Andy Card just admitted to LIHOP motivations on Morning Joe!!

[WonderGrunion]

Card and Chris Matthews were discussing the "Al-Qaeda determined to attack in US" intelligence briefing. They were discussing its significance as a warning and whether torture was necessary to gather the intelligence. Card was cowed by Matthews into admitting it was a warning that the Bush administration took seriously BUT that prior to September 11th, all warnings of terrorist hijacking of planes were assumed to be for negotiation of ransom or release of prisoners.

I have always thought that the Bush administration was guilty of LIHOP, but only because they misread the terrorists intentions and thought the hijackings would give a struggling Bush administration the ability to stage several photo ops of planes on runways surrounded by marines and a resolute president in the Oval Office declaring to worried Americans how this country would not negotiate with terrorists. LIHOP occurred because Bush wanted to recapture the aura of Reagan's tough stance against terrorism. This is why Bush proceeded to start reading to an elementary school after the first announcement that a plane had been hijacked. His intelligence agencies had already informed him that a hijacking was going to occur that day. It also explains why he was so stunned when he got the announcement that a second plane was hijacked and crashed into the world trade center. He all of a sudden knew that everything they assumed about the 9/11 hijackers was horribly wrong and that he would need to cover up why his administration didn't act on intelligence that would have prevented the hijackings to begin with.

I always thought it was preposterous that Bush ordered or allowed the WTC and pentagon to be annihilated by passenger jets. Bush is a douche, but not a deliberately murderous douche. He wouldn't change into that until after 9/11 when he decide to take down Iraq. I think the administration honestly believed that this would be a "harmless" hijacking that would restore the image of strength in a president that had just been bitch-slapped by the Chinese and was looking weak on defense issues.

Card's admission on Morning Joe just confirmed that was the prevailing view in the administration at the time.

[CJCRANE]

1. Nice try. How do you explain the anti-aircraft guns at the Genoa summit?

They knew all about the planes as weapons scenario. It's been well-documented.

[WonderGrunion]

4. Just because it was a possible scenario

Doesn't mean that it was believed to be what was happening. I honestly believe they allowed the hijackings to occur so they could have some dramatic photo-ops of negotiations occurring.

[CJCRANE]

8. Dramatic photo-ops?!!

You can't start a 500 year war based on dramatic photo-ops.

There's a reason PNAC referred to the "New Pearl Harbor" and Zelikow "the searing, molding event".

[WonderGrunion]

9. I agree completely that they used the resulting situation

to enact the massive change in foreign policy that they desired. I don't think they thought this was going to be the "Pearl Harbor event" they needed though.

[CJCRANE]

10. You need to read up on PNAC and Philip Zelikow nt

[WonderGrunion]

12. I don't doubt

That Perle, Feith, Kristol or even Cheney would have allowed the hijackings to happen even if they knew the outcome. Bush has never struck me as devious-evil, just stupid-evil.

[Blue Meany]

34. I don't think so...

The plot to attack the summit in Italy with airliners used as weapons was from al-Qaida and targetted Bush, primarily, along with other leaders. The Italiian authorities surrounded the place with anti-aircraft missiles to fend of this threat. There is just no way they didn't know about this and didn't know this was a real possibility.

[Sebastian Doyle]

20. Not just at the summit

The hotel in Sarasota where Chimpy slept the night of September 10 had anti aircraft guns on the roof. And why was the Chimp camping out in a hotel in a state where his brother was the governor, and certainly had a spare room for him?

And why did Jeb sign an executive order to deploy the National Guard in the event of an emergency on Friday, Sept 7, 2001?

Why did Cheney spend the night of 9-10-01 in the White House, and why was Poppy Bush there with him?

Why was FEMA, by their own admission, already on the ground and ready to go in NYC on 9-10-01?

The Bush Crime Family clearly expected something other than a "routine" hijacking on 9-11-01. Their own actions prove it.

[14thColony]

26. Anti-aircraft guns on the roof of a HOTEL?!

Sorry if I'm late to the party on that one, but I speak from a certain degree of expertise on the subject when I say the US military does not field anti-aircraft guns of the sort that could be emplaced on a rooftop, and has not for decades. Even the ones we had back in the day would have required a crane to get onto the roof of anything. Plus the reality that an anti-aircraft gun would be virtually useless against a wide-body jet being used as a cruise missile forces me to be extremely skeptical of this claim.

[AZ Criminal JD]

36. Don't bring facts into this thread. You will be flamed.

[SpiralHawk]

31. "Smirk." - xCommander AWOL (R)

[Uben]

2. If they knew a plane was to be hijacked.........

..and did nothing, that makes them complicit to capital murder. This brings the death penalty into play.

Paraguay, we will be arriving shortly!

[WonderGrunion]

7. I agree

Just like when a wheelman gets life in prison when a guard gets shot during a bank robbery. Just because you didn't plan on anyone getting killed doesn't mean you aren't responsible.

[Clio the Leo]

3. Cheney said last night on Hannity...

... "before 9/11, we didn't know much about Al- Qaeda."

Are you kidding me! They'd already attacked us ONCE at that point! In the SAME BUILDING!!!!! .... I realize that was under Clinton's watch, but for crying out loud! What did the Bush admin do for the first 9 months!? Figure out a way to get beer declared the National Beverage?!

Sheesh!

[WonderGrunion]

6. If you were to believe Cheney

(A bit of a stretch possibly) That would excuse Clinton completely of not acting against Bin Laden for the Cole attack.

[Laelth]

22. Clinton did act.

He launched missile attacks against bases in Afghanistan and Sudan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_missile_strikes_on_Afghanistan_and_Sudan_(August_1998)

:dem:

-Laelth

[populistdriven]

27. maybe because of the 2.5 terabytes of able danger information that was deleted?

[Stephanie]

5. I agree with you except for the motivation. They were hoping for their cassus belli.

They needed an excuse to execute their PNAC domino theory in the ME, something to get the ball rolling on plans that were already in motion. I do believe they had no idea how horrible the event would be. As Condi said, they thought the warning meant "conventional hijackings."

[CJCRANE]

11. Four planes:

Two hit the WTC providing "shock and awe".

One hits the Pentagon, the top military installation, providing an "act of war".

The fourth was headed for a political target. If it had reached it there would have had to a Unitary Government.

Seems to me this is exactly what the PNAC crew could imagine.

[WonderGrunion]

13. If you're saying

That PNAC lied or withheld information from Bush to get their "Pearl Harbor" event. I can believe that. But I earnestly believe that there were many people in the Bush administration, including Bush himself, that would never have allowed the hijackings to occur if they knew what the results were going to be.

[CJCRANE]

14. You've got a point there.

This is revealing another possible layer about how LIHOP could have been achieved.

[WonderGrunion]

15. More importantly

It's a LIHOP scenario that can be believed by a large portion of the population. Many people are loathe to consider large scale conspiracies. But given a small conspiracy working to mislead people in charge, like the Watergate break-in, and people can readily buy into it. Welcome to the sunshine LIHOP people.

[Laelth]

23. You're entitled to your belief.

But MIHOP makes a lot more sense to me.

:dem:

-Laelth

[mvd]

38. I don't know about MIHOP yet, but larger scale LIHOP makes sense to me

They knew about the hijackers. There's no way our defenses would be that weak. Cheney knew for sure, and Rumsfeld. Bush was likely kept somewhat in the dark.

[truedelphi]

24. Condi's release of the August memo was jsut a black flag headline

Again, far better for the Ameircian public to be thinking "LIHOP" than for the American public to be thinking "PNAC."

[Laura PourMeADrink]

16. WonderGrunion! K&R Your theory may be right,. There

HAS TO BEsome explanation for not acting (on the initial warnings of highjackings). I have said this a million times and I have never heard anyone ask this of them - something that bolsters your theory...

CONdi freely admitted that they were warned about highjackings. But that no one knew it would be planes crashing into buildings.
Fine - we'll give that one too you - no one could have predicted that. BUT - no one, to my knowledge, has ever followed up with her to ask, "What did you do to prevent the non-crashing-into-buildings highjackings?" Other Pilots that day complained that no one ever warning them of anything - and that if they had - they would have at least locked the cockpit." Let's face it, if those guys never got on a plane - or into a cockpit - there would have never been a 9-11.

[JamesA1102]

17. LIHOP????????? nt

[WonderGrunion]

18. Let It Happen On Purpose

It's the belief that Bush or people in his administration allowed 9/11 to happen for political gain.

[windbreeze]

19. IMO

That's exactly what happened. * was very unpopular at the time 9/11 happened, and he made political hay on the backs of NYCity, and those who died..Actually he manipulated, and took it to a fine art...The disaster served it's purpose, he made it justify his need to invade Iraq...by continually lying about who was responsible for the attack, in every speech he made after 9/11, and before March 2003...at one point, the media said about 70% of Americans believed Iraq attacked us(unbelievable I know)...Halliburton was awarded no bid contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq, AFTER the war in Feb.2003...BEFORE, (supposedly) any formal decision had been made to attack...(when actually * had made the decision back in 1999, that IF he became president, he was going to take out Saddam)

Jeb declared a state of emergency in Fla, 4 days before the attack, so why didn't they remove * from that school and escort him to a secure place, after the attack started?..(but I suppose that compares to him eating cake with J.McCain, while Katrina took out New Orleans, right?) the PNAC, published a paper in 1997, (and yes, it WAS published first in 1997), stating, that short of a "New Pearl Harbor", we would never update our military, Syria, Lybia, Iran, Iraq, N.Korea were targeted in that report...members of the PNAC included Jeb Bush, Kalizad, Cheney, William Kristol, Liddy, Wolfowitz, Pearl, Ashcroft, Dan Quail and on and on...

Scalia, one of the judges who helped make the decision about who won the election in Florida in 2000, has a son that was given a very lucrative position in a law firm in Florida..(funny how that works)...Ashcroft stopped flying in commercial airlines a week before 9/11...and I have also read that the Mayor of San Francisco was called and warned not to fly to DC on that date...and the latest findings say that nano thermite has been found in the ash from the buildings...(wonder where that came from?)

When Payne Stewart's plane came up missing in the air, they scrambled fighters to find him within minutes...yet on 9/11...NORAD was nowhere to be found???...How about the convenient cover of having exercises about planes flying into buildings to test emergency services in NYC and DC that morning?(yet C.Rice tried to convince us, that they never thought such a thing was possible..uh huh) and last but not least...WHY would BinLaden and his band of merry men, attack NYC, AND DC under the watch of a man they had been in bed with, business and otherwise, for literally decades????????While at the very same time, Senior Bush and Senior BinLadens were attending the annual Carlyle meeting together, at the Ritz Carlton in DC????....(seems in 1963, Senior was in Dallas too)Isn't it also amazing how an alphabet agency spirited over 100 members/associates of the BinLaden family out of the US...sometime between 9/12-9/14 when NO ONE ELSE WAS ALLOWED TO FLY?????(yes, they have admitted they rounded them up and removed them from this country)

Yes, I believe the *'s are that evil, and capable of just about anything you can imagine, and most you cannot....They have cost the American taxpayer BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of dollars
..(and none of the crooks have served one day in jail for it)...think BCCI in the 80's....think failed oil companies...think black ops...think alphabet agencies...think being involved in the outing of an undercover agent, the destruction of a valued asset, and death toll of her assets that resulted...Never underestimate this bunch...and what they are capable of....IF it benefits THEM, in ANY WAY...is all that is required to justify whatever actions they take...

[glitch]

21. Hijackings for ransom aren't "Pearl Harbor" type events. Just saying. nt

[NorthCarolina]

25. Hmmm, maybe the admission to MIHOP is just around the corner then n/t

[quakerboy]

28. "Bush is a douche, but" no but.

"Bush is a douche, but not a deliberately murderous douche"

I think Katrina demonstrated fully exactly how calous Bush was towards human life. The wars he started are yet more evidence. But there is no evidence that he was ever anything else or that 9/11 "changed" him. If you go back in time, we have him mocking people on death row and stealing land to build stadiums. The only difference I see is a matter of degree, of how much power he has. You might want to rethink this assertion/belief.

[uponit7771]

29. Letting It Happen is a prevailing pattern in the Bush admin, the let MANY things happen despite warn

...warnings and then sent in Halliburton et al to police them up.

I believe even if LIHOP comes out no one will be surprised, the Bush admin was inept to a high degree even if their weren't trying to be.

[indimuse]

30. well..

I smell Thermite!

[lunatica]

32. I disagree with you. Bush IS a murderous thug capable of LIHOP

He loved killing. He had more people executed in Texas during his governorship and he loved it. He pumped his fist in the air when he ordered Shock and Awe. He was like a teenager playing a violent video game.

My theory is that they thought it would be just one plane and that the damage would be far less than it was, but that it would be enough for them to go to war FOR OIL in the Middle East. Bush loved telling us he was a War President, and in the late 1990s he was interviewed and at that time he explained that his father lost the election to Clinton because he didn't finish the first war in Iraq and he said it was because the American people always rally around a war president.

So the neo-cons came in with the agenda they spelled out in PNAC which was the become the sole Superpower in the world with the military capability of preventing any other country of gaining any military advantage. Bush became their puppet because he was pliable and easily manipulated, but not ignorant of the plan.

The reason Bush sat reading My Pet Goat was because it never occurred to him that there was a video taking film of him that would go public. If not for that one fact, the video, we would never know what he did and didn't do. I believe he sat there because Andy Card just told him 'the attack is going as planned'

[Dinger]

33. I Don't Think It Was LIHOP

I think it was MIHOP.

[zulchzulu]

35. Andrew Card is a PNAC stooge... so it's no surprise

All we needed was a Pearl Harbor-type disaster to mobilize the American people to get us into a war... so said PNAC's strategy.

Card and the other PNAC stooges (most of the Bush administration cabinet) have blood on their hands and are indeed traitors worthy of treason.

[stevietheman]

37. This seems like the most plausible theory I've read. Good job! n/t

n/t