Coverup? Entire blockbuster films were made about this which explicitly linked the two (The Kingdom). Don't mistake people either not caring or not understanding with a coverup.
Watch the opening title sequence for one of the best summaries of the linked events building to 9/11 and the Saudi response here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW71JuzHr5o
The existence of unofficially recognized evidence and conclusions does not preclude a coverup. The government is not releasing documents or recognizing facts, and people who are open to a more sinister truth are marginalized.
I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened had Flight 93 reached it's presumed target, the Capitol Building [1]. I was young at the time, around 12 or 13, but I do remember quite vividly the atmosphere of fear that engulfed my country in the wake of the attacks. I cringe to think of how much worse it could have been had Congress been directly and successfully attacked. Our democracy was already in an extremely fragile condition. A plane hitting the Capitol Building on that day likely would have guaranteed it's immediate demise [2].
We have created this myth that Flight 93 was heading for the Capitol Building based on media reports of what some bloke in Guantanamo Bay said after being tortured. It is single source evidence, 'speculative fictional history'.
The media have also speculated that Flight 93 was also heading for Three Mile Island (a nuclear power station designed to survive a plane crash) and Camp David (the President's holiday home where some Middle East peace deal had been agreed on with the participants having gone home decades ago).
It is tempting to believe that Flight 93 was heading for the Capitol given that there is some confession and it would have made more sense than Three Mile Island or Camp David. However this is flawed reasoning.
Had Flight 93 not been delayed at the airport and made it to its target on time then that target just might have been The Pentagon. Here it would have made a far greater impact. We know one 757 had hit The Pentagon to cause significant damage. Had another plane - Flight 93 - crashed into another 'wedge' opposite to the fire that did happen then there would have been a high likelihood that the entire Pentagon would have burned to the ground. The first fire would have served as an attack on the fire prevention systems allowing the fire from the second attack to burn unimpeded.
If we look at what happened at the World Trade Center two planes were used against one target. The Twin Towers might have appeared as two buildings, however, there was only one set of pumps for the sprinklers. The towers had been designed to survive impact by a plane but not the scenario of 9/11 when both towers were attacked. Also note that the second tower to be hit was the first to fall - in paart due to the lack of water pressure for the sprinklers.
Given that two planes were used for the one target in New York it is not unreasonable to consider that two planes were also intended for the Pentagon, with one fire able to knock out the sprinklers and another fire to burn the building down. This would have removed The Pentagon from the map rather than create damage that could be (and was) repaired.
Although there is a certain amount of logic to support The Pentagon being the target for Flight 93, this idea does not support the agenda of 'The War Against Terror'. Let's stick with the nursery stories and believe what the media say the interrogators water-boarded out of the guy in Guantanamo - Flight 93 was heading for The Capitol.
The Reichstag fire made way for sweeping authoritarian changes in Germany and to me this is pretty much what has happened in the US, starting with the Patriot Act. Furthermore the Recichstag fire was surrounded in conspiracy theories with many believing the Nazis framed Van der Lubbe to further political ideals. Regardless of the Capitol Building being hit I'd say 9/11 was the US Reichstag.
In "Debt of Honor" and "Executive Orders", America survives this kind of catastrophe essentially okay, although it helps that they have Jack Ryan in charge.
This is utter nonsense. The chain of succession would be in place to establish a new President, and we could do without Congress until a new election were held.
In the absolute worst case of a more serious attack, the US armed services would assume control, and it would be unthinkable that they wouldn't restore democracy. 99% of our soldiery are patriots.
(Our eduction system hasn't done that much damage to our soldiers... yet. Some day, unless the intellectual trends in our nation change, our soldies will no longer believe that "democracy" is "practical," and will believe that people have to be forced to be good, and then we are not only going to be living under socaialism (as currently), we are going to be living under authoritarianism.)
First, due process only applies to those on American soil and to U.S. citizens abroad. The U.S. could nuke Yemen tomorrow and it absolutely would not be a Constitutional violation. It would be bad foreign policy, it would be an act of genocide, but there would be nothing "illegal" about it. Courts are intrinsically domestic institutions, they do not exist to supervise the conduct of nations in foreign affairs.
Second, "due process" does not mean "trial." The word "due" is used synonymously with the word "warranted" or "appropriate." What is the appropriate amount of procedural protection for someone who evaded attempts to capture him for a decade by hiding in the deserts of Yemen and inciting acts of war against the U.S. during that time? It's debatable, but it's not clear that Al Awlaki didn't get all of the process he was due.
Importantly, both Awlaki and his teenage son who was later targeted in another drone strike, were both American citizens. You can argue as much as you like in favor of the joys of murder and assassination as a way of organizing the world, but there is no conceivable argument that this is constitutional.
"Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) can’t reveal the nation identified by it without violating federal law. "
Pretty significant sentence, in this case. Much hangs from it, in the sense that if the official government narrative and this classified information differ greatly - then the Federal govt has been involved in what is essentially a huge propaganda operation.
America appears to have an analogue of Parliamentary privilege¹ written into the US Constitution (“for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place”), so why can't they discuss it there?
Thats kinda how things work though. Its pretty amazing that we're a country so fervently attached to the rule of law in some instances. It's kinda amazing actually.
Other nations wouldn't have it so lucky.
I'm sure stuff like this is why Cynthia McKinney just said to hell with it all...
"She had accused a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving foreign nationals, alleged serious security breaches and cover-ups and that intelligence had been deliberately suppressed, endangering national security."
From Wikipedia: "Edmonds testified before the 9/11 Commission, but her testimony was excluded from the official 567 page 9/11 Commission Report."
Publicly questioning the official 9/11 story is a great way to be ridiculed. The media and other propaganda outlets have so effectively labelled anything contrary to the party line as "conspiracy theory", discrediting anyone who points out the hundreds and hundreds of holes in the official story. The only credible theory (taking a cold look at the facts that have come to light over the past 12 years) is that AT THE VERY LEAST the US Government knew about 9/11 in advance.
Maybe, with time, it will become more socially acceptable to openly wonder what really happened. And probably by that time, most people won't give a shit.
There is a problem with reflexively dismissing "conspiracy theories": it increases the attack surface for deceiving the public.
Imagine telling a computer user "Don't be so paranoid, it's safe to open that binary. Do you really think there's some conspiracy to hijack your computing power as part of some botnet? Har har!"
Case-by-case, you'd be right nearly all of the time (at least for software the user sought out themselves, and didn't get linked to by spam). But by dismissing that concern out of hand, it becomes far more likely the user won't do 5 minutes of Google research, and will open an untrusted binary that really is unsafe.
Skepticism should apply across the board, and certainty should be an unachievable asymptote for "official" and "crackpot" explanations alike. There is a sufficient track record of powerful entities successfully deceiving the public that even the craziest of theories should be examined and considered, if only to spread the antibodies of skepticism.
Is that tongue-in-cheek or unintentionally ironic? This comic itself represents "cutting away context from facts and arguments and assembling them into reassuring litanies".
"Why is person A saying X?"
"Oh, you can just ignore that, exactly like when Person B says Y... it's just a conspiracy theory. What we do is, we use the mentally unstable, the confused and the mislead as an excuse to not look anyone else in the eye either, whenever it gets uncomfortable. This makes us morally and intellectually superior."
Exactly. the fact that this is suddenly being trotted out now leads me to wonder, "Who wants me to think about this now? Why? What are they trying to convince me to go along with?"
I am certainly not going to take this at face value. The NYP has a record of making up stuff. E.g.:
After the Marathon Bombing, "The Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid claimed that 12 people were killed by explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, and that a suspect -- a Saudi Arabian male -- was being questioned at a Boston hospital." [1]
After the marathon bombing, they were "slapped with a defamtion lawsuit" for claiming it was the two "Bag Men."
[2]
What was the motivation for Saudi Arabia to carry out these attacks? Was it an independent decision by Saudi elite? Did any events take place that would encourage vengeance of some kind? And why did it take place just once?
For people who don't want to read the essay, I'll just say:
Peikoff argues that modern terrorism is almost entirely coming about through sponsorship by a couple of very, very bad states, and simply ending those states in a proper, just war would solve the problem and make "Fortress America" unnecessary. (Any mistakes here are likely my own, not his.)
maxharris, wasn't this actually a full-page ad in the NYT? Could be wrong but for some reason I thought it was.
So what? Most terrorist attacks on US were orchestrated by FBI or secred services, who spoon-fed attackers, give them bomb and 'catched' them. Nobody cares.
Well, the FBI has a history of encouraging people to commit bad acts, giving them fake bombs and then "catching" them. I don't believe the FBI generally gives people real bombs, and it would be big news if you could prove that they did.
sadly this is exactly right - the American people don't care - they pretend they do but in reality they will just do what they're told to by the media and the politicians from whichever side of the one party with two faces they pretend they're aligned with
> What's Bush's interest in protecting the Saudis?
Perhaps not so much protecting the Saudis, as protecting the established pretext for the administration's response?
For instance, it has been reported that within mere hours of the first plane hitting, high-level officials were specifically seeking ways to blame it on Iraq, without regard to whether that was a relevant course of action [1].
Additionally, senior officials have stated that they believe Bush intended on invading Iraq at the time he took office, or at least well ahead of 9/11 [2][3].
And it's clear that protecting the public story was important: The Bush administration outrageously persecuted those who attempted to move the public discourse in directions that contradicted the official line, for instance [4] which was nothing but retribution for pointing out that the administration lied (i.e.: already knew their claims about uranium and Niger had been specifically investigated and debunked).
[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/plans-for-iraq-attack-began-on-9...Rumsfeld was "telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks" five hours after an American Airlines jet slammed into the Pentagon. ... [N]otes that had been taken at the time by a Rumsfeld aide ... quote the defense chief asking for the "best info fast" to "judge whether good enough to hit SH (Saddam Hussein) at the same time, not only UBL" (Usama bin Laden). The administration should
"go massive...sweep it all up, things related and not".
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_IraqFormer chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council Richard A. Clarke believes Bush took office with a predetermined plan to invade Iraq.
[3] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bush-sought-way-to-invade-iraq/And what happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations. "From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," says O'Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.
[+] [-] tsunamifury|12 years ago|reply
Watch the opening title sequence for one of the best summaries of the linked events building to 9/11 and the Saudi response here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW71JuzHr5o
[+] [-] crystaln|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NN88|12 years ago|reply
Its pretty much confirmed IMO that the Saudi's probably were behind the whole thing.
Which is odd because they have a serious history of state-backed terrorism and islamic expansion throughout the world.
[+] [-] pvnick|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire
[+] [-] Theodores|12 years ago|reply
The media have also speculated that Flight 93 was also heading for Three Mile Island (a nuclear power station designed to survive a plane crash) and Camp David (the President's holiday home where some Middle East peace deal had been agreed on with the participants having gone home decades ago).
It is tempting to believe that Flight 93 was heading for the Capitol given that there is some confession and it would have made more sense than Three Mile Island or Camp David. However this is flawed reasoning.
Had Flight 93 not been delayed at the airport and made it to its target on time then that target just might have been The Pentagon. Here it would have made a far greater impact. We know one 757 had hit The Pentagon to cause significant damage. Had another plane - Flight 93 - crashed into another 'wedge' opposite to the fire that did happen then there would have been a high likelihood that the entire Pentagon would have burned to the ground. The first fire would have served as an attack on the fire prevention systems allowing the fire from the second attack to burn unimpeded.
If we look at what happened at the World Trade Center two planes were used against one target. The Twin Towers might have appeared as two buildings, however, there was only one set of pumps for the sprinklers. The towers had been designed to survive impact by a plane but not the scenario of 9/11 when both towers were attacked. Also note that the second tower to be hit was the first to fall - in paart due to the lack of water pressure for the sprinklers.
Given that two planes were used for the one target in New York it is not unreasonable to consider that two planes were also intended for the Pentagon, with one fire able to knock out the sprinklers and another fire to burn the building down. This would have removed The Pentagon from the map rather than create damage that could be (and was) repaired.
Although there is a certain amount of logic to support The Pentagon being the target for Flight 93, this idea does not support the agenda of 'The War Against Terror'. Let's stick with the nursery stories and believe what the media say the interrogators water-boarded out of the guy in Guantanamo - Flight 93 was heading for The Capitol.
[+] [-] monkeynotes|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mherdeg|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javert|12 years ago|reply
In the absolute worst case of a more serious attack, the US armed services would assume control, and it would be unthinkable that they wouldn't restore democracy. 99% of our soldiery are patriots.
(Our eduction system hasn't done that much damage to our soldiers... yet. Some day, unless the intellectual trends in our nation change, our soldies will no longer believe that "democracy" is "practical," and will believe that people have to be forced to be good, and then we are not only going to be living under socaialism (as currently), we are going to be living under authoritarianism.)
[+] [-] VLM|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joejohnson|12 years ago|reply
Super handy that the US Government can kill people now without a trial or due process of any kind.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|12 years ago|reply
Second, "due process" does not mean "trial." The word "due" is used synonymously with the word "warranted" or "appropriate." What is the appropriate amount of procedural protection for someone who evaded attempts to capture him for a decade by hiding in the deserts of Yemen and inciting acts of war against the U.S. during that time? It's debatable, but it's not clear that Al Awlaki didn't get all of the process he was due.
[+] [-] rplevy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NN88|12 years ago|reply
I wish there was another, less controversial candidate to debate USA's killing of its citizens.
I don't condone the US's actions, but I sure as hell understand the reasoning for doing it.
ALSO, don't forget that he renounced his citizenship and Yemen tried him in-absentia.
[+] [-] patrickg_zill|12 years ago|reply
Pretty significant sentence, in this case. Much hangs from it, in the sense that if the official government narrative and this classified information differ greatly - then the Federal govt has been involved in what is essentially a huge propaganda operation.
[+] [-] kps|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NN88|12 years ago|reply
Other nations wouldn't have it so lucky.
I'm sure stuff like this is why Cynthia McKinney just said to hell with it all...
[+] [-] MisterWebz|12 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibel_Edmonds
[+] [-] joejohnson|12 years ago|reply
Publicly questioning the official 9/11 story is a great way to be ridiculed. The media and other propaganda outlets have so effectively labelled anything contrary to the party line as "conspiracy theory", discrediting anyone who points out the hundreds and hundreds of holes in the official story. The only credible theory (taking a cold look at the facts that have come to light over the past 12 years) is that AT THE VERY LEAST the US Government knew about 9/11 in advance.
Maybe, with time, it will become more socially acceptable to openly wonder what really happened. And probably by that time, most people won't give a shit.
[+] [-] 616c|12 years ago|reply
http://xkcd.com/258/
There is probably more than meets the eye because the brain matter behind them is making it so.
[+] [-] lukifer|12 years ago|reply
Imagine telling a computer user "Don't be so paranoid, it's safe to open that binary. Do you really think there's some conspiracy to hijack your computing power as part of some botnet? Har har!"
Case-by-case, you'd be right nearly all of the time (at least for software the user sought out themselves, and didn't get linked to by spam). But by dismissing that concern out of hand, it becomes far more likely the user won't do 5 minutes of Google research, and will open an untrusted binary that really is unsafe.
Skepticism should apply across the board, and certainty should be an unachievable asymptote for "official" and "crackpot" explanations alike. There is a sufficient track record of powerful entities successfully deceiving the public that even the craziest of theories should be examined and considered, if only to spread the antibodies of skepticism.
[+] [-] PavlovsCat|12 years ago|reply
"Why is person A saying X?"
"Oh, you can just ignore that, exactly like when Person B says Y... it's just a conspiracy theory. What we do is, we use the mentally unstable, the confused and the mislead as an excuse to not look anyone else in the eye either, whenever it gets uncomfortable. This makes us morally and intellectually superior."
[+] [-] twobits|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kbar13|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NN88|12 years ago|reply
The links are just blatantly obvious at this point.
We've got names. meeting dates. money transfers. travel itineraries. communication logs.
It ALL spell's "HOUSE OF SAUD"
[+] [-] richardjordan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diydsp|12 years ago|reply
I am certainly not going to take this at face value. The NYP has a record of making up stuff. E.g.:
After the Marathon Bombing, "The Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid claimed that 12 people were killed by explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, and that a suspect -- a Saudi Arabian male -- was being questioned at a Boston hospital." [1]
After the marathon bombing, they were "slapped with a defamtion lawsuit" for claiming it was the two "Bag Men." [2]
[1] http://www.ibtimes.com/one-day-after-boston-bombing-new-york...
[2]http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/post-sued-misidentifying...
[+] [-] caublestone|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilaksh|12 years ago|reply
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bribe/2009/04/loui...
[+] [-] pvdm|12 years ago|reply
In case no one has seen this.
[+] [-] DonGateley|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxharris|12 years ago|reply
http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/courses01/rrtw/Peikoff.pdf
[+] [-] javert|12 years ago|reply
Peikoff argues that modern terrorism is almost entirely coming about through sponsorship by a couple of very, very bad states, and simply ending those states in a proper, just war would solve the problem and make "Fortress America" unnecessary. (Any mistakes here are likely my own, not his.)
maxharris, wasn't this actually a full-page ad in the NYT? Could be wrong but for some reason I thought it was.
[+] [-] altero|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jellicle|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NN88|12 years ago|reply
The Saudi's have a history with this sort of behavior.
Their islamically led ideas of expansion have been around since the 18th century and oil is their vehicle of perpetuating that meme.
[+] [-] rajacombinator|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardjordan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twobits|12 years ago|reply
They care. You can't do anything about it though.
[+] [-] arangus|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgalt212|12 years ago|reply
It certainly would have been a lot cheaper to invade SA than Iraq.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] if_by_whisky|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamestnz|12 years ago|reply
Perhaps not so much protecting the Saudis, as protecting the established pretext for the administration's response?
For instance, it has been reported that within mere hours of the first plane hitting, high-level officials were specifically seeking ways to blame it on Iraq, without regard to whether that was a relevant course of action [1].
Additionally, senior officials have stated that they believe Bush intended on invading Iraq at the time he took office, or at least well ahead of 9/11 [2][3].
And it's clear that protecting the public story was important: The Bush administration outrageously persecuted those who attempted to move the public discourse in directions that contradicted the official line, for instance [4] which was nothing but retribution for pointing out that the administration lied (i.e.: already knew their claims about uranium and Niger had been specifically investigated and debunked).
[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/plans-for-iraq-attack-began-on-9... Rumsfeld was "telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks" five hours after an American Airlines jet slammed into the Pentagon. ... [N]otes that had been taken at the time by a Rumsfeld aide ... quote the defense chief asking for the "best info fast" to "judge whether good enough to hit SH (Saddam Hussein) at the same time, not only UBL" (Usama bin Laden). The administration should "go massive...sweep it all up, things related and not".
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq Former chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council Richard A. Clarke believes Bush took office with a predetermined plan to invade Iraq.
[3] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bush-sought-way-to-invade-iraq/ And what happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations. "From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," says O'Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair