I can't help but feeling a touch silly over 9/11

[Erika]

We had renegade fanatics hijack a few planes and we allowed them to turn our world topsy-turvy. Enough is enough. There were 19 of them and they caused every airport in the U.S. to tremble in fear and cause passengers to be denigrated thru searches. Yell, enough paranoia is enough. STOP THE IDIOCY!!!

[shance]

1. You should feel more silly if you believe the "official story".

With all due respect why anyone believe what they fed us after knowing what we know now?

[jobycom]

5. Actually, one should feel sillier for believing the "unofficial" story.

But often they don't.

[shance]

6. I gather you still believe in Santa Claus then.

Knock yourself out Joby.

[jobycom]

8. Actually, I assumed you do.

All day, baby. All day.

[Kelly Rupert]

9. I gather you believe in a flat earth then.

Because the government keeps feeding us round-earth lines! Can't trust those bastards.

[CGowen]

65. It's not flat and it's not round, it's a potato nt

[Beam Me Up]

19. Precisely. What evidence have they offered to back up their theory?

Everyone believes it but sans evidence because they and the media said so. Bush and Cheney wouldn't even face the 9/11 cover-up commission under oath and on record.

They couldn't possibly be lying about that, now, could they?

[Kelly Rupert]

24. Easy.

Where's yours?

[Twist_U_Up]

31. One thing is good to remember -

that the official story of 9/11 is a conspiracy theory of the most dubious nature. Arab hijackers who could barely fly small Cessnas, armed with boxcutter knives manage to pull of an operation of this scale and precision, manage to get the USAF to stand down and not intercept any of the jets flying around for an hour...To mention just a couple things. And many of these "hijackers" have turned out to be alive today, meaning somebody used stolen passports when boarding the planes, meaning we have NO IDEA who those hijackers actually were. Not to mention that not one single picture has been released from airport security cameras, showing the hijackers boarding the planes? Why not? ALL airports are FULL of cameras recording 24/7, its IMPOSSIBLE that there would be no video or pictures of them.

[rman]

32. outside job requires only a few people,

inside job would require thousands (according to proponents of the official story) - even though an inside job is easier than an outside job; the very point of an inside job is to circumvent security, which obviously makes it easier.

[proud2BlibKansan]

46. There is this thing called "need to know"

All those thousands of insiders don't have to know the whole plan.

[rman]

61. I think you don't even need that many people

If an inside job is easier than an 'outside job', then why would you need many more people for an inside job than an outside job? If anything, an inside job needs fewer people than an outside job.

[jobycom]

37. Scale and precision? Jesus H Christ, this was a simple, barely coordinated effort that only partiall

y succeeded. One of the planes never made it anywhere.

The only hard part about flying is landing. Everything is else is just point and shoot. Five guys holding 30 people hostage with boxcutters is hardly difficult to believe, especially considering that airline protocal has long been to cooperate with hijackers no matter what. Hell, it's easier to believe five guys with boxcutters can control 30 people than to believe that two guys with a gun or one guy with a fake bomb can control a plane of 200+ passengers, and yet that's the standard method of hijacking. Heck, individuals have hijacked planes with fake guns.

This is what is wrong with all these "Inside Job" morans. You may even be right, for all I know--I wouldn't put it past Bush. But you go from "Hey, there are inconsistencies in the thousands of testimonies about the chaos of that day" (something you would expect there to be), to "That's absolute proof that it was an inside job and the thousands of people who have investigated and explained what happened are lying and a couple of wackos with no evidence are absolutely right." You sort of skip over the whole evidence gathering bit, or worse, you draw conclusions and pick and choose evidence that might almost be twistable to support your belief. That's exactly how every other fundie does it.

One guy says a building was pulled, and that overrides all physical evidence that the building collapsed. One picture is carefully cropped to hid plane wreckage on the Pentagon lawn, and that proves that there was no plane (even after the full picture is shown, proving there was debris).

This is what gets me. We have one guy threatening to attack us for five years. We have constant warning from two administrations and from terrorist experts around the world that this same group is planning something big on American soil. In the months preceding the attack, we have videotape of this same person threatening to attack us, and our government is practically in a frenzy trying to head off these attacks, even pulling all ships from foreign ports out of fear of such an attack (mimmicing the Cole attack). Finally, one day we all watch in horror as a 300 ton jetliner traveling 600 mph slams into a skyskraper, exploding in a twenty story fireball. So naturally that proves to some people that it had to be something else.

Give me hard evidence. I don't mean someone saying "The steel couldn't have melted!" (no one is saying it did) or some dude in his back yard putting bricks on hogwire over a fire. I mean actual evidence that something other than what we had been expecting for years to happen actually happened. Maybe you are right. It's quite possible. But when you have someone post that it's "silly" to believe the "official" story, and you have clueless folk on the radio sounding like Napoleon Dynamite saying "Dude, it's pretty much proven that it was an inside job so why talk about it?" you turn people off. Give us evidence. Evidence isn't "It's silly to think that could have happened." Obviously most scientists who have looked at the evidence believe the "official" story. (Probably a higher percentage than believe in global warming, for that matter). Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs (Isaac Asimov or Arthur C Clarke, I forget which). Give us the extraordinary proof that is supposed to make us not belief our eyes, 95% of experts on the matter, the course of events leading to the attack, and common sense. And the proof has to be more than one scientist saying "No building has ever fallen from being hit by an airliner." Because we saw two of them do it.

It was a sloppy, haphazard plan by a group of sociopaths (and maybe a few who didn't know what was happening) who were following a cult leader. Happens. Remember Guyana? Waco? Heaven's Gate? That explanation is easily believable, and the evidence presented so far supports it. You want to convince people that it's wrong. REAL evidence will do that. Not calling people "silly" for believing the most likely story.

[Twist_U_Up]

39. Proof please that members of Al Qaida were on those planes? n/t

[jobycom]

58. You mean aside from phone calls, video, cockpit recordings, boarding records,

airport video (just because it hasn't been released doesn't mean it hasn't been viewed), etc? Prove they weren't. Someone hijacked the planes--all the phone calls made from the planes prove that. Prove they weren't connected to al-Qaeda. And by the way, even if you prove they weren't connected to Al-Qaeda, you haven't proven it was done by our government.

[Jonathan50]

57. All of the flying done was not that easy .....

http://tinwiki.org/wiki/Flight_77

The Scene in the Skies of D.C.

Flight 77 allegedly reappeared on radars at about 9:30, and was seen flying over the Capitol Beltway at about 9:33. The plane was traveling at over 400 mph and was flying too high at about 7,000 feet as it flew towards the Pentagon. It suddenly made an extremely tight turn, doing a descending spiral and dropping almost 7,000 feet in 2 1/2 minutes, a feat that a trained military pilot would have had difficulty performing. At about 9:37 a nearby C-130 that had just taken off from Andrews Air Force Base was asked to identify the jet.

[pampango]

30. At first, I thought you were replying to post 9 about the earth

being round.

"Precisely. What evidence have they offered to back up their theory? Everyone believes it but sans evidence because they and the media said so."

I have come to believe that arguing about 9/11 conspiracy/nonconspiracy theories is like arguing religion. Each of us can be totally convinced we are right (or at least unable to prove to the other guy/gal that they are wrong). Each of us can cite writings (Bibles, Korans, conspiracy websites, etc.) that prove our point as far as we are concerned. And other than few converts most just skip over their rants.

Even atheists believe in something, just not in a supreme being. (Count me among them.)

[yurbud]

29. I grew up next to an interceptor base. fighters can go from ground to altitude in about a minute

if the plane is dead cold, add ten minutes. Both F-15s and F-16s can accelerate going straight up.

From there, they can fly up to about 1800 mph. The two planes that were supposedly launched that day weren't even going high subsonic according to the Air Force story. They were going 400ish.

Interceptor squadrons had nothing to do but practice, practice, and more practice, including what to do in the case of a hijacking.

A fuck up on the order of 9/11 is not possible.

It's like saying Dr. Phil cured a schizophrenic with a five minute pep talk. It only sounds credible if you know nothing about schizophrenics or Dr. Phil (a mongoloid gym teacher from Texas).

[lancer78]

51. Interesting

Interesting point about interceptors. I was talking to this F-16 pilot last week. He was talking about sitting hot on the runway waiting for orders to launch in case of a surprise soviet bomber launch. He is retired now, but he says it would have been easy to shoot down the planes, especially the one in Pennsylvania. He said some missile systems have almost a 100 mile range

[yurbud]

54. you know, I hadn't even thought of missiles. that makes it even more inexcusable

I figure if every pilot on alert were taking a nap or in the john and the planes were dead cold, it would still have only taken 20-30 minutes to get on top of those planes. The best efforts might not have stopped the first crash into the WTC, but all the others should have had escorts and the could have forced them away or shot them down. A missile could shave 5-10 minutes off that.



Incidentally, that interceptor base I grew up by was in Oregon, so we remember the DB Cooper hijacking, which was probably one of the early ones that inspired the protocal that was ignored.

How long has that F-16 pilot been retired? Did he say anything beyond that it would have been easy to shoot the planes down? I'm surprised more pilots haven't spoken out on this, and I've searched the net for it a couple of times.

[upi402]

2. true, know when to say when

i feel duped too, to be honest.

[live love laugh]

3. That's not silly...the reaction to 19 men is "silly" for lack of a better word.

People don't get it. I work with a lot of ignorant people who talk about terrorism all the time. The threat of terrorism is so minute in relation to the threat to democracy and yet people are skeered. It's crazy.

[Kelly Rupert]

4. It's easy to understand.

Right or not, this image still holds a lot of power in the American psyche. It may be silly of us to concentrate on it so, but images hold more power than statistics do. Show an American his odds of being killed in a terrorist attack, versus his odds of being killed by a drunk driver. Show him this picture. Ask him which he remembers 15 minutes later.

[Norquist Nemesis]

23. I remember growing up 50 miles from the University of Illinois-Champaign

you know...the place where the Super Computer was and would (reportedly) be targeted in case of nuclear attack. It put a fear and uneasiness in us as kids.

But I also remember, as kids, coming to the conclusion/realizing that there wasn't much "we" could do about it if that was what was to happen. We'd deal with it when/if it ever happened. Meh.

I also remember in junior high (1972 to 1975) discussions about Social Security. The consensus was it didn't matter what 'they did' because it wasn't going to be there for us by the time we retired anyway. Meh.

And then there was the statistic that one has a higher probability of getting into an accident within five miles of their home! OMG!!!! The consideration that 99% of the people are driving to/from their homes 99% of the time thereby skewing the 'fact' didn't seem to be a part of adults' debate. Meh.

And I also remember pre-Jr. High when the entire sixth grade class walked quietly in line to a room the school had set up to that we could watch the Appollo mission take-off. It was exciting. It was hopeful. It was inspiring.

The fact is, you're right. Every time something happens we always internalize it to our local parameters with our own nightmares of how it could/might happen in our area or to us personally. We instinctively have an empathetic connection. I swear I would have been the FBI's best person for a panel of creative ways to attack including snakes in toilets! LOL!

And the Bushetals know this. They play to this, like scratching a scab to bleed instead of finding the best way for it to heal. They want to incessantly open that wound and let it bleed rather than confronting that scar and celebrating what it represents; They reject taking the time to gather information toward both healing and preventing others from experiencing the same fate and harm.

You're right about the power of the American psyche with these images. I long for those days when I was in Jr. High.

[Erika]

7. 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq but here we are

at www.icasualties.org

[Norquist Nemesis]

10. Calling "Oooohhh-Saaaaa-Maaaaa"

Amazing how 19 hijackers with a crazy fundamentalist leader who doesn't even appear as the #1 guy on the FBI's most wanted list can turn a nation of 300 Billion people into...oh wait, it was Bushetals who seized that opportunity.

[Erika]

12. Funny, how we take our shoes off because of 19 fanatics

Enough is enough. STOP THE IDIOCY. We can't even take a purchased airport drink on a flight because of this administration's planted fear.

[Big Pappa]

27. And

do you think Senator Clinton would abolish these laws if she were president?

[Warren Stupidity]

33. Actually we take off our shoes because of this idiot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid_(terrorist)

We were not allowed to carry nail clippers on airplanes because of the 19 alleged other idiots.

Then we were not allowed to carry shampoo because of some non-plot in the UK.

The whole thing is stupid. The people of London back in the battle of britain put up with actual bombs blowing up their city on a daily basis with far more dignity. When are we going to wake the fuck up?

[Erika]

15. Yes, I threw a fit over being wanded and touched

at some weird policy. What happened to our rights of privacy? Our government kowtows to 19 fanatics?

Tell them to STOP THE IDIOCY at the airports. Enough is enough.

[Beam Me Up]

20. This is precisely why I have refused to fly since 9/11

It isn't fear. It is white hot rage. Enough is more than enough, what we are supposed to accept for our "security" is outrageous!

My opinion is, if we're going to have a "War on Terror," then, by god, lets have one. First thing: Let's find out who the real terrorists are, who funds them and profits from their terrorist acts?

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. And then lets get a draft going

universal, no exceptions...

If the war is that critical, nobody will mind

Now we know this is a farce... so ...

[gimama]

26. I'll fly again,when I sprout Wings..

say whut? Voluntarily submit to being treated as suspect AND a herd o'cattle, because people failed in their jobs,on the simplest level?

I hear they even 'offer' a special pass for frequent travelers,who apply in advance & acceptance depends on personal info and background checks..Oh,yeah, and Y'get to pay EXTRA for THAT.:eyes:

[Bill McBlueState]

35. how has that inconvenienced you?

I would like to have refused to fly, but it would have come at a significant cost to my professional development.

What sort of sacrifices have you made to avoid flying?

[Bonobo]

11. I'm gonna take a wild guess that you're not from New York. Am I right?

[southerncrone]

13. I'm sick of hearing about it, frankly. Call me callous or insensitive,

but the neocons have gotten so much mileage out of that "event" that we won't recover from their reactionary "protections" for decades!

Hard to believe it just happened so conveniently for them to capitalize upon taking away our freedoms.

Hmmmmm :think:

[TomInTib]

14. Stupid is....

as Stupid does....

SweetHeart and I were traveling thru LaGuardia.

Went thru all three of the requesite ID checks.

And then I realized that I was carrying Beth's boarding pass and vice-versa.

My passport - hair to my waist...

Reality - hair cut short and I was wearing 'shades.

Beth..

Passport - hair pulled back...

Reality - hair down and wearing 'shades.

So neither of us looks like our ID and we are holding one another's Boarding Pass.

Your Homeland Security at work.

Tom

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. The objhective of terrorism is not to kill

but to seed fear and cause a society to change, and even reject their way of life

They were succesful

Mission accomplished

And once you realize what terrorism is all about... you realize that what needs to be done is to return the country to a sense of sanity, starting with habeas corpus

[Erika]

17. Agreed 1000%. Stop the nonsense at the airports

The fear and it's idiocy ran its course.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. No it hasn't

that is why I avoid flying as much as I can

But it has not.

Some of the changes might be permament becuase the people (who matter) are still afraid, and those are the business travellers... not that all business people are republican, but you get my point, I hopeh

[Occulus]

22. The irony is, every response we've made since proves the terrorists won in one shot. n/t

[dailykoff]

25. That's probably the best approach to take.

Airports are one big scare-o-rama and the only way to avoid getting furious every time you have to start shedding clothing is to laugh it off. Also most of the people pokers and prodders (not all) try to be nice about it so what can you do. Welcome to neocon hell.

p.s. it's recently come out that hijackings were made virtually impossible well before 9/11 by new plane technology, which explains why they dropped off in the 90s, meaning this airport drama is all sham. Makes you wonder how four happened to succeed on 9/11. Hmmm....

[yurbud]

28. You were probably STILL safer on a plane that day than listening on the radio in your car

as you drove to work.

[glitch]

34. It's all for show - they still don't screen checked bags.

Here's a weird bright side for me personally. I am on some kind of special suspect list that makes them pull me out of the line and wand me every time. Or blow air at me in a booth. They go through all my bags.

It's all for show since we all know they still aren't screening checked baggage. They know it, I know it, they may even know I know it.

But I do get through the line in about 1/3 the time.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

36. some things needed to change

like why in the hell was there not a policy beforehand to have a locked door between the pilot and the passengers? I mean cmon! there were a million things that happened before 911 that should have mandated locked cockpits.

that always blows my mind. . .

but this whole making grannies throw out nail clippers and stuff, good lord.

The terrorists can't even use the old boxcutter routine anymore, because that depended entirely on the passengers believing the terraists were going to land the plane and negotiate. Now they will be swarmed and torn to pieces at the first sign of trouble.

[FourScore]

38. Why isn't this in the dungeon yet?

[treestar]

40. I'm with you - and to allow the fact they were Muslim to

create a presumption that every one of the one billion Muslims on this planet "wants to kill us" is insane. It's like saying we are all just like Timothy McVeigh.

[majorjohn]

41. 9/11 couldn't have happened without inside help n/t

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

43. Yes It Fucking Could Have.

Jesus christ what the fuck is goin on here tonight.

[majorjohn]

49. OK Mr. White House Spokesman...

:eyes:

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

42. This Is One Of The Most Disgusting Threads I've Ever Seen Here. Embarrasses Us All.

This is simple minded thinking to the nth degree. Utterly disgusting.

[majorjohn]

50. Why so?

:radio:

[rman]

62. It seem you are one of very few who is embarrassed

Even to the mods it isn't yet embarrassing enough to move it to the dungeon.

[Pastiche423]

44. Who came up w/the number 19?

Does anyone know who said it 1st? Did they explain how they knew?

I know the "terroists had boxcutters" meme supposedly came from the phone call Barbara Olsen made to her DH. But she was only on one plane.

The OCT is such a crock, I can not believe anyone w/an ounce of common sense believes it.

[Jonathan50]

45. This isn't strictly about 9/11

But here is a truly bizarre "coincidence".

It turns out that the photo editor for the "Sun" tabloid paper who approved this photo was the very first anthrax victim:





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stevens_(photo_editor)

Robert Stevens (d. October 5, 2001) was a photo editor for the Florida based tabloid, Sun, employed by American Media Inc. He was the first fatality linked to the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States. He died of pulmonary anthrax after inhaling anthrax spores from a letter that is believed to have arrived at the American Media offices. He was 63 years old.

His wife, Maureen Stevens, is suing the government for lax security, because she states DNA testing would prove the particular strain used in this attack comes from the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick. The case has been held up on grounds of 'national security'.

[SidDithers]

47. Oooh, a 9/11 topic in GD, quick, hit the recommend!...

before it gets moved to the dungeon!

:sarcasm:

Truthers can't help but breathe heavy whenever a 9/11 post lasts more than a few minutes in GD.

Sid

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

52. That's Because Most Of Them Run The Risk Of Making All Of Us Look Batshit Insane.

And since those of us here who are of rational mind don't want to be classified as batshit insane and delusional via those types of threads floating around as if mainstream, they get alerted upon and sent to the dungeon where they belong.

[SidDithers]

53. I hear ya...

but that certainly doesn't stop 'em from trying.

Sid

[Egalitarian]

56. So, your motivation is fear.

What is the motivation of the "truthers"? It's the search for truth is it not?

[SidDithers]

64. *cough* *cough* bullshit *cough* *cough* ...nt

Sid

[Egalitarian]

69. What is your motivation then?

[proud2BlibKansan]

67. So that's it

rational mind

LOL

[Egalitarian]

55. So, we should oppress the search for truth?

How fascist like.

[SidDithers]

63. Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!...

Those poor oppressed, downtrodden google-scientists of the truth movement. They've got nowhere to discuss their search for truth.

Oh, wait. Yes they do.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=125

They're so oppressed, they've got an entire forum dedicated to the discussion of their issue. That's not oppression.

Rwanda is oppression:


Darfur is oppression:


Fallujah is oppression:




9/11 discussions in the September 11 forum is housekeeping.

Sid

[Fresh_Start]

48. I could not understand why other people were not as livid

with George Bush as I was over 9/11. Before 9/11, I was apolitical. After 9/11, I wanted answers.

I knew there had to be failures in our government for the terrorists to have so succeeded with their plan.

[Jonathan50]

59. One can be either a conspiracy theorist....

Or a coincidence theorist..

There were an awful lot of coincidences and other inexplicable events on 9/11.

Here's just a couple of questions that haven't been answered to my knowledge:

Why was a SAM battery set up around the motel in Florida where Bush stayed the night before 9/11? Is this standard procedure?

Why was Bush not immediately hustled out of the classroom in the Florida school by the Secret Service upon the second plane hitting the WTC? It was a publicized fact that he was going to be there that morning and no one had any way of knowing whether or not there was a hijacked plane on the way there at that moment.

[EstimatedProphet]

60. I absolutely agree

It was going on 6 years ago, and so many people are still acting like it was yesterday, wanting to live in complete fear of Eevul Ayrabs around every corner! IMO the real problem is that the media and Our Great Leader refuse to let us move on and heal.

[CGowen]

66. the liquid bomb plot has more silliness. nt

[BlackVelvet04]

68. I've told the story before....

I flew from VA to AZ 6 months after 9/11. I was selected by the computer to have my bags checked (checked in bags as well as carry on.) The screener went through my large duffle pulling out my Victoria's Secret panties one by one and my nighties, etc. What he failed to FIND in my duffle bag was a tripod. A rather substantial metal tripod which could have easily been a pipe bomb.

I had a screener run her hands between my breasts. Wasn't that nice?

I won't fly again except for a true family emergency until the insanity stops.