This is Reassuring-- I'm Not Totally Off my Rocker on 9/11

A lot of New Yorkers believe there is more to 9/11 than what was put out by the 9/11 independent commission, including foreknowledge by the Bush administration and specific failure to act on the threat.

Sounds like a lot of people believe in Let It happen On Purpose (LIHOP).

Interesting.

What We're Expected to Believe for the Official Flight77-Pentagon Story

1) On the morning of 9/11, despite the fact that four planes were known to be hijacked, and two had crashed already into the WTC over half an hour earlier, the heart of the US Defense system, the Pentagon, (not to mention Washington DC itself) was left completely defenseless. Thus, there was no way to stop a rogue airliner from crashing into Pentagon.
2) Hani Hanjour, who supposedly could barely even fly a Cessna single engine plane, initially flew over the Pentagon and then made an incredibly tight (for a Boeing 757) 270 degree turn with a perfect descent to crash the plane into the northwest wall of the Pentagon
3) Hani Hanjour's aim with flying the Boeing 757 was so precise that the ground was not touched yet the plane entered into a hole in the side of the Pentagon that only spanned the first two floors.
4) the giant Boeing 757 (forty feet high and 120 feet wide) entered through a hole no more than twenty feet high by sixty feet wide, without any appreciable pieces of the plane breaking off and staying outside.
5) the plane's fuel ignited, creating a massive explosion.
6) somehow this explosion, which was seen outside the Pentagon, showered only small pieces of debris and no apparent bodies of the passengers outside the Pentagon. Thus, the plane's whole body entered through a fairly small hole, and blew up in such a way as to create a large fireball outside the Pentagon, yet very little of the plane and no passenger bodies were found exploded outside the Pentagon.
7) much of the steel in the plane was vaporized by the explosion.
8) although the explosion was hot enough to melt and even vaporize steel, enough remains were found from each passenger to identify them by DNA typing.
9) the flight data recorders survived the explosion and were recovered, but the data was apparently not interesting enough to release to the public.
10) the FBI has found most of the pieces of the plane and has assembled them sonewhere, but never bothered to show this to reporters.

The odds of all these things being true is fairly low, in my opinion.

The thing that I find most suspicious, is the 270 degree turn and the targetting of the plane's impact on such a small space. I don't believe the 270 degree turn was made by flight 77 (assuming it did actually fly near the Pentagon), my guess is that was made by another plane (a military jet?) whose flight path converged with the putative flight 77. I can't believe Hani Hanjour could pilot the plane so effectively into the Pentagon. I think somebody else was controlling the plane.

The impact hole and the explosion of the plane is suspicious, but are not out of the realm of possibility. The explosion, as viewed in the surveilance camera film, is rather large and not at all what was seen for when Flght 11 and Flight 175 crashed into the WTCs. Possibly the difference is due to the strength of the building and how the plane's fuel was released in the different cases.

I REALLY wish the FBI and whatever other agencies are in charge of this would release the flight 77 transcripts from the black boxes if they really have them, as well as show the assembled plane, if they have it.

My Epiphany on 9/11 and Anthrax

In my analysis of the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax attacks, I have struggled with the motives for these attacks. The overall view is that the 9/11 attacks were a new "Pearl Harbor" for the 21st century, that allowed the US to escalate defense buildups and launch new wars. But more specifically, what was the motive of the people in the US government who planned these attacks? To provoke an attack on Afghanistan? To provoke attack on Iraq? And why has the CIA been relatively outpsoken against the Iraq war, if that was a goal of the 9/11 attacks and they facilitated the 9/11 attacks? And why wasn't more of an attempt made to frame Iraq for 9/11 if that was the goal?

My epiphany is this:
1) the 9/11 attacks were facilitated by the CIA and the FBI in order to provoke an attack on Afghanistan. This was done because the CIA had built up the Al Qaeda legend which was based in Afghanistan. The invasion of Afghanistan was needed so the CIA could have more of a hand in controlling opium production. The FBI looked the other way because they were also involved in the drug trade. Oil was a secondary consideration for the CIA and the FBI.
2) the CIA did not want to go into Iraq because it detracted from the significance of their Al Qaeda legend: the evil super-terrorists who threatened the world.
3) the Bush administration, specifically the Defense Department, wanted badly to go into Iraq. This is very clear. The reasons were for control of oil and to help the security of Israel.
4) the 9/11 attacks, clearly being an "Al Qaeda" operation did not suit the Iraq invasion agenda. This is where the anthrax attacks came in. The anthrax attacks were an add-on by the Defense Intelligence Agency, to implicate Iraq as working with the 9/11 terrorists. Anthrax of course was one of the big deals that everyone remembered from the First Gulf War-- a bioweapon that was well-known to be made by Iraq.
5) thus, the original 9/11 attacks were a CIA facilitated operation designed to provoke an Afghanistan invasion. The anthrax attacks were not CIA, but rather DIA, who wanted to make a link between 9/11 and Iraq.

One thing is clear, the person or persons behind the anthrax attacks was/were clearly framing muslims. My theory is this was done as an afterthought to try to link 9/11 to Iraq. Remember, on 9/11, Rumsfeld was asking for linkages for the 9/11 attacks and Iraq. So this is no great leap of imagination, and it explains a great deal.

How Come There Haven't Been Any Significant Terror Attacks on the US since 9/11 and the Anthrax Attacks?

A few basic possibilities:

1) Law enforcement has cracked down on terorism to prevent new attacks

2) Bush's war on terrorism has scared away the terrorists from attacking us again

3) 9/11 and the anthrax attacks were fluke attacks that were just very lucky and could never be repeated

4) 9/11 and the anthrax attacks served a horrible political purpose, and repeating them would be detrimental to the people who have benefited from the attacks.

Analysis:
1) Since there has been lack of prosecution against 9/11 collaborators, an inability to catch the anthrax mailer and there has been no announcement that major attacks have been stopped, we can fairly assume this is not the case.

2) there is certainly no reason to think this is true.

3) while the 9/11 attacks may have just been incredibly lucky, there is no reason to think that is the case for the anthrax mailer. Moreover, simple luck cannot explain why new attacks have not been stopped (and surely they would have made a big splash if a major attack WAS stopped).

4) This seems to me to be the most likely explanation. Thus, there will not be any new attacks unless those responsible for the 9/11 attacks or the anthrax attacks have a political need for them.

9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, terrorism!!!!!

The Republican National Convention has just started and so has the predictable emphasis on the 9/11 attacks and how Bush has gone after the terrorists.

Questions to consider:
1) what did Bush do BEFORE 9/11 to stop terrorism?
2) what did Bush know beforehand about the 9/11 attacks?
3) what does Bush know about 9/11 NOW that we don't know?
4) whatever happened to getting Osama bin Laden?
5) how come Bush resisted the 9/11 independent commission every step of the way?
6) what happened to the anthrax killer?
7) how many terrorists were in Iraq before we invaded?
8) how many terrorists are in Iraq now?
9) if Bush is so tough on terrorists, how come we haven't attacked the terrorists in Syria and Iran?
10) have our allies in Pakistan been more of an aid or a hindrance in going after Al Qaeda?
11) does Bush really have a better strategy than Kerry for going after terrorists? If so, what is it and how is it better?
12) is fighting terrorists the only thing that Bush can take as a major accomplishment?

Simpler Pentagon Theory

From Eric Bart's site (see post below), I noticed that the plane that hit the Pentagon also damaged a large generator on the way to hitting the wall (there was also a large scrape mark on the generator, but the direction of the scrape was not going in the right line for the plane's path, so it is not clear how this scrape was made). Most people think the plane's engine did this damage to the generator, which basically was part of the top being crushed in. A strong possibility is that when the engine hit the generator, it damaged the engine and released some fuel, since there is a lot of fuel in the engine. It seems likely that some of this fuel caught on fire from a spark before the plane hit the Pentagon wall.

The part of the Pentagon where the plane hit was very strong and reinforced for attack (coincidentally). The fact is that it is very likely the Pentagon wall resisted the entry of the plane much more than the WTC walls.

This new theory goes that when the plane hit the wall, the plane crumpled and broke up to some degree without penetrating the wall very much. The impact and rapid crumpling of the plane released a lot of fuel into the air, and there was already a small fuel fire on the wing. There was thus a massive fuel-driven explosion outside the Pentagon wall which caused the whole plane to completely explode before the plane could penetrate the Pentagon. This would cause the plane to disintegrate and thus only a very small section of plane might enter the side of the wall, leaving the famous abnormally small hole in the wall. The outside explosion theory accounts for parts of the plane that were reported to fly some distance from the site of impact, for instance onto the road next to the Pentagon.

Questions: could airline fuel explode in such a way to destroy the plane almost completely? Do we need to postulate a bomb or additional explosives on the plane?

Conclusion: this theory could explain what happened at the Pentagon fairly well and would tend to support the official 9/11 story. It perhaps also explains the fate of flight 77.

But significant oddities remain:
1) If Flight 77 really exploded outside of the Pentagon, shouldn't there have been passenger bodies and parts of bodies flying out and falling on the ground in front of the Pentagon? But I haven't seen anyone say they saw bodies from the plane, especially outside the Pentagon.
2) In the little surveillance video that was released by the Pentagon showing the explosion, why isn't the plane more visible? Is this video real, or has it been heavily edited?
3) How did the aupposedly amateur pilot of the Pentagon flight make such a close to the ground tight hit on the wall? Basically he had to almost land the plane in front of the Pentagon. From what is known of the supposed terrorist pilot's flying skills, is this possible?
4) what do we make of the phone call from Barbara Olson where she indicates she is sitting next to the pilot? Is it possible the pilot would give up his plane without a struggle and move to the back? Was this even a real call?
5) Was there another military plane flying nearby-- a C-130?
6) Why did the plane just happpen to hit the side of the Pentagon that was recently strengthened and the part where few people were? This could be luck of course, but in this official story Flight 77 makes a large banking turn around the Pentagon to hit that section. If true, this seems less like coincidence. Alternatively, Flight 77 just flew in straight from the northwest, and another plane was on the radar making that tight circle around the Pentagon.

Overall, this theory makes more sense to me than many other theories about this, but still not everything in the official story can be explained.

Pentagon Plane Bomb Theory

I just read a fairly thorough and impressive analysis of the 9/11 Pentagon attack by someone named Eric Bart, apparently from France. I'm not sure why the French are so interested in the Pentagon attack. In any case, his theory may be the best explanation I've seen so far for what happened at the Pentagon. His theory is that there was a plane loaded with explosives that blew up just before hitting the Pentagon. This theory would seem to explain many things that other theories can't explain very well, particularly the many eye-witness accounts.

The theory may sound kooky at first, but I advise you to check out his site. He has done a really nice job, with several pictures taken right after the attacks that I hadn't seen.

The major problem with this theory is that it presupposes a fairly advanced conspiracy, where the military (apparently) has rigged up an American Airlines jet with explosives and rammed it into the Pentagon. Most people just don't want to wrap their minds around that concept. Nonetheless, this theory would seem to explain the physical evidence fairly well.

However, since I now think that many of the cell phone calls made from the hijacked planes were faked, the plane bomb theory fits in with that general theory. That is, that the 9/11 attacks were government-sponsored and/or -facilitated terror attacks.

Along these lines, we can't rule out that the '93 WTC bombing and the '95 Oklahoma City bombing were not similar more primitive versions of government-sponsored terror attacks. And I don't think Clinton or Bush were behind the attacks, but rather that rogue elements of the government facilitated the attacks for their own ends. In Bush's case with 9/11, they may have finally gotten what they wanted-- an excuse to invade Iraq. I should point out that both the '93 and '95 attacks had some weak but nonetheless clear Iraq connections. These connections to Iraq may have been planted by intelligence agents specifically to incite some sort of Iraq invasion by the US. But in the case of Clinton, these links were never really exploited.

In any case, if the Pentagon attack was made by a plane loaded with bombs, we can't really rule out similar types of scenarios with the other 9/11 planes. Plane bombs may explain the WTC collapses better than just burning jet fuel. In the case of flight 93, there is evidence that the plane blew up in the air. This flight may have been aborted after plotters saw the horrendous damage at the WTC and the Pentagon.

Then, what happened to the real flights and the passengers? And were there hijackings at all?

I will leave these questions for another post.

Nyctohylophobia

I just found this new blog, which seems to be writing about some of the things I am trying to work on here.

Here's the URL: http://nyctohylophobia.blog-city.com

Or just click here.

They have good posts on the Pentagon hit (8/24/04 post; they believe the missile theory) and also the theory that the Mossad was behind 9/11 (also a 8/24/04 post; they dismiss). Also good posts on hijackers identities (8/26/04 post).

The Presidential Election

I predict that John Kerry will win in November. The reason is simple, and is this:

Bush barely won last time, and how many people who voted for Al Gore are going to vote for Bush now? How many new voters is Bush really going to pull in? Plus the Democrats who are much more energized than in 2000.

If there are no major voting scams, I think the election is Kerry's to win, and god knows Bush doesn't really deserve to be re-elected. If he is re-elected, it will represent a major triump of misrepresentation plus a totally failed performance from Kerry.

But I think after the debates, it will be over. Kerry should win easily.

More Flight 77

Xymphora is a long-running blog that talks a lot about 9/11. Today I saw they had a post on Flight 77, and I was somewhat surprised to see the Xymphora blogger to believe that something else besides Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. This was actually somewhat reassuring that someone else who does not seem to be totally wacky is thinking that something else hit the Pentagon. Moreover the picture they linked to showing the Pentagon right after it was hit was extremely interesting.
(I will just have to link to pictures until I download the program to uplaod pictures here.)

This picture would appear to show the most left-hand part of the hole that was knocked into the Pentagon. Nonetheless, what is striking is how the hole is basically on GROUND-LEVEL. How on earth would a Boeing 757 produce that hole?

All I can really say is that either that was the most amazing piece of jumbo jet flying ever (even more amazing considering it was supposedly an amateur pilot)-- could there have been a tighter hit?-- or Flight 77 DIDN'T hit the Pentagon. And I just don't see how a Boeing 757 could have hit that LOW. It just doesn't seem possible, given the height of the plane and the fact that the wings have huge engines underneath them.


While I was undecided earlier, I must say now I am leaning more to the idea that a cruise missile or a fighter jet hit the Pentagon and NOT Flight 77. All the people who witnessed a jet flying to the Pentagon likely saw an American Airlines jet fly OVER the Pentagon at the same time as the missile or fighter jet, and then the missile and explosion obscured the fact that the jumbo jet flew over and went on to land at Reagan International Airport.

Which brings up an idea I hadn't really heard before, but is kind of interesting. What if all the 9/11 flights were mock flights? There was some weirdness about American Flight 11 being a real flight that morning. Is it possible American Flight 77 never really existed?

I need to think and read about this more.

Abu Ghraib Investigation part 2

The Second Abu Ghraib investigation to come out this week, the Fay Report appears to be somewhat more hard hitting than the Blue-ribbon panel Schlesinger was involved with, at least from what I heard on NPR.

The key will be if Congress will investigate and follow-up important leads, such as the pressure put on military intel at Abu Ghraib by the White House and by a "National Security Council" member. If Repubs continue to hold onto the senate and house, I'm sure this will not go anywhere, but nonetheless, hearing Sen. Levin (D) on NPR, at least the Dems seem interested in investigating this further.

Sharing the Blame

I just heard an appalling piece on NPR about the "blue-ribbon" commission who investigated the Abu Ghraib prison abuse story. They interviewed the Chairman James Schlesinger, and he basically whitewashed the whole thing. It was VERY reminiscent of the 9/11 commission.

But the thing that got me is that they kept emphasizing: there was no ONE person to blame (and certainly Rumsfeld was not even mentioned for any blame). It was a "failure of leadership", but it wasn't any one commander's fault.

Well fuck that. That is EXACTLY the crap they pulled with the 9/11 commission. No one to blame for this mess. We'll just SPREAD the blame, so the blame gets so diffused, it is fucking worthless.

These people love to talk about the free market and competition, but here they sound like socialists , for cripes sake. Share, share, share.

I'm also quite annoyed, because this Schlesinger guy was supposed to be a former SecDef and here he was defending the Iraq policy ("it wasn't a failure"). He gave the old "you can't plan for everything" line.

Pure hogwash. I am SO sick of this administration, and Washington in general. CAn we shake thing up a bit with this upcomingelection?

UPDATE: the WaPo weighs in the next day

Cell Phone Calls on 9/11

What I think is probably the biggest single hole in the official 9/11 story was the use of cell phones by passengers in the hijacked planes.

These calls were absolutely essential in establishing the key story line of the official 9/11 legend: commercial planes were hijacked by gangs of fanatical muslims. And in the case of Flight 93, the calls were used to demonstrate the heroics of passengers fighting back against the hijackers (which is preferable to the more likely conclusion that Flight 93 was shot down).

There is only one problem with this part of the 9/11 story: cell phones simply do not work at high altitudes and in planes going extremely fast (See the linked article for details). This is an incontrovertible fact. I even tested this myself the last time I flew on a plane. I could not get a cell phone signal in the middle of a flight. We were flying over Louisville, Kentucky at the time, and my cell phone service is quite good, with service everywhere I have travelled.

The official 9/11 story has been very clear that the calls from the passengers on the hijacked planes were cell phone calls -- not calls from those on-board phones mounted on the backs of seats (which were de-activated on most flights before 9/11 anyway).

Moreover-- it is not just one or two calls that luckily got through. LOTS of people supposedly made calls from the hijacked planes.

If passengers could not make cell phone calls on the hijacked flights, where the heck did these calls come from?

There can really only be one conclusion, and an extremely chilling conclusion at that: the cell phone calls were faked. This means that someone knew on the morning of 9/11 that these calls needed to be made from supposed hijacked planes. This implies clear foreknowledge of the plot.

As mind-boggling as these conclusions are, I can really see no way around them.

Important questions:
Who made these calls? They must have been in on the plot, right? Were they the passengers that were killed, or someone else imitating them?

How can we pursue this angle?

UPDATE: On August 26th 2004, I found this article which gives an explanation for why the 9/11 airplne cell phone calls worked. However, I don't completely buy it, because this article says that the calls went through because the planes were close to the ground. Several of the calls were made in mid-flight, when the planes were quite high in the air. I could imagine that a few lucky calls got through in the few minutes at low altitudes before the planes crashed, but other calls are more difficult to believe. I wonder if cell phone companies keep track of the cell towers where the call signal is received from. Could they figure out where the planes were and where calls came from in this way? This would be extremely interesting and useful.

"WhatReallyHappened" and Flight 77

As I point out below, the web-site "WhatReallyHappened.com" is a pro-9/11 conspiracy site, although their main thesis appears to be that 9/11 was a false-flag operation committed by Mossad agents. At some point I will have to deal with this theory, which basically I find a little hard to believe, but of course this sort of thing is hard to disprove.

In any case, while "WhatReallyHappened" promotes its own particular brand of 9/11 conspiracy that leads to outright disinformation, "WhatReallyHappened" is also vehemently against the theory that something besides Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. The writer at "WhatReallyHappened" says that 9/11 theories that say that another type of flying object, such as a military plane or missile, hit the pentagon, are themselves disinformation that discredits those seeking the truth about 9/11.

So we have a disinformation site complaining about disinformation regarding 9/11!

Clearly, this is confusing, and whoever knows the real truth about 9/11 and is covering it up, is laughing at this.

We need to pick out the truth.

Sadly enough, the 9/11 truth movement has seem to fallen apart to some extent over the issue of what theories about 9/11 are real or not. See August 12th 2004 post at:

http://911skeptics.blogspot.com/

Note, overall this site seems to be an excellent round-up of 9/11 news. And according to this site, I see that Sibel Edmonds recently appeared on Paula Zahn's show on CNN. Looking over the transcript, not too much was revealed-- not surprisingly !

The "Fake Osama bin Laden Videotape": A Scam?

Earlier today, I posted the link shown below and said that this was evidence of a conspiracy because the videotape was faked. The link that I give (to the web-site "WhatReallyHappened") specifically indicates that the person in the video is NOT Osama bin Laden:

Is this really Osama bin Laden?

I initially was taken in by this "evidence" of US government fraud, but since I was officially posting this link, I thought I should look at the site more carefully. I therefore downloaded and looked at the original videotape and I saw, to my chagrin, that the videotape, as far as I can tell, really shows Osama bin Laden.

What is disturbing is that this web-site "WhatReallyHappened.com" specifically presents misleading images from the video, such that the Osama bin Laden figure looks very different from known pictures of Osama bin Laden. This is intentional fraud on the part of "WhatReallyHappened".

I started reading "WhatReallyHappened" about a month back because they had some interesting views on various issues. However, of late I have become disturbed with the blatant and unbalanced anti-Israel bias shown by this website. The web-site appears to promote a theory whereby Israeli agents pose as Al Qaeda, and that Israel is really behind the 9/11 attacks.

I will have to deal with the Israel issue at some point, but right now, I am disgusted with this "WhatReallyHappened" web-site. What I found here demonstrates exactly what I referred to in my very first post on this blog-- that there is a lot of misleading information out there on 9/11, and my job is to sort this out. In the case of "WhatReallyHappened", they clearly have an anti-Israel agenda, and they will present anything that conforms to their view. So I will not link to "WhatReallyHappened" again, unless there is something else to criticize.

NOTE: There may be issues relating to the translation on the videotape, such that OBL does not say exactly what the US gov't say he says. That however is a different issue from whether the man in the video is really OBL.

9/11-- details, details, details

It's kind of odd, considering what an earth-shattering event it was (an event that "changed everything") how little people, particularly the media, talk about 9/11 these days (almost three years later). I almost wonder if people are afraid to broach the subject, and even if people are somewhat embarrassed to discuss it. Delving into the topic is essentially verboten, unless as a generic reminder relating to the horrors of terrorism. I think it will be very interesting to see how much 9/11 is mentioned during the upcoming GOP convention. I'm sure they will mention it, use it as a springboard for talking about the "war on terror", and probably have some memorial for the victims. But I really wonder how much detail they will mention the details of that day. I suspect not very much. Is there a reason why they might not go into the details?

The official story of course is that four airplanes were hijacked by muslim fanatics who crashed them into major buildings, causing massive loss of life. This made us embark on a global "war on terror" intended to snuff out anybody who might try to attack us.

One detail they won't want to talk about is that the fact that the hijackers had no clear connection to Iraq.

Another detail they won't mention is the FBI and CIA were tracking the terrorists both inside and outside the US, but somehow seemed to have lost track of them before they attacked.

They might might talk about intelligence reform (although I doubt they will mention it in any detail), but was it really intelligence failure that led to 9/11?

In an earlier post I indicated that on 9/11 itself, I thought something strange happened, that I couldn't believe how badly my country's defenses had been subverted. Nonetheless on that day and for the next few weeks I didn't really question the official story too much. Sure, I thought, how fortunate they found the cars the hijackers had used parked at the airport, and how convenient the hijackers had left behing incriminating evidence. But it was only after hearing strange report after strange report dribble out for months after the attacks that I began to question how much the government really knew before the attacks.

Sure, several FBI agents had been suspcious of Arab men taking flight lessons, and when they tried to bring this up with their superiors, they were told to ignore it, but this was just bad luck. The intelligence people just couldn't connect the dots, and they weren't communicating properly with each other (there was this "wall"), and there were restrictions on what they could probe into. But really-- it was just an innocent mistake.

I guess what really set my alarm bells off was the story where two of the 9/11 hijackers had been living in an apartment in San Diego with a muslim FBI informant, who says he didn't know anything about the plot. Two hijackers were LIVING with a frigging FBI informant but no one knew what they were up to? Yeah, right. He didn't know. What a shame.

Then there was the story how before 9/11 one of the hijackers was interviewed by a CIA agent at an airport in Yemen, and then released. He was just asked a few questions, and they decided he was no threat. Okaaay.

Then there was the widely circulated story how the National Security Agency decrypted messgaes from Al Qaeda talking of the date of the 9/11 attack, but unfortunatley, the NSA just translated it on September 12th. What a damn shame. But the date of the 12th always made me wonder-- isn't that just a little bit hard to believe? They were JUST a day late?

Then of course there were the warnings that Bush had sayng Al Qaeda was trying to hijack airplanes. And the suspcious lack of response from the Bush administration to these warnings.

And I was ALWAYS highly suspicious of the anthrax attacks. The targets were exactly who the Bush administration would like to intimidate: journalists and key Democratic senators. And then the anthrax appeared to be a domestic source, and the anthrax mailer interestingly pretended to be a muslim fanatic. WHY muslim fanatics would target journalists and key Democratic senators was never really explained-- I guess no one could explain it, which is why the media have tended to ignore the story.

But oddly, what made me really put on my "tinfoil hat" was the murder of Nicholas Berg in Iraq. He was beheaded on video by an odd looking group of apparent Islamic terrorists. The reason I wondered about the murder was the timing--- exactly when the Abu Ghraib abuses were coming to light and provoking a huge outrage. The decapitation of Berg was an amazing distraction from Abu Ghraib, and the Abu Ghraib story lost most of its steam after the Nick Berg killing. Then I started reading about the life of Nick Berg, and he sounded a bit like he was a some kind of intelligence operative. Then, wonder of wonders, Nick Berg was linked to 9/11 via the "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui. Apparently, Nick berg shared his e-mail account with Moussaoui and another of the 9/11 hijackers. What an amazing coincidence! This jaw-dropping link was explained as merely because Nick Berg was VERY outgoing and he liked middle easterners. Okaaay.

The Nick Berg story sent me around the internet quite a bit, and I stumbled upon a fellow named Michael Wright who postulated that the 9/11 attacks were some kind of sting operation gone awry. This scenario seemed to explain a lot, and I bought it for a while, but more reading led me to believe an even darker version of what happened on 9/11. In any case, Mike Wright lives in Oklahoma, and is very familiar with Oklahoma University. His theory is that the president of OU, David Boren, collaborated with George Tenet, the CIA director, in this 9/11 sting operation gone bad. The reason Mike Wright got onto this theory is that one of the tickets used by the 9/11 hijackers was bought at a computer terminal in the OU unversity library. Here's the kicker: the person who bought the ticket was not an Arab or middle-easterner, but a caucasian American. The FBI won't tell who this was, but Wright speculated it was Nick Berg.

Well, if you have a caucasian American collaborating with he 9/11 hijackers, and you put together all the other facts I have said above, plus many many many other stories that I don't have time to go into (e.g. what Sibel Edmonds has said, the fact that several Al Qaeda members are/were apparently CIA assets, the fact that many governments have planned and used terror as a propaganda tool), it leads to one troubling and earth-shaking conclusion: a number of people in the US government knew about the 9/11 plot and actively facilitated it . It simply is just too hard to explain all these things as coincidences and harmless facts that merely look bad.

Finally, there is the fact that Geroge W. Bush's father, George H. W. Bush was CIA director and has been involved in quite a bit of known skull-duggery, and the fact that 9/11 served as a perfect excuse to launch a whole series of wars into the middle east, wars which suited the agenda of many people who are in the Bush administration.

So.... if anyone out there has read this far, tell me-- what part of this is hard to believe?

Anti-Conspiracy Reasoning

I spend a fair amount of time looking at liberal web-sites (such as Eschaton, Hullabaloo, Daily Kos, and so forth) and reading the comments people post there. What strikes me, is that even among highly partisan democrats, there is quite a bit of reluctance to think that Bush had anything to do with 9/11 or that 9/11 was a conspiracy with US government involvement. The worst that people seem to want to think is that Bush was simply negligent in responding to terrorist threats, and this is of course a major idea that is allowable by mainstream people about 9/11. When Richard Clarke's revelations came out last spring, I actually was highly susceptible to the idea that Bush and his administration was simply incompetent in responding to the "Al Qaeda" threat. Although, even on the day of 9/11 itself, I always suspected that there was more to it than outside terrorists sneakily attacking us. I suspected from that day that the government had let its citizens down in a very huge way. In any case, I often wonder why more people aren't suspicious about 9/11. I can think of three basic reasons:

1) most people just can't comprehend or don't want to believe that the government might be involved in something involving the killing of thousands of its citizens.

2) people think the official 9/11 explanation is completely convincing on its own.

3) people immediately associate any hint of government involvement in 9/11 as part of some kooky or nasty conspiracy theory and don't want to have anything to do with it.

I think that most people use a combination of these three reasons to dismiss any idea that 9/11 was a conspiracy invoplving the government.

But taking them one by one:

1) there is a clear historical precedent for governments using terror as a tool to sway public opinion. Moreover, such plots have been seriously considered in the US (i.e Operation Northwoods). Moreover, there is a whole seamy underworld to US government actions, that most people aren't aware of and certainly don't want to think about because it so disturbing. But this reason for not believing in a 9/11 conpsiracy doesn't really hold up.

2) this of course is the easiest idea to dismiss, because if people are properly educated about the many strange aspects of 9/11, then there really is no basis for this particular opinion. Although, still, there probably is a strong sentiment in a lot of people to blame the outsider for 9/11, and the offifical theory does this very well.

3) This is a more powerful reason, and as I discussed in my first post, there is a lot of kooky stuff out there on 9/11, which undoubtedly turns people away. And this is probably why a lot of these kooky theories get put out in the first place: to turn people away from thinking about alternative theories to 9/11. Then there are theories about 9/11 that have to do with Israeli involvement, the "nasty" theories that most people discount because they sound anti-semitic and hateful. I have to admit I am susceptible to this last part. How to seprate the true abnormalities of 9/11 from the fake and contrived ones? Well, that is part of the reason for this web-log. I feel confident, nonetheless, that there is solid evidence of government complicity in 9/11. The reason that this is not apparent to most people is simply that this damning information is dispersed all over in many different sources and doesn't yet form a coherent whole.

Thus, I think that logic and education about clear facts can be used to enlighten people about possible US government complicity in 9/11. The bottom line is that we do not know the whole story of 9/11-- that is very clear. And the government won't tell us, in order to guard "national security interests". And I think much of guarding national security secrets is simply covering up the governments own dirty work.

Bush Knew?

Okay, so I am no fan of George W. Bush. For various reasons. And I strongly suspect some members of his administration had a hand in facilitating the 9/11 attacks. But did Bush "know" about 9/11? My guess is that he really didn't know any specifics, but knew something was going to happen. He had to have, of course, "plausible deniability". Did Bush in any way "approve" an order or direct someone to allow 9/11? Who the heck knows? But what I can say, is seeing what this administration is like, how craven and self-serving they are, I wouldn't put some direct involvement in 9/11 past them.

9/11 Coincidences

This is a good list of many of the strange coincidences associated with 9/11:
9/11 coincidences

Obviously, these sort of collections don't prove anything, but they certainly make you wonder. I am willing to wager, moreover, that some of those coincidences are very significant with regard to perfidy on 9/11.

Many of the links in the list are very interesting. There is a lot of strange stuff out there regarding 9/11. Once again, though, how do we separate the wheat from the chaff?

Did Flight 77 Really Hit the Pentagon?

While this may seem obvious, like many things on 9/11, it is far from obvious once you learn more.*

Look at these pcitures of the Pentagon right after it was hit:
picture 1
picture 2

Do you see the hole where a large Boeing jet entered the wall? At best, one would have to say that only the plane's fuselage broke through, and that the wings and tail completely folded into this small hole. It is possible, but it really makes you wonder.

The fact is, I am neither convinced that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, but neither am I convinced that it didn't. It is just too hard to tell.

Here are a number of reasons to think Flight 77 DIDN'T crash into the Pentagon:

1) the INITIAL hole in the Pentagon wall was very compact. While it is possible that a large Boeing jet could completely enter the Pentagon and completely disappear into that small hole, it nonetheless seems highly unlikely.

2) there were NO skid or gouge marks on the grass outside where the Pentagon was hit. It seems unlikely that the huge engines of the jet would not have scraped the ground if Flight 77 hit the wall at the level where the impact was.

3) the surveillance video the Pentagon put out to show the plane hitting did NOT show a large jet at all. This is very suspicious-- plus the fact that a few frames appear to have been edited out where it might show a plane clearly.

4) some witnesses recall seeing a much smaller plane, such as a military plane or a missile with wings hitting the Pentagon

5) the very tight circular route flight 77 had to make to hit the Pentagon is very suspicious, and would seem to be almost impossible to be done with a large Boeing jet and especially by an amateur pilot such as the supposed pilot on flight 77, Hani Hanjour.

6) the perfect hit on the side of the Pentagon, a fairly narrow target, without hitting the ground or overflying, would seem to be impossible for a pilot of the caliber of Hani Hanjour to do with a large jet.

7) when asked about something else hitting the Pentagon, the Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke responded with demagoguery. You might expect if they were really sure about flight 77 hitting, they would simply speak the truth rather than appeal to emotions.

8) the relative lack of plane debris that would be expected from a large jet crashing into the region where the Pentagon was hit.

9) the FBI took a surveillance film from the nearby gas station that might show the plane hitting the Pentagon and have not revealed it contents

10) why haven't the collected and assembled flight 77 plane parts, that they supposedly said they had, been shown to journalists?

11) why hasn't the black box recording been released, since they said they found the black boxes?

12) supposedly the Pentagon has several anti-aircraft batteries (supposedly quite sophisticated) designed to prevent an air attack on the Pentagon. Why weren't these activated? One possibility that has been put out is that a US military plane or missile would not activate these weapons (due to their electronic signature), whereas a civilian aircraft should.

Here are the reasons to think Flight 77 DID crash into the Pentagon:

1) It is the simplest explanation for what happened to Flight 77.

2) Many eyewitnesses report seeing a large jet crash into the Pentagon.

However, even the eyewitnesses aren't uniform, and they seem to contradict known facts. For instance Steve Anderson, an editor for USA Today, seems to be a credible witness. From his vantage point in his office building he could see the flight path and the Pentagon very well. However, Anderson says that the plane's wing dragged along the ground before the plane struck, and pictures show the ground outside the hit area to be completely undisturbed. Many witnesses clearly saw a large plane hit the Pentagon, but it is not clear if it was Flight 77.

So I don't know what really happened, but collectively these facts certainly suggest that the story is more complicated than flight 77 simply hitting the Pentagon. My one alternative is that some sort of military jet hit the Pentagon, and that something else happened to flight 77. Perhaps the jet was tailing flight 77 and accidentally crashed into the Pentagon and Flight 77 was later shot down over a remote area-- and they obviously didn't want to admit this (like Flight 93). Obviously, they would never admit to this. Or they shot a missile at Flight 77 that was flying over the Pentagon, and the missile missed the flight and struck the Pentagon. Later flight 77 was shot down over the ocean by a similar missile. Again, they would not care to admit this. Certainly, these types of scenarios are actually somewhat comforting in that there may have been an air defense to the hijackings on 9/11. Of course, there are more nefarious explanations, such as perhaps flight 77 crashed in a remote inland area, when it was supposed to hit the Pentagon, and so someone in the military decided to shoot a cruise missile into the Pentagon to make sure the Pentagon was struck making it a clear act of war. Or other weird things are possible along those lines.

*Note, in order to streamline my writing, I am not going to reference everything I write here. Everything I write will be based on sources one can find fairly easily on the internet. Also, the book "The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush administration and 9/11" by David Ray Griffin is a good resource for many of these issues. Also, feel free to leave a comment if you want a reference. I will be happy to find it.

Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

A major focus of this blog will be to try to understand "what really happened" on September 11th 2001 and to develop a more truthful and honest narrative for the terror attacks than the "official 9/11 story".

The major hindrance from doing this is two-fold.

First, the government has constructed an "official" narrative for 9/11, and the major media has consecrated the story. Thus, despite the incredible interest that thousands of people have in trying to better understand what happened on 9/11, the government and the media will simply not let the official story be questioned. It is obvious why the government doesn't want to allow any untoward questions about 9/11, but less clear why the major media guard this event so carefullly. One might think the media is actually afraid of something-- certainly they have been very deferential to the Bush administration-- but I suspect it is beyond that. It seems that 9/11 is a story that disturbs the media so deeply that they refuse to rock the boat on it. I think that this is because what really happened on 9/11 undoubtedly involved deeply ingrained governmental corruption, and the media cannot deal with this-- just like they have not been able to deal with other major stories that involve major governmental corruption. The CIA involved in drug trafficking and the crash of TWA flight 800 are similar types of stories on a smaller scale that spring to mind.

Second, and much more insidious, is there undoubtedly has been a large amount of disinformation spread about who might have been involved in 9/11 besides Al Qaeda (i.e. the CIA, the Israelis, the Saudis, the Pakistanis). Since it is unlikely that all of these groups were involved in a significant way, some of these stories must have been planted, likely on purpose by someone with an agenda. Then there are the many stories that point out inconsistencies in the official story -- an extreme variation of this is the issue of whether flight 77 really hit the Pentagon (I will not even deal with totally whacked out theories such as the WTC attacks were some sort of video hoax or that there were missile on the planes that attacked the WTC). Many of these stories can also be thought of as disinformation, and certainly they act as major distractions. Of course, some of these claims make sense, but certainly it is highly unlikely that all of them can be true. I also suspect that many of these claims, particularly the most ridiculous claims, have been spread intentionally by agencies affiliated with the government, specifically in order to paint people who question the official 9/11 narrative as "conspiracy nuts".

So, how do we separate out "the good stuff" from all the junk out there regarding 9/11? That will be my new job and a major part of this blog. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully this new enterprise won't get me into any trouble with "big brother"!