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Edited on Wed Feb-09-05 08:48 PM by paulthompson
I try not to have an opinion on that, so I can remain open minded as a researcher. But there are a few things I do believe.
One, even under the "best cast scenario" of incompetence Bush and many of his staff should be impeached because the incompetence would be a criminal incompetence. And if that wasn't grounds for impeachment, the subsequent cover up would be (recall Nixon - he wasn't brought down by crime of Watergate itself, but by his role in the cover up of it).
Two, there certainly were other actors involved in addition to al-Qaeda. The Pakistani ISI is the most obvious example, but it doesn't end there. The story is much more complicated that we're led to generally believe.
Three, the above three choices are too limiting for me, and exclude many options. What about, for instance, a small, fanatical cabal of Americans participating, making it a fait accompli to the Bush administration after the latter finds out? I'm reminded of the Gary Powers U2 incident in the Eisenhower administration. If you dig deep into the historical record, it's an established fact that Eisenhower explicitly and firmly banned any U2 flights over Russia during the lead up to a big summit with Russia that could have led to a detente and an early end to the Cold War. The very fact that Gary Powers was flying indicates an act of treason by some within the US military. But there's further evidence his plane was deliberately sabotaged so it would go down inside Russia, creating the very incident Eisenhower desperately wanted to avoid. In the fallout, the Russian summit was cancelled, and this faction, whomever they were, got their fait accompli. All Eisenhower could do was warn about the excessive power of the "military-industrial complex" in his last speech as President (coining that term in the process).
Could a zealous faction of say, neo-cons, have had a similar role? I'm not saying that's what I believe, but it would add another option somewhere between MIHOP and incompetence or LIHOP and incompetence.
Another possibility that doesn't fit neatly is the mole possibility. Sibel Edmonds, who is certainly one of the most credible whistleblowers, has evidence of a foreign spy network with moles in at least the State Department, Pentagon and FBI, and manipulating the FBI's investigation about 9/11. Intriguingly, she hints this network may not be tied to any one foreign state, but rather a vast, stateless criminal network connected to the billions of dollars of opium and heroin coming out of Afghanistan. She's said that if this were fully investigated, people high up in the US government would go to prison. Incidentally, just a few weeks ago she was vindicated by an internal US goverment investigation.
So where would that fit? As I mention I think in the speech linked to above, Richard Clarke talks about a communication intecept of former ISI director Hamid Gul around 1999, assuring the Taliban leaders that they needn't worry about another US missile strike on their country, as he knew what the US leadership was thinking about this, and anyways if there was another one, he'd give advance warning like he did with the 1998 missile strike. Clearly this suggests a treasonous communication link between someone in the US government and the ISI, but who's playing who, or are both sides happily playing each other to mutual benefit?
So, I still don't know what all of this means, but if you put a gun to my head, I think it's likely some element of neo-cons have some role to play, though if that's a mole role (essentially working as foreign agents) or rogue faction role or if it goes all the way to the top and includes top neo-cons like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and/or Wolfowitz as overt participants and/or "in the know", I'm not sure. I also strongly suspect that one thing all the 9/11 participants have in common is connections to the lucrative Afghan drug trade.
It's intriguing the way folks like Perle, Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith have ties to groups like the American-Turkish Council, outed by Edmonds as a potentially semi-legitimate front group for this drug criminal network. I think research into this is likely to be much more fruitful that arguing for the 1000th time if a plane hit the Pentagon or not.
Furthermore, the way many neocons have divided loyalties with Israel raises the whole issue of how that country might fit in, which is another thing that puzzles me and adds a whole other level of complexity to it all. Note for instance that Perle, Wolfowitz, and Feith have been investigated off and on since the early 1980s for giving classified information to Israel.
Oh, and by the way, spooked911, I took a quick look at your website and am bummed that you don't include my book in your list of books to read. :(
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