Not my problem.

[mhatrw]

35. My question was hypothetical and you refused to answer it. n/t

[William Seger]

38. I hear World of Warcraft is a fun game, too

[freedom fighter jh]

22. "Spoke pretty well for himself"

Cockburn's structural analysis ignored the core columns. The core columns held up the towers, so Cockburn's structural engineer's analysis of how the towers collapsed doesn't really make any sense without them. DailyKoff has pointed this out in an earlier response.

MIHOPers could look for reasons why you OCTers cling to your beliefs. Maybe you can't bear to leave the comfort of your assumptions. Maybe someone is paying you to come to this site and discredit us. Who knows. Whatever we think is fueling you does not prove us right and you wrong. And whatever you want to say about our unconscious motives does not prove you right. Just try to have more respect for us than to call our assertions pretense.

[William Seger]

24. Straw man

If you want to know what 200 or so experts came up with after investigating the collapse, read the NIST report, not Cockburn's article.

[Amused Musings]

33. This is a very good response