Just the facts . . . at least as we know them

[ConservativeDemocrat]

Apparently I made a major error of fact in a recent column. It turns out, contrary to what I wrote, there never was a Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States. It wasn't hijacked airliners that brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Nor did any airplane plow into the Pentagon. Nor did United Flight 93 come to Earth in a field in Shanksville, Pa. Rather, this tragedy was staged by the U.S. government in order to dupe the nation into an oil war in the Middle East. Or at least so I am told by a surprising plurality of readers. Add to that Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela and renowned loose cannon, who said in a speech Tuesday it's possible the U.S. government had a hand in attacking itself on Sept. 11.
<snip>

I don't propose to spend time debating whether Sept. 11 unfolded as the official record says it did. If eyewitness accounts (''I happened to look up and I saw this airplane not more than 50 feet up coming right at us,'' Alan Wallace, a witness at the Pentagon, told The Washington Post), cockpit voice recordings (''Please, please don't hurt me,'' a voice on United Flight 93 pleads), cellphone calls (passenger Thomas Burnett told his wife, ''I know we're all going to die. . . . I love you, Honey'') and common sense (if the planes were not crashed, what happened to them and their passengers?) are not enough to make the case, I can't imagine what would.

No, I only bring this up because of what it says about our growing tendency to embrace separate but unequal facts en route to separate but unequal truths.
<snip>

While that's good in many ways, one troubling byproduct is this new notion that you cannot truly understand the great and terrible events of our time without access to some ''factier'' facts promulgated by some website most of us never heard of with an ideological slant that conveniently mirrors one's own.

The full article is here.

- - - -

Mr. Pitts, of course, is absolutely correct, though he's hardly noting anything new. Steven Colbert does a perfect job of lampooning "truthiness" you find just about everywhere in Republican owned media. Still, I think he's on to something. Up until now, Democrats have managed to remain firmly grounded in reality. But read the D.U. lately, and you can see that grip being shaken like a junky on a bad acid trip. Cheering at the prospect of civil war in Mexico, saying "Kos is a whore just with a different clientele" because he bans macro conspiracy theorists, and people pretending that dubious legal theories that the Supreme Court has never endorsed is the law of the land.

Personally, I'm torn about all this. All through the '90s, I was well aware that sane Democrats were being beaten by the coalition of sane-Republicans (who I disagreed with) and absolute lunatic crazies (who believed every anti-Clinton conspiracy theory that came down the pike). I kept saying to myself, "We need the brain-dead vote too", because quite obviously, if only smart people vote for you, you'll always lose. That said, it's really uncomfortable trying to ally with people who live in their own fantasy land, where all U.S. troops and Congress are about to be indicted as war criminals, and Kos and Skinner are withholding the "truth" about vote fraud because it helps them line their own pockets.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[TrogL]

1. That's painting with a broad brush

Some of us here still debunk conspiracy madness.

[CJCRANE]

2. Um...

9/11 was carried out by Saudi operatives, financed and planned via Pakistan and UAE.
(All Bushco allies).

And then blamed on Iraq.

If that's not as close as you can get to a "false flag" op I don't know what is.

[lapfog_1]

3. The problem is... once you know someone in a position of trust

is lying to you and continues to lie to promote THEIR agenda, you start questioning everything.

Especially when those very same people write in papers that they published, just how convenient it
would be for their agenda if something like "another Pearl Harbor" were to happen... and, presto,
we have a Sep 11.

Does that mean that Sept 11 didn't happen exactly the way that "the powers that be" said it did? No,
but it should make you look closely at all the facts.

What I'm certain of is that it's not unthinkable that our own "government" (or a very few people in our
government) could have had a role in Sept 11, either not acting on intelligence that they had which could
have stopped it, or even possibly had a hand in it.

[Parche]

4. 9/11

There are a lot of unanswered questions still out there about 9/11
Example bldg 7, why was it demolished and if so, doesnt it take at least
24hours to install explosives?
These are not conspiracy, these are facts
You cant confuse the conspiracy theories with facts

[ConservativeDemocrat]

5. Building 7 wasn't demolished. It collapsed from intense heat...

of the fires that the collapse of the other buildings. It burned for 7 hours before finally collapsing. Firefighters abandoned it because of safety reasons.

NIST investigators also point to several other factors that added to its collapse. It had an unusual design, in which more load was placed on outside beams that were vulnerable to the fire, many tenants in the building had diesel fuel tanks the used to run emergency generators, at least 10 floors were directly damaged by the initial collapse, and Building 7 was the largest remaining building in the area - and thus had to contend with significantly larger loads (building weight) than other structures.

Further, conspiracy theorists never manage to explain why anyone would wire up Building 7. Dwarfed by the twin towers, it was never a landmark.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[Parche]

6. bldg 7

NO building 7 was demolished, they announced to 'pull' it at around 5pm that day
The video also shows it was demolished

And they are not conspiracy theorists, they deal in facts


And also if you watch the towers come down on video, they come down in a demolition sort of way

[ConservativeDemocrat]

7. The "pull" order was to "pull" firefighters out

and the only think the video shows is that Building 7 pancaked, which is the way all high-rise buildings collapse when their structural integrity has been compromised - whether by explosives or fire.

Building 7 was not intentionally demolished by the fire department, or Larry Silverston - the owner of the building, and the person who described abandoning firefighting efforts with the phrase "pull it".

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[Parche]

8. video

I dont know what video you are watching, but bldg 7 was demolished, it is plain as day in the
video, a classic demolition period.

That means that someone installed charges at least 24hours prior

[FoxOnTheRun]

9. He is a classical liar.

Reminds me of Rummy

McClellan: (1/27/04) I think some in the media have chosen to use the word "imminent." Those were not words we used.

Rumsfeld: (3/14/04) You and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase 'immediate threat.' I didn't. The president didn't.
SCHIEFFER: Vice president didn't say that? The...
RUMSFELD: Not--if--if you have any citations, I'd like to see 'em.

http://zfacts.com/p/304.html


Larry said "pull it" not "pull them"

[John Q. Citizen]

15. FYI: NIST has abandoned the "pancake theory." Please update

your reality to conform to the current Official Theory of Reality. Older official versions of reality are no longer officially considered to be part of the reality based community.

Thank You for your compliance.

[achtung_circus]

16. Or

to pull the rescue operation back from the building, or using an agricultural term, to pull the pin on the rescue operation or a myriad of other meanings.

Defaulting to pull the walls down ignores Occam.:hi:

[tenseconds]

10. (former)Occupants of WTC7

What Was In Building 7?
Building 7 was one of New York City's larger buildings. A sleek bronze-colored skyscraper with a trapezoidal footprint, it occupied an entire city block and rose over 600 feet above street level.

Built in 1985, it was formerly the headquarters of the junk-bond firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, which contributed to the Savings and Loans collapse, prompting the $500-billion taxpayer-underwritten bailout of the latter 1980s. At the time of its destruction, it exclusively housed government agencies and financial institutions. It contained offices of the IRS, Secret Service, and SEC.

Tenant Square Feet Floor Industry
Salomon Smith Barney 1,202,900 GRND,1-6,13,18-46 Financial Institution
IRS Regional Council 90,430 24, 25 Government
U.S. Secret Service 85,343 9,10 Government
C.I.A. N/A N/A Government
American Express Bank International 106,117 7,8,13 Financial Institution
Standard Chartered Bank 111,398 10,13,26,27 Financial Institution
Provident Financial Management 9,000 7,13 Financial Institution
ITT Hartford Insurance Group 122,590 19-21
First State Management Group, Inc 4,000 21 Insurance
Federal Home Loan Bank 47,490 22 Financial Institution
NAIC Securities 22,500 19 Insurance
Securities & Exchange Commission 106,117 11,12,13 Government
Mayor's Office of Emergency Mgmt 45,815 23 Government
This list is based on a table published by CNN.com, which did not include CIA, whose tenancy was disclosed after the attack in the New York Times article.
One of the most interesting tenants was then-Mayor Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management, and its emergency command center on the 23rd floor. This floor received 15 million dollars worth of renovations, including independent and secure air and water supplies, and bullet and bomb resistant windows designed to withstand 200 MPH winds. The 1993 bombing must have been part of the rationale for the command center, which overlooked the Twin Towers, a prime terrorist target.

How curious that on the day of the attack, Guiliani and his Entourage set up shop in a different headquarters, abandoning the special bunker designed precisely for such an event. http://www.wtc7.net/background.html

[DoYouEverWonder]

12. What intense fires?

What floors had intense fires and how did they contribute to the collapse of the building?

[dailykoff]

11. Those aren't facts, they're talking points.

If it comforts you to believe the nonsense printed in the Miami Herald or broadcast on CNN, fine. Stay tuned to your favorite sitcoms and let other people do the heavy lifting. That's usually how it works.

:shrug:

[mirandapriestly]

13. You're entitled to your beliefs, but you're not very well informed

and you state opinion and misinformation as fact. Why is believing the Bush administration considered to be "reality based"?

[JackRiddler]

14. You're wrong about DU...

which was a center of 9/11 skepticism from the day itself. Only more recently has there been a crackdown and banishment to the dungeon. The majority of member probably have always thought 9/11 was an inside job.