Was the New Orleans Levee Blown?

An aquaintance speculates:

I smell a rat.

Sure, the hurricane dumped water. But, we've had "40 days and 40 nights" of rain throughout the midwest... that all drains down to New Orleans (and will suddenly peak, based on ground conditions). They have a ton of safety backups for diverting.

I don't buy it! We even heard it was going to break BEFORE the hurricane even hit!

and

They have a response checklist they do. e.g. "Storm coming, drain the pond and divert water to x, y, and z." Seriously, they have folks hired to monitor this stuff all along the Mississippi. I remember the weeks and weeks of rain they had in Iowa and all around the midwest several years ago. All up and down the Mississippi, there was flooding. You may remember when they deliberately broke a levee to dump the water out onto a corn field, in order to help the flood problem downstream.

There have been many hurricanes in the "neighborhood" of New Orleans, enough to give them a lot of water in a short amount of time. They've had hurricanes (or weather systems) that just stall out there and keep dumping rain. This current storm came and went in 24 hours. Compare that to a slow-moving water dump lasting over a week. You could even argue that the back-to-back hurricanes in Florida, last year, could have dumped more water on New Orleans.

1) So, they have the ability to divert Mississippi river water -- away from Lake Ponchatrain.
2) I'm sure they have the ability to lower Lake Ponchatrain (after diverting Mississippi river flow)
3) They've had much more Mississippi river volume in the past.
4) They've had more rain dumped on New Orleans over shorter and longer durations in the past.

+++ Here's where it gets weird +++

5) Before the storm hit, they knew the levee was going to break.

6) What monitoring procedures weren't followed?
(deja vu - "incompetence theory")

7) If they knew it was going to be really bad and they couldn't control it, why didn't they haul all the people out of there to safety? Why didn't they tell people their predictions?

It appears that it was presented as "just another hurricane" that may be a worse than usual.

These folks know what kind of volume of water to expect from a storm. The wind part of it is probably out of their control, as well as the exact path of the center. But, the water volume is something they should be able to anticipate well in advance! If it looks really bad, you divert the big river and drain the pond. Heck, I didn't even see sandbags going up (by the levee). The only sandbags I saw were in front of buildings, on an individual basis (i.e. NOTHING large scale).

This acquaintance does have a background in civil engineering, so he is not totally talking out of his ass.

I'm not saying I buy this idea, but I guess the idea is that someone had some sort of PsyOps disaster plan in mind-- as a distraction? Or to get the masses used to large disasters?

Alternatively, how do we know the levee didn't break from REAL terrorists (i.e. the muslim kind)?

Sad and Sadder

SAD 


SADDER 

Bush Admits Iraq War is About the Oil

"If Zarqawi and [Osama] bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks," Bush said. "They'd seize oil fields to fund their ambitions. They could recruit more terrorists by claiming a historic victory over the United States and our coalition."

Well, sheeeit! Ma, I'm gonna sign me up for that war!

David Ray Griffin Makes the LA Times

About fuckin' time.

I Really Need to Update My Working Model for the 9/11 Attacks

(link under my profile).

Too busy, will try to do it soon.

Three New Links

The 9/11 sites are old, but I hadn't put them on my roll before.

Good 9/11 sites:
Nerdcities
German Engineers Help the USA

Good Anti-Iraq War Anti-Bush Lie Site:
After Downing Street

UPDATE: side links fixed

Second Hit Not Right

If you can, take a look at this video.

After the plane goes in, what looks to be the fuselage comes out the other side, very briefly, and then it bursts into flames and disintegrates.

I have no huge problem with the fuselage of the plane coming out the other side-- assuming it went in between floors, it would have missed the solid core section and just plowed through a few flimsy office walls, and could have gone out the other side.

What I have a problem with is the front of the fuselage EXPLODING. There is no reason for it to do so. Moreover, it seemingly disintegrated, since no one ever reported large chunks of the fuselage on the street below. And certainly in the video, the "fuselage" gets completely enveloped in the strangely massive fireball.

The whole scene seems very odd, in deep retrospect.

And there are other anomalies, nicely summarized here:

...the strange mode of how the visible flying object entered the solid steel-column wall without reacting to it. That means:

- the entering craft is in south wall’s shadow wedge but parts of the craft shine white like a lamp

- the visible flying craft emits a yellow flash instants before nose-touch-wall event

- the visible flying craft cuts six floors which is impossible (Prof. Wierzbicki, MIT)

- the entering craft creates dust pimples that blow outward as from explosions

- the sensitive wing tips do not bend or break off, nor do they flip forward

- the sensitive tips of tail rudder and elevator (winglets) do not break off

- no veer or teeter despite flying in at an angle (about 13 degrees)

- no deceleration despite calculated loss of kinetic energy of 26%

- no deformation, crumple or smash-up of the visible flying object

- no explosion until the visible flying object has faded out of sight



Slow motion opens our eyes, as far as the viewer is not terrorized into mush-brain idiocy, to the fact that the videos we were shown are absurd and impossibly show a real physical solid object. We explain this as a much smaller USAF cruise missile cloaked with a holographic skin to make it look on TV like a large Boeing 767-200 (hologram theory). No other viable explanation has emerged to date, except possibly the theory that the videos are 100% fakes (media hoax theory – but amateur footage and the few credible eyewitnesses known by name definitely saw „something“ fly into each of the towers, and we have a sound recording from a probably neutral source of both hits as well).

I still have to say that I think this theory is very compelling.

Nightmare

My deepest sympathies and best wishes to everyone and anyone affected by Katrina.

The news just seems to keep getting worse and worse.

And, yes, having a few extra hundred billion dollars and National Guard troops out of Iraq would have helped to deal with the disaster considerably.

What Hit the WTC1 and WTC2???

The Gallerize site is redesigned and has some interesting analyses of these key 9/11 events.

This hole analysis seems particularly convincing that 767's did not impact the WTC1 and the WTC2.

This site seems particularly cool: The Strange Images of September 11th, 2001-- though I haven't had a chance to look over the whole thing yet.

Key Points About "Able Danger"

1) It succesfully identified Atta and other 9/11 hijackers well before the attacks, and as non-citizens, these apparent terrorists should have been put in a special class

2) The "Able Danger" administrators tried to go to the FBI with the names of suspect terrorists, but were blocked by Pentagon lawyers (apparently)

3) Someone in the Defense Department apparently put Atta in the protected category of US citizen/permanent resident-- WHY????

4) The program identified Atta in the US several months before he officially entered the US. Isn't this a problem for the official 9/11 story?

5) The Clinton administration did not seem to have trouble with this program.

6) There is a strong sense that most people in Washington would just like to see this story "go away" (hmmm, why would that be?)

Able Danger: Condi Rice a Security Risk

Well, I can't argue with that!

But I guess this is why Able Danger was cancelled so quickly by the Bush administration:

NYPost--

"The Pentagon canceled its contract with the private firm shortly after the analysts — who were working on identifying al Qaeda operatives — produced a particularly controversial chart on proliferation of sensitive technology to China, the sources said.

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, the veteran Army officer who was the Defense Intelligence Agency liaison to Able Danger, told The Post China "had something to do" with the decision to restructure Able Danger.

Sources said the private contractors, using sophisticated computer software that sifts through massive amounts of raw data to establish patterns, came up with a chart of Chinese strategic and business connections in the U.S.

The program wrongly tagged Rice, who at the time was an adviser to then-candidate George W. Bush, and former Defense Secretary William Perry by linking their associations at Stanford, along with their contacts with Chinese leaders, sources said.

The program also spat out scores of names of other former government."

Seems to ME, Rice WAS a security risk! But what do I know-- I'm just a tinfoil-hat-wearing kook.

Certainly it's funny how the Clinton admin didn't seem to mind this program but the Bush admin. got very touchy about the findings of this program.

In any case, the idea that Able Danger was fatally flawed because it identified Rice and other government offficials is bullshit, and I think is an excuse to make this story go away once and for all. Basically, Able Danger was a data-mining program, and there was absolutely no reason why they couldn't have modified it to only analyze foreigners who were terrorist threats. In fact, I would be surprised if they DIDN'T have a more circumscribed analysis that focused only on foreigners. After all, the point of the whole program was to identify Al Qaeda suspects!

(The complete text of the Post article can be found here and this blog comments on the story.)

David Brooks Actually Writes a Sensible Column on Iraq

Here:

Andrew Krepinevich is a careful, scholarly man. A graduate of West Point and a retired lieutenant colonel, his book, "The Army and Vietnam," is a classic on how to fight counterinsurgency warfare.

Over the past year or so he's been asking his friends and former colleagues in the military a few simple questions: Which of the several known strategies for fighting insurgents are you guys employing in Iraq? What metrics are you using to measure your progress?

The answers have been disturbing. There is no clear strategy. There are no clear metrics.

Basically, Krepinevich lays out a reasonable strategy for beating the insurgency-- although this should have been done from the fucking beginning.

Of course, I also like Gary Hart's piece a lot too-- on the failure of the Democrats in formulating an effective opposition to the Bush administration's Iraq policy:

The real defeatists today are not those protesting the war. The real defeatists are those in power and their silent supporters in the opposition party who are reduced to repeating "Stay the course" even when the course, whatever it now is, is light years away from the one originally undertaken. The truth is we're way off course. We've stumbled into a hornet's nest. We've weakened ourselves at home and in the world. We are less secure today than before this war began. Who now has the courage to say this?

Wes Clark also has a good piece on Iraq in the WashPost:

The growing chorus of voices demanding a pullout should seriously alarm the Bush administration, because President Bush and his team are repeating the failure of Vietnam: failing to craft a realistic and effective policy and instead simply demanding that the American people show resolve. Resolve isn't enough to mend a flawed approach -- or to save the lives of our troops. If the administration won't adopt a winning strategy, then the American people will be justified in demanding that it bring our troops home.

Finally, Digby has a brilliant must-read post about Iraq, Bush and liberals: "Expecting Different Results".

Third Source Confirms that "Able Danger" ID'ed Atta

J.D. Smith, a defense contractor who claims he worked on the technical side of the unit, code-named "Able Danger", told reporters Friday that he helped gather open-source information, reported on government spending and helped generate charts associated with the unit's work. Able Danger was set up in the 1990s to track Al Qaeda activity worldwide.

"I am absolutely positive that he [Atta] was on our chart among other pictures and ties that we were doing mainly based upon [terror] cells in New York City," Smith said.

Buddy Buddy

An excellent flash movie about 9/11, the military response, George Tenet, ISI Chief Ahmed and Mohamed Atta.

The Bush Administration Terminated the "Able Danger" Program in February 2001

Yep, shut it down right after taking office. Amazing.

A small group of Defense Intelligence Agency employees ran the Able Danger operation from fall 1999 to February 2001 - just seven months before the terrorist attacks - when the operation was unceremoniously axed, according to a former defense intelligence official familiar with the program.

Is this incompetence or maliciousness on the part of the Bush administration? If they were planning a terrorist attack, would they do something so obvious?

Were the main Bush administration officials really just totally clueless about Al Qaeda-- and about the capacity of elements of the government to sponsor synthetic terrorism (and this latter point is undeniable)?

Or did someone lower down the chain terminate the program as a way to set-up the incompetence defense that administration critics seem to accept far too easily?

The key point is who exactly terminated the program in Feb. 2001?

9/11 as a Covert Operation

I started this blog a little over a year ago wanting to find out what happened on 9/11, because I had serious doubts about the official story.

I have learned a lot since then, no question about it. Boy, have I learned a lot of stuff. But what I have also realized is that finding out what really happened on 9/11 is going to be, for all intents and purposes, impossible.

There is, as I have mentioned before, too much institutional power residing in the official story, and too much at stake for the US government to admit complicity. Even worse than this are the vast numbers of people, particularly in the media, who for various reasons simply refuse to question the official story. While there may a healthy percentage of people in the US who have doubts about 9/11, only the smallest percentage is going to believe what I have concluded: that 9/11 was an extremely complicated covert psy-ops.

What this means is that at every key point of 9/11, layers of weirdness have been added in to muddy the waters for investigators. This includes everything from the hijackers stories, the hijackings themselves, the bombs at the WTC and the Pentagon to the flight 93 crash. I suspect these layers of weirdness have been added in on purpose by the 9/11 planners for three reasons:

1) to confuse and distract real investigators from finding out what really happened

2) to make the whole story so freaking weird that the public at large basically has to accept the official story because it simplifies everything. Thus, the official story becomes the big easy lie.

3) what really happened is so freaking complicated that only hard-core nuts like me will put in the mental energy to try and crack it, and then when we do, it will sound so bizarre that no one will believe it.

So-- this is bad.

Even though I now feel that I have some good idea of what happened on 9/11, it is hopeless to try to spread this message, since I will be immediately be written off as a nutjob.

Sure, there are aspects of 9/11 that we can question that will not immediately get us labeled as lunatics, but I am referring to spreading the deep truth about 9/11. People don't want to deal with it.

Of course, whether the "9/11 truth movement" will EVER get anywhere is something I have fretted over a fair amount, and I still can't see any such movement getting much change in the US government. There is just too much shit going on and too much insecurity right now for enough people to force the government into looking at 9/11 again (and of course they really didn't even look at it the first time). Of course, there is the whole issue of the press, who are covering up 9/11 big time, and have serious complicity issues of their own.

In any case, there is ONE BIG CHANCE to make a STATEMENT ABOUT 9/11: THIS SEPTEMBER 11th, 2005, there are PROTESTS FOR 9/11 TRUTH either starting in Times Square (in front of the New York Times), NYC at 1pm OR AT GROUND ZERO INSTEAD.

Let's hope we can have some serious turn-out AT BOTH PLACES.

We Have Some Suspects!

For the traitors in the Able Danger saga: General Pete Schoomaker and Philip Zelikow. An excellent compilation on Able Danger by Sherlock Google:

So the responsibility for stopping DIA program Able Danger, which had Identified Atta and 3 other hijackers and linked them to 56 other al-Queda terrorists overseas, has been laid at the feet of Bill Clinton--except he and Richard Clarke were never told about it at all.

That's right. Bill Clinton was never told about Able Danger and the ID of Atta because Richard Clarke was never told about AD. How do I know? He never wrote about it in his book, nor did he testify about it's existence before the 9-11 Commission!

You see Richard Clarke was known for being obsessed with Osama Bin Laden and HE was the guy the neo-con moles did not want to find out about Atta and the gang. Schoomaker and the neo-cons knew telling the FBI would inform Clarke and then Mr. Laser Beam himself, President of the United State William Jefferson Clinton, would have gotten involved--and the Pearl Harbor-type attack would never take place (the neo-cons talked about the need for a Pearl Harbor-type attack before the PNAC Plan would be accepted by the American people--so when one presented itself, they let it happen).

General Pete Schoomaker, who were later heavily rewarded by the neo-cons in the Bush Administration, blocked the upward motion of the DIA information by having Shaffer and Philpott meet with Pentagon lawyers opinions--lawyers who were rubberstamping ridiculous legal opinions to carry out the neo-con plan. These certain people were neo-cons in the Clinton Administration, covertly carrying out the PNAC plan to let a Pearl Harbor-type attack occur so Iraq and 6 other countries could be invaded.

HOW DARE WELDON AND THE RIGHT WING TRY TO LAY ABLE DANGER AT THE FEET OF BILL CLINTON, WHEN HE WAS DELIBERATELY PREVENTED FROM KNOWING ABOUT IT BY SCHOOMAKER AND THE OTHERS! THEN THE NEO-CONS ENDED THE PROGRAM IN FEB. 2001 ALTOGETHER!

The heroic intel agents of Able Danger repeatedly tried to get the FBI to roll up the cell but were stopped by the secret neo-con cell within the Clinton Administration, especially General Pete Schoomaker, in command of Able Danger--and who was later asked by Rumsfeld to come out of retirement and replace Shinseki in 2003 as Army Chief of Staff!

This link has some additional important info on Able Danger, Schoomaker and whistle-blower Colonel Shaffer. Btw, SOCOM is Special Operations Command.

Worth Revisiting-- 9/11 Footage Live

The summary:

While reviewing my 8 hours of tapes I made some discoveries! The footage includes:
# Eyewitnesses describe a 727, 737, or "the smaller plane" crash into the North Tower. Nobody describes it as a Boeing 767 as American Airlines later claimed it to be.

(This obvious discrepancy in size is not mentioned in "9/11 - In Plane Site.")

# At 11:07am (eastern time) CNN's Aaron Brown talks with CNN's Alan Dodds Frank who is in lower Manhattan. Frank apparently reports that there was another explosion or building collapse 2 or 3 minutes ago. He says it happened at about 10:45 (his time is off by about 20 minutes). He says it fell 15 minutes after the collapse of the North Tower (10:28) and a firefighter estimated 50 stories fell. When viewing this clip notice that Brown doesn't ask which building fell; why it fell; or, were there people in or around the building. When Frank is done with his report Brown casually moves on and changes the subject! Shortly after this conversation the clock underneath the CNN logo disappears and is never displayed again.

* Early footage of the Pentagon before the wall and roof collapsed. Firemen hose down the fire that can be seen inside the building through the windows. One guy with a broom is sweeping. (Where is the plane?)

# KTVU Channel 2 (local Oakland, Calif. station) correspondent Mike Majchrowitz reports live from the Pentagon. He says that a little after 10am the smoke seemed to be going down and then there was a set of explosions and it turned black again. He also says he hasn't yet seen an eyewitness to the crash.

* C-span interviews a Pentagon employee in her car. She says, "The building shook. I was in the building and that last bomb threat [sic] they just had, it shook the building. I left."

# CNN's Jamie McIntyre reports live from the Pentagon. He says there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon; no large sections of wing, tail, or fuselage visible.

* Clear views of the front of the Pentagon show a clean green lawn with no craters, skid marks, or plane wreckage. Many tall street lamps can be seen all over the place that don't appear to be broken or bent.

# Even though there is a freeway in plain view of the Pentagon explosion, in all my news footage from that day the only witnesses who claimed to see a plane crash were from over-the-phone reporters quoting nameless, faceless people – with one exception: CNN interviewed Mike Walter at the scene (close-up on his face) who said he was in his car stuck in traffic when he saw a plane fly by low and crash into the side of the building. He says parts of the plane are on the overpass. He also says, "And the toughest thing for me right now is I've got a 14 year-old daughter, and a lot of her friends have parents who work in the Pentagon. And I just talked to her on the phone and those kids are going through agony; they don't know if they're okay. So it's tough. I mean this really hits home." Walter shows signs of starting to cry. And by the way, Walter just happens to be a reporter for USA Today.

Also, the sentence from Walter's story "I mean it was like a cruise missile with wings went right there and slammed right into the Pentagon" is excerpted and included, out of context, in the video "9/11 - In Plane Site" to help substantiate the theory that a missile (or "bunker buster") flew into the building. That's not really what he said.

(Just between you and me, I don't believe a plane, missile, helicopter, or UFO from the planet Krypton slammed into the Pentagon. I think old-fashioned bombs did it. This idea of a missile is reminiscent of what Jim Garrison refers to as a "false sponsor" in his book On the Trail of the Assassins.)

# From a helicopter ABC News shows us the onlookers on the nearby overpass.

* The initial report of hijackers with knives and box-cutters on Flight 77 allegedly came from Barbara Olson using a phone on the plane. She just happened to be married to Solicitor General Ted Olson who argued President Bush's election case before the Florida State Supreme Court in 2000. What a small world.

# A witness, live, at the Trade Center adamantly tells a Fox News reporter that he saw everything and no second plane crashed into the South Tower, but a bomb had exploded.

Question #1) How can somebody witness a Boeing 767 jet smash through a building and not know it was a plane? Even if his eyes were closed wouldn't he know?

Question #2) Why were the video shots of Flight 175 making impact on the back side of the South Tower not aired until after 4:30 pm, when everything else was shown to us quickly, if not live?

Question #3) Why is there no noticeable plane wreckage seen falling from the front, back, or side of the South Tower?

* After 5pm many of the news stations began airing video clips of the 47-story WTC #7 collapsing. Nobody bothers to mention that this was obviously a controlled demolition; no apparent damage to the building as it falls like a house of cards.

# Video footage of the Flight 93 crash site at Shanksville, Pennsylvania shows nothing but a ditch, smoke, and some broken trees.

* Fox News reporter Jeff Goldblatt interviews a photographer, live, at the Shanksville crash site. The photographer says all he could see was a 10ft. x 15-20ft. ditch and some broken trees. "Nothing that you could distinguish that a plane had crashed there."

# Take a good hard look at the witnesses being interviewed throughout the day who claim to have seen planes crash into buildings. Could these people be actors? With some emphasis on mocking New Yorkers and New York-based movies and TV shows?

* CNN shows close-up footage of the front side damage to the North Tower before the collapse. Much of the left side of the "airplane hole" is unbroken. Also, some of the building surrounding the damage seems to be splintering outward and not inward.

(Fake pictures on the internet show a larger and more believable hole in the building. And to add to the entertainment they even threw in some people standing in the hole!)

* At 4:04pm eastern time MSNBC shows us a wide shot of the Trade Center. As Brian Williams tells us about Barbara Olson there is suddenly an explosion near the top of the Woolworth building at the left of screen. What caused this?

Question #4) Why do many of the researchers and "experts" of Sept. 11 (some who like to use a lot of big impressive words) respond to this evidence with a very loud sound of silence?

* Wide shots of the city shortly after the collapse of the South Tower.

Question #5) Did only one plane and one building cause this amount of smoke and dust we see pouring over Manhattan, or is something else going on here?

# Wide shots of the city shortly after the collapse of the North Tower.

Question #6) Did only two planes and two buildings cause this amount of smoke and dust we see pouring over Manhattan, or is something else going on here?

* The words "pandemonium," "chaos," and "billows" are used profusely throughout the day by many of the news correspondents and witnesses (almost comical!). A witness who claimed to see the second plane crash into the South Tower describes: "Absolute pandemonium. . . I could see people running like ants."

Question #7) Could these words, as used throughout the day, actually have some deep hidden meaning?
http://www.paradiselost.org/img/07-ma.html
http://www.mcgoodwin.net/pages/otherbooks/jm_paradiselost.html
http://www.literature.org/authors/milton-john/paradise-lost/

* CNN's Judy Woodruff looks into the camera and says, "And Aaron this may be another point when we want to say God bless the souls of those who have lost their lives today, or who are dying. As we speak, in hospitals and in places where they cannot be reached, I think even those out there who may not believe that there is a god, at a time like this we all reach out for a higher being and we want to believe that there is someone who can bring us salvation."

Question #8) Why will many of the 9/11 investigators, "experts," authors, filmmakers, website hosts, and lecturers never in a million years encourage the public to study the 9/11 news coverage as it was aired that day?

Fascinating stuff. I think he is right about the Pentagon, for one.

What Hit the Pentagon at 9:20am??????

Is this a simple mistake, or were there several events at the Pentagon (9:20am, 9:31am and 9:38am)?

WashPost:

At about 9:20 a.m., Lt. Col. Art Haubold, a public affairs officer with air force, was in his office on the opposite side of the complex when the plane struck.

"We were sitting there watching the reports on the World Trade Center. All of a sudden, the windows blew in," he said. "We could see a fireball out our window."

More on the timing of the Pentagon event here (scroll down to flight 77). There is very intriguing information in that article that needs serious study.

And the OTHER Important Aspect of Able Danger

that no one seems to want to talk about: they identified Mohamed Atta in the US significantly earlier than he entered according to the 9/11 commission.

Kind of makes you go, hmmm.

Confirmation: Atta Was Identified by "Able Danger"

Second Officer Says 9/11 Leader Was Named Before Attacks:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 - An active-duty Navy captain has become the second military officer to come forward publicly to say that a secret intelligence program tagged the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a possible terrorist more than a year before the attacks.

The officer, Scott J. Phillpott, said in a statement on Monday that he could not discuss details of the military program, which was called Able Danger, but confirmed that its analysts had identified the Sept. 11 ringleader, Mohamed Atta, by name by early 2000. "My story is consistent," said Captain Phillpott, who managed the program for the Pentagon's Special Operations Command. "Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000."

Wow. This is big. Phillpott seems HIGHLY credible.


UPDATE: The Village Voice chimes in on Able Danger and notes how it is being used by the right-wing to distract from Bush's troubles. I say, if the right-wing wants to revisit questions about 9/11: BRING IT ON!

The Clinton administration can get some blame, but it is absurd and offensive to blame 9/11 solely on the Clinton administration. I just hope whoever is defending the Clinton administration on TV talk shows goes beyond simply disputing the Able Danger charges and questions what the Bush administration did. I'm sure that is too much to expect, however. The Village Voice piece at least points out some unresolved 9/11 issues at the end.

Importantly, the only reason to think that Clinton is to blame for the failure of the Able Danger people to pass their Atta info onto the FBI relates to the idea that it would be a scandal if the military was found investigating citizens and Green card holders. Thus, the right-wing would claim the Clinton people squelched Able Danger because of political expediency and thus allowed Atta to go free and to carry out 9/11 (which is a gross over-simplification of 9/11 to begin with). However, this totally misses the critical question of "WHO SAID ATTA HAD A GREEN CARD AND WHY"? Since Atta never had a Green card, THIS is the scandal-- that someone in the military was protecting Atta from scrutiny by saying he had a Green card when he didn't.

Again, WHO SAID ATTA HAD A GREEN CARD AND WHY?

Hopefully, My Last Analysis of the Flight 93 Crash: Where I Show the Official Story Is Simply Wrong

Here is the official government version of the flight 93 crash (all of the details can be found in the book "Among the Heroes" by Jere Longman):

A 


B 


C 

According to the official story, the remains of people that were in or near the flight 93 cockpit were found outside the crater, whereas all other passenger remains were found in the hole. BUT-- both types of remains were quite minimal-- they only found about 10% of the total possible remains from the known passengers. In other words, there should have been about 7000 pounds of body parts but they only found 700 pounds worth.

Things that don't make sense:

1) That the front of the plane broke up up while the rest of the plane went in the ground. By normal physical principles, either the nose went into the ground first followed by the fuselage or the plane didn't go into the ground period. I don't see any way around it. A good comparison would be with the planes crashing into the WTC: the nose didn't break off as the planes hit and broke through the wall-- the nose went in first. Moreover, the front of the plane smashing into bits should slow down the momentum of the plane quite a bit and thus it is not clear what drove the rest of the plane into the ground.

2) How did the front of the plane that supposedly didn't go into the ground break entirely into very small pieces? There wasn't even large sections of seats-- it's as if the front of the plane totally disintegrated. How would smashing into soft ground do this? Even an explosion doesn't rip everything into small unrecognizable pieces.

3) I can see bodies vaporizing to some degree if they were outside the crater and were subjected to the full force of the explosion and fire, but I don't understand why more intact bodies weren't recovered from the crumpled plane in the crater. What force shredded even these bodies to such an extreme degree?

4) What caused some debris from the plane to be found miles away? Some significant debris, including human remains and pieces of seats were found two miles away at Indian Lake.



D 

Scenario A would be analogous to most plane crashes. An example is the recent crash of the Helios flight in Greece-- the plane crashed into the ground going full speed, but large sections of the plane were recovered including the tail, and passenger bodies were relatively intact.

Scenario B, where the plane goes into the ground but the tail sticks out-- that was based on an actual plane crash that happened in Indiana 45 years ago (flight 710).

CONCLUSIONS:

Either--

1) the whole crash site was faked (the lack of any tail section near the crater is very fishy since the black boxes were found in the hole) with a planted bomb and human remains were planted later, or

2) the plane had a massive bomb on it (in the cockpit area?) that went right off before the plane crashed or the plane was shot by a powerful missile right before the plane crashed. But the timing is tricky for either detonating a bomb or being struck by a missile in order for the rest of the plane to bury itself in the ground. Possibly, the plane was blown up and they are just lying about the plane and the black boxes being in the ground in order to cover up that the plane blew into smithereens by a missile or bomb right before it crashed. But if this is the case, what created the crater?

3) The plane crash site was bombed by interceptor jets after it crashed. But if the plane crashed, why would they need to bomb it, and how could they be sure there were no witnesses? Also, wouldn't there be two seismic signals-- the crash and the bombing?

Since we had two Boeing 757 crashes on 9/11, both with suspicious holes and not enough debris (flight 77/Pentagon and flight 93), I have to think both were faked. But if this is true, it is mind-boggling to think how they must have planned and coordinated this. And if this is all fake, why didn't they do a better job? Why did they make it look so fake? Just to stoke conspiracies? To save the cost of a couple of 757's?

None of it makes a lot of sense, but the clear thing is that THE OFFICIAL FLIGHT 93 CRASH STORY IS WRONG!

Krugman Lays Out the Truth on the 2000 Florida Vote

Thank you Mr. Krugman:

The tone of these reports may have been influenced by the timing: the second consortium's report came out just two months after 9/11. The country wanted very badly to believe in its leadership. Nobody wanted to write stories suggesting that the wrong man was sitting in the White House.

More broadly, the story of the 2000 election remains deeply disturbing - not just the fact that a man the voters tried to reject ended up as president, but the ugliness of the fight itself. There was an understandable urge to put the story behind us.

But we aren't doing the country a favor when we present recent history in a way that makes our system look better than it is. Sometimes the public needs to hear unpleasant truths, even if those truths make them feel worse about their country.

Not to be coy: election 2000 may be receding into the past, but the Iraq war isn't. As the truth about the origins of that war comes out, there may be a temptation, once again, to prettify the story. The American people deserve better.

Heroin Trafficking and "Able Danger"

Hopsicker:

Mohamed Atta was protected from official scrutiny as part of an officially-protected cocaine and heroin trafficking network with ties to top political figures, including Republican officials Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, and it was this fact—and not the “terrible lapses” of “weak on terror” Clinton Administration officials cited by Republican Congressman Curt Weldon—which shielded him from being apprehended before the 9.11 attack. Weldon alleges that Pentagon lawyers rejected the military intelligence unit’s recommendation to apprehend Atta because he was in the country legally, and therefore information on him could not be shared with law enforcement.

But the “terrible lapses” cited by Weldon do not stem from the nonsensical assertion that Atta had a green card (he did not) which rendered him immune from military investigation but were the result of an officially-protected heroin trafficking operation being conducted on planes like those of Wally Hilliard, whose Lear jet flew "milk runs" down and back to Venezuela every week for 39 weeks in a row before finally running afoul of local DEA agents not been clued-in on the 'joke.'

Moreover the secret military intelligence operation which identified Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers as a threat a year before the 9.11 attack, called Able Danger, was by no means the first military intelligence investigation into the activities of the Hamburg cadre. (snip)

The rest is well-worth reading.

Maybe the Greek Airforce Isn't So Amazing?

This is really weird. In the article I previously cited, it was only "minutes" from loss of communication with a commercial jet to scrambling of jets. But according to this story, it took 47 minutes from loss of contact with the Helios Airlines Jet to scrambling interceptors and then another 30 minutes for the jets to find the jet and look into the cockpit.

What the hell? Why such a difference in accounts? Just overly fast/sloppy reporting in the first article (it was written a day before the others)? Or was the timeline altered after the first story came out?

This timeline also suggests that the plane flew for 2 hours without pilots before crashing. Seems like a long-time.


Here's more on the story from the BBC: they support the long period of time to intercept the plane.

In fact, if this timeline is correct, it suggest the Greek Airforce is incredibly bad! Since the plane entered Greek airspace it took them an hour and twenty minutes to get to the jet! What if it was a terrorist intent on crashing it?

What's going on here? Is it really so hard to intercept a wayward jet?

Additional oddity: the bodies found at the plane crash site were frozen solid, presumably because the plane lost its cabin pressure and very cold air got into the jet. Yet not all people were dead before the plane crashed. How does that work?

Stunning Statistic on Official Investigations-- Why Is 9/11 So Different?

Event-- Days before official investigation started:

Titanic Disaster-- 6 days

Pearl Harbor-- 9 days

JFK Assasination-- 7 days

Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster-- 7 days

9/11 Attacks-- 411 days


Stats from 911blogger.

An Excellent Piece on Getting Out of Iraq

In the Wash Post:

What will pulling out of Iraq mean for the United States? It will certainly not mean losing access to Iraqi oil, which will inevitably find its way to the market. To be sure, bringing the troops home will preclude the Pentagon from establishing permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq -- but the Bush administration has said all along that we don't covet such bases anyway. In addition, withdrawal will put an end to extravagant expectations of using Iraq as a springboard for democratizing the Islamic world -- but that notion never qualified as more than a pipe dream anyway.

For Bush personally, the consequences of leaving Iraq might be the most painful. The prospect of looking antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan in the eye to explain exactly what her son died for will become even more daunting. But as it is, the president can't dodge that question indefinitely. Postponing the issue simply swells the ranks of those with similar questions to ask.

Author's email : bacevich@bu.edu

Andrew Bacevich, a Vietnam veteran and professor of international relations at Boston University

Untold Thousands of Dead Iraqis, Almost 2000 US Dead, 15,000 US Wounded, 200 Billion US Dollars--

to produce Islamic law in Iraq.

What a goddammed fucking waste.

What a sick joke of an administration running this country.

Iraq

Not that my opinion counts for anything, but I think should make some statement about what the US should do in Iraq. I can't really complain about the situation unless I have some alternative, as they say.

I think precipitous wtihdrawal would be a mistake and is just not going to happen anyway.

I will assume that the US has long-term plans to stay in Iraq in some form, such as having a major military base. And a major reason for this is to have control over the region and to control the oil, I imagine.

One of the lesser tragedies of this whole god-forsaken war is that no one from the administration has ever been forced to explain just exactly what our long-term plans for Iraq are: do we want permanent bases or not?

Regardless of this issue, there is no question that at some point in the near future we should withdraw most of the troops from Iraq. And I think the best way to do this would be to set a firm deadline for withdrawal. Realistically, this can't be done for at least six months to a year. I would set a firm date of January 1st, 2007 as when all of our troops are gone from Iraq, with a gradual withdrawal between now and then.

I think a firm deadline for withdrawal is extremely important (despite what Bush says) for the following reasons:
1) it shows we have no long-term ambitions for Iraq
2) it gives a clear date for when our soldiers will come home and when they will stop dying
3) it will stop the bleeding of money from the US treasury into Iraq
4) it gives both us and the new Iraqi government a goal to work towards.

Having a firm goal is the best way to settle this issue.

Right now we have no firm goal, and Iraq is in disarray. If we can't get Iraq running on its own in another year or so, then I don't see how it will ever be able to stand on its own.

Of course, I think if we do have long-term ambitions for staying in Iraq, we should say so and say what they are. But I doubt that will happen, absent the press growing some new balls. For some reason the media does not seem interested in this question. Probably because they know the administration doesn't want to talk about it. But perhaps the media will start asking this question soon-- the time is right, the administration is weak and most importantly, the people have a right to know the answer.

Politically, I don't know how long the administration can keep this question unresolved. For the future of the Republican party, they must be thinking about how to get out of Iraq. But what is not clear is what the administration wants to do. And so far, the administration calls all the shots despite what anyone else thinks. How long they can keep this going is not clear, although we are stuck with Bush for three more years and he can pretty much do what he wants-- barring a miracle take-over of congress by the Democrats and impeachment.

As far as what will happen in Iraq, I see nothing but trouble for the US in the middle east until we set a firm time-table for withdrawal. More death, more destruction, morelives ruined.

The thing about Iraq is the US is not going to be ejected militarily, yet there is no realistic way we can beat the insurgency. So all we can do is set a time to withdraw and work hard to make sure the Iraqi government can stand on its own when we leave.

Stll Having Trouble with the Flight 93 Crash

I have to say that of all the odd things about 9/11, the thing that perplexes me most and makes the least amount of sense is the flight 93 crash.

See here and here for more about the crash.

It makes no fucking sense.

There No Such Thing as Vote Fraud, There No Such Thing as Vote Fraud, There No Such Thing as Vote Fraud, There No Such Thing as Vote Fraud...

Vote Fraud.

Nahfeez Ahmed on "Able Danger"

A must-read essay.

Exactly one year before 9/11, a highly classified US Army intelligence unit known as "Able Danger" had already pinpointed four of the 9/11 hijackers. Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid Almidhar, and Nawaf Alhamzi were identified as members of a "Brooklyn" al-Qaeda cell on a detailed chart that included visa photographs. The Army unit was established by the Special Operations Command in 1999 by Gen. Hugh Shelton, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

(snip)

Lt. Col. Shaffer gave on the record confirmation of the details revealed by Rep. Weldon, but further stated that Able Danger had scheduled three meetings in the summer of 2000 with the FBI's Washington field office to share the findings and recommend to "take out that cell."
Advertisement

Those meetings were unilaterally cancelled by military lawyers at the Defense Department's Special Operations Command, and information sharing was blocked.

The stated reason? Apparently, Atta and his comrades were in the US on "valid entry visas" - the law, it was claimed, bars US citizens and green-card holders from being targeted for intelligence-collection operations. Although, this does not include visa holders, the law supposedly provided a disincentive for sharing intelligence with law enforcement. "We were directed to take those 3M yellow stickers and place them over the faces of Atta and the other terrorists and pretend they didn't exist," said another defense intelligence official.

Terrorists don't get and keep visas:

The explanation was disingenuous. "Mohammed Atta and his terrorist cohorts were clearly and factually established as Al-Qaeda functionaries of a foreign government [Taliban of Afghanistan] with Al-Qaeda itself being a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (DFTO)", noted Sean Osborne of the US Army's Program Executive Office - Command, Control, Communications Tactical (PEOC3T) within the Special Project Office (SPO).

"Designated terrorist's do not receive and retain 'green card' status, and any card so previously attained would have to be considered a priori fraudulent, null and void," Osborne stated.

In fact, there are 13 exceptions within Executive Order 12333 allowing intelligence-collection on US Persons and bona-fide green card-holders, including for Counterintelligence purposes, allowing for collection of against individuals reasonably suspected of involvement in international terrorism, as well as their associates.

Atta:

But all this is academic. Mohamed Atta was never a green-card holder. Worse still, he never had a valid entry visa. On the contrary, in January 2001, Atta was permitted reentry into the United States after a trip to Germany, despite being in violation of his visa status. He had landed in Miami on January 10 on a flight from Madrid on a tourist visa - yet he had told immigration inspectors that he was taking flying lessons in the US, for which an M-1 student visa is strictly required.

Essentially, Atta had entered the US three times on a tourist visa in 2001, although INS officials knew the visa had expired in 2000, and Atta had violated its terms by taking flight lessons. So Atta was illegal - and the Defense Department lawyers who blocked the FBI from accessing the Able Danger data were lying. So the question remains: why was the Able Danger report prevented by the DoD from circulating in the US intelligence community?

I'M ONE YEAR OLD TODAY!!!

Happy Birthday to me!!!!!!!!!!

Killing Social Security is the Cost of Freedom

Only on FOX.

Can they get any lower?

A Good Run Down on the Menezes Killing

Flit:

No bulky jacket. No belt with wires. No vaulting of turnstiles. Still no evidence police officers even identified themselves before shooting.

(snip)

It should go without saying that the proximate cause here wasn't anything Menezes did, or whatever his immediate reaction was to that armed gang in civilian clothes running at him on a subway platform. No, it was almost certainly the last-minute and short-notice switching of the police teams dealing with him, with the apprehension team going into the situation poorly briefed and without much opportunity for any handoff from the surveillance team, that was the real cause of death here. There was probably zero time for an exchange of info on rules of engagement or likely threat between the two teams, just a demand to the guys who'd just arrived to immediately apprehend a guy who could be connected with suicide bombers, before he got on that train. Like all "stop that man"-style handoffs, this one was almost guaranteed to be misinterpreted.

Why the Upper Section of the South Tower Disintegrated So Rapidly--

rather than falling as a large chunk of building.

I always thought the way the large upper section of WTC2 just turned into dust early on in the collapse of the building was odd.

This thirty story section of the tower was essentially undamaged, yet early on in the collapse, it started tilting and twisting and falling, then the part of the building below this section starts collapsing. Before the collapse proceeds very far though, the upper section disintegrates into dust.

Now how on earth can the upper part of the building drive the collapse if it is also turning into a huge dust cloud?

In any case, here is a picture from an angle I hadn't seen before, showing the top of WTC2 just tilting. At the same time, there are multiple explosive squibs coming out the west face of this upper section.

Thus, this shows fairly clearly why the upper section turned to dust, and is fairly unequivocal evidence for controlled demolition, in my opinion.


Early moment during the collapse of the South tower-- note multiple explosive jets coming out of the upper tilting section. 

p.s. here is the video from which it looks like that still was taken.

"Able Danger": Still Alive

NY Times: Officer Says Pentagon Barred Sharing Pre-9/11 Qaeda Data With F.B.I.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly. The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the F.B.I.

Colonel Shaffer said in an interview that the small, highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger had identified by name the terrorist ringleader, Mohammed Atta, as well three of the other future hijackers by mid-2000, and had tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the F.B.I.'s Washington field office to share the information.

But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 plot was still being planned.

"I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued," Colonel Shaffer said of his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the F.B.I. in 2000 and early 2001.

This really sounds like the military was protecting these terrorists from scrutiny by the FBI.

Of course, the important questions are:
1) who gave Mohamed Atta a Green card?
2) why does the FBI timeline show that Mohamed Atta came into the US much later than the Able Danger exercise would indicate?
3) did Atta train at a US military base as early media reports suggested?
4) when will the mainstream media really start looking into these critical questions?

About That $100,000 Wired to Mohamed Atta Shortly Before the Attacks

Apart from the fact that it was approved by the Pakistani ISI Chief, I always thought it was suspicious that so much money was wired just before the attacks.

Why would Atta need so much money if he was going to die shortly? He certainly wouldn't care about paying off bills and he would be hard pressed to spend that much in so little time.

Today I had the idea that this money was actually to help Atta disappear for a while. In other words, he wasn't on flight 11 at all, but rather he had fulfilled his duty of acting to be a terrorist hijacker (taking flying lessons, having links to Al Qaeda, being generally noticed, asking government agents about crop dusting, ostensibly orgainzing the attacks and meeting with other hijackers, etc), and now he had to act as though he had died on the plane.

This would fit well with the story that Atta's father said Atta called him AFTER the 9/11 attacks and Atta said he had to lay low.

Prima Facie Case for US Government Involvement in 9/11

Good compilation by Bushwick Bill at DU.

Another Article Using the Speed of the Twin Towers Collapse as Proof of Controlled Demolition

Jerry Russel (MS in Engineering):

As your eyes will tell you, the World Trade Center collapses looked like controlled demolitions. Here's the proof.

The proof. According to the law of gravity, it is possible to calculate the time it takes for an object to fall a given distance. The equation is H=(1/2)at2, where H is the height, a is the acceleration of gravity (10 meters per second squared) and t is time in seconds. Plug in the height of the building at 1350 feet (411 meters) and we get 9 seconds. That is just about the length of time it took for the very top of the World Trade Center to fall to the street below. According to all reports, the whole thing was over in just about ten seconds.

It is as if the entire building were falling straight down through thin air. As if the entire solid structure below, the strong part which had not been burned or sliced or harmed in any significant way, just disappeared into nothingness. Yet this (within a small tolerance) is what we would expect to find if there had been a controlled demolition, because the explosions below really do leave the upper stories completely unsupported. Like the Road Runner after he runs off the edge of the cliff, the entire building pauses a moment, then goes straight down.

Any kind of viscous process or friction process should have slowed the whole thing down. Like dropping a lead ball into a vat of molasses, or dropping a feather into the air, gravitational acceleration cannot achieve its full effect if it is fighting any opposing force. In the case of the World Trade Center, the intact building below should have at least braked the fall of the upper stories. This did not happen. There was no measurable friction at all.

This proves controlled demolition.

Here's the other article using the same type of argument.

Tom Flocco Sticks By His Stories

That British intelligence agents were trying to bomb the subway in Chicago. The claim that Bush and Cheney received indictments by Fitzgerald has been downgraded to indictments of Bush administration officials (a much more plausible claim).

Now THIS Is Funny

A US State Department website arguing that flight 77 hit the Pentagon, links to Rense (a UFO site) for pictures of 757 parts in the Pentagon. (scroll to "Passenger and Crew Remains Recovered at Pentagon Crash Site")

Is this really the best they can do?



Note: the site does contain info I hadn't seen before though:

In addition, rescue and recovery personnel at the Pentagon reported seeing the bodies of airline passengers. The September 14, 2001 edition of USA Today reported, "When [Army Sergeant Mark] Williams discovered the scorched bodies of several airline passengers, they were still strapped in their seats."

For what that is worth...

You Know, At This Point, If You Are Not very Worried About the Next Terror Attack the Bush Administration Has In Store for Us...

you're simply not paying attention.

Not that I am advocating panic by any means. But there is serious cause for concern.

Anyone else remember what happened shortly after Bush took his last five week summer vacation in Crawford?



By the way, here is a fairly realistic assessment of how the US could attack Iran.

A Vision of Rudeness

Rather off-topic but I find it amusing that "The Rude Pundit" looks exactly like I imagined he would look.

Why Is The Greek Air Force So Much Better Than Our Own?

ATHENS (Reuters) - A Cypriot airliner carrying 121 people crashed north of Athens on Sunday after losing contact with air traffic control minutes before it went down.

A Greek police spokeswoman said there were no immediate reports of survivors.

Two Greek F-16 fighter jets were scrambled after the Helios Airways jet, en route from Larnaca in Cyprus to Prague via Athens, lost contact with the control tower at Athens international airport.

One of the F-16 pilots reported that he could not see the captain in the cockpit and his co-pilot appeared to be slumped in his seat, a Defense Ministry official told Reuters.

So, the story clearly says the jets caught up to the doomed jet WITHIN MINUTES of loss of contact.

Amnazing! I'm sure it was pure luck! Becuase we know from 9/11, that interceptors can never catch up to a commercial jet after losing contact with air traffic control that quickly. Right?

More on this story from 911blogger.

It Is Quite Annoying

that there is this meme going around that Weldon made up the "Able Danger" story and that the story has "unraveled", when it seems clear that certain people (i.e. liberals who are afraid of Clinton being blamed for 9/11) just don't want to believe the story.

Most importantly, there are two other sources for the "Able Danger" story besides Weldon:

Two sources are at the heart of Weldon's allegations. One, a former defense intelligence official, has told media outlets and Weldon that he briefed the commission's executive director, Philip Zelikow, and three other staff members about Able Danger's identification of Atta during an overseas meeting in October 2003. The commission said in its statement that its records of the briefing, held in Bagram, Afghanistan, include no mention of Atta and that none of the staff members who attended recalls such a claim.

The second person, described by the commission as a U.S. Navy officer employed at the Defense Department, was interviewed by senior panel investigator Dieter Snell and another staff member on July 12, 2004, 10 days before the release of the commission's best-selling report.

Got that? Two other sources besides Weldon. So Weldon isn't just making this up.

Clearly, however, most of the Washington establishment would like this story to go away, for various reasons, and so away it will go. Just another one of those "debunked" claims about 9/11...

How Mainstream Liberals Have Rationalized the "Able Danger" Story

Ooh, that bad old Curt Weldon just made it all up.

The Newly Released 9/11 Witness Reports

Here's a link to the big compendium of PDF reports. This is definitely a very useful resource.

The report of Chief Joseph Pfeiffer has some very interesting bits*.

I was working the night before in the

1st Battalion, and sometime about 8:15 or so in the

morning we got a call to Lispenard and Church for a

gas leak in the street. We were there for a while

checking on the gas leak, and then we heard the loud

roar of the plane come over, and we turned around and

we looked and we saw the plane coming down, heading

south towards the Trade Center, and made a direct hit

on the Trade Center.

Q. You actually saw it hit?

A. I saw it hit. Within about ten seconds after

that or so I gave the first report on the radio and

transmitted a second alarm for a plane into the Trade

Center, and then shortly after that, the units I was

with, I told them all to start in to the Trade Center,

and shortly after that I found a radio to transmit the

third alarm. I told the dispatcher this was a direct

attack on the Trade Center and we had the second alarm

3

J. PFEIFER

coming in on the north tower and to stage the third

alarm on Vesey and West.

I pulled in front of the building. I looked

up and I saw no fire coming out, no smoke coming out,

which would have been the west side of the building.

If I can back up, as we went down the street

after the initial explosion of the plane hitting, we

saw there was somewhat of a hole, from our position,

certainly, maybe three or four of the stories, three

stories I think I said. Again, there was no fire

coming out. So, when we got there, there was no fire

and on the west side there was no smoke. But there was

an obvious hole in the building.

He must have gotten there within ten minutes of the first hit, but he couldn't see any fire! The jet fuel must have burned off very quickly.

We weren't getting good reports from the

police at all. There was one point there was a

possibility of a second plane coming in and somebody

said something and I turned around to try to confirm

that and we couldn't confirm that. There was also

6

J. PFEIFER

later on the possibility of a third plane. Again, we

just heard somebody say it and we tried to confirm it.

We could not confirm it with any law enforcement

people. We all ran out at that point.

Yet another allusion, as discussed by Mike Ruppert in "Crossing the Rubicon", that there was a warning about a second plane hitting. Obviously, who gave this warning, where it came from, is very important but right now it is shrouded in mystery.

But right before the south tower

collapsed, I noticed a lot of people just left the lobby, and I

heard we had a crew of all different people,

high-level people in government, everybody was gone,

almost like they had information that we didn't have.

Some of them were moved across the street to the

command post.

Q. Who were you with at this time?

A. You name them, they were there.

Q. With you?

A. Yes, in the lobby. They were moving the

command post.

This to me, is the most intriguing bit. The idea that high level officials had some warning of the collapse of the South tower yet they didn't tell the firemen. How would they have warning? Either their move was extremly lucky and coincidental, or they had some inkling that the building would collapse from the fire (which the firemen certainly didn't expect) OR they knew the building was going to be blown up.

On that note, here is a link to some of the reports that refer to explosions in the towers.


*tip from Rob

Dan Hopsicker on "Able Danger"

No reporter knows the ins-and-outs of Mohamed Atta's strange sojourn in the US better than Hopsicker:

The importance of this week’s revelation that an Army intelligence unit was tracking Mohamed Atta’s movements in the U.S. during 1999 and 2000 is so mind-boggling that it seems nobody quite gets it yet...

You’ve been hearing it for three years in articles in the MadCowMorningNews, and in “Welcome to TerrorLand.”

Now you can hear it from an elite Army intelligence unit, one with at least several patriots with very large cojones. Their testimony is clear, explicit, and uncompromisingly contradicts the FBI's official story. Only one conclusion can be drawn from it...

The FBI has been telling a massive lie to the 9.11 Commission and the American people, a lie whose result has been to halt in its tracks, as a Commission spokesman freely admitted on Thursday, the investigation into the murder of almost 3000 people.

People go to jail for that sort of thing, don’t they?

God willing, we may be about to find out.

The Dog Ate the 9.11 Commission's Homework

9.11 Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg on Thursday excused the Commission’s decision to withhold from their Report any mention of the Army Able Danger intelligence unit in Tampa which was tracking Mohamed Atta and other members of his terrorist cadre during 1999 and 2000.

Felzenberg cited the fact that the information provided to them by military officers in the unit did not agree with the FBI’s timeline concerning Atta’s arrival in the U.S.

Information provided by a military officer from Able Danger did not make it into the final report, “because it was not consistent with what the commission knew about Atta's whereabouts before the attacks,” Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said.

Staff investigators became wary of the officer, Felzenberg stated, after he stated that the military unit had identified Atta as having been in the United States by late 1999 or early 2000. 'The investigators knew this was impossible, since travel records confirmed that he had not entered the United States until June 2000.”

"There was no way that Atta could have been in the United States at that time, which is why the staff didn't give this tremendous weight when they were writing the report."

Forget Jamie Gorelick. Forget trumped-up allegations that former Clinton Administration officials were weak on terror...

Al Felzenberg is lying. So is the FBI.

Hopsicker primarily sticks to the angle that the FBI is lying, and that is important.

However, I still think that the importance of "Able Danger" is that it shows SOMEONE was protecting the hijackers from further investigation (not simply that the FBI is covering something up). Who would that someone be? Possibly the Army itself, some other defense organization, the FBI or the CIA. Whoever it is, we need to know the truth, and this will get us much deeper into what happened on 9/11 than is possible to know right now.

Are These Guys for Real?????

The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

Well isn't that special?

They finally got a taste of reality.

In a normal world, these asshats would be laughed out of town for this.

Instead, these yahoos retain tight control of the world's most powerful country.



Of course, if we had a functioning responsible media, this wouldn't be the case.

"The use of force is the last option for any president."

Heh heh.

Good one, George.

You don't really expect us to believe it THIS time, do you?

A Simple Proof that the Official Story of the Flight 93 Crash is Wrong

Officially flight 93 was crashed intentionally by the hijackers into the ground. According to Jere Longman, who wrote the definitive account of flight 93 in his book "Among the Heroes", when the plane crashed going 600 mph, it burrowed head-first into the ground. Officially, most of the plane's fuselage was found buried 25-40 feet underground. Even the two black boxes were found at 15 feet and 25 feet below the ground surface. However, the plane also exploded, showering large pieces of debris for hundreds of yards and very light debris, for miles. The explosion produced a huge noise that nearby residents heard and also produced a large mushroom cloud. The crash also apprently produced a seismic vibration, though the 9/11 commission doesn't believe this evidence as the time of the signal was 10:06am and not 10:03am when the commission says flight 93 crashed.

Here is what the crater of the flight 93 crash looked like.

Here is the problem: the flight data recorders and the cockpit voice recorders (the black boxes) are located in the tail of the plane.

If the plane went into the ground head first, and the black boxes went into the ground, this means the tail went into the ground as well.

This PROVES that flight 93 either:

1) went in the hole head-first and DID NOT explode (since the explosion would have shot out the rear of the plane, blowing off the tail)

or

2) didn't go into the hole and the crater is a hoax.

I submit that it is impossible that the plane's fuselage including the tail section could have burrowed deeply into the ground but at the same time exploded so violently as to shower human remains and aircraft debris all over above ground.

More Reason To Worry

Here I speculated that a new terror attack would only come if there were signs of economic problems for the US. I pointed to a Paul Krugman column saying that the housing bubble was losing air.

Here, Xymphora finds a whole host of reasons to worry about the future of the US dollar.

I'll let you connect the dots.

Watch out and take care.

Bush's Vision

A couple posts back I was wondering exactly what sort of vision Bush had for the US.

Today I found out what his vision is:

Bush Vows To Eliminate U.S. Dependence On Oil By 4920.

WASHINGTON, DC—President Bush unveiled an aggressive initiative Monday that would make the U.S. free of petroleum dependence by the year 4920, less than three millennia from now.

"Our mission is clear," Bush said in a speech delivered at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. "We must free ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels within 85 generations. A cleaner, safer America is my vision. And it is our great, great—great-times-80 grandchildren who will realize that vision."
(snip)
Responding to reporters' questions, Bush admitted that our progeny could face challenges in pursuit of the goal, such as the earth's degrading orbit and eventual destruction of the moon by tidal force, or the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

"Our distant relations will have some hard work to do," Bush said. "But hard work is what built this nation, and I have every faith that they will succeed."

The proclamation comes on the heels of Bush's plans to pay off the national debt by the early 6300s, and win the war on terror by 7450.

"Enable Danger"?

Operation Able Danger protected Mohamed Atta:

When members of Able Danger made their presentation at command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base, Weldon said, the legal team "put stickies on the faces of Mohammed Atta on the chart," to reinforce that he was off-limits.

"They said, "You can't talk to Atta because he's here on a green card,"...

Ain't that just loverly.

Even more interestingly, General Tommy Franks appears to have been in charge of this operation, and he's also the same guy who let bin Laden escape at Tora Bora.

Can you say "mole"?

Or worse, could Franks be one of the 9/11 planners?



p.s. Ewing 2001 has some thoughts on "Able Danger". Laura Rozen has much more mainstream thoughts on "Able Danger".

Truly Dysfunctional Times

The Bush administration was clearly complicit in 9/11.

The Bush administration lied us into an ugly costly war, with soldiers dying at a greater clip every day.

The Bush administration engages in torture and has committed war-crimes.

The Bush administration is almost certainly cooking up new terrors and new wars as Bush vacations in Texas.

Surely, coincidentally, the Pentagon is preparing plans for martial law.

On the domestic front, gas prices are setting new records and Bush's new energy bill is a joke. The economic future is very unclear.

Anti-war protests are gaining momentum, particularly around Cindy Sheehan.

The president's popularity is plummeting.

Yet amazingly, the media and the Democrats almost completely ignore these issues and act if things are essentially normal in this country.

p.s. Jeff Wells notes more items of concern.

What Is Bush's Vision?

I was thinking about this this morning. Bush's father of course was criticized for not having the "vision thing". So I was wondering, in all seriousness: what is Bush's vision for the USA?

The only vision Bush has really articulated involves spreading democracy and fighting terrorists. Spreading democracy is great in principle, but it doesn't really say anything about what Bush's vision is for the USA itself. Fighting terrorists is fine in principle too, but that is basic reactionary self-defense. It is nothing "visionary".

The question is: what sort of future does Bush think he is building for the US? And while there are certainly answers to what Bush is doing to the country, it is less clear what exactly he thinks he is doing.

Anyone out there have any ideas?

Jim Hoffman Critiques the NIST Report on the WTC Collapses

Here.

Abstract:

In June of 2005 the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) published the draft of its 'Final Report of the National Construction Safety Team on the Collapses of the World Trade Center Towers'. This Report and a separate one on the case of WTC 7 represent the culmination of NIST's three-year 20-million-dollar investigation of the collapses of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers.

NIST's investigation is often cited as proving the official theory that the plane crashes and fires caused the collapses. Yet the Report makes no attempt to explain how the buildings totally collapsed, despite the lack of a single historical precedent for a steel-framed skyscraper totally collapsing for any reason other than controlled demolition. And, in contrast to the Report's voluminous detail about the plane crashes, fires, and loss of life, it makes no attempt to characterize -- let alone explain -- the demolition-like features of the collapses, such as their explosiveness and nearly free-fall rapidity.

NIST simply avoids these troublesome issues by placing them outside the scope of its investigation, claiming that "global collapse" was "inevitable" after the "initiation of collapse."

NIST's Theory

Remaining strictly within the confines of the officially prescribed theory, NIST crafts an explanation for the "initiation of the collapse of each tower" that avoids faulting the Towers' construction: The aircraft impacts dislodged insulation from the steel, and the exposed steel succumbed to the fires. Sagging trusses pulled in portions of the perimeter walls, causing a rapid spread of "column instability" in perimeter columns, which in turned strained the fire-weakened core columns. The "tremendous energy" of the floors above the collapse zone led to "global collapse."
Challenges

In this critique I challenge NIST's explanation on two levels:

* Its theory about the effects of crash and fire damage is deeply flawed.
* Its presumption that "collapse initiation" will automatically lead to "global collapse" is unfounded.

Whereas the Report attempts to pre-empt challenges of the first type with the voluminous detail of its observations and models, it does not even address challenges of the second type. Yet it must have been aware of such challenges. NIST's lead investigator Shyam Sunder is extensively quoted in the Popular Mechanics article attacking "conspiracy theories." Respected theologian David Ray Griffin detailed evidence of controlled demolition in an April 18, 2005 address to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, which was aired twice on C-Span's BookTV. Griffin's remarks included:

* The buildings collapsed straight down, and at virtually free-fall speed, as in controlled demolitions, and then the rubble smoldered for months.
* Many people in the buildings said that they heard or felt explosions.
* Virtually all the concrete of these enormous structures was pulverized into very fine dust.
* Much of this dust, along with pieces of steel and aluminum, was blown out horizontally several hundred feet.
* Most of the steel beams and columns came down in sections about 30 feet long, conveniently ready to be loaded on trucks.

By truncating its investigation at "collapse initiation" NIST avoids having to consider and disclose the subsequent evidence of controlled demolition.

9/11 Skepticism in the UK

Article in the UK Daily Mail on a new 9/11 book.

It's a good read. Talks quite a bit about Operation Northwoods and how 9/11 might have been done.

New Terrorist Attack?

Many in the conspiracy-sphere have been predicting a new major terror attack in the near future. This is hardly limited to die-hard "conpsiracy buffs", however, since many US officials and as well as Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two Al Qaeda dude, have been predicting the same thing for some time.

I too have thought for some time that there would be another major attack, a devastating attack that might bring martial law and result in a military draft for troops to attack Iran. However, the one thing that has tempered my thinking was the realization that a terror attack would be a huge blow to the US economy, which actually is doing okay these days. Moreover, there are reasons to think that the US doesn't really want to attack Iran in the near future but rather the threats are all part of a power struggle to maintain extremists in power in Iran.

In any case, if the US really wants to maintain its super-power status, it is unlikely to self-inflict a major terror attack-- as long as the economy is doing well.

Remember, 9/11 occurred right at the onset of a national economic recession and conveniently hid a lot of financial shenanigans. So 9/11 was timed rather perfectly to distract from economic woes rather than to add to them.

One reason for a new terror attack would be to help prop up Bush's sagging poll numbers, right now they are clearly in the danger zone-- in the low 40's.

Another reason for a new terror attack would be to cover-up a major downturn in the US economy.

Uh oh.

Another Eye-Roller from the Mainstream Media on the 9/11 Hijackers

The Pentagon back in 2000 idenitifed four of the 9/11 hijackers, including Mohamed Atta, as terrorists, and then forgot about them... or something... then the dog ate their homework.

NYT:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 - More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States, according to a former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress.

The Simpson's Presage WTC Explosive Collapse

Just saw this episode (Viva Ned Flanders from 1999) on videotape this morning-- the very beginning has the controlled demolition of a casino.

Demolitioner #1: Five, four, three, two ...
Bart: All right! Here comes the implosion!
Demolitioner #2: =Im=plosion? But I thought you said ...
-- Close enough, "Viva Ned Flanders"

The worker presses down the detonator, resulting in an immense cloud of dust that spreads out into the crowd. Don Rickles, apparently having been still in the building, flies through the air, yelling "Hockey Puck!". Homer chuckles and says, "Don Rickles zinged you, Marge!"

The Simpsons, part of the rapidly fleeing audience, run from the dust cloud and jump into the car. Homer starts it and backs up blindly, colliding with something.

Lisa: Dad, we hit Don Rickles!
Don: I'm okay. But the Puerto Rican guy's trying to steal your
hubcaps. Ha, ha, just kidding. [singing] I'm a nice guy
...
-- "Viva Ned Flanders"

Driving home with a generous coat of dust on the car, Homer runs the windshield wipers to try to brush it off, though it just comes right back on with every re-wipe.

The building explosion, cloud of dust and layer of dust on the car are all highly reminiscient of what happened in lower Manhattan on 9/11. Also, note, the building was EXPLODED in the Simpsons.

Sure, it's a cartoon. But it's still very eery.

Possibilities for the Flight 93 Crash

See the previous post for a picture of the putative flight 93 crash site.

I think the "official" scenario of the crash is basically impossible: that the plane flew upside down into the ground at a 45 degree angle, blew up into millions of tiny pieces that spread for miles leaving no large pieces anywhere above ground YET most of the fuselage burrowed into the ground and the plane still left a head-on profile-shaped imprint on the ground.

I think there are five basic possibilites to explain the crash site:

1) the plane dove straight down at a 90 degree angle, mostly going into the ground and also exploded such that the fuselage acted a bit like a rocket tube-- plane parts and human remains blew out the back end. The problem with this scenario is that there was no tail section seen anywhere, no wing pieces and no seats. Overall, the explosion seems too violent for an ordinary plane crash, no matter how fast the plane was going. Note also, a 90 degree angle of impact would conflict significantly with the official story, since the plane was supposedly going very low to the ground and could not have had room to go into a head-first 90 degree dive.

2) the plane crashed as described in (1) but there was a bomb on board the plane that blew everything to smithereens when the plane hit the ground.

3) the plane crashed as described in (1) but jet fighters came along and bombed the crap out of what was left of the plane on the ground. This could explain the crater, the explosion, the extreme fragmentation of the human remains and why no large plane parts were visible. The problem with this scenario is the timing is tricky and they had to be lucky that no one saw this.

4) the plane was going at a higher altitude (1000 feet?) than reported (100 feet) and was shot by a missile that blew off the front of the plane, immediately causing the plane to plummet head-first into the ground. It was reported that the front section of the plane was smashed on the ground while most of the rest of the plane went underground. This scenario might account for that. The wide-spread debris could be explained by the plane being smashed apart in mid-air. This could explain the pattern assuming that it was just "luck" that the rest of the plane disappeared into soft ground, though it doesn't explain why not even the tail was visible at the crash site. Perhaps the tail section was blown off by a second missile? Then just the middle fuselage and wings would have created the crater. This is possible, and seems to be the only way a true shoot-down scenario could have gone. Certainly there are abundant rumors that there was a shootdown.

5) the crash site is a hoax-- there was no plane crash, the site was merely seeded with a few plane parts and made to look like a plane crash, much like the Pentagon site looked like a plane crash but if you look in detail it doesn't add up. Fighter jets may have bombed the site to create the crater. The problem with this scenario is that it involves a large cover-up and planting of human remains.

I think 4 and 5 are most likely, though I can't completely rule out any of the five. Perhaps number 4 fits all the evidence best, if we assume there were two hits on the plane.

Does This Like the Crash of a Plane That Was Shot Down?

Flight 93 Crater near Shanksville, PA 

One of the "milder" 9/11 conspiracy theories is that flight 93 was really shot down and that the government is lying about it.

Please give me your opinion: does this look like the crash of a plane that was shot down? Or does it look more like some sort of faked plane crash?

The long skinny marks going left to right are apparently where the wings went into the ground.

(Note, supposedly the plane both blew up spewing small plane debris and passenger remains all over the vicinity of the crash site AND the bulk of the plane supposedly went into this hole in the ground. There are no large pieces of plane anywhere on the ground. No tail, no wing pieces, no seats, no luggage, no bodies. The only large piece of the plane found outside of the crater was a large chunk of an engine roughly one quarter mile from this crater. Also note the plane supposedly came in from the bottom right of the picture, and the engine piece was found in the direction the plane was traveling off to the top left of the picture. At least according to one account, the plane was flying upside down when it crashed. You may be able to see a mark on the ground where the vertical stabilizer of the plane supposedly imprinted the ground on the lower edge of the crater.)

If this was shot down, how was it shot down to create this overall crash pattern?

A Mainstream "Terrorism Expert" Finally Admits There Is Government-Sponsored Terror

A fascinating article in Infowars relating an Alex Jones' interview with terror expert James Loftus:

We have continually documented how those at the top of British and US intelligence services have again and again recruited, funded and employed useful terrorists. In 1993, the bomb used in the first WTC attack was cooked by the FBI and the driver was under their instruction. It was the same story in 1995 with the destruction of the Alfred P Murrah Building in Oklahoma, again the Feds were implicated, the stooges were under their control. And we know for a fact that Bin Laden was a protected CIA asset, he even had the codename Tim Osman.

We have previously revealed how former MI5 officer David Shayler has alleged, and French intel sources have corroborated, that the MI6 paid a Libyan al-Qa'ida cell £100,000 in 1995 to assassinate colonel Qaddafi. The use of the group that has come to be known as "Al Qaeda" as assets by Intelligence services the world over is well documented.

So it came as little surprise that the so called mastermind of the 7/7 London Bombings was in the employ of British Intelligence.

The July 29 edition of FOX News Channel's Day Side programme revealed that Haroon Rashid Aswat, had been working for MI6. Former Justice Dept. prosecutor and Terror expert John Loftus revealed that the Al-Muhajiroun group, based in London had formed during the Kosovo crisis, during which Fundamentalist Muslim Leaders were recruited by MI6 to fight in Kosovo.

Mr Loftus Appeared on The Alex Jones Show earlier this week and revealed even more detail concerning the case of Aswat and the "War on terror". Although it seemed that Loftus was reluctant to accept that time and time again the "failures" of the Intelligence agencies are more than just coincidence, he had no choice but to verify the stone cold facts that Alex presented him with during the 20 minute interview.

Loftus firstly pointed out that the Israeli services have long known that British Intelligence have allowed Muslim extremists to train and recruit in Britain with the promise of safe haven so long as British interests are kept off the hit list.

(snip)

...Loftus suggested that Tony Blair and the British Government had no knowledge of Aswat and that opportunist bureaucrats in MI6 were to blame. Alex pointed out that even if this was the case there are compartmentalized crime groups within the intelligence services that are funding Al Qaeda leaders to attack Western citizens. This equates to Government Sponsored terror. Loftus could only agree:

"Boy you have put your finger right on it there. There are compartmentalized groups who engage in crimes. Are these authorized by the Government or is it wink and a nod stuff? We haven't got to the bottom of this yet and a lot of us are very very concerned."

Mr Loftus then reasserted what Alex has been addressing for a long time now, that the whole Al Qaeda Phenomenon began in the mid forties as the CIA was recruiting Nazi Arabs. In the mid eighties Loftus himself testified before Congress on the illegal use of Nazi war criminals by US intelligence.

(snip)


Alex then went on to ask Loftus if he had heard of Operation Northwoods, the official Government plan to carry out 9/11 style attacks on its own citizens and blame them on foreign enemies to provide a pretext for invasion. Loftus admitted he knew all about it and pointed out that it was an operational document and not a wargame.

Loftus also took on Alex's assertions concerning Operation Gladio and admitted that the facts were indisputable.

(snip)

Mr Loftus ... concluded the interview by asserting that the very top ranks of the intelligence agencies are so corrupt that they are recruiting terrorists for their own agendas, to make money whilst forwarding an agenda of fear to restrict civil liberties and stop good people questioning the actions of the secret services.

"There are compartmentalized groups who engage in crimes. Are these authorized by the Government or is it wink and a nod stuff?"

Whether terrorism is approved officially or not (and I really doubt it is officially "authorized"), it boils down to government-sponsorship.

(I hadn't heard about the nazi-connection with Al Qaeda before, though interestingly that ties the Bush's to Al Qaeda another way apart from the Saudi Arabian connection.)

But if one needs any more proof that state-intelligence agencies sponsor terrorists, look at this:

Members of the Moroccan terror group Salafi Jihadi fought for the CIA in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Dagestan, Bosnia and Kosovo

USS Cole Bomber Jamal al-Badawi fought for the CIA in Bosnia

Zacarias Moussaoui fought for the CIA in Chechnya

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed fought for the CIA in Afghanistan

Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman fought for the CIA in Afghanistan

Head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad Ayman al Zawahiri, fought for the CIA in Bosnia

His brother Zaiman al-Zawahiri fought for the CIA in Kosovo

Abdullah Azzam, "one of the ideological founders of Hamas" fought for the CIA in Afghanistan

(snip)

"Some analysts believe that in his current role in Afghanistan, (Ayman) al-Zawahiri has taken over control of much of bin Laden's terrorist finances, operations, plans, and resources," wrote the Guardian.

His known terrorist career started no later than 1981, with his involvement in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat; it includes the massacre of 70 people on a tourist bus in 1997 Luxor, Egypt, and the assassination attempt against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1995.

Strangely enough, according to January 2000 U.S. Congressional testimony, al-Zawahiri was granted U.S. residence by the Immigration and Naturalization Service - something almost impossible for many legitimate immigrants to obtain.

Should we be surprised that one of the centers of operation for al-Zawahiri was London, where one of his closest relatives resided? President Mubarak is believed to have referred to him when, after the Luxor massacre, he stated: "There are people who carried out crimes and who were sentenced [in Egypt] and live on British soil."

I think right now it is a race between educating the public about the real nature of terrorism and the next major terror attack that will shut down American life as we know it.