I'm just popping in to say hello to Doreen and China

This stuff about Iraq and Osama being linked, America's economy is fine, health care is there if you just took it instead of buying a new car... etc. The percentage of the population that would be terribly offended by this nonsense is growing rapidly. If all goes as planned you will be among them soon enough.

I don't buy the ridiculous story that the State Department gives for the 9/11 attack but chances are you've never even heard it. It was never broadcast in our national media because the story that precipitated it was also never broadcast. America was going to war against the Taliban in October 2001. This is known in the rest of the world because the story was told by Brittish, French, Indian, German, etc. newspapers. The official USA response is that Osama did a "pre-emptive" attack against the US because Mullah Omar was told of the US's intentions by someone in the ISI (Pakistan's CIA).

Think about it... we were already moving our invasion force in place before 9/11. We were going to overthrow the regime in Afganistan and replace it with an American friendly government of our own choosing, 4 weeks from when we were attacked. When was the Bush administration planning to sell the US and world public on this idea?

9/11 could have been prevented, that much is even admitted by the congressional committee investigating it. Colleen Rawley, the FBI whistleblower that was on the cover of Time magazine said their investigation into the terror cells that DID the 9/11 attack was sabatoged by the heads of the FBI and the CIA. She said they could have prevented the attack if George Tenet, Robert Muller and the head of the FBI ant-terror division hadn't intentionaly sabatoged the investigation. 9/11, which has brought us the Patriot Act, unending war against an undetermined number of countries and near bankruptcy of the economy, was referred to as America's new Pearl Harbor. Bush's Neo-Con think tank planners wrote in their blueprint for the administration "America needs a New Pearl Harbor".

The enormous amount of false evidence used in the 9/11 attack "explanation" as well as the push to invade Iraq, the shameless brandishing of forged documents in the world forums, has angered and embarrassed even the Bush administration's own intelligence agencies.

I don't buy it.

I've been reading everything I could find in the world press and American press since the day 9/11 happened. I don't think anyone who is aware of the whole story (as much as is available) can say any more than there are only two possibilities:
1. 9/11 was "allowed" to happen because it furthered the Bush agenda
2. 9/11 was planned and executed BY the Bush administration.

If this sort of reasoning sounds impossible to you then you haven't been paying attention.

World War III is well under way. The twists and turns it takes could go a number of ways, including the worst. Just remember as more freedoms are removed to make you "safe" and more aggression and unilateralism makes America an even greater target of terror attacks and even more empowered to pre-empitively overthrow soveriegn countries, it's being brought to you by the Bush administration, not by any necessity... but by plan.

Hello David
and me has no idea why I ended up here in a History/War/Political themed type thread? I originally thought hmm maybe I will go piss of Baker w/ some off topic stuff but got sucked up into this war somehow by catching it on TV and was trying to understand what was actually going on but hello back to you David
and hello China!

X: I rather doubt Saddam had complete control over the automonous Kurdish controlled areas, so named because after the 1991 Gulf War the Kurds have had their own set up and are not governed by Baghdad. That is, those areas have not been under Saddam's control since the Gulf War. Those areas also have had US air power to assist the Kurds in keeping their independence from Baghdad. So the presence of Ansar al-Islam in Kurdish controlled areas near the Iranian border does not in itself make a strong case for Saddam being tied to Al Qaeda. Not even the US gov't claims that as I have mentioned before.

David, I think perhaps in your enthusiasm to make your point you rather greatly overstate what Coleen Rowley actually said. I recall her testimony to Congress and the memo she wrote, etc. I don't recall her mentioning George Tenet having any involvement. It was authorization to search a suspect's computer (in August 2001 IIRC) that was denied by her FBI superiors. When they looked at it after Sept 11 the info there would not necessarily immediately blown open the whole case as you seem to think. Even Rowley doesn't say that had it gone otherwise that the events of Sept 11 would have been prevented altogether.

"If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning,
I'd hammer in the evening,
all over this land....

And then I'd nuke everybody.....

hmmm.. I was paying attention, aybe not enough, but I never came to the conclution that this was planned by the Bush administration.

Really, such a plan has so many loop holes you would have to be a fool to inact it. I usually do not call people names, but you would have to be a fool to try a stunt.

It will have so many uncontolable outcomes, may in which could end in the 'fools' demise.


Funny, but I heard many theroes like this, and some have evedince that does not work to well with each other. First it is Americas fault cause of the forien policies, then Isreal did it to get Americ to get rid of Islam, now this one where Bush said "ok lets kill thoughsand of people so we can have a peral harbour"

I do agree that some on the Bush team wanted something Pearl Habourish was needed to get people to follow there aganda, but that doesn't mean they allowed it to happen.

Yes sept 11 could have been avoided and who know how many sept 11's was avaoied. All around the world airplanes have expeirecnce hijacking, tell me why the US air lines did not have sucurity doors, no terroist training, hi-jacking training, no air marshal at all, and bag checking security being paid Mc Donalds wages.

Arragance and Bureaucracy (and maybe greed) looks like a more target as to why it happened then a conspiricy.

OPEN YOUR EYE"S!!!!



Why do people say that? It really is a looded statement and lend to believe that the other side has no grounds for seeing it the way they do and are in a sence branded stupid for not 'opening thiere eyes'

I hopefully will never say that, I think all oppinions are valued, and come from some sort of source that should be addressed.


Open your eyes indeed...

looded = loaded

Don't lood me up with your rhetoric, Joe....

I reallt have to use spell check on my posts...

reallt = really

SHEESH!!

Don't even TRY to sheesh me, Joe.....

sig - The request for a search warrant was to look into the computer of a suspect that was (we are told) the twentieth hijaker. He was supposedly part of the group that did it. The search warrant request was modified by the head of the anti-terror division (I think his name was David Chavez, might be remembering that wrong) and Robert Muller. The modifications made it so the judge would not grant the search warrant. When that happened, Colleen Rawley went over the heads of her superiors to George Tenet. That only got her in deeper trouble. But her team arrested Moussaui on some minor charge which is why we are told he was not on one of the hijacked planes. Even though they were specificaly told to drop the investigation.

Her public letter to Robert Muller spells out numerous roadblocks to the investigation her office was conducting. The worst in my opinion was the fact that there was a simultaneous investigation by the FBI in Phoenix into another group that was doing exactly the same thing, taking flying lessons, etc. The two investigations were never known to each other. That was the job of Chavez and Muller, who had knowledge of both investigations but never allowed them to learn of each other's work which would have been a standard procedure, share notes and look for larger conspiracies, other groups and so on.

When Ms. Rawley made her public statements she was very clear that had they been allowed to conduct their investigations without the top-level interference they "could concievably have prevented the hijackings". She was being very careful in her wording but she said that much directly. She also said the investigation into these terrorist suspects was "sabotaged" by her superiors.

The British intelligence agency MI-6 had used a special information conduit directly to George Tenet about a week and a half before 9/11 to warn him of the hijackings. They spelled out the plans, which airports would probably be used, the buildings that would probably be attacked and gave the names of four of the hijackers. George Tenet did nothing with this information, he didn't even put out a bulletin to the airports to watch for these four names.

And yet, a week after the hijackings, Dick Cheney in an interview said "we couldn't be happier with the job he's (Tenet) doing". I could be happier... I think most Americans could have been happier.

We were fed crap like "before 9/11 no one could have imagined that hijacked planes would be used as missles" a quote that was used by almost everybody in the White House. And yet only nine weeks before the attack, George Bush was at a G-7 convention in Genoa, Italy. There had been a warning that terrorists would hijack airliners and fly them into the building to try to kill the world leaders there. This threat was taken so seriously they had anti-aircraft batteries installed all around the convention site and the hotel where the dignitaries stayed. That wasn't even enough for our president, he was taken by helicopter to a destroyer at night to sleep because the hotel was deemed to be too unsafe. But nine weeks later no one could have imagined?

The Bush administration gave us Osama and Afganistan as the culprits within hours of the event. They gave us Atta's passport and suicide notes (that were later proven to be fakes) within 24 hours.

But the war against Afganistan was already underway. The timing couldn't be better... Rumsfeld was trying to get Iraq thrown in on the deal back then, but he had to wait.

Why would the President and Vice President be personally lobbying (begging really) members of congress to NOT investigate the events surrounding 9/11? They claimed it would interfere with the "war on terror".

When Pearl Harbor happened there was an investigation and we were involved in WWII. After Pearl Harbor every field commander in the intelligence community resigned in disgrace. Tenet, Muller and Chavez all got promotions and the CIA was put in charge of the entire intelligence community as well as given domestic intelligence responsibilities for the first time since its creation.

Before 9/11 Bush had the lowest approval rating of any President in American history. Within days of 9/11 the Patriot Act appeared, all 350 pages of law amending Constitutional guarantees and amending the Bill of Rights. There weren't copies for the Congress to study before voting on it and yet they passed it into law with almost no debate.

Afganistan is left out of the rebuilding budgets and is reverting to warlordism and terror for the impoverished population. The country is a bombed-out disaster zone, the opium crop is back and the pipeline is being built, watched over by American troops. Our promise of better times and liberation for the Afgan people seems like just another US foriegn policy snow job.

As the museum in Baghdad was being looted and ransacked, destroying Iraq's unique cultural heritage and 6,000 year old evidence of the oldest civilization on the earth (much of it not yet cataloged and studied), American troops, an entire company with tanks and hundreds of soldiers, was guarding an oil field only a few miles away. Just 5 soldiers would have been enough at sites like the museum, hospitals and government buildings to prevent the destruction but none were there, in spite of a promise they would protect these sites. The rebuilding will cost far more now they say but the priceless artefacts from the ancient Sumerian civilization can never be replaced. The oil is safe though, no oil fields or well heads were damaged.

Funny thing about the increase in rebuilding costs is that the private companies that got the rebuilding contracts will get even richer. The American taxpayer will get even poorer, government spending on essential domestic programs will be cut even further. And the Iraqi's, will they get the paradise of freedom and a fixed up country we promised? If they do maybe the Afgani's could move there.

Rowley personally contacted George Tenet? That's not what she said as I recall. The agents on the case (she was Legal Counsel, not the agents' supervisor) contacted the CIA's Counter Terrorists center. That's not quite the same as Rowley putting in a call to Tenet and getting squashed. Her involvement in the case, she said, was peripheral. Also, Moussaoui was taken into custody before any search warrant was requested. It's not like they arrested him just to put him on ice because they couldn't get a search warrant, which may or may not have been what you were suggesting. Couldn't quite tell if that's what you meant.

MI-6 provided Tenet with the terrorists' game plan in advance including names and places and methods? Where's your source for this? That's even better than the French book's account that claims a plane never hit the Pentagon. But seriously, where's your source for the MI-6 thing? I don't recall hearing that one.

I don't unquestioningly trust the gov't. But I also am familiar with gov't bureacracy, intra and inter agency power trips that actually hinder the work at hand and how screwed up it can be. So I don't necessarily assume a vast conspiracy when just gov't doing its bureaucratic thing as usual and then trying to cover up its screw ups is also an option.

As for the "no one ever could imagine that airplanes could be used" line some members of the Administration came out with, that's clearly nonsense. Al Qaeda plans to hijack airplanes and also use them as missles on American targets were found in SE Asia in the early to mid 90's. The CIA in Langley was one target as I recall. It was reported in the press at the time.

Also, on a more mundane note, only weeks before Sept 11 I saw a rerun of a show that spun off from the X-Files with the Lone Gunmen characters. An airliner was hijacked in flight and its computer was set on a path to crash into the WTC. At the last minute of course the show's heroes thwarted the plot. Evidently Hollywood could imagine what our intelligence agencies could not even with evidence of such plans having been made in the past.

Dave, I dig ya and all, but you really sound like a cornball when you say stuff like that. You make strings of little facts and then tie them together insider details. Anyone really thinking about what they read will see the leaps.

Anyway, if people *did* imagine that terrorists might hijack planes and run them into buildings, what could have been done about it? *AFTER* 9/11 you couldn't get people to tolerate the kind of security it takes to prevent that. You think they would have tolerated it beforehand? Do you think people like yourself would have tolerated a 'patriot act' preemptive strike on minorities and non-citizens? Nah, the civil rights advocates have been screaming 'boogie-man' since 9/12.

IMHO the fact that such a rant can be safely uttered goes a long way to disprove a lot of wacko conspiracy theories.


**

and btw, "The percentage of the population that would be terribly offended by this nonsense" is directly proportional to the percentage of the population that doesn't know what the word poor means. I, for one, do. It is my heritage. I know many people who are greatly offended when they see our spoiled nation point to unprecedented comfort and prosperity and whine for more like it is somehow owed them...

sig - I remember Rawley saying she sent a letter to George Tenet.

The MI-6 story was on the front page of the BBC, the London Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post on 9/12. It was still 9/11 when I read it, late at night here but morning in Europe. The headline was "(don't remember his name but the head of MI-6) Is Furious, Demands to Know Why CIA Ignored Warning" The story said MI-6 had used a special channel, only used when the information is verified and extremely urgent, that goes directly from the director of MI-6 to the director of the CIA, 11 days before the attack. It said they sent 4 names (they turned out to be the 4 pilots according to the FBI's list) and the basic plans, including that the planes would be hijacked from major airports on the Eastern Seaboard. The official response from the CIA (a second one since the first was summarily rejected by MI-6) was that they misinterpreted the data, thinking it was referring to the assassination of General Massood in Afghanistan.

The story disappeared after about 3 days and was replaced (on every newspaper site that ran it) with a story that had the headline "CIA Was Warned". This story revealed that a secret CIA white-paper had detailed the possibility of such an attack in '96. What was interesting about this story is that this classified internal CIA document had details like using boxcutters, 4 or 5 hijackers per plane, full fuel tanks, and even angling the plane when it hits the WTC to spread the fuel over a wider area which it said could possibly cause enough heat to bring down the building. Eerily accurate in every detail. That story was pulled about a week later but I had saved it before it went away after seeing the original story disappear.

There are lots of stories of warnings about two weeks before the attack. Putin supposedly contacted Bush with very specific warnings and pulled all Russian personnel out of the US, The White House ruled that cabinet members and their families were not to fly on commercial airliners about 3 weeks prior and private jets were chartered for them, the Israeli's warned us, the French and Germans warned us. What's interesting is that seems to be when Osama learned about it too and he made his fateful comment that something "big" was going to happen in the US in about two weeks. In the tape of him at the wedding which was the supposed "smoking gun" (Rumsfeld actually said in a press conference "hey, this tape is real, it's not one of ours") he says to the Saudi guy "we found out it was going to happen two weeks before so we were not surprised and when the first plane hit I told my friends, wait there's more to come". Doesn't sound to me like Osama planned it if he only found out about it two weeks before it happened.

One thing that we do know is later in October it was revealed that Mohamed Atta was given $100,000 by the head of Pakistan's ISI (secret police). Coincidently that same guy was at CIA headquarters for a week leading up to 9/11 and was flown home on the 12th. While in DC he also met with the Senate Intelligence Committee. We can't ask him what that was all about because when it was discovered he was funding the terrorists he disappeared.

You say beaurocratic bungling but to me it smelled more like an intelligence operation. The stolen identities for example, one of them was from a deal two years before in Saudi Arabia where an entire family's identitys were stolen in a very professional looking operation that took only the necessary bits and left the entire family dead. Of the 19 hijackers 6 are still alive and several more are known to be stolen identities. We don't know who these guys really were and we don't know who planned it or funded it. Even George Tenet said about six months ago that "to this day we don't have a shred of evidence linking any of the hijackers to anyone in Afghanistan".

But the war on terror must move on. Is Mullah Omar and Osama really no longer a priority as Rumsfeld said? Why not? If they did this, and Bush swore they would be "rooted out and hunted down" why are they no longer important? I'm angry and I still want to know what happened on 9/11 and who did it. Most Americans it seems are okay with just invading some country that had nothing to do with it, like that makes it all better.

Well in Rowley's memo to Mueller she said the agents had contacted the CIA counter terrorist unit folks and got reprimanded for that. She didn't mention writing a letter to Tenet herself.

As for the other stuff, I distinctly recall an AP story in around June of 2001 in which there was an alert put out by the gov't that there was seriously something up with Al Qaeda and there was a strong possibility of imminent attacks on American interests here and abroad. I recall that it seemed really significant and scary in tone since we weren't seeing those alerts all the time like now, but the story seemed to quickly fade away and didn't attract attention in the press. Apparently the FAA was notified also but it later came out IIRC that it didn't pass on the alert to the airlines. I think I recall it was not much later after that alert that Cabinet folks stopped flying on commercial jets.

As for press reports, I did see some that said (after the fact in the British press) that the MI 6 info passed on to the US wasn't specific enough so as to have prevented the attacks. I don't recall seeing something reporting the level of specificity you state, either attributed to the MI 6 or later to a CIA report. But here's a bit of a summary from our friends of Fox News about various warnings prior to the attacks: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,53065,00.html (if the link works.)

And when I saw the Osama tape where he was gloating about the Sept 11 attacks, I took it that he was taking credit for the attacks. The actual date of the attacks may not have been set that far in advance and may have been left to the team on the ground to determine. That in itself wouldn't be surprising in such an operation.

Of course the Administration is now downplaying the hunt for Bin Laden since they've been repeatedly criticized for their failure to track him and Omar down as they promised. They looked a bit silly. Even I could figure out Osama was splitting from Tora Bora while the Afghanis were hanging back and hemming and hawing about a "cease fire." No doubt some legal tender likely was changing hands at that time. Just like now it's not, at least according to the administration, that important whether or not Saddam is pushing up daisies. Just in case, of course, he's not found and winds up enjoying his retirement and watching The Godfather marathons on TBS.

Talal Hussein, the local Hamas representative (in Syria):

"Iraqis are losing the war because they don't have the real Islamic faith. If the situation requires it, the jihad against the Americans will continue," he said.

"If the Iraqis asked us to stop fighting, we wouldn't because their request would be a result of American pressure. No-one would ask a fighter to stop a jihad against an occupier"

Hello China, and everybody...

hey IPlural's back!

Hey DavidK, I have been trying to find stuf about Afganistan to see what is going on over there. I noticed on some other message boards (do you believe it! I went to another message board) and most don't know what is going on either. Most stories I find are old or are about some capture (not good enough)

I was wondering if you have any links to where you get your info on Afganistan?



.... what was the other messageboard? SOAD: System of A Down.