11/9 & middle eastern war, Facts shmacts

[Michael Hardner]

The official sources claimed that Saddam had WMD. Official sources are not always right and should not be trusted blindly. Should they be trusted in this case? Probably. But I think the conspiracy theorists have forced the official sources to think more carefully about what happened. I don't think the information in the Popular Mechanics article would be available there were not people who questioned the official story.

The issue is not whether someone questions the official story, the issue is whether they cling to the their theories once they have been credibly refuted.

Exactly.

WMD is a great example. It was stated as a fact, questioned by the press and people in general and didn't stand up to scrutiny - at least not yet.

[GostHacked]

We are not talking about UFO's or the Lochness.

No, but much of the rationalization that's used to support arguments that those are cover-ups are identical to the ones used for 9-11.

For example, 'it's always good to ask questions'. Another - official sources can't be trusted. Even closer to the point - finding strange anomalies and unexplained facts and concluding that there must be a conspiracy at work.

And - yes - the Popular Mechanics article is a good read, if only to show that many seemingly unexplainable things can be explained. You can bet that the ones that aren't will be fuel for the conspiracy engines.

Exactly.

But c'mon MH, let's face it. The evidence of the lochness monster is far more compelling than the "cement powder, 110-stories-of-exposives" BS we're being subjected to here...

I really do enjoy reading this stuff for entertainment value,though. They go round and round in circles without proving anything.

The more you reply the more you are subjecting yourself to it. I am not holding your mouse hand and making you click to reply. I was not trying to turn this thread into a farce, which by now it clearly seems that way.

So maybe just move along to another thread. Or hit that ignore button to stop subjecting yourself to this agonizing pain you seem to be in.

[lost&outofcontrol]

Iraq did have "WMDs" and the United States knew this because they're the ones that sold them to Saddam. link

One minute, The US doesn't care what Saddam does to his people(mid 80s, ask Rumsfeld)and all of a sudden he becomes the devil himself. Funny how we're always the good guys.

[GostHacked]

Iraq did have "WMDs" and the United States knew this because they're the ones that sold them to Saddam. link

One minute, The US doesn't care what Saddam does to his people(mid 80s, ask Rumsfeld)and all of a sudden he becomes the devil himself. Funny how we're always the good guys.

We also know that the US supplied arms to Iran AND Iraq during Reagan's Administration.

[PolyNewbie]

"Apart from the fact that I haven't posted my opinion yet I guess. I certainly don't agree with all the conspiracy theories out there"

Then you must believe that there are no conspiracies and that the powers in place in our society today genuinly have our best interest as their number one concern?

As far as I'm concerned there is definetly something up. I see people here have taken the "follow the money" approach. I have been looking at the physical evidence and looking through various interpretations and comming to these conclusions and being 99.9999 % sure. The physical evidence proves that the official line is wrong.

[Michael Hardner]

Then you must believe that there are no conspiracies and that the powers in place in our society today genuinly have our best interest as their number one concern?

Obviously, it's not an either/or proposition... this is called a false dilemma.

As far as I'm concerned there is definetly something up. I see people here have taken the "follow the money" approach.

The fact money was made from what happened after 9/11 doesn't mean that the events were planned from the beginning.

I have been looking at the physical evidence and looking through various interpretations and comming to these conclusions and being 99.9999 % sure. The physical evidence proves that the official line is wrong.

Look at the Popular Mechanics article above. It debunks a lot of these theories. I think your opinion arises more out of your cynicism than from the facts. As I've said, there's no way anybody could have executed such a risky and complicated plan, or even had it approved.

"Sir, we're going to destroy the World Trade Centre and make millions in the process. Here's how...."

[JerrySeinfeld]

We are not talking about UFO's or the Lochness.

No, but much of the rationalization that's used to support arguments that those are cover-ups are identical to the ones used for 9-11.

For example, 'it's always good to ask questions'. Another - official sources can't be trusted. Even closer to the point - finding strange anomalies and unexplained facts and concluding that there must be a conspiracy at work.

And - yes - the Popular Mechanics article is a good read, if only to show that many seemingly unexplainable things can be explained. You can bet that the ones that aren't will be fuel for the conspiracy engines.

Exactly.

But c'mon MH, let's face it. The evidence of the lochness monster is far more compelling than the "cement powder, 110-stories-of-exposives" BS we're being subjected to here...

I really do enjoy reading this stuff for entertainment value,though. They go round and round in circles without proving anything.

The more you reply the more you are subjecting yourself to it. I am not holding your mouse hand and making you click to reply. I was not trying to turn this thread into a farce, which by now it clearly seems that way.

So maybe just move along to another thread. Or hit that ignore button to stop subjecting yourself to this agonizing pain you seem to be in.

Can you read? I just said I find it immensely entertaining, not painful.

Keep it up! My money's still on professor plum in the library.

[PolyNewbie]

We are not talking about UFO's or the Lochness.

No, but much of the rationalization that's used to support arguments that those are cover-ups are identical to the ones used for 9-11.

For example, 'it's always good to ask questions'. Another - official sources can't be trusted. Even closer to the point - finding strange anomalies and unexplained facts and concluding that there must be a conspiracy at work.

And - yes - the Popular Mechanics article is a good read, if only to show that many seemingly unexplainable things can be explained. You can bet that the ones that aren't will be fuel for the conspiracy engines.

Exactly.

But c'mon MH, let's face it. The evidence of the lochness monster is far more compelling than the "cement powder, 110-stories-of-exposives" BS we're being subjected to here...

I really do enjoy reading this stuff for entertainment value,though. They go round and round in circles without proving anything.

The more you reply the more you are subjecting yourself to it. I am not holding your mouse hand and making you click to reply. I was not trying to turn this thread into a farce, which by now it clearly seems that way.

So maybe just move along to another thread. Or hit that ignore button to stop subjecting yourself to this agonizing pain you seem to be in.

Can you read? I just said I find it immensely entertaining, not painful.

Keep it up! My money's still on professor plum in the library.

Look up operation Northwoods.

[Riverwind]

Look up operation Northwoods.

Holy crap (link)

Operation Northwoods, or Northwoods, was a 1962 plan to generate U.S. public support for military action against the Cuban government of Fidel Castro as part of the U.S. government's Operation Mongoose anti-Castro initiative. The plan, which was not implemented, called for various false flag actions, including simulated or real state sponsored terrorism (such as hijacked planes) on U.S. and Cuban soil

I guess the idea that the US gov't would stage a terrorist event is not as far fetched as some people might like to believe.

[Michael Hardner]

I guess the idea that the US gov't would stage a terrorist event is not as far fetched as some people might like to believe.

When this information originally came out, I have to admit I was shocked. You can't say that the idea of staging fake terrorism attacks has never been considered. Clearly it has.

But there are a few things to put this in context.

1) In the source documents, almost all of the references are to mock attacks and fake attacks. There was, in a document I saw, a proposal to cause damage on US soil but not take lives.

2) Many things are discussed behind closed doors, and far fewer things get beyond the discussion stage.

3) The political cost of war was far less at that time, as was the level of public dissent.

4) All of this has to be taken in the context of the Cold war.

For me, it's a leap to say that because these things were discussed in the early 60s, that's somehow significant to a discussion about an attack that took thousands of lives in 2001. And those attacks could easily have taken tens of thousands of lives.

Again, I ask anybody out there to explain how such a thing could have been planned and approved beforehand. There's nobody who could or would do that.

[lost&outofcontrol]

The fact money was made from what happened after 9/11 doesn't mean that the events were planned from the beginning.

This is the money link I have ("money man")

To quote myself:

The Money man

-Mahmoud Ahmad, the director of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at the time, ordered $100,000 to be wired from Dubai to one of hijacker Mohamed Atta's two bank accounts in Florida. This has been confirmed by Indian intelligence and the FBI.

-Mahmoud Ahmad(Director ISI) was having breakfast with Congressman Porter Gross and Senator Bob Graham in Washington when the twin towers were attacked.

-Goss spent as many as 10 years working on numerous CIA clandestine operations. He is very close to Vice President Dick Cheney.

-Graham and Goss were co-heads of the joint House-Senate investigation that proclaimed there was "no smoking gun" as far as President George W Bush having any advance knowledge of September 11.

-Mahmoud Ahmad(Director ISI) has met repeatedly with the director of the CIA George Tenet and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

Link to this information and some more info.

Now if that's not a smoking gun, I don't know what is. I urge everyone to read the bottom part of the first link.

[Michael Hardner]

Now if that's not a smoking gun, I don't know what is.

The sources here are murky and the smoking gun is really circumstantial.

It's quite possible that a Pakistani intelligence officer could have been part of the plot but I don't understand why that implicates people who met him.

[JerrySeinfeld]

The fact money was made from what happened after 9/11 doesn't mean that the events were planned from the beginning.

This is the money link I have ("money man")

To quote myself:

The Money man

-Mahmoud Ahmad, the director of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at the time, ordered $100,000 to be wired from Dubai to one of hijacker Mohamed Atta's two bank accounts in Florida. This has been confirmed by Indian intelligence and the FBI.

-Mahmoud Ahmad(Director ISI) was having breakfast with Congressman Porter Gross and Senator Bob Graham in Washington when the twin towers were attacked.

-Goss spent as many as 10 years working on numerous CIA clandestine operations. He is very close to Vice President Dick Cheney.

-Graham and Goss were co-heads of the joint House-Senate investigation that proclaimed there was "no smoking gun" as far as President George W Bush having any advance knowledge of September 11.

-Mahmoud Ahmad(Director ISI) has met repeatedly with the director of the CIA George Tenet and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

Link to this information and some more info.

Now if that's not a smoking gun, I don't know what is. I urge everyone to read the bottom part of the first link.

Well!

I know that if I was a senator or congressman, and had secretly planned an attack to kill thousands of my own citizens, and was smart enough to pull off this massive undertaking, god knows my first order of business would be to have breakfast in public with the Pakistani financier of said attacks on the very morning they are occuring.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

[Michael Hardner]

And, again, I ask who in the US government would have the resources and motive to get such a plan approved and execute it ?

It would have to be somebody at the very top, but that makes motive and approval very difficult to establish. People at the top have a vested interest in stability, and a plan like this would have far too many possible outcomes.

Instead of thinking of the past, think what would happen in the future. If somebody offered to destroy a major US city, what would be the outcomes ? What would be the outcome to the establishment ? You can't say with any degree of certainty who would or wouldn't benefit from such a thing.

[GostHacked]

And, again, I ask who in the US government would have the resources and motive to get such a plan approved and execute it ?

Who in the government? The US Military.

It would have to be somebody at the very top, but that makes motive and approval very difficult to establish. People at the top have a vested interest in stability, and a plan like this would have far too many possible outcomes.

Instead of thinking of the past, think what would happen in the future. If somebody offered to destroy a major US city, what would be the outcomes ? What would be the outcome to the establishment ? You can't say with any degree of certainty who would or wouldn't benefit from such a thing.

Motive for 9/11 ? Pretext for war. Something along the lines of the Northwoods Documents from the CIA.. Two months later the Patriot Act (how long had that been in the works?) was signed into law. On October 7, 2001 not even one month after 9/11 the US and Co went to war with Afghanistan. How long does it take to prepare for a war? If you went to war only a month after 9/11, you would have to have been preparing for the possibility of war. I would say they started working on the war plan for about, and I am no expert, but 6 months to a year?

ArmyGuy.. if you are even reading this thread, how long before the Afghanistan war, would it take to prepare for that war? When would the first deployments happen?

I would say the build up was happening months before the actual invasion of Afghanistan. I will say 9/11 was used as a pretext for war and to get domestic support for the war in Afghanistan and eventually Iraq. Otherwise alot of people would have not supported it.

[Michael Hardner]

Who in the government?

The US Military.

That's not a person, it's a branch of the government.

Pretext for war. Something along the lines of the Northwoods Documents from the CIA.. Two months later the Patriot Act (how long had that been in the works?) was signed into law. On October 7, 2001 not even one month after 9/11 the US and Co went to war with Afghanistan. How long does it take to prepare for a war? If you went to war only a month after 9/11, you would have to have been preparing for the possibility of war. I would say they started working on the war plan for about, and I am no expert, but 6 months to a year?

The US military is in a constant state of readiness.

And how much of a pretext would be required ? The pretext for invading Iraq was intelligence that told them there were WMDs. Later, they said the intelligence was faulty.

Does it make sense that the same government needed to stage a catastrophic attack on its largest city to generate a pretext for a much smaller campaign in Afghanistan ?

ArmyGuy.. if you are even reading this thread, how long before the Afghanistan war, would it take to prepare for that war? When would the first deployments happen?

I would say the build up was happening months before the actual invasion of Afghanistan. I will say 9/11 was used as a pretext for war and to get domestic support for the war in Afghanistan and eventually Iraq. Otherwise alot of people would have not supported it.

How much pretext was needed to invade Panama ? Grenada ? To bomb Lybia ?

Really not much. Support can be generated fairly easily through "intelligence", invoking national security or a dozen other ways.

Attempting to murder tens of thousands of people in ones own country would be overkill don't you think ?

[Michael Hardner]

Also, I addressed the Northwoods documents above. The fact that such an idea was floated is shocking and abhorrent, but it doesn't give blank slate to assume every attack on the US since then was planned by the administration. You need more evidence than that.

And I'm still asking WHO...

[JerrySeinfeld]

And, again, I ask who in the US government would have the resources and motive to get such a plan approved and execute it ?

Who in the government? The US Military.

It would have to be somebody at the very top, but that makes motive and approval very difficult to establish. People at the top have a vested interest in stability, and a plan like this would have far too many possible outcomes.

Instead of thinking of the past, think what would happen in the future. If somebody offered to destroy a major US city, what would be the outcomes ? What would be the outcome to the establishment ? You can't say with any degree of certainty who would or wouldn't benefit from such a thing.

Motive for 9/11 ? Pretext for war. Something along the lines of the Northwoods Documents from the CIA.. Two months later the Patriot Act (how long had that been in the works?) was signed into law. On October 7, 2001 not even one month after 9/11 the US and Co went to war with Afghanistan. How long does it take to prepare for a war? If you went to war only a month after 9/11, you would have to have been preparing for the possibility of war. I would say they started working on the war plan for about, and I am no expert, but 6 months to a year?

ArmyGuy.. if you are even reading this thread, how long before the Afghanistan war, would it take to prepare for that war? When would the first deployments happen?

I would say the build up was happening months before the actual invasion of Afghanistan. I will say 9/11 was used as a pretext for war and to get domestic support for the war in Afghanistan and eventually Iraq. Otherwise alot of people would have not supported it.

Not that i'm giving the conspiracy theory ANY credence (I'm not), but for the sake of argument, if all that was needed was a pretext for war why didn't the US stage a massive attack on ISRAEL or some other country? Why did it have to be thousands upon thousands of their own citizens?

And the lefty argument is contradictory anyway. If the US was full of shit on WMD anyway, whats to stop them from concocting an even bigger lie so that they'd have the pretext without the dead bodies?

And why wouldn't they try to make the case for war FIRST, using the simple fact that Saddam Hussein has flouted UN sanctions - the conditions of his defeat in Gulf War - for over 10 years and the UN needs enforement. Then excalate to WMD. Then escalate to some other lie (as the lefties say) before killing thousands of innocent americans.

We're talking about terrorists - people who saw off heads and shoot women in the back of the head in soccer stadiums as punishment for infidelity. We're talking about a society that sentences a man to death for convertin to christianity. We're talking about people who blow themselves up in cafe's.

Now really, truthfully - what makes more sense? That the US government allowed for the attacks on its own people? or that these were fanatical suicidal maniacs hell bent on destroying anything american?

As far as"evidence" there is not one shred of conclusive evidence to support any of these theories. All this hocus pocus about people "having breakfast together" and "marvin bush sits on the board of the security company" is precisely the kind of BS leads nowhere, that stirs up questions but doesn't provide answers.

That's the great thing about conspiracy theories. All you have to do is raise questions to sound credible.

C'mon guys.

[Riverwind]

Also, I addressed the Northwoods documents above. The fact that such an idea was floated is shocking and abhorrent, but it doesn't give blank slate to assume every attack on the US since then was planned by the administration. You need more evidence than that.

Agreed. But it also means you can't refute the conspiracy theory by arguing that no one in the US gov't would ever consider such a plan.

[GostHacked]

Also, I addressed the Northwoods documents above. The fact that such an idea was floated is shocking and abhorrent, but it doesn't give blank slate to assume every attack on the US since then was planned by the administration. You need more evidence than that.

And I'm still asking WHO...

Who?? That is what I am attempting to find out. Cannot be just one person, but a small group of people.

Keep those questions comming Micheal. It is at least making me think of other things. I have an open mind.

[Michael Hardner]

Agreed. But it also means you can't refute the conspiracy theory by arguing that no one in the US gov't would ever consider such a plan.

I agree with you on that, with qualifications.

Look at the plans they considered, and you'll see that anything approaching the scale and cynicism of 9-11 is implausible. Many of these plans call for faking attacks, which tells you that these people were not above lying for their cause but probably had qualms about killing innocent people. Another hallmark of these plans is their scope is quite manageable.

9/11 would require cross-functional coordination with many, many civillian and government organizations. Such a plan would be fraught with problems.

[Michael Hardner]

Who?? That is what I am attempting to find out. Cannot be just one person, but a small group of people.

Keep those questions comming Micheal. It is at least making me think of other things. I have an open mind.

My mind is open to be changed but the answer to WHO can only be 'nobody' at this point.

Lyndon Johnson tried to cross jurisdictional lines to change the name of a town to Cape Kennedy in the 1960s and it took a huge effort, which eventually was undone.

[JerrySeinfeld]

Agreed. But it also means you can't refute the conspiracy theory by arguing that no one in the US gov't would ever consider such a plan.

I agree with you on that, with qualifications.

Look at the plans they considered, and you'll see that anything approaching the scale and cynicism of 9-11 is implausible. Many of these plans call for faking attacks, which tells you that these people were not above lying for their cause but probably had qualms about killing innocent people. Another hallmark of these plans is their scope is quite manageable.

9/11 would require cross-functional coordination with many, many civillian and government organizations. Such a plan would be fraught with problems.

That's the BIG hole in most conspiracy theories: scale.

The Libs can't even keep the income trust decision a secret.

Someone always talks.

Face it: to plan something of this scale with this many people involved is not only a logistical nightmare but a secrecy nightmare too.

Can you just imagine the conversation (which never happened obvioulsy)

"Listen, Bob I need you to come up to my office.....my security company is going to pull out of the WTC for a day so some engineers can plant hidden secret explosives on all 110 stories of each building. We're gonna need 48 hours. I know I know, I'm on the board of directors and not authorized to give operational orders, and I know that these kinds of things require approval of the ENTIRE board, not just a secret order from one member of the board, but listen...just do it, OK? We're trying to kill 3000+ innocent americans as an excuse to invade Iraq. I know I know, sounds wonky, but just TRUST me, it will be worth it. and hey - listen, Bob. we need to keep this on the QT ok? don't tell a soul. and make sure those dozens of engineers we're gonna need to get this job done in short-order keep their mouths shut too, ok Bobby? thanks man"

[Michael Hardner]

Anybody who works for a large organization, who's had to cross only ONE line of operational chain-of-command knows how much it takes. A lot.

[PolyNewbie]

"Anybody who works for a large organization, who's had to cross only ONE line of operational chain-of-command knows how much it takes. A lot."

Its happened before - Operation Northwoods made it all the way to Kennedy. So it must be possible.