9/11 conspiracy theories abound, and inquiry takes note

[stickdog]

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1072954556323650.xml

Washington- One theory has it that the Bush administration was warned about the Sept. 11 attacks but did nothing to stop them. Another says a missile fired by the U.S. military, not a hijacked jetliner, struck the Pentagon. Yet another: The Israelis orchestrated the attacks to force the United States into a war against the Arabs.

More than two years after terrorists hijacked four airliners and killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, conspiracy theories abound about what happened on Sept. 11, 2001.

A Sept. 11 widow recently filed a lawsuit accusing President Bush of allowing the attacks to guarantee support for a war on terrorism. Conspiracy books have become best sellers in Europe. Earlier this month, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean was criticized for mentioning "the most interesting theory" he had heard: that Bush ignored warnings from Saudi Arabia about the attacks. He later dismissed the allegation, saying, "I can't imagine the president of the United States doing that."

"What breeds these theories is that two years out, we have no authoritative account of how it happened and why it happened," said Sept. 11 widow Kristen Breitweiser of Middletown, N.J., a member of the Family Steering Committee, a group of survivors and relatives monitoring the national commission examining the attacks. The commission is charged with providing that au thoritative account. As it approaches a May deadline, the bipartisan panel is evaluating, and in some cases investigating, some of the conspiracy theories.

more ...

[TomNickell]

1. A definitive account is long overdue....

<<"What breeds these theories is that two years out, we have no authoritative account of how it happened and why it happened," said Sept. 11 widow Kristen Breitweiser>>

An honest account -has- to be embarrassing to the Admin.

[LARED]

3. Your right

But, it will only see the light of day after enough time has past so that most of our congress critters have moved on.

I know many will disagree with me, but because any information about 9/11 that could be portrayed in a bad light will be portrayed that way no matter what the truth is; whether it is just plain incompetence, negligence or just a plain oversight it will be demagogued by the opposition, no matter what side of the isle the opposition happens to reside. IMHO there is no MIHOP or LIHOP; 9/11 happened because the people charged with protecting us were asleep.

While the buck stops at Bush, there will be plenty of fall out for our elected congress-critters and Senators the day all the facts are known.

So at the end of the day the complete story will be blue paneled to a near slow death until the guilty have moved on.

[stickdog]

6. Regardless, covering up the truth about what happened on 9/11 is

completely and utterly indefensible.

[LARED]

I agree n/t

[Media_Lies_Daily]

2. There aren't too many valid reasons why the NeoCon Junta continues...

...to refuse to provide information sought by the 911 Commission. In fact, there is only one reason that makes sense...they are hiding something pretty bad that they don't want the American people to know.

[missile_bender]

4. AMEN. Can they allow a Dem back in the WH

to discover all their crimes? I don't see how they could allow that before doing a lot of (additional) damage to this country.

[DeepModem Mom]

5. MLD's simple statement says it all, in a way that people...

would understand if our media gave the story of the Bush administration's 9/11 stonewalling the compelling importance it deserves. The question the commission, the press, and the public should be demanding an answer to is: What are they hiding, and why?

[Cocoa]

7. I was very disappointed with the media on JFK

the 40-year anniversary last month, the media should have extensively covered the parallels to Sept. 11. The JFK conspiracy theories, true or false, arose out of the total inadequacy of the Warren Commission report, and the Sept. 11 event is shaping up to be a million times worse, it's going to be so bad that people will forget all about JFK.

[XNGH]

8. Fakes and phoneys

Don't put it past the WH Mafia to fake ANYTHING in their interest

This website describes how the "capture" of Saddam was faked

http://www.gulufuture.com/saddam-tricks.htm

You can count on this same thing happening around election time with OBL. They may even get an actor to "play" Osama

[Minstrel Boy]

9. And again, the mainstream singles out

the most ridiculous and debunkable "theory" as representative of the kind of inquiry pursued by 9/11 skeptics:

Another says a missile fired by the U.S. military, not a hijacked jetliner, struck the Pentagon.

To a readership perpetually uninformed by the American press about the damning evidence already compiled regarding White House actions and inactions and 9/11, they read this and shake their heads and snort, "those people will believe anything."

Not all conspiracy theories are created equal. But so long as this story keeps circulating, the American mainstream will smear all 9/11 skeptics as credulous fools.

[TolstoyAndy]

10. With all due respect

the biggest conspiracy theory of all is the innocent incompetence theory, the official story.

When that theory is juxtaposed with:
- Bush's behavior that day
- myriad warnings from foreign govs and the FBI
- Bush/Cheney's attempts to quash any investigation (Kissinger Commission ?!)
- the put options on the airline stocks
- the taking of Cipro that day by Cheney (not worried about smallpox or anything else, just anthrax )

we can see that the official story requires more suspension of disbelief than does MIHOP or LIHOP.

We need look no further than the fact that the agencies responsible for security that day were rewarded with vast budget increases, to understand that 9/11 was meant to pass the prewritten patriot act and attack Afghanistan and Iraq.

[Minstrel Boy]

11. Absolutely. And the suspension of disbelieve accorded the White House

by the American press re: 9/11 is unconscionable.

The "official story" is a tissue of lies - before leaving the 9/11 commission, Max Cleland said "the American people are getting scammed" - but which "news" subdivision of a weapons manufacturer will say it?

[Cocoa]

12. more unexplained phenomena:

-- no one got fired
-- Bush seems strangely uninterested in how it happened

[pinkpops]

13. he knows

doesn't want anyone else to

or maybe as TolstoyAndy implies (?)

Cheney et al knew but Bush was out of the loop.

[XNGH]

14. Would he even understand

In the first place ... anyone who thinks that Bu$h calls the shots is severly deluded.

Second ... even if "W" was in the loop does anyone think he has the intellect to understand it all ???

[Thoth]

16. Excellent summary!

[reprobate]

26. A slight correction, if I may TA

IIRC, the cipro was given to ALL white house staff on the afternoon of 9/11. What did they know that they didn't tell us?

[TolstoyAndy]

28. You're right (I mean, correct !)

I must have been typing too quickly: I believe everyone got it, not just Cheney.

[bobthedrummer]

27. Tommy Thompson hired Jerome Hauer from SAIC 9-10-2001

and HHS staff also took Cipro right after 9/11.

Then there is the question of the behavior of US Space Command, NORAD and the USAF on 9/11-something stinks there and won't go away. Especially if you think in terms of a coup of some type, like the neo-conservative dominated military think tanks do.

Here's an example called Revolution in Political and Military Affairs/RPMA that includes the efficacy of coups.
http://www.guerrillacampaign.com/coup.htm

LIHOP is my conclusion.

[Terwilliger]

17. since the evidence favors the idea that a 757 did not strike the Pentagon.

what are you supposed to do? Ignore evidence?

[Minstrel Boy]

19. I disagree about the evidence.

And I didn't reject the no-plane-hit-the-Pentagon theory out of hand. I checked it out. And to my satisfaction, I reached the conclusion that it's a distraction at best, and disinformation at worst.

Here's an excellent rebuttal by conspiracy researcher John Judge. Judge is the founder of The Coalition On Political Assassinations, and not a man to be tricked by cover stories.

...

Let me dispel your agnosticism on Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon, which would not be an issue if the film coverage here had approached that in NY or even if official footage would ever be released. However, I base the conclusion that the plane hit the Pentagon on the following:

It's route was followed from Ohio and announced in advance and reported on up to and including the hit. We in DC knew it was coming at us for at least 30 minutes, and for much longer at the Pentagon. The plane was never "lost to radar" for 30 minutes, only for a few when its abrupt turn left spotters in the tower looking in the direction of its previous course and not finding it. Turning off the transponder only turns off an identifying tag, it does not cause any inability to see the plane on radar. Beyond all the FAA and NORAD radar tracking it, there is separate and special radar on 24/7 in the P-56 restricted area around DC and even radar on the roof of the Pentagon that was pointed out to me in 1998 as "watching the skies to make sure they don't fly a plane in here". The "they" referred to "Muslims" who had been calling in death threats daily, supposedly.

Eyewitness accounts abound in the local area, and people were quoted all day on the local news who saw the plane hit. I have since spoken to at least half a dozen people who were eyewitness to the event and saw the plane make the descending loop and fly along Wilson Blvd and then so low it took off lamppost lights. Some people hit the ground it was coming in so low. Ground crew members who survived the crash, and not all did, were describing their own horror on local news afterwards. One woman in the building saw the tip of the nose crash through her office. We know the plane hit here in DC, because people saw it, hundreds of them.

As to the amount of damage done, much is made by the speculators of the fact that the wings did not punch a larger hole in the building. What is in the wings of those planes? The fuel. The wings disintegrated on first contact, and the explosion started when the plane bottomed out just short of contact with the building and bounced into it. The construction crews were burned alive, not crushed by debris. Only 15 people died inside the building of the 185 total, 164 passengers and crew were on the plane, and the rest of the dead were workers outside. That side of the Pentagon was virtually empty and had been for some time because the building had been under reconstruction quite visibly on that side for 5-6 years and part of that was to reinforce the building from external attack. In fact some photos show the difference in damage on either side of that reinforcement work and it is striking. That plane went 270 degrees out of its way at high speed, a very sophisticated maneuver with no possible military advantage, to hit the empty side of the Pentagon. There, as in New York, I would argue that they minimized the number of deaths by timing and method of attack.

I thought that day when Flight 77 and its Dulles/LAX route were announced that a fellow researcher and dear friend had died because she rides that flight all the time as an airline attendant for American. As fate would have it she was home caring for her dying father that day and survived. But her friends did not. She was taken, with other attendants and ground crews who had worked that route into the crash site to view the wreckage. She clearly recognized parts of the plane she had ridden in hundreds of times and identified items. She was also shown autopsy photos and forensic evidence photos which included a severed arm. From the bracelet on the arm she knew it was the remains of her best friend at work.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/f77FoF.html

[goforit]

31. OK there was a plane, but could have it been controlled by remote?

Could it have been intentionally used to target the pentagon?

With the absense of wings, were the wings knocked off by telephone poles?

[Minstrel Boy]

32. the remote control hypothesis is worth study

USA Today story from October 2001, announces that Raytheon had remote flown a FedEx 727 to a safe landing on a New Mexico air force base in August 2001, without a pilot.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techreviews/2001/10/2/remote-pilot.htm

Some odd things about Raytheon. There was a Raytheon employee on at least three of the four sparsely occupied hijacked flights. Including, on Flight 77 (the plane which hit the Pentagon), Stanley Hall, director of program management for Raytheon's Electronics Warfare Division. A colleague called him "our dean of electronic warfare" (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/12/victim-capsule-flight77.htm). Also, after 9/11, at least some of the bin Laden family were flown out on private planes from Raytheon's own airfields.

I'm at a loss to explain how Flight 77 - supposedly piloted by Hani Hanjour, so unskilled he was denied a Cessna just three weeks before - could be flown so aerobatically a flight controller believed she was following the path of an F-18, perform a 270 degree turn over Washington, spiral down thousands of feet in a matter of seconds, and go out of its way to hit the naval side of the Pentagon: the one side which was virtually empty for reconstruction; the only side whose exterior wall had been hardened to withstand attack.

A MIHOP speculation: to ensure the hijackers did the damage, and only the damage the cabal needed, control was taken from them while in flight.

What became of the black boxes of the WTC and Pentagon planes? The electronic readings and the cockpit conversations would have been illuminating.

[Abaques]

20. That is not true...

The overwhelming evidence does support that a 757 did hit the pentagon.

The pentagon is a hardened building.

A 757 is not designed to act as a missle.

When the 757 hit the pentagon it virtually disintigrated, with the fuel being the main force of impact.

The only other possible means to cause the damage done to the pentagon would be with a missle.

There has been no credible evidence that a missle was fired at the pentagon.

If the 757 in question did not hit the pentagon, then where is it? Many people witnessed it taking off, now where did they hide it? Its a good sized plane that would have had to be held in the US. Don't say "millitary base" because the overwhelmingly vast majority of our millitary would not participate in such a thing. Too many people would have to know.



This whole conspiracy distracts from the real issues that we should be addressing, such as how the Bush administration was so incompetent to allow 9-11 to happen. And why Osama hasn't been captured yet. And why there are 50 million people in America without health coverage.

[Terwilliger]

21. maybe those things will be addressed

after all, with the American government's insistence on getting to the bottom of 9/11, I'm sure they're just as interested in those other issues you mention

[WhereIsMyFreedom]

15. Even if incompetence is the true reason

I think for 9/11 to have happened the level of incompetence must be so gross as to be indistinguishable from LIHOP. There were a lot of failures that day and in the weeks leading up to it: dozens of warnings that weren't heeded, dozens of security procedures that weren't followed.

[pfitz59]

18. Irrefutable conclusions.......

1) Negligant - Warned, never acted. Impeachable offense.
2) Incompetent - Criminally clueless! Impeachable offense.
3) Complicit - Treasonable offense. Death by hanging!
Really only three possible conclusions! All start at the top!

[Cooley Hurd]

22. At the very least, the 9/11 commission will find that...

1) The Bush Administration was grossly incompetent in the months leading to 9/11 by not focusing on terror more

or...

2) The Bush Administration intentionally ignored the intelligence and warnings it received from domestic and foreign sources.

Either way, it's gonna be a big black eye going into the election season! :) :thumbsup:

[Minstrel Boy]

23. I think that's expecting too much from them

Just look at them.

Chairman Thomas Kean, "by sheer coincidence", had business ties with Osama bin Laden's brother in law and al Qaeda financier, bin Mahfouz, just as Bush did.

Vice-Chair Lee Hamilton has a history of covering-up for the Bush family. He led a congressional inquiry into the "October Surprise" of Bush Sr, and found no evidence of wrong doing

Others:

Jamie Gorlick: joined the legal defense team of Clark Clifford and Robert Altman, the two top officers of First American Bank, which had been taken over by the corrupt BCCI, which laundered money for Intelligence agencies, criminals and terrorists.

Richard Ben-Vaniste: represented Barry Seal, the drug-running Iran/Contra CIA asset. Told The Wall Street Journal: "I did my part by launching him (Seal) into the arms of Vice President Bush who embraced him as an undercover operative."

Fred Fielding: deputy counsel under John Dean in the Nixon WH. Helped clean out Howard Hunt's safe and dispose of evidence. Served on the Bush* transition team.

Jim Thompson: longtime Illinois Governor and currently chairman of the Chicago-based law firm Winston and Strawn. Subject of allegations of complicity in CIA drug smuggling.

Slade Gorton: Appointed by Trent Lott to Senate Intelligence Committee. Told the Seattle Times two days after 9/11, that there was nothing Intelligence agencies could have done to prevent the attacks, and "I doubt we can expect to get too much inside information no matter what we do."

The one who called the proceedings a "sham", Max Cleland, is gone.

[0007]

36. I guess you don't know who is heading the 911 Investigation?

Thomas Kean was the right man to cover this investigation up.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO212A.html

Read this link and you'll know why we're so screwed!

[Fleshdancer]

24. I just started reading 'Dude, Where's My Country' today.

The first chapter blew my mind. I had to read it over again. It goes in to the Bush-Bin Ladin family connection and our unethical ties with Saudi Arabia. Creepy stuff.

I think Moore brings up a very interesting theory regarding the plane that hit the Pentagon. He says that flying a jet going 500 miles per hour into the side of a 5 story building takes more percision and training than what some small flight school in AZ could teach. He wonders if these pilots recieved military training in Saudi Arabia.

Considering the WH blacked out all the portions of the 9/11 Congressional report that pertained to SA, it's no suprise when people start to come up with theories.

[Minstrel Boy]

25. Moore raises some good questions, but

I don't know if he's ready to admit just how deep it goes.

The Saudis didn't train them. It was the United States government.

When they arrived in the United States, five of the hijackers received training at secure military installations. This was reported as early September 16, 2001 by The New York Times. Mohammed Atta attended the International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force in Alabama. Saeed Alghamdi studied at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey.

Lt. Col. Steve Butler was vice chancellor for student affairs while Alghamdi was a student. In a letter published May 26, 2002, Butler charged "Bush knew of the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism. What is...contemptible is the President of the United States not telling the American people what he knows for political gain." Butler was removed from his position and threatened with court martial.

According to its web site, the Defense Language Institute provides foreign language services to "Department of Defense, government agencies and foreign governments" to support "national security interests and global operational needs." So, why was Alghamdi there?

And Moore's right about the precision required to fly a passenger jet at 500 miles into the side of a five-storey building, and after executing a 270-degree turn to hit the one side that was virtually unoccupied and under reconstruction. But the pilot, Hani Hanjour, was so incompotent he was refused a Cessna just four weeks before. His instructor thought he was hopeless, and after many months of lessons. So, how could he do it?

[worldgonekrazy]

29. It would've been VERY hard to hit the towers as well

ESPECIALLY because they had to hit the towers at exactly the right spot in order to ensure maximum damage. If they had been off just a little bit the towers could have easily withstood the damage.

[goforit]

30. This is a well written article. Conspiracy theories can not be discounted

until a thorough investigation is completed. Many suspects abound.

Kristen Breitweiser is quite the head strong individual that
Wellstone would be proud of.

I salute her quest for the truth!
She is a ray of light for us all in this long dark tunnel.

[young_at_heart]

33. Please explain Mr. Bush...why did you just sit and do nothing for 1/2 hour

Is this what a leader would do? Why aren't questions asked about him not doing anything while we were under attack? I can't imagine our past presidents doing what he did.

[Mike Niendorff]

34. So remember, folks :

Only Wild-Eyed Conspiracy Theorists (tm) doubt the Official Party Line.

Furthermore: any expression of doubt -- at any level and for any reason -- will automatically be taken as an endorsement of each and every crackpot "theory" ever heard anywhere, no matter how ludicrous or unrelated it may be to the issue at hand. In fact, the more outlandish the "theory", the more likely it is that you will be branded as one of its supporters. And this is especially true if your actual statements have nothing whatsoever to do with it. After all, who has time to think these days? Labels are where the future is, my friend. Labels.

Now: Go back to you underpaid McJobs, keep on voting Republican, and stop asking questions!


MDN

* The preceding has been a paid commercial announcement from the Republican Party's Central Committee.
-- "The Republican Party -- serving God and Mammon for over a century.".

[stickdog]

35. The Bottom Line on Bush's Indefensible 9/11 Coverup

Either they knew it or they blew it.