Questions for those who argue as skeptics against 9/11 skepticism

[JackRiddler]

(NOTE: No name calling. I want to open a serious discussion with those who are willing. I ask people who support inside job theories to comment on the OP if they wish but to avoid snark in this thread and wait on adding their own new questions for 48 hours.)

Isn't Cheney's continued linking of the Saddam regime to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 events the most "outrageous conspiracy theory" of all? Did it not have more real-world impact than any other conspiracy theory? Note that he did it again yesterday:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/13/MNG7UOK2D61.DTL&type=printable

Should 9/11 have been responded to as a crime against humanity, or as an act of war?

Is it untrue that 9/11 was employed as the justification for military actions and domestic policies that would have otherwise been politically difficult or infeasible? Is it untrue that each of these actions and policies was explicitly desired and planned in advance by the main players of the Bush administration?

Do you justify the appointment of Philip Zelikow as the executive director of the 9/11 Commission? Does not this appointment on its face indicate a cover-up?

What did you think of the original appointment of Henry Kissinger to be the chairman of the 9/11 Commission?

Did Condoleezza Rice commit perjury with regard to the Aug. 6th PDB in her testimony before the Commission? Should this not be a priority for prosecution?

Do you agree with the 9/11 Commission conclusion that the question of who financed the alleged hijackers is "of little practical significance"?

Should the Pakistani money connection have been pursued? Should this not be a high priority?

Should Sibel Edmonds be allowed to speak openly on all that she knows? Should this not be a high priority for opponents of the Bush regime?

Should an investigation be pursued to determine which agencies and officials consciously and repeatedly upheld false accounts of the air-defense response timeline? (Suspects to include FAA, NORAD and Gen. Myers, who produced and repeated mutually contradictory accounts in the 2001-2003 period?)

Shouldn't the whereabouts of Gen. Myers (in light of his contradictions with Clarke's account) and of Donald Rumsfeld during the attacks be known?

Should Christie Todd Whitman be indicted for her false statements to the public concerning the dangers of Ground Zero emissions? Shouldn't it be a high priority to investigate which White House officials suppressed the initial EPA report? Wouldn't consciously downplaying this risk and ultimately raising the fatality rate constitute a high crime?

Were the questions posed by the Family Steering Committee the right roadmap for the 9/11 Commission, as Jamey Gorelick and others acknowledged? Is it untrue, as two members of the FSC have detailed, that 70 percent of these questions were fully omitted from consideration the 9/11 CR?

Would you support a new investigation that uses these questions as its basis?

Do you agree there is probable cause for a criminal investigation or grand jury into as-yet unsolved crimes relating to the events of September 11th and their aftermath?
(See http://justicefor911.org - Have you read the actual 2004 complaint to Spitzer up at that site?)

Do you agree with the Commission's deal with the White House on WH documents including PDBs?

What do you think of Cleland's resignation, and his statements that the 9/11 Commission was a whitewash and White House treatment of the investigation was a scam?

Should we know who the sources were for the alleged discovery of the "Brooklyn Cell" including Mohamed Atta by Able Danger in 1999-2000? Was Able Danger of minor historical significance, as the 9/11 Commission claimed?

Wouldn't a serious investigation of September 11th pursue all stories of foreknowledge and forewarnings, especially those from foreign intelligence agencies, with the goal of finding out the sources of such information? (I.e., avoiding any assumptions about their significance until the sources are known?)

Are you aware that claims of put options and suspect financial deals suggesting foreknowledge range far, far beyond the well-known sets of put options placed on United and American stock on the CBOE?

Do you believe that United 93 crashed at 10:03 am without causing a measurable seismic event, and that a natural seismic event of the size usually associated with a plane crash followed in the same area at 10:06 am by coincidence?

Why do you think the anthrax mailings were sent to Daschle and Leahy? (Reports of any other anthrax targets in the government have since been discounted as hoaxes and mistakes.)

What do you think of the FBI's investigations of leaks from the intelligence committee senators and their staff during the Joint Intelligence Committee Investigation of 9/11? Might the FBI actions have been intended as intimidation?

Sibel Edmonds and Anthony Shaffer were disciplined. The FAA tapes of accounts by air traffic controllers who handled the two flights that hit the Towers, taken on the afternoon of September 11th, were destroyed. Myers, Eberhard, Frasca, Maltbie and Bowman all received promotions after 9/11. George Tenet got a medal. Would this combination have an effect on potential whistleblowers contemplating coming forward with whatever bits they know?

Do you believe all hijacker identities have been resolved beyond doubt?

Where was Mohamed Atta in the period from April to June, 2000?

When if ever do you think the al-Qaeda networks that grew out of the "Afghan Arab" movement during the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad stopped having links to US intelligence networks?

Was Osama Bin Ladin allowed to get away from Tora Bora? Was there an airlift of Pakistani ISI and al-Qaeda operatives out of Kunduz, Afghanistan via an air corridor cleared by US forces in November 2001, as Seymour Hersh reported?

Do US intel/military agencies or related networks amongst their contractors have a significant history of engineering false-flag terrorism? Should this enter at all into considerations of 9/11?

What is the significance of Ali Mohamed? Was his story worthy of inclusion in the official 9/11 investigations?

Do these questions, most of which relate to official statements and actions of geopolitical consequence, not indicate higher priorities for skeptics to pursue than the debunking of errors and distortions by amateur researchers as seen in "Loose Change 2," Alex Jones's works, dustification theories, "no planes" theories and the like?

Have you read Michael Ruppert? The 9/11 Timeline edited by Paul Thompson? Nafeez Ahmed? Michel Chossudovsky? Daniel Hopsicker? Were these not the most prominent 9/11 skeptic-researchers by far until 2005?

[CJCRANE]

1. Cheney's statements

illustrate what I call a "false-blame attack". It doesn't matter who carried out the attack - you just blame it on someone else.

Even better if the attack was "state-managed terrorism", i.e. you manage everything in the terrorist's favor to ensure that the operation goes ahead successfully.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

2. Pretty low response rate from our OCTs.

kick :kick:

[JackRiddler]

3. Give them some time - it's a big post...

Thanks!

[petgoat]

4. kick nt

[HamdenRice]

5. Where are the replies? nt

[jberryhill]

6. The bar exam had fewer questions

Is this quiz for credit?

The key question is here:

Do these questions, most of which relate to official statements and actions of geopolitical consequence, not indicate higher priorities for skeptics to pursue than the debunking of errors and distortions by amateur researchers as seen in "Loose Change 2," Alex Jones's works, dustification theories, "no planes" theories and the like?

Why don't you go ahead and post on some of those other intriguing and important topics. I'll post about what I damned well please and don't need you to tell me what my "priorities" should be.

The amateur nutjob crap are things I enjoy discussing. Different strokes for different folks. If you want to debate stuff like creationism, UFO abductions, and other popular mythologies, I like that stuff too. I've been arguing over weird crap on the internet since USENET days back in the 1980's. It's a freaking hobby. It is neither my life nor my occupation, and I don't recall having appointed you as my supervisor.

Why, there is a YouTube video that CONCLUSIVELY PROVES that Bush did it, and in all caps too! So, why bother discussing funding, cozy historical relationships, manufactured intelligence, and so forth. 9/11 has been solved already.

Take, for example:

Did Condoleezza Rice commit perjury with regard to the Aug. 6th PDB in her testimony before the Commission? Should this not be a priority for prosecution?

My answers are "yes" and "yes". Do you believe there is a cabal of "OCT'ers" that, by the very act of posting at DU, are somehow preventing this from happening? It's a discussion board. Discuss what you want. At the end of the day, a bunch of keyboard strokes stored in a database somewhere is really not that big a deal.

What I see happening is a constant parade of insane tinfoil crap that short-circuits serious discussion of a wealth of things which do certainly need more than the 9/11 Commission whitewash.

[Bryan Sacks]

8. A person's priorities give others information about them, Jberryhill

By all means, do whatever the fuck you like. I like discussing bizarre stuff, too. That, of course is not the issue and never has been.

The issue is painting '9/11 skepticism' as MOSTLY or PRIMARILY about speculative videos and outlandish theories. It is not and never has been, and only someone ignorant of the body of work supporting oppositional/deep political analysis could claim such nonsense.. The best 9/11 skepticism is intimately connected with an approach to political analysis called "Deep Politics". It's basically an extension of the methods of structural analysis to areas of political activity that are systematically suppressed in official histories. It also has a more robust concept of elite agency than does standard leftist structural analysis. It considers international money laundering, drug trafficking, traces the interlocking connections between US political campaigns/parties and agencies that front for foreign governments, looks at patterns in the creation of official investigative boards for the purpose of understanding what evidence is likely being suppressed, and the like.

Jack Riddler and I and several others have made this point many times here, and that point has either been denied without ample argument, considered irrelevant without ample argument or ignored. After awhile, one cannot help but come to believe that those who wish to ignore this material are part of the political problem to be overcome. Just as you and others seem to believe that CTists are a political problem to be overcome.

What I see happening is a constant parade of insane tinfoil crap that short-circuits serious discussion of a wealth of things which do certainly need more than the 9/11 Commission whitewash.

And your contribution to this state of affairs is??? Defending your right to discuss any kind of 'nutjob crap' you want. How clever and brave of you. You can discuss whatever you want. Great point.

Your gripe is with the corporate media, Jberryhill. They pick up the nutjob crap and run with it. Instead, you blame the nutters who can't be helped anyway.

Get out of the 9/11 forum and read a little bit. Start with Nafeez Ahmed ot Peter Dale Scott and get back to us.

[MervinFerd]

10. Have I seen you (any of you) denouncing the "nutjob crap"?

"painting '9/11 skepticism' as MOSTLY or PRIMARILY about speculative videos and outlandish theories."---Is much paint really needed?

The reality is that the harebrained theories dominate. If you wish that to end, then denounce them vigorously.

AND STATE CLEAR HYPOTHESES of your own.

[JackRiddler]

70. If you haven't, it's because you don't want to look...

Just in current threads you can find repeated critiques and rejections of various canards by myself.

Politics is the realm of theses, not hypotheses. Sorry if it can't always be broken up into quanta for your understanding.

Thesis: There is probable cause for a criminal investigation of September 11th focusing on allegations of fiduciary failure to protect, criminal negligence, public endangerment (the air toxicity issue), wanton facilitation of criminal acts, foreknowledge and failure to act before the fact, aiding and abetting terrorist activity, obstruction of justice after the fact, providing of false accounts, perjury under oath, destruction of evidence, harrassment of whistleblowers, withholding of evidence relevant to criminal proceedings, misuse of a criminal act by laying false-blame for the purpose of an agenda of aggressive war and crimes against humanity; and also possible direct high crimes, treason and mass murder; by officials of the United States government, members of US intelligence contractor networks and operatives of allied intelligence agencies. Let's start with Condoleezza Rice for perjury and NORAD for false accounts to the 9/11 Commission and see what the discovery process unveils. A special prosecutor should be appointed immediately by Congress.

Secondary assertion: Notwithstanding one's desire to play high school debate on Internet fora, the above is a higher priority for concerned citizens than the failures of Loose Change 2 and other speculative works.

[greyl]

72. We're looking at your own words at your sig links.

I'm beginning to suspect that the only reason you ever said anything critical of Loose Change is professional jealousy.

Dear Serious Publishers,

you may think I'm a lunatic but the writing's not bad,eh? You're also thinking I could use an editor. And a fact-checker. Whydon't you give me one then, and a decent contract to turn this site intothe real book it was meant to be? I've been published, I can deliver. Andyou know this sort of thing is going to have a market. Why not be in on the ground floor? With something more sophisticated than your maniac talk-radioranters? I'm totally down with evidentiary standards, you know. Even gota pinch of court experience.

Don't misunderstand the above as prostitution. I wouldn'twrite what I didn't think. That's my damn problem in the first place, isn'tit? I'd just like to have the time to actually work on this project inpeace - preferably with like-minded others - and pay the bills while I'mat it. No different than you. Send me a mail.

Remember to get out into the sunshine today,

Jack
http://911truth.org/osamas/visitors.html#believer

[JackRiddler]

76. WE?

Who are "we"? The James Randi Freedom Hit Squad?

Well please go ahead and defame me, people, long as you provide links to the objects of your calumny. I'll be happy to let independent readers compare for themselves.

Thanks for plugging my ancient (2002) page of joke "Letters from the Editor," (which is what the letters page in the old National Lampoon was called),including the self-deprecating piece you quote above. And thanks for showing your usual sterling sense of humor in the process.

I'll be happy if anyone still goes there and reads the whole thing, since it's addressed to various parties. (I wonder what's causing that damned layout thing where it eliminates the spaces between words. Like I need more things to fix on my plate!)

--

Straight Talk to A Selection of My Visitors
Get yourself a beverage and lean back with Jack...

Dear American Believer in the Official Conspiracy Theory...

CONTINUED HERE http://911truth.org/osamas/visitors.html

--

That used to be my most popular page, I suspect because one of the pieces was linked from the main page via a text that read, "Hey FBI! Meat for Carnivore! Here boy! woof, woof."

Here's that one. I think you may recognize someone in the last section. I've bolded it to help the fast readers among you.

--

Dear FBI, Spooks and Cops of All Nations, Self-Appointed Patriotic Spies, Etc.,

You aren't really reading this, are you? If you are: Why?

Yeah, I know it all gets munched through Echelon/Carnivore/Herbivore or whatever you're calling it this week, but (I bet you're thinking this too...) you... a human... are... not... really reading this, are you?

Do you want to?

I'd like to think you're here because you are curious about what I have to say. You're wondering yourself what really happened on Sept. 11. You know that the FBI investigation was a joke. You probably know that the serious agents among you, the ones who wanted to bag terrorists, were held back before AND after Sept. 11. Maybe you're even angry about what happened to John O'Neill. And now you're running around the Skeptic sites, trying to find out what they think, weighing their arguments.

But - if you are here - that is almost certainly not the reason, is it? You're here - and you've been in lots of other places besides- because you've been told to observe subversives and potential troublemakers.

Isn't that embarrassing? Do you know how insignificant I am? Of course you do, I use a pseudonym but you can find out who I am in about a minute. Why are you here?! Don't you have any REAL fish to fry? Even more so, don't you feel it's wrong? You may think I'm crazy, but actually I am exercising the rights that, last I looked, were still legal. The rights celebrated as the greatest achievements of the democratic way of life, etc. etc. I ain't no terrorist, no matter what crazy law the government decides to pass.

They'll try to make everything illegal, in the end. How did one fellow I read it put it? The logic of the state is such that in the end, "everything that is not forbidden will be made compulsory." Are you really for that? Do you get kicks out of it? I doubt it, for most of you. Just doing your job. But what would you do if one of your bosses was the real criminal?

(You're not all on the take, are you? Is there a Serpico in the house?)

I speak my mind. Sometimes too dramatic, but I'm legal and non-violent. I sincerely believe it's my patriotic duty to put up my doubts about the official story of Sept. 11 here, on the Net, where others might see it. In London, in Hyde Park, they'd at least let me make speeches on a Sunday.

Or am I threat? Maybe you're taking the ideas espoused on this site more seriously than you admit?

Hey, some of you self-proclaimed patriotic censors are out there too. War Bloggers and Neo-McCarthyites and even some Protectors of Leftist Propriety Against the Conspiracy Menace. Making the rounds for heretics, are you?

Well you're right. I must be a heretic. I don't love an ideology. I don't love a flag. Any flag. I don't hate anything or anyone all that much, either. I ain't crazy. I ain't for war. I don't believe ANYTHING the government (or any government) says if not multiply confirmed through other independent sources. On questions of war and grand policy I always assume they will lie, because that is what the historical record shows they do with great consistency. And I don't need to apologize. I gain nothing by putting up this site. Just a feeling that it's the right thing to do, for all my doubts. Of course I could be wrong about so many things, but I do it anyway, because I seriously believe what I write. I love my country. More to the point, I love my people. The American people,and the people of the world. Together. I am the patriot.

If you're a cop and you're reading this, ask yourself: Why are you wasting time with me, who knows nothing, who can only present fragments and speculate, who is powerless? Why aren't you spending your time going after some real crimes? What are your bosses trying to hide, by sending you off to read conspiracy lunatics on the Web?

Enjoy your coffee,

Jack

(Nicholas Levis (c) 2002.)

Originally published on the defunct website "Osama's Kidneys," which is archived as a piece of historical interest at 911Truth.org here:
http://911truth.org/osamas/main.html

[Twist_U_Up]

107. "hey, that's good stuff!"

well it is.

[greyl]

109. You also liked

this bs.

[Fainter]

123. The One Thing OCTers Can't Abide And Have No Answer For Is Honest Self Examination...

isn't this your point Jack? Greyl, who is this "we" you apparently speak on behalf of? A brave OCTer would be proud to demonstrate the courage of his convictions by answering this question forthwith. Your failure to do so exhibits a degree of scienter which needs exploring. Jack, you have him cold. Perhaps Greyl would be so kind as to post to the board his paper trail? I for one hope someday to see your book. Your work is invaluable, never give in. Your muse, your inamorata is the truth.

[greyl]

126. Funny.

One of the most basic tenets of authentic skepticism is realizing how fallible the human mind is - that we tend to fool ourselves. In this case, like many before you, you've fooled yourself into believing that some members of DU are part of some professionally organized effort to subvert truth. Well, thanks, but that's bullshit. Just like there are multi-million dollar industries of homeopathy, astrology, psychics, and salvation, there is a multi-million dollar 9/11 conspiracy theory industry. Nobody would want to distract from that fact by accusing skeptics of the industry of being part of a conspiracy, would they? Nah.

"We" equals MervinFerd and I specifically, but includes anyone else on the planet who might follow the links in JR's sig. That some believe it was a clue to some sinister operation fits perfectly with the rest of their attitude.

[JackRiddler]

127. I don't think that...

My default hypothesis in your case is that you hang with an Internet crew (as you've now more or less said) who serve each other as an echo chamber at JREF and maybe other sites, engaged in the self-glorifying ridicule of "woo-woos." Which in turn is a form of comforting group membership. It's like gang war without need of shanks, and the targets are happy to group into a gang of their own and fly their own bandanas (and often provide you with nice fat targets, they do), and it goes round and round and seems to be its own reward. Whatever it is, it usually isn't scholarship or skepticism.

[Fainter]

129. "WE're looking at your own words at your sig links"

That is your characterization of what you are about, not Jack's, nor mine. You own it, and if it invites questions, tough noogies. Perhaps you intend "we're" in its royalist, Olympian sense? After all, one "...of the most basic tenets of authentic skepticism is realizing how fallible the human mind is-that we tend to fool ourselves." Goose for your gander, Greyl. Please show everyone where I have ever expressed a belief from which one can conclude that I am of the opinion that "...some members on DU are part of some professionally organized effort to subvert truth." You can't, because I haven't. But for what it is worth, one way of parsing your statement is as an admission to participation in an organized effort on DU, professional or not, to discredit skeptics of the official story.

[greyl]

134. Yeah, I own it and I've explained it.

The OP is addressed to a group of people, correct?

Now, 3 people are in a room, divided into 2 groups.
2 on one side, 1 on the other.
2 on opposite sides are talking, one poses a question, and the 3rd interrupts and uses the term "we".

That leads the average non-paranoid person to imagine it's part of a conspiracy, right?

The subject was JackRiddler and his claim that if someone doesn't think he denounces nutjob crap, it's because they don't want to look for evidence of him denouncing nutjob crap.
If anyone follows the links in his sig, they will find nutjob crap.

[jberryhill]

12. An F-bomb inside of the first ten words....

How nice.

So, to be clear, I am an ignorant part of a political problem.

Have you ever considered that when you post informative material which you believe to be "ignored", then what is really happening is that it is being "read".

Or is your problem that nobody argues with the good stuff?

What is it you want, exactly? I certainly wouldn't dispute the proposition that, say, Cheney is a pathological liar. If others *agree* with what you are posting, then is your point that there are not enough follow-ups saying "hey, that's good stuff!"?

Or is your problem that there are folks who bother to dispute the nutjob stuff?


Your gripe is with the corporate media, Jberryhill. They pick up the nutjob crap and run with it. Instead, you blame the nutters who can't be helped anyway.


No, I never heard about dustification beams, no planers, and a whole wealth of topics until I started reading that stuff right here at DU and at various 9/11 truth websites. If you think I spend any time watching "corporate media", then you don't know me very well at all. That stuff is posted here, every day, day in, and day out.


Get out of the 9/11 forum and read a little bit.


And your rank would be, uh, what?

[JackRiddler]

85. dude...

fuck is more american than apple pie, which is a dessert for fucking commies. some people like fuck as an adjective, an intensifier, a mixer for vodka...

[jberryhill]

102. Hmmm....

I gotta get me some of that vodka.

[AZCat]

16. Uhhh, no.

you said

It's basically an extension of the methods of structural analysis to areas of political activity that are systematically suppressed in official histories.

Not even remotely the same thing, unless you do your structural analysis different from every structural engineer I've worked with.

[HamdenRice]

20. He means structural in the anthropological /linguistic /political sense

There is a field of analysis called structuralism that was pioneered in linguistics by Noam Chomsky, in anthropology by Claude Levi Strauss and applied to politics later by Chomsky. It has nothing to do with structural engineering.

Structuralism focuses on the structure of thought, language and political institutions rather than on the actions and motivations of individual actors in history and politics.

That's why Chomsky always argues that there is no difference between a Democratic administration and a Republican administration -- because the economic structures that dictate everything remain the same.

He is suggesting that "deep politics" focuses on individuals and networks with motivations -- the accumulation of power, the manipulation of the system for illegal purposes, the private use of intelligence for economic gain -- rather than impersonal structures.

[MervinFerd]

23. Structuralism and the "global warming hoax".

Fine.

Now, how do we resolve the question whether emissions of the oxide of carbon are causing increases in the average temperature at the Earth's surface?

"Structural analysis"? Or, careful measurements, historical records, analysis of ice cores, computer modeling, consensus of experts--all that dull, difficult hard science stuff.

"Structuralism" has whatever utility it may have in the realm of abstract political theory. When the name and methods are applied to questions of hard fact, it becomes nothing but a vehicle allowing fools and knaves to spin ridiculous theories and protect them from rational scrutiny.

[HamdenRice]

26. All you are saying is

"I MervinFerd, don't believe in history, political science or anthropology."

Structuralism is a well respected method of analysis in these fields, and just because you are ignorant of it or don't believe in it won't make it "go away."

[MervinFerd]

28. No, I'm saying that you are misusing "structuralism".

"Structuralism" has, in political science, anthropology and history whatever utility that it has.

But, we are talking of simple, straightforward questions of fact:
Is industrial activity causing the climate to become warmer?
Did the Holocaust happen?
Can structural damage and fire account for the collapse of the 3 WTC buildings?

"Structuralism" is of no use at all in answering such questions. These require the standard, ancient methods of Science and Academics--clear statement of hypotheses, gathering and verification of facts, respect for expert opinion, consensus of a community of scholars.

The methods that explain the collapse of the WTC buildings are the same methods that demonstrate global warming and the reality of the Holocaust. Reject rationality in one instance, you have no reason to reject it in the other.

So, explain the Deep Politics of 911 with Structuralism, or whatever else you find enlightening. But leave the analysis of very large steel structures and the global climate system to the people who actually know how to do that analysis.

[HamdenRice]

29. 9/11 is a political crime, not an engineering issue

You seem to equate one form of inquiry -- engineering -- with "rationality". But there are other methods of inquiry that have scientific legitimacy in their fields. You wrote:

"These require the standard, ancient methods of Science and Academics"

But some "Academics" are not based in "engineering," which you falsely equate with "science." I've written a bit about this on this forum under the rubric of epistemology, but most of the OCTers simply ridicule the idea that there are other forms of rational knowledge other than "engineering."

For example, a jury does not decide the guilt or innocence of a defendant on the basis of engineering epistemology; it does so on the basis of jurisprudence under a standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt." A legislature, whether a state legislature or the federal Congress, decides to pass a highly technical law not on the basis of "yes-or-no" engineering epistemology, but on the basis of gathering data and making the best estimate of what will work.

It's depressing to try to get this across to the alleged "engineers" on this forum, but there are other forms of knowledge than yours that are not only rational, but proved to be effective heuristic device.

For example, aspirin, other analgesics, anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, blood pressure medicines and many other drugs "work" but often their method of working is poorly understood by biochemists. They are approved by the FDA because of an inductively proven correlation between taking the drug and a lessening of symptoms.

You cannot "solve" the crime of 9/11 using engineering epistemology. It can only be solved using inductive methods of political science, jurisprudence (criminology), terrorism studies, deep politics, and other non-engineering disciplines to determine what was the most likely explanation of what happened.

It is sad to see that there are some people who simply cannot accept or understand the epistemological underpinnings of almost all modern knowledge outside of "engineering."

On edit: The irony is that you appear not to even know what "structuralism" is! In fact, structuralism arose because of the application of science -- especially developmental psychology and neurology -- to linguistics, which transformed that field from lists of words and grammar to the study of the relationship between the brain and language.

So you dismiss it out of pure ignorance.

[MervinFerd]

33. Does industrial activity cause global warming? YES or NO.

Can structural damage and fire cause a steel building to collapse? YES or NO?
Did a particular historical event actually happen? YES or NO?

These are questions of objective fact, not of politics. They are solved by the traditional methods and disciplines of sciences and academics. "Solving" the crime of 911 may require many other methods. That has nothing whatever to do with SPECIFIC FACTUAL QUESTIONS.

I certainly do not understand "structuralism" very well, but I strongly suspect that even its legitimate practitioners and advocates would not claim that the method can ascertain the truth about global warming or the collapse of WTC7. To claim that, is straightforwardly bullshit.


The "working" of aspirin and BP medications is nowadays pretty well understood. Antidepressants and antipsychotics, less well. So? Controlled, double-blind, statistically valid experiments demonstrate that the effects are real. No structuralism is necessary.

[HamdenRice]

37. The OP is NOT about collapse of a steel building

The OP asks a series of questions about circumstantial evidence. The sum total of the answers leads to a conclusion: what is the best explanation of what happened and who was responsible on 9/11.

The practitioners of structuralist politics would not try to explain why wtc 7 collapsed; but they might very well try to explain how 9/11 served the interests of the neo-conservatives, or whether structures of intelligence networks, drug trafficers and terrorists were involved.

As for the drug example, the point is that the method of the working of these drugs is not well understood but the INDUCTIVE relationship, proven by double blind studies, between taking them and the alleviation of symptoms is.

But you and other OCTers have flatly denied that inductive science exists.

On edit: One thing you say is undoubtedly true: You don't have much of a grasp of structuralism.

[MervinFerd]

44. WTF? "flatly denied that inductive science exists."

Dear Jezus wearing peace rings and a slide rule!

You think that controlled, double-blind empirical studies are NOT "science"?

The problem is NOT with inductive science; the problem that the list in the OP is NOT proof of anything, by -any- science. It's a list of known and accepted facts, questions that mostly have been answered, and irrelevant facts.

There's an actual persuasive case that there the Saudis, Pakistanis and American Intelligence had more to do with 911 than we know about. But I don't need any new bullshit "inductive science" to argue that.

And, if this is about only "nexus"es, why the BS about seismic signals in PA? and etc? "Practitioners of Structuralism" may not be trying to explain the collapse of WTC7, but the OP certainly is.

[HamdenRice]

48. Double blind studies are inductive science

sorry if you don't think so. But then again, you don't believe in history, political science or anthropology, so you're not that credible.

[MervinFerd]

56. Yes....That's what I said.

But, long lists of unconnected facts, questions and falsehoods, such as the OP, are NOT "inductive science".

They are bullshit.



I've no problem with history, poli sci, or anthropology. To the extent that those disciplines -are- sciences, they will make clear testable hypotheses and support or refute them with clearly stated and verifiable evidence.

[HamdenRice]

60. You really don't get it! It's amazing!

A "long list of facts" may not be "engingeering" science, but they can lead to social science. How do you think historians write history?

But contrary to this post, you have admitted, you don't believe in " history, poli sci, or anthropology". As you wrote:

"Structuralism" has whatever utility it may have in the realm of abstract political theory. When the name and methods are applied to questions of hard fact, it becomes nothing but a vehicle allowing fools and knaves to spin ridiculous theories and protect them from rational scrutiny.

In other words, because a particular theory of history/ political science/ anthropology does not conform to your narrow, and self-admittedly uninformed epistemology, it is nothing but "bullshit" that allows for "ridiculous theories."

How can an historian engage in your narrow kind of science when historical events are not "reproduceable" like scientific experiments because each event is unique? How can development economists adress the obstacles to development of poor countries when there may be a multitude of factors rather than one factor that leads to a particular country's underdevelopment?

How would a jury decide on the guilt or innocence of someone accused of a crime based on "clear testable hypotheses and support or refute them with clearly stated and verifiable evidence."

Again, you are showing that you simply cannot grasp the methodology of many other fields!

[MervinFerd]

71. You flatter yourself.

"How would a jury decide on the guilt or innocence of someone accused of a crime based on "clear testable hypotheses and support or refute them with clearly stated and verifiable evidence.""

Ahhhh.... You want the jury deciding -ambiguous- charges on the basis of vaguely worded and unverifiable evidence? A jury is required to do exactly what I described. Charges -must- be clearly stated; they can be thrown out of court if they are not. The rules of evidence are intended to guarantee that facts are verifiable and clear.

"How can an historian engage in your narrow kind of science when historical events are not "reproduceable" like scientific experiments "

These events -happened- or --did not happen--. Historians have methods of deciding that, which are different from the methods of science, but rigorous, nonetheless. I said nothing about the theories used to explain events.

The fools and knaves in question are certain Conspiracy Theorists who compile long, essentially meaningless lists, insinuate that these lists mean --something-- sinister. But, they cannot clearly state what that sinister something is, or how the long meaningless lists proves it. And then they invoke "structuralism" or "Deep Politics" to disguise the fact that they are making no sense whatever. All the while imagining that they possess intellectual capacities beyond those of mere physical and life-scientists, who just cannot grast subtleties.


Bullshit.

[greyl]

75. fabulist nt

[LeftishBrit]

141. As regards the jury...

'How would a jury decide on the guilt or innocence of someone accused of a crime based on "clear testable hypotheses and support or refute them with clearly stated and verifiable evidence."?'

Isn't that exactly what judges and juries *are* supposed to do? And, if there is insufficient evidence, to acquit rather than convict?

I think that there is an assumption here that there are only two possibilities: to accept the 'official version' of 9-11, or to believe that it was an inside job. One can be sceptical about both. I certainly think that there should be an independent investigation of 9-11, and should have been one a long time ago. And that such an investigation would probably have revealed such incompetence and dishonesty as to cause an overwhelming defeat for the Republicans in 2004.

I don't think that there is sufficient evidence that the Bush government LIHOP or MIHOP; and I feel that by now such evidence would have emerged. Bush might suppress investigations and reporting of evidence within the USA itself; but he doesn't have the same control over what happens elsewhere.

The Republicans encouraged the development of other conspiracy theories - that Saddam or Iraq or an organized worldwide network of 'Islamo-fascists' were responsible for 9-11 -; and the invasion of Iraq was also justified by false rumours of WMD. I never believed that the evidence supported any of these implicit and explicit conspiracy theories of the Right; and my scepticism was fully justified. I also never believed that Bush MIHOP. That Bush 'Lied About it On Purpose After the Event to Suit his Own Agenda' is another matter - I would believe that.

Perhaps I am just not a great believer in large-scale conspiracy theories, official or unofficial, without lots of evidence. I think one difference between my 'world view' and that of some people on this board is that I tend to believe that much of the harm in this world is caused by lots of rival groups, big and small, struggling for power, with many people ending up as literal or metaphorical 'collateral damage'; while many people here tend to believe in a vast network of groups working together. Thus, some people here are far more inclined that I am to assume that if two bad things happen, they must be directly linked; whereas I would need far more evidence for such a link.

[HamdenRice]

49. Please point out where the OP discusses WTC 7 nt

[jberryhill]

57. I have two hats

I started as an engineer, but am now an attorney. You know better than this:


The sum total of the answers leads to a conclusion:


No. It is the constellation of questions which frames a conclusion.

That was the point of my posting of certain facts relative to the Titanic.

Do you believe that ice can cut steel?

What do you think of a NIST scientist saying "It doesn't matter how cold it gets. Ice does not break steel."?
(http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6200565569456547648&hl=en)

Why do you think passengers reported hearing explosions at the time of the "iceberg collision"?

Was the Titanic designed to be "unsinkable"? Yes or no?

Can you identify any steel-hulled passenger steamship which was ever sunk by an iceberg OTHER than the Titanic?

Does it seem at all odd to you that other ships in the area observed distress signals from the Titanic, but decided to "stand down"?

The sum total of the answers to these questions leads inexorably to a conclusion. It's all about picking your questions.

[LeftishBrit]

143. Simply examining 'whose interests were served' does not prove guilt

It may provide hypotheses to be tested; but does not prove them.

In a murder trial, if the victim's spouse stood to inherit a lot of money, this might lead to their being considered as a suspect, but does not mean that they are guilty. "Who done it" in any crime, political or non-political, is a question of fact.

In all of science, testing a hypothesis generally *is* a matter of demonstrating that something is true 'beyond reasonable doubt'. It is rarely possible to prove that a hypothesis is undoubtedly true. It is only possible to demonstrate that the chance that it is untrue is less than 5%, or less than 1%, or less than 1 in 1000, etc. So there is more similarity between science and law than might appear at first sight. And in both cases, personal considerations of 'who might have gained', etc. are only potentially relevant to the creation of hypotheses, not to their proof.

[HamdenRice]

40. A structuralist answer

Structuralism, a branch of political science, history and anthropology, rather than of engineering, would not try to explain whether global warming is occurring.

But it would certainly try to explain why it is politically difficult if not impossible for an American government to address it.

For example, one branch of political science structuralism shows that where a problem imposes small or highly speculative individual costs on big groups of people and gigantic benefits on well organized small groups, the political system cannot resist the small group.

This has been used to explain pollution in general. The polluting company spews smoke that costs each family, say, $20 dollars in damage. But ameliorating the problem might cost the factory one million. So the factory spends $10,000 to lobby to prevent pollution control, saving $990,000. But to the thousands of affected families, the cost to each family of organizing politically to lobby to prevent pollution is greater than the $20 damage that each family suffers. Therefore the political system will tolerate the pollution, even if the damage to the whole system is greater than the cost to the factory of preventing the pollution.

Global warming is exactly this kind of problem. Why would I pay $5,000 more for a low polluting hybrid car to prevent my grandchildren from suffering floods or hurricanes? Why would Congress legislate against global warming when the costs are spread over future generations, but the benefits of doing nothing generate billions for Exon-Mobile, which pays campaign contributions today?

Do you think that this is a fantasy, crazy tin foil hat, alien lizard overlord type analysis?

edited for clarity

[MervinFerd]

46. That's perfectly clear. Why do you, then, use Structural Analysis to discover..

the cause of the collapse of WTC7?

If you are not doing that, why will you not denounce the claims of bombs and nukes and rays as arrant nonsense?

[HamdenRice]

47. Here's yet another question MervinFerd cannot answer

using his "engineering" epistemology.

Actually this thread is pretty interesting to me because I am learning about the epistemological limitations of the intellectual framework of some of the OCTers in general and MervinFerd in particular.

So let me take another whack at this by asking MF another question.

You may be aware that the FBI sometimes has had to use undercover agents in order to penetrate criminal enterprises. There is a great movie about this you may have seen -- Donnie Brasco -- which was based on a true story of undercover agent Joseph Pistone. Hope you've seen it because it will make this discussion somewhat easier.

Pistone posed as a jewel thief and gangster named Donnie Brasco in order to infiltrate the Bonano crime family, a mafia organization. After six years under deep cover, he was so convincing that the Bonano organization proposed to make him a "made man," on condition that he assassinate a certain crime figure. At that point the FBI pulled him, but his testimony led to hundreds of arrests.

The problem, however, is that Brasco had to commit certain crimes, including assault, robbery, accessory after the fact to murder and disposal of bodies, in order to prove his credibility.

From an "engineering" perspective, you would ask, is Pistone guilty of a crime? YES or NO?

As you can immediately see, there is no yes or no answer. There may be a legal/structural/institutional answer: he was not prosecuted, so therefore he is not "technically" guilty of a crime. But we could still ask whether he committed a crime.

A more troubling and nuanced example is the FBI's penetration of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s. The FBI was part of the Justice Department, which under Kennedy and Johnson was sympathetic to the civil rights movement, which ordered the FBI to carry out the espionage. But the FBI was headed by notorious racist, paranoid J. Edgar Hoover, and had many racist agents who were not sympathetic to the civil rights movement.

The FBI found it difficult to penetrate the KKK until it began recruiting well known racists who were already KKK members. It paid them for information, which led to arrests and prosecutions, but those very same informants participated in crimes, including assaults, batteries, and murder, against civil rights movement workers.

If we had a debate or trial about the guilt of those informants, their handlers or J. Edgar Hoover could we definitively answer whether these people were committing crimes or enforcing the civil rights law?

Ultimately, the answer is not knowable. What was in J. Edgar Hoover's heart? Did he himself understand what his motivations were? Did he have divided motivations -- wanting to solve crimes while also wanting to undermine the civil rights movement? What role did Hoover's mental illness play in his level of guilt? How guilty were the mid level FBI officials? How would you assess the guilt or innocence of the informants?

Can you pose any of these questions as "YES or NO" answers? If not does that mean we simply cannot ask them?

Ultimately, the answer would be a moral, ethical one that balanced each actor's mixed motives, level of self-awareness, the benefits of penetration of the KKK weighed against the detriments of the crimes committed during the operation.

IN OTHER WORDS, MF, THERE ARE QUESTIONS TO WHICH THERE ARE NOT "YES OR NO" ANSWERS!

This must be very disturbing to you, but there are many fields of "academic and scientific" inquiry in which this is the case.

Several posters, including JackRiddler, and several 9/11 researchers see 9/11 as emerging from this kind of environment -- in which western and foreign intelligence agencies funded, built up and used al Qaeda to fight the Soviets, and to intervene in the former Yugoslavia, and maintained contact with them in order to get intelligence on Islamic extremists. A fairly large network of intelligence, immigration and law enforcement officials allowed AQ operatives to move freely across borders, while engaging in criminal enterprises to finance their activities. They seem to have been aware of the developing 9/11 attacks.

Under these circumstances it was fairly easy for some actors to allow the attacks to occur or facilitate them. The "YES or NO" evidence has not been completely elicited, but the circumstantial evidence is very strong.

[MervinFerd]

68. You flatter yourself. OF COURSE there are questions without YES or NO..

answers. There may be a few of those, even in engineering, and no competent engineer would deny it.

--BUT--

there ARE questions that -are- YES or NO.

Did your informants -participate- in crimes? YES. Per your description of the situation.
Did your informants -commit- crimes themselves? Obviously, an ambiguous question. Answerable within a particular legal or moral framework.

Is industrial activity increasing global temperature? YES, although there is some limited uncertainty remaining.
Can steel buildings collapse because of structural damage and fire? YES, unambiguously.
Were airplanes hijacked and flown into the WTC towers? YES, unambiguously.

Did Saudi and Pakistani governments participate in 911? Ambiguous. Define "government" and "participate". But, yes, very probably under reasonable definitions of those terms.


The OP is a list of well-known facts and a couple of misleading questions, which is supposed to mean --something--. But, neither you, nor anyone else, can say quite what that is. We're supposed to guess, and if we don't see it, we are just ignorant and rational.

That's not a question of ambiguity. It's a question of -unambiguous- bullshit.

[HamdenRice]

69. You didn't address the question about thee FBI and KKK in post 47

It goes to the heart of the question.

And just calling things "bullshit" is not an effective rhetorical strategy and is very boring and repititive to your readers.

[greyl]

73. You didn't address post 68, nor are you being truthful.

Just after you launch a baseless smear against so-called OCTers, you falsely accuse MervinFerd of name calling. Plus, MF didn't "just call" your post bullshit, he used bullshit as an expletive along with a bunch of other words that you are ignoring.

[MervinFerd]

90. I did, too, answer that question.

The question was whether FBI informants participating in crimes, or KKK snitches participating in grimes were -guilty- of crimes.

The answer was that the matter is ambiguous. Honest men may differ. There is most definitely a large legal literature on the subject. For lawyers familiar with that subject, there is probably a clear practical answer. Morally, the question is more difficult. Within particular moral or religious systems, there will likely be clear answers. But there are many such systems.

It's an ambiguous and difficult question; there is no simple answer.

This is entirely different than the question: Did Snitch A shoot Victim B? -That- has a simple, unambiguous answer.

See the difference?

[HamdenRice]

131. Hey Mervin, interesting answer.

Thanks, that's actually a very thoughtful answer taken together with the answer above.

"Honest men may differ."

Now, here's another way our views may differ. You believe that a field like law ultimately answers most questions yes or no, like an engineer even if there are a few ambiguous questions.

My view of the law, as a decision making process is different. I think most questions that legal processes are designed to ask and answer are ambiguous.

The charge to a jury in a civil (ie non-criminal) trial includes an instruction to determine factual issues on a "more likely than not" or "preponderance of evidence" basis. In other words, the most important decision making function in litigation assumes that ultimately most issues are not fully knowable, yet we have to try to proceed and give answers.

Even in criminal cases, most questions are not like, "Did Snitch A shoot Victim B," because most crimes require a mental component. So it's not just "Did Snitch A shoot Victim B," but "what was Snitch A's intention (ie an unknowable, internal mental state) when he shot Victim B." Even criminal cases are decided with doubt -- ie on a beyond a reasonable doubt basis, which implicitly allows jurors to have some (unreasonable) doubt when finding guilt, or for that matter to acquit because they have reasonable doubt about a guilty hypothesis that on balance they believe to be true.

Rules of evidence are not just designed to provide the most accurate information to the jury, but to vindicate all kinds of policies and values -- such as consitutional limits on compelled testimony, or notions of creating a fair battle between opposing lawyers.

There was a really interesting article in the New Yorker some years ago, a first hand account by a journalist about being on jury duty, in I believe a criminal assault case. After the jury returned a not guilty verdict, the journalist investigated the facts that were not presented to the jury and was shocked to see how much they were not allowed to know, and determined that it would have been an easy guilty verdict if they had had that information.

The point again is that social science, legal, public health, historical and other fields do not have the same epistemology as engineering.

9/11 is a criminal and political issue, not an engineering issue. Whether elements within the government facilitated or allowed it to happen cannot yet be determined on a yes/no basis.

But from a legal/political basis, I would certainly conclude that there is enough "probable cause" to demand a new, independent investigation.

On edit: You seem to object to the way the OP resembles a "laundry list" of anomalies about 9/11. But juries, like certain other kinds of legal, political and social science decision makers, make their decisions in exactly this way: they are presented with a "laundry list" of consistent and inconsistent facts, and make an overall judgement in context of what is the most likely explanation of what happened.

That is not a yes/no answer methodology.

[Fainter]

97. An Exceptional Post!

Hamden, Jack's original post, and yours here, lay the foundation of a meaningful inquiry into 9/11. An investigation, like the law, has no majesty and is undeserving of our respect, if it is underpinned by what at best is a paradox and at worst a fraud. The way we come to know a thing is every bit as important as the thing we come to know.

MF's faith in the revelatory prowess of science is not misplaced, if enough hard data is known with certainty. But this is precisely the fault line between Truthers and Debunkers, isn't it? Do we have enough hard data about the fall of 7, and if we have enough, do we know it with enough certainty to answer the question what caused the collapse and who, if anyone, was responsible? Truthers remonstrate against both what they consider to be the paucity of hard evidence cited by the Debunkers, and the degree of certainty to which these data are known. The conclusions drawn by the Debunkers from the available data are increasingly viewed with suspicion because no attempt was made to collect dispositive evidence supporting a more obvious mechanism of collapse when the existence of collateral evidence supporting said mechanism was already well known by the appropriate investigatory bodies. The exclusion of all evidence tending toward the confirmation of an alternate explanation for the failure event was...deeply political.

When faced with such a conundrum, what is one to do? Exactly what Jack and Hamden have tried to do, which is to circumscribe the field of inquiry, and place an unsatisfactory forensic analysis in its likely context. Their approach does not attempt to tell us which truss failed (which is its chief appeal), nor must it pretend to know that which has long been unknowable, WHY the critical truss(es) failed. The firmness of the conclusion which OCTers wish to draw from the NIST report is wholly dependent on the exclusion of witness testimony and documentary evidence suggesting that explosives may have been used to bring 7 down and the related unwillingness to acknowledge the obvious point that the use of explosives accounts equally well for the "observed" damage to the concealed side, whether documented or modelled. It is inconceivable that NIST ruled out any serious consideration of the explosives hypothesis to explain the mysterious demise of the Salomon Brothers Building on a day during which myriad credible witnesses reported explosions in and around the towers and 7 itself. This alternate account is at least as compelling as NIST's which relies on an unlikely concatenation of events (debris, structural damage, cloud-borne ignition source, copious quantities of diesel fuel, fire, failure of key truss, global collapse) to explain the failure. Had the fascists won WWII, overweening counselors making such arguments would have been reproved by the law judges for "jackbootstrapping". When the "why" of this scenario is thrown into contention, "who" is waiting just outside the door, and "who" is reasonably, albeit not conclusively, known by the degree to which he stands to benefit from the event.

[Fainter]

55. Hamden, 9/11 Chafes The Epistemology...

of lots of people, doesn't it? Great post!

[HamdenRice]

61. Thanks! But it's not just 9/11

There is a group of posters here who really cannot grasp the epistemology of many fields. It's quite shocking.

[vincent_vega_lives]

178. Then why oh why are those who insist 9-11 was an inside job

point to supposed engineering and science (physics and chemistry) evidence to prove their case?

[salvorhardin]

34. Actually you're wrong

Structuralism was in fact pioneered by Ferdinand de Saussure around the turn of the 19th century. In terms of sociology, you would be looking at Claude Levi-Strauss starting around the mid-1950s.

And you are misapplying structuralism. Actually, your analyses are more in a post-structuralist vein than structuralist and represent the fundamental divide between the continental and analytic schools of philosophy than anything else, or anything concrete for that matter.

[HamdenRice]

38. Saussure

may have provided some early insights in the late 19th century, but what is commonly known as the structuralist movement is a mid twentieth century movement that relied in part on "rediscovering" the work of Saussure.

BTW I am completely familiar with Levi-Strauss, having read most of his work. He was an anthropologist, not a sociologist.

If you look at my posts carefully, you will see that I was saying that the field called "deep politics" is different from structuralism, because it re-adds "agency" of particular actors and networks to the analysis.

[AZCat]

50. Okay.

Whatever you say. This stuff is beyond my area of knowledge.

[vincent_vega_lives]

24. I don't have an issue with most of the stuff JR posted

If if most of it was true, it would have fuck-all to do with explosives in the WTC or the lack of planes at the Pentagon or PA.

Like JB I prefer to argue the obvious crap, because it is just so crappy. The stuff Jack posted is less definitive.

If you folks want I can go down point by point and give you my opinion on each.

[HamdenRice]

27. Please do

That's exactly what the OP asked for.

[vincent_vega_lives]

31. After you (n/t)

[HamdenRice]

32. I'm not a debunker or OCTer

So my thoughts on these questions are well known.

The point of the OP is that OCTers focus on issues like space beams, mini nukes and alien lizard overlords, but never seem to address the glaring socio-political evidence that suggests that 9/11 occurred at the nexus of Afghanistani, Pakistani, Saudi and American intelligence, terrorist, and drug networks.

[MervinFerd]

35. "nexus of Afghanistani, Pakistani, Saudi and American .., and drug networks"

But you -could- explain in what way the list in the OP "suggests" this hypothesis. And what this hypothesis actually means.


And what any of this has to do with explosives in WTC or disappearing airplanes.

And quit speaking of the Lizard Overlords. It's dangerous.

[jberryhill]

182. "the nutters who can't be helped anyway"

Bryan, is Steven Jones on your advisory board or not?

Does he or does he not continue to assert the "angle cut column" photograph to be proof of CD of the towers?

Sorry, he's a nutter, a liar, and he's on your advisory board.

[Bolo Boffin]

183. Your support of David Ray Griffin gives me all the information about you I need to know.

He should have stuck to process theology.

http://www.counterpunch.org/sacks06262004.html

[Bryan Sacks]

190. more ad hominem nonsense from you

What is wrong with the points Griffin made, that I quoted favorably? Answer: nothing

How did I "support" him? Answer: I didn't. I cited his work (which was actually to cite some others in concise fashion).

Your aversion to collecting information is noted, and unsurprising. That's how your stock-in-trade (stereotypes) proliferate.

[Bolo Boffin]

193. Oh, please. Those that dish it out should learn to take it.

"Consider the following cases, all drawn from mainstream news sources, summarized in David Ray Griffin's well-researched expose, "The New Pearl Harbor":"

That's a direct quote from you. You don't say, "In the way a broken clock is right twice a day, David Ray Griffin's remarkably wrong book manages to make a few points adequately."

But I do need to apologize to you. I did misspeak. Your entry into these forums spewing Arkansas Project/Clinton CT told me everything I needed to know about you. Your support of the hackmeister David Ray Griffin merely confirmed it.

[Bryan Sacks]

194. Apology accepted (you'll need a new one for the new lies, though)

I had never heard the term "Arkansas Project" before your post in my life. Still don't know what it is.

We'll remember your support for Hillary on these boards if and when she wins, I promise you that.

[Bolo Boffin]

195. Since Hillary is the current frontrunner for the Democratic nomination...

...I hope you do remember my support of her here at Democratic Underground.

My vote in the primary and my electoral support is going to Obama. If Hillary does take the nod, as it appears she shall, I'll be happy to vote for her and campaign for her, as I would any other current Democratic candidate. She isn't my first choice, but I'll respect the other members of my party if they vote her our candidate.

And then I will watch people trying to disrupt her campaign get the boot around here, just like the 2004 election. And I will remember this conversation. And I will laugh.

[MervinFerd]

101. Perhaps Deep Politics and Structuralism should be applied to the Titanic.

There's enough facts to definitely prove something. And we wouldn't have to say what that is.

I'm working on a thesis in Deep Physics, myself. Hope to prove that a perpetual motion machine is not impossible.

There's also Deep Chess, in which the pieces can move any way you want them to.

[JackRiddler]

103. The Titanic is not beyond the reach of social analysis...

I may be mistaken (since I don't care about the Titanic) but I seem to remember hubris sank the Titanic (or the desire to reach America faster) as much as an iceberg did, and the conditioned mechanics of class society saw to it that more of the rich passengers would survive than the poor.

What's perhaps most relevant is that the government did not announce that the Titanic sank because icebergs hate our freedoms, or respond by declaring war on a desert it had always wanted to conquer, which is what happened after 9/11. (But I'm sure you'll keep straining this analogy for its full value as a used spittoon.)

Yes, there is a Deep Chess, the rules are subject to change and are better described by psychology than mathematics, the pieces move however THEY want to, and some of them choose to be pawns. It's called life.

Do -you- support a non-partisan, independent investigation of September 11th?

[MervinFerd]

121. Can "social analysis" demontrate whether an iceberg sank the Titanic?

YES or NO?


The analogy is precisely on point. It's a one-time event that was considered impossible and that is not completely explained even today. There are contradictory accounts. There was ass-covering. The investigatory commission was, no doubt, skewed in favor of the powerful. etc etc... Add some spooky music and you've got Loose Change--Titanic Edition.


Investigations are needed.

[Fainter]

130. And your analysis here...

squares with your contention, elsewhere noted, that historical questions are simple factual matters? YES OR NO?

[Grateful for Hope]

7. kick n/t

[HamdenRice]

9. Aw, c'mon OCTers! No takers? Not on even one issue?

kicked!

[jberryhill]

13. You really miss the point

Okay, I'll pick one:


What did you think of the original appointment of Henry Kissinger to be the chairman of the 9/11 Commission?


That appointment, like much of the activities and output of the Commission, reeked to high heaven and made it abundantly clear that there were limits of inquiry beyond which the Commission was not going to go, in order to protect privileged behinds.

You might as well ask me what I thought of the appointment of George W. Bush to the presidency in 2001. That also reeked.

Obviously, when you have an act that - even as alleged - involved well-connected Saudis, then having people with good Saudi connections as "investigators" is a clear signal that one is not serious about conducting an investigation.

You might as well ask what I thought of the manner in which Bush and Cheney were jointly interviewed by the Commission. Absolutely, they needed to be in the same room at the same time, because otherwise their stories wouldn't match up. That's the problem with liars, and it is as clear as day.

Do you remember when crop circles were a new and unexplained phenomenon? There is a mindset that is uncomfortable with "I don't know what caused it, but that doesn't mean I buy into any bizarre explanation that comes down the pike." There is another mindset that says, "Aha, something I don't understand fully - therefore it must be caused by <insert pet theory here>".

The "pet theory" that jumps into that breach of incomplete knowledge (and all knowledge is incomplete) always confirms what the person had been thinking all along. For anti-semites, 9/11 was caused by "the Jews". For Jerry Falwell, 9/11 was caused by "lesbians".

My background is in engineering and physics. There are a limited number of things that I feel that I know something about well enough to bother to participate in a forum discussion. When I see nutty engineering and physics then, yes, I respond to it.

But the larger discussion really needs to move beyond this impression that there is a binary choice between being an "OCT'er" or believing in any piece of lunacy that is posted here.

[CGowen]

21. the 3 patsies

The events of September 11 gave birth to three parallel threads - or counter-legends - pointing the way to the culpability of three possible foreign suspects, or patsies - namely, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Israel. Of the three, the Saudis were the patsies of choice for the mainstream "critics", who were a motley assortment of neo-cons, FBI investigators, or "retired" national security types opposed to the war in Iraq. The Pakistan/ISI thread to 9/11 flared up most noticeably in the events surrounding the death of Daniel Pearl and the alleged involvement of Omar Saeed Sheikh - events which were used, in fact, to smother the Pakistani/ISI connection to the 9/11 money trail. As regards Israel, the most radical opponents of the War On Terror were nursed on the twin threads of an Israeli spy ring and a neo-con cabal supposedly at the helm of the Bush Administration
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP312B.html

[Fainter]

86. Like Your Idea Of Jumping Into The"...breach of incomplete knowledge..." Very Much...

it is a useful way of looking at tough cases. Thanks, Jberry

[vincent_vega_lives]

25. IGNORE

:hi:

[Fainter]

11. CD Remains A Worthy Avenue If Perspective Is Kept

Don't be too hard on those who believe controlled demolition brought down the towers. For some, controlled demolition is a detour on the road to understanding the larger enigmas of that day, what has happened since, and who we believe we are as individuals and as a nation. For some, it is a destabilizing gateway drug leading to dependency on the dangerous narcotic of conspiracism. Others yet, waver between the two approaches. What remains indisputable, however, is that 9/11 tests the limits of human faith and reason. It is by these events that entire generations will come to know themselves. By the events of 9/11 we contend with ourselves, with our fellows, with the world. 9/11 raises the two most fundamental questions. What does it mean...and how should we act?

The collapse of 7 exerts the special pull that it does on the imagination because it either explains nothing or it explains all. If nothing it leads us down other paths. If all it promises to unlock the mystery of the greatest story never told with one turn of the key. It is both Macguffin and Rosebud. Stockhausen called 9/11 "the greatest work of art ever". The fall of 7 was the object of his contemplation.

[jberryhill]

14. That's a great post

The collapse of 7 exerts the special pull that it does on the imagination because it either explains nothing or it explains all.

That, and the "gateway drug" line are bang on. That's why I pull out the "YouTube Video of INDISPUTABLE PROOF" as a rhetorical point about the Silver Bullet, the Magic Pill, that eliminates the need to think critically about the web of actions, relationships, and consequences that led to 9/11.

The "bad people" were responsible for 9/11. Everyone agrees on that. It is no surprise that the "bad people" were the people whom pretty much everyone thought were the "bad people" prior to 9/11.

Once we root out those "bad people", life on earth is just going to be peachy.

[Bryan Sacks]

15. It's an excellent post, yes

The questions posed in Fainter's post are well worth pondering.

The assertions are equally interesting, but for different reasons. If one comes to believe, as I do, that 9/11 is not a singular event, but one that emerged from the same dynamic system that lesser events are emerging from, it's importance becomes more symbolic than anything else. It has become the central event in the creation of a new mythic space - and it is within the confines of mythic space that a people comes to know itself.

There are lots of possible responses to the framing of a new mythic space: acceptance, denial and everything in between. We are always coming to 'know ourselves'. It ain't never complete. It's the most contested territory there is.

[MervinFerd]

17. Do -you- have even the vaguest idea what you are talking about?

Damn if I do.

"Mythic Space?" WTF?

Do you think Larry Silverstein said "Pull It" and the NYFD went into that building and set bombs and blew it up?

YES or NO.

There is nothing mythic here at all. A simple question of fact.
And of obvious--what was the phrase--- "nutjob crap".

Structurally analyze whatever you think is structurally analyzable. Whatever the hell that means.
But -please- leave the structural engineering to people who passed Freshman Physics.

[LARED]

18. Mythic Space

I think it's the place where guys with too many philosophy classes under the belt go to take a wizz.

[MervinFerd]

22. Take a piss in the Structuralist Bathroom...

the stuff probably lands in the "mythic space". Passing through mythic plumbing.

Unless you fall through the floor, which was supported by mythic steel.

[Bryan Sacks]

30. Ask Philip Zelikow about mythic space if you don't understand it

You can be sure he does.

[MervinFerd]

36. Can he design a plumbing system that will drain properly..

using "structuralism" and mythic space?

[HamdenRice]

39. Dude, you admitted you don't even know what structuralism is

So why are you ridiculing it. It makes you look uneducated.

[Name removed]

58. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

62. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[vincent_vega_lives]

67. I missed it.

What name did he call you?

[petgoat]

41. So far, plumbing jokes and "not my table" pleadings and sal's

immaterial pedantry on structuralism are about the sum total
of the OCTers' contribution on the questions.

"It makes you look uneducated." I like that, Hamden. I'll
have to remember that politic form. "It makes you smell as
if you stink."

[HamdenRice]

52. Their inability to address these issues is telling

I used to think they had bad motives. Now I realize that they have severely impoverished intellectual frameworks.

It used to make me annoyed, but now I just have a lot of pity.

[MervinFerd]

59. It's very easy to mistake a fog of words and "deep" bullshit, for ...

superior intellectual abilities. Ain't so.

But, a good dose of psychodelic substances will enhance the experience.

Lots of colored lights and spooky music will also help.

[Name removed]

63. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[greyl]

74. What bizarre definition of name calling are you using?

You must mean if I call your post a pile of horse shit, that I'm name calling, right?
If that's not the definition you're using, you are posting falsehoods.

[Name removed]

132. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

133. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[CJCRANE]

53. I second what Bryan said.

I know you've seen the articles by Zelikow that mention "public myths" and "searing"/"molding"/"catastropihc" events.

[jberryhill]

42. As an aside

I think you are probably best able to understand why I use the Shroud of Turin as an avatar.

It is pretty much guaranteed that "INDISPUTABLE PROOF" is neither, but some things can be known to a fairly high confidence.

[JackRiddler]

19. Hey fainter, if I may ask...

Are you a human female between the ages of 29 and 52? Because if you are, I may be proposing marriage shortly (and this has naught to do with CD yes or no)... Otherwise, damn. Thanks.

[Fainter]

81. LOL! Dude, No I'm Not. Perhaps We Could Double With Sibel and Indira :>)! n/t

[JackRiddler]

89. That's too bad... and Sibel is married you know...

But welcome again to DU!

[jberryhill]

43. And

Welcome to DU.

Starting from that well stated position, it will be sad to watch your descent into name-calling here in, oh, about 50 more posts.

[Fainter]

54. That's Very Gracious...

thank you! LOL! Unfortunately, you're right. Already I've demonstrated that I am not above name calling and counter-labeling, but that is the nature of the human beast isn't it?

[jberryhill]

66. Internet arguments intensify that beast

Decent people say all sorts of things from the comfort of their keyboards that they would never say to a real human being.

[Fainter]

172. Hah! How did you know? When did you jump the snark? n/t :>)

[naboo]

45. Well said, JackRiddler

The irony of people who defend and appear to believe the corporate media (a media which in most other cases hides the doings of the Bush administration and does their bidding) calling themselves "sceptics", is not lost on me either.

[vincent_vega_lives]

51. Here's my take as an AIJ (Anti-Inside Jobber) you asked for it.

Isn't Cheney's continued linking of the Saddam regime to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 events the most "outrageous conspiracy theory" of all? Did it not have more real-world impact than any other conspiracy theory? The administration was pushing Regime change in Iraq prior to 9-11. It was part of their Grand Plan to reinvent the ME as a model of Western Democracy. Linking 9-11 to Iraq was part of that plan. How'd that turn out? Relevence to "Inside Job"? Nil.

Should 9/11 have been responded to as a crime against humanity, or as an act of war?
You can argue both. Handling anything but Domestic terrorism through international legal channels is all but futile unless you are dealing with closely allied nations. In Afganistan it would have been a joke. Relevence to "Inside Job"? Little or none.

Is it untrue that 9/11 was employed as the justification for military actions and domestic policies that would have otherwise been politically difficult or infeasible? Is it untrue that each of these actions and policies was explicitly desired and planned in advance by the main players of the Bush administration? Has the Patriot Act made anyone any money? Seriously folks, it's somthing that obviously needs oversight, but that's ALWAYS been the case when the legal strugle between the courts and the executive agencies are involved. The PA is a mere legal twitch in terms of what has been enacted temporarily in the past in the name of National Security.
Grand Democracy Plan again regarding Iraq...went well there. Did people make money? Sure, but you can argue Haliburten made more money putting out oil fires in Kuwait and the Big Dig in Boston than in Iraq. The cost of doing buisiness there is ENORMOUS. So much so Haliburten is geting out of the Military services buisness alltogether. Got into the buisiness in Bosnia/Kosovo, where the environment was a little less hostile. Not convinced of "Inside job" from this.

Do you justify the appointment of Philip Zelikow as the executive director of the 9/11 Commission? Does not this appointment on its face indicate a cover-up? Had to look him up. Only if you automatically assume everyone that ever worked for the Government is corrupt, immoral and unethical, and that he could sucessfully brainwash or threaten the other members of the commission. He don't look that scary.

What did you think of the original appointment of Henry Kissinger to be the chairman of the 9/11 Commission? Perhaps somthing if he didn't resign. Wonder who suggested him to Bush?

Did Condoleezza Rice commit perjury with regard to the Aug. 6th PDB in her testimony before the Commission? Should this not be a priority for prosecution?Perhaps. Perjury is always a tough one to prove despite the Libby trial. I do think the whole period leading up to 9-11 warrents further review on a tactical level.

Do you agree with the 9/11 Commission conclusion that the question of who financed the alleged hijackers is "of little practical significance"?Have not read the 9-11C but on the face of it I would say no.

Should the Pakistani money connection have been pursued? Should this not be a high priority? Obviouly a touchy subject. There is clearly a delicate balance within the Pakistani government regarding Islamist designs in Afganistan. The Intelligence services and the Army have been at odds since the 1980s. Were the US to push that end they may have risked the cooperation of a critical ally in the region by upseting that balance. The ISI was known to fund the Taliban's predecessors in Afganistan long before 9-11-01. It's not hard to immagine this money finding it's way into the hands of OBL or one of his deputies.

Should Sibel Edmonds be allowed to speak openly on all that she knows? Should this not be a high priority for opponents of the Bush regime? As far as I can tell no one is not allowing her to speak openly.


All I can get to for now.

[naboo]

64. You ought to do a lil more research

start with Philip Zelikow. Ignorance is no defense.

[vincent_vega_lives]

65. Thanks did some. (n/t)

[JackRiddler]

82. You didn't know Zelikow and you haven't read The 9/11 Commission Report?

Seriously, what are you doing here taking sides? Is this a gang fight you joined for fun? Why don't you inform yourself before forming an opinion? Many of those who argue for the official story have obviously worked hard at it. Show some respect for this discourse, on either side, and at least read the 9/11 CR and one dissent before you spout off. That wouldn't be enough either, but a start...

This just floors me.

Number your paragraphs, some answers:

1) Relevance: lies told to launch a war. Example of someone who is not attacked as a "conspiracy theorist," though he advances one - in this case, a wrong one. Something need not be directly about inside job to be relevant to a skeptical view of 9/11.

2) Other than that, 19 determined men are a criminal conspiracy, not an act of war. Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden. Rejected.

3) Money is not mentioned in OP. However 9/11 in the last five years has resulted in the shift of trillions of dollars in government spending priorities and spawned a homeland defense industry.

4) No, I am saying someone who was on the Bush transition team sitting in on briefings about terrorism in 2000-early 2001, and in the Presidents Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board after 9/11, and who worked with Rice in the 80s, wrote a book with Rice in the 90s (and returned to work for her at the State Dept. after the 9/11 Commission), has obvious conflicts of interest and is not qualified to set the agenda for a 9/11 Commission (that's going to feature Rice as the star witness no less).

5) I wonder too.

6) Rice's testimony under oath that the Aug. 6th PDB was strictly of historical nature is on video, and it is a lie. This was a vital matter all along due to her "no one could have imagined" excuse since 2002.

7) (speechless)

8) Talking here specifically of the $100,000 wire transfer from Pakistan to Atta, as reported by Wall Street Journal and in the 2001 UN report on financial trail of 9/11. The transfer was widely attributed initially to Omar Saeed Sheikh, a name that was dropped as his ISI connections emerged and after the Pearl murder, for which he was later arrested and convicted. Indian intel claimed it was an ISI approved transaction. The head of ISI was forced to resign after that claim. He had been in DC on 9/11, coincidentally meeting the intelligence committee chiefs. They curiously failed to investigate the Pakistani connection, an enormous omission given they were directly talking to the man accused of being responsible for it. No mention of a Pakistani money connection to Atta is made in the 9/11 CR, whether to deny or confirm, although again the report of the $100,000 was in WSJ (independently of whether the ISI approved this). Instead we get the statement that although US does not know where the money for the 9/11 hijackers came from, "the question is of little practical significance." Okay?

9) Sibel Edmonds is under gag order placed by Ashcroft who invoked the "State Secrets Act." Gag so far upheld in court. Among other things she is not even allowed to say what languages she speaks (Azeri, Turkish, Persian and English). Research it.

Since you came into this thread, thanks for at least speaking to the OP's issues and avoiding ridicule or subject-changing.

[MervinFerd]

92. Do these observations support any particular hypothesis?

Or, are we still supposed to guess?

Would stating an hypothesis be non-structuralist?
"Shallow Politics?"


You persist with half-truths and the gratuitous insults are, well, insulting. And, an ad hominem argument. The 911 commission report has been summarized and criticized ad nauseum. It is not necessary to have read the entire bleeding thing to have an informed opinion. Most of the items in your list were not directly related to that report anyway.

[JackRiddler]

93. henceforth, since you repeat yourself ad infinitum

I'll just cut and paste this:

Politics is the realm of theses, not hypotheses. Sorry if it can't always be broken up into quanta for your understanding.

Thesis: There is probable cause for a criminal investigation of September 11th focusing on allegations of fiduciary failure to protect, criminal negligence, public endangerment (the air toxicity issue), wanton facilitation of criminal acts, foreknowledge and failure to act before the fact, aiding and abetting terrorist activity, obstruction of justice after the fact, providing of false accounts, perjury under oath, destruction of evidence, harrassment of whistleblowers, withholding of evidence relevant to criminal proceedings, misuse of a criminal act by laying false-blame for the purpose of an agenda of aggressive war and crimes against humanity; and also possible direct high crimes, treason and mass murder; by officials of the United States government, members of US intelligence contractor networks and operatives of allied intelligence agencies. Let's start with Condoleezza Rice for perjury and NORAD for false accounts to the 9/11 Commission and see what the discovery process unveils. A special prosecutor should be appointed immediately by Congress.

Secondary assertion: Notwithstanding one's desire to play high school debate on Internet fora, the above is a higher priority for concerned citizens than the failures of Loose Change 2 and other speculative works.

[MervinFerd]

100. That's a grocery list, not an thesis. And your observations don't prove it.

Thesis, hypothesis, whatever. You still have to think clearly.

And you are not.

[LeftishBrit]

173. The whole point is that the investigation of 9-11 should handle it as a crime, according to law,

not according to politics.

So the argument that 'politics is in the realm of theses, not hypotheses' should not be relevant. The American government handled the 9-11 outrage as a political matter, rather than as a criminal act (if motivated by politics) and that led to disaster. Treating it as a political matter from any other political point of view would also be dangerous.

*Responses* to 9-11, e.g. the war (insofar as it was a response to 9-11) and the Patriot Act, were political decisions, and should be dealt with as such. But the question of 'who-done-it' is a matter of criminal law, and should be dealt with as such, with clearly specified charges and the presumption of innocence.

I think that there is a probable cause for criminal investigation of *some* of the charges that you mention, e.g. fiduciary failure of protection, obstruction of justice after the fact, criminal negligence with regard to the air toxicity, perjury. Actual accusations of abetting terrorism and mass murder seem unjustified on the basis of present knowledge, and should only be added in the unlikely event that prosecution on other charges reveals evidence in those directions.

[vincent_vega_lives]

98. As I have said before

This is all worthy of further investigation. None of it is cut and dried and involves a lot of grey areas. You can research it all you want, but never come to any definitive conclusions because the source information is not accessible.

I NEVER PRETENDED TO BE AN AUTHORITY ON THE SOCIAL/POLITICAL ASPECTS OF 9-11. You asked my opinion and I gave it.

[JackRiddler]

104. Exactly.

"This is all worthy of further investigation. None of it is cut and dried and involves a lot of grey areas. You can research it all you want, but never come to any definitive conclusions because the source information is not accessible."

And that is why, until the opening of the source information to an independent investigation and public scrutiny, 9/11 skepticism and its call for such is justified (and should be a higher priority for citizen-skeptics than the easy debunking of inconsequential theories).

[vincent_vega_lives]

122. I don't disagree with any of that

What I have issue with is the misguided pseudoscience that seems to populate this board.

[JackRiddler]

77. ZERO ANSWERS

Is what the self-described skeptics of 9/11 who have visited this thread have provided so far here, except for a couple of points by jberryhill, who is to be commended for admitting it's all about sports, and screw priorities.

It's funny, because so many of these matters relate to concerns they pretend to have: transparency and accountability, for starters.

Absolutely zero on the factual stuff. Zeroing in reliably on ridicule, ad hominem attacks as usual.

Those of you who are 9/11 skeptics, please: keep it on a higher level than the examples provided here by the skeptic-skeptics.

[jberryhill]

78. Do you have Vega on Ignore, or is post #57 invisible to you?

I'm still waiting for answers from CD'ers relative to the Al-Fe phase diagram that I posted weeks ago.

[JackRiddler]

79. You're right, I missed Vega and will return to it. Sorry. As for Al-Fe... off-topic here. nt

[jberryhill]

80. Aw shucks

You mean that the evil debunker squad is at your beck and call to answer your questions, but it doesn't work the other way?

Is that it?

[JackRiddler]

83. dude...

Show me where I call anyone here evil.

As the OP, I will not bother in this thread with subjects off the topic of this thread. Al-Fe (I don't even know where you posted this) would be that. Feel free to debate it with someone else. This thread's not about demolition, or the thermite hypothesis (to which I also do not feel married).

[jberryhill]

106. Asking Questions And Demanding Answers

This thread's not about demolition, or the thermite hypothesis (to which I also do not feel married).


While you may not be married to the thermite hypothesis, the problem arises when you've been seen running around town holding hands with it, going out dancing with it, checking into a motel with it, and then you get back home to your senses and they want to know what you've been up to all night long.

"Awww... honey, you know I love you. That other hypothesis didn't mean anything..."

[JackRiddler]

108. I've understood perfectly well

When confronted with a case for

- withholding judgement in favor of the official story, given suppressed information and significant unknowns; and
- demanding a investigation of the strong evidence (for starters) of criminal or wanton negligence, (which in turn would necessarily explore other open questions of possible complicity)

- a case made entirely without resort to the demolition hypothesis -

you will still change the subject to demolitions, which you seem to find easier to deal with. A willingness elsewhere to entertain that hypothesis brands any other statement, no matter how pedestrian or obvious, as something you won't deal with, even at the cost of understanding (or even wanting to understand) the event that has been presented to you as the reason for everything that has been done by your government ever since.

[jberryhill]

110. And I understand perfectly well

Who was president on 9/11 and who - at best - failed to do his damned job in favor of his pet illusions and grandiose visions.

The Bush/Cheney/PNAC crowd does not live on a planet in which gravity holds their shoes on the ground.

I utterly believe that delusional people can be dangerous, and that using the media to promote one's delusions to an uncritical public is also dangerous.

I do not believe that substituting one set of delusions for another is an improvement in the overall situation.

Delusional neocon thinking got us into this mess. Recognition of that fact does not require idiotic theories.


Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

-Thomas Jefferson

You furthermore equate statements I either "agree with" or "have no opinion about" as statements I won't "deal with". I promise you that if you post proof that on September 11, 2001, water was wet and grass was green, I won't show up in the thread to argue with either of those assertions.

[JackRiddler]

111. By all means...

argue with those propositions (implied or otherwise) in the questions of the original post that you disagree with. Thanks.

[jberryhill]

113. I don't know how to argue with a question

But here are my answers to each and every one, Jack:

Both. No. No. No. No. I didn't like it. Yes. No. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. (Yes.) No. Not without probable cause of personal culpability. No. I don' t know. I don't know. I don't know. Sure, why not. I'm not sure you understand the distinction between those two things. (No.) No. I think that's what happened. Yes. No. No. Yes. No. To intimidate them. They were unwarranted and done for the purpose of covering up non-feasance or malfeasance. Absolutely. Perhaps. People acting with the strength of their own conviction generally have less than venal motivation. No. I have no idea. I believe they continue presently. Yes. Yes. Maybe. Sure. I don't know. Didn't read it. No. What one chooses to discuss in one's free time on an internet forum is not, in the larger scheme of things, of much consequence. Yes. Yes. No. No. A little. I don't know.

There. The world is now a better place because you now have the complete list of opinions of someone you don't even know. Wow.

But if I could offer you some helpful free advice, do not take up writing interrogatories in your spare time. You have a very pronounced tendency for "negative phrasing" of yes-or-no questions.

For example, try answering these two questions with "yes" or "no":

1. "Were you drinking last night?"

2. "Weren't you drinking last night?"

If you were drinking, the correct answers are "yes" and "no". The problem with the second question is that it asks "Were you NOT drinking last night?" A lot of people, though, will answer question 2 with "no" to indicate that they were not drinking last night. For that reason, questions of the form you posted are generally considered to be not capable of an unambiguous yes or no question.

So now that I have answered all of your questions, I will give you ten seconds to answer one simple yes or no question.

Isn't it not untrue that the earth doesn't fail to orbit the sun?

It's a simple yes or no, Jack.

I will shortly be posting the Minnesota Multi-Phase Personality Inventory. I do hope you don't try to dodge those questions.

[AZCat]

84. Why is it so important that we respond to this?

Is it not acceptable that we have areas of interest, just as you do, that might not encompass the multitude of topics connected to the September 11th attacks?

[Grateful for Hope]

87. who is "we"???

This is the second time tonight that there is a reference to "We"

This is getting very interesting!!

[AZCat]

88. That'd be the "we" referenced in the title of the OP...

and numerous other posts in this thread. You should be pretty well aware of who "we" are by now Hope.

[Grateful for Hope]

91. So you say

Ad, yes, I do know.

All of you should be ashamed.

[AZCat]

95. Ashamed? Of what?

Of being labelled by others? That would be pointless and stupid.

[vincent_vega_lives]

177. I am ashamed

I shouldn't have drank the whole bottle of 1800 Silver at my friend's wedding last weekend.

[vincent_vega_lives]

99. If you haven't noticed

This Forum has pretty much seperated in to three distict camps. The "Truthers" who belive an MIHOP, the MIHOP debunkers, and everyone else.

[JackRiddler]

94. So don't...

I think someone's posting a dustification thread somewhere, it's probably more fun for you there.

[AZCat]

96. Your attitude is perplexing.

Why such a dismissive avoidance of my question?

[AZCat]

105. Kicking for a response from JackRiddler. n/t

[AZCat]

124. Still waiting... n/t

[Bolo Boffin]

112. Off the top of my head...

bolo says: My answers in italics - simply because I don't feel like doing the excerpt thing all the way through this...

Isn't Cheney's continued linking of the Saddam regime to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 events the most "outrageous conspiracy theory" of all? Did it not have more real-world impact than any other conspiracy theory? Note that he did it again yesterday:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/200...

No. I think the no-planer/missile pod crapola and the controlled demolition twaddle edges it in outrage factors. However, Cheney's linking does have more real-world impact.

Should 9/11 have been responded to as a crime against humanity, or as an act of war?

Merits to both. If the "act of war" response had been contained to military intervention against al-Qaeda solely, things would be much better.

Is it untrue that 9/11 was employed as the justification for military actions and domestic policies that would have otherwise been politically difficult or infeasible? Is it untrue that each of these actions and policies was explicitly desired and planned in advance by the main players of the Bush administration?

No to the first question. Not sure about the second one - list out "each of these actions and policies" and we'll take it from there. In the interest of time, the Patriot Act was already being written, and the Iraq invasion was desperately desired by this administration.

Do you justify the appointment of Philip Zelikow as the executive director of the 9/11 Commission? Does not this appointment on its face indicate a cover-up?

Better than Kissinger, perhaps. Otherwise, no, I don't justify Zelikow's appointment.

What did you think of the original appointment of Henry Kissinger to be the chairman of the 9/11 Commission?

PBBBBBBTTTT!

(the preceding raspberry was aimed at HK, not JR)

Did Condoleezza Rice commit perjury with regard to the Aug. 6th PDB in her testimony before the Commission? Should this not be a priority for prosecution?

A very qualified, technical "No." Rice isn't that stupid. However, her testimony about a certain phone call to President Bush from Cheney is quite questionable. I don't know if she was under oath on that one.

Do you agree with the 9/11 Commission conclusion that the question of who financed the alleged hijackers is "of little practical significance"?

Perhaps for their purposes in the report, but no, it's important overall to know where the money came from.

Should the Pakistani money connection have been pursued? Should this not be a high priority?

Yes. Yes.

Should Sibel Edmonds be allowed to speak openly on all that she knows? Should this not be a high priority for opponents of the Bush regime?

Unless her speaking would jeopardize the lives of agents in the field and compromise national security efforts, yes. Then, she should be allowed to testify to people with appropriate security clearances. Either way, she should be allowed to speak. No, I do not equate "ass-covering by the Bush administration or other groups within the government" with national security efforts. It is in the interest of national security to eradicate people whose asses need covering on a regular basis.

Should an investigation be pursued to determine which agencies and officials consciously and repeatedly upheld false accounts of the air-defense response timeline? (Suspects to include FAA, NORAD and Gen. Myers, who produced and repeated mutually contradictory accounts in the 2001-2003 period?)

If one hasn't been conducted, yes.

Shouldn't the whereabouts of Gen. Myers (in light of his contradictions with Clarke's account) and of Donald Rumsfeld during the attacks be known?

I find Clarke's account to be in serious conflict with the logs of the day. Therefore, his conflicts with Myers and Rumsfeld as to whereabouts might not be resolved in his favor. However, yes, they should be known. Has anyone asked Max Cleland if Myers was with him when he says he was?

Should Christie Todd Whitman be indicted for her false statements to the public concerning the dangers of Ground Zero emissions? Shouldn't it be a high priority to investigate which White House officials suppressed the initial EPA report? Wouldn't consciously downplaying this risk and ultimately raising the fatality rate constitute a high crime?

I'm not familiar enough with this to say either way. I do think she put out false information. I don't know if she's culpable for it. It's worth looking into. A case could be made for "high crime" under those stipulations. Do you think "raising the fatality rate" was her motive?

Were the questions posed by the Family Steering Committee the right roadmap for the 9/11 Commission, as Jamey Gorelick and others acknowledged? Is it untrue, as two members of the FSC have detailed, that 70 percent of these questions were fully omitted from consideration the 9/11 CR?

This would have been a good place for a link. The link to the detailed re-examination of the questions is sufficient.

Would you support a new investigation that uses these questions as its basis?

Again, I'd have to read them.

Do you agree there is probable cause for a criminal investigation or grand jury into as-yet unsolved crimes relating to the events of September 11th and their aftermath?
(See http://justicefor911.org - Have you read the actual 2004 complaint to Spitzer up at that site?)

A link. Too much to read right now. So the answer would have to be "No" at this point.

Do you agree with the Commission's deal with the White House on WH documents including PDBs?

Don't know what it is.

What do you think of Cleland's resignation, and his statements that the 9/11 Commission was a whitewash and White House treatment of the investigation was a scam?

I tend to trust him on this.

Should we know who the sources were for the alleged discovery of the "Brooklyn Cell" including Mohamed Atta by Able Danger in 1999-2000? Was Able Danger of minor historical significance, as the 9/11 Commission claimed?

The assertions of Curt Weldon about Able Danger have been debunked. As such, the Able Danger may be of minor historical significance.

Wouldn't a serious investigation of September 11th pursue all stories of foreknowledge and forewarnings, especially those from foreign intelligence agencies, with the goal of finding out the sources of such information? (I.e., avoiding any assumptions about their significance until the sources are known?)

Yes.

Are you aware that claims of put options and suspect financial deals suggesting foreknowledge range far, far beyond the well-known sets of put options placed on United and American stock on the CBOE?

This has so incredibly been debunked that I am surprised you still refer to it.

Do you believe that United 93 crashed at 10:03 am without causing a measurable seismic event, and that a natural seismic event of the size usually associated with a plane crash followed in the same area at 10:06 am by coincidence?

The seismic information has been labeled "not definitive(note 148)" by one of the original authors of the study you're using. Everything else - the FDR, CVR, ATC, radar, and impact site data sets - all agree on 10:03. Therefore the answer is "No, and this is another example of debunked crap you insist on repeating."

Why do you think the anthrax mailings were sent to Daschle and Leahy? (Reports of any other anthrax targets in the government have since been discounted as hoaxes and mistakes.)

I've a couple of ideas on that. The main one is that al-Qaeda wanted to rend the US government into chaos. Sending anthrax only to the political opponents of Bush could produce both mistrust and resolve to agitate against the executive branch and the Republicans in charge.

What do you think of the FBI's investigations of leaks from the intelligence committee senators and their staff during the Joint Intelligence Committee Investigation of 9/11? Might the FBI actions have been intended as intimidation?

Not much (as in :( ). Yes.

Sibel Edmonds and Anthony Shaffer were disciplined. The FAA tapes of accounts by air traffic controllers who handled the two flights that hit the Towers, taken on the afternoon of September 11th, were destroyed. Myers, Eberhard, Frasca, Maltbie and Bowman all received promotions after 9/11. George Tenet got a medal. Would this combination have an effect on potential whistleblowers contemplating coming forward with whatever bits they know?

The FAA tapes, again, is just so much crap you guys keep flinging. Continuing to return to thoroughly debunked (sorry, no link here, do a DU search on the posts of MercutioATC) stuff like this is not doing your advocacy of alternative theories any favors.

Everything else? Yes. It doesn't mean that people with certain knowledge of MIHOP or LIHOP would shut up because of it. There really is this notion of patriotic duty in this country.

Do you believe all hijacker identities have been resolved beyond doubt?

Yes.

Where was Mohamed Atta in the period from April to June, 2000?

I don't know.

When if ever do you think the al-Qaeda networks that grew out of the "Afghan Arab" movement during the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad stopped having links to US intelligence networks?

I don't know.

Was Osama Bin Ladin allowed to get away from Tora Bora? Was there an airlift of Pakistani ISI and al-Qaeda operatives out of Kunduz, Afghanistan via an air corridor cleared by US forces in November 2001, as Seymour Hersh reported?

Seymour's not God, but he has good reason for everything he says. "Did the US have a choice in the matter" is the way I'd ask the question. Yes, I know what that implies.

Do US intel/military agencies or related networks amongst their contractors have a significant history of engineering false-flag terrorism? Should this enter at all into considerations of 9/11?

Significant history - no. History - yes. Does the US have a significant history of turning setbacks into opportunities? Yes. Entering into considerations - not necessarily.

What is the significance of Ali Mohamed? Was his story worthy of inclusion in the official 9/11 investigations?

Ali Mohamed shows just how much the United States could be played. Yes, his story should have been included in the 911CR. Cutting off the investigation to after 1998 was ludicrous.

Do these questions, most of which relate to official statements and actions of geopolitical consequence, not indicate higher priorities for skeptics to pursue than the debunking of errors and distortions by amateur researchers as seen in "Loose Change 2," Alex Jones's works, dustification theories, "no planes" theories and the like?

We run interference on these errors and distortions....so you don't have to! This is a problem? (PS: the removal of the few "errors and distortions" from your own rhetoric as noted above would go a long way toward legitimizing your own inquests)

Have you read Michael Ruppert? The 9/11 Timeline edited by Paul Thompson? Nafeez Ahmed? Michel Chossudovsky? Daniel Hopsicker? Were these not the most prominent 9/11 skeptic-researchers by far until 2005?

Is this the list of the TRUE 9/11 investigators?

I met Mr. Ruppert care of the Vreeland atrocity. I've never respected the man's ability to reason since. He's run off to South America now, right? In response to a sex/money scandal, if I recall correctly, which he of course blames on a governmental infiltrator. Riiiight.

I have mostly respect for Paul Thompson, but he could do better (the reliance on Mineta for timing at the White House is an egregious error in the Timeline).

Nafeez who?

Heard of Chossudovsky - never read.

Read very little Hopsicker - just saw how one of his key witnesses has recanted her Atta testimony.

Currently reading Peter Lance's Triple Cross.

Are you suggesting that all of this Loose Change crapola wasn't around before Dylan "Do Over" Avery got cracking with his little laptop? Wasn't Thierry Meyssan pre-2005? Why'd you leave him off the list? Oops, I know why! Not a TRUE 9/11 researcher. Wacky plane denial guy. How about the infamous Dulce Decorum, right here at DU, who tried to prove a Northwoods-style operation right down to fake passengers? Another not-TRUE 9/11 researcher, huh? How many fake identities has Killtown had over here?

Let me state this frankly, JackRiddler - these amateur 9/11 researchers are YOUR problem, not ours. We have done yeoman's work keeping the nutcases down and out around here. You'd think you'd appreciate it, but oh, no. Not you. Clean up your own backyard if you want more attention paid to your pet theories, is my advice. One way you could do this, is encourage your fellow posters here to point out actual examples of pseudoscience in the current reports on the WTC complex, which this post of yours is an obvious response to. If you think those buildings were brought down by controlled demolition, you should trot right over and point out examples yourself.

Tell me, Jack, do any CD questions appear on the FSC questionaire?

[jberryhill]

114. Bolo Finally Shows Himself to Be Logically Inconsistent

Should the Pakistani money connection have been pursued? Should this not be a high priority?

Yes. Yes.

Why do you think it should not be a high priority?

This makes utterly no sense to me, Bolo.

On the one hand you think the connection should have been pursued, but on the other hand you think it should not be a high priority?

Why do you believe it should be of low or no priority?

Are you aware that claims of put options and suspect financial deals suggesting foreknowledge range far, far beyond the well-known sets of put options placed on United and American stock on the CBOE?

This has so incredibly been debunked that I am surprised you still refer to it.

Answer the question, Bolo, don't dodge it. Are you aware that claims range that far or not? YES or NO. Your answer seems to indicate that you are aware that claims range that far.

[Bolo Boffin]

115. What. The F*ck. Ever.

Jesus Christ, calm down.

Yes, the Pakistani money connection should be pursued. Yes, this should be a high priority. That's what I meant. I'm sorry that I misread the original question.

I am aware that the claims range beyond United and American stocks. I did misread the question to be solely about UA/American put options. However, the United and American investigations are the only ones explicitly spelled out in the 911CR. I believe that they investigated them all and found the entire range wanting.

Please call off the attack dogs and wipe the flecks of spittle from your chin, jberryhill.

[greyl]

116. I think he might have been

making a point about the questions, not your answers. ;)
I could be wrong.

[Bolo Boffin]

117. Yes, that's true.

But the point could have been better made.

[jberryhill]

119. Better than letting someone else misinterpret you first? /nt

[jberryhill]

118. Point for greyl

I shall have the overlords pay you a bonus this week.

[Bryan Sacks]

120. Hope they're paying you guys in silver bars.

Your dollars might not be worth all that much in a few years.

[vincent_vega_lives]

179. Thats just nutty sounding

Oh oh. Am I going to be reported now? :scared:

They pays us in PEPPERMINT!

[Bryan Sacks]

189. I understand nobody pays you, Vince

It's a joke meant to call attention to the juvenile synchronicity of the debunker crew.

Seriously, who would pay YOU??? Even the government can get better help than that.

[JackRiddler]

128. Good.

Took you four days, which is fine. I'm only pointing that out because it may take me as long to respond. Lots to cover...

[JackRiddler]

135. kick for freshness...

[JackRiddler]

136. Replies to Boloboffin's replies...

First, I want to welcome you to the ranks of 9/11 skeptics. Clearly, you are unsatisfied with (many of) the official accounts so far given, you understand the importance of 9/11 as a defining (and exploited) event in justifying and formulating an agenda of policies, and you seem to support a new investigation with teeth. You may not believe such would uncover evidence of complicity or inside job, but I'm sure you'd be happy to see it fearlessly go wherever the evidence leads.

Ack. Now putting in responses to responses gets complicated, so let's do it by keyword (skipping those points where our answers do not disagree).

Cheney: "outrageous" is a moral category, not merely "outlandish." Cheney's conspiracy theory may be more plausible than no-planes-at-WTC, but its use as a justification for a real war, again, is not crazy but criminal.

FAA/NORAD/other timelines in conflict: No, an investigation has not been conducted. Kean/Hamilton said in their recent joint memoir that they considered a criminal probe of possible lying, but decided instead it was, ahem, more important to issue a unanimous report.

Myers/Clarke/Rumsfeld/Cleland: If Clarke is in conflict with the logs of the day - have you actually seen these, or are they among the 90 percent of 9/11CR citations that are being kept secret at least until 2009? How do you know they're more authentic than his account? Well, let's not disagree on who might be right. A real probe would have highlighted these questions and most likely settled it.

--

Christie Todd Whitman/poison air: you say you're unfamiliar. Well let me tell you that she was on TV telling New Yorkers the air was safe to breathe, and you know what? Everyone here remembers it clearly. It's quoted in the papers on a weekly basis, in accompaniment to stories about the hundreds of pit workers and Manhattan residents who are now suffering serious respiratory and other illnesses.
This might have happened anyway, you say? Could be, but there is a world of difference between informing people openly of the known risks and telling them instead - as the government - that it's all good, go back to work, no need for further precautions. New York City told people they could just clean up their houses of the dust with soap and water! The White House suppressed the initial EPA findings, as revealed already in 2003:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/090603A.shtml
This has been the subject of an EPA IG report and further reports from Sierra Club, which I have read. Jenna Orkin's site does a good job of pulling together the news stories and reports up to 2006:
http://wtceo.org
The lies about air toxicity are in themselves a great crime, besides that they will raise the death rate in some, however immeasurable fashion. They are evidence of a willingness to treat the lives of US citizens (even those celebrated as heroes) as disposable to (I'm going to presume a possible motive) the corporate interest of getting Wall Street et al. working again.

--

"Unanswered Questions" on Family Steering Committee site:
http://911independentcommission.org/questions.html

Ratings by members Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie Van Auken:
http://911truth.org/images/resources/Family%20Steering%20Cmte%20review%20of%20Report.pdf

"Detailed" it may not be, but the most essential matter is that two-thirds of the questions were correctly rated as full omissions from consideration in the 9/11 CR.

--

"Justice for 9/11" Complaint main text starts here:
http://justicefor911.org/Part_I_Complaint_111904.php

--

JR: Do you agree with the Commission's deal with the White House on WH documents including PDBs?

BOLO: Don't know what it is.

The PDB deal cut between 9/11Com and WH in October 2003 specified that the White House would present edited versions of the PDBs it selects for viewing only by Kean, Zelikow, Gorelick and Ben-Veniste. Any notes they took would have to be surrendered to the WH. Then they report what they recall to the other Com's. This is when Cleland went public with statements like, "I'm not going to look at partial information" and compared the 9/11 Com to the Warren Commission. Suddenly, Bush (who was "scamming America") appointed Cleland to head the Export-Import Bank, and he left the Commission and did not go on record again.

"A Brief History of the Kean Commission"
http://justicefor911.org/Part_I_Complaint_111904.php

--

JR: Should we know who the sources were for the alleged discovery of the "Brooklyn Cell" including Mohamed Atta by Able Danger in 1999-2000? Was Able Danger of minor historical significance, as the 9/11 Commission claimed?

BOLO: The assertions of Curt Weldon about Able Danger have been debunked. As such, the Able Danger may be of minor historical significance.

First of all, Weldon's assertions are irrelevant. He was the guy in Congress willing to give Shaffer, Philpott and three others who came forward a platform. Their assertions have not been "debunked," the Pentagon report on them didn't deal with what they said: that Atta had been identified - THAT Atta, they said - as a member of "al-Qaeda" working in the US in 1999 and 2000, thanks to information provided by a subcontractor of Orion Scientific working with "Middle Eastern" sources.

ACK! I was about to give you links to an extensive, point-by-point dossier on Able Danger and a follow-up article I did at 911truth.org. Due to some technical problem (not a conspiracy) the first parts of these articles are cut off. I will post these after it's fixed.

--

PUTS: The SEC and 9/11 Com (brief footnote) "debunked" only the UA and AA put option stories, by attributing the suspicious trades to "an institutional investor pursuing a hedging strategy" and the recommendation of a "fax newsletter," and without bothering to detail any further where the recommendation/information behind these abstractions may have come from. (If you do the math on the former, you'll find that it was one weird hedging strategy.) An institutional investor can work on behalf of clients; this was not clarified. A "fax newsletter" could be getting it from anywhere. The basis of the SEC dismissal was that the institutional investor and "fax newsletter" had "no conceivable connection to al-Qaeda." Which is of course meaningless. The only question is: does the information track back to someone with foreknowledge of 9/11?

The SEC and 9/11 Com did not deal with: put options on Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, with offices near the WTC, or reports of suspicious trading on the WTC reinsurers.
http://www.ict.org.il/index.php?sid=119&lang=en&act=page&id=5230&str=radlauer%20%22black%20tuesday%22

After 9/11, there were reports that suspicious trading would be investigated in Frankfurt, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore. The head of the Bundesbank said he saw strong evidence of foreknowledge. Where are the promised investigation reports? London's conclusion was that the deals there involving puts on the two airlines were done by a "small airline" pursuing a hedging strategy. Which would also make for a great cover. Which small airline? If it was Middle Eastern or owned by the CIA, would that be of interest as a lead worth pursuing?

$100 million in money transfers were reported to have been done through a firm at the WTC during the actual attacks. The hard disks of the firm in question were recovered and given to a firm called CONVAR in Germany for data recovery. Supposedly, this was a success. What was found there?

---

JR: Do you believe that United 93 crashed at 10:03 am without causing a measurable seismic event, and that a natural seismic event of the size usually associated with a plane crash followed in the same area at 10:06 am by coincidence?

BOLO: The seismic information has been labeled "not definitive(note 148)" by one of the original authors of the study you're using. Everything else - the FDR, CVR, ATC, radar, and impact site data sets - all agree on 10:03. Therefore the answer is "No, and this is another example of debunked crap you insist on repeating."

The seismic report notes a "low" signal to noise ratio of 2:1 for the event it interprets as the UA93 crash. The FDR/CVR data sets are whatever we're told they are. I'll go with the tremor.

---

ANTHRAX, BOLO SAYS: I've a couple of ideas on that. The main one is that al-Qaeda wanted to rend the US government into chaos. Sending anthrax only to the political opponents of Bush could produce both mistrust and resolve to agitate against the executive branch and the Republicans in charge.

Wow, what an outlandish idea: a false-flag attack by al-Qaeda, built to look like a US inside job. Maybe this is also how they arranged 9/11?

How did they get the FBI to "approve" the destruction of the Ames strain original samples in Iowa, on Oct. 9-10, 2001, just as the attacks started? How did they tip off Cheney's staff to go on Cipro on Sept. 11? Where did they produce weapons-grade anthrax stock traceable to Fort Dietrick stores? Oh, sorry, five years later the FBI reversed its own information and claimed otherwise. Case closed, I guess.

--

BOLO: The FAA tapes, again, is just so much crap you guys keep flinging. Continuing to return to thoroughly debunked (sorry, no link here, do a DU search on the posts of MercutioATC) stuff like this is not doing your advocacy of alternative theories any favors.

Tell me how the following NY Times article, detailing the destruction of tapes of statements made by air-traffic controllers on Sept. 11th, has been "debunked."
http://www.summeroftruth.org/nyt_06may04.html

--

JR: Where was Mohamed Atta in the period from April to June, 2000?

BOLO: I don't know.

The FBI timeline has him arriving for the first time in the US in June 2000. Able Danger and witnesses such as Johnelle Bryant (very interesting story!) and various people who spoke to Florida local papers say he was hanging out already in April to June.

---

JR: When if ever do you think the al-Qaeda networks that grew out of the "Afghan Arab" movement during the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad stopped having links to US intelligence networks?

BOLO: I don't know.

Would you like to know, or do you prefer to assume it doesn't matter?

---

That's enough for now!

Thanks for "running interference" on ridiculous stories but I feel more than capable of it myself. I like the bullshit detection of a Mark Robinowitz better than the scorched-earth denialism I see from a ScrewLooseChange. The first debunkings of Loose Change were done by Jim Hoffman, Michael Green and Robinowitz. For some reason, the ScrewLooseCrew decided they still needed to make a mini-movement out of LC2 debunking, rather than just link to the excellent work already done by 9/11 skeptics on pages like the following:

http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/green/loose_change.html
http://911review.com/disinfo/videos.html

[MervinFerd]

137. So much text. .... And still no hypothesis.

You just can't think clearly, can you?

[jberryhill]

138. I thought this was going to be like

...one of those quizzes in Cosmopolitan where, depending on how you answer, you find out if you are a good kisser or something.

[Bryan Sacks]

142. Can't you just acknowledge excellent work instead of making dumb fun?

Jack's done us all a service in summarizing bolo. Is there a problem with what he said?

[JackRiddler]

139. Tech problem fixed, Able Danger articles are back...

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050830191215604

(...)

10 Salient Points About Able Danger

1) In early 2000 the secret Able Danger program under the US Special Operations Command supposedly identified four men as Al-Qaeda operatives working in the United States. Their names were Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi. The US government has named Atta as the overall ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers. Atta and al-Shehhi came to the United States from Germany in 2000 and at times lived together in Florida, where they attended the same flight schools. They have been named as the pilots of the two World Trade Center crash planes. They were members of the al-Qaeda "Hamburg Cell," which the government says also provided the alleged suicide pilot of Flight 93, Ziad Jarrah. Almidhar and Alhazmi are considered to have played an important role in organizing personnel for the attack, and are said to have been among the Flight 77 hijackers.

2) Able Danger used sophisticated electronic "data-mining" or "matrix" techniques to locate potential terrorists. But according to a former Pentagon contractor who worked on the program, James D. Smith, Able Danger obtained Atta''s name and photograph from "a private researcher in California, who was paid to gather the information from contacts in the Middle East." (NYT, 8/23/2005) Who was this private reasearcher?

Atta''s photo was added to a wall chart plotting "Brooklyn Cell" connections, which included the other three suspects so far named. The chart was ordered destroyed after objections from Defense Department lawyers, according to the officers who have come forward (Col. Anthony Shaffer and Capt. Scott Phillpott). But a spokesman for the Special Operations Command, of which Able Danger was a part, says "that ''we have negative indications'' that destruction of such a chart was advised by military lawyers." (Reuters, 9/1/01) In that case, who did advise it, and why?

3) The original Times story contains a blanket statement that hides the most important facts of all: "The account is the first assertion that Mr. Atta, an Egyptian who became the lead hijacker in the plot, was identified by any American government agency as a potential threat before the Sept. 11 attacks."

This is the heart of the "limited hangout." The Times statement is false for at least two reasons:

- Already in September 2001, German authorities told their own press that the CIA had Atta and the Hamburg Cell under observation from Jan. to June 2000, while they were still in Germany. (This counts as an "assertion.") The German authorities say the CIA did not inform them of its activities, and that they only found out after the attacks. (See Berliner Zeitung, 9/24/01, archived as third article here, among many other German reports at that time.) According to the German authorities and the FBI, Atta received a travel visa from the US Consulate in Berlin in May, and first left for the United States via Prague in June 2000.

- How did the CIA get on Atta''s tail in the first place? It could be because in March 1999, "German intelligence officials gave the Central Intelligence Agency the first name and telephone number of Marwan al-Shehhi, and asked the Americans to track him." And that is how the New York Times itself reported it ("C.I.A. Was Given Data on Hijacker Long Before 9/11," NYT Feb. 24, 2004). In late 1999, the CIA attempted to recruit Mamoun Darkazanli, an associate of the "Hamburg Cell" members. (Chicago Tribune, 11/16/2002, archived here.)

(MORE)
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050830191215604

---

ALSO:
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20060302155139342

Thursday, March 2 2006
'Mystery Woman' Told Military of Atta Long Before Sept. 11

(...)

In the latest wrinkle, blog reporter Rory O'Connor (Mar 1, archived below) says a Pentagon inspector general's investigation has identified the person who provided Able Danger with Atta's name and photo. Atta's photo was incorporated into the "Brooklyn Cell" within a chart of alleged al Qaeda activities in the United States. The brass who later shut down surveillance of Atta and Co. ordered the Able Danger operatives to cover the photo with a yellow stickie, and finally had the chart and the data that went into it destroyed altogether.

The source of the photo, O'Connor now writes, is "a female contract employee of defense contractor Orion Scientific," nowadays a data-mining subsidiary of SRA with heavy Homeland Security involvements. This would appear to confirm an earlier assertion by Orion employee James D. Smith, who had also worked with Able Danger, "that Mr. Atta's name and photograph were obtained through a private researcher in California who was paid to gather the information from contacts in the Middle East." Since that story was already in the New York Times of Aug. 23, 2005, we wonder why it should take until now for a Pentagon inspector-general to "identify" someone who was working for the Pentagon in the first place.

O'Connor does not name his source for the story, but his blog makes clear that he is in contact with Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), the public champion of the Able Danger whistleblowers. Weldon is known for his aggressive approach to Iran and strong support for the unrestricted use of data-mining surveillance. Some observers have therefore voiced suspicions that claims of Able Danger's successes may be designed as a commercial for more Orwellian programs of the "Total Information Awareness" type.

Yet Able Danger's real success in rooting out the 9/11 suspects was apparently thanks to the as-yet unnamed woman and her contacts in the Middle East. Score another one for human intelligence. The question now is, who was this "mystery woman," and how did she find out about Atta and Co.? Who were her contacts? And what exactly did they know?

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20060302155139342

[Fainter]

168. Indira Singh On EPA...

Jack, I don't know if you've had a chance to peruse the lengthy interview conducted by Bonnie Faulkner for the Guns N' Butter radio program, but Singh talks at length about the perfidy of the EPA during 9/11 and its aftermath. Here is a link to the transcript:


http://www.nowpublic.com/node/25975


Like Sibel Edmonds, Singh is another extraordinary woman who emerged from 9/11, and if anything is an even more pivotal figure because of her involvement with Ptech and Yasin al-Qadi. What was done to the health of the residents of Lower Manhattan and all the first responders and victims of 9/11 was at best criminally negligent, and in the case of Ms. Singh, who sacrificed so much that day so that others might live, was especially egregious. Among her many accomplishments, private pilot, EMT, IT guru, she was also a world class mountain climber, a discipline which requires its practitioners to be at the peak of aerobic conditioning. Indira was robbed of her health working the pile the first day and week of September 11th because of the poisoned air.

You're damned right the allegations about the findings of Able Danger haven't been debunked! The Pentagon's "investigation" was a pure cover-up. This level of obstruction of justice hasn't been condoned since the 9/11 Commission itself. The same must be said regarding the put option scandal.

If elsewhere in other threads I have left the impression that the work you do is less than invaluable, please accept my apology. You and the other methodical researchers who post their work to this forum, do brilliant and dogged work making it possible to "connect the dots" of 9/11. Someday, it will be recognized and will have enduring historical value because it will be seen to have been instrumental in exposing the greatest fraud of our age.

[BrokenBeyondRepair]

169. .

[dailykoff]

125. The LIHOP show had a good run but now it's time to move on.

Thanks for the memories.

[JackRiddler]

140. Hypothesis: Some people are in avoidance of relevant facts and questions n/t

[LeftishBrit]

144. A few responses

Isn't Cheney's continued linking of the Saddam regime to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 events the most "outrageous conspiracy theory" of all? Did it not have more real-world impact than any other conspiracy theory? Note that he did it again yesterday:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/200...


YES!!! ABSOLUTELY!!! I have pointed out the evils of this outrageous conspiracy theory MANY times, and have certainly devoted far more time IRL and online to arguing against this than any other theories. (And also against related right-wing conspiracy theories, such as that the UN only opposed the war because some of the member states were involved in illegal deals with Saddam.) But the very fact that unfounded conspiracy theories by Cheney, Bush and the right wing have led to such disaster is for me a strong motivator against believing ANY conspiracy theories without proof.


Should 9/11 have been responded to as a crime against humanity, or as an act of war?


The former.


Is it untrue that 9/11 was employed as the justification for military actions and domestic policies that would have otherwise been politically difficult or infeasible?

It is true; though they also used other justifications, such as false claims of WMD.


Is it untrue that each of these actions and policies was explicitly desired and planned in advance by the main players of the Bush administration?

Yes, but 9-11 was not NECESSARY to these actions, merely facilitatory. "WMD" would have done the trick on their own, as they largely did for our government.


Do you justify the appointment of Philip Zelikow as the executive director of the 9/11 Commission? Does not this appointment on its face indicate a cover-up?

I am sure that the 9/11 Commission was to some degree a cover-up; but this does not mean that 9/11 was planned by the Bush government. Incompetence and massive post-hoc dishonesty are quite sufficient for a government to wish to cover up.

What did you think of the original appointment of Henry Kissinger to be the chairman of the 9/11 Commission?

A bad thing; and I will repeat that disbelieving LIHOP/MIHOP is not equivalent to trusting every word of the 9/11 Commission.


Did Condoleezza Rice commit perjury with regard to the Aug. 6th PDB in her testimony before the Commission? Should this not be a priority for prosecution?

I think it should certainly be investigated.

Do you agree with the 9/11 Commission conclusion that the question of who financed the alleged hijackers is "of little practical significance"?

No.

Should the Pakistani money connection have been pursued? Should this not be a high priority?

Yes.

Should Sibel Edmonds be allowed to speak openly on all that she knows? Should this not be a high priority for opponents of the Bush regime?

I don't know how 'high' the priority; but yes, she should.


Should an investigation be pursued to determine which agencies and officials consciously and repeatedly upheld false accounts of the air-defense response timeline? (Suspects to include FAA, NORAD and Gen. Myers, who produced and repeated mutually contradictory accounts in the 2001-2003 period?)


Yes. I have no doubt that there was a great deal of lying and
dishonesty, and that this should be investigated.

Shouldn't the whereabouts of Gen. Myers (in light of his contradictions with Clarke's account) and of Donald Rumsfeld during the attacks be known?

Yes, though I don't think the info will show very much.

Should Christie Todd Whitman be indicted for her false statements to the public concerning the dangers of Ground Zero emissions?

This should certainly be investigated; and if she deliberately (rather than ignorantly) made false statements, she should be prosecuted (as should Giuliani, if the same is shown for him). However, this, though serious, has nothing to do with who planned and caused 9-11.


Shouldn't it be a high priority to investigate which White House officials suppressed the initial EPA report? Wouldn't consciously downplaying this risk and ultimately raising the fatality rate constitute a high crime?


Yes, certainly. Again this is nothing to do with who caused 9-11 in the first place.

Would you support a new investigation that uses these questions as its basis?


Yes.


Do you agree with the Commission's deal with the White House on WH documents including PDBs?

No.

What do you think of Cleland's resignation, and his statements that the 9/11 Commission was a whitewash and White House treatment of the investigation was a scam?

I think he was probably quite right. Again, 'the 9/11 Commission was a whitewash' does not equal 'Bush MIHOP/LIHOP'.

Are you aware that claims of put options and suspect financial deals suggesting foreknowledge range far, far beyond the well-known sets of put options placed on United and American stock on the CBOE?

I know that such claims have been made, but no evidence was found for them.


Why do you think the anthrax mailings were sent to Daschle and Leahy? (Reports of any other anthrax targets in the government have since been discounted as hoaxes and mistakes.)

I think there are three possibilities: (1) the Bush government did indeed make this HOP (far more likely here than for 9/11 IMO); (2) Al Quaeda operatives did this to cause confusion, or because they oppose ALL American politicians; (3) local right-wing terrorists took advantage of the situation to attack hate-targets. It needs to be investigated.


Sibel Edmonds and Anthony Shaffer were disciplined. The FAA tapes of accounts by air traffic controllers who handled the two flights that hit the Towers, taken on the afternoon of September 11th, were destroyed. Myers, Eberhard, Frasca, Maltbie and Bowman all received promotions after 9/11. George Tenet got a medal. Would this combination have an effect on potential whistleblowers contemplating coming forward with whatever bits they know?


Yes; but on the other hand people involved in the terrorist operations, and threatened with prosecution in America and abroad, would have been likely to reveal info to exculpate themselves. Or to cause trouble and disruption in American and allied politics and government. There are motivations in both directions.

[JackRiddler]

145. Thanks for your responses.

And I welcome you as well to the ranks of 9/11 skepticism, who are defined by rejection of the official story and support for a muscular investigation, wherever it may lead. You say:

Again, 'the 9/11 Commission was a whitewash' does not equal 'Bush MIHOP/LIHOP'.

No. But it helps establish probable cause for a real criminal investigation, one run by people who are not Bush officials, one that examines all the evidence, asks the omitted questions and does not dogmatically rule out possibilities in advance.

[LeftishBrit]

170. I am sceptical about ALL conspiracy theories, until proven

Whether put out by the right about Saddam, or put out by the 'truthers' about Bush.

Yes, I think more investigation is needed.

[JackRiddler]

171. FROM HERE IT'S THE OTHER THREAD...

NOTE: From 146 down it's the same thread as posted in the Skeptics' group and later moved here...

[JackRiddler]

146. Questions for Skeptics of 9/11 Skepticism

If skepticism has a patron saint, as contradictory as that idea may be, then I hope his name is Socrates, and not James Randi.

Yes, I'm one of those 9/11 skeptics. Surely you don't want the discussion in this group to be an echo chamber? I want to open a serious discussion with those who are willing.

The point of the following (cross-post from September 11 forum) is to show that skepticism is perhaps more productively devoted to the tales told by officials, rather than to the speculations of self-published Internet theorists. I'll be happy to provide references on any topics you're unfamiliar with.

Isn't Cheney's continued linking of the Saddam regime to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 events the most "outrageous conspiracy theory" of all? Did it not have more real-world impact than any other conspiracy theory? Note that he did it again the other day:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/13/MNG7UOK2D61.DTL&type=printable

Should 9/11 have been responded to as a crime against humanity, or as an act of war?

Is it untrue that 9/11 was employed as the justification for military actions and domestic policies that would have otherwise been politically difficult or infeasible? Is it untrue that each of these actions and policies was explicitly desired and planned in advance by the main players of the Bush administration?

Do you justify the appointment of Philip Zelikow as the executive director of the 9/11 Commission? Does not this appointment on its face indicate a cover-up?

What did you think of the original appointment of Henry Kissinger to be the chairman of the 9/11 Commission?

Did Condoleezza Rice commit perjury with regard to the Aug. 6th PDB in her testimony before the Commission? Should this not be a priority for prosecution?

Do you agree with the 9/11 Commission conclusion that the question of who financed the alleged hijackers is "of little practical significance"?

Should the Pakistani money connection have been pursued? Should this not be a high priority?

Should Sibel Edmonds be allowed to speak openly on all that she knows? Should this not be a high priority for opponents of the Bush regime?

Should an investigation be pursued to determine which agencies and officials consciously and repeatedly upheld false accounts of the air-defense response timeline? (Suspects to include FAA, NORAD and Gen. Myers, who produced and repeated mutually contradictory accounts in the 2001-2003 period?)

Shouldn't the whereabouts of Gen. Myers (in light of his contradictions with Clarke's account) and of Donald Rumsfeld during the attacks be known?

Should Christie Todd Whitman be indicted for her false statements to the public concerning the dangers of Ground Zero emissions? Shouldn't it be a high priority to investigate which White House officials suppressed the initial EPA report? Wouldn't consciously downplaying this risk and ultimately raising the fatality rate constitute a high crime?

Were the questions posed by the Family Steering Committee the right roadmap for the 9/11 Commission, as Jamey Gorelick and others acknowledged? Is it untrue, as two members of the FSC have detailed, that 70 percent of these questions were fully omitted from consideration the 9/11 CR?

Would you support a new investigation that uses these questions as its basis?

Do you agree there is probable cause for a criminal investigation or grand jury into as-yet unsolved crimes relating to the events of September 11th and their aftermath?
(See http://justicefor911.org - Have you read the actual 2004 complaint to Spitzer up at that site?)

Do you agree with the Commission's deal with the White House on WH documents including PDBs?

What do you think of Cleland's resignation, and his statements that the 9/11 Commission was a whitewash and White House treatment of the investigation was a scam?

Should we know who the sources were for the alleged discovery of the "Brooklyn Cell" including Mohamed Atta by Able Danger in 1999-2000? Was Able Danger of minor historical significance, as the 9/11 Commission claimed?

Wouldn't a serious investigation of September 11th pursue all stories of foreknowledge and forewarnings, especially those from foreign intelligence agencies, with the goal of finding out the sources of such information? (I.e., avoiding any assumptions about their significance until the sources are known?)

Are you aware that claims of put options and suspect financial deals suggesting foreknowledge range far, far beyond the well-known sets of put options placed on United and American stock on the CBOE?

Do you believe that United 93 crashed at 10:03 am without causing a measurable seismic event, and that a natural seismic event of the size usually associated with a plane crash followed in the same area at 10:06 am by coincidence?

Why do you think the anthrax mailings were sent to Daschle and Leahy? (Reports of any other anthrax targets in the government have since been discounted as hoaxes and mistakes.)

What do you think of the FBI's investigations of leaks from the intelligence committee senators and their staff during the Joint Intelligence Committee Investigation of 9/11? Might the FBI actions have been intended as intimidation?

Sibel Edmonds and Anthony Shaffer were disciplined. The FAA tapes of accounts by air traffic controllers who handled the two flights that hit the Towers, taken on the afternoon of September 11th, were destroyed. Myers, Eberhard, Frasca, Maltbie and Bowman all received promotions after 9/11. George Tenet got a medal. Would this combination have an effect on potential whistleblowers contemplating coming forward with whatever bits they know?

Do you believe all hijacker identities have been resolved beyond doubt?

Where was Mohamed Atta in the period from April to June, 2000?

When if ever do you think the al-Qaeda networks that grew out of the "Afghan Arab" movement during the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad stopped having links to US intelligence networks?

Was Osama Bin Ladin allowed to get away from Tora Bora? Was there an airlift of Pakistani ISI and al-Qaeda operatives out of Kunduz, Afghanistan via an air corridor cleared by US forces in November 2001, as Seymour Hersh reported?

Do US intel/military agencies or related networks amongst their contractors have a significant history of engineering false-flag terrorism? Should this enter at all into considerations of 9/11?

What is the significance of Ali Mohamed? Was his story worthy of inclusion in the official 9/11 investigations?

Do these questions, most of which relate to official statements and actions of geopolitical consequence, not indicate higher priorities for skeptics to pursue than the debunking of errors and distortions by amateur researchers as seen in "Loose Change 2," Alex Jones's works, dustification theories, "no planes" theories and the like?

Have you read Michael Ruppert? The 9/11 Timeline edited by Paul Thompson? Nafeez Ahmed? Michel Chossudovsky? Daniel Hopsicker? Were these not the most prominent 9/11 skeptic-researchers by far until 2005?

[mr blur]

147. Of course there are questions about 9/11

and we even ask them over here in the UK. But there's a difference between reasonable, intelligent and important questions and hysterical accusations and theorizing.

[JackRiddler]

148. Okay.

So do you think the above questions are reasonable or hysterical?

Are you satisfied that we the democratic polity have enough of the full story on 9/11 to evaluate it properly - given its importance as a justification for a wideranging set of policies?

Is there probable cause for an unhindered criminal investigation of unsolved crimes relating to September 11th such ranging from criminal negligence to possible complicity on the part of US government officials, intelligence networks or their contractors?

Is this a higher priority for analysis by concerned citizen-skeptics than the hysterical type of theorizing you eschew?

[Name removed]

149. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[realisticphish]

150. The answers to those questions

can mostly be summed up by the following

1. Because they're assholes
2. Because they're stupid
3. Because the government is hugely inefficient and bureaucratic

[JackRiddler]

151. Those aren't felonies.

Perjury, obstruction of justice and wanton criminal negligence are, for a start. And isn't a skeptic defined by the preference for actually knowing what happened, rather than to assume based on world-view that the 9/11 cover-up is "only" attempting to hide assholishness, stupidity, and incompetence?

[realisticphish]

152. doesn't skepticism require evidence

that the 9/11 ISN'T only attempting to hid assholishness, stupidity, and incompetence?

And I don't know why the fuck I'm feeding you.

[JackRiddler]

155. No.

In the absence of adequate evidence (the result of cover-up and whitewash, which I don't think you are disputing),

skepticism - reason - requires an agnostic approach that does not posit a default hypothesis,

and political involvement - citizenship in a democracy - requires a demand for a muscular investigation, so that we're not laying odds but actually know

all the more so given the central role of this event in defining all that has happened since.

Tolerance of lies, incompetence, false accounts, etc. already is a reward that guarantees more of the same in the future. Accepting secrecy and a lack of transparency makes a mockery of the ostensibly republican institutions, which rely on an equality of common knowledge.

And in this case, how do you know you're not actually tolerating something far worse? Because your world-view tells you it must be "mere" lies, incompetence, etc.?

[muriel_volestrangler]

153. OK, some answers

"Isn't Cheney's continued linking of the Saddam regime to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 events the most "outrageous conspiracy theory" of all? Did it not have more real-world impact than any other conspiracy theory?"

Outrageous in results, yes. What they had to do to persuade people wasn't great, because it's not a stretch to believe that people co-operate with each other. This is, of course, why far more time was spent on this by most people than trying to prove that only the American government had the capability of bringing down the WTC buildings.

"Should 9/11 have been responded to as a crime against humanity, or as an act of war?"

Primarily, as a crime (I presume that 'against humanity' means that it needed to be investigated internationally). However, the support of the Taliban for al Qaeda did mean that they put themselves at risk of force by governments who wanted to prevent future support.

"Is it untrue that 9/11 was employed as the justification for military actions and domestic policies that would have otherwise been politically difficult or infeasible? Is it untrue that each of these actions and policies was explicitly desired and planned in advance by the main players of the Bush administration?"

The invasion of Afghanistan wouldn't have happened without 9/11, I agree. I'm not aware of advance planning for it, however. Bush did use 9/11 in the propaganda for invading Iraq; I know the Bush admin desired this before that, but I don't know they already had it planned (though I have my suspicions about the Cheney energy task force). I don't know about advance planning for domestic policies.

"Do you justify the appointment of Philip Zelikow as the executive director of the 9/11 Commission? Does not this appointment on its face indicate a cover-up?"

I'm not American; I've never heard of Philip Zelikow, so to me it doesn't indicate anything at all.

"What did you think of the original appointment of Henry Kissinger to be the chairman of the 9/11 Commission?"

They wanted a Republican who would go easy on a Republican administration.

"Did Condoleezza Rice commit perjury with regard to the Aug. 6th PDB in her testimony before the Commission? Should this not be a priority for prosecution?"

She tried to avoid answering questions; her "I can't remember exactly what it said" was unconvincing. It might be perjury, technically; I don't think it's a priority, since the PDB was available anyway.

"Do you agree with the 9/11 Commission conclusion that the question of who financed the alleged hijackers is "of little practical significance"?"

I'd need a context for that to be sure, but in terms of what happened on the day, it would make sense.

"Should the Pakistani money connection have been pursued? Should this not be a high priority?"

Yes, and yes, it should be a high priority.

"Should Sibel Edmonds be allowed to speak openly on all that she knows? Should this not be a high priority for opponents of the Bush regime?"

Yes, she should be able to speak openly, but I'm not clear what is the area that she knows about but hasn't said anything about. She's exposed incompetence, but I can't call this 'high priority' without some idea what would be revealed.

"Should an investigation be pursued to determine which agencies and officials consciously and repeatedly upheld false accounts of the air-defense response timeline? (Suspects to include FAA, NORAD and Gen. Myers, who produced and repeated mutually contradictory accounts in the 2001-2003 period?)"

Yes, their responses are unsatisfactory. We don't know exactly what went wrong, or if it's since been fixed.

Enough for now. I may return to the many other questions later.

[JackRiddler]

156. Thank you.

Responses to several of your points will be forthcoming.

[PVnRT]

154. So, then

basically you want to shut up all criticism of the kook claims put forward everyday in the 9/11 dungeon and just have everyone agree with you?

Skepticism is not one-sided. One can be skeptical about the government and their use of 9/11 as propaganda without buying into whatever asshat theory is hot this week.

[JackRiddler]

157. To your question - no.

And nothing in the OP justifies your unwarranted presumption.

[Caution]

158. yOu have made no assertions. Asking questions does not support the 9/11 "Truth" movement

provide actual evidence that refutes rather than support the conclusion that the attacks of 9/1 were planned and perpetrated by Al-Qaeda.

When you can do that then you will have a case.

Skepticism is NOT about "asking questions"

Socrates was NOT a skeptic.

Skepticism is plain and simply the belief that extraordinary claims require evidence to be taken seriously. Until evidence is provided, there is NO reason whatsoever to buy into any of the ridiculous bunk that the 9/11 "Truth" movement is selling.

[mr blur]

159. End of discussion, I'd say.

Though, of course, it won't be.

[petgoat]

163. extraordinary claims require evidence

The destruction of evidence is evidence.

The obstruction of investigations is evidence.

The refusal to answer 70% of the widows' questions is evidence.

The refusal to pursue certain lines of inquiry is evidence.

Do you think we're stupid?

[Ferry Fey]

165. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary investigation n/t

[CJCRANE]

167. There is already evidence

and knowledge of who funded the hijackers. And those people are linked to B*sh administration allies.

[JackRiddler]

160. Dungeonized...

Strange, I do think this was on-topic at the Skeptics' Forum as well, given the frequent use there of 9/11 skepticism as a target for summary beatings.

[greyl]

161. It's a DU Group, not a forum.

I don't think someone who believes Sagan and Shermer are flamebait is down with the idea behind it.

[JackRiddler]

162. Don't put words in my mouth.

I don't think Sagan is flamebait, I love the guy. I said you abused Sagan as flamebait. And while I don't put a lightweight like Shermer in the same class, your citation of him ("baloney detection") was similarly an off-topic attempt to grant yourself the mantle of skeptic confronted with wackos, no actual relevance to 9/11 necessary; though given his mindless attacks on 9/11 research I'm sure he'd approve.

[petgoat]

164. It's a comedy club, a mutual admiration society, and quite juvenile. nt

[JackRiddler]

166. kicking...

to remind myself to get back to MurielVolestrangler's responses...

[JackRiddler]

174. ditto, still owed...

[JackRiddler]

175. kick

[jberryhill]

180. Hey Riddler

I answered every single one of your questions in the thread above.

Both. No. No. No. No. I didn't like it. Yes. No. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. (Yes.) No. Not without probable cause of personal culpability. No. I don' t know. I don't know. I don't know. Sure, why not. I'm not sure you understand the distinction between those two things. (No.) No. I think that's what happened. Yes. No. No. Yes. No. To intimidate them. They were unwarranted and done for the purpose of covering up non-feasance or malfeasance. Absolutely. Perhaps. People acting with the strength of their own conviction generally have less than venal motivation. No. I have no idea. I believe they continue presently. Yes. Yes. Maybe. Sure. I don't know. Didn't read it. No. What one chooses to discuss in one's free time on an internet forum is not, in the larger scheme of things, of much consequence. Yes. Yes. No. No. A little. I don't know.

There. The world is now a better place because you now have the complete list of opinions of someone you don't even know. Wow.

But if I could offer you some helpful free advice, do not take up writing interrogatories in your spare time. You have a very pronounced tendency for "negative phrasing" of yes-or-no questions.

For example, try answering these two questions with "yes" or "no":

1. "Were you drinking last night?"

2. "Weren't you drinking last night?"

If you were drinking, the correct answers are "yes" and "no". The problem with the second question is that it asks "Were you NOT drinking last night?" A lot of people, though, will answer question 2 with "no" to indicate that they were not drinking last night. For that reason, questions of the form you posted are generally considered to be not capable of an unambiguous yes or no question.

You had exactly nothing to say after that.

So now what?

[JackRiddler]

186. If you're not going to bother with returns

Your one paragraph with all the answers confusingly stuck together is not worth the parsing, and I understand it in the discourterous, disrespectful and dismissive manner it was delivered.

[jberryhill]

191. You think it didn't take time and thought

...to deal with your demand to know the answer to your, what, 30-odd questions?

You piss and moan in here about people who spend time addressing nutjob theories, when the site in your OWN signature 911truth.org exhorts people to do just that.

Although having Steven Jones peddling his lies about the Sam Hollenshead photograph and being on the board of 911truth.org, while encouraging enthusiastic debunking of nutjob theories is, to put it mildly, more irony-rich than thermite is iron-rich.

So, I got an F on the final exam because YOU can't take time to grade the paper, is that it?

You wanted to know what people thought about your questions, including the ones YOU phrased as double-negatives. I told you. What do I win?

[vincent_vega_lives]

176. Here is what strongly refute from this list...

Nothing.

You really don't get it do you.

[jberryhill]

181. Riddler doesn't even read the site he puts in his sig....

"we have to exert discretion and discipline by ferreting out those ideas repudiated by the physical evidence."
http://www.911truth.org/index.php?topic=strategy


"it is important for 9/11 truth activists to confront the spread of false evidence head-on"
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040810075752147

But if you actually do those things that the site in his sig SAYS to do, then you are just an OCT'er.

Hmm.....

[Perry Logan]

184. Oy! I wish the Truthers would make their homework assignments smaller.

Here are my answers to the first ten questions. The syntax was giving me a headache, so I had to stop:

No. The most outrageous conspiracy theory of all is the one with the Reptoids. That has Cheney beat anytime.
Crime against humanity, I guess. Will this be on the final?
It would not be unfair to say it is not untrue that "each of these actions and policies was explicitly desired and planned in advance by the main players of the Bush administration," but it would not be unfair to vehemently deny that it proves in any way that 9/11 was an inside job. This is a common logic problem amongst Truthers.
"Does not this appointment on its face indicate a cover-up?" Another logic problem. It can't be a cover-up if it draws attention to itself.
I thought it was funny. Either that, or the bad guys were trying to leave clues they were up to something.
I dunno Probably not.
No. I don't know what they were thinking. But it doesn't sound lie a cover-up. A cover-up would provide a soothing answer.
I dunno. Evidently, it led nowhere.
Definitely. Let's let Sibel talk, if it will shut the Truthers up.

[JackRiddler]

185. I am not a "Truther"

I apply skepticism to the official story of 9/11.

Your name calling frees me of any obligation to take you seriously.

One example serves to show you are not serious:

"Does not this appointment on its face indicate a cover-up?" Another logic problem. It can't be a cover-up if it draws attention to itself.

Semantics in place of logic, as usual. No one drew attention to the Zelikow appointment except those of us who found out his background after the fact. Nor would "drawing attention" per se conflict with the mission of a cover-up, unless they drew attention to his career as a Bush foreign policy team member (they didn't).

I like kicking this thread because new people will start reading it at the top. In other words, I care little for what is said by all those whose positions are long ago hardened and now delivered strictly on behalf of one or the other team as in a sports contest. All this self-discrediting and insulting shit you lot stick at the bottom doesn't matter very much. Please respond to this message with more snark, as it needs more kicks.

[OnTheOtherHand]

188. since you mention it

I pretty much stopped taking you seriously when you addressed your remarks to "those who argue... against 9/11 skepticism."

[jberryhill]

192. "...but I do promote Steven Jones' stuff in my signature" /nt

[JackRiddler]

196. You have no shame, do you?

911Truth.org has about a thousand articles and I like it as an introductory site, in part for nostalgic reasons. I haven't been a board member in two years, if memory serves. Most of the articles are fair-use archives of other publications. So maybe somewhere it has the "diagonal cut" photos, which I do not consider to be evidence of anything except workers cutting up the beams after the fact. And so?

Do I have to apologize for every statement I disagree with on DU?

It never matters what any given person says. All you guys ever care about is constructing group membership for en masse dismissal, cartoon smear by association. You're on the level of the tabloids and FOXNEWS (decrying "conspiracy theorists" instead of "America haters"), and it's obvious -- in case there's anyone still left reading this forum after the shambles it's been turned into by the debunker squad and the no-planes etc. pretenders (which is exactly what they are).

[Bolo Boffin]

197. You're the one that links uncritically to that website.

So you're the one that's responsible for our thinking that you agree with the bulk of what's there. If you didn't, why would you link there?

This mock outrage is just silly, Jack. If you were a LOT clearer about what you actually believed, then none of these problems of mistaking your beliefs would exist.

[JackRiddler]

198. I write too much as it is...

If you read it and you haven't figured out what I believe and what I don't, that's too bad for me I guess.

[jberryhill]

212. He won't do it...

Offering any sort of explanation of 9/11 is not the point.

Nurturing suspicion, without stating a clear theory, is precisely the point.

[jberryhill]

211. "Every statement I disagree with"

No, not at all. Jones is on the BOARD of 911truth.org. That's not the "one posting on a blog by a nut" kind of situation.

You think the no-planes guys are "pretenders"? I'm sure spooked9111 would love to have a word with you.

But there is something larger going on here, and the contours are becoming apparent.

9/11 wasn't just Bush's "Reichstag Fire", and there is an entire spectrum of fascist and proto-fascist organizations that have latched onto "9/11 truth" as an introductory route into a much more developed set of historical and economic theories.

It was reflecting on the comparisons and contrasts between the Larouchies and the John Birch Society, and also remembering my observation, from when I had briefly lived there, of how the JBS fit in just fine among ordinary folks in Utah.

But, please, the "de-bunkers" have turned the 9/11 Forum into a shambles? And they did this by arguing with the "nutjob" theories, which you never criticize. No, of course not. It's only those who argue with your unspecified "nutjobs" who are ruining the conversation.

It never matters what any given person says. All you guys ever care about is constructing group membership for en masse dismissal

Nonsense. You haven't put forward a thesis susceptible of dismissal. Your continued refrain is "of course the nutjob stuff makes no sense... how come nobody answers THESE questions..." and whereupon you loosely stitch together some insinuations, but never really spit out what it is you are on about. You further studiously avoid actually criticizing proponents of the nutjob stuff. It's only the critics of the nutjobs with whom you take issue.

The reason that you won't go after the nutty stuff, even though 9/11Truth.org suggests people legitimately seeking the truth should, is pretty apparent.

The approach is brilliant. There are CT's in want of a theory, so by studiously avoiding criticizing any particular piece of physical nonsense, the "crazy folks" are nearly always someone other than your intended reader.

Steven Jones is functionally important for the use of 9/11 Truth as an introduction to the broader conspiracy theories of history espoused by fascist and proto-fascist organizations, because while a lot of folks generally believe the LDS to lean right, some folks are completely unaware of the positive endorsement and historical flirtation between LDS leadership and the John Birch Society. See, e.g. http://www.latterdayconservative.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=339

And behind all of the "probable cause" and "beyond reasonable doubt" language, there are lists of people to be rounded up, come the Truth revolution:

http://www.sowtp.org/The_Facts_Of_September_11_2001_Investigators_List_Of_Conspirators.htm

Names which are on the below list are only placed on this list when I have irrefutable evidence of criminal activity or colluding with others in the events of September 11, 2001. Names which are on this list shall be listed on subsequent arrest warrants.

American Airlines

Demolition Consultants

Ron Dokell

Department of Defense

Donald Rumsfeld

Executive Branch of The United States Government

Condoleezza Rice

George W. Bush - President of The United States of America (1-20-2001 to current)

Richard (Dick) B. Cheney - Vice President of The United States of America (2001 to current)

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

Marion Clifton Blakey FAA Administrator was sworn in September 13, 2002

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Bill Crowley

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

George Elmer Pataki - Former New York Governor (1995-2007)

Jack Loizeaux, Founder of Controlled Demolition, Inc.

Jeb Bush - Former Florida Governor (1999-2007)

Marvin Pierce Bush - Former Stratesec/Secureacom BOD member

Legislative Branch of The United States Government

House of Representatives - Each member who has voted for the USA Patriot Act (2001) and every Representative elected to congress since 2001 simply for not demanding an independent investigation.

Senate - Each member who has voted for the USA Patriot Act (2001) and every Representative elected to congress since 2001 simply for not demanding an independent investigation.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

National Construction Safety Team for WTC Investigation

Fahim Sadek - Proj. Leader, Proj. 2: Baseline Structural Perf. and Aircraft Impact Damage Prediction

Frank Gayle (MSEL) - Proj. Leader, Project 3: Mechanical and Metallurgical Analysis of Structural Steel

Harold E. Nelson - Fire Protection Engineering Expert

H.S. Lew - Co-Project Leader, Project 1: Analysis of Building and Fire Codes and Practices

Jason Averill - Project Leader, Project 7: Occupant Behavior, Egress, and Emergency Communications

John Gross - Co-Project Leader, Project 6: Structural Fire Response and Collapse

John Hodgens - Project 8, Fire Service Technologies and Guidelines

Kevin Malley - Project 8, Fire Service Technologies and Guidelines

Randy Lawson - Project Leader, Project 8: Fire Service Technologies and Guidelines

Richard Bukowski - Co-Project Leader, Project 1: Analysis of Building and Fire Codes and Practices

Richard Gann - Project Leader, Project 5: Reconstruction of Thermal and Tenability Environment

Stephen Cauffman - Program Manager

Therese McAllister - Co-Project Leader, Project 6: Structural Fire Response and Collapse

Shyam Sunder - Lead Technical Investigator

Valentine Junker - Project 5, Reconstruction of Thermal and Tenability Environment

Vincent Dunn - Project 8, Fire Service Technologies and Guidelines

William Grosshandler - Project Leader, Project 4: Investigation of Active Fire Protection Systems

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)

Marion Clifton Blakey NTSB Board Member 2001-2002 (also named under FAA)

Richard F. Healing NTSB Board Member 2003-2005

Ellen Engleman Conners NTSB Chairman 2003-2006

News Media

ABC News

CBS News

CNN News

Fox News

WCPO - Liz Foreman

Popular Mechanics

David Dunbar - Executive Editor

James B. Meigs - Editor-In-Chief

Jerry Beilinson - Deputy Editor

Lori Yacovone - Managing Editor

Michael Lawton - Design Director

Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani - Former Mayor of New York City

Securacom/Stratesec (Delisted from American Stock Exchange July 22, 2002) - Security Firm (Barry McDaniel, CEO of Stratesec) for World Trade Center, Washington Dulles and Boston Logan International Airports. Marvin Pierce Bush (Former Board of Directors Member)

United Airlines

Glenn F. Tilton, Chairman - President and Chief Executive Officer

Graham W. Atkinson - Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Officer

Frederic F. Brace, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Peter D. McDonald, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

John P. Tague, Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer

Jane G. Allen, Senior Vice President - Human Resources

Gerald (Garry) F. Kelly, Senior Vice President - Continuous Improvement, Strategic Sourcing and Chief Information Officer

Paul R. Lovejoy, Senior Vice President - General Counsel and Secretary

Rosemary Moore, Senior Vice President - Corporate and Government Affairs


http://www.sowtp.org/Society_Of_We_The_People_Organizations.htm


American Scholars Symposium - The American Scholars Symposium: 9/11 + The Neo-Con Agenda was covered by Reuters, The Washington Post, ABC & NBC Affiliates, CSPAN, and even more independent media outlets from all across the globe. The CSPAN broadcast of the Panel Discussion held on the second day of the conference which featured Webster Tarpley, Steven Jones, Bob Bowman, James Fetzer, & Alex Jones will be on Saturday, July 29th at 7:00pm cst & then the program will be re-broadcast at 10:00pm cst.

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John Birch Society - Ever since its founding in 1958 by Robert Welch, The John Birch Society has been dedicated to restoring and preserving freedom under the United States Constitution. Members come from all walks of life and are active throughout the 50 states on local, regional and national levels. United by a strong belief in personal freedom and limited government, plus a sense of duty, members of The John Birch Society have

[leftofthedial]

187. those are some good questions

[Perry Logan]

199. Why does the seismology clearly indicate no explosions on 9/11?

[JackRiddler]

214. This is not a topic of the OP - why do you distract?

[Perry Logan]

200. Why have virtually none of the world's structural engineers figured this out?

Ditto the world's demolitions experts, architects, political scientists, and historians,?

[JackRiddler]

215. This is not a topic of the OP - why do you distract?

[Perry Logan]

201. How did the bad guys place the charges in the towers exactly where the planes were to hit?

[JackRiddler]

213. This is not a topic of the op - why do you distract?

[Perry Logan]

202. Why did the President go into brainlock on 9/11?

This alone disproves both MIHOP and LIHOP.

[JackRiddler]

216. Why do you provide excuses for him? What about the secret service?

How is it that the entire top of the chain of command went into a coordinated and clearly faked "brainlock" for the duration of the attacks?

[Perry Logan]

203. If they wanted to invade Iraq, why did they frame Osama bin Laden?

[JackRiddler]

217. Who are "they"? Who says ObL isn't one of them?

[Perry Logan]

204. Would international bankers really fund a plan to bring down Wall Street?

[JackRiddler]

218. Did Wall Street come down? At any rate, not a topic of the OP - why are you distracting?

[Perry Logan]

205. Why haven't they staged any big domestic follow-up attacks--as most of the Truthers predicted?

[JackRiddler]

219. I didn't. Go ask elsewhere.

[Perry Logan]

206. Why do Truthers fight constantly? Why can't they get agree on their story?

[JackRiddler]

220. Why do Democrats fight constantly? Why can't they agree on a strategy?

[Perry Logan]

207. Why do Truthers spend half their time saying the news is rigged, & half their time quoting the news?

[JackRiddler]

221. If you can find anyone who self-identifies as a "Truther," ask them.

[Perry Logan]

208. Why do Truthers ignore the manifold debunkings of everything they have ever said?

[JackRiddler]

222. Why haven't you stopped beating your dog?

[Perry Logan]

209. Why do Truthers call anyone who disagrees with them an agent--always without a shred of proof?

[JackRiddler]

223. You should ask that of someone who has actually done this - more false insinuations/associations.

[Perry Logan]

210. When will the Truthers realize that making false accusations of mass murder is bad for your karma?

[JackRiddler]

224. Creating phantom categories to act as the target of prejudice and hatred can't be good for it either

[JackRiddler]

225. next-year kick

[Fainter]

226. Kick. n/t

[JackRiddler]

227. Thank you.

[JackRiddler]

228. So digging up this thread again...

I see I forgot to put in anything about the planning and intent by the relevant members of the Bush regime to wage the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in advance of Sept. 11. Another subject untouched by the investigations, and of obvious interest as a potential criminal complex (i.e., they lied by using 9/11 as the pretext for what they were intending anyway), regardless of who was responsible for 9/11 itself. One can believe fully in official story and still see this as a reason for a 9/11 coverup.

[deconstruct911]

229. Paul Bremer knew he had work in Iraq post 9/11

Paul Bremer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soAGSevjumk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2pW6WZhZrQ&feature=rela...

“Iraq should remain on the list!”
“If we throw away the democratic freedoms and civil liberties that are at the heart of our society that’s what they are after. That’s what we can’t allow to happen”

This of course BEFORE the Anthrax scare….. Not only was the anthrax scare an excuse to strip civil liberties, it was initially alleged Iraq was responsible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ResY3SYXa8w

Isn’t it funny Paul Bremer says this stuff and goes on to be the U.S. Administrator to Iraq charged with overseeing the reconstruction of Iraq.

No it’s another coincidence…..

[JackRiddler]

230. kick