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NSA Had Domestic Call Monitoring Before 9/11?
MarkusQ writes "Bloomberg is reporting that, according to documents filed in the breach of privacy suit on behalf of Verizon and BellSouth, the NSA asked AT&T to set up its domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Could it be that they were intending to monitor domestic calls (and internet traffic) all along, and the 'Global War on Terror' was just a convenient excuse when they got caught?" From the article: "...an unnamed former employee of the AT&T unit provided them with evidence that the NSA approached the carrier with the proposed plan. Afran said he has seen the worker's log book and independently confirmed the source's participation in the project. He declined to identify the employee."
James Bamford in his book Body of Secrets and in his numerous interviews with the press defended the NSA and said they really did change their ways after the scandals of the 1970s (telegram interception). Could it be that there never was a period of "gentlemanly spying" between then and September 11?
So you tell me that it wasn't about the terrorists? I can't believe it.
"Could it be that they were intending to monitor domestic calls (and internet traffic) all along, and the 'Global War on Terror' was just a convenient excuse when they got caught?"
Of course the so-called "War on Terror" is just an excuse! Before the illegal
invasion of Iraq, no terrorist groups were based there, but look now! This
was widely expected to happen. So the current Administration has increased, not
reduced, the risk of Americans to be victims of terrorists.
Hmmm. I wonder how many ACs we'll get commenting on this topic. I hope you all bounced through a couple of proxies first!
I'm also curious if the mainstream news media will pick this article and run with it. If for no other reason, I want to see the Daily Show and Colbert's take on it.
The word of the day? Pre-emptive strike.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Don't tell me you are surprised by this... I am not.
After all Echelon has been around much longer so this was only to be expected to happen.
The scary thing however is that it took so long to get out. Makes you wonder what else they have in hiding...
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" - Carl Sagan
Alright so besides the point that call monitoring is unconstitutional, if they had it 7 months before 9/11, then why did 9/11 still happen?
Idiot or not, you're still an idiot.
So Bush takes office, the NSA starts wiretapping everybody? I bet the MIHOP nuts are going to make a mountian out of this fairly large hill.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Before the illegal invasion of Iraq
Illegal according to what law? You know that when they are attacking other countries they are not required to obey the laws in that country.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
I can see their argument now.
"See the NSA already started to take the civil liberties away and they wanted more so they planned out 9/11."
MIHOP == Made IT Happen On Purpose.
As if, a president so incompentent as to do nothing when the security agencies started seeing red isn't enough. He has to part of a criminal cabal to do it their damned selves.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Maybe it's just me here but in every paranoid guy's head this is going to come across as "They knew, they just let it happen". I hate to buy into conspiracy theories and I really don't believe any of the 9/11 ones. But two and two wasn't making four yesterday and now it seems closer to six at least in my head.
I just hope I get to live untill I'm 80 with my mind still intact, then I can see all the evidence from this bullshit as stuff is released in Britian and maybe even see some things from the US if a government with some balls and not just childish wargames in mind comes into power.
I like muppets.
I have NO doubt that our government was just doing the prudent thing. 9/11 is proof that it was necessary. You guys are just too cynical.
It could be said that the Bush Administration had this planned as a part of 9/11....
Why the .... state the date as seven months before 11th of september 2001? It would be so much simpler and easier to understand if you just say since 11th of february 2001. Now if I want to know how long time before or after some arbitrary date it is, I can compute that myself. For example it could as well have been stated as sixteen months and four days after 7th of october 1999, but I can do that computation myself if I want to.
or looking at it a different way, it shows how worthless information gathered this way can be.
The dogs were carefully watching the henhouse but the weasels still got in. So what good are they?
I would only hope the government is trying to see who the bad guys are calling.
Evidently, every law abiding citizen in the United States.
May the Maths Be with you!
...Welcome to the world of ECHELON, the world-wide surveillance system.
The EU recommends European citizens use cryptography in all communications to protect them from commercial theft and invasion of privacy, of which ECHELON is suspected of doing. But this advice really applies to everyone, as UK intercepts communications on behalf of the US, and visa versa, to avoid the constitutionally illegal act of spying on ones own citizens, although this in itself has recently emerged as a bit of a legal grey-area.
FBI tried to install their carnivore boxes months before 9/11. After the attack the providers didn't question this anymore - but some agreed even before 9/11.
President Bush's major legal defense for the NSA call database was that the resolution passed by Congress on September 14, 2001 authorizing military force against those that caused 9/11 and organizations that aided those that caused 9/11 was a declaration of war. When the Democrats voted for that resolution, and then the resolution to go to war with Iraq, both times they enacted the President's war powers embedded by statute in FISA.
Check FISA at Cornell University and you see statutes giving the President to use pen registers and trap and trace devices. If you didn't know, those things constitute the technology used to record numbers a phone has been dialing, and numbers that have called a phone. They also give the President the power to search and seize without a warrant and to use electronic surveillance without a warrant. Here is the exact statute. There are three identical sections with "electronic surveillance," "pen register or trap and trace device," and "search and seizure" being replaced by the other in each one.
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize the use of a pen register or trap and trace device without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed 15 calendar days following a declaration of war by Congress.
Even then, the statute may be interpreted many ways. "for a period not to exceed 15 calendar days" could mean that the authorization must be repeated every 15 days, that individual authorizations may last no longer than 15 days, that the power lasts 15 days once the President has used it, that the power may only be used for 15 days after Congress has declared war, or any number of interpretations, many more plausible than others.
It depends on to what extent your judicial interpretation philosophy incorporates "originalism," thinking about what Congress intended, "starre decisis," looking at prior court decisions, and "strict constructionism," which limits judicial interpretation to the meanings of the actual words and phrases used in law, and not on other sources or inferences.
There was a huge debate over whether the authorizations of military force constituted declarations of war for the reasons given above. The Democrats, they say, did not mean to give the President war powers and thought that the authorizations did not constitute declarations of war because they had been used as a means of allowing deployment of armed forces without giving the president war powers since at least the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed an "escalation of military forces" in the Vietnam War. The Republicans mock them for this, and the debate was even brought up in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld if you watch the oral arguements on C-SPAN like I did.
For all this, how much has this of President Bush's arguements been brought up in the mainstream media? I have seen 2 paragraphs in an Associated Press article and nothing more. Regardless of the debate being all worthless now that he is discovered perhaps to have begun the program before 9/11, the debate is something I feel needs to be known. Just don't berate the Democrats for wanting to debate whether the Iraq War's a war. If the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution had been a declaration of war giving Richard Nixon wiretapping powers, the Supreme Court would not have ruled against him in East District of Michigan v. Nixon.
A statute in FISA does not make a difference in constitutional law. President Bush wants the statutes to make legal what he does with no regard to the Constitution, but when statutes prohibit his actions, he can cite constitutional authority. If it's legally a war, he'd say it's the first case, and if it's not he'd say it's the other.
This apparent legal paradox has arisen in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld---if he's a POW he's under the Geneva Convention, and if not he's a criminal entitled to a trial. The Bush administration argues he's not a POW because he was not fighting for an organized g
I like how people keep saying "in the months before 9/11". As if these programs were instituted by der furher the day he was inaugurated. The truth is that these programs have been going on for years but none of you cared.
1. Carnivore first hit slashdot during the Clinton Administration. The oldest reference I found on slashdot is about Earthlink refusing to install it in 2000 - which means it had been in development for several years before that.
2. The legendary "Echelon" - the NSA program for monitoring all telecom traffic has been bandied about for many years - Slashdot posted several articles about it in May of 1999 but the news about it first broke in 1998. The program itself is probably 50 years old.
Clear, Dark Skies
The operation was legal? The operation was planned because its not to much of a stretch from other operations from the last 30 years?
Instead of gasping about how they *planned to do this horrible thing* even *before* 9/11 like a little school girl you should go out and work on the political side that made this even possible. Instead of railing against Bush for using the tools at his disposal you should work on modifying those tools.
Evidence has to be weighed in context. For example, having a book on bomb making is very weak evidence of having terrorist intent. There are many more people in the world with a fascination with making things go boom than there are people with a fascination with making people go boom. However if there are extremist political tracts and plans for local infrastructure like dams or bridges, it becomes a matter of concern even though any one of these in isolation is harmless.
In a sense, there is no such thing as a strong piece of evidence. Only a strong pattern of evidence. It bugs me when people talk about "confirmation bias" as if it is some kind of logical fallacy. It's not. At least in part it is not: it's the inevitable consequence of living in a world of uncertainty and contradictory evidence.
The thing about the MIHOP people is that they start with the strong belief that Bush is evil. Given that, it's easy to believe he knew about 9/11 but let it happen so that he could use it as an excuse for all the evil things he wanted to do. Things that would strike the neutral observer as ordinary incompetence become part of a sinister plan. The same thing happened a few years ago with the Republicans who were sure that Clinton arranged murders and other outrageous pieces of skullduggery.
The thing is, if this particular piece of information is confirmed, it will actually provide strong support one of the MIHOP standpoints central assumptions: the Bush Administration needed an excuse to justify things it wanted to do. Maybe not enough for the mythical unbiased observer to buy the whole MIHOP package, but enough to buy several signigifant pieces of it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Mr. Speaker, I rise because information has come to my attention over the past several months that is very disturbing. I have learned that, in fact, one of our Federal agencies had, in fact, identified the major New York cell of Mohamed Atta prior to 9/11; and I have learned, Mr. Speaker, that in September of 2000, that Federal agency actually was prepared to bring the FBI in and prepared to work with the FBI to take down the cell that Mohamed Atta was involved in New York City, along with two of the other terrorists. I have also learned, Mr. Speaker, that when that recommendation was discussed within that Federal agency, the lawyers in the administration at that time said, you cannot pursue contact with the FBI against that cell. Mohamed Atta is in the U.S. on a green card, and we are fearful of the fallout from the Waco incident. So we did not allow that Federal agency to proceed.
Rep. Weldon later reiterated these concerns during a news conferences on February 14, 2006. He stated that Able Danger identified Mohamed Atta 13 separate times prior to 9/11 and that the unit also identified a potential problem in Yemen two weeks prior to the attack on the USS Cole in October, 2000. The Pentagon released a statement in response to Rep. Weldon, stating they wished to address these issues during a congressional hearing before the House Armed Services Committee scheduled for Wednesday, February 15, 2006.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Danger
I think we had a smallish inkling that something was going to happen. I can't be sure how much of this was "hey if there's an attack we get more power" and how much was "Don't want a lawsuit, so CYA". Both seem equally plausible to me.
I hope you do feel safe while the last of your freedoms is taken from you. Freedom of speach this is. The real reason for such monitoring is to supress political dissent. You see a monitored populace is a complient one.
davecb5620@gmail.com
And yes, I would have done the same with something like by all accounts the president is a dictator.
They still make wonderful companion animals, or were you referring to the call monitoring?
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
No, he's not.
Neither is ignorance nor selective recall.
If you don't understand why something has happened how can you correct it?
Clear, Dark Skies
I take it you just arrived here from another planet. Of course its an excuse.. Its what governments do by nature.
Welcome to Earth, i hope you enjoy your stay.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Do you remember Admiral Poindexter's Total Information Awareness proposal that came out shortly after 9/11? A gigantic database that aggregated all available electronic information on US citizens -- financial and credit card records, grocery store shopper cards, movie rentals, library books, maybe even medical records? And how people raised such a stink that congress cut off funding for it?
Well, guess what. It's still up and running.. It simply moved over to the pentagon, that's all.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
ok, so since that was entirely domestic this program wouldn't have helped there, but you get the point).
/. I'm too lazy to RTFA, but the headline says "domestic call monitoring". Why would you then conclude that it would be ineffective against domestic terrorism but effective against international terrorism?
Well, since this is
Anyway, 'terrorism' (both domestic and Islamic) weren't a significant problem before 9-11 and they aren't a significant problem today, despite what the 6 o'clock news wants you to believe. Murder takes the lives of many more people (as in several orders of magnitude) per year. Suicide takes 4x more than murder, and car accidents take over 5x more. Heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and smoking-related respitory diseases together claim over 200x the lives that murder claims (which is itself claims several orders of magnitude more lives than terrorism.)
In terms of human lives, terrorism in America isn't even a blip on the radar. It certainly doesn't justify the expenditure of trillions of dollars on wars and "Homeland Security", nor does it justify the wholesale slaughter of our freedoms and even if it did a domestic call tracking program would do jack shit. Despite what the pundits want you to believe, there is no vast centralized network of terrorists. They have no need to keep in constant contact with each other over long distances, and ruthlessly and indiscriminately monitoring law-abiding American citizens (incidentally, none of the 9-11 terrorists were American citizens) will give us nothing but another step towards a police state.
Fascinating. You have a blanket label for anyone who thinks Bush is evil. I don't think "purpose" has any bearing on the definition of evil. Incompetence raised to a high enough level is, in many ways, indistinguishable from deliberate intent. You don't have to be Darth Vader to personify evil. The most evil people I know tend to be ideologues who feel their dogma is more important than the means to institutionalize it. They are both zealous and incompetent leading to evil in deed if not in character. At a certain point it's hard to tell the difference. Evil is as evil does, to paraphrase an old truism. A little evil mixed with a lot of incompetence, shaken, not stirred, makes a disastrous cocktail regardless of intent.
But it's convenient to have a one-dimensional bucket to dump anyone disagreeing. A label and put down all rolled into one. Like labeling any exit strategy for Iraq as "cut and run" when most people are smart enough to realize no one is really suggesting that.
If Bush supporters represent the brightest and best this country has to offer, or even the biggest fraction of the whole, we're really fucked.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
They already knew Iraq had sarin and other ancient pre-1991 WMD's because the US gave Saddam these weapons. A certain photograph of Rumsfeld and Saddam shaking hands comes to mind. There was a concerted effort a couple of weeks ago by Republicans in Congress to promote these ancient and non-functional weapons as "OMG the WMD's! Take that liberals!!"
It is an important but often overlooked fact that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were planned before 9/11.
s p?recno=10ctg=policy
6 6.stm
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http://www.indiareacts.com/archivefeatures/nat2.a
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/15503
http://www.sundayherald.com/39221
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
That would have been somewhere around February, 2001. What else was going on around that time?
I'm trying to think really hard about this. Early 2001... what important development took place in early 2001?
Gosh, I'm at a loss here. Maybe someone else can help out.
You could actually have your cake then eat it. The maxim is You can't eat your cake and have it too because you can't have your cake after it's been eaten.
It certainly is not constitutional by "all accounts", unless you dismiss contradictory accounts out of hand, or have very peculiar ideas about what "constitutional" means.
Advovates of expanded executive power like to talk about the President as "Commander in Chief", as if this were somehow a superior and broader function than the Presidency; and they like to talk about the President's "inherent powers". Some countries do have a system in which they elect dictators with practically unlimited powers, but not us.
The president's "inherent" powers are very few. It's a queer term in any case; no president I can think of ever used it before the present one, although Nixon did unsuccessfullly use the grounds of "Executive Privilege" to try to hide evidence of his wrongdoing in the Watergate affair. It would be more correct to describe most of the president's powers, not as "inherent" but "contingent". "Contingent Power" seems like a contradition in terms to some, but even the classic paradigm of power invested in the president can be seen as contingent: the power to take extraordinary actions while defending the country against invasion.
For example, the executive branch might comandeer property in the heat of battle. But it cannot raise taxes to support the defense. In both cases we're talking about siezing private property; the difference is that it's a practical impossibilty to vote on what goes on in battle, but a system of taxation necessarily inolves so much coordination that clearly Congress can be consulted.
And that's the rub. It's possible for the same action (siezing property in our example) to be constiutional or unconstitutional depending on specific circumstances. It also follows that by changing circumstances, we can change the scope of the president's "inherent" powers.
And thus, we have FISA.
Many of the things convered by FISA would fall into what we'd think of the president's "inherent" powers of defense. However, FISA does two things. First, it regulates the scope and manner in which the President exercises those powers. The president is not above the law; in the heat of battle he may stretch it or even break it with some excuse, but he certainly has no power to allocate funds to a program which flies in the face of it. Secondly, it provides mechanisms of accountability which are practical for the President to use in cases where it was impractical before. And this bears on the theory of "inherent powers". In cases where the President once could simply decide to intercept a private person's communications, he must now get a FISA warrant. The existence of the FISA mechanism, particularly the ability to get retroactive warrants, means it's no longer enough to brief congress in the time and manner you see fit. Nor is it in the power of the Congressional leadership to bless this as "legal" without changing the law.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
espo
Fascinating. You have a blanket label for anyone who thinks Bush is evil.
Well, I think Bush is evil. I just don't think it should cloud my thinking.
I think there is abundant evidence that the Bush administration is trying to shift power away from the Congress and the people to the executive branch. In particular, the kind of power represented by knowledge. If allowed to continue unchecked, then they will have an unprecedented knowledge about private indviduals in their hands, while the people have less knowledge of what the executive branch is doing and how than they've had in a generation, in some ways ever.
Under the circumstances, 9/11 was certainly a godsend for them. But plotting it would be risky indeed. Treason is a capital offense after all. All it would take is one person in the great chain of deceit to go public, and the house of cards falls.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The President, The Vice President, and their legal advisors Yoo and Addingtion do not place the office of the Presidency above the law. What they argue is that the law is below the office of the Presidency.
Right after 9/11, I distinctly remember some lowly government official talking about them going through the recordings of cell phone conversations from flight 93. There was a lot of media and government confusion at the time and the media would talk to any government official they could and the feds hadn't quite gotten their lines of communication straight. I immediatly remember thinking "They've been recording cell phone conversations?!?!?!?" I was incredibly shocked to hear that, but I can't for the life of me remember what news show it was.
This happened within a few days after 9/11 and I wish I could remember the program, because at the time it seemed to be an incredible statement.
Does anyone know what program / source I'm talking about? Surely such a damning piece of evidence must have been noticed by someone other than me. I've always been mad at myself for not making note of the source when I heard it.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
So Bush takes office, the NSA starts wiretapping everybody?
Is there any evidence from TFA that the Bush Administration ordered the NSA to do this?
Such evidence may appear in the future, but as of now, I don't think we can honestly assert that Bush ordered the NSA to monitor all domestic traffic.
Why? "seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001" is Feburary 2001, when Bush had only been in office 1 month. The timeline seems too compressed, since, absent war, these kinds of policy decisions can take a long time to formulate. Thus, if any administration did prompt this, it would have been Clinton.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
And the answer is "no". Any system will have "false positives", "false negatives", "true positives" and "true negatives".
The "false negatives" mean you miss a plot. As long as the false negative rate is above a certain percentage of the actual plots, it will work.
More problematic is the "false positive" rate. This is when a non-plot is identified as a plot. Innocent people are investigated. This takes time / money / effort.
Given that there is an upper limit on the time / money / effort available, the government will waste resources chasing false leads.
People who do not understand that will look at the extreme rarity of "terrorist attacks" in the US (try to name 5 attacks in the US in the last 100 years without using Google) and conclude that the time / money / effort spent was successful.
However, looking at the budget, you will see that our government is BORROWING the money.
We are going bankrupt in an attempt to chase down a threat that kills fewer people every year than car accidents.
And we are surrending the Rights that our forefathers were willing to give THEIR lives for.
The naturally occuring "false positives" would eat up the budget for the program (under any sane spending plan).
With almost 300 million people
1% false positives mean 3 million people investigated (and the people they know)
0.1% means 300,000 people investigated (and the people they know).
0.01% means 30,000 people investigated (and the people they know).
Now, even if you limit each investigation to just that person and the 5 closest people to him/her
Spying does not work randomly.
...to let things happen. Prosecutors present a scenario to the jury when a case is tried in court. This scenario may or may not be 100% accurate, but it is usually the best explanation thta "fits the facts" of the case at hand. The charges that they present against the defendant describe the crimes comitted in the scenario they are presenting to the jury. Seldom does a conspiracy come before a jury and for good reason. If we examine the facts surrounding the Bush Administration and it's interaction with the events of 9-11, I do not see a conspiracy -and I feel that this is probably the most corrupt administration since J. Q. Adams. The scenarion I'd be pr3esenting to a jury is "dereliction of duty" with the intent to further it's own power in the aftermath of an attack on American soil by Islamic terrorists. In my mind, the scenario plays out somewhat along the lines of a few select people within the administration looking at the evidence (before the attacks) dismissing it as inconclusive, and secretly, among themselves, thinking that "this COULD play into our hands." I suspect that, even knowing that something might be about to happen, the administration was as shocked a the rest of America on that September morning, but that the ball had been set in motion: all that they could do was to take advantage of the attack as they had already planned. They may have counted on -at most- a few hundred dead IF the attack were for real, but the reality of 9-11 was far worse than they had considered. The evidence is there: pre-attack intelligence that was dismissed far too speedily, Bush's own reaction at the school that morning, and the way they wandered the counrty aimlessly, the contingency plans that were already in place, the seemingly deliberate lack of action on their part.... Does the fact that I consider this to be a poissibility make me a conspiracy theorist? I don't see a conspiracy, but I do see a plausible case of criminal negligence and think that it should be investigated. The current evidence that the Administration was making a power grab before 9-11 only bolsters the case that they may have comitted a crime as desribed...
Rather, it is about two types of intel: that which helps in stealing elections, and business intel. All this infinite talk of incompetence of the Bushies seems to ignore all the money that has been made ($50 billion in war profiteering and another estimated $50 billion or so in humanitarian disaster profiteering and graft and fraud regarding "homeland security" dating back to the profit from the destruction of the WTC).
So they had monitoring before 9/11, too? Wow it was really effective. Let's put some more time and energy into wiretapping and monitoring of the American people because it's provent to be so effective up to this point. Not to mention 100% legal.
If Bush would be convicted as a war criminal by hague, he would avoid traveling to foreign countries after his presidency would be over and it would probably affect the future elections in America.
The real question would be that which effect would be bigger, democrats saying fuck you to hague, or republicans turning away from the war criminals and their party.
©God
Kofi Annan ... In some parts of the world, leaders lead from a position of moral authority
And it's exactly Kofi Annan's willingness to treat despots and terrorists with the same deference that he reserves for the elected governments of democracies that strips him of any moral authority. It's his completely luke-warm, moreally rudderless handling of stunning UN-facilitated corruption in things like the Iraq oil-for-food program that indicate what a moral relativist he is. It's not "moral authority," it's classic, ineffectual political correctness writ larger than any warm-and-fuzzy campus activist could ever hope.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yes, thank God that Iraq weren't interested in acquiring nuclear (nu-lick-le-ar) power when the Reagan(?) administration tried to push it on them.
The meetings from that period have a young-looking Donald Rumsfeld who I believe was an aide in the Reagan government. How attitudes can change.
There's obviously plenty of documentation on this, and some interesting memoirs from an old, wise (and very left-wing) politician called Tony Benn in the UK, who was a cabinet member at the time, and as such had pretty high-level access.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
The only form of life on this planet more useless than the government worker is the the corrupt corporate worker - and the only form of life more useless than that - is the Federal Reserve Bank worker.....
Yes, that's true.
I remember around June or July of 2002, reading some comments that Secretary Rumsfeld made about Iraq. At the time Iraq was not on the post 9/11 radar screen at all. It was all about Afghanistan. I forget what the remarks were exactly, but they weren't front page stuff. I do remember my reaction to them: "My God, they're floating a trial balloon on an invasion of Iraq".
Shortly thereafter, Iraq was moved front and center. I was opposed to it from the start, because I was convinced it was all malarkey. You don't float trial baloons in a desperate military struggle for survival. When asked whether a country is involved in the worst terrorist attack on your soil ever, you don't say coy things like "I wouldn't put it past them." If you have evidence, you act, if you don't have evidence, you focus elsewhere.
Afghanistan is a different story. We should have had invasion plans on the boards, because we knew Al Qaeda was attempting major terror strikes on the US mainland. They'd already attempted the WTC and been foiled once. Arguably an Iraq invasion should have been planned too, but more on the general principle that we were already militariliy engaged there and circumstances might warrant. However, it's very clear that Afghanistan was a sideshow for this administration, and Iraq was the true prize. Geopolitically Iraq is much more of a linchpin state, situated in the nexus of the Arab Sunni, Iranian Shiite and Kurdish and Caucasian sunni worlds. Placing a Shah type client government there would be highly convenient, as a counterweight to potentially hostile developments in Iran, Saudia Arabia or Syria.
Under the circumstnaces 9/11 certainly was a stroke of fortune for them. It allowed them to do virutlaly everything they had wished to do. Even their political enemies signed on as a show of national solidarity.
However, I don't think that they plotted 9/11, because it would be tremendously dangerous. A single conspirator getting cold feet or an attack of conscience, and the whole house of cards falls down. Treason is a capital offense, and if that wasn't treason, nothing else would be. There was some question in the late Nixon administration of what would happen if Nixon decided to try declaring martial law. It probably wouldn't have worked then, but if it came out that Bush had planned an attack on the Pentagon, the question isn't whether the military would support him in a declaration of martial law; the question is whether they wouldn't declare martial law themselves and put his whole administration under lock and key.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Any suggestions?
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Pres. Clinton tasked the NSA with monitoring of domestic to domestic phone calls by executive order after the Oklahoma City bombing in the 1990s in an effort to combat "militias" and other domestic terror groups. It was common knowledge, widely reported, and much maligned at the time. Monitoring of all domestic to international communications has been in effect since the start of the coldwar.
Why is this such a big deal now? Granted its unnerving, but Bush did not start it. Remember Al Gore's "Clipper" chip? Federally mandated and designed encryption with built in backdoors and key escrow.
The reality is the US will move toward a system of complete video and electronic surveilance of its citizens similar to what is in place in the UK. It will include laws that either outlaw encryption, demand keys escrow or make it a crime to withhold keys. The US will also move to a system of internet monitoring similar to China. No government gives up power, and if it sees other governments, especially democratic Euro governments, with more it will move to adopt the same powers.
Treason is only a captial offence in time of war.
As far as I can tell, despite being as execution-happy as we are, Bush isn't eligible for the death penalty under US law. Can the Hague pass down death sentences?
Fascinating. You have a blanket label for anyone who thinks Bush is evil.
"X is a MIHOP person -> X starts from the presumption that Bush is evil" -/-> "X believes Bush is evil -> X is a MIHOP person."
As further evidenced by that hey!'s reply.
This almost isn't a logical fallacy because the clause "X believes Bush is evil" is made up out of whole cloth, existing only in your criticism and not appearing at all in what you criticized.
You're in no position to be making implicit accusations about the intelligence of Bush supporters.
And to point out what you really ought to already be able to tell, this post simply points out that your argument is bad; it implies nothing about my own beliefs. I actually put them here but it just complicated things, and besides, they are irrelevant to my point. Suffice it to say they are neither black nor white on this issue.
Bush is "trying to protect us from mass murderers", when he responds to the Presidential Daily Briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" with the words "All right, you've covered your ass, now" and went fishing on his Texas estate?
No, he's attacking us while leaving us undefended, while Bush worshippers like you cover his ass.
Like when you lie about FISA, the law that prohibits Bush from wiretapping any call including a US person without a court order. Which he did, which he continues to do, which he has publicly insisted he will do - all in violation of the law. The law, BTW, that was passed after Rumsfeld, Cheney and their cronies spied on us in their first attack, during the Nixon administration, then made stronger by Clinton in the 1990s, to cover physical searches as well as wiretaps.
I've been watching this gang since the early 1970s. I watched them wage covert war in Iran/Contra in the 1980s. And I've watched them move from the fringes of the government to a takeover of all the branches. And I've watched people like you hurl lies to cover their attacks on our country. But I don't watch silently, and I don't think it's a joke. Because it's not funny.
--
make install -not war
Why do you assume he's so incompetent? Because of Iraq? They're building permanent bases there now. The growing civil war ensures that the current Iraqi contractor heaven continues for all forseable future. Was it 10 more years they said? It's all going as planned.
Ignoring security warnings? Google for "you covered your ass". They didn't ignore anything.
Because he talks funny? See this. And this.
Treason is only a captial offence in time of war.
True.
But it's not a matter of a declared war, but a de facto state of war. And Bush likes to call himself a "war president", by which he means he is a president with extraodinary powers. But who are we at war with? It's hard to draw the exact boundaries, but one thing is certain: no such boundaries can be drawn without including Al Qaeda.
So the question is, when did the de facto state of war with Al Qaeda start?
It's not clear that the attempted '93 bombing of the WTC was technically an Al Qaeda operation. But at the very least, we can say that bombing the US embassies in Dar El Salaam and Nairobi in 1998 were acts of war. The '98 bombings showed the Al Qaeda trademark of simultaneous attacks that we'd see again on 9/11.
So, in 1998 Al Qaeda undoubtedly commited an act of war against us. Furthermore, if the Bush administration had evidence showing that in the following three years Al Qaeda had been preparing a larger follow on attack on US soil, this evidence would automatically establish that the de facto state of war continued to exist.
Therefore, if the administration knew about 9/11 and chose to allow it to go forward, it would constitute an act of treason in war time.
So -- prove your case, and you'll have your capital case. No need to apply to international bodies. In any case the Europeans aren't as enthusiastic as we are about putting people to death.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
us, they want to control us. They are trying very hard to speed up this totaltarianism. They want all the power and control over the people. George Bush's fair voting act is putting in place electronic voting machines in every state, its now illegal to whistleblow that a Diebold voting machine is hackable and could be used to fix an election. Haliburton got a $400 million contract to build Federal "Detention Centers" right after the 2000 election. Hundreds of thousands new federal beds that are currently setting empty while the prison system is overflowing. Couple that with things like spying on the polulace, it is starting to paint a very scary picture. WAKE UP. ITS NOT A BAD DREAM
With Slashdot's new tagging system, you can finally add moderation to stories you have always dreamed of!
Regardless of your feelings on NSA wiretaps, both domestic and international - you already know what all of the commennnts on this story will look like. Why even bother? An article like this one simply meant to stir up feelings and add nothing new to the discussion would ina comment be marked "flamebait", so why not tag it as such?
To tag, simply click on that small triangle next to exiting tags. Below is a text entry box for your tag (flamebait), after entering simply press the "Tag" button next to it and your tag is added. If enough people use the same tag it makes the front page and helps people understand just what they are going to see in the comments inside.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Fascinating. You have a blanket label for anyone who thinks Bush is evil.
Um, that's not what he said. Stating that people in a group share an attribute is not saying that everyone with that attribute is part of that group. For example, if someone states that every member of the Nation of Islam is black, they are not saying all black people belong to the nation of Islam.
We will now see Bush's media flacks spinning his bottomless hunger for spying on Americans by saying that "if we had gotten this program before 9/11/2001, we would have had what we needed to stop those terrorists".
Even though we of course had more than enough info and spying programs to catch and stop them. The FBI tried to stop the hijackers in flight school, but the FBI refused to act. One FBI whistleblower has been gagged for years because she's tried to tell too much about how badly broken is our counterterrorism system. Amidst mountains of intelligence, Bush has been unable to even find Bin Laden for longer than it took FDR and Truman to beat Germany and Japan in WWII.
We don't need more mountains of intelligence, especially spying on every American's every transaction. We need regime change to one that will actually protect us, the way we elected them and pay them to do. Every threat we've faced - terrorists, recession, hurricane, and smaller - has been bungled or worse by the Bush regime. Giving them more power is like giving the school bully a gun. They'll just pistol whip everyone to make stealing our lunch money that much more efficient.
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make install -not war
No it's not just you. I suggest you do some extra research into those 9/11 "conspiracy theories", just to be safe. If you find out they are all crap, no harm done right?
Hmmm
Sorry to be pedantic, but Tony Benn was not a Cabinet member at the time that Rumsfield visited Iraq on behalf of the Reagan administration, Tony Benn was a Labour Member of Parliament. The Labour Government was voted out of office in 1979 and replaced by the Conservative Party.
For those non-Brits who don't know who Tony Benn is:
He is a raving nutter and extreme leftie who was a minister under one of the most left wing government this country ever had and is best known for his support of Sinn Feinn, a mouthpiece organisation for Irish Republican terrorists and organised crime.
Tony Benn carries no weight with any political organisation or individual of any consequence, although he occasionally manages to get himself on television because producers can rely on him to say something provocative and/or stupid.
He may be old but he is certainly not wise and if he said "good morning" to me I'd check my watch. The man is widely regarded as an object of ridicule in the UK.
> since, absent war, these kinds of policy decisions can take a long time to formulate. Thus, if any administration did prompt this, it would have been Clinton.
you missed the whole continuation. Their is definitly a pattern of continuation from Bush Sr's admininstration, which was a continuation of Regan... So if this follows a presidental request, it seams highly improbable that the Clinton whitehouse would push forward the plan to give the excutive branch more power, knowing full well the circumstances of the following admin were to be. It seams much more likely that this was a plan carry-over from Bush Sr's days but were too worried that it would be given to a executive branch they didn't like.
Don't confuse me with a clinton supporter, I think the missing checks in the 2 party system, is that they know all the power the opposing party grabs will eventually be passed back to your party. Theirfore they like to expose these policys, get the other party to defend it (if they look a little bad, perfect) so that it is well establshed for them to use, and build on when the pendulum swings back to the democrats. (after all, all of the talk of whatever evil is happening comes around eventually to, do we need to change the laws to legalize it.)
Yea, because those have worked so well in the past.
damaged by dogma
Could it be that they were intending to monitor domestic calls (and internet traffic) all along
Of course. This was created to satisfy the extension of traditional telephone wiretapping requirements. You remember Carnivore and the related laws, right? No large Internet provider can cost-effectively satisfy a wiretapping subpoena for -only- the data requested. That filtering requires equipment vastly more powerful than the routers they use. I looks to me like AT&T cut a deal: We'll give you access to the total data stream but in return you agree that filtering for the lawfully authorized data is solely and permanantly the Federal government's problem and expense.
From the perspective of fiscal responsibility to the shareholders, its the right choice.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Hmmm
He may be of the left (I do not concede that he is of the extreme left), but Tony Benn is not a raving nutter. I agree that his political views carry very little weight with any of the mainstream political parties in the UK at the present time. As for your points about his support of Sinn Fein, yes he did support it, however the US used to allow Sinn Fein leaders into the country to do fund raising via Noraid...a fact conveniently forgotten by the US People & Politicians when talking about the War on Terror...however it has always been the case that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter (I am reminded of the time that Thatcher labeled Nelson Mandela as a terrorist).
Sinn Fein is a legitimate political party, IMHO Tony Benn was right in his insistence that the UK Government should enter into dialogue with them.
I certainly do not agree that Tony Benn is regarded as an object of ridicule here in the UK, whilst most people do not agree with his views, he is still regarded as being an honest politician and a nice person...
So with this information and the Downing Street Memo that clearly showed the war was already planned when the president was publicly claiming it was the last option, what they heck is this guy going for? Why? And who stands to benefit from all this stuff?
Perhaps it's :
The Masons
Illuminati
Skulls & Bones
Trilateral Commission
Bilderberg Group
Neocons
Opus Dei (Heheh)
NSA
But seriously... who or what do people think Bush is working for and what evidence do they actually have?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I agree, the sanctions were extremely harmful and another solution needed to be found. But trying to claim that Saddam was a threat to US security, and using that to justify a war, just makes you a laughing stock.
Its impossible to cite perfect equivalent examples. It always opens one up for an attack of splitting hairs no matter how silly it may be.
The context was deaths per year. It was a valid point in that context. When things become ordinary or long term, you don't given them much consideration. Driving may get me killed (higher chance) and electing representatives that create blowback may also get me killed. In either case, my death may or may not be my fault over the spectrum of:
directly indirectly uninvolved
Naturally, the victims have a BIAS opinion; we need to stop falling for the appeal to emotion everytime victims act like we must take their position. Think of how many conflicts could be avoided if people were not influenced by an emotional victim crying for "justice"...
It does not matter if 99.99% agree with you, its bandwagon and not a valid argument. Now having a majority of valid experts is another matter..
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I'll just mention that if "talks" with "Taliban-infested Afghanistan" are proof of guilt
The point is that Saddam was hardly isolated from the extremists that were sheltering, financing, and providing operational support for A-Q and their hosts, the Taliban. "Talks," in that context, is more than just diplomatic contact - since Saddam was providing services to some of their members. This is only worth mentioning because I was responding to someone who indicated that he had no involvement with terrorism. That's complete crap (just ask the people in Hezbollah and Islmaic Jihad that were quite literally cashing his checks). This was less because of any Islamist streak on Saddam's part, and more because he was cynically trying to gin up support among other Arab populations - but most of them weren't buying it, having seen his true colors over the years.
But trying to claim that Saddam was a threat to US security, and using that to justify a war, just makes you a laughing stock.
No, Saddam was a repeat-offender threat to the stability of the entire middle east. A less stable middle east makes a riper target for the marginal, extremist wack jobs that seek to control the main asset that provides anything like an economy in that region: oil. With oil revenue comes more influence, and in the wrong hands, that becomes either a neo-Stalinst (like Saddam), or crazies like the Wahabbis in Saudi Arabia. Saddam was a major de-stabilizer in the area, and his perpetual hatred for the Shiites was part of fuel that brought on the current Iranian regime. More of that is a threat to the US because it's a threat to the entire world.
Did you have some other handy source of economy-empowering energy ready to go for Eurpope, the Americas, and the gigantic new markets of China and India? No? Well until we all do, the market that is the middle east can't be threatened by operated by the equivalent of a local mafia don with long-range missiles that he likes to lob at neighbors.
I am not going to bother replying at length to your troll. I'll just mention that...
Uh huh. Why? Because it sort of makes your other points look less meaningful? You said, essentially: "he had no weapons, was no threat." I said he did, and why. That's not a troll, it's a refutation of one (yours).
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I strongly disagree with this assessment. Tony Benn has always appeared to me to be an individual of integrity, and one capable of calm and rational discourse. He is one of the most interesting politicians I have had the pleasure of meeting.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In other words, in all the things you listed (except murder), there was simple stupidity, bad luck, and poor lifestyle choices to blame.
...allow the terrorists to win. The only way to effectively fight terrorism is to fight the fear, don't let it take over your mindset, your freedoms, your society... keep living good lives, focus on PROMOTING GOOD instead of fighting evil even when it is painfully cost-ineffective. We improved our interagency communication, we beefed up our airline security, and we cracked down on immigrants who overstay their visa. That was it; that was all that was needed. Everything else is pointless at best and profoundly anti-American (assuming that word still has some fleeting connotations of freedom) at worst.
Yes but if tomorrow I get hit by a drunk driver, was that MY stupidity? Is it the fat kid's fault that his mom only feeds him McDonald's? Is it the asthmatic kid's fault that his parents refuse to stop smoking in the house? Initial anger aside, it isn't going to matter to our loved ones whether it was malice or recklessness that took us out of this world. The loss is the same. Evil vs. reckless intent is to an extent an important distinction--but not nearly as important as human lives.
If we wanted to, we could spend a trillion dollars medical research and making our roads better, heck we could ban extremely unhealthy food. Hey, I'm not a huge fan of the idea, but what's a few simple restrictions on fast food places compared to a vast network of domestic surveillence? Let people cook what they want in their own home, but ban restaurants from serving obscenely unhealthy food... at least to kids. I'm sure the libertarians in the audience are screaming bloody murder, but the fact is the free market ISN'T smart enough to make decisions that The loss of life is secondary to the terrorist, whose primary goal is to strike "terror" into the hearts and minds of his victems will (in time) save millions of lives each year. If you care about saving millions of innocent (if perhaps somewhat stupid, but then again who isn't? I try to eat healthy but often there just isn't the time, so I grab whatever's closest, which is usually shockingly unhealthy) lives, then it's a trivial restriction on our freedom. But don't try to justify (however obliquely) the expenditure of trillions of dollars and countless freedoms sacrificed for less than 3,000 American lives that were lost to terrorism in the past decade.
I'm sorry, but that just ISN'T significant compared to our other problems. Hey it sucks for the guys who died, but I don't personally know any of them because it is such a very small number of fatalities. I've known at least a dozen people who've died of cancer and a dozen more who've died of heart attack. Life > 'fighting the bad guys'. Oh yeah, and:
The loss of life is secondary to the terrorist, whose primary goal is to strike "terror" into the hearts and minds of his victems
Exactly. And by allowing yourself to vastly overreact due to this "terror", you in effect...(drumroll please)
To be fair, I could well be called on the assertion that people who believe in the MIHOP hypothesis are drawn exclusively from people who believe Bush is evil. I have no actual evidence of this, it's just an impression I have. In fact it should be stated more narrowly than that. People who believe in MIHOP are probably those predisposed to think of Bush as evil. Predisposed of course because if MIHOP is true, then Bush is demonstrably evil.
However, its an assertion I believe that will hold up to scrutiny. I don't think we'll find many people who used to be Bush admirers or fence sitters in the ranks of believers on the basis of what we know about 9/11. I think something else would have to happen to change their minds about the man first.
I think you are correct in that the GP poster got a bit tripped up by bad old modus ponendo tollens.
However it's usually not worth taking people to task over this kind of thing. Everybody makes mistakes now and then. And most arguments try to demonstrate what is believed to be true. Even major formal flaws in them are seldom worth pursuing, since the test for the persons constructing them is how well they agree with what they already know to be true. What is really critical is the quality of the information a person has and how he weighs it.
I think the GP was reacting to a perceived assertion that somehow people who accept the MIHOP theory are irrational. I don't think they are irrational, they are just weighing evidence in light of prior beliefs like we all do.
Let's face it, we all look at the man, and we draw conclusions about his character, and based on those conclusions we filter what we hear about him for good or ill.
I don't believe the MIHOP hypothesis because I believe Bush is evil in an operationally defined sense: evil is that which morally must be struggled against. I think those who are onboard with the theory believe Bush to be evil in a stronger way: that he is in an affirmative sense morally depraved. If you believe Bush is just the kind of person to do that thing, then you will find slight evidence more convincing.
My assesment of the Bush character is not one of wanton depravity, but more of intellectual laziness, egotism, and hubris. When you work for a person who does not brook any self-doubt, then you inevitably find yourself living in an artificial coccoon designed to protect against unpleasant truths. Much stock is placed in hoping for the best, because mere discussion of the worst is considered insubordination and not tolerated. It also encourages accepting bad future consequences if good results can be shown today.
Thus my reading of the pre 9/11 behavior of the administration runs to incompetence, since it fits the impression I made of him back in 1999 when he was setting out. Katrina only strengthened this; they hoped for the best, but did not prepare for the worst. As information gathered that the worst case scenario was taking place, it was filtered out. It had to be, because they had no intellectual tools for dealing with bad news in real time. After the bad things have happened -- sure. During or before, no.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Do you drive a white van too ?
I'm understanding, but finding incredulous, your point.
Are you saying that the GWB Administration (via former members of the Reagan and GHWB Administrations) pre-conspired with the NSA, to have this ready to go so soon after GWB came into office?
I think the missing checks in the 2 party system, is that they know all the power the opposing party grabs will eventually be passed back to your party. Theirfore they like to expose these policys, get the other party to defend it (if they look a little bad, perfect) so that it is well establshed for them to use, and build on when the pendulum swings back to the democrats.
This I definitely agree with!!
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I can't tell if that's from a Markov chain or not.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Assuming the cause is what we are being told, the appropriate reaction would have been:
As it stands, we still have some liberties left. We can still indulge in public protest (as long as we do it in "free speech zones" and nowhere near a funeral and have a permit), we still have our homes (well, unless the state wants them for higher taxes), we still have free speech (unless we want to broadcast it, in which case we have free speech minus seven words, if we're rich.) And we still have the right to regulate intrastate commerce on a state-by-state basis. Of course, the USSC has defined "interstate commerce" to be "anything that *could* be interstate commerce if you took it over the state borders", so this is mostly an exercise in "hope the feds don't have a different opinion", but states can at least try to make state law on goods and services.
As for the perjorative "MIHOP"... Even though it really does look like the twin tower buildings were dropped using standard demolition techniques, and even though building seven fell, hours later, without ever being hit by an aircraft and also looked like it was dropped in exactly the same manner as the two towers, and even though there are no signs that the Pentagon was hit by anything as large as an airliner, and even though airline fuel doesn't burn hot enough to soften steel enough to cause a collapse... I see that the idea that we might have some kind of problem other than what we're being told is still treated as a kook idea. I find this even more fascinating (and worrying) than I do the events themselves, which after all, have killed far fewer people than the administration's incursion into Iraq.
Was this something other than it appeared to be? We have some very troublesome evidence that doesn't fit the "a plane hit it, so it fell" scenario. We have a lot of missing gold from the vaults of the buildings. We have the removal of a single jet engine (which appears not to be an airliner engine anyway) from a hole in the Pentagon that was far too small for any of the wing materials of the putative airliner to have entered, and no holes (or even any damage) out where the wings would have caused the engines to impact; We have a knee-jerk war reaction against two countries that were not the majority source of the people we were told were the hijackers. The actual source of most of them, Saudi Arabia, remains untouched and a firm business partner. I'm not really on the "MIHOP" bus, but then again, I'm not really on the "it was just a hijacking with intent to fly into buildings" bus, either. I'm jusst mostly on the "my fellow citizens sure are an uninformed and spoon-fed bunch of people" bus.
Spend some time looking through the MIHOP sites on the net. I'm not saying you'll be convinced by any one site, but you sure will be entertained — and there are some startling facts worth thinking about.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Please explain to me the legal authorization for Echelon - a program which the NSA denied having for many years and which drove the Europeans, and some Americans, nuts because it violated every legal standard?
Actually, please explain how Echelon was legal but the current program is not.
Clear, Dark Skies
What oversight was Echelon subjected to - especially since the NSA has never even admitted that it exists?
Clear, Dark Skies
To clarify: are you claiming that this isn't a violation of civil liberties, or are you claiming that civil liberties are unimportant? It's hard to tell from your post.
English is easier said than done.
I know, I know... The facts are liberal. Go turn on Fox News and keep away from nasty "facts".
Yeah, yeah. I've never voted for Bush in my life, but I'm a conservative stooge for pointing out that this problem has been with us for a long time but people like you want to blame Bush because you either have (1) no knowledge of history or (2) no intellectual honesty.
As for Echelon being solely outside the US - how do you know that, seeing how the NSA has never admitted it's existence?
I especially find it amusing that you seem to think that it was okay for the US government to engage in the wholesale survellience of telecommunications as long as they were only monitoring foreigners.
Clear, Dark Skies
I'm also curious if the mainstream news media will pick this article and run with it.
Let's be honest...
The story came out on Friday, June 30th, and a Google News search doesn't yield any results beyond this Slashdot article. Furthermore, it came out on the Friday before the 4th of July. Since the 4th is a Tuesday, many people are taking the 3rd off and calling it a four day weekend. The odds of anyone paying attention right now are, sadly, quite small.
Beyond that, the likelihood of the media launching an investgation that would be characterized as a new attack on the American government over the 4th of July weekend is miniscule. It may come up in a week or so, but I'm not holding my breath.
We should have invaded that looney bin called Afganistan years ago. When they blew up those Buddhas we knew they weren't right in the head.
Of course, now we've managed to turn Iraq and Somalia (Everyone forgets about them) into Afganistans, too. And Afganistan is quickly turning back into Afganistan.
Possible if we'd finished Somalia, then invaded Afganistan after 9/11 and finished that.
Wait, that would have been a logical and doable plan, and couldn't have plunged us into a permanent war.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Another way of saying that is Iraq was our ally during the Clinton and Carter years.
Clinton was president AFTER Bush Sr. The major ties with Iraq occured during the Reagan administration (you can still find pictures on the internet with Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam) which was AFTER Carter. This relationship soured when Saddam suppressed a Kurd uprising by using biological weapons.
Is there any evidence from TFA that the Bush Administration ordered the NSA to do this?
How about the fact that Adm. Poindexter was appointed to do this? How about the Total Infromation Awareness Requests for Proposal under US DARPA, NSA, CIA etc? I read the proposals at the time.
Such evidence may appear in the future, but as of now, I don't think we can honestly assert that Bush ordered the NSA to monitor all domestic traffic.
The only shred of evidence to deny that Bush ordered this is the "Plausable Deniability" screen they constructed in the Whitehouse with Adm. Poindexter at the helm of the program. Honestly it was their highest priority. They had the Patriot Act full text written prior to 911. They had all of the RFP's out before 911! They were well on the way. To deny any of this is the height of ignorance. I know! I read the RFP's at the time! By the way, they were not secret! They may still be somewhere out there on the net.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
And, of course, Osama still lurks in the shadows untouched, the perfect foil to our "strong" leader.
I don't understand what you're talking about. This article doesn't say it was already in place.
There's some confusion, possibly delibrate, going on. In 2000, the NSA starting looking into plans to modernize.
One month after the Bush Administration entered office, the NSA asked AT&T to build some sort of spying rig into its network, called 'Pioneer Groundbreaker'. It didn't say 'Okay, here's what you need to install', it said 'Let's work together to spy on people, what's your suggestion?'.
There's nothing, that happened one month after Bush took office, that would require more than a week of prep to figure out a proposal. That's when AT&T was approached, not when anything happened.
Now, the NSA says this is part of the plans to modernize, but we don't have knowledge that would indicate said plan existed before Bush took office, or that it actually was part of any modernization, or that it's anything but a smokescreen. They fact they call it 'a different component' of the plan is rather telling. A component that was created when Bush took office, perhaps?
Here's the possible timeline that doesn't contradict anything we know:
2000: NSA, like all government agencies, decides it is once again time to modernize. It starts taking bids.
2001, January: Bush takes office.
2001, three days later: Bush asks NSA to spy on domestic calls.(*)
2001, Late January: The NSA decides to do this by getting the support of various telecomm companies. The project is called 'Pioneer Groundbreaker', and will have AT&T to build a network operations center which duplicated AT&T's Bedminster, New Jersey facility, for the NSA. It decides to call this 'modernizing'.(*)
2001, February: The NSA approaches AT&T with the proposal. AT&T says okay, and they start working out the details.
2001, unknown: The plan changes to have the NSA build the facility and AT&T just provide taps.
2001, unknown: This is all actually built.
2001, Sept 11: Terrorists attack.
What order the last three happen in is unknown. Whether the (*) happened under Bush or Clinton is unknown, but don't really make any sense to have happened under Clinton and not approach AT&T until under Bush.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
On the morning of 9/11 on CNN one of the reports/anchor people said "NSA is reviewing the cellphone calls" of the people from flight 93.
My head spun at that moment. Apparently CNN didn't think it that odd that the NSA would have those records.
Ascii artist &
And explain to people how to install encryption plug-ins, how to download/upload a key, how to revoke a key and that yes, they have to remember a pass phrase which has got to be a bloody long one if they want things to be secure. All that after you've convinced them that you're not a bloody tin-foil hat wearing lunatic for insisting on the use of encryption in the first place.
And when I can't remember my pass phrase anymore, I'll have to create another one, mail it to my contacts and ask them to trust me. Furthermore, I can't revoke the old key. Nice.
No thanks. I'll keep sending my mails in plain text. My e-mails aren't that interesting anyway.
The owls are not what they seem
Whether the (*) happened under Bush or Clinton is unknown, but don't really make any sense to have happened under Clinton and not approach AT&T until under Bush.
My only comment (based upon my experience working/contracting with government bureaucracies) is that it's reasonable for the idea to have started during the time when Clinton was in office.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
>>>>So Bush takes office, the NSA starts wiretapping everybody?
>>Is there any evidence from TFA that the Bush Administration ordered the NSA to do this?
I never said Bush ordered a damned thing. I said that Bush takes office and the NSA starts wiretapping everybody. 9-11-01 -7 months == 2-11-01. This is when Clinton was out and Bush was in. I was noting that the two things happened together. I didn't suggest the former caused the latter, that would be cum hoc ergo propter hoc, which is a logical fallacy. I was just noting what was in TFA. Bush gets elected and the NSA starts wiretapping everybody.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Yet, reading the comments in this thread, I doubt that memory is shared by 25% of the people posting here.
Clear, Dark Skies
"Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... [sic] censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything --you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."
-- Robert A. Heinlein
I'm just airing this as a representative of the paranoid mindset.
The choice are narrowed down to at this point - either they didn't know, and they were incompetent to an extraordinary degree, or they did know, and for other reasons chose not to interfere - and it's not a particularly large leap to believe that the administation is in fact, not incompetent.
And I think that's the ringer - 'for other reasons, chose not to interfere'. Not necessarily 'As a grab for power, chose to 3000 people to die' or 'to disarm the Demcrats, chose to make the president a war president', but 'for other reasons, chose to interfere'. Only a crazy, sick set of people could let 3,000 people die for a powergrab, or as a political ploy.
But, as a step necessary for a greater good? That's possible. Even glorified - is there any student of history that doesn't think about difficulty of Churchill's decision allow Coventry to be bombed, or whether or not Roosevelt might have been aware of Pearl Harbor beforehand and used it to bring the U.S. into the war? Heartrending decisions to be sure, but compelling to right kind of mindset that dreams of making the 'Hard Calls' a 'lesser person' might balk at.
And that's the bit of paranoia that eats at me. That it was done because somebody thought they were making a hard call for the greater good, and didn't really realize how bad it was going to be, and now they feel compelled to justify the decision to themselves by whatever means necessary. To make that decision and be proved right by history makes you a Churchill, a Lincoln, a Kennedy. To make it and have history prove you wrong? The kindest example would be the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
I don't see our president as a strong man, capable of looking in the mirror and admitting the error, nevermind correcting it. Frankly, I yet to see anyone in his administration that won't keep pushing it further and further rather than admitting to the error. Maybe I would too, if I had to look at myself in the morning through such a lens. Frankly, it's the only sort of lens I can look at it through that gives me any empathy at all for them - the thought that, just maybe, they had this romantic ideal of making 'the hard decisions', and suddenly found themselves riding a tiger that they had to use to attack everyone else lest they end savaged themselves.
But, although it's a view that gives me some glimmer of empathy for the administration, it's also a view that scares the hell out of me, because I haven't seen any evidence of any principles they won't shred in order to come out of this with their self image intact.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
>>The thing about the MIHOP people is that they start with the strong belief that Bush is evil. Given that, it's easy to believe he knew about 9/11 but let it happen...
Actually "let it happen" are the LIHOPs. The MIHOPs believe that they "made" it happen.
They put explosive charges in the twin towers! They guided the planes by remote! They fired a missile at the pentagon!
I personally don't have faith in the administration to have the foresight to let such a thing happen for politcal gain or to orchestrate such a plan. Which leaves me with the offical story, they were amazingly incompetent and ignored all the warning signs.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Geopolitically Iraq is much more of a linchpin state, situated in the nexus of the Arab Sunni, Iranian Shiite and Kurdish and Caucasian sunni worlds. Placing a Shah type client government there would be highly convenient, as a counterweight to potentially hostile developments in Iran, Saudia Arabia or Syria.
Yeah, that worked so well the last time. What'd be cool is if we changed tactics from cold-war style proxy wars and started dealing with countries in ways that don't give them a reason to hate us.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
BWAHAHAHAHA!
Seriously, thanks for the entertainment (I googled for MIHOP). I have never seen a group of more willfully ignorant people in my life. Good stuff.
I don't know why, but conspiracy kooks always put a smile on my face.
"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
>When one party controls all branches of government, the Constitutional checks and balances are ineffective because everyone with the power to stop a branch of government is part of the same organization.
The old Soviet Union had a pretty good constitution on paper. There were theoretical checks and balances, there were theoretical guarantees of human rights. What kept it from working, besides the Russian traditions of autocracy, brutality and corruption, was that the only way to get a government job -- legislature, executive, judicial -- was to be a Communist Party member. If you got arrested for publishing something the government didn't like, the Party member presiding over your court case wasn't about to risk his membership by enforcing the constitution.
That implies that someone was listening in or recording phone calls. The NSA has been asking phone companies to hand over phne RECORDS -- that is, a list of who called what people. Not exactly the same thing. It is, however, very illegal for phone companies to give out that information, which begs the question: Since the NSA is just asking phone companies (and some of those phone companies have refused), if your records are turned over, who should you be angry with--your phone company or the NSA?
By the way, USA Today -- which first reported all of this -- has since backed off part of the story. It seems many those phone companies really didnt' hand over the information, or at least, USA Today can't back up its claims that they did.
That being said, it's still a lousy program. The only way someone's domestic phone records would be useful to the NSA, is if that person were already being investigated and they wanted to see who he/she had been calling and when. Police use this information all the time, but if I am not mistaken they have to get a warrant or subpoena or something to get it. Why couldn't the NSA just do the same thing, if they were already investigating someone?
And while I'm ranting, congress knew this was going on all along, but decided to act all shocked and aghast when it came out in USA Today.
I hate politicians.
Could it be that no terrorist groups were based in Iraq before the invasion because Saddam was ruling with an iron fist? The fact that Saddam was terrorizing his own people and those of nearby places is the only reason I saw to support the war. Forget oil, and forget weapons of mass destruction; when a man's policy is nearly in line with those of terrorist organizations, there's no reason for them to terrorize his country. When foreign invaders move in with intentions of turning that country's practices inside out and upside down, local conservatives will suddenly appear to be terrorists.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
The legal advice we had - and I tabled it at the time - was that the action was entirely valid in international law terms," he said.
The British government - which has argued that UN resolutions provided a legal basis for intervening to topple Saddam Hussein - said the 2003 invasion was "not only lawful but necessary".
So much for Google, huh? Google does not answer legal questions!
Sometimes it seems only one side of the argument is allowed on Slashdot. Any attempt to question that single viewpoint results in troll mods. Disagreeing with someone or asking someone to clarify their claims doesn't make you a troll.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Under the circumstances, 9/11 was certainly a godsend for them. But plotting it would be risky indeed.
This is certainly true. We certainly can't say for certain that they either planned the attacks or even allowed them.
We can say with 100% certainty though that the administration planned to invade Iraq since before they were elected. We can say with 100% certainty that they knew that it would take an attack of that magnitude to convince the American people to go along with it. We can say with 100% certainty that once the attack occured that they used it in order to go ahead with their long standing plans to invade Iraq.
All of this is 100% certain since they wrote it up in policy papers, signed their names to them and still have them up on their website.
Now, this does nothing at all to demonstrate any involvement active or passive in the 9/11 attacks, but it absolutely demonstrates both motive and a clear understanding on their part that they had a serious motive.
Given these simple basic facts, anybody who *doesn't* think that there is probably much more to it than the official story is living in a fantasy world maintained by a militant death grip on their own ignorance.
As far as this comment:
The thing about the MIHOP people is that they start with the strong belief that Bush is evil.
"Bush is evil" isn't a starting point for anything. It is a clear concise accurate conclusion that can be drawn based solely upon absolutely proven facts.
The fact that Bush is evil (or more accurately a sociopath since "evil" is kind of a nebulous term) doesn't imply that he had anything to do with 9/11, but pretending it isn't entirely in line with his character and that of those he has surrounded himself with is hopelessly naive.
Bad people exist, and they do quite often rise to the top.
Nice troll, let's feed it. Can you come up with a single instance of post-WWII interference of the US military on foreign soil that has directly protected the freedom inside the US, instead of hampering it? Some of the wars were aimed at keeping out the boogey-man of communism, most were aimed at helping the US corporations to maintain a profitable venture abroad. These being the same corporations that are slowly destroying your freedom. The US standing military has always been a mercenary corps for economic benefit; the two world wars were the exception, not the rule.
Just as a little clarification. The act of war was committed by the nation that harbored Al-Quaida, and allowed it to use it as a base for their actions. Al-Quaida itself was and is a loose organization of troublemakers that need (and can) be put down by regular police action. Terrorists are not, in any way, a danger for a nation: they are a mere nuisance. They only become a real threat when they have a safe piece of land to use for training an plotting. Terrorists cannot commit acts of war, only nations can. Nations harboring terrorists can, by proxy, be condemned for the actions of the terrorists they protect.
Thus, for all practical purposes, the war on terror ended the moment that the US seized control in Afghanistan. This has been recognized by all (former) allies of the US as an important step to take. All the other stuff is simply a power-grab and the settling of old scores. Really nothing to do with any war on terror.
100% certain? Hardly. Take off your tinfoil hat and quit accepting blogs as bible truth.
I'd rather not have a capital case- I speculate about such things only out of interest, and not out of advocacy. I abhor the death penalty. Then again, perhaps I see in shades of black and white.
From the article:
The groundbreaker program is well known, in fact its infamous... in being a really really expensive network upgrade. The kind of thing with rewiring offices and buying lots of bandwidth from the likes of AT&T.
And I mean a lot of bandwidth. A lot of the DoD bandwidth contracts currently up for grabs are of course available online for anyone to see. (But shame on the nytimes, shame shame shame!) How did you think intercepted traffic came from all over the world back (But especially big telco sites) to Maryland? Still wonder why companies like AT&T want to do everything to help the NSA?
And of course groundbreaker is over budget and insecure.
So what is this secret new thing that is being claimed? The hints are:
It makes sense that the NSA would want a new but ordinairy "network operation center" with its new network. You really really need one of those to show politicians around (scroll to "nsa loads nmap" for a good laugh). Especially the ones who know nothing about intelligence except what they have seen on 24. (I would be funny if there werent so many schools planes trains and subways blown up around the world after 9/11)
Guiding them past the movie theater and showing the huge list of languages in which movies are shown isn't glamorous, though it should get the point across of sigint being of no use without humans to read and hear it... It might also show why having computers that can display bidirectional text isn't some fancy feature nobody uses. (Its usefull for such obscure languages as say Arabic, just to name something random of the top of my head.) I guess the lack of lighting the 24 set designers came up with for dramatic effect makes these NOC places a little cheaper to run than hiring qualified analyst though.
Sure it could also be a top secret surveillance program advanced beyond anything ever seen before, possible including extra terrestrial technology and tinfoil hat countermeasures... I mean in theory you could call that a NOC I guess.
This possible hype reminds me of the echelon story. After unspecific press accounts surrounding a big and sloppy EU investigation about "echelon" people assumed the worse and the hype started to build and build.
Now some time has passed historians have been able to figure out exactly what component is codenamed echelon, and it looks a little like this. (Thats an 70`s VAX 11/780, for those who couldn't tell, shame on you)
does this really surprise anyone?
While I agree that it is a statistical improbability that the average American will be killed by terrorism, killing people isn't really the objective. Look at the root word: "terror" or "fear".
Terrorists want to inflict fear in the general populace in order to create unrest and keep their cause fresh in everyones mind.
And while the amount of Americans killed by a terrorist attack each year really do not justify the amoutn of money spent on anti-terrorist activities (I'm not being crass here - compare the ratio to gun safety, auto accidents, other types of non-natural deaths etc), terrorism does have a profound effect on our economy. It is this overall affect on our society which makes terrorism so front-and-center. Unfortunately that is the ultimate goal of terrorism, to be on the top of everyone's mind.
Libertas in infinitum
The majority of voters did not vote for Bush in the last election. His support (in the polls) has dropped since then.
100% certain? Hardly. Take off your tinfoil hat and quit accepting blogs as bible truth.
The alternative idea which is actually in line with reality, unlike yours, is that the website of the thinktank composing the majority of the administration back in 2000 isn't "a blog".
Of course, you wouldn't want to actually have any actual facts intrude into your deluded worldview, now would you?
Much easier and safer to dismiss simple, basic, easily checked facts as "tinfoil hat".
It's cowardice like yours, more than any other single thing that is destroying the American dream.
stealing elections? This started after the elections were well over. No, stealing election but maybe something in the rest of your statment.
And for all the proifit being mad? well take that back before 9/11. That stuff has been going on for quite a long time. You act as if it is anything new. Only the names have changed so it will give you something to bitch about. CLintons goonies profted in much the same ways, troop depoyments and national guard callups to reduce unemployment from certain areas, FEMA conntracts with prefered companies, it is all the same things just different names.
airline fuel can burn hot enough to soften steel. Especialy steel that old. Hell, common gas and diesel fule can do that. I was with you all the way until you made that mistake.
/I guess whatever it takes though. the ends justify the means.
It now apears as if your statment was crafted jst to make the kooky explainations seem more apearent. Oh well, i guess if you cannot beet bush in the polls, you can make things up and have him weakened that way. It is sad that we are trivializing the lives that were lost or ruined just to go after one man.
To ilistrate, If i see you stab someoen to death and do nothing, report it to no one, and jsut leave the sceene, i have done nothing wrong. If a cop asks me about it, i cannot lie to them. If it is found that i worked with you in selecting the victom or any aspect of the killing then i'm in trouble.
Now, i don't see how allowing 9/11 to go forward could be treason. First war is about trading lives and property for gains. If you claim we were at war when 9/11 happened, then it could just have been a blunder, a stratigic move or maybe something even more profound. If there was a law saying that it is treason, then we would have to prosecute every general down to seargents who have given orders or commanded something in a time of war.
Hezbollah has nothing to do with all of this. They are freedom fighters
Yes, yes, a fine bunch of fellows.
Saddam loudly proclaimed his support ($25k) for any family that lost a member in a suicide attack against Israeli interests, and over time doled out millions in support for Palestinian terrorists, their families, etc. This was less about expressly supporting the Palestinian cause as it was precisely to woo the opinions of other foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Israeli groups and factions that might impact the larger middle east picture, relative to his conflict with the coalition, after Kuwait. There was no love lost between Saddam (and his fellow Sunni Tikritis) and Shiite groups like Hezbollah (who claim they're happy he's gone), but in a really callow bit of grasping PR, he did his best to seem generous to any organization that was overtly anti-US and anti-Israel. Hezbollah knew very well how unpleasant it would be for them to actually lose Saddam in the neighborhood - he was the devil they knew, as it were. But certainly most of their support came from, and still comes from Iran.
Baathist Syria has been very supportive of Hezbollah, but they've toned it down a bit of late because it's bad for their image, and they'd much rather get the sort of treatment that Lybia is now about to receive. But back when Saddam was still (sort of) a player, Syria was totally in bed with both Saddam (as a weapons trading partner and conduit for materials that were supposed to be banned through sanctions), and likewise with Hezbollah. To the extent that Saddam was lavishly throwing money at any group that dedicated itself to the destruction of Israel, he was on the same team as Hezbollah, in terms of people that were shipping money, weapons, etc to groups like Hamas. His inclination, though, was to simply make life more miserable, if possible for Israel - not so much to saddle up next to his Shiite rivals.
Don't pretend that, through the nexus of Baathist Syria, that Saddam's interests and Hezbollah's didn't overlap. They held their nose about him just like we held our nose about him back with he was in a cold war proxy fight with Iran.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Actually, read some of the other replies to my comment. I was hoping that by insulting Bush I'd deflect criticism that I was a merely a republican stooge parroting FN talking points. Sadly, I was wrong.
Clear, Dark Skies
I blame Bush for what he has done. Seems pretty simple and straight forward. You want to give him a pass...
ROTFL!
Ah, pure paranoia.
Please point to where, any where, in my posts where I said that the spying was good or that Bush should be given a "pass".
You do realize that the fact that I think the people on this forum have the attention spans of mayflies does not make me a Republican? Don't you?
Or is towing the slashdot line now part of the Democratic Party Dogma?
Clear, Dark Skies
Oh I see, it must be politically motivated then, and therefore nothing more than those wacky liberals who hate Bush.
No, it's nothing more than mindless mayflies who think they can solve the problem by blaming Bush.
Forgive me, but to read, today, that domestic spying by the NSA is somehow Bush's creation when the stories and rumors about it go back thirty years or more - to read that today says more about the ignorance of the American people than it does about the malfeasence of one particular president.
Clear, Dark Skies
There is nothign on that site showing the administration planned ot invade irtaq before 9/11. Interestingly though, i always believe 9/11 would never have happened if iraq had been taken care when clinton was in office and they started thier shit in breaking the UN resolutions.
I'm 100% certain your jumping to conslusion based on your desire to put this administration in a bad light.
Can you provide a link to documentation of that? Because the only "protests" at military funerals that I've heard about are those "non-liberal" religous nut jobs who think that's a proper venue for whining about homosexuality.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
James Bond is an elite MI-6 agent who reads "top secret" documents over lunch. He drives expensive European sports cars. Terrorists and KGB agents shoot rocket-powered grenades at his cars, and he doesn't mind.
James Bamford plays with his own sort of fire: he pursues FOIA requests. Terrorists and KGB agents don't shoot rocket-powered grenades at his car, but then again... Mr. Bamford drives a Pinto.
Even the official coverups, I mean investigations, werent stupid enough to blame the kerosene for softening the steel. They blamed the resulting office fires, forgetting that the fires were tiny and not hot, in comparison to dozens of other skyscraper fires that have never before or since caused a complete collapse of a modern (steel/concrete) highrise.
They had no explanation for the LARGE POOLS OF MOLTEN STEEL FOUND IN THE WRECKAGE (as described by various cleanup crew members, including the head of Controlled Demolitions), or the molten metal (which was NOT aluminium since this has a low emissivity, and does not glow brightly in daylight) pouring out a hole near the initial failure point, prior to the explosive collapse. This metal was in the range 950 to 1100 degrees C from the colour, which is FAR to hot for an ordinary office fire (and no the kerosene jet fuel did NOT cause it to get this hot). building fires dont normally even reach 100 deg C, except briefly at flashover. And thats the AIR temperature, not the surrounding heat sink/steel frame/concrete etc.
watch "the money masters" on google video
There is nothign on that site showing the administration planned ot invade irtaq before 9/11.
Nothing? So in the 2 1/2 hours between my post and yours you read the whole thing? Wow, you're truly amazing. Or more likely you're a cowardly shill defending the fascist traitors currently running our country.
Do you really think they'll pat you on the head and throw you a bone? Are you that deeply stupid and ignorant of all of human history?
Here's one of the primary smoking guns
You didn't read the site since you're too cowardly to be a good citizen, and you won't read this document either, but the facts are there, Sparky. Your failure to take your responsibilities seriously won't change that.
I'm 100% certain your jumping to conslusion based on your desire to put this administration in a bad light.
Yet every single fact backs me up and not one single fact backs you up.
I'm speaking out because I am a patriot who cares about my duties as a citizen and therefore I *know* that there isn't a good light to cast this administration in.
Your failure to understand cause and effect is entirely your own.
oops that should be 1000 deg C
watch "the money masters" on google video
There never was a peace treaty after the Iraq war. Not even a cease fire was signed. The US and Iraq has been legally in a state of war ever since the Kuait invasion. There was no surrender, no treaty, etc, the colation forces just decided to partially withdraw. There have been continued operations such as enforcing "no-fly" zones and attacking missle installations that shot at the aircraft doing so.
So while the war was an exceedingly bad idea, it does not appear to have any legal problems. There was a state of war, and the UN lacked the ability to pass a resolution stoppping it since the US has permenant veto power. None of that makes it right, but it does appear to make it legal.
Things like all the people getting flight training, when those countires hadn't the need for that many pilots. Obvious in retrosepct, but at the time what could you do? Suspicious, certianly, but not illegal.
I'm just not really sure there was anyting to be done to forsee something like 9/11. It's not like the peopel that plan this crap are e-mail eachother documents called terrorist_plans.doc that spell it all out.
It's real easy to look back, when all the connections are laid out and say "Look how obvious it is! Only an idiot could have missed it!" Much harder to reason it all out when you have a ton of seemingly unrelated info with no clear conneciton.
I liken it to something like Netwon's Laws of Motion. Once you've learned them and tested them, they seem extrememly obvious. You can't understand how you didn't know this. However, for all the "obviousness" it took one of the greatest minds of all time to figure them out and state them.
I think you are spot on that simply throwing more ifnromation at the counter terrorism problem isn't the answer. The issue isn't getting the info, we can already get warrants to target people and get all the info we need. The issue is knowing WHAT info is needed.
You can tap every phone in America, recognise all the speech, and searhc for key words, if the people involved in a plot are using deceptive termonology it still gets you jack shit other than a lot of people wasting time going over normal people talking about terrorist events that have happened.
It's true at any network. Our network security guys at work tried monitoring our netowrk for intrustions, but bogged themselves down in data. Their sensors were getting EVERYTHING, which made it all useless because there was so much. They didn't need more information, they needed BETTER information.
Same thing is true with the US. We don't need more info, we need better info. We need peopel infltrating these terrorist groups feeding us the info we need, not petabytes of useless e-mail traffic.
Yea, KEROSENE. Actualy diesel fuel with alot of aditives.
But to say that the jpl fires couldn't weaken the steel that was already damaged by the crash is stupid. Not to mention, the plane itself caught fire and burning aluminum is quite hot too.
It doesn't take much heat to aneal a pice of steel it just takes a persitant amount of it. You can take a simple propane torch along with time and heat some reletivly large pieces of steel to the point it can be easily bent. Exhaust bolts are usualy grade 8 wich is comparable to structural steel and the heat from your cars combustrion proccess is enough to weaken them. They can be weakened enough to the point they break when attemptiong to remove them.
And for the molten steel, the "kerosene" could have mixed with some oxidizer and created the heat needed to melt it. It wouldn't be as much the airplane fuel burning but something else burning with the diesel acting as an excelerant. Try taking a cotton swab and soaking it in kerosene, ringing it out then alowing it to dry for about an hour. Then place it in a coffe can and drop a match on it. You'll see what i mean. Now think about what is in an office building that could be simular?.
I guess everything is a conspiracy. Bush is a conspiracy, people dieing a horible death is a conspiracy, god is a conpsiracy, i'm a conspiracy. I feel for people who always think someoen is hiding in the closet waiting to jump out and get them. This was getting old back when reagon and clinton was a conspiracy. Now that CLinton is being seen with dole, I guess there will be a conspiracy thoery about it being intended to get old people fucking again.
Ok, were in that document does it say we are going to invade iraq and bush was in on that decision?
It doesn't state that. IT does however make claims that we need to increase the defense spending and cited iraq as some of the reasons.
what you are doing is comming with a predetermination and using this site to justify that predisposition. The fact is that Iraq has been on the radar since before the first war with them.
Now i am not completly sure your motives are to put the administration in a bad light, you might just bee a nut case. Just don't pull a timothy mcveigh. Every single fact doesn't back you up. You are citing things as fact that don't even pertain to the discusion. It amazes me that you are doing this all along wile justifying it as if you are doing a civic duty. Now you call me a coward because i havn't jumped the line to the insane? wow. Many people died at the hands of patriots. strangly, those patriots weren't remebered that way.
So what you are proposing has never happened before?
Even in situations with FAR worse conditions such as entire large portions of buildings FULLY ENGULFED in flames for many HOURS, even days?
Even though the towers where SPECIFICALLY designed to withstand the damage of aircraft of almost identical size to the ones that crashed?
Even though they were designed to be able to stand with MORE THAN AN ENTIRE SIDE (ie 25% of the total) of the outer columns severed?
and your proof/evidence to support this wild and unreasonable conjecture is what exactly?
duh...I dunno, the hot fire, its burny, steel doesnt like the burny burny..goes boom all fall down.
(oh and you forget, WTC7 had no plane hit it. Claims that it had large diesel tanks on fire within it are just that, claims, and there are MANY VARYING reports on the severity of the damage and fires within WTC7, from different firefighters. You know, changing/inconsistant stories, the sort of thing that normally would make a witness statement doubtfull.)
P.S., this is not about Bush. Bush is a patsy. He almost certainly knew something was coming, but I personally doubt he planned it (plausable deniability and all that). Watch these very interesting videos and read these reports properly, preferably in this order, then do your own research on the issues involved, and see whether you still think there is no hidden agenda/conspiracy in play, and that you havent been lied to.(you can call it a (anti)propaganda course if you like, I dont care, just watch it)
1.) "The Money Masters" part 1 part2on google video (not even 9/11 related, but EVERYONE should watch this, and make their own minds up whether they believe it.)
2.) "truth and lies of 9/11" on google video (by an ex narcotics policeman with a long family history of inteligence/enforcement etc)
3.) WACO rules of engagement part1 part2, just to show you this sort of thing (media lies, government coverups) is not just bush related
4.) JFK II the bush connection you can disbelieve the bush connection if you want, the point to get from this film is the amount of lying to the public and complete disinformation that comes through the media
5.) getting into 9/11 now: read these reports: "why indeed did the WTC buildings collapse" (by a physics proffessor at BYU, make sure you watch the WTC7 collapse footage as well, its only short.
6.) ...WTC...Why the Official Account Cannot Be True for all of you who think you are being "scientific" or using common sense in doubting the conspiracy theories.
lastly, do your own research, use your own brain. www.scholarsfor911truth.org is a nice starting place. lookup WTC Gold repository, alex jones predicts 911 (you tube), the lone gunman pilot episode (you tube), afghanistan oil pipeline, opium production in afghanistan, bin laden fake tapes (his nose is WRONG, among other things, its not him), put options, securacom, WTC power downs, "everybodies gotta learn sometime" (google video), cheney "does the order still stand", bush goat story, PNAC "pearl harbour", pearl harbour itself, skull and bones bohemian grove(its not imaginary, its real, what they do, you m
watch "the money masters" on google video
Ah, but you're forgetting that they have _computers_ to help them sift all that information. These aren't the sort of silly so-called computers that _we_ get to see, but the kind on TV shows and movies that can effortlessly enhance a blurry low-res piece of video into pristine 72mm quality and then tell you the make of bullets each perp has is his gun in real-time, take over a ring of secret US or Russian death satellites and use them to threaten the free world, or craft a virus that can cripple the computers controlling an entire alien invasion fleet. And remember, this is just the stuff that the TV and movie industry was allowed to show, not what the government and law enforcement actually has, which is obviously even more awesome.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
It couldn't have been demolition charges, because anybody who watches TV or moves knows that demolition charges are black boxes with digital read-outs that bleep every second until they explode. Somebody would have been pretty sure to have noticed a bunch of those and mentioned it, especially when the beeps started to get really loud just prior to detonation.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
I have nothing against those who took the risk to be killed or injured for their country, most of them are fine people. The thing is that you wrote "serve and defend your country" which is the correct purpose of the army. Now, if the army or an agency is used to increase the power of a few milionaires by harming the population, is this still someting worth dying for? (hint: in "we the people", they were not ony considering the persons in the room).
Your last sentence is funny, you tell people they are coward if they don't fight for their government but say they have no right to fight back if their government is attacking them in the first place. And yes, the founding fathers had the foresight to predict that any government will be tempted to overuse its power, the fact that it is easier now is not an excuse for allowing it.
> Things like all the people getting flight training, when those countires hadn't the need for that
> many pilots. Obvious in retrosepct, but at the time what could you do? Suspicious, certianly, but
> not illegal.
Which country doesn't need 19 pilots? I can't think of many countries that would only require that few. You tend to get 2 or 3 pilots on each plane! Which country only has 7 planes?
As for the Clinton Administration - certainly they weren't guiltless (GATT, NAFTA, WTO, etc.), most pointedly with regard to the actions taken in Eastern Europe (Bosnia, etc.) to ensure the building of that oil pipeline there....
Two words CLINTON & ECHELON!!!! The left is just looking for another reason to be the "haters" they claim their not.
The Darkside http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/v iew/
Rumsfields War http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pent agon/view/
War Behind Closed Doors http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq /view/
Pretty much sums it up. These People saw Nixons spanking as a terrible stripping of presidential manhood, and set themselves about to "RESTORE" it. Complete with wiretaps and torture on demand. Dick and Don are in it for the long haul. I don't think they realize what lies at the end of the road they are building. (We would be lucky if it is another good ole fashioned presidential spanking. Can you impeach an entire cabinet?.)
They haven't changed much in the last 20 years. I expect them to act with the same lack of integrity and political chickanery they always have. This is your fathers Nixon administration.
The only good thing to come from any of this is Jon Stewart's Dead-On single syllable impressions. Waaaaunnnggh! Waaaaunnnggh! Heh,Heh,Heh!
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Uhh...
:)
"The maxim is You can't eat your cake and have it too"
And the GP said:
"have your cake and eat it too"
These two statements are exactly equivalent, thanks to the use of the word 'and'. Note the absence of the word 'then', which you've apparently conjured from thin air...
You can have your cake and eat it. You cannot eat your cake and have it.
The word 'and' has no temporal meaning. But another way, "A and B" is identical to "B and A". This is in contrast to the word 'then', which clearly defines a temporal order (and is why you needed to introduce it in order to have your argument make sense). Thus, "have your cake AND eat it too" has the exact same meaning as "eat your cake AND have it too". Therefore, either they're both possible, or they're both impossible. Of course, common usage assumes the latter.
Funny how, on Slashdot, a simple cliche can turn into a lesson about grammar and logic...
This is because their concept is 'durable, fast, many'.
Not 'durable', but 'rugged'. I read their tank quality wasn't spectacular, but they could be serviced pretty much anywhere while the German tanks often had to be taken to special repair shops in the rear. And that 'fast' part is beyond my understanding -- many Soviet designs were butt-ugly and slow pigs. Manoevrability was hardly their forté, mass, numbers and expendability was.
Finland bought some of their 'Jeep' equivalents in the late 20th century -- and they had to be custom-fitted with fuel tanks with refilling-corks. The Soviet doctrine was to drive as far as the jeep would go on a single filling and the dump it once it ran out of fuel.
An analogy from history : germans had excellent technology, experience and perfect training to go with it, they favored extreme quality against quantity.
You're overemphasizing the quality -- Axis (even German) weaponry was often lacking when compared with their immediate opponents, but their operational ingenuity (e.g., blitzkrieg, joint weapons and Auftrakstaktik) and keeping the initiative allowed them to compensate and dominate the early war. During the war, their weapons could be improved accordingly.
What the NSA is doing is fighting the last war over and over again: they're dumbfounded with the asymmetric warfare of the 'terrorists' (a lot of people get lumped under that label). The 'terrorists', on the other hand, have read their Sun Zsu and von Clausewitz: don't necessarily attack directly the mass of enemy forces, attack his/her strategy. That's why US still has very little chance of 'winning' -- the three-letter-agencies and armed forces are going for the non-existent mass army, non-existent WMDs and such.
I'm sure the NSA has all sort of plans, but you'll note that the plan that was first invented 'AT&T builds the building' ending up not being the plan, instead if being 'AT&T provides a bunch of taps'.
Considering they thought of and implimented that second plan in seven months, I don't know why we'd assume they couldn't think of the first plan in one month, at least some sort of rough sketch of it. It's a pretty basic plan, 'Build an identical building to the one you guys already built, but let us have it.'.
And I'm honestly not sure under who's administration the idea was thought of matters. Like I said, the NSA probably has all sort of plans laying around, and it's not like this one was partically hard to think of: Hey, to spy on domestic phone calls, let's ask the phone company to do it. Not exactly rocket science there.
Our government has all sorts of plans drawn up. There are people in every agency to sit down and write out the craziest and most absurd plan imaginable. That doesn't mean that the people in charge are responsible, or even know about the plans. Clinton almost certainly didn't go to the NSA and say 'Come up with a way to spy on domestic phone calls'.
Bush implimented it, as soon as he got into office. I'm sorry, presidents on the way out the door don't set up spying programs with constitional questions, and that sort of thing would be the very first thing an incoming president would learn about. Bush said 'go'. That's the important point.
He probably neither knows nor cares if it was an existing plan, he said 'spy on domestic calls', and the NSA either whipped up a plan really quickly, or pulled out this vaguely defined 'plan' to ask the phone company to do it. Whether or not there was some file sitting in a drawer somewhere that said 'To spy on domestic call, I propose we ask the phone company for help' is unknown and unimportant.
And, frankly, this administration has lied so often about this program I wouldn't trust them to admit the NSA existed.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
No, "and" in itself doesn't have a temporal meaning, but the order in which we say things implies a sequence or priority. Of course if you take the conjuction "and" and stick it between two meaningless letters the implication isn't the same--you've divorced the statement of its context: the laws of causality. Besides, if you were correct no one would say it. I'm going to have some sugar and coffee now.
Even though it really does look like the twin tower buildings were dropped using standard demolition techniques,
No it doesn't.
even though building seven fell, hours later, without ever being hit by an aircraft and also looked like it was dropped in exactly the same manner as the two towers
It had been on fire the whole time.
and even though there are no signs that the Pentagon was hit by anything as large as an airliner
Except for the goddamn big hole...
I'm jusst mostly on the "my fellow citizens sure are an uninformed and spoon-fed bunch of people" bus.
I'm just mostly on the "you will believe any conspiracy theory as long as it conforms to your pre-existing beliefs" bus.
and even though building seven fell, hours later, without ever being hit by an aircraft
Oh, and I forgot to mention that WTC 7 had been seriously damaged by the collapse of the towers. There's a picture of the damage on this page.
OK thats enough for now. Im not going to argue with anyone here unless I think they have gone through this info first, because if they havent then it will be pointless.
In other words: unless you only marginally disagree with me, I don't want to argue with you. I've gone through a lot of the info you've referenced, and I've gone through the info on the other side. I gotta tell you: I disagree with you completely on almost all points (it's been a long time since I looked it all over, but I found nothing on the paranoid side to indicate they had anything beyond speculation, rumor and outright lies.). So far, everything I've seen on the MIHOP side is nothing more than "intelligent design" applied to 9/11. "There's a lot of stuff we don't understand, so there must've been some intelligent agent behind the stuff outside our cognitive abilities." Things didn't happen exactly as predicted, operative word there being "PREDICTED". As in "the weather man predicted rain, but it's been dry all day". The outcome of a plane flying into the side of the WTC was predicted by the engineers and architects who designed it. It was tested, I'm sure, in wind tunnels and with mockups and all kinds of nifty stuff that's outside my pervue....but until you actually fly a full-sized plane into a full-sized building, you have only a very educated guess as to what's going to happen next.
I suppose this is why highrise buildings have fallen over previously from fires, because the steel gets weakened by the fire... oh wait they haven't?
Did they also have the weight of a fully-loaded 747 sitting on one of their stress-weakened floors? Geez, I'm still amazed by the fact that it didn't fall over when it was hit, everyone else seems to be amazed that it fell over at all.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
he is still regarded as being an honest politician
And that in itself is an indication that there's something not normal about him. I have little doubt that he believes what he says, the problem is, what he believes is insane.
Not that it has any relevance but as it happens neither, and this attempt at stereotyping says more about you than me.
There is an old saying, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." which applies here. You can spoon feed folks like Sparky all manner of facts and lead them to all of the sources, but they will continue to insist that you are wrong and they are right. It's sad, but there are some people with closed minds who take what they hear from right-wing talk radio and from Fox TV as Gospel TRUTH, and NOTHING you can say or do will convince them to even look at the facts for themselves.
I once had a friend who said, "Thinking makes my head hurt!" and that was why my friend always took the opinions of "experts" over his own. He was far more comfortable repeating the opinions of others than he was in drawing his own conclusions, no matter what the subject. I have since met many people like my friend. These people seem to trust the opinions of authority figures over everything else, and they regularly will toss their own conclusions onto the scrap heap as worthless.
For those who are more open minded, consider the following:
Watch the videos of the three WTC buildings collapsing, and use a stop watch to measure how long it took for each building to collapse. Then compare those videos with videos of other controlled building demolitions. I think you will see many similarities. Then go to any beginning physics text book and read about gravity and falling objects. Using the equations you will find in that book, you can calculate how long a free fall would take for a demolished building, given the height of the building, and you can draw your own conclusions. I think you will find that comparing your measured collapse times with your calculated free fall times, all three of the WTC buildings collapsed at almost free-fall speed. I have not seen any other logical explanations for such rapid collapses other than that the vertical steel beams were severed by explosive charges into short pieces as the buildings were collapsing. The upper parts of the WTC buildings met with almost no resistance as the buildings collapsed. If there had been any resistance from the lower parts of the buildings, their collapse would have taken longer because the lower parts would have absorbed energy from the falling upper parts, slowing the fall of the upper parts.
Placing the explosive charges to make a controlled demolition takes a fair amount of time, usually several days, and it requires an accurate knowledge of the building structure, so all of the explosive charges required can be properly placed. Then the explosive charges must be set off in sequence by a remote control system to cause the buildings to collapse the way you see them collapse in those videos. Building 7 looks like a "classic" demolition, because the outer walls fell inward after the center of the building collapsed, and are lying on top of the pile of rubble from the core of the building, limiting the amount of rubble outside of the building's footprint. WTC 7 does not look like a demolition planned and executed in an hour or two.
One inconvenient fact is the energy released into the pile of rubble from each building is more than can be accounted for by converting the potential energy in the mass of the WTC buildings into kinetic energy as they collapsed. The excess energy must have come from somewhere. I think the excess energy came from the explosives used to sever all of those steel columns and beams, and went into the pools of molten metal in the basements of the WTC buildings. But if those beams and columns had been severed by explosives, wouldn't that have been evident in the rubble pile? Well of course it would, but the entire area around the WTC site was immediately declared a crime scene and the scrap metal was hauled away to steel mills on the other side of the world as quickly as possible, so forensic analysis of most of it could not be done. Why was there such a rush to recycle that steel? And why would anyone want to block photographers and other investigators from the WTC site, and even go so far as to
An analog gray hair frantically clinging to the trailing edge of technology.
Even then I said it was an excuse to stop the flow of cheap oil under the oil for food program (which all Americans benefited due to it's driving down oil prices, well I guess all Americans except those who make money selling oil). Turn out it was also a source for some choice no-bid contracts for Halliburton.
Remember we faced Saddam in the "mother of all battles". As my grandfather would have said, "Saddam is all blow and no go".
The US had nothing to fear from Iraq, other than empty rhetoric.
Of course now we have something to fear as thousands of Iraqis who have watched thier families die at American hands and are now ripe for recruitment by terrorist groups.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
Of course now we have something to fear as thousands of Iraqis who have watched thier families die at American hands and are now ripe for recruitment by terrorist groups.
How about the millions that died at Saddam's hands? And how the large, brutal, and deliberate death toll inflicted on Iraqis by Syrians, Jordanians, and a Sunni minority being armed and funded by Iranians and Saudis? Do you think the average Iraqi really thinks it's the US that drives car bombs into marketplaces to kill people for being Shiites? Do you really think that a family that lost someone who was dragged out of the house to be used by Saddam's troops as a human shield doesn't remember who did the dragging? Do you really think that local Iraqis - other than the Tikriti minority that lost their cash-flow-sugar-daddy when Saddam's regime finally died - are the ones that are so dead set against an elected and constitutionally governed country? The millions that voted would suggest otherwise.
The terror recruits you're worried about are the ones that are being ushered into on-the-job training after crossing the border from Syria and Iran. They're there to kill coalition troops when they get a chance, as a bonus, but mostly they're there expressly to terrorize the Iraqi population in hopes of making their new form of government seem too unpleasant, as opposed to something more "secure" and Taliban-ish. Stopping that cancer is critical for our national security, and is the only decent thing to do for all those people that voted, even as the happily late Zarqawi said he'd cut the heads off anyone who did.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Millions, can seem to get into the millions. How about some links?
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
Millions, can seem to get into the millions. How about some links?
My fault, I should have simply said "over a million."
1
2>
3>
There are as many as you might want to go Googling for.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Everything you said is a supportable opinion, but your comment runs aground on one matter of math: that Democrats want lower taxes. I've compared the tax plans and the ones where Democrats want lower taxes than Republicans are rather rare. It is almost always the other way aroud: Dems wanting higher taxes (even if, from your apparently libertarian point of view, the difference is relatively small). A good, and rather stereotypical example, of this is found in New Jersey right now. You have three factions: the governor, the Democratic majority, and the Republican minority. The two Democratic factions are fighting likes snakes on a plane over which of two massive tax hikes to put in place. The Republicans (despite their "good old, Soviet-style, socialism and cronyism") are asking for a 0% tax hike.
Where were you when the voynix came?
"industrialists and the like (i.e. the Republican base) were tremendous supporters of the european fascists. It was only the American left (when we had one) that supported going to war against them"
The American left, pre WW-2, supported Stalin. In fact, large numbers of them joined Stalin's own political party (much more than numbers of Americans who joined the Nazi Party) Can you find a difference between the two that really matters? One that makes one a fascist and the other an anti-fascist? You can't, other than the most superficial difference of all: one type of fascist quotes Marx and the other does not. The American left threw their lot in with one fascist. This made them against one fascist, but not anti-fascist.
Where were you when the voynix came?
OK, Skippy -- what are those sequential explosive outgassings running down the sides of each building floors BELOW the crush points, at perfect timed intervals? You think that was the building occupoants farting in fear, or what?
The pentagon hole was 16 feet across. Get off your lazy ass and research how big the airliner they SAY hit the building was, and don't forget the wings, and the engines on the wings. Then ask how that (way too small) jet engine got into the hole where the fusilage was, considering there were NO holes out where the wings would have hit. C'mon, genius... what's your answer? Another "duh, no it don't"?
Fire has never in the past dropped skyscrapers; they're designed that way. Look it up. Did you know NO other skyscrapers EVER ANYWHERE have fallen from fire? I thought not. Look that up, too. While you're at it, look up how steel softens and at what heat, and WHY skyscrapers don't fall from fire. Then look up the temperature at which kerosine burns (jet fuel) and compare that to the molten pools of steel at the bases of the fallen buildings. Then look up thermite.
You know, it really doesn't bother me that some people aren't as bright as others. I mean, it IS unreasonable to expect everyone to understand what they see, know basic science, etc. But what DOES bother me is when someone like you, who has not taken the time or energy to examine the issues, or may not be bright enough to do so (I don't know that, I'm just saying it's possible) pretends they know what is going on. If you're not actually one of the world's mass under IQ 100, you certainly just made yourself look that way.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"Did they also have the weight of a fully-loaded 747 sitting on one of their stress-weakened floors?"
erm.... first, they where Boeing 767-222's, not 747's. Obviously you've done plenty of research into this topic, and just forgot this.....
A 767 weighs a little over 100 tonnes. The floors of the buildings weighed around 1000-> 3000 tonnes each. so adding the entire weight of a 767 added a whopping 3 -10% extra load to the floor, assuming it managed to stop itself on just one floor rather than multiple floors and assuming none fell out of the building. (I hope Im never in a structure where the safety limits are so low that 3% extra can make it fall..) If you cant see your argument is rediculous, I'll help you out a little more:
The buildings where designed to handle impacts from "fully loaded 707's", the largest passenger aircraft at the time. (this from the WTC construction and Project manager). In fact he believes they could withstand MULTIPLE strikes due to the "intense grid" construction, with a plane being like a "pencil through a screen door". A boeing 707 weighs between 100 and 150 tonnes. This is the same or in some cases MORE than the 767's that hit.
"Geez, I'm still amazed by the fact that it didn't fall over when it was hit"
Perhaps you should consider the hundreds of firefighters, who are normally experts (or at least the people in charge are) on when a building is safe to enter or not, who died because they disagreed with your statement. Perhaps you should read some of their interesting witness statements that they where BLOCKED FROM RELEASING for years!!!
watch "the money masters" on google video
erm.... first, they where Boeing 767-222's, not 747's. Obviously you've done plenty of research into this topic, and just forgot this.....
Typo.
A 767 weighs a little over 100 tonnes. The floors of the buildings weighed around 1000-> 3000 tonnes each. so adding the entire weight of a 767 added a whopping 3 -10% extra load to the floor, assuming it managed to stop itself on just one floor rather than multiple floors and assuming none fell out of the building. (I hope Im never in a structure where the safety limits are so low that 3% extra can make it fall..) If you cant see your argument is rediculous, I'll help you out a little more:
And, if one of those floors is weakened enough by the impact, explosion and resulting fires, the extra weight might be enough to make that ONE FLOOR fall onto the next one, thereby doubling the load on the next floor. That floor then falls on the next, and so on and so on...remarkably just like what happened that day. How about this: the explosion of the plane hitting fractures the floor ABOVE where it hit, spilling large amounts of the floor and objects on the floor onto the one below. How much weight increase are we talking now? A 767 is about 16M tall, meaning best case scenario, when it hit the building it severely damaged three floors. Even if 90% of those floors and the plane were ejected out of the other side on impact, you're still putting a 20% load on the one at the bottom, which has also been severly damaged.
The buildings where designed to handle impacts from "fully loaded 707's", the largest passenger aircraft at the time. (this from the WTC construction and Project manager). In fact he believes they could withstand MULTIPLE strikes due to the "intense grid" construction, with a plane being like a "pencil through a screen door". A boeing 707 weighs between 100 and 150 tonnes. This is the same or in some cases MORE than the 767's that hit.
Again with the "IN THEORY, it should have worked like this...but in reality, it acted like this. Therefore there must be a conspiracy" theory. I believed I could setup my in-laws computer so as to protect them from themselves, viruses, spyware, etc...and yet, there it sits on my desk waiting to be rebuilt. No conspiracy, I just assumed they were going to use it for e-mail and browsing only. My bad. The only conspiracy I see here is the Construction and Project Manager trying to preserve his reputation. Because, afterall, building contruction is such a perfect and exact science that mistakes NEVER happen.
Perhaps you should consider the hundreds of firefighters, who are normally experts (or at least the people in charge are) on when a building is safe to enter or not, who died because they disagreed with your statement. Perhaps you should read some of their interesting witness statements that they where BLOCKED FROM RELEASING for years!!!
I'm really not sure what your point is here. My point was that I found it amazing that a structure that tall could be hit close to the top with 100 tons of high-speed airplane and not fall over. And, if the firefighters died that day, how much can you really trust their eyewitness statements?
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
Imagine a murder case, where the victim had gunshot residue indicating close range shot, but the suspect claimed to have fired in self defence from further away. If the victim could not produce any other examples of gunshot residue occuring from a distant shot, then the jury is not going to believe his story when the evidence clearly supports a close range execution style shot.
Well in this case, there are two stories: -
an unprecedented 4 planes successfully hijacked on the same day (never happened before) without setting off hijacking alarms in most cases and turned the transponders off, managed to avoid NORAD for nearly 2 hours, despite flying INTO the pentagon, one of the most well defended buildings in the world, supposedly, managed to hit targets with 100% accuracy if we discount the one plane shot down (I mean taken back by passengers), even though professional pilots have claimed that the manouvres where beyond ordinary human ability (and the "pilot" couldnt fly a cessna), and ignoring pages of other problems, 3 buildings collapse from fires and damage that they where engineered to take. This story has no real motive (if the terrorists wanted to hurt america, why pick empty planes, why attack at that time when an hour later would have caused many more casualties, WHY HIT THE ALMOST EMPTY BOMB PROOF AND FARTHEST CORNER of the pentagon, missing all the high level employees, when a straight dive would have allowed them to hit the section with the high level brass in it) and has NUMEROUS WORLD FIRSTS and PHYSICAL IMPOSSIBILITIES (pools of melted steel COULD NOT have occured just from kerosene and office fires). OR
a conspiracy involving various members of the millitary and government (has happened all through history) for MULTIPLE MASSIVE MOTIVES totalling at least trillions if not more, used remote controlled planes (been around for decades) to crash into buildings, and then explosives to bring them down (again, been done for years). There are no loose ends or problems with this one, it has means (these are powerful people) opportunity (eg Bush's brother running security at WTC, WTC powerdowns etc), Motive (afghani pipeline, opium in afghanistan, iraq invasion for various reasons, PATRIOT ACT, TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS MISSING FROM THE DEFENSE BUDGET!!, 5 billion insurance +12 billion taxpayer money for the cleanup + billions in low interest loans + get rid of asbestos ridden hated buildings for silverstein, possible Gold Heist from the gold repository, WIPE OUT EVIDENCE FROM INSIDER TRADING CASES in the collapse of WTC7 (eg Enron)) and pages an pages of evidence (eyewitnesses, photo, video, etc etc etc).
THere is also the coverup afterwards (think about it: 40 million to investigate Clintons sex life, 16 million after delaying nearly 2 years (so most of the evidence was already destroyed) for an investigation into the biggest terrorist attack, biggest attack on US soil, biggest failure of US millitary/defence/NORAD, intelligence agencies, MASSIVE problem in that if these buildings could fall from fire, so could others, etc etc etc. And all it gets is 16 million? and the people running the investigations are ALL insiders and have huge conflicts of interest? We even know the likely culprits for the actual demolition: "Controlled Demolition Inc", one of the few companies worldwide able
watch "the money masters" on google video
OK, Skippy -- what are those sequential explosive outgassings running down the sides of each building floors BELOW the crush points, at perfect timed intervals?
Frankly I don't know what you're talking about. I've seen the videos of the collapses dozens of times and I've never seen any "explosive outgassings".
The pentagon hole was 16 feet across.
Which is larger than the width of the fuselage of a 757.
Then ask how that (way too small) jet engine
Huh?
considering there were NO holes out where the wings would have hit.
The wings pretty much disintegrated when they hit. What did you expect in a reinforced concrete building, a Wile E. Coyote-type cartoon hole?
C'mon, genius... what's your answer? Another "duh, no it don't"?
Christ you're kind of an idiot.
ook it up. Did you know NO other skyscrapers EVER ANYWHERE have fallen from fire? I thought not. Look that up, too. While you're at it, look up how steel softens and at what heat, and WHY skyscrapers don't fall from fire.
Look up the 9/11 report while you're at it.
I mean, it IS unreasonable to expect everyone to understand what they see, know basic science, etc.
Which, apparently, you don't. Sorry.
But what DOES bother me is when someone like you, who has not taken the time or energy to examine the issues,
I have examined the issues. And you're wrong.
or may not be bright enough to do so
Yes. Everyone who doesn't buy into your crackpot theory is an idiot. Check.
If you're not actually one of the world's mass under IQ 100, you certainly just made yourself look that way.
Maybe, but that's still at least 50 points higher than you.
Here's one for you, genius. If the 757 didn't hit the Pentagon, where did it go? What happened to all the people on it? What about the many eye-witness reports of the plane flying toward the building? And the lampposts that were clipped?
What you're saying, essentially, is that the government flew a 757 toward the Pentagon so as to get witnesses, then flew it away somehow without anyone noticing, while simultaneously launching a missile or something to blow a hole in the building. Then they snuck in, planted fake pieces of a plane to corroborate their story (but screwed up their clever plan by using pieces that you say were too small for a 757, tipping off eagle-eyed observers such as yourself.) They also disposed of all the passengers on the plain; I presume either by shooting them and burying them in an unmarked grave in Afghanistan somewhere, or by keeping them in custody in a remote gulag. Then I guess they chopped up the plane and sold the parts at a flea market.
Christ Almighty. Even if it was a conspiracy, wouldn't it have been easier to just crash the bloody plane into the building?
OK. I'll watch my temper. And I'll stipulate that you're not ignorant because you're stupid. You're just uninformed. Let's fix that.
Do something about it. Watch this:
http://f4d3r.blogspot.com/2006/03/911-documentary. html
You can see the outgassings; the professor calls them out and they are patently obvious. The Pentagon impact is detailed. The reports on the problems with the idea that the steel failed are detailed. The questions you asked about the 757 are raised -- there are some answers, though not nearly enough.
Your call. Watch or don't watch; remain uninformed or learn something. Remember: This is just one of the works out there that examines the many anomolies involved with 9/11. If you can examine all of them and come up unconvinced, that would really be something. However, I know you have not — because just about everyone who has looked even a little knows about the sequenced outgassings. You don't. You will after you watch that video. Now, you may have a theory that accounts for them, and I'd be interested to read it. But saying you don't know just means you are unaware of some of the really obvious things that went on that day, and you should probably fix that. At least, if you want to be taken seriously as an advocate for the mundane explanation.
No. I'm not saying anything of the kind. I'm saying there are serious discrepancies and they don't match well with the story the government has put out. I've not drawn a conclusion. I don't think I have enough information to draw a conclusion. What I do have enough information for is to suspend my belief that the story we've been told is 100% true.
Ok. Look. Try to visualize. The 757 has two huge Pratt & Whitney PW2037 or PW2040, or Rolls-Royce RB211-535E4 or RB211-535E4B engines. They're mounted on the wings, OK? They're about 40 feet apart, or another way to look at it is they're 20 feet from the centerline of the aircraft. These engines are very dense compared to the fuselage. There is no third engine mounted on the centerline. These are all simple facts. Please visit the Boeing website if you feel the need to double check; I did.
Now. There was one hole in the Pentagon. Fact. The one and only hole was 16 feet wide. Fact. The engines were 20 feet off center, left and right. Fact. Another way to look at this is that they were at least twelve feet outside, horizontally, the maximum radius of the hole. Fact.
Now, ignoring the particular type of engine that was found (which was not a 757 engine, and is weird enough a fact as is), you tell me what your theory is as to how that jet engine got inside the Pentagon without there being an additional hole 20 feet from the center of the impact. The engine is very heavy, moving very fast, and it will either (as you intimate) disintigrate on contact, which I don't neccesarily have a problem with, or it'll breach the wall, which I also don't have a problem with, as it is denser than any other part of the aircraft. However, there was no hole except for the center one, and there was an engine, amazingly undamaged (as in, the turbine was still intact) inside the hole. So: how did the engine get in there? The obvious, and easy answer is that the engine was a centerline mounted engine. But if it was, then this wasn't a 757, which is a twin engine, wing mounted aircraft. But we were told this was a 757.
This leaves me, at least, with various unanswered questions. Now perhaps you are way, way smarter than me, and you see the answer or answers. I'd very much like to hear them. Please feel free to elaborate. Otherwise, watch the video and go snoop around the various sites asking these
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Don't worry yourself too much about such convoluted theories that rely on preposterous assumptions, "evidence" that contradicts all eyewitness accounts, and remarkable leaps of logic or superhuman impossibilities (like the OJ defense team's blaming of Mark Fuhrman, that, if accepted, had the man travelling 800 mph between locations where he was seen/planting evidence/etc). Any big event has this: a sort of surrounding cloud where pained minds create vapors of conspiracy theory. This explains the "Elvis at a Burger King in Kalamazoo" theories and the entirely fictional non-Oswald participants in the JFK assassination. If this was WW2 time, the same nutties would be providing irrefutable proof that no Japanese planes were actually at Pearl Harbor.
Where were you when the voynix came?
http://f4d3r.blogspot.com/2006/03/911-documentary. html
Doesn't play.
This is just one of the works out there that examines the many anomolies involved with 9/11.
You realize that for every one crtackpot conspriacy site out there, there is probably one that debunks it too.
which was not a 757 engine, and is weird enough a fact as is)
Prove it.
you tell me what your theory is as to how that jet engine got inside the Pentagon without there being an additional hole 20 feet from the center of the impact.
Wings fold toward the fuselage, engine enters hole. Or, engine comes off when plane touches the ground before impact, momentum carries it into hole. Done.
This leaves me, at least, with various unanswered questions. Now perhaps you are way, way smarter than me, and you see the answer or answers.
Still waiting on answers as to the whereabouts if the actual plane. Take your time.
As I said right out of the gate in my original post, I'm not on board with the conspiracy folks.
It certainly looks like you are.
I found another site with a video about the "outgassings" and I still think you're full of it. Looks to me like debris being blown out windows from the force of the floors above collapsing.
Also, it probably needs to be pointed out that when a building is brought down with explosives, the explosions typically start at the bottom.
"Also, it probably needs to be pointed out that when a building is brought down with explosives, the explosions typically start at the bottom."
By placing the explosives up high in the building, they sure fooled you, didn't they?
Where were you when the voynix came?
I see the trimmed version is no longer on Google. Sorry, I should have tried it.
This works, I did test it:
http://www.loosechange911.com/
Please watch, then we'll continue.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Sorry, I missed that. The physics won't work. You can't translate the engines sideways suddenly. They have enormous kinetic energy along a particular vector; you can't alter that vector in time to get them into the hole without a ridiculous amount of additional energy. Regarding what kind of engine it was, watch the film. They consulted experts; I am not one.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You are seriously asserting that explosions 20 to 30 floors below the collapsing region represent debris being pushed out from above, while the 20 to 30 floors in between suffer no such event? I'm having trouble with that.
Also, you asked above, what happened to the plane. That's why I directed you to this specific video; it addresses those questions. Watch, then comment, please.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I don't see any explosions from 20-30 floors below. More like 2-3.
Also, you asked above, what happened to the plane. That's why I directed you to this specific video; it addresses those questions. Watch, then comment, please.
Your specific video still doesn't play. Summarize.
Also, from here:
Oh Jesus, if this video, which has been debunked a thousand times, is your evidence, I give up.
They are ***clearly*** visible and POINTED OUT on the video I pointed you to. Which plays fine on the second link. However, you wrote that you "gave up", claiming that the video had been debunked. Since you have obviously not WATCHED the video, and *again* are completely ignorant of the facts that you attempt to argue against -- obviously you have not watched the events for yourself, are taking your validaation from third parties, and so I decline to spend any more time on this. People who argue from conviction instead of data belong in churches, not discussions about reality.
And by the way, here's the first problem with the popular science article: "Once each tower began to collapse" It has never been satisfactorily explained why the collapse began. There were two smallish fires up on the oen tower; the NYPD fire cheif was up there, on the radio, and he said he'd neeed just a couple of lines (fire hoses) to put it out. Doesn't sound much like a multi-thousand degree raging inferno that the standard line would have you believe melted the multiply redundant core of supportinig steel. The second problem is answering why all that "compressed air" didn't just blow out the windows on the immediate floors below, but went down multiple tens of stories to blow them out there instead. I thought it could have been elevator or utility shafts -- there were quite a lot of them in the building -- but actually watching the events (yes, I know that's too hard for you to do) it doesn't look like that at all.
Anyway, don't you worry your pretty little head about it. The facts are the facts, they're not subject to either of our opinions. History usually has a way of finding out what happens when people lie fusge the data.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.