My take on 9/11

[RobertEarl]

It could have easily been prevented.

If not for failures of the politicians in power at the time it would have been prevented.

Now, given the view of the politicians and the history since that day, it makes sense that the politicians are quite happy with how it all turned out for them. They should all be in jail, and they are not.

Generals should have been fired, the intelligence agencies revamped, whistle blowers exalted, ground zero examined as a crime scene.

Instead the failure of the politicians has resulted in endless war, many more thousands dead and suffering, and the future: bleaker than ever.

Fuck you, bush and cheney!

[indepat]

1. No matter how horrific, chilling, and heart-breaking these dastardly attacks were, these attacks

were used by TPTB to instill abject fear in the populace, expand MIC spending exponentially, wage a pre-emptive war of aggression, gut the social safety net, and systematically trample basic liberties, even freedom itself, shredding the Constitution in the process, and implementing a national security surveillance state, all just for starters.

[RobertEarl]

3. Yep. It was an abuse of power

Even if they did not LIHOP, they used it to screw over the country.

A real Patriot in power would have resigned after what happened. Instead they milked it for their own personal gains.

[emsimon33]

2. It was an inside job

There were two earlier attempts to drag us into war. I can't remember the first but the second was the Hainan Island incident but China backed down. We needed a distraction because the Florida count was just about complete and it would have shown that Gore won.

I was in DC at a conference on 9/11/01. I had driven there from Va Beach and so had to pass the Pentagon that afternoon on my drive back home. There were no sheared 757 wings, no passenger luggage, or debris that we always see from the crash of a large commercial passenger jet.

A friend of mine was the keynote speaker at a financial conference held in Windows on the World on 9/11/01. Many of the high ranking financial personnel who were to attend that day were called by Warren Buffet to a last minute meeting in Omaha. My friend declined because he had committed to being the keynote speaker at the conference. He died. He was a truly great spirit with two young children.

God do I hate Bush, Cheney, and the secret government!

[RobertEarl]

5. I wondered about that

Where was the debris from a huge airliner that is claimed to have hit the pentagon?

Sorry about your friend. I am sure he appreciates you thinking of him. Good for you to speak out.

[hack89]

10. It was inside the building

The aluminum melted but all the big steel structures were found including landing gear and engines.

[RobertEarl]

11. Sure, hack, sure. n/t

[hack89]

13. There are plenty of pictures. Nt

[hack89]

14. There were hundreds of eyewitnesses

It flew over a major highway during rush hour.

[hack89]

18. Bullshit.

No one saw a missile. Many said it was a commercial airliner.

[Reter]

25. Yet no video has been released except two grainy frames that show nothing

The feds confiscated the tapes at the convenience store across the street. What are they hiding from us?

[hack89]

26. There is lots of other evidence

Including hundreds of eyewitness accounts. There is no credible evidence of anything other than a commercial airliner. None.

[Jenoch]

28. What happens in situations like this is that

some people just cannot grasp reality. To them it is unthinkable that a bunch of idiots can get just enough training to steer an airliner and cause this destruction to our country. They are looking for something bigger. I remember people focusing on the melting point of steel. The steel in the WTC did not need to melt for the building to collapse, it just had to get hot enough to lose enough structural integrity to bend and then thexweight of the building did the rest. The OP suggested that ground zero be treated as a crime scene. As far as I remember, it was.

[RobertEarl]

30. No, GZ was not treated as a crime scene.

As for the rest of your post, have you forgotten how bush tried to make sure there was no investigation, at all? And then, years later when there was, the report was denounced by several very good Democrats as a sham?

Like many others you seem to be in denial of many pertinent facts.

[Jenoch]

31. As I recall,

they sifted through ground zero, at first looking for survivors and then for bodies. I do not subscribe to the conspira y theories that have circulated sine that time.

[RobertEarl]

33. What about the 9/11 commission?

That is not a theory I presented, just facts. Reported facts that are the Truth.

So don't hand me this 'conspiracy theory' crap. It's okay to be wrong about things, but to throw out that 'CT' crap at me in your response is not okay.

[Jenoch]

34. I don't recall the details about that report.

Did the report say it was an inside job?

What is your opinion on those who believe bin Laden could have been taken out in 1996?

[RobertEarl]

35. The report was a sham, a coverup

Much of it is still a secret. You like not being told the facts about the biggest crime that ever happened on US soil?

As to the rest of your questions I will just take them as throwing mud hoping some will stick. Heck, you don't even care enough to know about the 9/11 commission report, what makes me think you know anything at all about 9/11, but what the media tells you?

[Jenoch]

36. I know that two airliners hit

each of the WTC towers that day, another hit the Penagon, and another went into the ground in Pennsylvana. If it was not an airliner that hit the Pentagon, where did that airliner go? What happened to it and the passengers? I may not know all the details, but I know that it is impossible to keep a secret about an 'inside' job. I am amazed rhat truthers are still projecting their nonsense.

[sabrina 1]

48. It is no ct that the NYFD were never allowed to conduct the usual investigation of fire or that Bush

announced almost immediately that there would be no investigation of what was one of the biggest crimes, if not the biggest, in recent history.

The ONLY reason we got the watered down investigation later was because so many people absolutely refused to accept such an outrageous decision.

Why he wanted no investigation, is still a mystery. Both his and Cheney's 'testimony' remains 'secret'.

[emsimon33]

19. Nope.

Where are the pictures of the engines and landing gear. One of the pictures they claim is of an engine, one of my brothers' Navy friends said was a missile.

[hack89]

20. Sorry - I am done with Truthers

Believe what you want to believe.

[RobertEarl]

29. Go easy on Hack, he's confused as ever

First it was all melted, then it wasn't, then it was rush hour when it wasn't, then there are pictures, but there aren't. To top it off, he's done with what he calls Truthers: which must mean everyone else are liars? But then he's not done: he keeps posting and posting.

I wonder if he ever had anything bad to say about how bush handled 9/11?

[NuclearDem]

32. Fukushima was responsible for 9/11.

I just know it!

PS: It's alright, you can reply to me in public. No need for silly PMs.

[zappaman]

55. You get silly PMs too!?

[RobertEarl]

57. Go ahead and post my pms

And your replies.

I dare ya.

[NuclearDem]

58. Oh, I couldn't.

If you'd like to, go right ahead.

[zappaman]

66. we could swap PM's

I dare you.
they are rather funny.

[hack89]

45. Here is photo after photo of plane wreckage at the Pentagon

https://www.google.com/search?q=photos+pentagon+plane+wreckage&client=firefox-a&hs=dTT&rls=org.mozilla:en-US

[hack89]

12. The are plenty of pictures of the wreckage

Most of it was inside the building but there are pictures of aluminum fragments all over the pentagon lawn.

[emsimon33]

15. "Aluminum fragments"...not the usual items from a commercial aircraft crash

such as the Malaysia airliner in the Ukraine or even the 9/11 crash in Pennsylvania. I drove past the site and there was debris just not debris from a commercial passenger 757. ..such as clothes, suitcases, etc.

[hack89]

17. So you could see inside the building?

You got out and walked through the damaged section of the Pentagon?

The plane flew over a major highway during rush hour - there were hundreds of eyewitnesses.

[emsimon33]

21. No, rush hour was over

The Pentagon was hit at 9:37 am, I believe.

Some eye witnesses saw a plane heading toward the Pentagon but it wasn't a commercial airliner and it didn't hit the Pentagon. Let me restate...I am from Virginia Beach, VA. I am from a military family. I am very familiar with high speed jet crashes and even in military jet crashes there is more human debris.

It was a missile. Why? Heck, I don't know. The whole thing was crazy, but it wasn't under the direction of Bin Laden but of Dick Cheney.

[hack89]

23. No one saw a missile. Many saw an airliner

The 90 foot hole in the pentagon was too big for a missile. There were aircraft parts found in the Pentagon. There were dead passengers still strapped in their seats found in the Pentagon.

[Iamthetruth]

49. Ding ding ding

We have a winner! No missile could cause the damage to such a hardened building. Also, if it wew a missile there would be multiple radar tea kings of it and missiles move much faster than planes so every radar in the area would have picked it up.

[peacebird]

52. I saw the plane, we heard the engine and it was way too close, we ran to the window and saw a plane

It was way too low, disappeared from our view behind stuff then heard the boom, saw the plumes of smoke.
It was clearly a plane.

[zappaman]

56. How do we know you don't work for Bushco and are just covering up?

Prove a plane hit!
You can't do it!

[FSogol]

24. You've obviously never been to DC. The traffic around the Pentagon never subsides. n/t

[hack89]

46. Here is photo after photo of plane wreckage at the Pentagon

https://www.google.com/search?q=photos+pentagon+plane+wreckage&client=firefox-a&hs=dTT&rls=org.mozilla:en-US

It would appear your eyesight isn't what it used to be.

[Jenoch]

22. Jesse Ventura agrees with you

[Whiskeytide]

54. I have some questions for you...

... because I'm genuinely curious. The "inside job" accusation seems to focus on the pentagon strike. In other words - a missile hit the pentagon rather than a plane, and that proves something fishy was up.

But that simply doesn't make sense to me. We have all seen the footage of the airliners hitting the WTC buildings in NY. It's not CGI, it's not movie footage. Hell, millions of us saw the second hit live and in real time. By now we have all seen at least 4 different angles of that second hit, and they all match. It was a commercial airliner. We have seen the street level video of the first strike, and although it doesn't show the plane, you can hear it. Clearly a jet engine. So - there doesn't seem to be any question that commercial airliners hit the twin towers. We have to take that as a given.

But lets assume you can construct a theory that US, MIC or some other nefarious rouge, black ops agents were steering the airliners. Maybe they found guys who had terminal illnesses and did it in exchange for their families receiving millions. Maybe they found Libby-esque, radical war hawks that were just that freakin' committed. Or - maybe they just knew what these Saudi nationals were doing and intentionally didn't stop them. However you want to construct the premise that someone else was behind or at least facilitated the attacks, lets assume you can do so.

So WHY hit the pentagon with a missile? What is the strategic gain from that? The hits on the towers were certainly enough to lay the foundation for the war we have to assume they wanted. The pentagon strike added absolutely nothing to the cause. Do you think the eventual march to war would have been any different if all they had was the WTC hits? So why risk the public becoming aware that it was a missile (because of all of this evidence you point to) and thereby questioning the attacks? Why? The first rule of black ops is keep it as simple and undefinable as possible, right? Don't leave fingerprints, right?

For that matter, if you - as the planner of such a scheme - felt a pentagon strike WAS strategically necessary, and you couldn't hit it with an airliner like you did the twin towers (not enough psychos willing to die? - I don't know), then why not use a missile, say it was a missile, and then say a terrorist fired it? "OMG, they're not just hijacking airliners, they're shooting war weapons at us!!!! Fire up the military machinery!!!" That would have actually advanced the race to war, don't you think? What is the gain of using a missile and then trying to say it was AA77? Why add a "cover-up" to your plan unnecessarily?

And, of course - WTF happened to AA77 and its passengers if it didn't hit the pentagon? Ditched at sea? Flown to Canada? No air traffic controller saw that? Transponder was off, but still showing on radar. No one looked at the recorded blips afterward and saw a plane disappear 100 miles off shore or sneak off to Canada? OK. Lets assume they landed at some secret US base. No one saw that? Everyone at the base was in on it? OK. secret, abandoned base in the middle of nowhere. Are they still there? Of course not. A mercenary team must have lined up the passengers and dispatched them, right? Why do that? Could you really trust those mercenaries to murder US citizens - some children - in cold blood? And why risk a "Capricorn I" outcome where a passenger escapes and later shows up at the offices of the Associated Press? We know four planes went off course, and we know where three of them ended up. If the pentagon hit WAS a missile and not the fourth plane, then what the Hell happened to the fourth plane?

And then there is the secrecy thing. Your post implies that Warren Buffet might have known something was up and called his high ranking guys to a meeting elsewhere. I don't KNOW if that's what you're saying, but I took it as the implication. So - if Buffet was told, then presumably many others were told too. Why? Again, keeping it on the down low is rule #1, right? Your going to risk one of these people getting "murderer's remorse" and clearing his conscience publicly, thereby exposing the whole thing? What kind of conspirators would be capable of doing this, but then decide a few rich guys had to be spared and risk the whole thing by bringing them into the loop? And even if they didn't bring them into the loop, but just made anonymous calls to Buffet and 25 other guys, wouldn't there be a risk of one of them coming forward and saying "hey - I got this call on September 10..." - ESPECIALLY if they weren't in the loop?

Again - I'm not being snarky. But the "it was a missile" theory has just never made any sense to me at all. The absence of logic in it is, I think, the fundamental flaw. If you start with the assumption that this was pulled off by someone other than a group of Saudi terrorists sponsored by or at least following Bin Laden, you HAVE to assume that they are very smart people - evil, certainly - but still very, very smart. Smart people don't usually do incredibly dumb things when they have had an opportunity to plan their actions. Using a missile in this attack - unnecessarily as it concerns the goals you want to accomplish - and then trying to cover it up, hide it and lie about it ... just strikes me as incredibly dumb.

I'm just asking.

Edited for a couple of typos.

[RobertEarl]

59. He's been juried out

But he might ask/answer thusly: If it was a missile, who was capable of firing a missile?

And you are dead on says me: Quoting you: "Using a missile in this attack - unnecessarily as it concerns the goals you want to accomplish - and then trying to cover it up, hide it and lie about it ... just strikes me as incredibly dumb. "

But if you wanted to send a message that there was anything one would do, or attack, a missile on your own base would make that message clear, eh?

[hollysmom]

4. I cried during shock and Awe thinking how americans had been wound up with

blood lust form 9/11 and bestowed this horror on the people of Baghdad. Most of them were just people, how they destroyed museums that survived the Hun invasion and bombed hospitals full of real patients who had nothing to do with anything. All for a fireworks show stripped of real feelings to sooth the blood lust. I know people who died. Heck I was almost working in tower 2 but decided against it when I thought my mother seemed ill (she had a stroke a few weeks after I took a lesser job close to her house) But as my sister says, the odds of me dying there were low because I tend not to show up on time for work. In this company it was 8:30. I would have probably showed up at 9:15.
It could have easily been prevented several times but Bush the dumb would not read his reports decided Child pornography was more important than Al Qaeda so changed the security, disbanded Clinton's terrorist watch, and fired all those homosexual translators that could have found the warning if there were enough to read through the backlog. And there were so many more

[RobertEarl]

7. Clinton, they said, was wagging the tail

Clinton, and Gore, knew there were people with evil intent. Clinton was impeached and Gore had his election stolen.

So then the bush cabal was in power, and their excuse for 9/11 is .....

My feeling is that they LIHOP. Or at worst, used the evil ones as scapegoats to do it themselves. I haven't decided which, but they sure made out like bandits, the bush cabal did.

[Dawson Leery]

27. +1,000,000,000,000

[treestar]

6. I don't think it would have been all that easy to prevent

If Gore had been president and taken the warnings seriously, it might have been possible to disrupt, but it was so evil and deviously clever. They still weren't thinking in terms of suicide attacks. For example they did check a couple of the hijackers' luggage, but the assumption was that someone would not get onto a plane if they were going to blow it up.

And ironically, does anyone think of the wiretapping and other invasions of privacy that might have been done? Seems the same posters find that such an outrage and yet that's what could have been the result. More wiretaps on people who were later hijackers or other assistants.

[RobertEarl]

8. You buy into the bush excuses?

"...assumption was that someone would not get onto a plane if they were going to blow it up. "

Good gawd is that lame. There have been many examples that counter your assumption.

Besides the cia and fbi knew of the 'hijackers' but the DC offices ignored field agents' intelligence passed up to them. Just like bush ignored the PDB.

One would think that at this late date, 13 years down the road, no one would be reading such dribble as yours. But then you are a great supporter of the NSA spying on everyone, aren't you?

Please, just stop.

[Agschmid]

9. Hindsight sure is 20/20.

You can't prevent terror unfortunately IMO. If someone wants to terrorize they will find a way even if that specific attack could have been prevented.

[hollysmom]

37. we had a warning, unfortunately Bush reduced the staff and the translators had a backlog,

they read the warning 2 days after the act.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/03/13/311361/-Peter-Pace-Rehire-Fired-Gay-Arabic-Farsi-Translators
then there was the terrorist arrested in Minnesota where the police applied for waivers to search his lap top and were denied by the DOJ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zacarias_Moussaoui

On August 16, 2001, Moussaoui was arrested by Harry Samit of the FBI and INS agents in Minnesota and charged with an immigration violation.[21] Materials itemized when he was arrested included a laptop computer, two knives, flight manuals pertaining to Boeing's 747 aircraft, a flight simulator computer program, fighting gloves and shin guards, and a computer disk with information about crop dusting.[21]

Some agents worried that his flight training had violent intentions, so the Minnesota bureau tried to get permission (sending over 70 emails in a week) to search his laptop, but they were turned down.[22] FBI agent Coleen Rowley made an explicit request for permission to search Moussaoui's personal rooms. This request was first denied by her superior, Deputy General Counsel Marion "Spike" Bowman, and later rejected based upon FISA regulations (amended after 9/11 by the USA Patriot Act). Several further search attempts similarly failed.

Ahmed Ressam, the captured al-Qaeda Millennium Bomber, was at the time sharing information with the US authorities, in an effort to gain leniency in his sentencing. One person whom he was not asked about until after 9/11, but whom he was able to identify when asked as having trained with him at al-Qaeda's Khalden Camp in Afghanistan, was Moussaoui.[23] The 9/11 Commission Report opined that had Ressam been asked about Moussaoui, he would have broken the FBI's logjam.[23] Had that happened, the Report opined, the U.S. might conceivably have disrupted or derailed the September 11 attacks altogether.[23]

Then there was O'Neil who was fired when Clinton's terrorist watch group was disbanded, he was a Bin Laden expert.
There were a bunch of ways 9/11 could have been avoided. And they were all bungled by Bush and his intelligencia. Or maybe not.

[Agschmid]

42. Okay so from that information we could surmise that 747's were the target...

Well they weren't involved in the incident of of that day at all so even had we heeded that warning it might not have been effective.

I don't think that anyone can really say for a fact that we could have prevented that attack.

There are far too many variables, but that's just my opinion.

[treestar]

44. Yes, something I saw last night pointed out that OBL was so

dangerous because he was patient and didn't give up when there were setbacks. Something else would have been planned.

[sabrina 1]

50. And yet, the Clinton Administration prevented many terror attacks. And we know why, thanks to those

from the Intel community who worked during that administration on terror. At least one, possibly two of those planned attacks involved hi-jacking planes and had it succeeded would have been WORSE than 9/11. It didn't, because we are told by those working on the issue at that time, 'Clinton took Terror seriously and paid attention to the reports from the Intel Community, starting each day studying those reports and giving the Intel Community the ability to deal with them'.

Bush failed to stop an attack despite 52 warnings that it was likely to happen. Richard Clark believes that had Bush not dismissed the issue, despite warnings from the outgoing Clinton Admin of the seriousness of the issue, it would not have happened.

So to say it could not have been stopped is contradictory to the evidence which includes multiple planned attacks that WERE stopped.

[Agschmid]

53. If you parse my words a bit...

You can see we actually mostly agree.

The thing is do you think [name a terror organization] would have just given up had we prevented their attack?

That they would have just said "oh that bush he is a smart cookie for preventing our attack, I guess we should just give up"...

It doesn't work that way. And again hindsight is 20/20 so we sure have a leg up on the people who were trying to make sense of the information real time.

[sabrina 1]

70. I think as long as we are going around the world acting like an Empire, there will be extremists who

will want to harm this country. This has been true of all countries who invade other countries for resources, throughout history. So I know that if the 9/11 attack had been stopped, it would not have been the last one. But we also know that many, many attacks WERE stopped and will be stopped in the future.

Other countries have always dealt with terror attacks without invading other countries. England, Spain, France et al all have problems with terror due to their interventions in other nations.

Such plots will only stop when we end our current foreign policies and it might have helped had we prosecuted the Iraq war criminals.

After 9/11 a lot of people where shocked that anyone could hate us so much. 'Why do they hate us' was a constant question shocked people were asking. I'm sure the Iraqi people were asking why WE hated THEM so much we killed over one million of them.

So imo, 9/11 like so many other terror attacks, could have been stopped. But that would not have been the last plot. Clinton warned the Bush Admins to take terror seriously, as he did. Bush didn't and 9// happened.

[treestar]

43. Wow talk about overreaction

nothing justifies your post.

There is no guarantee it could have been prevented, and it is hindsight that lets you think it was so obvious what they were going to do.

And you didn't answer the question. You wouldn't have approved of the NSA acts that would have been part of preventing it? Just knowing OBL was going to strike in the US and even thinking it might be suicidal hijackings doesn't mean more would not have been done to figure out just who was going to do it. So how could it have been prevented without that? You're comfortably letting yourself stop at the idea that Gore could have prevented it without taking further action based on the pdf. Reading the pdf alone was not going to do it.

Get a grip on yourself and stop the ad hominem. Merely because I raised an issue that makes you uncomfortable does not justify your attacks. Face it, the NSA would have been involved.

[CJCRANE]

51. Warrantless wiretapping started before 9/11

according to some sources.

I also remember reading that in the original NYT article that blew the whistle on it in early '05 IIRC.

[MFM008]

39. they SAT and waited

the whole lot of them knew the likelihood of an attack on this country . They had been warned...if it happens it happens which was all the better for the Bush administration.

[Capt. Obvious]

40. One person's view of 9/11 as a political failure

is the war machine's view as a success.

[Jeneral2885]

41. If you read Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies

he gives the best argument that it could have been prevented. Seriously, I believe he's the hero of 9/11. But like those who claimed "alternative views", Bush officials sidelined him.

[Iamthetruth]

47. That is a very limited view

These attacks were not planned and executed in nine months. There were signs of this attack coming for years. One administration is not responsible, the entire make up of our political system and how they interact with the intelligence community was at fault. It appeared to be a giant CYA situation.

[mnhtnbb]

60. Well, of course it could have been prevented if the airlines would have spent the $$

to secure the cockpits.

El Al secured their cockpits years previously--along with other security measures--with no more hijackings.

In line with the thoroughness that governs all aspects of Israel's airline security, all El Al cockpits have double doors to prevent entry by unauthorised people. A code is required to access the doors, and the second door will only be opened after the first has closed, and the person entering has been identified by the Captain or First Officer.

Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/politics/17285/air-security-rest-world-needs-learn-el-al#ixzz3D8hk6ljK


American airline companies refused to spend the money to secure their cockpits
and then, in the wake of 9/11 finally got around to doing a half way job.

But that wasn't all there was to it. I did a LOT of reading after the fact of 9/11. Count me in as one who has never believed
the 'official' story. But I also don't believe the 'official' story of the JFK assassination, either.

[RobertEarl]

61. Yeah secure doors would have worked

Too, if the bush jerks had just made the announcement that intelligence had picked up a threat of planes being hijacked and told the public....

I remember at the time there was a public announcement that some chemical warfare may take place. Nightline was all over it, with Koppel.

Just one little warning to the airlines and the public and 9/11 would have been just another day.

Fuck bush.

[BelgianMadCow]

62. Dumpster trucks hauling away metal debris without investigation

was always curious for this metallurgical engineer.

[wildbilln864]

63. what do you think about the melted steel?

even vaporized by some accounts!
911 was their "new Pearl Harbor event" that the Cheney/Rumsfeld gang wanted to get their war on!

[zappaman]

65. "what do you think about the melted steel? even vaporized by some accounts!"

what about eaten by rodents...by some accounts.
what about taken down by elves...by some accounts.
what about vaporized by a secret government laser beam...by some accounts.
what about Ray Rice knocking it down...by some accounts.
what about Cthulu rising up from the depths...by some accounts.

[wildbilln864]

67. ha ha ha ha ha!

[SidDithers]

64. Truthers. LOL...nt

Sid

[RobertEarl]

68. To reiterate, just for you, sid

It could have easily been prevented.

If not for failures of the politicians in power at the time it would have been prevented.

Now, given the view of the politicians and the history since that day, it makes sense that the politicians are quite happy with how it all turned out for them. They should all be in jail, and they are not.

Generals should have been fired, the intelligence agencies revamped, whistle blowers exalted, ground zero examined as a crime scene.

Instead the failure of the politicians has resulted in endless war, many more thousands dead and suffering, and the future: bleaker than ever.

Fuck you, bush and cheney!
19

[wildbilln864]

69. anti-truthers. LOL...nt