> I do not look forward to the day when our own brutality is visited upon us.
Many people around the world would say that one of those days was September 11, 2001.
Many people around the world would say that one of those days was September 11, 2001.
And on the following day, we'll bomb the everliving christ out of the people we think are responsible, and on some day hence, we will be bombed in response.
The wheel turns--might as well get into the drone and bomb business. :(
Just before people rewrite history, afganistan and iraq governments had nothing to do with 9/11.
Beating the USA over the head post-911 with the club of having assisted anti-Soviet fighters in the 1970s and 1980s makes as much sense as castigating Italy's WW1-era allies and people like Hemingway in the late 1930s for having come to Italy's aid twenty years earlier.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Bush-s-use-of-word-cru...
http://www.3news.co.nz/Govt-cant-rule-out-SAS-link-in-Afghan...
Harbouring criminals is a reason to declare war?
The argument remains the same, I drew a parallel with a current situation to highlight how ridiculous it was to blame the Taliban for 9/11 (as they had NOTHING to do with it). Just as Russia had nothing to do with Snowden (except that he's there).
Tin-foil hat aside, it strikes me as oddly coincidental that the folks who use drones these days to kill around the planet with impunity are the same folks who had several allegedly drone controlled airliners carry out an attack, garnering public support for several illegal wars.
Just saying, it's all mightily convenient. As ever.
As to foreign bombers... So? Most Americans agree drone strikes are a good thing, so surely they'd still be a good thing when they start happening on US soil?
If you don't, then I applaud your critical thinking.
I don't think a single word that comes out of the US (and UK) gov't is truthful. Why would they be truthful about 9/11?
Means, motive, and opportunity: Who'd consider 3000 dead Americans a reasonable price to pay for carte blanche to make a pushbutton military coup possible in this country?
The US already controls, coerces, or mutually cooperates with a large number of other sovereign states (as we've seen with this whole Snowden airspace thing, or the global surveillance networks, et c).
Such an action would place a person or group that was able to exert leverage over the majority of US persons high in the running for "able to control the majority of humans on Earth".
Not a bad prize, that.
What an utterly ridiculous statement.
The entire premise of this article is one of the oldest motives for violence in the history of the human race.
Or did you somehow think this was the first middle eastern child killed by America?
Analogy: a wasps best appears on your porch. Occasionally, you get stung.
Do you a) put up with being stung once in a while or b) whack the ever living shit out of the nest with a stick, knowing retaliation is the likely outcome, and wait to see what happens?
In spite of what the US media liked to portray, OBL was an intelligent man, well versed in both war and politics.
So no, there is no motive, unless you're suggesting that OBL's goal was to get Afghanistan and Iraq invaded, and millions of Arabs killed?
"[It is] easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda, in order to make the generals race there and cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses ... This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat." - OBL, 2004
So yes, it's very fair to suggest that his goal was to get Afganistan and Iraq invaded given that his formative years were spent, in his mind, bringing down the Soviet Union by provoking them into a protracted and costly battle in Afganistan. Al Queda is responsible for killing thousands of Arabs directly. It's no stretch to think that he didn't mind seeing a few million killed, like all sorts of utopian-totalitarian ideologues who preceded him, in the cause of bringing about 1000 years of utopia on earth through the establishment of a new Caliphate.
OBL was an intelligent man, like Hitler or Stalin were intelligent men. Ruthless, but almost impossibly warped in his views on why the present he lived in didn't fit his own fantasy.
"It is enough to know that the economy of all Arab countries is weaker than the economy of one country that had once been part of our world when we used to truly adhere to Islam. That country is the lost Al Andalus... No Muslim territory should ever become non-Muslim...Let the whole world know that we shall never accept the tragedy of Andalusia." - OBL, 2004
There's your motive if you're looking for one. Spain defeated the Muslim invaders who had conquered part of it 500 years ago and since it's now richer than the whole Muslim world put together it proves that... wait... what?
Again, why break the habit of a lifetime?
"Live and let live" is a concept which no longer seems to be part of popular cognition.
And the analogy still holds.
It's remarkable that this interview with Richard Clarke only has 53,000 hits- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl6w1YaZdf8
It's sad that people just ignored the chief of counter terrorism on 9/11 stating that CIA knew terrorists were in the US planning an attack and purposely withheld it from the White House in an effort to develop sources. Not to mention ignoring the involvement of Saudi Arabia.
- Lots of CIA agents who have testified that they knew about the hijackers but were prevented from stopping them, e.g.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/13/1016585/-Frontline-...
- High level FBI agents who have testified they would have stopped the attacks, but were purposely kept in the dark.
- The fact that on the morning of 9/11 the guy who wired 100k to Muhammed Atta to pay for the hijackings was having breakfast with the two guys who ran the official investigation into the attacks.
All this stuff about whether it was or wasn't a controlled demolition is just a red herring.
Then why wasn't he placed on trial for this crime?
He's still sitting in Guantánamo, supposedly "awaiting trial".
(I don't even speculate "who did what, exactly" -- but that this thing is fishy as fuck, and has been from day one, is undeniable. You can cover your ears and scream tinfoil all you want, but that doesn't answer the gaping questions. Apply Occam's razor, how about that? The possibility that the laws of physics were suspended that day is very slim, even more slim than aliens using lizards to convince mice to hypnotize humans to do it. Logic!)
The physics of a controlled demolition is fairly simple.
Take out or weaken one a few pillars and the weight of the building will do the rest.
Why would it not possible for a fire and/or an explosion to do exactly the same thing?
Nothing.
Lets assume it was a controlled demolition.
Now answer these obvious questions that this would raise.
Did all the people in the building not see the dynamite strapped to the pillars?
Did they not see the 100s of meters of wires?
When did the guys that wired the build do the wiring?
Was it during working hours or after hours?
How come no camera, person or security guard managed to see them?
Because it would very likely tip over, or at least veer to one direction, instead of folding neatly into itself.
Did all the people in the building not see the dynamite strapped to the pillars?
What makes you assume dynamite?
Did they not see the 100s of meters of wires?
What makes you assume wires?
When did the guys that wired the build do the wiring?
Who knows? When did the dude who sucked at flying sports planes learn to fly a boeing so well? How did a passport of one of the attackers allegedly get found on the scene? If you want a conspiracy theory, try a bunch of guys taking down THREE high rises with TWO airplanes and a bunch of box cutters. Hah.
Was it during working hours or after hours?
How is that relevant?
How come no camera, person or security guard managed to see them?
Are you say it's not possible to deposit bags of C4 (etc.) with remote triggers in the right spots even just 10 minutes before impact, and safely get out? Or, to be alone in a room just enough to hide it in the ceiling or walls or wherever? I'm not saying it's easy, but it seems easier than even just flying a boeing so well without practical experience, or such a tall skyscraper folding neatly just by pure luck, and both of that happening twice on one day.
I'm adamant that we're being lied to about things related to these attacks, but making things up to fill the vacuum of information is behavior that belongs back in the middle ages.
I'm glad you're starting to get a handle on this thing called Physics.
Parts of the official story are perhaps hard to believe or lack credibility. But it was not an ordinary event, it was an extraordinary one meaning that we'll have a lot of unanswered questions and very little precedent. In the absence of certainty we fall back on our default positions. Some people could never imagine a bunch of foreigners hate the US enough and have the skills and ingenuity to pull something like this off. Only we have agency, others do not. Some people blame everything bad that happens on their government. In fact for some it's more palatable in a way to think that your government did it.
Anyway, we know you know the truth - but can you please keep your opinions to yourself, it only serves to derail the actual discussion at hand; but who knows, maybe that's your intention.
The official story is an obvious lie.
Two wars in fact.
> It's enough to know that the government and the media lied their asses off
Life doesn't offer up points for being thoughtful and wise after the event.
The USA invaded IRAQ looking for WMD and trying to blaming Saddam Hussein for 9/11.
Even before the war started it was a well-known fact there were no WMDs and Saddam Hussein had no links to 9/11 and anyone who thought about this rationally knew an invasion was not a good idea.
But as you said the government and the media lied their asses off and the unwashed masses where taken in hook line and sinker.
The majority of the citizens of USA, UK, Australia and Spain all supported the plan to invade IRAQ.
Move on a decade and those same citizens now think it was a big mistake.
Well it too late. You can't put the genie back into the bottle.
Through their collective stupidity, the citizens of the USA, UK, Australia and Spain will be paying for that big mistake for years to come.
What's unfortunate the ripple effect of that big mistake affects us all.
Fires have never before or since destroyed a steel skyscraper.
The team that investigated the collapse were kept away from the crime scene.
By the time they published their inconclusive report in May, 2002, the evidence had been destroyed.
Why did the government rapidly recycle the steel from the largest and most mysterious engineering failure in world histor? [..] ?
Unless you replicate all the aspects of the event that statement is meaningless.
What other steel building has been hit by a 300 tonne aircraft, fully loaded with jet fuel and flying at full speed?
It is actually pretty easy to understand why these steel buildings fell.
All it takes is stock standard structural engineering modelling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FfAYIaH-wE
Now this modelling involves a high level of maths, but we do know the modelling is correct.
Why?
Because that exact structural engineering modelling is used to put up these massive sky scrappers.
I take it you do you not accept the maths?
This is about WTC 7.
To replicate the event you're describing, we need to have a multi-million tonne building, close to our steel building and we need to make that first building collapse.
Naturally flying a plane into the first building won't make if fall, so we'll need a few hundred kilos of strategically placed C4 in that building to bring it down.
To hide that C4 explosion we'll use the plane flying into the building as a diversion but at least we're guaranteed to bring down that first building.
Now we have a collapsing multi-million tonne building close to the steel building we are trying to bring down and that event will be creating millions of tons of flying debris.
Naturally, that amount of flying debris won't be enough to collapse the target building, but luckily we also places some C4 in a second building that is also close by.
Once again we are going to need a second plane to hide the C4 explosion in that second building, but that should be easy enough to arrange.
Now we've managed to bring down two massive multi-million tonne buildings and created flying debris with the equivalent energy of thousands of tons of C4 but we always knew that wouldn't be enough energy to bring down our target building.
Luckily, while laying the C4 charges on the other two buildings, we also manage to plant a few hundred kilos of C4 in the third building.
Now to finish the job, all we have to do is detonate those last few kilos of C4 and no one will be the wiser.
What a simple plan. It's fool proof and using the planes to cover up the C4 explosions is a stroke of genius.
The only problem we face is this last explosion makes the building collapse like a demolition.
We should have thought about that!!!
1) bother with the 3rd building (are not the first two enough? The third didn't even get much publicity, it surely did little to rally public support)
2) wait so long after the collapse of the first to blow the 3rd (why wait? Surely one of the conspirators should have pointed out that a wait would only serve to make people suspicious. take it down seconds after one next to it falls and everything will look much more "natural")
3) bother with C4 at all (aren't planes slamming into buildings horrific enough? Controlled detonation of them afterwards adds very little but VASTLY increases the chances of something going wrong or the conspiracy being uncovered).
Conspiracy theorists almost never put themselves in the minds of the alleged conspirators. They latch onto things that are odd or unusual but the explanations they offer never actually reduce the oddness. WTC7 falling a few hours later is odd... it being blown up deliberately a few hours later is even more odd.
I particularly like the one about how the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile.
Once again assuming this is true, any minimal amount of analysis raises a whole bunch of questions.
For example:
1) Flight 77 took off, so if it didn't hit the Pentagon where did it go? How did it just disappear?
2) The control tower voice and radar details match with the Flight 77 flight data recorder and they show the plane hitting the Pentagon.
Does that mean the control tower was in on the plot? Did the Pentagon also fudge the radar recordings?
3) Wouldn't the cruise missile also have shown up on the radar recording? Did the Pentagon remove it from the radar recordings?
4) Where was that missile launched from? Didn't anyone notice that launch? How did they keep the launch quite?
5) Wouldn’t someone, somewhere in the US Armed Forces be missing one cruise missile from their armaments inventory? Has no bean counter noticed that unaccounted missile?
And as always the conspiracy theorists answer to these types of question is the government did it but cover it up.
A video showing how the structural integrity of a building is severely compromised and it doesn't explain why the building collapsed?
Seems like a fairly myopic view to me.
I look at that video and to me it highlights the amazingly good structural engineering used in the design of the building.
For it to have taken such a massive hit and still manage to stay standing for as long as it did is a credit to the designers.
If only they had done a better job spacing the emergency exits many lives would have been saved.
Well... ok, let's assume it is.
> If you were told it's something different you wouldn't believe it.
Sure I would. It could be an apple wrapped in an orange shell. It could be a hologram. It could be a picture of an orange with a small kitten hidden behind it. It could, indeed, even be a chroma-shifted live-view of earth from space.
> What does it look like to you?
Looks like all the supports gave out at pretty much the same time. Like if there was a large fire and badly maintained fireproofing on them. Or maybe a gang of small kittens chewed them off. You have to admit it looks precisely like it would if you had a thousand kittens scratching at the supports simultaneously (assuming robot kittens, of course).
Trouble is, too many of these conspiracy theories turn out to be true. Just cast your mind back to the reactions of politicians when the rendition allegations first surfaced. Oh how they laughed and patronised. How they insulted and mocked. And then these same shameless filthy cowardly politicians came back to then justify their lies.
As for 9/11, I'm not sure any one knows the whole truth yet. Maybe we do, maybe those same politicians are telling the truth, but equally they themselves give us enough reason to doubt their word.
[1] You may notice that "intercepting communications with the express purpose of spying on people" is the charter of the NSA and of analogous agencies everywhere in the world.
You're more than welcome to take the word of a known dishonest agent. I prefer using my own common sense to discern events.
I'd suggest Dissident, but that's just me.
You forgot to mention the Arizona farm where Jim Morrison and JFK are living together.
Your debating skills suck. If you wish to be taken seriously, don't engage in namecalling and don't conflate issues by adding Bigfoot poison to the mix. It wrecks your cred.
"Debating" 9/11 truthers is a form of reasoning with people who have none.
My point is that diminishing the credibility of the US government doesn't enhance the credibility of 9/11 truthers. Have you made a point yet?
You're more than welcome to believe the Official Fables of the 9/11 Myth Cycle. Knock yourself out.
Who is maintaining that?
Or, y'know, perhaps shock horror scandal probe your government has lied to you! Nooooo.
NOTE: i'm supressing a serious rant along your vector.