In the defense of tin-foil hats.

[yella_dawg]

I am a hard-core MIHOPer. Let's just get that out of the way right now.

Almost every thread that accuses the BFEE of 911 complicity, widespread vote fraud, the Wellstone crash, and many other "fringe" conspiracies that surround this administration attracts a few naysayers that cry out: "How can there have been such a monstrous conspiracy? Somebody would have come forth and spilled the beans!"

It just occurred to me, they're right. We're fuckin' surrounded by whistle blowers. Cybel Edmunds and fifty of her peers are howling their heads off. Richard Clark talked. The Nashua (New Hampshire) Telegraph ran a scathing serial expose. What do you think the Downing Street Minutes are?

The single best argument the anti-tin-foil crowd can muster is revealed as both true and meaningless. "If it were true, someone would talk." Well guess what? They ain't talkin', their screaming their heads off. The din is deafening.

Wake the fuck up, America!!!

[EVDebs]

1. The madcowprod.com fromthewilderness.com stories on Ptech

and the 'dog that didn't bark', the attack on the Pentagon without any anti-aircraft fire whatsoever...

70% of public knows JFK was murdered (with CIA's help). You can't keep those kinds of secrets and then name the CIA HQ 'The George H. W. Bush Intelligence Center'. It's an oxymoron.

[lenidog]

10. The reason there was not anti-aircraft fire at the Pentagon

was because there were no anti-aircraft guns too fire. That SAMs too. The last defensive SAM batteries there were ever installed in the US were Nike and Ajax missile systems and they were put in during the late 50s.

[yella_dawg]

12. I'll bet you're right.

But after six years in the Army and five years as a DOD contractor with top secret or better security clearance, I'm betting the headquarters of the most powerful military force that ever existed would not be left undefended.

I don't know. I never had access to that sort of information, even concerning ordinary military bases.

But the idea that it was no better defended than Amway World Headquarters is a harder sell than the idea that the defenses were on standown, if you just think about it a moment.


By the way. I worked on a system that used perfectly ordinary, everyday equipment in a novel configuration. My system had to be shut down thirty miles before the aircraft began it's landing approach because a fear that a weapons system error would take out the airbase. It was a valid concern.

The SAMS aren't needed anymore. Trust me.




on edit: typo

[Zynx]

16. There's simply no AA system at the Pentagon prior to 9/11

This generally makes sense, when you consider that there are all sorts of airbases within very easy flying distance of Washington DC.

Factor in that no non-US country in the world has aircraft that can really reach the Pentagon on a strike mission other than Russia - and if Russia did it, they would use nukes and it would be Game Over - and there simply is not much of a threat.

No conventional military on Earth is capable of attacking DC with an airstrike. Even Mexico and Canada can't reach it.

[yella_dawg]

17. I'm sure you're right.

I'm just speculating based on years of experience and an understanding of military issues.

Issues like: "An undefended target is the one most attractive to the enemy."


It's not like anyone but us has guided missile subs or anything.

[Zynx]

34. There's a difference between "undefended" and "unreachable"

Even guided missile subs have problems approaching the US coast undetected - we put a lot of effort into making this very difficult during the Cold War for obvious reason. The only nations that have ones to worry about anyway are NATO members and Russia, neither one of which we really worry about because their either friends or understand the implications of attacking Washington DC.

Some Canadian F-16's could come streaking down from Ontario (and promptly get ripped apart by the F-15's from the regional airbases), but other than that, there really isn't that much to worry about for planning defense of DC.

[achtung_circus]

102. Point of Privilege

Although we have CF-18s we have no F-16s. Still, point taken.

[philb]

148. Stories say F-16s were used to intercept some of the 9/11 flights

[lenidog]

27. That is all true but also remember

the Cold War is over so I doubt they have aircraft on ready alert like they did during the Cold War to make instant interceptions and even during the Cold War most of the interceptor units slated for continental defense were Air National Guard units.

[Frederik]

33. But then again

the plans to use planes as missiles were well known years in advance. The scenario had been drilled at the Pentagon (at least medical personnel had drilled it). But no one cared to take precautions to defend the Pentagon against what was obviously acknowledged to be a real possibility?

[Zynx]

35. I agree with you

I'm just saying that from a doctrine point of view, the local airbases are more than adaquate defense against a conventional attack - which would be spotted with a good deal of advance warning.

[yella_dawg]

40. "defense against a conventional attack

which would be spotted with a good deal of advance warning."

Do you have any idea how ridiculous that statement is, given the scenario of 911 you seem to be defending? Just how big, slow, and operating outside SOP does a plane have to be before it's perceived as a threat?

Jesus! A horde of Huns on shaggy ponies could have ridden across the Arctic ice pack and destroyed the Pentagon were it as poorly defended as it was on 911!

[TeeYiYi]

50. A horde of Huns on shaggy ponies . . . *lol* . . .

. . . carrying torches and signs that read, "We're Takin' Out the Pentagon".

TYY:rofl:

[Zynx]

66. Um, 9-11 started off well *inside* US airspace

A conventional airstrike would be picked up hundreds of miles outside US airspace, probably thousands of miles from the actual target unless it came from Eastern Canada - and would be immediately identified as hostile.

The jet that hit the Pentagon started off inside US airspace, was not initially hostile, and when it was hijacked was *much* closer to its target than any foreign airstrike could possibly get without being detected. This gives it a very advantageous starting position relative to a military strike.

It's really not that hard to see how this would be harder to stop than a flight of bombers.

[yella_dawg]

81. That is reasonable

if you are planning combat in the WWII European theater. However, I have recent experience in modern warfare techniques, and such a scenario is not the kind of threat the military expects to encounter.

Modern attacks would necessarily have to come in the form of sub-launched missiles, cruise missiles, and extreme high-altitude weapons platforms. Sneaky is the only thing that will work in a world inundated with radar and satellite surveillance.

I don't know if the Pentagon was defended in any way. I do know that if it was not, someone should have been held criminally liable for dereliction of duty. I do know the nature of perceived threats in modern combat theaters, and what the average person thinks of as defensive weapons (AA batteries like Iraq used in Gulf I) are quaint at best, and totally useless.

This is really a pointless discussion, since the wealth of evidence indicating government duplicity renders it meaningless.

[Zynx]

84. Well, there are no SAM batteries at the Pentagon, and guns are worthless

And the only laser systems we have are much larger than any SAM battery.

So I would say "undefended" makes the most sense by far.

[yella_dawg]

93. What in the world is that supposed to mean?

I mean really? The Pentagon can't have a laser defense site cuz it's too big?

The freakin' aiming head will fit in the glove box of your car. Bury the rest if you don't want it seen.

Fuck me. I give up.

[Zynx]

96. How do you use an aiming head inside the building? It cannot track

This would be worthless. You need X-axis and Y-axis movement. You cannot get that with something inside a building with just a little window. This would have pathetic coverage and be completely ineffective, similar to a cannon on a ship-of-the-line. It could hit what would be right in front of it and nothing more.

To actually hit anything, you would need a targeting dome/platform similar to a small telescope. Actual military lasers have just this sort of mounting. They can rotate and elevate. They have to.

Your proposed defense laser mounted *in* a building with no external evidence - there are no laser domes on the Pentagon, sorry - can do neither and is thus implausible for a defense mechanism.

[yella_dawg]

106. Whoa friend. Relax. Take a break.

I didn't say any of the things you're reacting to. Trust me, I know military laser mounts. I wrote the software that operated the damned things. There could be hundreds of them on and around the Pentagon and no one would know. They're little bitty. Twice the size of your clenched fist.

That's all I said. It's time to call this discussion off. Enjoy your Saturday night.

[moddemny]

131. "They're little bitty"

little bitty, really? The only publicly known functioning tactical laser is the size of a trailer at least. The little bitty ones you are talking about have the power to shoot down aircraft and cruise missles?

[yella_dawg]

134. Jesus Christ on Roller Skates.

Would you people please read what I write before you jump in my shit?

A laser weapon has several parts:

The source tube that generates the coherent light.

A power source to fire the laser tube.

An aiming head to direct the laser beam.

A control unit (computer).

None of these things have to be located close together. There is electrical resistance between the power source and the laser tube. We been dealing with electrical resistance for a while, we got that covered. The laser tube must be in line of sight with the aiming head. They could be fifty fucking feet apart. They could be two fucking miles apart. It doesn't matter. Coherent light just ain't that picky about distance. The whole point of coherent light is that r-squared don't count.

The aiming head is the only part of the device that must be exposed to the target. And the aiming head is small enough to fit in your god damned lunch box.

Fuck me, this is insane.

[Frederik]

83. Yet

they were drilling for that very scenario that very day. Rumsfeld and General Myers had to admit in Congress that wargames took place that day, when asked by Cynthia McKinney, but they claimed the war games had actually shortened the response time because fighters were already in the air... which is curious, given the non-existant response. Where were those fighters? Rumsfeld (or Myers, I can't recall) partly answered the question without being asked it, by saying that fighters had to respond to a real situation over Alaska (which was already known in "conspiracy" circles, nice to be vindicated, but shouldn't that information have been included in the 9/11 Commission report? One of the wargames is mentioned in a footnote, that's it).

So, by Rummy's and Myers' admission, there were wargames going on, they didn't get into the specific scenario being gamed, but it is well known that it was multiple hijacked airplanes, probably with live planes as well as false radar blips on FAA screens. Then suddenly the fighters had to respond to a situation over Alaska. Shortly afterwards the real hijackings begin.

Fishy?

[EVDebs]

123. Wargames on 9-11 paralyzed attempts to intercept planes

http://www.oilempire.us/wargames.html

And...

9/11 War Game Attribution Description

CIA / National Reconnaissance Office "plane into building" exercise Associated Press, August 21, 2002 simulation of a plane crash into the NRO headquarters (near Dulles Airport, Virginia) - this was not a "terrorism" exercise but it did result in the evacuation of most NRO employees just as the "real" 9/11 was taking place, making it more difficult for the nation's spy satellites to be used to track the hijacked planes

Vigilant Guardian
Aviation Week & Space Technology, June 3, 2002, Newhouse News, others (these articles are reproduced below) The publicly available mass media articles about these exercises state that they were similar enough to the actual events that top NORAD personnel were confused, not sure if 9/11 was "part of the drill" or a real world event.

Vigilant Warrior
Richard Clark, "Against All Enemies" (March 2004) referenced by Richard Clark.

Northern Vigilance
Toronto Star, December 9, 2001 "Operation Northern Vigilance, planned months in advance, involves deploying fighter jets to locations in Alaska and northern Canada." This ensured that there would be fewer fighter planes available to protect the East Coast on 9/11. Simulated information was fed into radar screens - is this what confused the air defenses that morning?

Northern Guardian
Toronto Star, December 9, 2001 only mention was in the early edition of this article, no details publicly available (probably related to Northern Vigilance)

Tripod II
US Department of Justice and City of New York Rudolph Giuliani's testimony to the 9/11 Commission, May 2004 biowar exercise in New York City scheduled for September 12, 2001

The LACK of M$M coverage of all of these wargames is what I find especially damning. The people have a RIGHT to know but the conservative media does not want to do anything to pierce the facade.

[philb]

149. Could it have been a coincidence military jets were sent to Alaska & Canad

at the precise time of the 9/11 events?
and all of the other simulations at the same time as well?
When they had lots of explicit warnings of imminent attacks on WTC and the Pentagon in September?

What is the probability of all the coincidental events that happened on 9/11 that would not normally happen, occuring at that precise time??

[AuntiBush]

138. Fishy is right. 1 of Many Strange Occurrences on 9/11 and days prior

[EVDebs]

140. Spec Forces Team 574 was in Afganistan in JULY 2001

According to a Discovery Channel program aired Jan 30, 2003.

This team was doing what exactly weeks prior to Sept 11, 2001 ? Don't tell me, I know I know, it's classified and you'll have to kill me. But I can still ASK, can't I ?

Also, this Discovery Channel show directly contradicts what PBS is showing at

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/campaign/etc/cron.html

regarding the first deployments of US special forces to Afganistan. It says the first units arrived in country in Oct. 2001.

Someone is lying. Gee, I wonder why ?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

41. NORAD had other planes in the air participating in DRILLS...

...simulating how to deal with hijacked airliners. Do you sense the irony in that?

On 911, NORAD launched two interceptors from an Air National Guard base south of Boston, and three from a USAF base outside Hampton, VA...a total of five interceptors to deal with four hijacked airliners. On top of that, the planes were launched from bases geographically distant from where the planes were flying. Additionally, not one of the planes broke the sound barrier on their way to intercept the airliners.

Here's a list of available air bases:

35 USAF Bases Within Range On 911: The 7 Air Stations On Full Alert Covering The Continental United States And 28 More Air Stations That Were In Range Of The 4 Airliners On 911
<http://www.prisonplanet.com/110903usafbases.html>

[Zynx]

69. Pre 9/11,Why should squadrons of fighters race to *kill* hijacked planes?

Prior to 9-11, the concept of hijacking was that some idiot took over the plane and wanted to go to Cuba and wanted media to bitch about the "Zionists" to. No one had used a jet as an air-to-surface missile.

[Eloriel]

76. May not have DONE it, but it was well understood as a tactic

No one had used a jet as an air-to-surface missile.

In fact, when Bush was in Genoa for the G-8 (I think it was G-8) in July that year, they set him up on a Navy ship precisely BECAUSE they were expecting just that.

It was also something that had been discussed and warned about in various intel.

[Frederik]

87. But it was wargamed that very day

Multiple hijackings to be used as missiles. Al-Qaida plans to do so had been known since the Bojinka plot was uncovered in the Philippines in 1995. FAA received 58 warnings about 9/11, though not all of them were specific, some were. And, SOP is to scramble fighters to intercept a plane as soon as there is any suspicion of a hijacking or anything else being unusual. It's the same god damn procedure in every country on Earth. It's done all the time, it's pure routine. Just not on that day.

[philb]

150. There were dozens of specific warnings that airplanes would be used agains

WTC and Pentagon in September 2001

There was a huge amount of information and a long history of the plans to use airplanes as weapons against targets like WTC and Pentagon. And its known that the Administration was aware of the information. See:
http://www.flcv.com/warnings.html

[Eloriel]

72. I read a direct contradiction to your assertion some time ago --

-- that there ARE AA defense systems atop the Pentagon. This was a post by someone who had direct knowledge.

[Zynx]

75. What sort of AA defense system? Exact classification and make, please.

It's not hard to identify US military weapons systems. No aerial view of the Pentagon (on any date) has ever shown anything that looks like SAM batteries. Nor any AA guns, not that we would be dumb enough to use these. The US has never been a big fan of static AA guns and never had that many mobile systems either.

So what sort of "weapon system" is this?

[Eloriel]

78. Oh, get real. *I* didn't make the claim, I'm simply reporting that

someone else did, and probably right here at Du.

[Zynx]

80. Then dig it up and find the weapons system

There are very few US weapons systems that are good against strategic air attack (as opposed to swatting choppers or something like that), and they're all quite large.

[Eloriel]

88. Hmmm

Why do you think you can order me around? Maybe you don't mean it that way, but that's surely the way it sounds to me. I could refuse to do what you demand simply on that point.

I told you to get real and I meant it. If it's so damned important to you, YOU go do the digging. I am merely reporting what I read, which is buried somewhere in DU1.

[Zynx]

92. You made a claim; you support it.

Or don't expect people to just take it at face value.

[Eloriel]

101. I don't expect you to take it at face value if you don't want to

You are most surely free to do whatever the fuck you want.

Get it?

I don't GIVE A DAMN about your petty, insistent, overbearing DEMANDS. Get a clue. I told you what I read -- which isn't the same as making a claim -- and I told you I ain't goin' diggin' for any links.

Believe me or not, your fucking CHOICE, and one that I care not one whit about. Now, stop trying to bully me and go find something else to do, or someone else to annoy.

Sheesh. Overreact much?

[nomatrix]

157. Here's a good place for you to look

Paul Thompson's Essay
http://www.complete911timeline.org/essay.jsp?article=essayairdefense
Protection for a Lucky Few

"In fact, just about the only known actions taken by top-level Bush administration officials were to protect their personal safety. According toCongressman Porter Goss (R), Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, “the chatter level went way off the charts” in summer 2001 and stayed high until 9/11. Both Bush and Vice President Cheney responded by spending nearly the entire month of August on vacation at separate locales. Former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney said she was disturbed about the implications that “24-hour fighter cover was placed over the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas” during his vacation there from August 4-30, 2001. ABC News reported that Bush was doing “nothing much” on his vacation, aside from his regular daily intelligence briefings. On August 6, when Bush received the briefing entitled, “Bin Laden to Strike in US,” he apparently “broke off from work early and spent most of the day fishing.” Despite this carefree attitude, when Bush spent the night in Sarasota, Florida, the night before the 9/11 attacks, surface-to-air missiles were placed on the roof of the resort where he was staying. Presumably the presence of fighters in August and surface-to-air missiles protecting Bush that night were hardly typical security procedures.

Perhaps even more remarkable was the behavior of Attorney General John Ashcroft. In May 2001, he told a Senate committee that counter-terrorism was his “highest priority.” But on September 10, 2001, Ashcroft rejected a $58 million increase in funding for counter-terrorism programs, and sent an internal memorandum stating his seven priorities—none of them relating to counter-terrorism. Yet, back on July 26, 2001, CBS News reported that Ashcroft had stopped flying commercial aircraft due to a threat, but “neither the FBI nor the Justice Department ...would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it.” In May 2002, Ashcroft walked out of his own office rather than answer questions about why he had stopped flying on commercial planes. The San Francisco Chronicle concluded, “The FBI obviously knew something was in the wind. ... The FBI did advise Ashcroft to stay off commercial aircraft. The rest of us just had to take our chances.” "

[achtung_circus]

105. In playing with Google maps

and the satellite feature I found this.

<http://maps.google.com/maps?q=washington+dc&ll=38.897256,-77.036959&spn=0.005118,0.007918&t=k&hl=en>

I'm curious what is on the roof of the White House. Air Vents?

[philb]

147. Its my understanding there is a missile battery in each Pentagon wing

Do you really think the center of the U.S. military would not have protection? It has been well known in official channels that there have been lots of plans to use commercial airplanes to attack targets like the Pentagon. And it was known that there were specific plans to attack the Pentagon in the fall of 2001. The first plans to attack WTC using commercial airplanes was done as an update to Operations Northwood in 1976 when Bush I was CIA director. It has been known that al-Qaeda had plans to attack the WTC and Pentagon using airplanes since the mid 1990s. There was a huge deluge of warnings that there were plans to attack these buildings using airplanes in fall 2001, from U.S. agents, from many foreign intelligence agencies, from many individuals; lots of people in many countries knew of the plans for 9/11 before it happened. That is well documented:
http://www.flcv.com/warnings.html

So why were the WTC buildings and Pentagon left unprotected when it is clear that the military had the ability to prevent the attacks?

And this disregards that many agents also were aware of the alleged hijackers who had questionable records, yet seem to have had help in getting into the U.S. and getting training and staying, rather than
serious efforts to prevent "terrorism".

[lenidog]

21. You make a very valid point but also remember they

military has been having trouble getting rid of its cold war mentality. In those days the aerial threat would have been a 1 megaton ICBM and well nothing would have stopped that so why bother having air defenses if you can't actually stop the threat.

[EVDebs]

42. David Ray Griffin mentions Pentagon 'automatic defense systems'

""In the third chapter of Omissions and Distortions, Griffin looks at the attack on the Pentagon, which has many anomalies...

Why didn't the Pentagon's automatic defense systems fail to shoot down the invading aircraft?

Also, the west side of the Pentagon, which was under renovation, had relatively few workers in the vicinity at the time. Wouldn't the terrorist `masterminds' prefer to cause the most damage by hitting an area with top Pentagon officials?""

http://www.paow.org/id178.htm

Also see
http://septembereleventh.org/airdefense.php

[Viva_La_Revolution]

48. and the radiation readings at the pentagon after the attack...

A geologist had her colleague go out on her balcony with a Geiger counter -

interview by Iconoclast

snip>
MORET: I’ll tell you what I did when 9/11 happened. I called all the doctors with Radiation And Public Health Project, and I said, "Get out of town, and don’t come back until it has rained three times." One lived 12 miles downwind from the Pentagon. She went out on her balcony with her Geiger counter. I said, "Get that Geiger counter out of your purse." We had just done a press conference in San Francisco, and I knew she had it in her purse. Well, the radiation levels were 8-10 times higher than background. We called the EPA, HAZMAT, FBI, and said, "Get all those emergency response workers suited up. They need to be protected." Two days after 9/11, the EPA radiation expert for that region called back and said, "Yup, the Pentagon crash rubble was radioactive, and we believe it’s depleted uranium, but we’re not worried about that. It’s only harmful if it’s inhaled." He said, "We’re worried about the lead solder in the plane." Well, you know what’s in Tomahawk missiles? They have depleted uranium warheads. The radioactive crash rubble contaminated with DU is evidence of a DU warhead.
snip>

Entire article is chock full of extremely frightening info about Depleted Uranium
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=6232

[EVDebs]

67. Another good link on the 'stand down' of USAF and FAA

http://www.global-conspiracies.com/too_far_too_slow_too_late.htm

[Zynx]

77. Once again, WHAT defense system? Patriots? Guns? AMRAAM'S?

We don't use guns (for good reason) and SAM batteries (including their targeting suites) are very large and not easily and covertly mounted.

[EVDebs]

121. The one the Pentagon's basement operates.....

"But at the National Military Command Center (NMCC) in the basement of the Pentagon, Air Force staff officers monitoring every inch of airspace over the northeastern seaboard would have caught that first hijacking when Flight 11's identification transponder stopped transmitting at 8:20 - automatically triggering a radar alarm."

http://www.global-conspiracies.com/too_far_too_slow_too_late.htm

Failing to even take action after that, you'd think sending up an armed Apache helicopter from one of the many airbases surrounding the Pentagon would have been a logical response...don't you agree ?

Or even evacuating the building would have made sense. But I guess 'duck and cover' was the preferred response.

[EVDebs]

124. "FBI shut down investigation into Saudi terror cell in Boston" why?

""A software company called Ptech, founded by a Saudi financier placed on America’s Terrorist List in October 2001, had access to the FAA’s entire computer system for two years before the 9/11 attack.
Last week, when the National 9/11 Commission held hearings on The Aviation Security System and the 9/11 Attack, government and aviation officials described a system unprepared for the events that unfolded on September 11. None of them, however, mentioned security breaches involving “Saudi terrorists in the basement of the FAA.”

Yet that's what happened, according to a high-level risk analyst who had troubling dealings with the firm"....

"Ptech had a couple of very troubling client relationships," states risk architect and whistleblower Indira Singh, "one of which was with the FAA. One of the 'persons of interest' in the investigation had a team in the basement of the FAA for two years.""

http://www.madcowprod.com/index45.html

Yet another whistleblower the press MSM ignores...how come ?

[FightingIrish]

2. Your last line would be a great title for a new activist movement

"This has been a paid political announcement by Wake the Fuck Up, America"

It has a nice ring to it.

[yella_dawg]

6. Good idea.

I'm tempted to set up a website to take donations just so I can air ads with that disclaimer.

It does have a nice ring to it.

Thanks.

[acmejack]

9. Dare ya!

It would be cool but I bet they wouldn't air it...

[yella_dawg]

13. Not even once. n/t

[Jara sang]

3. I'll tell you how they do it.

They communicate with each other through nuanced language. They know exactly what they are saying because they are all on the same page and they are all trying to carry out the same goals. It's the "old boys network" on crack. Secret societies, organizations and clubs. They get together at these gatherings and with a nod and a wink they foment their global policy.

[stellanoir]

4. Yup

I agree with you. It's completely overwhelming.

Having always known that government was somewhat corrupt I'm just baffled by the incessant barrage of deceit, corruption, and blatant disregard for lawfulness.

I think it might just be their strategy. . . to overwhelm us with such a plethora of BS, that we'll sit with our heads spinning not knowing where the "flop" to begin.

[glitch]

58. That is the principle behind blitzkrieg, aka shock and awe.

"to overwhelm us with such a plethora of BS, that we'll sit with our heads spinning"

Re the OP: To believe in the official 9/11 conspiracy theory promoted by this administration and their corporate media allies you'd have to be thoroughly brain-washed. I stopped watching TV news in 1990 - so my brain still functions independently. I wonder what the actual correlation is between tv-news watching and true-believing.
I do know since the Internet has become more mainstream it's much harder for them to maintain their illusions. Their numbers are going down, and they won't be going back up. Once people know you lie (especially like these sociopaths do), people just don't believe you anymore.
You can't get that back, which is why they are moving so quickly to totalitarian methods of control.

John Judge talks about SAMs on the roof of the Pentagon, you should google him.

[shanti]

91. stepping up the pace

yep, i also believe that too. the veil has been ripped away for many more people. the men behind the curtain are being revealed. their evil knows no bounds.

and i'm a MIHOP'er too;-)

[TankLV]

5. You'll get no disagreement from me!

[SammyWinstonJack]

32. Nor me.

Rabid MIHOPer here! WAKE THE FUCK UP AMERICA! If it isn't already too late?

[DemonFighterLives]

7. Every time I see that Smirk, I know

I don't know how dubby can live with it, but the meds must do wonders for him.

:tinfoilhat:

[yella_dawg]

8. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that that POS is such a total shill

that he believes his own bullshit. Let's be fair here. The boy ain't bright under the best conditions. He shows significant effects of years of chemical enhancement of various sorts. Not a lot of synapses still intact. He's obviously succumbing to various mental disorders, whether chemically induced or natural. What we got is another Reagan on our hands. Too brain dead to know what's going on.

I'm almost to the point of feeling sorry for the little bastard. God! It would suck to be him. Can you imagine waking up to that vile pus in your mirror every morning? (And what about waking up with the Stepford prototype beside you? That's a trauma of another sort).

[lenidog]

11. I think you are missing the whole point

the reason people get tired of or don't listen to the Tin Foil Hats is because they believe that they are crying wolf all the time. EVERYTHING negative that happens is tied into some conspiracy. Then to top it off the weave a web of conspirators and reasoning that is so byzantine that it would make Machiavelli jealous. Add into the fact that with the internet that these conspiracy theories start being woven five minutes after the event happens before anyone actually knows anything besides the fact that someone died, something crashed or something blew up. Not everything on the planet is some dark conspiracy by the dark powers on high, the Illuminati, the Bildebergs, the CIA, the NWO, ZOG, the Powers that Be or whatever catchy name we decided to create this year. Sometimes shit happens, sometimes people die in accidents or even by natural causes and sometimes things are done secretly for dark purposes.

[yella_dawg]

14. Good for you.

I'm sure you sleep better at night than I do.

[lenidog]

25. Actually I have always had a problem with insomnia

but that is besides the point. ;) I not saying that these conspiracy theories are bullshit. Well there are some that would even make Mulder and the Lone Gunmen shake their heads. What I am saying is that it seems at time in the world of consipracy theories that everything is a conspiracy and their constant spinning of new theories about everything destroy their credibilty and makes it many times impossible for anyone to believe the conspiracies that actually are real.

[Minstrel Boy]

15. I think your brush is too broad

There's a lot of nuanced analysis that gets dismissed as "tinfoil."

About theories "woven five minutes after the event happens" - why not theorize? If they're valid, they'll stick. If not, they'll be discarded.

[lenidog]

22. Why not theorize I have no problem with that

but when you have no details yet its not theorizing it called creative bullshit.

[Minstrel Boy]

30. I was responding to you, and you called it theorizing.

But hey, "creative bullshitting" has its place in just about every intellectual pursuit. It gets the kinks out of our thinking, and helps us think through alternatives. It's a valuable part of the process, so long as it's not the end of it.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

19. I don't think you "get it" yet.

[Frederik]

36. I agree with you there

I think it's a good rule of thumb to try and explain events with as low a level of conspiracy as is possible given the known facts and circumstances, provided the un-conspiratorial explanation is actually plausible and not just a denial. And I get really tired of the "Illuminati", the "NWO" and all the other imagined mysterious entities that can only be caricatures of what really goes on. Why not stick to what we know or can plausibly deduce from what we know. That's bad enough, usually.

[Eloriel]

86. Once upon a time I agreed with you, and in fact automatically dismissed

any and all so-called conspiracy theories OTHER than JFK wasn't murdered by Owald.

But then I actually started doing some readin and research, most of it prompted and elucidated by wonderful DUers.

Now I truly, honestly believe that the FIRST thing anyone should do when confronted with unusual (not everyday) occurrences is suspect it weren't no accident. Nor do I automatically believe one word coming out of this administration, about anything -- I am ALWAYS looking for "what's behind this, what ulterior purpose does this serve, what's not being said or reported?" etc., and I'm not usually wrong.

As for "Illuminati" and "NWO," I still reject the terms. BUT I've finally learned that the truth is that there ARE people in this world who manipulate and influence the geopolitical realities that affect the world that the rest of us have to live in daily. :shrug: Illuminati is as good a word for them as anything else, probably. It's a word that kept me AWAY from the truth for a very long time, so I still don't use it or even think of it in reference to TPTB. But that doesn't affect the truth of the matter one whit.

[Frederik]

111. I agree with you

I have also changed my view of conspiracy theories, my view of them used to be identical to lenidog's. I still agree with him about the Illuminati, NWO etc., but often "CT"s come much closer to the truth than the New York Times does. I just think it's a good rule of thumb to try to explain things with the lowest plausible level of conspiracy, but it's always healthy to speculate further.

Some media outlets are certainly better than others, but investigative journalism has its limits, for several reasons (one being that investigative journalism is increasingly rare), and so it is often up to interested individuals to do the research if we want a clearer picture of what is going on. There are of course limits to what one can discern by surfing the web (just as there are limits to what you can learn from reading books), but Paul Thompson, to pick one example, has gathered a wealth of information, much of it not well known, from exclusively mainstream media stories. Everybody who is interested in 9/11 should check that out, it's a treasure trove of information for reseachers:

www.cooperativeresearch.org

The problem isn't always that the information isn't out there, but we can't rely on mainstream journalists to connect the dots.

I couldn't agree more on this: "what's behind this, what ulterior purpose does this serve, what's not being said or reported". Those are always the questions.

When Rumsfeld set up the Office of Strategic Influence, one of the purposes of which was to concoct fake news stories and disseminate them, it should have been a wake up call for anyone remotely interested in what is going on in the world. Not that there's anything novel about the practice, but the blatant announcement that they would actually make up news stories showed a new boldness. You'd be crazy not to question the "news" after that.

[bpilgrim]

38. so many conspiracies, so little time

sometimes conspiracy happens

peace

[starroute]

60. The Illuminati, NWO, etc. are right-wing conspiracy theories

I've been thinking a lot lately about right-wing vs. left-wing conspiracy theories -- and there's one extremely important difference between them.

Start here: Since the late 18th century, there's been a struggle going on between the old ruling classes and what could loosely be called popular empowerment. The forces of popular empowerment have had the momentum of history on their side, due to the development of more subtle and flexible systems in a range of areas (government, economics, technology) which make the traditional rigid top-down structures unnecessary.

But the old ruling classes haven't been willing to go easily into the dustbin of history and have been fighting back with every tool in their possession. One of those tools is the claim that there are no authentic popular movements -- that the people would have no reason to reject their natural masters if they weren't manipulated by diabolical conspiracies whose only goal is to destroy civilization.

That is the common theme of all right-wing conspiracy theories, starting with the first Illuminati scares at the time of the French Revolution. Their aim is to delegitimize popular movements by depicting them as unknowing puppets of an evil counter-elite.

Compared to this, left-wing conspiracy theory is far simpler and far more plausible. Its basic assumption is that rich, powerful people, who all tend to know each other and share common objectives, frequently get together to manipulate events. In this version of conspiracy theories, there's no need to assume invisible plotters behind the scenes -- the plotters are the same as the known leaders of the elite. There's no need to assume that people with no apparent connection are secretly working together. There's no question about where the money and access to resources come from. The only questionable part is how easy it would be to bring off something like the Kennedy assassination or 911 and keep it covered over -- and that, I hope, is what we're here to discuss.

So please keep the Bilderbergers and the NWO out of it. They're not really relevant and are only hauled in as a means of tarring left-wing conspiracy theorists with the nuttiness of the right.

[oblivious]

64. Your generalisations and logical fallacies fool no one.

I've never seen anyone on DU ever hint that EVERYTHING negative is tied into a conspiracy, but here you are repeating it four times in one paragraph.

[mopinko]

18. i'm thinking of selling tin foil hats

i've been meaning to make an 'i (heart) my (pic of tinfoil hat)' button for a while now. but i have also been thinking of making some little origami hats out of foil coated paper, with proven facts about conspiracies that people should know about but don't printed on the inside.
anybody got suggestions? there is a thread right now about smedley butler, and his story would be a great start.
anybody?

[yella_dawg]

20. Wonderful idea.

But where to start?

Try:

http://www.911truth.org/

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/

[mopinko]

24. i'm really looking for past, proven

events that people eventually understood or better yet, were proven in court to be conspiracies. something to point to to say 'people thought this was crazy at the time, but...'

[Eloriel]

95. Watergate -- your PRIME example, I'd think

and not only that, but there are plenty of ties between Watergate and now.

Here are a couple of links that may have more info about this:

Author Now Suspects 'Deep Throat' Was -- Drumroll, Please -- George H.W. *
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1213645#1213660
Link: http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000789447

Woodward and Bernstein on Watergate Papers today....something else
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1567562&mesg_id=1567562

Watergate is the ultimate evidence of repub election theft
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1829005#



Edited: Forgot these. I hope the one in bold lives up to its billing (don't remember):


Nixon's Watergate and JFK's Murder: Connecting the Dots!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1828353&mesg_id=1828353
Link: http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/15463

Nixon administration official (Eagleburger) "I'm surprised FELT didn't end up dead..."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3780961#3781283
Link for transcript: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0505/31/cf.01.html

[MisterP]

23. I wore one for last Halloween, actually (though I was actually a

Hershey's kiss with it). So I'm a proud tinfoiler in both real life and on the Internets.

[Klimmer]

26. What do all of these events have in common?

Q: What does the assassination of JFK, BCCI, and Iran/Contra/Drugs/CIA fiasco, 9-11 Bush Administration MIHOP (made it happen on purpose), 2 stolen elections, Gulf War and the Iraq War (War Profiteering) all have in common?

(No tin-foil hat required.)


A: The Bush Crime Family. The Granddad was a Nazi sympathizer, Bush I CIA and the only President to continue to receive intelligence briefings after leaving the office and even now. Bush II, the village idiot, who knows much more than he pretends. Remember, he witnessed on TV the first jet hitting on 9-11 when no one else could have possibly seen on TV. It wasn't televised. He knew "that must have been one bad pilot." Then when the second jet hit he knew it was an act of terrorism. Better get your story straight Mr. Coo-Coo-Bananas. Uh-oh you're letting the truth leak.

I agree. Wake-up America! You really don't have to fear terrorism so much as your own government. 9-11 was no accident. The terrorists were "Patsies," the fall guys. The event happened to get America raged and ready for war with Afghanistan, and then the war they really wanted Iraq. It worked.

We may not have it all right or the complete story straight, but we are figuring this thing out. Power to the people!

Here are just some of the many great resources out there:

"Bush - Nazi Dealings Continued Until 1951" - Federal Documents
By John Buchanan and Stacey Michael from The New Hampshire Gazette Vol. 248, No. 3, November 7, 2003:
http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=detail&catalogno=NN_Bush_Nazi_2

DVDs on 9-11 and JFK assassination (Bush Crime Family connection):
http://www.rbnlive.com/videodvd.html
Reviews about JFK2 and free downloads:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread135335/pg1

From the Wilderness --- Book, "CROSSING THE RUBICON: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil" -- New Society Publishers by Michael C. Ruppert (his book puts it all together).
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/

Coalition of Scientists and Engineers look at the Evidence of 911:
http://www.physics911.net

The German Intelligence Report:
http://www.physics911.net/germanintel.htm

Quick course on 911 truths:
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050204132153814#2step

Hunt and Spot the Boeing! Test your perception (French Site):
http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/erreurs_en.htm

Q: What did hit the Pentagon? A: Military Aircraft A3, and/or Missile. Bottom line, a Boeing 757-200 did not hit the Pentagon. Why is the government fabricating stories and lying to the world?
http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/erreurs_en.htm
http://www.physics911.net/missingwings.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/020205Schwarz/020205schwarz.html

"Pentagon Strike" --- a Video describing the Pentagon attack:
http://www.neiu.edu/~ayjamess/hmmm.htm#Main
http://www.pentagonstrike.co.uk/

NYFD Firemen discuss explosions prior to WTC towers collapsing:
http://www.letsroll911.org/discussion_in_firehouse.mpg
http://www.letsroll911.org

David Ray Griffin, book author on 9-11, speech at Madison Univ.(full speech):
http://mp3.rbnlive.com/download/griffin_madison_full_25.wmv

Hustler Mag interview with David Ray Griffin about 9-11:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/06/318576.shtml
http://faketerror.blogspot.com/2005/06/hustler-interviews-griffin-what-if.html

9-11 in Plane Site: The Director's Cut (video/DVD)---
http://www.911inplanesite.com/
Article:
http://www.911inplanesite.com/911article.htm

911Blogger.com (Blog/forum for those actively involved in 911 news and
research):
http://www.911blogger.com/

Reopen 911.org:
http://www.reopen911.org/

911 Share the Truth .com (lots of articles, DVDs, stickers, t-shirts,
and other links etc.):
http://www.911sharethetruth.com/
http://www.911sharethetruth.com/links.htm

[lenidog]

28. Papa Kennedy was a Nazi sympathizer too

he was also incredibly vocal about it till WWII started. JFK actually had to address his Fathers stance while running for President.

[LuPeRcALiO]

130. not so

He was an isolationist at the beginning of the war, yes, and that was the end of his career in the U.S. government.

[yella_dawg]

29. Hunt and Spot the Boeing!

I ran across something just recently where that site had been thoroughly debunked. By "respected scientists".

My jaw is still bouncing off my chest. There's nothing to debunk. It's just a collection of DOD photographs downloaded from the Pentagon website. I downloaded the best ones from the .mil site and still have them.

Talk about tin-foil loonies. Geez.

[Fovea]

127. A thought experiment

First, assume you are ObL.

Q What is your stated goal?
A To remove the infidel from the islamic holy sites, indeed the holy lands of Arabia.

Q What will 911 actually accomplish?

This is a bit more complex, and involves a range of possible outcomes.

Rosy Scenario-- The west will withdraw from the Kingdom, and abandon its interests in the world's largest oil producing area.

Why the Rosy Scenario would be rejected by ObL--
For the reason ObL might reject this idea out of hand, I say ask Walid Jumblat, leader of the Druze, or what's left of them. For far less provocation, the US North Carolina(IIRC) unlimbered its 16" guns on the Druze strongholds for an afternoon. Result... Very few living Druze.

If ObL wanted to achieve his real goal, then he would be far better served by attacking the royal Succession of Saud. Once this happened, the conversion of S.A. to an Islamist state would be a comparatively straightforward thing.

Once that happened, the oil would stop flowing, and Islam would be triumphant. Or WW3 would start, but for Iraq, and the Islamic world watching, how would that be different than the current state of affairs? The difference would be a united Islamist front.

So why would ObL attack America?

[nuxvomica]

31. When David Ray Griffin spoke on C-Span, he was asked...

something like "How could so many people keep such a big secret?" His response was that the Manhatten Project employed a lot of people but it was still kept secret. So I looked up how many people actually worked on the Manhatten Project and, at it's peak, the count was 130,000! Ok, so not everybody knew everything but you can say the same about 9/11, right? These are the things that have never passed my BS-meter test:
* That a large plane hit the Pentagon
* The air-defense standown
* Ted Olsen's chat with his wife Barbara
* The implosion of the towers. Every last one of them.
It would take an awful lot of 'splainin' for me to not be MIHOP.

[LunaC]

53. Thanks for refreshing my memory

I saw that interview too but couldn't remember his response which was oh, so true.

130,000 on the Manhattan Project? That being the case, 911 was a bare-bones budget catastrophe.

[Eloriel]

104. There are other explanations as well --

and I tried to outline them in this first link:

CONSPIRACIES
Conspiracies: Self-interest, fear, inertia, values
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=5535&forum=DCForumID70&archive=yes

Also see Information Architecture of Evil (read down) at http://www.zpluspartners.com/zblog/

Paranoid Shift
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/011004Hasty/011004hasty.html

Can huge conspiracies work? Or would someone talk?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1695698#1695780

The Magic Bullshit (OP by Minstrel Boy)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2300021#2302016

QUOTE:
Many readers are naturally be inclined to gravitate toward the former when confronted with ideas considered "outside the box", therefore it is necessary to define the phrase "conspiracy theory".

The term "conspiracy theory" consists of two words, the active word being "theory". By definition, a theory is a concept, an idea, a proposal, a supposition. Example: "In theory, if I purchase a raffle ticket, I could win the prize." However, once the first ticket is purchased, winning is no longer a theory, but rather a possibility. The more tickets that are purchased, the more possible and eventually probable the win becomes. The same can be said about a conspiracy theory. As long as there is no evidence to support the conspiracy theory, it remains a theory. Once however there is one piece of evidence to support the theory, no matter how flimsy or circumstantial it may be, the conspiracy is no longer a theory, but a possibility! And the more evidence there is that is gathered, the more possible and eventually probable the conspiracy becomes.
http://www.thepowerhour.com/911_analysis/report.htm

[longship]

37. Just use this essential tool

Whenever I hear people making statements that seem to raise flags of possible bunkum, I use

Baloney Detection Kit

It tells me what is reasonable to believe and what is most likely bunkum.

All political movements need their kooks. The Repugs have their lunatic fringe, and regrettably so do the Democrats. People who see complicated conspiracies behind every event don't do a lot of good for the Dems except for provide entertainment for everybody. They may even do a little harm by giving opponents something to target, but since both sides have their lunatics, it's balanced.

I have no doubt that there was some funny business with the attacks on 9/11. But all the evidence looks like a conspiracy of omission, not a conspiracy of comission. Until that changes, I will basically stay with the facts we know. Arabic fringe elements, mostly from Saudi Arabia, hijacked airplanes and flew them into buildings. We've seen the films; we've heard the ear-witnesses. To claim that something else happened requires too much extra baggage. Sagan tells me that these conspiracy theories are probably baloney. As such, they don't do much good for our side. As I wrote above, probably they don't do much harm either.

At least they're entertaining.

[Al-CIAda]

43. Four letters, PNAC n/t

[longship]

52. What does PNAC prove?

That CuckooBananas wanted a war to control certain world elements. That's documented, and it condemns CuckooBananas as well his henchmen.

But to start with that and jump to the conclusion that they conspired to hijack airplanes and then took other airplanes and flew them into buildings is ludicrous.

I believe that there was a conspiracy, but it was the conspiracy that we can document, not the one made-up whole cloth.

It was a conspiracy, either wittingly or otherwise, to ignore certain warnings, even overt and explicit warnings that an event such as this was inevitable. We can and have documented this.

Yes, it includes the PNAC document. It also includes memorandum and testimony of people surrounding CuckooBananas during the first months of his occupation of the White House. Everything we have points toward the undeniable documented fact that CuckooBananas and his people deliberately pushed terrorism, specifically that from Bin Laden, off the front burner in spite of warnings from principals at the top levels of the administration. They cooked the books, just like they did to justify the invasion of Iraq.

This is an impeachable offense as the President has sworn an oath to defend the Constitution, which means defending the country from attack.

We don't need the wild conspiracy theories. There was a conspiracy of omission, of neglect, of incompetence which is well documented already.

Keep the case simple and we can win. Complicate it with undocumented and undocumentable conjectures and we not only lose, but we look like fools. What would that do for our political futures?

[LunaC]

56. If you have a quick minute

I'd like your opinion on the link in my sig line.

[Klimmer]

44. I can see how you come to your point of view . . .

when you selectively cut out so much physical evidence and single-handedly dismiss eye-witnesses from all the facts, and then ignore many more facts just as the 9-11 "White-Wash" Commission Report did. They changed the facts known prior to the report, or they just didn't bring up the facts that easily contradicted their official version. They ignored them. Don't go there. Don't bring it up. Maybe no one will notice.

Tell me how a massive 757-200 goes through a much smaller hole (solid through solid) in the side of the Pentagon and then disappears --- "vaporizes," yet leaves body parts to identify? No jet to find, but the bodies remain. I'm pretty sure the heat of evaporization for metal is much greater than for that for human carbon based molecules.

I'm a high school physics teacher. Tell me how that happens. Apparently, all laws of physics were suspended on 9-11. I'm no conspiracy theorist. I'm just looking at the facts.

If they are lying on this fact, and this is a very huge fact, then they are lying everywhere else. And the visual or physical evidence that people are finding shows they are lying.

No conspiracy, just facts.

[longship]

45. Okay.

Again, let's stick to the facts. (BTW, I have degree in Physics and was an engineer at Boeing Airplane Company.)

Let's tackle your 757 objection. This is what I know.

The skin of an airplane is extremely thin, like an egg's shell. The plane's strength comes from rigidity and form, not from beef. The thin skin is reinforced by ribs, kind of like an aluminum corregated cardboard (only with fewer ribs).

When the airplane hits a reinforced structure, like a 100-story building, it basically dissintegrates. The egg shell skin collapses, the reinforcing struts can no longer do their job to maintain the integrity of the airplane form, and the whole thing basically breaks up into little pieces. Aluminum alloys used in planes is very rigid, but brittle. Little of the airplane's form would survive the transition across a reinforced outer wall of a large building like the WTC. One would not expect a hole with the precise profile of the airplane as the airplane's form would not survive even a cursory collision with a rigid structure let alone a head-on, especially at the documented well over 400 knot speed of those airplanes.

We can see this in the extremely thorough documentation of all the airliner crashes which have happened since airplanes started flying passengers. In even a low speed crash, fuselage integrity is nearly non-existent. This is true even in relatively low speed crashes where experienced pilots are attempting to minimize damage. At 400+ knots the fuselage would basically dissintegrate into small particles which would travel along the airplane's path. In the videos of the crash of the second tower, you can see a large portion of one of the engines fly out of the other side of the building. This engine piece was found on the street. If one checked the videos of this, one would find that it was a 757 part, not some other plane.

Bodies are not brittle and do not obey the same rules on impact. And I would challenge anybody to go to a disaster scene like an airplane crash and claim that the bodies are intact. Identification is usually based on blood type, dental records, fingerprints, and more recently, DNA. It doesn't take a large body part to do that.

Another problem with the alternative airplane theory is that this 757-200 flight was a documented flight with a documented schedule and a documented passenger list. Also, we have many eye witnesses to these events who used their cell phones making their surviving families and friends real time ear-witnesses to what was happening. This was well documented and beyond dispute as all happened at the time and was reported by a disaster-loving news media as soon as they got a hold of it. And don't forget the flight controllers, ground crews, airport security cameras, and the plethora of other witnesses and evidence that points toward the conclusion that specific flights were hijacked.

So, if there is another plane which flew into the tower, one has two big problems. First, the witnesses must all have been wrong (highly unlikely). This means the flight controllers, airline employees, ground crew, and plain ol' people who just happened to be in the area when the flight departed. Second, if the documented flight did not crash into the tower, what happened to it? Remember, there were eye and ear witnesses to the entire thing. Passengers knew where they were because they saw unmistakable NYC skyline. They reported this fact to the ear-witnesses. So what did happen to that 757 if it didn't hit the tower? And why didn't anybody witness its miraculous disappearance when it surely must have been observable from Manhattan given that witnesses had it flying at very high speed at a low altitude? This ignores the fact that at that speed and altitude an airliner would shake the ground. It couldn't just be flown away without witnesses.

If you teach physics you should know the principle of parsimony, Occam's Razor. What does it tell you about these conspiracy theories?

My training states that I must reject the alternative airliner theory as falsified.

[Tommymac]

51. Ummm...

I think he was referring to the "757-220" Pentagon crash..not the WTC ones. Thers is a lot of ambiguous evidence about that one that needs explaining. Do a web search, among the chaff there is some wheat...the photos that have been released of the crash site are plain weird...doesn't look like any major LARGE plane crash site I have seen pix of.

Skepticism is healthy...both ways.

But personally, I'd rather be inclined to be an inquisitive tin hat than a kool aid drinking zombie who accepts the MSM govt approved pablum without thinking ... at least it shows my grey matter is operational. (Now I understand why the intelligentsia is always one of the first groups to be suppressed in a totalitarian regime.)

[longship]

57. Well, given the whole picture.

I am a confirmed skeptic. But I do not let my skepticism get in the way of the facts.

I doubt that most people have ever seen an impact site of an airliner travelling at 400+ knots with a building.

There were thousands of first-hand witnesses to all three plane collisions. These conspiracy theorists conveniently pick and choose the facts that fit their theries and ignore all the unsupporting evidence. There is even at least one security camera film of the 757 hitting the Pentagon.

Like you, I have doubts about what the admin says about this. But, please, let's not ignore the facts. There were four flights hijacked that day. Hundreds of people died. If those planes did not go where people have said they went, there is a whole lot of facts we've got wrong. One cannot cherry pick facts--that's what the Bushies do. The theory has to fit with the whole body of evidence.

I think that what happened on 9/11 was basically what was reported. Four planes were hijacked, three of which were flown into buildings, one of which crashed, probably deliberately by heroic passengers.

The CuckooBananas administration deliberately ignored clear warnings that this would happen and as such should be impeached for whatever we can hang on them that. What we have is entirely sufficient to accomplish this task.

[Frederik]

63. There are exactly five frames

of a security camera video from the Pentagon that have been "leaked". A frame or two are missing in the sequence. They show the explosion and some kind of object hitting the Pentagon - but nothing that looks remotely like a 757. The pictures are too unclear to make any kind of definitive judgement though.

Of course plenty of security cameras must have picked it up, but for some reason the films have not not released. As a matter of fact, the films from the gas station nearby and the hotel across the street were seized by FBI agents very shortly after the crash. FOIA requests have been made for the release of these tapes, but to no avail.

There weren't thousands of witnesses to the Pentagon collision, and eyewitness reports are awfully inconsistent - most agree a plane hit, but some claimed it was a small plane, some an airliner. Those who witnessed the explosion didn't see the plane for more than a second or two.

It may well have been Flight 77 - most probably so, despite the anomalies. But you obviously haven't made an effort to delve into the matter, if you think that the serious people that are pursuing the question of what hit the Pentagon are cherry-picking facts. A couple of the posters on the 9/11 forum here do some very good work.

Another point - it's not about hanging Cuckoobananas at all. It's about finding out what the hell happened.

[longship]

90. Again, look at the whole picture.

Then, what happened to the flight? You can't theorize that a plane did not hit the Pentagon and not explain what happened to a 757 full of people.

Don't you understand that if one has to pile on additional unsubstantiated conspiracy to eliminate a public airline flight which was known to exist--with people who were known to have disappeared, some of whom talked to their loved ones while events were going down--then this conjecture just doesn't stand up to the light of day.

The most simple conjecture is that the 757 crashed into the Pentagon. It certainly looked like something did. Of course, if one is willing to wave their hands and have an entire airliner full of people mysteriously vanish into thin air, I suppose they would have no problem conjuring up all sorts of alternate conjectures to what did crash into the Pentagon. Maybe it was the starship Enterprise. Or a monstrous Krispy Creme jelly doughnut.

The conspiracy that occurred is the one we can easily defend. That Bush & Co, deliberately or through incompetence, ignored clear and apparent warnings that an attack was imminent. Either way, it is a violation of his oath of office. For this, he and his cronies should be impeached and removed from office.

Keep it simple and we can win the case. Start talking about all this tin-foil hat stuff and we just look like a bunch of kooks, and with good reason.

[Frederik]

113. I'm not that concerned about looking like a kook

and there are other concerns than winning the case - like getting to the truth, for instance. And the truth isn't necessarily simple - "Occam's Razor" is a nice rule of thumb but not logically valid.

I happen to find it more probable than not that Flight 77 did crash into the Pentagon, piloted by a suicide pilot (though not by Hani Hanjour, who the 9/11 Commission claims did it). But I'm still not entirely convinced. As for making it "disappear", it would have been fairly easy in the chaos of that day.

Switching planes during flight and fake hijackings was planned by the joint chiefs of staff in 1962. It was called Operation Northwoods. It was going to be blamed on the Cubans as a pretext to invade Cuba. If the joint chiefs of staff can conceive it - why shouldn't we?

[starroute]

68. And one of the best of the eyewitnesses was Bobby Eberle

Convertible, top down, passenger seat, looking straight down the highway as the plane went by, trained pilot . . .

Yeah, that Bobby Eberle.

Give me a good explaination that doesn't include the words "lucky coincidence" and I might agree with you.

[longship]

99. Coincidences are funny

(I mean in the peculiar sense.)

Would you be surprised that, in the midst of the busiest time of the business day, somebody would witness an airliner at a low altitude flying towards a building at 400+ knots?

The answer is no, not surprising. Likely many, many people witnessed this.

Would you be surprised that, at the approaches to the headquarters for the largest military establishment on the planet, there might be somebody who has flown an airplane before?

The answer is no, not surprising.

Would you be surprised that a person with airplane training of some sort might be one to come forward and present themselves as a witness to an important historic event involving the use of airplanes?

The answer is no, not surprising.

Would you be surprised that if multiple people came foreward as witnesses to such an event that a news organization might select somebody with some expertease to present their story?

The answer is no, not surprising.

I see no conspiracy here.

[Frederik]

115. The point isn't that Eberle is a pilot

but that he is a GOP operative. Bobby is president of GOP USA (employer of Jeff Gannon).

http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/bobby/bio.shtml

[demodewd]

152. the hole

How do you explain the hole leading into the A-E drive?

[truth2power]

54. Question here...

I'm not a physicist, so not claiming any special knowledge. But I've seen pictures of airline crashes, the Lockerbie crash comes to mind. After the bomb blew it apart, it hit the ground (a pretty immovable object) and large parts of the fuselage were still intact. Pictures show that the whole forward cabin seems to have survived.

Also, I'm not convinced by the so-called cell phone communications. There are some claims that one can't originate cell phone calls from an aircraft. I fly rarely, so couldn't test that out. Just asking.

[yella_dawg]

61. Independent testing of cell phones in aircraft

show that both speed and altitude inhibit communications. The word "cell" in "cell phone" refers to the fact that the phones depend on a dense network of receivers that communicate with the phone at close ranges, typically a mile or less. When a plane exceeds a mile distance from a tower (altitude of greater than 5000 feet) phone performance deteriorates rapidly. The phone allows travelers to communicate by establishing a connection with a sequence of these "cell sites". The connection negotiation typically takes as long as ten seconds. At 400 knots (relatively slow for a jet liner) a phone would be in range of a specific cell for at most twenty seconds (aircraft passing directly over a tower, and at low altitude). This is not long enough to establish and maintain the sequence of connections needed to allow a conversation. (As late as 2001, engineers in some cell networks struggled to get seamless handoff for travelers in cars at 70 mph on the highway.)

At present, it is reasonable to say cell communications from a commercial airliner is highly unlikely, if not impossible. The fact that there were so many reported cases of cell calls from airliners is a strong factor in painting the whole 911 scenario as false.

This is just another argument used by the anti-tinfoil brigade that is in actuality the reverse of what it is meant to be. The cell calls are not evidence the government's story has to be true. The cell call claims are in fact some of the best evidence we have that the story is false.

[longship]

74. Cells

What you are talking about is the transitioning between cells. That's a fact of life with cell phones. We've all been disconnected while talking in our automobiles. So why would airline cell calls be much different except for how often the transition happens. And I have been in airplanes when people around me (illegally) use their cell phones while in flight. I didn't see them have much trouble with it.

Theorhetically, it should be easier to reach a cell because GHz transmissions are line-of-sight. At the altitude of an airliner line-of-sight is a very long distance. It should be and is easy to find a cell especially over the very urban east coast where cells are plentiful. I know of no technological or physical reasons to expect any different.

Even if airliner cell communications is problematic, it is clearly not impossible. So, to draw a conclusion that it makes the entire 9/11 scenerio false seems to be a bit excessive to me.

Furthermore, we know that these things happened because they even played tapes of those calls from ordinary people, people's relatives, people's neighbors. You cannot ignore that unless you're willing to pile on much more conspiracy. I don't see what is to be gained by that.

See Occam's Razor.

[yella_dawg]

89. Sorry

Cell transmission is not line of sight, it is r-squared energy dispersion. Thus theoretically, any time you go beyond the effective transmission range of the phone, the connection fails.

The point is that the "drop" at transition you experience in a car would be happening at least every 15-20 seconds at 400 knots.

So you have observed phone conversations in flight repeatedly? I find that dubious at best. Sitting on the runway? Fine. During takeoff? Fine. During level flight some 5 - 6 times the designed maximum distance from the cell tower? I'd be amazed if you ever saw anyone able to get a connection at all, much less hold a conversation. It's an r-squared problem, and nothing will change that.

As for all the recorded phone calls, I don't know who make those calls, who received those calls, and who recorded those calls. I'm highly suspicious just because I have never once recorded a call myself, and have no direct knowledge that anyone outside the government ever recorded the other end of a call I was on. The fact that so many typical, in the sense that no one had warning to prepare to record, phone calls got recorded. Doesn't that seem odd to you? "Bobby called and said blah, blah, blah." Unlikely, but whatever. But "Bobby called and here's a recording Mr. Newsman." Bullshit.

[longship]

103. This is incorrect

All radio signals are r-squared. It's part of the fabric of the universe.

r-squared just describes how the strength of the signal decreases with distance and has nothing to do with its atmospheric propogation characteristics.

Line-of-sight describes one of the atmospheric propogation modes common in radio reception and has nothing to do with how the signal decreases with distance. It means that the signal does not reflect off the ionized layers of the atmosphere. This is determined by the frequency of the emissions. AM broadcast band does reflect. The much higher frequency cell phone signals (and TV and FM radio) do not. Instead, they pass through the upper atmosphere into space. This is called line-of-sight because the signals cannot bounce off the ionisphere and reflect over the horizon.

So cell phone communication is line-of-sight, by definition.

[yella_dawg]

109. Do you realize you are agreeing with me while calling me wrong?

Of course the path is line of sight. Damn. But the propogation problem, the thing we are discussing, please remember, in an r-squared problem. The point being, distance matters. Your cell phone can't reach a tower a hundred feet away if it's inclosed in a radio-opaque chamber. That's a line of sight problem. The fact that it can't touch a tower on a hill two miles away, in spite of the fact you can see it clearly twinkling in the night, in an r-squared problem.

Good night.

[longship]

114. Sorry about that.

Given that there's plenty of recordings of the people calling from those flights, I guess that some cell phones still work in airliners in flight. After all, they don't make airliners out of mu metal. I don't think that the fuselage would make a good faraday cage.

I've seen people use cell phones in flight. So if somebody claims it can't happen, that is simply wrong.

[nolabels]

126. Except the radio waves a cell phone work on don't transfer...............

though the metal hull of the plane (they need an antenna outside of it).

Lets Roll my freaking ass :rofl:

:tinfoilhat:On Edit: Why in the hell did you think we were wearing the hats anyway? :evilgrin:

[truth2power]

122. Wow! Thanks, yella dawg. I really never knew

exactly how that process works as to the distances and time needed to connect. Why didn't the 911 commission deal with that issue? (rhetorical question).

There's no question in my mind that it was MIHOP on the part of the Bush Cabal. I can't help but think that if the American people ever REALLY came to an awareness of what Bushco did, their anger would be infinite in its power. If only...

[longship]

62. Velocity

The pieces of the Lockerbee plane that hit the ground were decidedly unaerodynamic and would have reached a relatively low terminal velocity when they reached the ground. They would not desintegrate on impact.

However, the airliners striking the WTC and Pentagon were travelling aerodynamically at over 400 knots. The energy released in such an impact is huge. An airliner is massive because of its size, but is very fragile. There would be little left of the structure in a collision at that speed.

Therefore, what we have seen at the WTC and the Pentagon is exactly what one would expect to see if a large airliner slammed into a building at 400+ knots. The fact that we actually witnessed both collisions at the WTC just adds credibility to what we could already have determined independently.

And, by the way, the collapse of the towers (yes, all of them), is also well documentable by any engineer who would care to carry out the study. In fact, this has already been done. The results? The towers collapsed when a flaw in the design allowed fire retardent failure which caused structural failure in the floor supports. Once a top floor collapsed on the level below, it caused a domino effect as each level failed due to the added weight of the collapsing floors above it. The towers pancaked down just as one would have expected under those conditions. Nothing mysterious about that.

[yella_dawg]

70. I'm sorry, but this is just more canned anti-MIHOP drivel.

A commercial aircraft is NOT "very fragile". It is a massive beast weighing 110 TONS (in the case of a 757). Nothing of such mass that is capable of bouncing through the sky, capable of slamming into the ground daily, and capable of doing so reliably for years can be reasonably called fragile. To represent such a structure as delicate is disingenuous at best. The idea that the main spars of a modern aircraft could be effectively obliterated in a crash is ludicrous.

This argument is a misrepresentation of the facts at the very least.

What we saw at the Pentagon absolutely was NOT what we would expect to see if a large airliner slammed into the building at cruising speed. The damage done to the building facade was not sufficient to support the claim that it was hit by a 110 ton aircraft at even minimum flight speed. The damage revealed by the Pentagons own published photos is orders of magnitude less than would have been expected by such a strike. Note that only photos taken after fire heavily damaged the facade were shown on national media. Photos taken immediately after the strike, although made available to the public, never made it into media broadcasts.

Another argument that is a misrepresentation of facts.

I'm not even willing to address the WTC collapse. Any engineer who honestly examined the evidence would laugh at your claim.

These aren't arguments. These aren't facts carefully presented to debunk the MIHOP legend. These claims are merely the government story dressed up in nicer clothes.

Try again. Nothing would please me more than accepting that my government is not, after all, a group of power-mad megalomaniacs.

[Zynx]

79. Um, 110 tons of mass is *very bad* for the object that masses that much

It increases kinetic energy significantly.

[yella_dawg]

97. Wow!

Ya know, that just never fuckin' occurred to me.

[Zynx]

100. Nice sarcasm. You realize what that mass means for the object, yes?

The KE built up by mass and velocity is going to go somewhere, and in an impact, half of it is going right back into the thing doing the impacting. Simple Newtonian physics.

IOW, plane goes POOF!

[yella_dawg]

107. I think so.

I also think you don't. Newton says that the inertial energy of a moving body is transmitted to an impacted body. The percentage of energy transfer and the rate of transfer (peak energy pulse) are determined by a great many things. (Think about the grade school science display with the straw driven through a board, unbroken, by a tornado.) Things which neither of us can estimate very well simply because we don't know the exact conditions.

The calculations, however, are what makes it possible to produce neat stuff like shaped charges and armor piercing projectiles. It's a fun subject. You should learn something about it.

[longship]

116. Good analogy.

But we do not kind of know what happened. The airplane body would break up into little shards and larger bulkier pieces all which would keep going at their better part of Mach 1 velocity, ripping into everything in their path until their energy was dissapated. Add to that the tons of fuel and the contents of the airliner. That's one heck of a big mess. On top of that, it would be all burning.

Does anybody rationally expect anything to survive that?

[muriel_volestrangler]

142. Newton doesn't say anything about the transfer of 'inertial energy'

but he does say that the action and reaction forces are equal and opposite. Now, what's going to suffer more in a collision? A building consisting of several thousand tons of reinforced concrete, or a 110 ton airplane? Here's a hint: the bottom floor of the Pentagon has to hold up 4 more floors, while bits of the airplane's wing have "do not walk here" written on them.

[demodewd]

153. re: "poof"

If your plane is going "poof",what explains the hole leading into the A-E drive?

[longship]

108. Sorry, but this is incorrect.

It may be massive, but that's because it's very large. The outer skin of a modern airliner is a very, very thin veneer of light alloy stretched over light ribs of similar alloy. These are often glued and riveted together to form an egg shell like fuselage section. The strength of the structure is in its form, the strengthening ribs and other components, like the deck, which compose the complete plane. If you were to see how thin the outer skin actually was, you might not ever want to fly again.

The major component for strength includes the wing spars with are probably the largest pieces of metal in the whole airliner, since almost all of the aerodynamic stresses must be handled by the wings. The fuselage, on the other hand can be made much lighter, and as long as it is stiff and strong and can handle the payload, it doesn't have to be bulky because there's little in the way of aerodynamic stresses on the fuselage.

That's why the fuselage itself is like an egg shell. It may be very strong and very heavy (due to its size), but it cannot handle stresses. In any collision the fuselage breaks apart. In a 400+ knot collision with a reinforced object, it would just desintegrate. Were talking metal thickness on the order of a millimeter.

Those are the facts.

[Frederik]

118. So what happened to the wings?

[Frederik]

71. You can't claim that

it's not debatable what caused the towers to collapse just because this "domino theory" has been proposed. The studies that have been made have obviously taken for granted that fires caused it, and tried to find a conceivable way that could have happened. To conclude otherwise would have been controversial, to say the least. How conceivable it really is is another matter.

Note that FEMA, in their report, can't explain why WTC7 collapsed (and the "design flaw" in WTC7 must have been a different one than in the two towers that were hit, as its construction was quite different, yet it collapsed in the same fashion even though it hadn't been hit by an airplane). The rescue workers on the site were told to keep away from it becase they were going to "bring it down". The 9/11 Commission report conveniently neglects to mention even the existance of WTC7.

[Zynx]

85. I suspect that the impact shock of WTC 1 and 2 took out WTC 7

If you calculate the energy of those towers falling, you get something on the order of a minor tactical nuke, although obviously releasing its energy in a much slower impulse without the unique thermal effect of nuclear reactions

One would expect that sort of energy release to smash much of the surrounding area.

[Frederik]

119. That theory appears more exotic

than controlled demolition to me, but okey.

[philb]

151. So why didn't the closer by buildings collapse?

This theory doesn't sound likely.
Got some evidence of similar events?

Has a building next to a big building brought down by controlled demolition ever collapsed in sympathy?

[demodewd]

154. you're not being realistic

2.3 on the Richter Scale doesn't "take out" anything

[Zynx]

73. The Lockerbie pieces fell. The 9-11 jets descended under power

This is a huge difference, because the complete jet has a gigantic amount of mass and is moving at very high speed because of its engines.

With Lockerbie, the plane is blown up in the air and the pieces start an unpowered descent from an initial velocity of zero. Individually, they have much lower mass than they would in one unit, and they experience orders of magnitude more wind resistance than they all would as one aerodynamic unit. So they mass less, have terminal velocity issues, and must accelerate from zero.

The energy released by the kinetic impact of the 9/11 planes is enormous,, many, many times the KE of any Lockerbie piece and well beyond *ANY* missile that is not a nuclear weapon. That's just KE, not any explosive effect from the fuel - which will be minor considering the fuel is not a particularly energetic explosive as explosives go.

[yella_dawg]

55. Just to stay on the topic you responded to...

Lets talk about the Pentagon plane. I may need to check with Occam right quick, but I don't offhand remember anything about tossing out tricky bits that weaken your argument.

What about the massive main spar that runs down the center of the fuselage of the 757? Remember from your Boeing days, you know, the thing the wings attach to. And while we're on the subject of wings, what about the rather beefy main struts in the wings?

Your discussion wholly ignores the fact that a modern aircraft is not an aluminum bubble, but rather a carefully designed structure with immense strength. Another peeve of mine is posters who come around claiming good credentials and then spout BS.

So, were you in the building maintenance department at Boeing?

[longship]

112. Beefy parts

My degree is in physics. At Boeing I was an engineer doing mathematical modelling. I am a bit put off by your ad hominems.

Any weight is a killer for an airplane. Designers use any trick in the book to reduce weight. On the KC-135 Statotanker, the plane with which I am most familiar, the spars were fairly beefy, but were still made up of light alloys. I believe, but I may be incorrect, that in the more modern planes the spars may even be composite structures. They would certainly be made up of long components, though.

But these alloys don't do well with high temperatures. Airplane alloys don't do well with fire. Aluminum melts at a low temperature. It even oxidizes (burns). There was a whole lot of jet fuel on those planes. It was one of the primary considerations for the choice of these flights.

When the plane struck the building, the particles of the desintegrated fuselage would rip open everything in their path. Nothing would survive intact except for the very fortunate item. There would be tons of thin metal shards, the pieces of the less than mm thick fuselage components. Add the tons of combustable jet fuel which, freed from its desintegrated tanks would mix with available air as it expanded. Add to the mixture the luggage contents, plastic, PVC wiring, and other parts of the airliner's contents. Finally, add a huge amount of paper in the offices from containers ripped open by the shards of metal travelling at the better part of Mach 1. Don't forget the bodies of the already dead passengers.

This sucker is going to burn. And there's no stopping it. The light alloys in an airliner aren't designed to stand up to this. They're going to burn as well, especially since much of it will already be in conveniently small pieces. Those parts that aren't already broken up will burn just the same. It would have been Hell on earth in that building.

[Name removed]

132. Deleted message

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

[yella_dawg]

135. I'm not attacking you.

I'm pointing out that your arguments are disingenuous and poorly developed. When you respond with an argument that is an insult to my intelligence, I will respond appropriately.

To wit:

Aluminum melts at roughly 1200 f. It boils (vaporizes) at 4500 f. Counter to your assertion, alloys of aluminum have higher, and in some cases significantly higher melt points. To suggest otherwise is insulting to me. These are common facts and I would have to be quite ignorant to accept your argument. I am not.

Jet fuel burns at 1800 f maximum in a controlled environment (i.e. a jet engine where it is metered under ideal conditions into a pressurized air stream). An enclosed building is a vastly less efficient burn environment. Testing shows that under such fuel rich conditions, the burn will proceed in the 800f - 900f range. This is considerably below the the melting point of aluminum, and considerably cooler than the boiling point of aluminum. Your argument is in error to the extent that it must be considered a deliberate falsehood.

As for debris, you must know that the considerable debris one would encounter in such an environment would serve to further dampen the burn, and thus the temperature rather than excite the burn. Human bodies are notoriously difficult to burn due to their high water content. This part of your argument is astonishing in the extent to which it attacks my intelligence. My god!

Again, the aluminum alloys used in aircraft construction are considerably more resistant to heat than the pure metal. To suggest otherwise, given your claimed expertise, in disingenuous in the extreme.

When you cherry-pick facts, blend them with obvious falsehoods, and stir them together with a good dollop of drama, you have constructed an argument that is very insulting to my intelligence. If you feel attacked, so be it. If you are uncomfortable with that, don't leave yourself open to it with such ludicrous statements.

Ad hominem my ass.


Your argument is a textbook example of the point I intended to make with the original post. You are so desperately clinging to the government lies that you are making a fool of yourself to defend them. Stop and look at what you are writing!

[Griffy]

65. ok..Im a mechanical engineer.. explain the hole, 3 rings in...

based on the construction of the Pentagon, how do you explain the neat 8' diameter hole 3 rings in? The damage done was much more likely a missile than a plane, and thats without taking into account the skill required to fly a airliner along the suggested trajectory. But its not about what I think, its about the force required to penetrate that many rings. I have worked in materials and contraction, and in my opinion, a 757 did not hit the pentagon. Now, add to this the MOTIVES of the PNAC and the buckets of lies we ALL agree on, it becomes more and more likely that there is a huge cover-up here!

..the answer is simple, where are the tapes from the Virginia Dept. of Transportation that would have clearly filmed whatever hit the pentagon that day. Otherwise, I suggest you do some math on this and see if you can still support that a commercial airliner made that hole!

oh.. and look at the 1 picture of the pentagon later that day, with a piece of debris in the forground... notice how it rests on the ground... if it flew through the air, blown away from the explosion.. wouldn't it "dig in" to the lawn.. just a little even?

[Zynx]

82. Smaller interior hole = denser piece of the jet.

The jet does *not* decelerate uniformly and denser, harder to destroy pieces will penetrate much more than whole aircraft will. It's like using a hollow-point bullet with a tungsten penetrator core.

And no missile other than a nuke can do close to what the object that hit the Pentagon did. You'd be much better off using a jet if you wanted that sort of damage.

[Griffy]

125. so.. what part of a airliner did this?

I dont know of a component on a 757 capable of penetrating that much reinforced concrete.

[demodewd]

155. what pieces?

What pieces would create the huge hole about the girth of the fuselage when the fuselage would have deteriorated in the process of penetrating through at least one cement floor? There was no evidence of fuselage parts in the photos of the debris in the A-E drive? And the landing gear had been chopped up into much smaller parts.

[Minstrel Boy]

110. then you don't know all the evidence

"all the evidence looks like a conspiracy of omission, not a conspiracy of comission"

Do you know that the standing order which covered the shooting down of hijacked aircraft was altered on June 1, 2001, taking discretion away from field commanders and placing it solely in the hands of the Secretary of Defense? Do you know the order was rescinded shortly after 9/11?

Do you know at least six wargames were underway on the morning of 9/11, one simulating live-fly hijackings on the Northeastern seaboard, and one in Washington, simulating an airplane crashing into a government building? Can you imagine how these wargames taxed and confused interceptor response?

You may want to read this, at least, before you presume to talk about "all the evidence," even though it represents just a fragment:

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/08/coincidence-theorists-guide-to-911.html

[nomatrix]

156. Good to see you again Minstrel Boy

Watching CNN rerun 9/11 events recently, I saw some events really stand out, like Aaron Brown, who was covering the events at WTC, say right before the collapse "a HUGE explosion" (2x times), the video of Rumsfeld helping carry someone at the Pentagon, (even though he was in his office on the other side), and KNOWING he was the one who needed to order the shooting down of aircraft, and he's out of reach.

You don't need a degree for this one.
Here is the question. Why would they go to the extraordinary expenses of reinforcing the Pentagon if they didn't expect that it would be attack?

I know there was an article on the WH and Pentagon having 24hr. air protection after that plane crashed on the WH lawn during the Clinton years.

[bpilgrim]

141. no one advocates being LAZY in your research

and thats what most of the puffed up 'critics' are lazy, uninformed popinjays.

debunking' things they've never heard of and proud of it, too :rofl:

the whole horrid event of 911 took almost 2 fucking hours to unfold and our most important military target was hit... a STAND DOWN order was given, no doubt, and buildings were CD, no doubt.

who is that powerful?

fundamentalist Muslims?

I don't think so...

peace

[RBHam]

39. When their POLICY is lying, deceiving and covering up...

I assume the worst.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

46. you said...

"Wake the fuck up, America!!!"

Ditto!


nominated

[SlavesandBulldozers]

47. the label of conspiracy theorist as an epithet is very ironic

given that the "official story" is in itself a conspiracy theory.

[FreedomAngel82]

49. You said it

Nobody wants to listen. I know how it feels to know that your government can do some horrible things such as kill 3,000 people. Nobody wants to believe it or wrap your brain around it. But it happened. The sooner you wake up and look at the facts and the evidence the sooner you can progress and get the bastards.

[Vincardog]

59. You said it.

Wake the Fuck up America. aWoL MIHOP and he will do it again.
Step away from the kool aid and wake the fuck up America.

[theearthisround]

94. People understand 911 was an inside job on an unconscious level...

The problem (if you want to call it that) is that about 10% of people don't want to acknowledge it consciously. They feel if they acknowledge it to be what it is then that will mean they will have to change some beliefs they thought they had. Its funny, I know this because I used to feel the exact same way... I thought it would mean all this crazy stuff acknowledging 911 was an inside job and there is a centralization of power conspiracy, but in reality, looking back I realize Now I understood it the whole time, I just never took the time to consciously acknowledge my unconscious.



1984 by George Orwell

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed - if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan,
'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in New speak, 'doublethink.'
'Stand easy!' barked the instructress, a little more genially.
Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.

[libodem]

98. and just because i need my own tinfoil hat

doesn't mean i can't see or understand how nuts the whole idea sounds. My first fight over this concept had my attacker screaming how could you believe they would kill 3,000 people....people mean nothing to them....money means everything.....they needed a Pearl Harbor, so they made one.....and if people don't understand how closely The Saudis were involved I just don't know.....

[longship]

117. Thanks for the discussion.

Enjoyed it.
Gotta go. Have a nice weekend, everybody.

[TheWatcher]

136. Give Him Credit.

He runs away with his tail between his legs very elegantly.

[yella_dawg]

137. Oh.

I'm so hurt by that.

I sleep at night. Therefore my arguments have no merit.

Cunning observation.

[Straight Shooter]

120. Getting people to accept LIHOP or MIHOP means discarding cherished beliefs

It's like being confronted with damning evidence that your father is a serial killer of young children. You cannot wrap your mind around such a thing if you've been told all your life what a wonderful man he is. Even if you catch him in the act, every fiber in your being will accuse you of having lying eyes.

That's the problem that most Americans have. They drive around in their cars with yellow magnets and bumper stickers that say, "Proud To Be An American." What, who am I to shatter their illusions? They'll tell me to get the F out of their face, I'm a conspiracy nut, and God bless America, blah blah blah.

Most Americans cannot accept that their government, or shall I say the persons in real control of the government, don't give a rat's a** about ordinary citizens. They refuse to believe that most of us in America are expendable except for the highly privileged, insulated elite. Expendable Americans. That's what we are, and let's not kid ourselves about it. But as I said, people just cannot wrap their minds around that because it means discarding cherished beliefs they hold about their country and what they think it stands for.

Never in my life would I have ever believed that I would be writing on a world-wide forum and stating unequivocally that I believe those that hold the reins of our government conspired to kill thousands of my fellow Americans for the goal of creating an American empire. But I have weighed the evidence and that is my verdict. Those who died on September 11 were simply collateral damage. We all know what the bush administration thinks of collateral damage. It's just the price of power, as long as someone else pays it.

[spooked911]

144. Well said.

[cloudythescribbler]

128. A number of questions

First of all, I don't even know what MIHOP and LIHOP or BFEE stand for. Please try to make the discussion less esoteric.

Second, I am not one to reject "conspiracy" theories out of hand. I have been called paranoid schizophrenic, and labelled that and other things many times over. But a theory must have a coherent explanation of the totality of the facts, not just a number of suspicions. Has someone looked into the issue of the cell calls, or the debris on the lawn outside the Pentagon, or the nature and the size of the hole three rings in the Pentagon? Has anyone put together all the evidence in a really coherent picture that would convince a skeptic like me that at least an alternative specific HYPOTHESIS fits the facts as well if not better than the CW. I listen to WBAI.org on the web, and they have had people try to present theories that suggest that planes didn't bring down the World Trade Center (WTC). I recommend WBAI for many things, but these presentations never convinced me, although I have to admit I wasn't exactly taking notes. I would say -- try to have someone put together the most rational-sounding case you can. I wonder if you could convince a science-minded skeptic like Michio Kaku, even to have someone present the overall theory on his program. I have a lot of respect for Michio -- and frankly for Dick Clarke, although Clarke is obviously rightwing in his political leanings, for that matter. His book sounded very persuasive to me, although I can't imagine that anyone in his position would always tell the truth.

Was Clarke engaged in a 'modified limited hangout' when he revealed, before the 2004 election, in FAHRENHEIT 9/11 that Bush quizzed him on 9/12 about links to Iraq, and no other country, and didn't even quiz him about Al Qaeda? It isn't his fault that the 527s and the MSM and others buried that. It should have been the most frequently playing political ad of the YEAR. THAT'S HOW YOU WIN AGGRESSIVELY AND SMART, not with gaffes like Dean that advance the Party relative to the REpublicans little (not to let the Democrats who join in a feeding frenzy of him off the hook -- the point is the whole lot of them just won't defy the program and fight to win.)

There are MANY conspiracies in our government. It is, as C. Wright Mills said (and he was accused of being a 'conspiracy theorist' when he published THE POWER ELITE in the 1950s, before drinking himself to death in his 40s in 1962): It is one thing to locate conspiracies IN history, and another to see history as, in effect, a conspiracy.

I see the US as a bipartisan political machine (like the model of Walter Karp in INDISPENSABLE ENEMIES, despite some blooper theories about Vietnam and the FDR Court-packing scheme). Karp's model fit the Clinton Administration in 1993-94 so well I was reading from it at the time over the air. Bush is less interesting theoretically -- an out-and-out imperialist; no mystery there. Then we have a media machine devoted to justifying the lying, as described by Noam Chomsky in MANUFACTURING CONSENT (both these books are must reading). But I go further in pointing to the decisive role of repression, especially underground repression, as like the 'dark matter' of US politics, that completes the circle of the kind of discreetly (mostly underground) repressive system in the US. It explains why there is no Greenpeace type organization even calling for an end to absolute poverty ("world hunger") when there is more organizing for animals'
rights at things like dog and cat shows etc in a month than over the politics of absolute poverty in the US in a year. Nothing against dogs & cats etc. but hey! You can't save the habitat of the whole Third World without a globally financed ecologically centered development program for the poor anyway.

And there is much else about repression in the US -- I have experienced a LOT of it myself. And it is remarkable that, as FAHRENHEIT 9/11 pointed out, George Bush Sr and Osama's father were TOGETHER at the time of 9/11. WOW!!! And there is no doubt about how 9/11 has been USED. I call 9/11 "Christmas for Tories", a slogan that I think progressives should push widely. But as for theories that the planes didn't cause it, I am not yet sold -- I don't even know what the terms stand for.

[leftofthedial]

129. it's pitchforks and torches time

obviously the system is incapable of rendering justice anymore

[spooked911]

145. Yep. When do we go?

[dbt]

133. Kicking for the sheer JOY of seeing a 9/11 post

A. actually STAY in General Discussion (as opposed to being quickly moved to the 9/11 Forum, where it cannot be recommended) and
B. make it to the Greatest page.

[dooner]

139. I so agree

[muriel_volestrangler]

143. It's not a meaningless argument

You cannot use the existence of whistleblowers in one area (eg the Downing Street Minutes) to prove that a theory in another area is correct.

The fact that whistleblowers come forward to denounce the US government for actions that many Americans think were acceptable (like lying to invade Iraq) would seem to indicate that, when no-one comes forward with inside stories from something that 99% of Americans would think to be the ultimate evil, then there's a good chance that the theories are wrong.

[RBHam]

146. Now THIS is a thread!

The point is that the BFEE make it a POLICY to lie, distort and manipulate to fulfill their Neo-Fascist agenda.

If they've lied about some things, I asume they lie about everything.