What I still don't get about the 9/11 attacks

[begin_within]

The proper response to the 9/11 attacks would be to agressively pursue, capture and prosecute the parties who did it as well as ordered it and enabled it, and make an example of them to discourage anyone else from trying something similar. And to fix any weaknesses in our national security that it exposed. Ideally our lifestyle should not be affected any more than minimal requirements such as stricter airport screening, or whatever is necessary to isolate and insulate us from the danger. Ideally the life we live should be the same as we were living before the attack, and we should not have to live in fear or worry of another such attack. The job of the federal government should be to provide a level of protection, so that we don't have to even worry about it. They should do their job and we should not have to worry about a constant threat. We should not have to live in a constant "War on Terror" and live under constant surveillance and be subject to constant reminders of it. We should achieve "closure" from the event and move on from it, not forgetting it happened but not allowing the event to decrease the quality of our lives and the lives of our future citizens. The permanent change should only involve security, to insulate us from terrorism, and not be a permanent change in the fabric of our society and the quality of our lives. In this sense the federal government has failed, in my opinion. Instead of insulating us from terrorists they want to bring them to our TV screens and sometimes even point the finger at us instead of the real source of the danger. I have never heard Bush or Cheney talk about "restoring" America to the relatively peaceful, prosperous condition it was in before 9/11, which should have been their job. The fact that this has never been their goal leads me to believe that they aren't all that unhappy that the 9/11 attacks happened. They try to act like they feel the horror of it, but their subsequent actions demonstrate to me that they're actually glad it happened. Instead of trying to stamp out terrorism, they are content to engage in a permanent battle.

[Cleita]

1. They can't agressively pursue, capture and

prosecute the parties who did it as well as ordered it and enabled it because the circumstantial evidence points to them and some of their buddies in the Saudi royal family. In this light, it hints that Osama bin Laden and Dick Cheney were accomplices. We need an independent 9-11 commission, grand jury or whatever justice department we can get that isn't afraid of Washington, to investigate this, put people under oath to testify and get to the bottom of it.

[CJCRANE]

2. Also the fact

that they say they are against religious extremism and yet they do everything they can to increase christian fundamentalism in America and their closest ally in the ME is Saudi Arabia which is the heart of islamic fundamentalism (also not forgetting that Iraq was a secular country before the invasion).

[Ghost in the Machine]

3. K&R! Good points... This misadministration just expounds on its failures

every time they mention "the war on terror", 9-11 or anything about al Qaida. The terrorists have won, because our own government drills it into us to be scared of them.

Why hasn't anyone made this connection before?

[OwnedByFerrets]

4. Its something that Thom Hartmann

has been preaching for quite some time. We are not the only country to have ever been attacked by terrorist, but we seem to be the only one cowering in fear.....propagated by our own government and the media.

[Gregorian]

5. Interesting. I am in almost complete disagreement. But only in a sense.

I believe the proper response to 9/11 was to ask why it happened. To introspect. There is a very simple answer that very few people want to think about. It's our lifestyle. This statement is highly threatening to everyone. It threatens our comfort. Our convenient lifestyle. If we ask why 9/11 happened, it's an easy answer. Meddling in other people's lives. We steal what we want in order to have our extravagant lifestyle be affordable.

I waited for many years for 911. It was long overdue. I knew it was coming. And after all it had already happened once. But we ignored it then as we are now. What I'm saying is so foreign for most Americans. It sounds almost nutty.

The bottom line is, we have to start taking responsibility for our actions. The war on terrorism starts with me. Not with them. And it's primarily about petroleum. I remember listening to Dave Emory about thirty years ago. He made sense when he said that Americans confuse liberty with comfort. They don't hate us for our freedoms. They hate us for meddling in their lives. Installing dictators like the Shah, or Saddam. Or financing wars in South America. Or Operation Condor.

And of equal importance is the effect we are having on the environment. If we address our actions, we also address our carbon footprint. It's two for one. But it requires sacrifice. And that is not going to happen. So prepare yourselves for bad times ahead. More military funding. More terrorism. More wars. Fewer civil liberties.

I need to add the obvious. Stop looking outside yourselves. This is not just me talking. This is Scott Ritter, Noam Chomsky, among many. If we take the steps in our personal lives, the rest follows. Maybe it really does take a degree in engineering to see how things work. I don't think so. The corporations are doing what we are asking them to do.

[againes654]

15. You are so correct

I have said this for many years. We are an arrogant nation that believes that all nations should live just as we do. I don't remember Iraq asking us to come in and "free them". If you can call what we have done freeing them. If that is this admin's policy, why are we not freeing all nations that live under violent, dangerous situations? That is why "terriosts" hate us. Hummm what is the definition of terrorst?

Terrorism
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

Terrorism is a term used to describe unlawful violence or other unlawful harmful acts committed (or threatened) against civilians by groups or persons for political or other ideological goals.

Gee who else do we know that has done that?:sarcasm:

[mhatrw]

32. Who created Emmanuel Goldstein? We all did!

Who is more pathetic -- the right in its worship of hatred, war and authoritarianism or the left in its prayerful hope for the messianic deliverance of the "just" wrath of the downtrodden?

[Gregorian]

35. The right.

In every way, I believe the right created him. And even though I don't think pathetic is an accurate description for this subject, it's the intentions of the right that are. The intentions are important. There is nothing pathetic about the intentions of the left. Only dignity. What is pathetic is the right's sabotage of them.

Man, I forgot about Goldstein. :) I believe he was created by the fear the right instills.

But I think this is not the same as terrorism. We have violated people directly.

I guess it seems like acts of forgiveness and good intentions are misconstrued as weakness. Jesus was not weak. His acts were more powerful than any bomb ever dropped. But that also opens a can of worms around here. I prolly should leave that out.

[mhatrw]

38. My view is that those who benefit most from 9/11 had far better

means, motive and opportunity to pull it off.

I'm not saying that the masses we have abused are impotent to strike back at us -- just that when evaluating suspects we should start with those that have the best means, motive and opportunity.

[faithnotgreed]

36. precisely right gregorian

you summarize the complexities and what actually drives the (western) world but there will/must come a time when the truth stops us in our tracks

[dailykoff]

42. Blowback is a nice idea

but it's just the official evil-Moslems story with a touch of added guilt. The reality is much simpler and in my view less depressing, because it turns out there ISN'T a dark horde waiting to steal our SUVs and color TVs, and never was.

[The2ndWheel]

6. Very imperial of you

"We should not have to...be subject to constant reminders of it"

"make an example of them to discourage anyone else from trying something similar"

Anyone else see anything there?

"We should not have to...live under constant surveillance"

What if constant surveillance is the "whatever" part of..."Ideally our lifestyle should not be affected any more than minimal requirements such as stricter airport screening, or whatever is necessary to isolate and insulate us from the danger."...that ideal situation?

"Ideally the life we live should be the same as we were living before the attack, and we should not have to live in fear or worry of another such attack. The job of the federal government should be to provide a level of protection, so that we don't have to even worry about it. They should do their job and we should not have to worry about a constant threat."

Wouldn't constant surveillance be a level of protection? If it's done correctly of course. Done by people who know what they're doing.

"I have never heard Bush or Cheney talk about "restoring" America to the relatively peaceful, prosperous condition it was in before 9/11"

Wow, really stretching the use of the word relatively there.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

18. "A New Normalcy"

Wasn't it Cheney or Rumsfield or somebody within the Bush (mis-)administration that said something to the effect that they believed that our so-called "war on terrorism"(and presumably everything that they believe needs to come about in response to it) will become a "new normal" and that "9/11 changed everything"? I think that that pretty much summarizes their point of view about how they have manipulated things since then. We can't ignore the facts that the events of 9/11/01 happened, that it was devastating to our country, and that need some basic commonsense changes in terms of security measures to insure that something similar doesn't happen again but there's no excuse for our government to force us to live in a state of perpetual fear. The Bush (mis-)administration actually seems to want to have it both ways like with Iraq. They rave about how good of a job (gag) they've done protecting our country SINCE 9/11/01 but then turn around and issue dire warnings of impending doom again and again if we(don't) do "x...y....z" (basically whatever they want). If I recall correctly the Clinton administration busted up terror cells and foiled some pretty nasty terror plots (i.e. "Millenium Plot") throughout his Presidency but to the extent that such plots were publicized and/or even talked about, I don't recall ever feeling like we were being made to live in an exaggerated state of fear about terrorism or anything else like we are now and frankly, I'm sick of it too.

[The2ndWheel]

39. I'm not saying Cheney and Rumsfeld weren't giddy

They signed on in a blood pact with the PNAC clique.

The Clinton administration did what they had to, but it didn't stop people from doing anything. They just came up with new plots. They'll come up with new plots whether it's a war or police action.

As to various states of fear, what aren't we terrified of? Name one aspect of life that doesn't have our collective society in a stranglehold. The state(usually if it's run by the other side), corporations, globalization, isolationism, environment, pollution, religion, science, healthcare for profit, socialist healthcare, pills for everything, pills for thinking there's a pill for everything, TV, RW and LW radio, major media, alternative media, Hollywood, the south, the American empire, war, oil, cars, China, taxes, nuclear weapons, poison in our food/air/water, too much regulation, too little regulation, total surveillance, chance, death, the sniffles, etc, etc, etc, and the new kid on the block, terrorism. If we weren't a society basically based on fear, what would we do? How would we sell anything?

[Proud Liberal Dem]

50. Well, I HAVE read Barry Glassner's "Culture of Fear"

A point that Michael Moore did highlight rather effectively in "Bowling For Columbine", however I guess I just never noticed it until immediately following 9/11/01. That was a time period when I myself lived in a rather exaggerated state of fear for my life and those of my loved ones, probably for the first time in my life. After a few months, I came back to my senses just in time, I might add, to realize, apparently correctly that Bush et. al were attempting to dupe us into an unprovoked "war of choice" against Iraq. I also began realizing how silly and phoney all of the so-called "terror alerts" and "warnings" actually were. Watching Fahrenheit 9/11 reminded me of that particular time period and just how silly a lot of those things actually were. Of course, it also depressed to me to realize just how easy it was for Bush et. al to dupe/manipulate a lot of the public and members of Congress were back then. Anyway, I think a lot of media stories are overhyped and after awhile I have found that, at least for me, a certain sense of "fear fatigue" sets in and enables me to tune out a lot of the BS. I don't even really watch a lot of news broadcasts and when I do, I have noticed that many of the shocking/appalling story "lead-ins" often end up being far more dramatic than the actual stories that they highlight. I'm not surprised much anymore as it is almost always an attempt to garner ratings.

[Locrian]

7. this ties in ...

The fact that this has never been their goal leads me to believe that they aren't all that unhappy that the 9/11 attacks happened.

This ties in with "The Shock Doctrine" that has been mentioned on other DU threads. It (911) was the perfect "shock" that allowed bush/neocons to implement their plans.

http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/short-film

[TrogL]

13. Welcome to LIHOP

[Kazak]

8. I don't really recommend many...

but I'll rec that!

[libodem]

9. LITHOP

and then I think of Cheney down in the Washington bunkers orchestrating all of it because he was conveniently at control and command, for practice drills ...telling Norad to stand down....don't ever think this wasn't fixed and the overreaction staged to make it appear they are so aghast it happened.....they loved it, thrived on it and masturbate to it to this very day....

[TheWraith]

11. You're repeating myths.

"and then I think of Cheney down in the Washington bunkers orchestrating all of it because he was conveniently at control and command, for practice drills"

Cheney had nothing to do with any practice drills. This is a myth repeated by 9/11 conspiracy theorists, but it's not at all true.

"...telling Norad to stand down...."

Another myth. There was no "stand down" order.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

19. Not a myth. From the White House... Cheney being placed in charge of

counterterrorism preparedness and emergency response.

As you know, there were extensive drills that day.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/05/20010508.html

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
May 8, 2001

Statement by the President
Domestic Preparedness Against Weapons of Mass Destruction

Protecting America's homeland and citizens from the threat of weapons of mass destruction is one of our Nation's important national security challenges. Today, more nations possess chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons than ever before. Still others seek to join them. Most troubling of all, the list of these countries includes some of the world's least-responsible states -- states for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life. Some non-state terrorist groups have also demonstrated an interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

Against this backdrop, it is clear that the threat of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons being used against the United States -- while not immediate -- is very real. That is why our Nation actively seeks to deny chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons to those seeking to acquire them. That is why, together with our allies, we seek to deter anyone who would contemplate their use. And that is also why we must ensure that our Nation is prepared to defend against the harm they can inflict.

Should our efforts to reduce the threat to our country from weapons of mass destruction be less than fully successful, prudence dictates that the United States be fully prepared to deal effectively with the consequences of such a weapon being used here on our soil.

Today, numerous Federal departments and agencies have programs to deal with the consequences of a potential use of a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon in the United States. Many of these Federal programs offer training, planning, and assistance to state and local governments. But to maximize their effectiveness, these efforts need to be seamlessly integrated, harmonious, and comprehensive.

Therefore, I have asked Vice President Cheney to oversee the development of a coordinated national effort so that we may do the very best possible job of protecting our people from catastrophic harm. I have also asked Joe Allbaugh, the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to create an Office of National Preparedness. This Office will be responsible for implementing the results of those parts of the national effort overseen by Vice President Cheney that deal with consequence management. Specifically it will coordinate all Federal programs dealing with weapons of mass destruction consequence management within the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Justice, and Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other federal agencies. The Office of National Preparedness will work closely with state and local governments to ensure their planning, training, and equipment needs are addressed. FEMA will also work closely with the Department of Justice, in its lead role for crisis management, to ensure that all facets of our response to the threat from weapons of mass destruction are coordinated and cohesive. I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts.

No governmental responsibility is more fundamental than protecting the physical safety of our Nation and its citizens. In today's world, this obligation includes protection against the use of weapons of mass destruction. I look forward to working closely with Congress so that together we can meet this challenge.

[earth mom]

23. Wow-The smoking gun? nt

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

24. Pretty stunning. eom

[Bolo Boffin]

26. I didn't realize that passenger planes were WMD.

Specifically, "chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons."

There is no effort described in that memo that would have done anything to stop the 9/11 attacks.

There is no effort described in that memo that would have given Dick Cheney authority over anything happening on 9/11.

There are plenty of reasons to oppose George Bush and Dick Cheney without this.

ETA: Seriously. The OP has some legitimate, actual points, and now you're talking conspiracy theories about 9/11. This is precisely why 9/11 belongs to the Republicans. Oh, it belongs to all of us, and it shouldn't be politicized at all. But these specious attacks on Dick Cheney invalidate real questions, like the ones in the OP.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

30. The point is that there were war games that day. Northern Command's games was counter terrorism and

there were bio warfare drills in NY. According to the signing statement I posted, this was Cheney's domain.


PNAC is Very Real. If you read Rebuilding America's Defenses most every goal in that paper has been achieved. Without 9/11 there wouldn't have been this Nebulous war on terror and an excuse to go into Iraq. Iran is next on their list in Rebuilding, and if you are watching the Patraeus hearings today, the war drums are beating strong.

Do you believe that Cheney was behind the lies that led us to war in Iraq? That he had his Office of Special Plans make-up and skew Intelligence? How many thousands of Americans have been killed and maimed by those lies? How many thousands upon thousands of Iraqis? We are talking about a man who couldn't give a crap about the value of human life. That same disinterest in the sanctity of life can make one understand how this man can behind the death of 3000 people on our soil giving him a starting point to achieve his goals.

People who believe as I do come from all different political ideologies. I'm a Progressive as most DUer are, and you've seen the 9/11 polls here. Most believe in LIHOP or MIHOP.

[TheWraith]

41. You're mistaken on several points.

One, there was no Northern Command on 9/11. It wasn't created until October of that year. The drills being run by NORAD had absolutely nothing to do with counter-terrorism--they involved intercepting Russian bomber flights. There were also no biowarfare drills happening in NY. All of these things are myths that have sprung up around 9/11 and are wrongly repeated as pure fact by conspiracy theorists.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

48. Sorry about the mistake re Northern Command and NORAD. Here's on biochemical

drills in NYC. They were "scheduled" for 9/12 but equipment was in place on 9/11.

From Giuliani's testimony in front of the 9/11 Commission

http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing11/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-05-19.htm#two

Snip

Later on I visited the police department, our backup command center, our number two backup command center would have been the police department, 7 World Trade Center was the primary one, the backup was the police academy. The number three would have been MetroTech in Brooklyn which is fully equipped to be a command center. We made the decision to use the police academy because we didn't want to leave this island, we didn't want to leave Manhattan. We thought it would be a terrible statement if city government left the island of Manhattan. But then we realized pretty shortly that the police academy was too small, and we selected Pier 92 as our command center.

And the reason Pier 92 was selected as the command center was because on the next day, on September 12th, Pier 92 was going to have a drill. It had hundreds of people here, from FEMA, from the federal government, from the state, from the State Emergency Management Office, and they were getting ready for a drill for biochemical attack.So that was going to be the place they were going to have the drill. The equipment was already there so we were able to establish a command center there within three days that was two-and-a-half to three times bigger than the command center that we had lost at 7 World Trade Center. And it was from there that the rest of the search and rescue effort was completed.

[TheWraith]

52. So what possible relevance does that have?

Other than to try and create an impression in people's minds that there's something suspicious going on?

I bet there were also city safety inspections scheduled for 9/11/01, police training, building refits, all sorts of different things. Big cities have stuff going on all the time.

[mhatrw]

34. If not Cheney, who was actually in charge of responding to the 9/11 attacks?

What was Bush doing during the attacks?

What was Rumsfeld doing during the attacks?

What was General Myers doing during the attacks?

What was General Winfield doing during he attacks?

Who was in charge of responding to a domestic military attack on 9/11?

[TheWraith]

43. Ultimate military and national defense authority rests with the POTUS.

As Commander In Chief, Bush would be the one responsible for organizing and delegating a response. Of course, being an incompetant, he sat there with his eyes glazed over in a schoolroom, doing nothing, and nobody else knew to take the reins.

[mhatrw]

47. Yes, Bush is incompetent.

But what about the Secret Service? The US was experiencing a terrorist attack. Why was Bush allowed to dawdle for 25 minutes and then go ahead with his little photo op?

How did the Secret Service know for sure that Bush himself wasn't one of the targets of the coordinated terrorist attack? Remember that in July of that very year at the G8 conference in Genoa Italy, Bush was moved from a hotel to an air craft carrier because of concerns about terrorists flying hijacked planes into buildings. So why wasn't he moved quickly on 9/11 for his safety as well as that of all the little kids in that Sarasota school?

[TheWraith]

49. They didn't know for sure that Bush hadn't been targeted.

"So why wasn't he moved quickly on 9/11 for his safety as well as that of all the little kids in that Sarasota school?"

However, absent an immediate threat--that meaning confirmed intel of an incoming attack, a person with a gun, etcetera--the Secret Service doesn't get to make decisions about where the POTUS goes. If whoever was in charge at the school--almost certainly Andy Card--said "We're staying here until X," then they would stay there.

Further, there was apparently a crank call about Air Force One having been targeted, which might have contributed to hesitation about moving Shrub back the the plane. Or it might have just been panicked indecision.

[mhatrw]

58. So when USA is undergoing a domestic attack, Andy Card calls the shots?

And our President remains a sitting duck at a previously scheduled photo op? What kind of contingency planning is that?

Does Card also get to decide whether or not there is an immediate threat on the President? What kind of chain of command is that? And, even if Card was in command, he's not so incompetent to risk his own life in this manner.

[TheWraith]

40. Developing a plan for WMD response has NOTHING to do with military wargames.

You're talking about coordinating civilian agencies for emergency response. That is a completely different thing from a military exercise which has been regularly scheduled for years, involving a response to a Russian bomber threat.

I repeat: there is absolutely no evidence that Cheney had any involvement with military activities, and every indication that he did not.

[libodem]

25. well you made me doubt myself so

I googled and got 1,890,000 hits that say you are wrong. I'm not good with cutting and pasting or even links so I usually go with what I have in my head. If I could I'd link you to www.from the wilderness.com for a story called, Crossing the Rubicon, simplifying the case against Dick Cheney; by, Michael Cane, and Prison Planet.com Did Dick Cheney lie about his 9/11 whereabouts? It's a 5 minute video. Those looked the best out of the 20 pages of Where was Dick Cheney on 9/11 2001.

[Bolo Boffin]

27. If you are relying on Mike Ruppert and Prison Planet for your information...

...there isn't much hope for talking you down.

[TheWraith]

44. Prison Planet is never, ever reliable.

Try looking at some of their other articles. You can find all sorts of insane crap on that site. I suspect they even believe in alien cattle mutilation.

I could claim that a Google search shows 1.9 million hits proving the Sun is actually a giant flaming lemon. It doesn't alter reality, though the 9/11 conspiracy theorists have done an admirable job in filling the internet with bullshit and misinformation.

[dbt]

37. Back it up, Wraith.

Without sources, you're repeating talking points.

[TheWraith]

45. Nice strawman argument, but you're mistaken.

It's incumbant on the person who made the claims to prove that Cheney was directing the wargames, and that the Air Force was ordered to stand down.

[TheWraith]

10. Yep.

"The proper response to the 9/11 attacks would be to agressively pursue, capture and prosecute the parties who did it as well as ordered it and enabled it, and make an example of them to discourage anyone else from trying something similar."

Yes.

"And to fix any weaknesses in our national security that it exposed."

Also yes.

"They should do their job and we should not have to worry about a constant threat. We should not have to live in a constant "War on Terror" and live under constant surveillance and be subject to constant reminders of it."

Still spot on.

"I have never heard Bush or Cheney talk about "restoring" America to the relatively peaceful, prosperous condition it was in before 9/11, which should have been their job. The fact that this has never been their goal leads me to believe that they aren't all that unhappy that the 9/11 attacks happened."

Nope. After all, it gave them the excuse to follow through on all the things they wanted to do like going into Iraq, playing international politics with the military, and imperializing the presidency.

If 9/11 hadn't happened, Bush would have gone down in history as an incompetant one-term president who failed to accomplish anything at all. He'll still get most of that reputation, but 9/11 allowed him and his cronies to fearmonger their way into "accomplishing" a lot of the things they would have otherwise been barred from, and enshrined Shrub as a "great leader" among the most brain-dead, nationalistic, para-fascist 20% or so of the American public.

[cascadiance]

17. The only "peaceful" message I heard from * was to go back and go shopping...

... as we would "normally" do.

But of course the motivation there wasn't to try to get us to think peacefully, but to persuade us to help his corporate buddies in other ways such that the shoe of cronyism still fits!

[rudy23]

12. What kind of leaders encourage their population to be afraid of a terrorist attack?

Isn't that the point of a terrorist attack?

Why do we give them that power? Why do our leaders repeat the phrase "9/11 changed everything"? Why would you want to claim or admit that, much less hammer that point home? Especially when the people who perpetrated the attacks did so with little money or weaponry at their disposal.

Even if you rule out the possibility of an inside job, our response to the attacks has been nearly criminal. Using someone ELSE'S attack to justify your policy is still terrorism, regardless of your link to the attack.

[Richard Steele]

29. Craven, cowardly, pathologically self-serving ones. That's what kind. nm

[TheWraith]

46. That's EXACTLY the point of a terrorist attack.

To scare the targets, and cow them into changing the way that they live. To sow fear among them in the hopes of breaking down their society.

As I've said before: Bush has done more for Bin Laden than Bin Laden could have ever hoped to do on his own.

[Warren DeMontague]

14. You have to understand that the REAL threat materialized around 1990...

When the Iron Curtain dissolved, then the USSR fell, and the cold war ended, and people started in with crazy-talk about a "peace dividend".

Military-Industrial Pooh-bahs who had been riding a cushiony gravy train for 45 years all of a sudden found themselves confronted with a very real, scary, security threat- the threat of funding cuts.

Now, fortunately, they have a handy boogeyman who can never be found, never be defeated, (pops up on video at well-timed intervals sounding like Michael Moore, Al Gore, etc. :eyes:) always moves around from country to country depending on who we'd like to invade at any given moment.

It's really fucking convenient.

[dogday]

16. They have been looking in caves, when they should of

been searching the beauty shops for Bin Laden.. Apparently he likes to dye his hair....

[earth mom]

20. Fear mongering works for them. Which is one reason LIHOP/MIHOP is not so far fetched after all. nt

[cali]

21. Paragraph breaks are your friend

and the friend of all your potential readers. I'm simply constitutionally incapable of reading the above as formatted. And I'm not the only one.

[DemGa]

22. So much secrecy

So much has been hidden by Bushco, it's hard getting to the truth of just exactly what our response has, and has not been. And I have read a LOT of information over the past six years.

I can only imagine how lost the average American must be. Hopelessly, I would think.

[CJCRANE]

28. Anyone who has

some knowledge of coups and revolutions of the 20th century will know that the people who carry out the violence often aren't the ones who take the power. Same with 9/11. The hijackers were (unwittingly) just hired hands. If you look at 9/11 as a violent counter-revolution then it will make sense.

on edit: sp

[texas1928]

31. A scared public, is a controllable public.

Keep them scared and they will take any thing you say as fact.

[rucky]

33. What Texas said.

we all know there are several actual policies we can implement to effectively reduce the threat of global terror, but we're not even at the stage where we can begin discussing these options. The fucks in the white house are not interested in solutions.

[truedelphi]

51. You say: I have never heard Bush or Cheney talk about "restoring" America to the

relatively peacefulprosperopus condition that it was in before 9/11..."

Actually the Shit was about to hit the fan. The business section of any major newspaper you might have been reading Sept 1 to Sept 10th 2001 told of outsourcing, Enron investigations, missing billions in the pentagon, outsourcing, bankruptcies, etc. The economic situation was in the toilet.

This whole diabolical mess has been very good for the Powers that be. Halliburton stock has gone from under $ 6 to over $ 32 per share. We can't focus on the Enron stuff or the missing Pentagon Billions because there are wars to fight and stategies with which to intimidate air line travellers.

[B Calm]

53. The terrorists all died on 9/11.. Pretty hard to prosecute a dead person.

[CJCRANE]

54. How about the paymasters who provided $500,000?

Yeah, let's just forget about them and let them go free.

Nice try.

[B Calm]

55. You know who they are? 9-11 was an inside job!

[CJCRANE]

56. It's on the public record.

You can find out who they are if you want to.

I never said it was inside job.

;)

[PATRICK]

57. A one track WH

is only engaged in one thought pattern and one pattern of behavior contrary to the very definition of nation and office. they are there to take full dvantage of everything. This automatically leads to the irrelevance of perfoming any security operation, any defense, any pursuit of the criminals, any leadership of nation other than the whip of fear itself, any service to the people and nation whatsoever.

Anything resembling national service or a responsible relationship with anyone else is simply absent from their makeup and regarded actually as a threa. Not one nickel to the victims of Katrina but anything that would profit from their demise and deportation. If evil is the oppositoin to good, the dedicated policy of the WH has been ruthlessly consistent. The facts MIGHt show that Cheney cleared the path knowlingly to 9/11. There is ample evidence to suggest the need to investigate that.

But there is no evidence needed to show that the demonstrated performance of the WH is only to exploit what has happened and that the worst things are to their personal advantage because that leaves them operating alone in the realm of power and not allied in any cooperative venture for the general good with people of good will.

I may not have proof of their por-active role or even passive role in causing 9/11, but yes, I can fathom the transparent depths of their single-minded callousness and determination. we have had many concrete example. Only, the heart trembles at what is clearly set before our eyes and doubt is forcefed by the blinding propaganda of the whipped establishment.