TruthOut - Town Meeting
T O  needs your help

Standing Down on the Rove Matter

By Marc Ash

Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 03:01:50 PM EDT :: Fitzgerald Investigation

Yesterday, most Mainstream Media organizations published reports about a letter supposedly received by Karl Rove's attorney Robert Luskin. As an example of the supposed letter's contents, TIME Magazine stated that, "Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said or wrote, 'Absent any unexpected developments, he does not anticipate seeking any criminal charges against Rove.'"

Truthout of course published an article on May 13 which reported that Karl Rove had in fact already been indicted. Obviously there is a major contradiction between our version of the story and what was reported yesterday. As such, we are going to stand down on the Rove matter at this time. We defer instead to the nation's leading publications.

In that Mr. Luskin has chosen the commercial press as his oracle - and they have accepted - we call upon those publications to make known the contents of the communiqué which Luskin holds at the center of his assertions. Quoting only those snippets that Mr. Luskin chooses to characterize in his statements is not enough. If Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has chosen to exonerate Mr. Rove, let his words - in their entirety - be made public.

Reporter Jason Leopold

Mr. Leopold did not act alone in his reporting of this matter. His work, sources and conclusions were reviewed carefully at each step of the process. There is no indication that Mr. Leopold acted unethically.

Please keep in mind that over the years we have reported on many examples of individuals being scapegoated in crisis situations by superiors seeking cover from controversy. Truthout, however, does not do scapegoats. And we stand firmly behind Jason Leopold.

The Confidentiality of Our Sources

As journalists, nothing is more critical to being able to report guarded facts than the guarantee of confidentiality we provide to our sources. Truthout has never compromised the identy of a confidential source. We will protect our sources on this story, as we have on every other story we have ever published.

Expect a more comprehensive accounting of this matter on Monday, June 19.

Marc Ash
Executive Director - Truthout
director@truthout.org

Update [2006-6-22 0:18:21 by TruthOut]: This thread is now closed.


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I am proud to be a supporter of TruthOut.  Keep up the excellent work!  Best to Jason Leopold as well.
~
"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." Arundhati Roy
by SlowDown on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 06:58:25 PM EDT
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There are enough sycophants on the Right.  We need to a full accounting of what can only be described as a disasterous journalistic gaffe before trust and credibility can be regained.  Love letters won't help.

by Lescoeurs on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 08:24:56 PM EDT
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that the staff of Truthout know more than they're telling us? Besides the identities of their sources, that is.

Here's a full accounting: They obtained some information, they reported it, things didn't play out as expected, and people started screaming bloody murder because they were disappointed that the administration had once again managed to thwart the forces of good.

Then Truthout and the rest of the progressive community went back to trying to expose the crimes of the administration, including trying to figure out exactly what had just happened and why, except for a small group of people who continued to cry bloody murder, convinced there was some sort of conspiracy afoot to, uh . . . try to . . . uh . . .

. . . What is it all you conspiracy theorists think Leopold and/or Truthout hoped to gain by making all this up, anyway?
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Are we safer yet?
by catastrophile (catastrophile@punkass.com) on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 09:15:36 PM EDT http://catastrophile.blogspot.com/
[ Parent ]

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Run on over to all of the MSM blogs.  They are spreading the news that Rove won't be indicted based on nothing but heresay from Rove's lawyer.  Oh, right, then there's also Mr. Bush telling the roses that Rove's been cleared too.  But still, you don't call that substantive evidence do you?

Go on now - get on over there an hold those scoundrels to your lofty journalistic standards.
~
"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." Arundhati Roy
by SlowDown on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 09:16:15 PM EDT
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Cassandra
by Cassandra on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 07:41:20 AM EDT
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Petulance or final preparations ?

by Lescoeurs on Mon Jun 19th, 2006 at 04:05:19 PM EDT
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I'll not hold my breath when the commercial media demand to see Fitzgerald's letter to Luskin/Rove.

by Catherine Vincent on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 07:01:57 PM EDT
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"We are going to stand down on the Rove matter at this time."  

I sure hope Monday's installment will have a clearer statement, including whether you think Jason got burned or not.

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 07:06:49 PM EDT

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While I am disappointed, (Rove should be indicted), I believe this is the only course of action for TruthOut to take at this time.

In three years we may know more.

Practice tolerance, kindness and charity.
by lwelsch (LWelsch@gmail.com) on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 07:15:39 PM EDT http://home.comcast.net/~PoliticalThoughts/index.html
[ Parent ]

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We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it. Edward R. Murrow
by beachdweller on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 08:04:14 PM EDT
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Changing the world, that is.  The more time we spend ruminating on each & every one of their lies & crimes, there's that much less time for us to put out a vision of  a world that's truly of, for and by the people.   It's as if we're continuously looking backward as they put the next one over on us.  Coach John Wooden of UCLA who (with his players, of course) won ten NCAA basketball championships when asked why he never scouted his oppenents, used to respond (paraphrasing him), "We don't need to scout our opponents as long our players do what they're supposed to do and play as hard and as well as they can."  
Today, unfortunately, those of us who seek to change  the world are doing the exact opposite of Coach Wooden's formula.for winning   We're spending far too much of our time scouting our oppenents and not  nearly enough time trying to figure out what we need to do to change the world, so the sooner we forget about such as Rove and move on to the task at hand the better off we and the world will be.   Anyway, Marc, whether or not one story was entirely correct or not,  what counts is that you and Truthout are out there for us in the netosphere, because that's where the actions is!    

by booboo on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 06:48:50 PM EDT
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that Luskin's office has (in spite of previous statements that no further statements would be forthcoming) now specifically denied that any deal was made for immunity between Rove and the OSP.

That basically leaves two plausible explanations consistent with TruthOut's reporting:

  1. After five rounds of testimony and a lengthy negotiation in Luskin's office, prosecutors determined that they could not make charges stick to Rove -- or they were satisfied at last that he had come clean, and opted not to indict; or

  2. An indictment was, in fact, served, but Fitzgerald's superiors in the DoJ subsequently ordered the case dropped, possibly against the wishes of Fitzgerald himself.

In either case, the OSP would not anticipate bringing charges against Rove, barring any new cause of action. In either case, the investigation might or might not continue to move forward.

One way or another, there's more story to come, as the OSP will have to announce something, eventually. Whether the announcement sheds any light on what exactly happened is anybody's guess.

In any event, cheers to Truthout for pursuing this story and keeping us informed as best as possible. Courage means sticking to your guns, even when people start shooting back at you.
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Are we safer yet?
by catastrophile (catastrophile@punkass.com) on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 07:08:09 PM EDT http://catastrophile.blogspot.com/

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thanks for demonstrating what courage is in this hallucination of a country/government/democracy/history.

Keep you eyes wide open in future too; this story isn't over.  You've kept us abreast and we're with you.  Look at the reaction to young Kennedy...just telling the truth in front and not even the "Globs of Protoplasm" (GOP) can blast him for human foibles.

TO is not propoganda, a political rag, a monster with it's own agenda etc.  Your taking "one baby step" aside can't be a relief to Rover since it's not ignominious defeat and disappear, is straightforward and practical re MSM;  There is no benefit for any of us to be crushed by the machine while they monopolize all the ink.

Tactical without bloodshed.  Beautifully done and the beginning of a fascinating saga with y'all there watching, risking, thinking, reading, writing for many americans more than TO. Your manner of journalism in this instance actually adds an element of fun!  What's next??  

When the battle is over, who will be.."The Next American...Idolator?"(as in cult of power)
"...in the house of the poor, the walls are thin and fragile, and troubles seep into one another." Caroline Payne
by Tiny Wits (TimeBean@gmail.com) on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 07:15:55 PM EDT http://ForMoronIssues.blogspot.com

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and keeping us up to speed. I look forward to the next installment. Whatever has happened behind scenes is typical Rove; remember his connection with the FBI when he had his own office bugged in Texas and then tried to pin it on the political opposition? He always has insiders doing his dirty work. It will be interesting to eventually find out who they are in this case.

I'm glad you are keeping the sources confidential. No one else should have to suffer Rove's revenge, as others have in the past.

by WonderWoman on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 07:22:46 PM EDT

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I am counting on you all to continue to learn more and let us know what you learn as you learn it. Rove and Fitzgerald is not the end of the world, there is still a war, there are still immigration issues. I am counting on you.

Thanks for keeping us updated on your status.

Practice tolerance, kindness and charity.
by lwelsch (LWelsch@gmail.com) on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 07:23:38 PM EDT http://home.comcast.net/~PoliticalThoughts/index.html

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Figurative Bullet and comes up smelling like a, um, a, er.....
Well A Stanky Ole Texas Turdblossom.........
A Weed by any Other Name would smell as Sour

The Crawford Mafia will be swept aside soon enough....
No later than Liberation Day November '08

by darkduck on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 08:22:46 PM EDT

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I've monitored this saga going between bemused, saddened and disgusted.

The stance of this last post is less than uplifting and might even be called a professional cop-out - if pulled by an organ of the Mouthpiece Media - TO would be the first to castigage. We must consider that.

The story is now solidly unsubstantiated. Talk about trying to dodge a bullet.

I must say I had hoped for better.

RA

by g21guy on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 08:50:37 PM EDT http://www.g21.net/

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"The story is now solidly unsubstantiated."

What's that mean, exactly?
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Are we safer yet?
by catastrophile (catastrophile@punkass.com) on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 09:18:51 PM EDT http://catastrophile.blogspot.com/
[ Parent ]

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Thanks for asking. We are awaiting, this post suggests, that another shoe *might* drop.  The use of "might" suggests that IF there is subtantiating evidence it has not yet been reported in these Web pages.

That is my quibble.

I appreciate your courtesy in not simply flaming me for the comment.

If others who responded to my post - which provides links to my background and experience in journalism, as well as being transparent - had taken the time, it would have been appreciated.

But I see this discussion is beyond reasoned dialogue any longer.  You are either with [TO] "...us or against us."  Sound familiar?

Regards,
RA


by g21guy on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 06:56:43 PM EDT http://www.g21.net/
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as substantiated as it ever was . . . It's based on anonymous sources, and that was perfectly clear from the start. If it was ever made out to be more than that, it wasn't the doing of TO.

And, very basically, this does boil down to whether you're with TO or against them . . . not because of any ultimatum made by anyone here, but because whether you're with them or agin' them will determine how you see this story.

If you have faith in TO's intentions and professionalism, the fact that nothing's come out which directly rebuts the claims they made about events at Luskin's offices last month indicates that this story has simply yet to be fully exposed.

If you don't have that faith, the failure of events to play out the way people hoped/expected renders the story, the reporter, and the organization unreliable. Despite the lack of anything solidly contraverting the assertions they've made.

From the perspective of TO supporters, coming here to demand retractions, firings, and outing of sources (without solid evidence that any of these are warranted) represents a gratuitous attack on this organization, and people have responded as such.

No doubt the people making the attacks feel equally justified, whether they're doing so out of a sense of indignation that the story was ever run, or one of disappointment that it didn't pan out the way we hoped it would.
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Are we safer yet?
by catastrophile (catastrophile@punkass.com) on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 07:28:18 PM EDT http://catastrophile.blogspot.com/
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explaination.  I appreciate your understanding.
"For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead." Thomas Jefferson
by lizbitchwitch (saylinbackagin@yahoo.com) on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 03:23:05 AM EDT
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Tenure NSA? Are you the head File Clerk at the School of the
America's?
It's unclear or should I say uncular who you are addressing
in your terse, condescending comment.

If it's me...then Bring It On re more Uncular Commentary...
I'd be glad to engage you...in debate.

by darkduck on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 10:02:14 PM EDT
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Just remember, you're basing your conclusions on the word of Karl Rove's lawyer five months before an election.  (Don't be making any $150 bets on that.)

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 07:49:44 AM EDT
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Since they closed the previous thread.....I'll respond to you
here. It does a disservice to the left as a whole, for a few on the left to insinuate, against all the evidence, that our current Piratical Regime had an active
hand in plotting and executing the atrocity that occurred at
the site of the former WTC on 9/11/2001.

Certainly there is more to it than the 'Official Story'. But
that does not include the farfetched radical theories advanced
by the angry, anti american, and anti israel, french leftist who
wrote the Bestseller in which those unsubstantiated claims
were printed.

One might as well believe in the panspermia ideas  advanced by the "religious' doctrine of the scientologists.
And let me assure you Elron Hubbard did not believe those
notions himself when he wrote his dianetics books as science
FICTION.

And as to your statements about there being debris
left over in the Florida Everglades Air crash....
I will clarify that what I meant there. The file photos of the crash site were taken
from a bit of a distance and in those photos one could not make out any debris....just a charred area surrounded by swamp
grass....
But I question whether you, or your so-called authorities on
the 9/11 crash sites,( that you claim had no debris..thereby with your jump of logic ruling out a plane crash since you insist planes can't vaporize or disintegrate on impact even when loaded with fuel), whether you, or your vaunted 'authorities' on the matter, got any  closer to those sites than a file photo....

Either way the French Leftist's claims are pure malevolent
poppycock meant to stir someone, anyone including you apparently, to go
off their rocker with enough anger, stateside, to do something
desperate against the piratical regime....but y'know something
This Piratical Regime would love that and it's a completely
irresponsible and counter productive act for that French Leftist
to Instigate that kind of Outrage on Trumped up evidence and
Theories....I will now go back and look his name up again
because he has really done a terrible thing to make
the simple facts in the matter murky with his unsubstantiable
and far fetched allegations and theories...and I'd like to name
him when attacking his preposterous claims
Have a Nice Day ; )

by darkduck on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 08:55:11 PM EDT

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who questions the official story of 9/11 doesn't discredit that entire line of inquiry.  The evidence is abundant.  You may feel that talking about it "hurts the left", but really, is that a reason not to talk about what seems to be true?  The same argument was advanced for not disputing the 2004 election and look where that got us.

I'm sick of being told to shut up or we'll hurt the left.  The truth is the truth, and this is the place where we speak it.

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 08:06:56 AM EDT
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But the Thierry Meyssan polemic is unfounded
and is aimed at stimulating one ill informed impetuous soul, or several,
to do something vigilante style that would
be a huge feather in the right's cap were it to happen.

The Official Story obviously isn't the whole story...
but the 'planted demolitions' argument is debunked
thoroughly in a scientific american article. And the other
wishful arguments such as the one that asserts that
a jet didn't hit the pentagon but rather a cruise missile
did as a so called 'false flag' strike have also been
meticulously debunked and are laughable.

And even a website that would love to add fuel to the fire
of a fact based conspiracy theory if there were one....
rotten.com (and I know their site has some lurid content and a questionable name).....has a very lucid item by item debunking
of the worst conspiracy theories but leaves the door open
to the possibility of damning errors and perhaps
intentional blindness on the part of the central government here
re: what they might have known or were tipped off about or should have known....
But every one of the allegations by the more rabid conspiracy theorists who believe that the administration had an active
hand in the planning and execution of the 9/11 atrocity
and that diminishes the role of Al Queda and the Hijackers
has been completely and broadly debunked by calm, rational,
non fanatical analysis.

by darkduck on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 01:36:27 PM EDT
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I'd like to read more about your claims.

I'm not familiar with Meyssan but his book The Big Lie sounds pretty good:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.effroyable-imposture.net/& ;sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=2&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3D%2522thierry%2Bmeyssan%2522 %26hl%3Den%26lr%3D

And here is a review of it in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,677112,00.html

Here's an interesting presentation by Meyssan in April 2002
http://thewebfairy.com/whatzit/french.html

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 02:31:26 PM EDT
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the scientific american article in which an MIT
professor shoots down the idea that burning jet fuel
cannot weaken the steel framing of a building/modern skyscraper at the peak temperature of a jet fuel fire. The MIT professor states that a fire of this sort will burn at 300 degrees
above the temperature to weaken the steel framework of such
a building such that the steel loses fifty percent of it's strength..
and there is an excellent skeptical analysis of the various
government involvement conspiracy theories floating around
about the 9/11 atrocity on rotten.com.
Rotten.com is the sort of site that would relish being able
to reveal a good government conspiracy if they could find
any factual merit to it. They can't. Please read it. Just
google 9/11 conspiracy and look for the entry that comes from
rotten.com.

Meyssan's book has been thoroughly and I repeat thoroughly
debunked.
I haven't even begun to look at the other skeptic websites
to find further refutations of the arguments of his ilk.
Arguments like Meyssan's obscure and obfuscate the
process of finding out what the government did know before
the event.....which would probably make them look
very bad and very like folks we know them to be, grossly incompetent at anything but spin, venality and suppression,
lying and stealing

by darkduck on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 08:44:37 PM EDT
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Sorry, but if you buy that Scientific American article  you are either very naive in the tactics of strawman arguments, etc. or else you are selling something. Try reading this as a naivete antidote (if needed):

http://www.serendipity.li/wot/sciam_reply.htm

The Sci. Am. was highly unpersuasive. Pancaking my @ss. WTC 7 collapsed soley due to fire (no plane hit it) despite the fact that two other buildings (5 and 6 I believe) were burning hotter. It collapsed at near free fall speed onto its own footprint. The leaseholder of the building said in an interview that they made the decision to pull it. Could that have been because it was a small scale replica model of WTC 1 and 2?

The Sci Am. article cites the Popular Mechanics article
as the single best debunking. No wonder, since the Scientific American article doesn't even begin to address things. Oh, but oopsie, that Popular Mechanics article has been pretty thoroughly debunked as straw man. Try here  or here  for example.

Oh, before you call me a tinfoil hatter, bear in mind that wikipedia calls 9/11 a proven conspiracy theory. Yep, 19 guys with box cutters and Al Qaeda backing = a conspiracy theory. Next time try to give a few better examples of debunking. Also, providing links instead of saying to google something is a helpful touch.

by waterdancer on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 01:20:10 AM EDT http://wassertanzen13.blogspot.com
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Theory...I read that whole page ...what they say is that
some consider the official story the equivalent of a conspiracy theory....and they do not take sides in the matter at all...

If you read further you'll see that the new york fire department found
there to be considerable movement in wtc 7 quite some time
before it fell and decided it was unstable....

You have no solid examples but there is a very tendentious
style of thought that I will call the wishful thinking of
conspiracy theorists trying to explain to themselves
with erroneous fantasy explanations a traumatic event
that makes them feel insecure.

But you are horribly mistating the contents of the material
in wikipedia which really is just trying to state the different points of view.....

The ones quoted who are advancing the multiple actual conspiracy theories that want to let Al Queda off the hook
are obiously fanatical crackpots,
oh and I suppose you'll say the cia was doing all of Zarqawi's
suicide mission recruiting too and hypnotizing the sunni participants in those attacks?

Conspiracy theorists obscure the simple truth.
The repuglykin party would not risk a false flag
attack of that magnitude because the consequences
of having something like that leaked and getting caught
would be their own annihilation...besides that, they are not
omnipotent, leakproof, nor that imaginative.
But I will call you a tin foil hatter because  does Wickipedia not call it a "Proven" Conspiracy theory...and
by definition a conspiracy theory that is "Proven" is no
longer a Conspiracy Theory.... Rather to prove means
the facts have shown it to be the case....it would then be
a proven conspiracy... Instead you have the worst form of drivelly speculation...that comes from fear of the reality that radical sunni Al Queda Islamists both Hate and succeeded in
attacking the U.S.

Now please go back to a healthier pursuit like
trying to get a look at the little green men in the freezer
at Roswell
 

by darkduck on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 01:50:23 AM EDT
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Calling proponents "fanatical crackpots" doesn't make it so.  Adding your own psychological assessment of the person you're conversing with doesn't strengthen your case either.

One thing that interests me about the so-called pancake theory of how the towers collapsed, is that the Australian author wrote the first paper about it---on September 11, 2001.  I have to ask myself, how does an engineer halfway around the world come up with such a rapid diagnosis of a structural failure in the US?  Where did he get that immediate knowledge of the towers' design and construction?  Where did he get the confidence to assess, so quickly, what had happened?  (Reminds me of how quickly the Patriot Act materialized.)  Scroll about 1/3 of the way down to read Tim Wilkinson's paper:
http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc.shtml

Here's a good site, worth reading by anyone who wants to understand this controversy better:  "Destruction of the WTC: An assessment of alternative theories"
http://nomoregames.net/index.php?page=911&subpage1=collapse_theory_comparison

I don't think anyone is claiming the Republican Party was behind this, duck.  But anyone who wasn't born yesterday knows there are many sorts of organized crime that work silently and have great power to get things done---especially if they have friends in high places who will benefit from it.  That's all it takes.

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 09:32:58 AM EDT
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I agree!  And when you think about it, this whole idea of "left" and "right" is absurd.  No doubt this was all started by some Republican who decided that they were "right" and anyone who was opposed to empire building would be relegated to the "left".  The connotations being, "left" behind, "left"overs, cowards who "left", in right-handed people (which are most of us), the "left" hand is weaker.  Ridiculous.

Anyone who lives in and for the truth (which knows no polarities) is in the CENTER.  What we speak from here may indeed "hurt" the "left" (and the "right") for it dispells the myth that these illusions are somehow inviolate.

So let's just keep speaking the truth, knowing that this is the very best thing we can do for our whole country.
~
"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." Arundhati Roy
by SlowDown on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 02:39:55 PM EDT
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Right after 9/11 a friend who was a demolitions expert in Vietnam said the WTC had to have come down with shaped charges. Also, when I worked on Wall Street, it was rumored that about a billion in bearer bonds were stored in the basement of the WTC, along with a substantial amount of gold. Couple these tidbits with the immediate removal of debris after 9/11 - much of which was sent out of the country - and you don't have to be a "French Leftist" to question 9/11.

I don't have answers, just enough troubling input to question any official findings. If you really consider the war for profit angle, it is difficult to avoid implications of collusion. As in the JFK murder, powerful interests can cover their trails in many ways unimaginable to those without their access to information and actions.

9/11 remains an open issue to many, including 9/11 victims' families.
"The very future of this Republic may well rest on whether or not anyone can, or will, stop George W. Bush." George Harleigh
by stonehenge on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 12:37:26 PM EDT
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Anecdotal evidence and, as you say 'Rumor'....

There are some interesting coincidences regarding the
happenings on 9/11 but the ones advanced by rumor,
anecdotal evidence and the polemic of Thierry Meyssan
are not pertinent.

Again...I don't believe the official story says it all
and probably covers up some things to make officialdumb
look better....

But the fanatical polemic of Meyssan and the Rumors
and anecdotes don't hold water.

Some of the coincidences that I find interesting but that
I still think are probably coincidences are the presence
of solicitor general or former solicitor general? olsen's wife on one of the planes after she'd made several appearances on
"Politically Incorrect" and the casualty of the former FBI agent
who'd left the brochure of the WTC anti terror plan in a hotel
and who the FBI later let go and who went to work in
some sort of anti terror post at the WTC and who died there
on 9/11....Another set of interesting coincidences is
the short selling of stocks related to the airlines prior to
9/11 and with regard to the Anthrax attacks....the connection
between the first man to die from exposure at the Florida newspaper offices and his real estate agent wife's contact with
two or so of the highjackers...

But the central question advanced by the conspiracy theorists
as an assertion.....of whether or not the US Executive
branch or it's special operations intelligence arms or a Rogue
offshoot planned and executed a 'false flag' military strike against it's own country in order to give the administration
enough momentum in public opinion to instate their new world order notions.....this is a rogue idea that is misguided,
fanatical and that gives the Piratical current regime a
aura of omnipotence that the bunglers do not deserve...
They would not risk a conspiracy of this magnitude because
their boat is too leaky....though they did run opportunistically
with the result of this al queda strike and deep down
are probably Very Glad It Happened....
At the very worst they may have turned a blind eye to
vague Warnings....but there is no evidence to support the
notion that the warnings were specific no matter how much
hindsight credit people like putin and castro take for
having been much more specific than they were in offering
a warning....
I do however believe that the administration in their energy
minute notes that cheney won't reveal probably
included plans for an iraq strike well prior to the impetus
for it garnered by 9/11 and they probably also included alot
of chuckling about how the energy industry would
have free rein to gouge the Public under Bush's plans to
destabilize the Middle East.....But I can't Prove It

by darkduck on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 01:52:27 PM EDT
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Some things never get "proven" in the strict sense.  This one is unlikely to be proven because all the evidence which might have definitively shown what happened was handled and disposed of by agents of this administration.

If the mob got to handle their own crime scenes and investigations, there would be many more cases dismissed for lack of evidence.

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 02:51:50 PM EDT
[ Parent ]

------------------------------------------------------------
Whether the current ship of fools is capable of WTC mischief or not, the event furthered their cause, and is subsequently suspect. The Wall Street bearer bond/gold tale went up through the ranks on the Street for years. That I don't fluff off, as I knew some of the sources, and they were in a position to know the contents of the WTC basement.

What if 9/11 was the biggest heist in history?
"The very future of this Republic may well rest on whether or not anyone can, or will, stop George W. Bush." George Harleigh
by stonehenge on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 04:58:11 PM EDT
[ Parent ]

------------------------------------------------------------
That's what hearsay evidence of the bearer bonds you
describe amounts to...

Again....it is tempting to want to blame the Boosh
regime for 9/11 ....But beware of wishful thinking influencing
your command of the facts
If the Bush team had had a hand in it ... It would have had to have been a Rogue group of
Cowboy Intelligence community people reporting directly to the Crawford Mafia, under such
deep cover, such a deep cover that it would never permit of the faintest
hint of a leak,  the probability of that approaches
nil....for, as we've seen the Bushtanic is leaky.
Also, contrary to some people's notions, Most people
in the Military or in the Intelligence Community
are too Pro American to have permitted a False Flag
operation as heinous as this one would, rightly, have appeared to Them under a False Flag M.O.

Once Again....to say that 19 committed islamists did not
have the tactical skill, discipline or intelligence to carry out
this operation under the nose of the most powerful military in the world, is to underestimate militant Islam....
If they want to pay the ultimate price,losing their lives in suicide attacks, then
they are capable of anything....
And as we've seen in Iraq the scale & power of the iraqi Insurgency, mostly a Sunni phenomenon, goes way beyond what Bush's military expected at least under Rumsfeld's spell....
Zarqawi is thought to have orchestrated some 800 suicide attacks recruited from Sunni martyr volunteers....mostly iraqi Sunnis...
No one would've expected this level of ferocious commitment
on the part of the Sunni's who we thought had largely surrendered after the shock and awe initial campaign.and melted into the community....they've done an effective job of keeping the most powerful military in the world busy and off balance..so it is
really underestimating Sunni Islam to think that
19 Sunni Al Queda did not have the tactical discipline or
intestinal fortitude to be fully capable of pulling off 9/11...
And as bad as bush/cheney/rumsfeld/rove are ..this gang
of four are not the planners of 9/11....This theory is
a red herring of Meyssan's that I believe is aimed at stimulating
someone who believes this propaganda and is angered by it to undertake a vigilante act against members of the administration

by darkduck on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 09:08:48 PM EDT
[ Parent ]

------------------------------------------------------------
that too was unthinkable
"The very future of this Republic may well rest on whether or not anyone can, or will, stop George W. Bush." George Harleigh
by stonehenge on Thu Jun 15th, 2006 at 10:23:37 PM EDT
[ Parent ]
------------------------------------------------------------

"You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you have to concentrate on." George W. Bush
by YUCA (msealesk@yahoo.com) on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 01:01:44 PM EDT
[ Parent ]
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Iran Contra.....they wanted to keep Iran and Iraq
counterbalancing each other....

Remember...if an inside job, internal conspiracy version of 9/11
were the truth the arch right wing leaders would have to look over their shoulders for the rest of their lives....and if something
like that had occurred and then leaked....they would lose their base constituency.....hard core right wing voters, mostly,
would not countenance a false flag domestic strike...
even while many of the southern right wing like New York city
about as much as they like the unrevised version of Judas

by darkduck on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 05:14:26 PM EDT
[ Parent ]

------------------------------------------------------------
I don't claim to, nor do I have a predelection. But I do have an interest, and it is in no way satisfied by available info. There are just too many contradictions.
"The very future of this Republic may well rest on whether or not anyone can, or will, stop George W. Bush." George Harleigh
by stonehenge on Sun Jun 18th, 2006 at 03:39:36 PM EDT
[ Parent ]
------------------------------------------------------------
"hard core right wing voters, mostly, would not countenance a false flag domestic strike..."

Well hey, I'm glad to hear that at least MOST of them wouldn't want a false flag strike on their OWN COUNTRYMEN.  Hooray for the right.

Yes it was risky.  But manly men thrive on risk, don't they?  (Or so Harvey Mansfield would have it.)  And after all, they think they're making America better by ruling the world.  What's a few lives lost, in the grand scheme of things?  They had confidence that George Bush and his close associates could be counted on to do whatever it took to keep the lid on this.  That's proven much more complex than they expected---just like Iraq has---but so far, with some arm-twisting and some perception management, they've kept it below most Americans' radar.

Keeping Iraq and Iran counterbalancing each other?  You sound so very comfortable with that idea.  I don't know whether to start calling you Invited Neocon or keep up this pretense that you're somebody else called "darkduck".

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Sun Jun 18th, 2006 at 07:25:47 PM EDT
[ Parent ]

------------------------------------------------------------
Counterbalanced each other....
It was just how it had been going down
And yes some men seem to like risk...
And Al Queda is mostly Men, if not All
Male...probably All Male....
And Al Queda risked 9/11...
Not Bin Laden himself...he is a survivor type..
He said he wanted to die in the belly of the beast
but instead is hiding...like the upper class brat he is...
Like someone else we know....a spoiled
mirror image of some we all know...

Cassandra I don't believe that deep down you
believe it was an inside job...
You wish you could but your
Intellect tells you it isn't so
But you like trying the idea on...
The websites that push the theory are
hysterical tabloid paranoid sites....

While George Bushco is guilty of so many things,
I  don't want to see them get accused mistakenly
of the most inconceivably dastardly
instigating event which  spawned many of the subsequent crimes they are guilty of ...because
if they can dismiss and disprove their complicity in the
'prime mover' event after being accused of it...it gives them
a pass on their guilt for all the crimes they used the
event to justify the necessity of...

And no the 'Evidence' is not leaking out...
Unsupportable allegations are....


by darkduck on Mon Jun 19th, 2006 at 12:39:32 AM EDT
[ Parent ]

------------------------------------------------------------

"Cassandra I don't believe that deep down you believe it was an inside job...
You wish you could but your Intellect tells you it isn't so
But you like trying the idea on..."

Wrong, duck.  My intellect tells me there are too many discrepancies between the evidence and the official version of what happened.  The evidence and the circumstances point in the direction of those who benefited from these attacks---PNAC neocons, defense contractors, and Israeli hawks.

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Mon Jun 19th, 2006 at 08:01:58 AM EDT
[ Parent ]

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for the establishment, duck.

You say the Bush administration, with all their money and awesome power, could not accomplish this attack, but a small group of foreign Muslims could---even though it meant flying large planes, unchallenged, through airspace that should have been closely guarded.

Vigilante act?  The only vigilante acts I've seen were undertaken by our own government, against us.

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 10:03:20 AM EDT
[ Parent ]

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Let's see...if I said I didn't think Charles Manson killed Nicole Simpson, that would make me an apologist for Manson, then?

Someone who defends the policies of Team Bush...that's an apologist.

Sorry. Just a little word quibble.

by Mutternich on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 03:14:36 PM EDT
[ Parent ]

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is to totally quash this controversy and all the evidence pointing to it.

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 03:20:23 PM EDT
[ Parent ]
------------------------------------------------------------
state what the Imperialists  are not directly guilty of.....
There are many, many crimes they are guilty of
that are verifiable if you consider their rollback of
civil liberties, war profiteering, election rigging
and generally contemptuous treatment of our founding father's
principles and the parchments they were written on.

It is a serious mistake to accuse them of
crimes for which there is a mountain of good evidence showing
that they are not guilty of.

It makes the accusations that do hold water easier to dismiss
since they can then point at the gullible or wishful thinkers
and say ....look, they are conspiracy theorist crackpots....

It is not being an apologist to give them a pass on an act they
did not execute and it is a gross underestimation of the Sunni
Al Queda movement to give them a pass on what they did do and took credit for doing.....

Accusing Uncle Sam of a False Flag atrocity of this magnitude
is part of the psychology that considers the adversary domestic regime to be an omnipotent evil god/demon figure...
Now they may be evil and demonic but they are not omnipotent..
And they are not evil spirits but flesh and blood....
As were the Al Queda Highjackers...who did far better from their own perspective than they might have hoped.

It is actually sort of a racist slight to believe that Zealot Islamists
cannot be this resourceful and dangerous....and it
ignores the paper tiger aspect of the american military which is
all beefed up on the Steroid of "Nucular" weapons that don't seem to scare the enemy anymore....since they are Martyrdom
oriented.....the american military, as happens with FEMA and other fed branches and agencies, with all their technology
and manpower ....was asleep at the wheel on 9/11

Or do you want to make the case that all the cleverly crafted Suicide bombing tactics that Islamists, in Iraq, afghanistan and
the Israel/Palestine area have carried out were actually done by CIA or Special Ops but only made to look like they were
done by the poor, aggrieved, simple, barely post stone age, peoples of the Middle East? That would be a huge condescension
and underestimation of the horrific but dedicated hatred
these militants have towards the west.
 I don't think you would find that a reasonable case to make.
So what is the obstruction in
your thinking that doesn't permit you to see that
19 Al Queda Highjackers, of the Sunni Al Queda ilk,( which larger group regularly publicizes their baleful hatred
of the West anywhere and everywhere they can), had the discipline, intelligence and commitment to do what they did
in New York on 9/11.

It is a very poor argument ,(unsupported by the facts), to say that these 19 highjackers were anything but participants in the same sort of highly dedicated, Islamist suicide attack format as  the others that we're seeing in many areas of the middle east and afghanistan and Indonesia and Europe for that matter.

It troubles the west to see the underdog, the equivalent
in some ways of the american indians, being able to strike
US with a kill ratio per their soldier's life, larger than the US
accustomed kill ratio of 40 to 1 in a military engagement.
It ain't supposed to happen our psyches say.
But if the American Gov't was behind it then we're still
in control right?..or our evil brothers....but at least it's in the family.

This 9/11 strike had a kill ratio of 150 to 1 and yes it is very
troubling to see a third world force strike out with such success
at the West. It may be even more troubling to the left
to have such a huge disagreement with conservative islam,
(which is more conservative than the most repressive western
governments but you know it gets hot over there), since the left would prefer to always support the
third world against the american empire. But this poses a problem since radical Islam combines terrible radical conservatism, which we don't like, with oppressed third world
people's interests, which we want to favor.

So to sidestep our uncertainty about whether the underdog is our conservative enemy or a third world, peasant movement that we'd like to sympathize with....we instead find a way to blame our favorite old imperialists that we blame everything on, usually correctly. I am no fan of Bush nor Globalization so called 'Free Market' theory which is really an excuse to outsource jobs and gouge consumers unmercifully.....
But It is a mistake to blame our favorite imperialists for a crime
they did not commit,  (though they may have been obtuse in their inability to anticipate it and though they've happily run wild with the opportunities to Usurp more power from the people as a Result of the attacks)...because it waters down the Imperial gov't Opposition's credibility
when we want to point out the many and variegated crimes they actually have comitted  and will continue to attempt to commit.

I'm leaving the door open on whether they knew something in advance and didn't move to stop it but if they did that
they, like the highjackers, didn't imagine it would succeed
with the magnitude of destructive force that it did...
But the lions share of the evidence points to our federal
government being just plain asleep at the wheel.

by darkduck on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 05:04:37 PM EDT
[ Parent ]

------------------------------------------------------------

I've never said Islamic fanatics are lacking in the discipline, will and intelligence to plan and carry out a plot, nor that they don't hate us enough to do it.  I'm saying that it wasn't possible for them to do this particular plot by themselves.  There were too many ways it could go wrong, too many things they couldn't control if we'd really wanted to stop them.  (And I question whether these guys were Islamic fanatics anyway, since they engaged in some rather worldly pleasures before the big day.)  So your characterizations of why the left "wants" to believe in this conspiracy may be true of some, but they're not true of me and probably not true of many on this board.

I don't WANT this conspiracy to be true.  I'd feel a hell of a lot better if it weren't!  (It doesn't feel that great to know my government is plotting against me for geopolitical ends.)  But your assurances and dismissals have not altered the mountain of evidence that exists.  The three most damning facts in my opinion are that 1) for the first time in history, not one but three steel-framed highrise buildings fell because of "fires"---one of which wasn't even attacked; 2) no fighter jets were ever scrambled, even though hijacked planes were in the air and headed for our nation's capital; and 3) normal Secret Service procedures for protecting the president were not followed---indicating that someone knew no real threat existed.

You make persuasive arguments duck, but I wonder why you ignore these facts which are simple and easily verifiable.

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 08:32:35 PM EDT
[ Parent ]

------------------------------------------------------------
First though there is not a mountain of evidence supporting
an inside job theory....at best there are alternate arguments
forwarded...and most of them would not qualify in a court of law as comprising even solid expert testimony...most of the arguments are stated in the form of questions from a tendentiously thought out point of view

The real mountain of evidence supports the Al Queda plot.

There are too many ways for any plot to fail but some plots
don't fail. There were to many ways for the London underground
bombings to fail, or for the spanish railway bombings to fail for
the first WTC attack to fail or the Beirut bombing to fail ....for John Wilkes Booth's assassination of Abraham Lincoln to fail ...but many plots fail
and many succeed....And the plot for the Right Wing Republicans
to maintain the Control of the U.S. govt has all their resources behind them but will likely fail...

The question of the collapse of the WTC buildings has been
extensively addressed. There was a different sort of construction
in the two buildings that were hit by the Jets as compared to
other buildings like the one that first interstate bank building
in l.a. that caught fire and had quite a few gutted floors.

The two main wtc buildings are described as having an
exterior perimeter style of steel framing structure that
is different from many that have been gutted by fire and that
have not fallen....if you ask me what they don't want to say is
that they were as cheaply built as possible.....and pancake prone
in a catastrophe....but no one wants to admit that on the design
side.... If you read the articles I highlighted before you will see that the original designers had anticipated the possibility of
a jetliner crash ...Oh they must've been special ops?  No
they knew that a plane had hit the empire state building before
so they designed the towers to withstand a 707 crash....
but just barely ....  but they were talking about the impact and weren't at all sure about the effect of a massive jet fuel  fire
compounded by the various accelerants in the building....

The Steel structure according to the MIT professor in the scientific american debunking of the conspiracy theories
firmly states that Jet fuel burns at a temperature 300 degrees above the temperature required to induce steel to lose fifty percent of it's strenght....in fact with all the boondoggling you see on massive construction contracts around the country
I don't see that you can even argue that the materials can even have been guaranteed to have been of the quality they may
have been promised to be in the construction of the towers..
Next....since noone has seen buildings of this size collapse
as the first two did...it isn't possible to state that the trauma suffered by number seven in addition to the fires it endured
weren't enough to bring it down...This is all addressed
in the articles I highlighted....Including reports that the NYFD
found number 7 to be moving some time before it fell and advised that it was a goner....

But let me play devil's advocate...Would you be able to guarantee me that if two jets with thousands of pounds of jet fuel
barreled into the middle of a large skyscraper and burned
in a new event....would you be able to say with absolute confidence to me that they would not fall? I think not....
If you do believe that they would not fall then you are telling me
that the people in a skyscraper, even one with this sort of construction, if below the impact line...could take their time in
evacuating that structure since all the 'evidence' you've seen
proves to you that there is no danger of the structure collapsing...
Phrased that way I think you'll agree that you can't make that claim.

There are good explanations of why jets weren't scrambled....
for one thing the prospect of shooting these planes down over
an urban or suburban area is a daunting one and number two
the political fallout from shooting down a civilian jet without having tested the US public's stomach for something like that may very well have seemed prohibitive...
In addition how many times have you heard of private planes
intruding on DC airspace without having been shot down?
They do intrude on restricted airspace...but can you remember one ever having been shot down?
The US is a paper tiger....with anabolic steroid style weapons
and the idea that we are failsafe from david versus goliath
assymetrical attacks is false....

Further ....are you going to tell me that with all the money and
power and resources that the US has that the bombing of
the Federal Building in Oklahoma couldn't have been pulled off by 3 religious zealots? Because that is what you are saying to me
and the readers about Al Queda.....or is McVeigh an exception because he's white and a domestic hate byproduct?

Finally....what makes you think a small group of  foreign commandoes would have the slightest idea where the president would be on a given day? He was about as far away from the
action as he could be on that day....And it is a huge leap of illogic for one to assume that the secret service would make
the assessment that a group of plane hijackers on a mission that
targeted american landmarks would have an additional
group of attackers or an extra plane headed to an elementary school in some non-descript area...They probably rightly assumed that he was well hidden where he was....like someone
being hidden in the witness protection program in the middle of
random nowhere USA.....

I could go on and will if you put forward anymore of the
completely discredited arguments that the consiracy theorists
propound......

Again...the administration possibly ignored shrill but vague warnings or at the very most hoped something might happen,
though not of this magnitude, but didn't know what it would be...Even now with full knowledge that we have this enemy to deal with it has been broadly publicized that there are too many soft targets in the US to cover all the avenues of possible
attack....

Certainly it is true that the right wing has been very happy with the resulting
power grab they were able to make because of the attacks...
but to think this was too much of a bolt from the blue
to actually have come from Al Queda is to ignore how Al Queda
evolved and grew in strength over time....and it is a foolish condescension to believe that this incredibly dangerous enemy
and the style of  hatred and fanaticism it represents is not a very serious, if undermanned, adversary.
Oh they're third world ....they couldn't have done it...they aren't smart enough ......David could never fell Goliath......Oh let's bring in the Trojan Horse they wouldn't dare.....
Thinking like that is what led to Custer's last stand

by darkduck on Sat Jun 17th, 2006 at 12:21:21 AM EDT
[ Parent ]

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"most of them would not qualify in a court of law as comprising even solid expert testimony" - That statement fits the official version better than the evidence to the contrary.  It's a good thing for Bush his version of events has never had to stand up in court!

I hope you're not likening John Wilkes Booth's attack on Lincoln in a small theater to the complexity of commandeering commercial jets and flying them through closely guarded air space in two major American cities to hit multiple targets.  That required foiling US air defense systems!

We don't know who did the bombings in London and Spain.

"The question of the collapse of the WTC buildings has been
extensively addressed."

Extensively maybe, but poorly.  (Another item that wouldn't hold up in court!)  As I mentioned elsewhere, the so-called pancake theory first came out in a paper on September 11, the same day the buildings fell.  There is something very suspicious about any analysis generated that soon, especially coming from Australia---the other side of the world.  That smacks to me of perception management.

The "different sort of construction" you mention included not only steel column perimeters but also steel columns at the core.  Even if pancaking HAD occurred, there is no reason why those columns, both interior and exterior, would not have remained standing after the floors came loose and fell.  Pyrotechnic experts have stated that the color and quantity of smoke emanating from the buildings indicated a fire that was poorly aerated and not very hot, not nearly hot enough to melt steel or even significantly weaken it.  Yet in the ruins of the buildings after they fell, molten steel was seen for weeks, despite all efforts to quench the fire.  Thermite was a likely source of this unquenchable heat.  Kerosene could not have done that.

I have learned that professionals in every field are being co-opted to compromise their judgment in favor of what will get them ahead in their careers.  "Scientific" articles are now being published in formerly-reputable journals which do not hold up under scrutiny.  These articles are then used to bolster political causes favored by industry and government, and the authors and editors which allow this to happen get their reward under the table.  Everyone should scrutinize "experts" and the "science" behind what they write.  Check for yourself on the melting point of steel and the temperature of burning kerosene.

You asked: "Would you be able to guarantee me that if two jets with thousands of pounds of jet fuel barreled into the middle of a large skyscraper and burned in a new event....would you be able to say with absolute confidence to me that they would not fall?"

I am not a physicist, but after all I've read, I would bet a large sum of money on just that.  I have all of the past history of highrise building fires on my side.  (I would just need a guarantee that the neocons had no access to that building prior to the event.)  And yes, there need be no rush to evacuate the building except for the concern of smoke inhalation.

There are still questions about the Oklahoma City bombing.  I am no authority on this, but given all that has happened since, I never take the government's word for anything.  And re fighter jets, a decision about whether to shoot down a hijacked plane can always be made---AFTER the jets have been scrambled.  An escort can be formed, orders and threats can be issued, a lot of things can be done.  In this case, NOTHING AT ALL was done.  Why is that?

The president's location on the day of the attacks was public knowledge.  He was in a primary school for a scheduled photo-op.  Therefore it could be assumed the terrorists knew where he was.  If real terrorists were on the loose, no one knew just where they were or what they planned to do.  The president was in real danger!  The entire country might be under attack!  Yet no one snatched him up and whisked him away to an undisclosed location.  He kept on reading My Pet Goat for the cameras.

"I could go on and on..."

Please don't.  Your arguments don't hold water and you're wasting our time.  So far, everything you're advancing is what the White House wants us to believe.  And it's just not gonna fly.  Maybe you're on the wrong forum?

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Sun Jun 18th, 2006 at 03:59:39 PM EDT
[ Parent ]

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Surely he/she must have taken a wrong turn and wound up here by mistake!  Anybody have a freeper link handy?

(-:G
"Give up those treasured wounds, let go the tempting memory of the pain...." Buffe St.Marie
by G Achin (XLexcel at zia net dot com TruthOut in subj.line) on Sun Jun 18th, 2006 at 05:34:49 PM EDT http://www.zianet.com/XLexcel/moons.html
[ Parent ]

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to file a case against the alternate 'perpetrators' you believe
are behind this?
Do you really think there is no one with the common decency
to hear this case, if there were any validity to it whatsoever, in the entire US court system? i
Ask Ramsay Clark to try the case, or take it to the aclu, or find
some Nader Lawyers with all of the unimpeachable
experts you have on your side.
My point being that there is NO ONE amongst all the courageous
and qualified litigious warriors in this country who would undertake trying to prove these
outlandish allegations....for the simple reason that
they represent a  wishful desire to
exonerate the actual culprits, al queda, while blaming in kangaroo court fashion, the usual suspects....
This is not to say that the USUAL Suspects are not criminals...
But get them on their real crimes....Not on UFOOLOGY theories
that do their very best to overlook the simple and honest
explanation of what happened here, the Al Queda explanation....
The sheer complexity of the conspiracy theories is another
indication that they are not the accurate version
Go back and read the background on John O'neill by googling
the new yorker article if you'd like to see a short history of al queda's evolution as a threat and how stupidly the US turned a
bureaucratic deaf ear to it....
You can't have it both ways...You can't say both that the US
is a huge obtuse bureaucracy rife with waste and inefficiency
and incompetence and then say at the same time that the US
with all it's power and vigilant air defenses were too good
not to see this coming and detect it and foil it if they had wanted to. Further your statements that it isn't clear who was behind
the bombings in the english subway or on the spanish passenger trains is a vicious assault on the truth.
If you are calling them false flag operations you are
just plain wrong.

by darkduck on Mon Jun 19th, 2006 at 12:58:54 AM EDT
[ Parent ]
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bureaucracy.  You must have me confused with your Republican talking points.

Our air defenses are the best in the world, and they're especially vigilant in the nation's capital---as they should be.  There is no satisfactory explanation for their failure to act on 9/11.

"Sheer complexity"--Oh yeah, that refutes alternate explanations every time!  Good one.

File a case?  Against whom?  How does one go about investigating a crime when the government controls and hides all the evidence?

Enough of this foolishness.  I don't owe you endless explanations and argument.  Readers here can draw their own conclusions about 9/11.

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Mon Jun 19th, 2006 at 09:01:14 AM EDT
[ Parent ]

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Accomplish an attack like this with their resources...
I'm saying they didn't....

But I will say that if they had....they wouldn't have been
able to keep it from leaking out....

even conspiracy theorists are just advancing arguments
and asking questions....they don't have a shred of evidence

so unless you think I'm one of the shooters from the Grassy
Knoll I hope you'll really consider that you're notions, if you have them, that 9/11 was an inside job are even more fantastic, exponentially more fantastic, than the simple explanation that
Al Queda pulled off a score on Goal....that is the simplest explanation.....and the one supported by the evidence
...much to the chagrin of the conspiracy theorists...

Incidentally, did you know that the scientologists apparently
allege that the highjackers were al queda but that they were
hypnotized by the 'hated' psychiatrists to do the deed?
at least that's one report I read while googling

by darkduck on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 05:10:26 PM EDT
[ Parent ]

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Don't associate us with somebody else.

"But I will say that if they had [planned the attack]....they wouldn't have been
able to keep it from leaking out...."

That's what we're talking about.  In bits and pieces, it is leaking out.  Nothing "exponentially fantastic" about it.  What's fantastic, and horrifying, is that somebody inside this country did this to us and then tried to pin it on al Qaeda.

What will they do next?

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 08:38:52 PM EDT
[ Parent ]

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Oh poor poor al queda....always the Scapegoat?
They're really no worse than the IRA are they?
They just get a bad wrap because they're mass murderers
who ocassionally enjoy a beheading.

It's  truly disturbing if you believe the conspiracy side because the arguers on the conspiracy side are zealot minded....
And are finding complex illfitting arguments that don't
correspond to the facts but only to their prejudice...

The legitimate foreign press...and I don't mean
pakistani tabloids or hezbollah's broadcast arm...
have uniformly dismissed the conspiracy theory
arguments as well  


by darkduck on Sat Jun 17th, 2006 at 01:40:19 AM EDT
[ Parent ]

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that don't correspond to the facts" - yeah, that's just what I was thinking about the official story.

Who said I feel sorry for al Qaeda?  The point is that it's my own government and the organized crime behind it which threaten me more than al Qaeda ever can.  "Al Qaeda" gives the neocons a convenient pretext to make war on the world, and on us.

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Sat Jun 17th, 2006 at 06:19:33 PM EDT
[ Parent ]

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For the Boosh Administration......I'm a hillary, biden, kerry, gore,
Democrat....allow me to go on record again stating
categorically, and boringly by now, for the umpteenth time,
I would like nothing better than to see the Free Range Chickenhawk Ranch, Crawford Mafia, Oval Office Circle
Jerkers, Impeached and tried for Treason and sent to Guantanamo for Life Terms

by darkduck on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 05:17:21 PM EDT
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I'm skeptical about where you're coming from.

Cassandra
by Cassandra on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 08:39:50 PM EDT
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But it's not the sort of skepticism you'll find on skeptic.com
where they enjoy dissecting the meritless arguments
of the conspiracy theorists....

Almost everything the Boosh admin does is wrongheaded
unless it just happens to converge with something positive
by accident when the venal merges very rarely with
positive ends.

But it is imperative not to accuse them of things they didn't do
.....because instances of that will be the examples they will refer to in order to dismiss the other more accurate criticisms and accusations of which there are an abundance.

by darkduck on Sat Jun 17th, 2006 at 01:47:37 AM EDT
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.....what they deem meritless and you swallow whole, just scarfing it up, then bringing it all back here to barf back out all over the place, on and on and on.  You never get it.  You keep bringing back nonsense parrotted back again and again, even after it has been pointed out, WITH MUCH merit in accompaniment,  how downright naively SILLY much of it is.  You obsess, and digress and obsess and regress, and obsess, get derogatory, implicating this and that as if you could competently give meaningful psychological assessments, you call peole who disagree with you inappropriately mean names, in compulsive/obsessive rings,  wearing grooves around it, wearing then the grooves into ravines, then gorges..........  

Here, to go 'round again  just for you, a little ditty I've brought out here and there before when called for :

Everything's exactly as you see it!
You KNOW it can't be any more!
   But ev'ry time you lift your head up higher,
         you can always see MORE than before.

Ev'ry time I thought that I had the answer,
   the question turned out bigger than I'd thought;
Reality's an ever ADVANCING horizon---
       Soon as you're there,
        it's moved on.

Good to see all the debunking info and many of the good debunking links out and about in public again too, but, enuff's enough dd, time let it go and move on.  Take a deep breath dd, and Let It Go.

(-:G
"Give up those treasured wounds, let go the tempting memory of the pain...." Buffe St.Marie
by G Achin (XLexcel at zia net dot com TruthOut in subj.line) on Sat Jun 17th, 2006 at 06:17:41 AM EDT http://www.zianet.com/XLexcel/moons.html
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and a tired duck is a sad duck

by darkduck on Sat Jun 17th, 2006 at 10:36:34 AM EDT
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.
Confronting Evil is difficult for most people..sometimes it's hard to imagine that little Johnny next door grew up and killed someone......

And then there is the competence element....is the Bushco competent enough to manage a whole 9/11 false flag op?....

My take is: they discovered the plot and let it happen.....that doesn't take too much competence and fits a lot of the inaction observed by underlings in the FBI and elswhere. But here is where the confront comes in:

I think it was not only allowed to happen, but was helped. Bush didn't run the op...his job was to read "My pet goat" and let Cheney do his thing in D.C.....

The towers were brought down. Period. The plane that hits the Pentagon crashed 80 minutes after we knew people were highjacking multiple planes and no fighters are scrambled from Andrews.

Multiple cell calls from planes going 600 miles an hour at 30,000 feet- defying physics.(Cell tower range is 1-2 miles).

No engine parts from any of the crashes made available and no engine part numbers on the pieces that were captured on film.

Either you believe in a series of extraordinary events all at once and try to explain it all in a way that says we are still AMERICA and still all about doing the right thing....or you are a student of history.

History says we knew about Pearl Harbor and let it happen. We knew Japan was going to surrender and nuked them anyway just to show Russia we could and to say: stay away.

We knew the Bay of Tonkein was false.

We knew the Lusitania would most likely be sunk.

We knew the Spanish didn't blow up the Maine.

Google "Northwoods convention"

We have a history of false flag ops.

I also suggest you read the PNAC manifesto (Cheney, Wolfowicz, Rumsfeild) where they hope for a "Pearl Harbor" event to implement their plan.

.

-9.00, -7.69 ... We may all put our pants on one leg at a time, but it's the ones that leave their zippers down ya gotta watch out for....
by brent (bonnyladd@hotmail.com) on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 02:23:27 PM EDT
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For many years I have held the following quote close.  When Panamanian human-rights monitor Otilia de Koster was asked if she feared for her life or her family's she replied,

"What I fear is being in the presence of evil and doing nothing.  I fear that more than death."

It takes uncommon courage to face evil head on, but by the simple (although all too uncommon) act of seeing the darkness, it is illuminated.  Then and only then can we see the path of healing and of restoring the natural order to things.

Fun, isn't it?
~
"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." Arundhati Roy
by SlowDown on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 03:39:46 PM EDT
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Cassandra
by Cassandra on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 03:53:49 PM EDT
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When a box of darkness is opened in a lighted room, the darkness in the box vanishes.

The light of a lighted room shines out the windows, radiating light into and piercing the darkness.  Darkness cannot penetrate into a lighted room.

Yes, we must see the darkness to know to illuminate it with light.  To illuminate the darkness with light, we must let ourselves see the light, no matter how fearsome it may seem.

(-:G
"Give up those treasured wounds, let go the tempting memory of the pain...." Buffe St.Marie
by G Achin (XLexcel at zia net dot com TruthOut in subj.line) on Sat Jun 17th, 2006 at 06:32:31 AM EDT http://www.zianet.com/XLexcel/moons.html
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But more likely they were caught completely offguard, asleep in their global capitalist narcissist wet dream.

You're doin' a heckuva Job Brownie.

by darkduck on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 05:19:52 PM EDT
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...but doesn't explain the physics of the 3 towers free-fall collapse.....google "911-physics".....it also doesn't explain the mathematical near impossiblity of 13 cells calls for minutes at a time from 30,000 feet at 600 mph..... the "cell" in a cell phone is a tower with a range of a mile and a 1/2.....that includes a mile-and-a-half UP as well......30,000 feet is what 6 miles up?  Also at 600 miles an hour you are traveling 10 miles a minutes. That means your call is being transfered to a new cell tower every 6 seconds.......and while our calls DO pass from tower to tower in normal circumstances, at 600 miles an hour it can't possibly keep up.....it has trouble keeping up if you drive 80 on the freeway.

Please study the 911-physics site....it will really give you a ton of info.

.

-9.00, -7.69 ... We may all put our pants on one leg at a time, but it's the ones that leave their zippers down ya gotta watch out for....
by brent (bonnyladd@hotmail.com) on Sat Jun 17th, 2006 at 01:57:21 PM EDT
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First, (and I've said this before) we (and I really do mean "we", because I AM a regular reader, if not always a regular poster...I'm even a donater, despite the fact that I'm a starving elderly student) very much appreciate the work that you've done on this issue. I KNOW how difficult it's been to try and validate, confirm, and actually GET TO the TRUTH. Quite frankly, I'm amazed that you were able to get as far as you did, knowing what the Bush Crime Family is capable of. The depths of their secrecy knows no bounds.

I'd also like to make the point, (though others may have) that my gut tells me that the fat lady still hasn't finished singing. Now some may have no greater appreciation for my "gut feelings" than they do of all your work. But, I still feel it, and I feel it strongly.

A friend told me yesterday, that he was terribly depressed to learn that Rove had "gotten off". I think that we need to remind ourselves that he hasn't "gotten off". That would only be the case if he'd been indicted and then acquitted. So, he can STILL be indicted at a later time, and that may be what Fitzgerald has in mind. That's only a guess of course, but it's of crucial importance to recognize that.

Needless to say, we're disappointed, but I'd hate to miss the ver