Conservative media tout flawed poll to call Dems 9-11 conspiracy theorists
Several conservative commentators have misrepresented the results of an April 20-May 1 Rasmussen Results poll question -- which was itself ambiguous -- to accuse a substantial percentage of Democrats of believing that President Bush knew about the 9-11 attacks in advance and deliberately did nothing to stop them. According to Rasmussen Reports, respondents were asked, "Did Bush know about the 9/11 attacks in advance?" Twenty-two percent replied that he did, 55 percent that he did not, and 22 percent were not sure. According to the poll: "Thirty-five percent of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure. Republicans reject that view and, by a 7-to-1 margin, say the President did not know in advance about the attacks. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 18% believe the President knew and 57% take the opposite view."
In his May 15 nationally syndicated column, titled "Just How Crazy Are the Dems?" National Review Online editor-at-large Jonah Goldberg claimed that the poll found Democrats "are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance," and declared that "a majority of Democrats in this country are out of their gourds." Yet as Goldberg himself admitted, the poll question was ambiguous. As Goldberg said, "Many Democrats are probably merely saying that Bush is incompetent or that he failed to connect the dots or that they're just answering in a fit of pique." In other words, respondents could have been merely saying that Bush received ample warning of possible attacks.
Indeed, President Bush received a briefing on August 6, 2001, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US," which indicated that Osama bin Laden wanted to conduct terrorist attacks on U.S. cities, that members of his Al Qaeda terrorist network had lived in or traveled to the U.S. for years, that bin Laden had previously said he wanted to hijack an American aircraft, and that "FBI information since that time indicate[d] patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings." Investigative journalist Ron Suskind wrote in his book The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 (Simon & Schuster, June 2006) that Bush responded to this report by telling his CIA briefer, "All right, you've covered your ass."
Others have also touted this poll but ignored the ambiguity of the question entirely, in some cases misrepresenting the question and responses and ridiculing Democratic voters as delusional conspiracy theorists.
- On the May 7 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly characterized the poll question as having said more than it actually did -- that "35 percent of American Democratic voters believe President Bush knew about the 9-11 attacks in advance and allowed them to happen." He later claimed that it indicated that "35 percent of Democratic voters believe that President Bush stood by and allowed 3,000 Americans to die on the streets." O'Reilly repeatedly referred to this as "madness," and claimed, "Sane people do not make that kind of leap."
- On the May 7 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh claimed that according to the poll, "35 percent of this country's Democrats think that there was a government conspiracy about this and allowed these attacks to happen." He asserted that due to the poll, that "it's no longer funny to call [Democrats] kooks and freaks and so forth. This is -- they are deranged, dangerously uninformed, misinformed, or what have you." He continued: "The Democrat [sic] Party is not mainstream. It is literally a bunch of deranged, delusional radicals." Limbaugh postulated the poll results were due to the influence of the American news media and education system, which had "poison[ed] people's minds" against Bush since the attacks of 9-11.
- In a May 9 post to his blog at townhall.com, nationally syndicated radio host Michael Medved claimed that according to this poll, "a stunning 61% of Democrats believed that the President of the United States may well have collaborated in the murder of 3,000 of his fellow citizens." He cited this poll as proof of "Democratic paranoia and conspiracy mongering," which he asserted "pushes the party to the lunatic fringe and leftwing edge of national opinion."
From Goldberg's May 15 column:
Most fair-minded readers will no doubt take me at my word when I say that a majority of Democrats in this country are out of their gourds.
But, on the off chance that a few cynics won't take my word for it, I offer you data. Rasmussen Reports, the public opinion outfit, recently asked voters whether President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand. The findings? Well, here's how the research firm put it: "Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know and 26% are not sure."
So, 1 in 3 Democrats believe that Bush was in on it somehow, and a majority of Democrats either believe that Bush knew about the attacks in advance or can't quite make up their minds.
There are only three ways to respond to this finding: It's absolutely true, in which case the paranoid style of American liberalism has reached a fevered crescendo. Or, option B, it's not true and we can stop paying attention to these kinds of polls. Or there's option C -- it's a little of both.
My vote is for C. But before we get there, we should work through the ramifications of A and B.
[...]
So then there's option B -- the poll is just wrong. This is quite plausible. Indeed, the poll is surely partly wrong. Many Democrats are probably merely saying that Bush is incompetent or that he failed to connect the dots or that they're just answering in a fit of pique. I'm game for option B. But if we're going to throw this poll away, I think liberals need to offer the same benefit of the doubt when it comes to data that are more convenient for them. For example, liberals have been dining out on polls showing that Fox News viewers, or Republicans generally, are more likely to believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. Now, however flimsy, tendentious, equivocal or sparse you may think the evidence that Hussein had a hand in 9/11 may be, it's ironclad compared with the nugatory proof that Bush somehow permitted or condoned those attacks.
And then there's option C, which is most assuredly the reality. The poll is partly wrong or misleading, but it's also partly right and accurate. So maybe it's not 1 in 3 Democrats suffering from paranoid delusions. Maybe it's only 1 in 5, or 1 in 10. In other words, the problem isn't as profound as the poll makes it sound. But that doesn't mean the Democratic Party doesn't have a serious problem.
From the May 7 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:
O'REILLY: Now for the top story tonight, somewhat related to the far-left propaganda being dished daily by Soros-funded websites. According to new Rasmussen poll, 35 percent of American Democratic voters believe President Bush knew about the 9-11 attacks in advance and allowed them to happen -- 35 percent. Overall, 22 percent of American voters believe that madness.
Joining us now, conservative commentator Monica Crowley and Julie Roginsky, a Democratic strategist. Julie, we'll begin with you. When I saw that stat, 35 percent of Democratic voters believe that President Bush stood by and allowed 3,000 Americans to die in the streets, I couldn't believe it.
[...]
O'REILLY: All right, look, I understand that the lack of credibility the White House has with most Americans. And it's apparent and it's true. But you can't make a leap like that. Sane people do not make that kind of leap.
ROGINSKY: I don't disagree with you, Bill. I don't disagree with you.
O'REILLY: Because you're basically saying -- the people who believe this -- that the president of the United States sat there and allowed 3,000 people to be murdered for whatever reason. And if you believe that based on nothing -- because again, if there was any evidence at all in play, it would be splattered on every front page of the Bush-hating, American-hating press all over the world.
From the May 7 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:
LIMBAUGH: There was a poll -- I saw this over the weekend, and I will admit to being surprised at this; I shouldn't have been. It's a Rasmussen poll. Democrats in America -- this is not voters. Likely voters, registered voters, this is a survey that represents all of America. Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9-11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent of Democrats believe he did know, 39 percent say he didn't, and 26 percent aren't sure. Thirty-five percent of Democrats think that Bush knew.
Well, who in the world has been saying this? Who in the world has been getting -- why in the world -- hello, Bill Maher, perhaps. Hello, Rosie O'Donnell. Hello, any number of these kook blog websites. But this can only happen if there's a sufficient foundation of effervescent, boiling rage among these people in the first place. I don't care about the "why." I really don't care. The fact that 35 percent of this country's Democrats think that there was a government conspiracy about this and allowed these attacks to happen -- does that not give you an indication of just -- I mean, these -- it's no longer funny to call them kooks and freaks and so forth. This is -- they are deranged, dangerously uninformed, misinformed or what have you. This is a -- I don't know, I -- to me, this is just -- it's a shocking, shocking thing. I mean, there have been conspiracy theories ever since there have been humanity, but no conspiracy theories ever had this kind of belief among so-called mainstream people, which -- I guess that's it, they're not mainstream. The Democrat Party is not mainstream. It is literally a bunch of deranged, delusional radicals. And we'll be back.
[...]
RUSH: Now, about this Rasmussen poll, 35 percent of Democrats -- 35 percent -- think that Bush knew about 9-11 before it happened, which has to mean that Bush let it happen, which has to mean Bush wanted it to happen, which had to mean -- could mean that Bush was behind it happening. Thirty-five percent of Democrats, radicals and deranged. Thirty-five percent of Democrats translates to 17 percent of Americans if you do the math, assuming that 80 percent of the country is Republican or Democrat, evenly split, 20 percent the great, great moderate, independent line, it roughly comes out to 17 percent of Americans, or almost one in five, think that.
I'll tell you, if I've run the numbers right on this, instead of focusing on President Bush, do you think it might be better to focus on our schools and on our media? Do you think these people just woke up being this radical? Do you think that a week after 9-11 you would have gotten 35 percent of Democrats who thought that Bush knew about 9-11 before it happened and obviously let it happen? Do you think 35 percent -- you think 35 percent of any group would have said that? Ten percent? Clearly, this is a mindset that had a foundation -- as I say, these people already had their -- and why did they have the rage and hatred? Florida 2000, and then it got stoked and fueled by never-ending drive-by media reports about Bush. I'll tell you, that's where we need to start examining, not the president. We need to start examining the media, the schools, institutions of higher learning, because that's who's poisoning these people's minds. I mean, they might have had a little poison to start with, but it's certainly grown.
From Medved's May 9 townhall.com blog post:
Asked the question, "Did Bush Know About the 9/11 Attacks in Advance?" a shocking 35% of Democrats said "yes," another 26% said they weren't sure, and only 39% said "no." In other words, a stunning 61% of Democrats believed that the President of the United States may well have collaborated in the murder of 3,000 of his fellow citizens.
This willingness among most Democrats to entertain the idea that 9/11 represented a Bush-sanctioned "inside job" demonstrates the alarming extent to which conspiracy theorists, paranoids and America-hating extremists have taken over one of our major political parties. If someone honestly believes that the Commander in Chief received advance notification about attacks on his own country (including the Pentagon), but allowed those assaults to proceed for political purposes, then this sense of alienation and betrayal will poison all his other political attitudes and judgments.
Equally important, the crazed suspicions nurtured by much of the Democratic base serve to separate America's liberal party from the national mainstream. Among Republicans, not surprisingly, those who realize that Bush didn't "know in advance" outnumber those who suspect he did by a margin of 7-to-1.
And among independents - those not affiliated with either party - an overwhelming majority of more than 3-to-1 (57% to 18%) decisively rejects the idea that Bush knew about the devastating attacks before they occurred.
In other words, Democratic paranoia and conspiracy-mongering pushes the party to the lunatic fringe and leftwing edge of national opinion.
[...]
Such logical questions may not trouble partisan Democrats in their obsessive rage, but they ought to concern Americans in the middle who haven't surrendered themselves to nightmarish fantasies.
What happens to the tone and substance of American politics if one of our two great parties not only disagrees with the opposition leaders, but believes they're guilty of participating in mass murder of innocents Americans?
i've criticized bush frequently on this. in fact, i believe that you can place most of the blame on him for the attacks for ignoring and downgrading the threats. he set the tone. but i'm not willing to say he "knew".
One of the 65%... Good for you... Now, does fire melt steel?
if you are asking me do i believe if the towers were a controlled explosion, i do not. there is not one iota of evidence they were. it would have taken a huge amount of explosives carefully placed over many days to to do that. it's absurd.
did not have to 'melt' to collapse, all it had to do is lose half it's stregth at about 1,000 degrees. not really that hard a concept.
There is no way it could be considered good engineering practice to design a building so that it would collapse if the strength of the materials were reduced by 50%. That is an unacceptable safety margin for electronic circuit design (which I do) let alone a building that holds thousands of people.
I understand what you're saying, but I don't believe that the buildings were designed to withstand a passenger aircraft running into and engulfing such an enormous segment in fire.
Normally the building would catch fire and the sprinklers and other systems would do their job fairly well until firefighters can get in and extinguish it. It would be very difficult for temperatures to reach that massive to break out without colossal damage.
I believe the question, "Does fire melt steel?", is directed at building 7, a 47-story building adjacent to the twin towers. It "fell" several hours after the twin towers. Now I may have missed something, but I don't think a plane EVER hit building 7. That means it just fell right over from basically nothing more than "fire".
I'm not saying it was part of any conspiracy, but it does raise some eyebrows in my opinion.
building 7 was right next to one of the towers. it's likely it sustained damage from the collapse and subsequent fire.
JScott saw through the sarcasm.. woo hoo.. you are spot on, my brother.. Although I saw a campaigning clip where the Breck-boy was going to check into it after getting asked his opinion about it.... couldn't find the link again..
if you meant building 7, you could have specified that. because a lot of the conspiracy theories about the twin towers collapsing begin with the assertion that fire can't melt steel, so therefore it had to be a controlled explosion. going by most of your posts, you confuse being coy with being clever. now run along and call the tobacco store and ask them if they have prince albert in a can.
erroneous comparison. You'd probably like "Spook's" website where he does a backyard experiment of the tower collaspe by making a chicken wire building with a concrete slab on top. He then lights a cup of kerosene in the bottom with the newspaper and lets it burn out. Ofcourse, he's amazed that the "building" didn't collaspe. We finally have the scientific proof needed to expose this conspiracy.
Common sense alone should tell you an inside job was impossible. Forget pysics. Forget melting oints. Forget freefall times and similar info. Could an inefficent government p[ull off the hoax of the milenium while keeping thousands of people quiet? You mean to tell me that out of thousands of people, many of which are respected scientists in the engineering and forensic fields, are all being hushed up? Not one whistle blower? It's so rediculous!
Only ignorant, biased people unwilling to look at the facts think that steel melted in the WTC, or needed to melt in order for them to collapse, or that any scientist has claimed that steel did melt.
Water doesn't melt paper towels, but getting a paper towel wet does significantly weaken that paper towel. Great amounts of heat weaken steel. There were great amounts of heat in concentrated areas of the WTC, and when the steel weakened, that combined with the structural damage caused the buildings to fall. It was a combination of those two things. Likely neither one on their own would have caused an eventual collapse.
Water doesn't melt paper towels, but getting a paper towel wet does significantly weaken that paper towel.
Terrible analogy!
The fascist Republicans lose, just for Nine Eleven Op surfacing 'on the table,' in play as a discussable topic. Surviving and surmounting the years of massmind media freeze-out, stonewall, suppression, of the very idea, let alone the details. Q.: 'Did Bush know of Nine Eleven Op mass murders in advance?' A.: 'So you're saying there's some question about that.'
It is NOT a matter of steel melting, softening, weakening -- forget such hair-splitting distraction.
It IS a matter of pulverizing concrete into 50-micron dust. To understand the energy difference, of cracked concrete and powdered concrete, get yourself a hundred pound chunk of concrete, say, and a sledge hammer, and go out in the parking lot. Okay, swing the sledge hammer until you crack and break the concrete into little chunks, into bits. Okay, keep swinging until you make it dust, pulverize it into fine powder 50-micron dust. The "keep swinging" part is the extra energy difference.
There ain't enough energy in 100 planes loaded with fuel going 1000 mph hitting a Tower twice as tall with 10 times as much mass (concrete) weight falling down crushingly -- there is NOT enough energy in action in a fictional situation -- to effect the reaction that we saw and recorded and measured, actually, in fact, honest-to-God-it-really-happened.
Action and reaction must be energy EQUAL and opposite. That's the Law.
Not saying who knew what when or how, but absolutely proof positive, courtroom-quality evidence, exhibit Nine Eleven shows there was extra energy, from somewhere, in each of the three skyscrapers that imploded in an enormous, choking, rapidly spreading, pyroclastic cloud of dust. Pancaking layers (as if) don't have enough energy. Ask any nearby physics teacher, at your choice of high school or college.
Or see and do the math for yourself, HERE: Analysis of Energy Requirements for the Expansion of the Dust Cloud, by Jim Hoffman.
http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/dustvolume/volumev3_1.html
If a person brain sick
Knows not natural Law:
Isaac Newton's Physics,
well, still it's the Law.
Such a person unknowing,
of course, has no showing,
to talk about how to land
on the Moon.
Indeed, since that person
can't think it themself,
all they can think is that
nobody can.
Unless media informs
his or her education
to think, it's some matter
of which massmind thinks.
so there was not enough energy in 100 planes going 1000 miles an hour and a building with ten times the mass of the wtc, to produce what we saw? ok. then that leaves you to explain where that massive amount of energy came from.
Au contraire, Saint Mefir, the prevaricator. That leaves Official Investigation to explain mass pulverization by physical possibility, in reality, and without Laws of Physics impossibilities.
See, that's why science-ignorant O'Reilly's derogatory FUXnews covers up nothing by deriding whatever 'conspiracy theory' apparition they conjure up to deflate -- there IS NO a., b., or c. 'THEORY' in stated physical FACT, recorded and measured, of energy release. Official report must account somehow, in conjecture or objectively, a Nine Eleven Op energy source. Until the report accounts a possible energy source, then the Officials cashing the public-money checks and submitting their inadequate, incomplete and fraudulent report, are in breach of public contract and legally liable for failure to perform.
By the way, there exist depositions of eye-witnesses who attest and swear under oath that, while at their daily jobs in the Towers, and independently corroborating each other's account, they saw stangers in the building(s) during the weeks before Nine Eleven Op, wearing white coveralls, carrying parcels, "crawling around in" the elevator shafts and mechanical access areas. May it please the Court to consider.
first of all i don't buy your theory that it would have taken that much energy, but you are making the claim, so you have to explain where that huge amount of energy came from. i'm not required to defend your theory. and there must be some site that has those statements made by the people you claim. please direct us to where those can be found.
Yeah, and Mr. Magoo, he don't buy eyeglasses to see humankind's wonderous diversity and his individual responsibility in it, lest it belittles his parochial vanity.
The evident energy is a accurate computation, NOT some alluded "claim." How it came in, and Who put it there, is only "theory," ideation you want seeing all being suckered to within the blur of your prejudice, totality surreal, and you have mind confusing the real confines of universal truth. Your brainless denial of every theory for Who could and How was put the massive Nine Eleven Op energy there, actually exploding structures in fact, earns your negative thoughts even less credibility than fringe thinkers' improbable theories, and your exposition fumes biased hate against humankind offering life eyewitness testimony.
As for directing your self-blinded research, look up the big words wise of world-round knowledge in the links I already posted, or google 'real 911 truth happens' and click on the lights.
From now on stay away from Media Matters and go pick and toss superstitious bones of contention on somebody your own smallminded size.
you made the claim. you said there was not enough energy in 100 planes going 1000 mph hitting a tower twice the size of the wtc, that could produce what we observed. so where did that energy come from? you must have a guess. how many pounds of explosives? and i guess you can't produce those depositions.
Not one respecatble physicist or better yet, not one structural/mechanical engineer has made that assertion. there was plenty of energy. I guess the entire scientific community of the U.S. is being hushed up as well. by all means, go ask your closest physics teacher.
Denying that respectable, professional, trained and qualified physics scientists, mechanical and structural engineers, and architects have and are agreed that the Official Nine Eleven Op Report fails to account for an incident energy source equal to and commensurate with the explosive energetic reaction, and resultant persisting and inhaled dust layer contaminating a half-mile radius around Ground Zero, is denying the existence in fact of these specific persons -- Bob McIlvaine, Bill Doyle, Dr. Steven Jones, Kevin Ryan, Richard Gage, AIA Architect -- and denying the existence in fact of this specific petitioning document filed pursuant to fraud inquiry into the NIST nonperformance -- [link to stj911.org] here may believe a fool's denial, or the tangible evidence in front of their eyes, described HERE: [link to stj911.org] />
Correcting LINKS.
Readers here may LINK to description of filed petition.
In script: stj911.org/press_releases/NIST.html
The short answer is YES. How do you think steel is created? Pretty sure an overpass fire in California just melted/weakened the steel enough for that bridge's collaspse.
Ocourse, logic and evidence will not persuade someone like you. Why let scientific evidence and the reports of all the experts get in the way? Can you name one respected and accredited structural/mechanical engineer that agrees with you and the conspiracy theories? Please post the details for this expert if you have any.
"i've criticized bush frequently on this. in fact, i believe that you can place most of the blame on him for the attacks for ignoring and downgrading the threats."
Actually, the 9/11 pilots were in this country even before Bush was elected president. Who ignored and downgraded the threat then?
yes, they were. and there was no info available that they were planning anything. chapter 8 of the 9-11 report about the summer of 2001, "the system was blinking red", page 265: "in sum, the domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. they did not have direction and did not have a plan to institute." bush told bob woodward he was "not on point" about bin ladin pre 9-11.
Ahhh Kevin. It's always Clinton, isn't it. You are a sad, sad little one-trick pony, Son.
Ahhh Jscott. It's NEVER Clinton, isn't it. You are sad, sad because you never got a little pony...
CONSPIRACY: "An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action."
PNAC: The Project for the New American Century; members include Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, James Woolsey, "Scooter" Libby, John Bolton, Elliot Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, James Bolton, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William Bennett, Dan Quayle, and Jeb Bush.
Their world view: America needs to project its will around the globe, using military power to transform the entire world into a place easily exploited for purely American interests. An obstacle to this grand plan was the American People, who would object to such ruthless aggression and imperial domination without a proper "catalyst". In PNAC's own words, "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."
The inescapable TRUTH is that, with GW Bush installed in the White House, we were being "led" by a group of like-thinking individuals with a grand plan, and that plan NEEDED and WANTED a "new Pearl Harbor-like event" in order to set their plans in motion. 9/11 was the answer the their prayers.
So, did they conspire to CAUSE it, or conspire to ignore the warning signs of its approach? We may never know.
But one thing is certain: There WAS (and IS) a real conspiracy, and its GOALS are world domination by evil and nefarious means. This conspiracy BENEFITTED from the catastrophe that was 9/ll. Whether they actually ENGINEERED it is academic. They WANTED and NEEDED it to happen, to be freed from restraints on their plans.
So, it's no "conspiracy theory". It's a FACT. Deal with it.
geesh Tex.. do you think fire melts steel?
What is this with the melted steel stuff?
Only an imbecile thinks that the steel had to melt for the building to collapse. Only an uneducated person thinks that the heat was not enough to soften the steel enough in a few critical places to make the building collapse after the structural damage from the plane's impact.
Tex is not an imbecile or an uneducated person. You must be if you are accusing Tex of being one though.
Crescent, I would like to encourage you to respond to posts like Tex's in a well thought out educated manner. Trolling doesn't elevate discourse it just makes you look silly. If you don't have the capacity to debate then don't.
Tex's post was an explanation of why many in this country believe Bush & Co. knowingly allowed 9/11 to happen. PNAC by their own documentation required an event they could use to justify world domination through force.
PNAC, at the very least, used 9/11 to forward their philosophy by taking advantage of the vulnerability and fear of the citizens of this country. Only time will tell whether it can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that they had advance warning of 9/11 and turned a blind eye for political reasons.
No, Tex's post is just more of his conspiratorial, Bush-hating rants.....unless he has some substantive proof or can back up any of his pie-in-the-sky wacky accusations, his theories will forever remain on the nutty fringe.
Come on Tommy. Given all the PNAC ties to the administration, the lack of action before 9/11, the benefit they got from it, the bizarro response of invading Iraq which only makes sense from the PNAC viewpoint...can you honestly blame people for looking at all that and suspecting the worst? Honestly?
I had this discussion with someone I know the other day. I think these are serious accusations which are not to be made casually, but at the same time it's hard to look at the circumstances and simply accept that it's just a big coincidence.
Show me in PNAC's mission statement, or anywhere where their world view is exactly how Tex has described it? To transform the entire world to be explited by American interests? Those are his words and I am merely asking for backup. You can excuse his hyperbole, I don't.
"The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'."
"We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership."
It doesn't seem like a great deal of hyperbole to say that PNAC is interested in expanding America's power for the sake of its own interests.
Tex specifically states "exploitation". You don't see the difference, apparently, I see it as quite significant.
In any event, why are you and the rest dancing around what you are really saying? That Bush either planned or let happen the innocent slaughter of over 3000 Americans on 9/11 to have an excuse for his global domination and exploitation of the world to further our interests. That's what this really is.
Gee, call me nutty, but I can't accept that without evidence, and there has been none. So to argue with conspiratorial advocates is a waste of time........enjoy.
I'm not sure how taking advantage of the lack of other superpowers to expand our own power is not "exploitation". In any event, that's not really enough of a refutation to back up your "wacky" line above, is it? Does "pie-in-the-sky" really rest solely on that distinction?
I said myself it's a serious charge, but when you look at the big picture I don't see how you can call it "wacky" to think the worst. Let's look at the other viewpoint. We're supposed to believe that there's that much influence from PNAC in the government, PNAC needs an event like 9/11 (according to their own words), no steps are taken to prevent it, and then it's used to invade Iraq (which PNAC made clear they wanted to do), and yet they really really didn't want it to happen. I don't know, that sounds a little far-fetched too.
Tommy, this one is going to require some homework on your part. Start at http://www.newamericancentury.org and start reading. It's difficult to point at any one statement that neatly summarizes PNAC's view. However, a survey reveals an aggressive militaristic approach to "geopolitical preeminence" that harkens back to the early "neo-cons."
To understand the seriousness of PNAC of not just being another conservative think-tank, take note of the PNAC signatories. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century conveniently lists fifteen of them who, subsequent to Bush's election, took major roles in the administration. Considering who is on that list, it's not difficult to see how PNAC essentially formed Bush foreign policy.
At this point, I part with Tex's view. While I have no doubt of PNAC's objectives and methods, I doubt there was an adminstration conspiracy with respect to 9/11. That doesn't seem to mesh with the various actions and communications of the administration in the wake of 9/11. Instead, I believe that they were simply too cocky and pre-occupied with stirring up a war with Iraq to give serious consideration to an attack on the scale of 9/11.
Unfortunately, I doubt we - as a nation - have really come to understand the role the PNAC policy strategy played in Iraq and in our unilateral foreign policy in general. The problem with the PNAC strategy is that it places an excessive premium on the use military force to secure U.S. global interests. It treats diplomacy pessismistically; it essentially holds a gun up to our rivals, all but guaranteeing diplomacy will fail. It's not leadeship, but coercion.
Of course, aggressive military foreign policies can often have an impact on domestic liberties. As James Madison said, "the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad."
Tommy,
Tex detailed PNAC and their documented agenda which required a "Pearl Harbor like event" to catapolt their philosophy into reality.
You post in no way addresses PNAC (Tex's post to which you are responding) or the overall topic of this thread. That means you are trolling. Dismissing posts with no counter argument expect "Bush hating" is weak and pathetic.
Look, I am not a PNAC fan, but Tex misrepresented, at best, their mission. If you can prove his assertions, do it. Otherwise, it's fantasy land via Tex.
Read James Mann's "Rise Of The Vulcans: The History Of The Bush War Cabinet". It includes a chapter or two that detail the PNAC agenda.
Yes please allow me to enlighten you even though it is you who the burden lies upon since YOU are the one disputing Tex's post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pnac
"New Pearl Harbor"
A line quoted by critics [34][35] [36]from Rebuilding America's Defenses (September 2000) is "a catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor (PDF)".[37] This quote appears in Chapter V, entitled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force". [38] The full quote is as follows: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor." Some have used this quote to support the questionable argument that PNAC members within the Bush Administration were complicit in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.[39][40] Others believe though not complicit they used the events as "The Pearl Harbor they needed"[41] - an "opportunity" to "capitalize on"[42] and enact long-desired plans.[43][44]
As William Rivers Pitt wrote
It's a question of degree. Do you take what's out there and figure that the Administration planned 9/11? I hope not. Do you figure that it's a huge coincidence that they needed this event, they got it, and then we invaded Iraq for legitimate reasons? God I hope not. Somewhere in the middle is the answer. Were they just imcompetent or uninterested? Did key players blow off the threat, figuring that we couldn't be hit, and even if we were we would just make it an excuse to invade Iraq? It seems entirely possible.
I'm loathe to believe that they intentionally let it happen to acheive their goals, but I can't blame people for looking at what's out there and coming to that conclusion. It's not "wacky" by any stretch of the imagination.
It is certainly no coincidence that all the PNAC guys are in this administration and we invaded Iraq without cause (and they want to do the same to Iran). I think clearly there is a bigger picture behind the scenes and it's got nothing to do with WMDs.
I have no idea how involved the government was in 9/11 but I do think the PNAC guys were "happy" to take it as an opportunity to implement their philosophy.
there is no doubt they were happy to exploit their new pearl harbor.
Why would anybody be upset with Bush for stopping plane hijackings? There was certainly plenty of REAL evidence to at least bring in some of the hijackers. I don't think any reasonable person here would have had a problem with it. But please, keep up with the unfounded negative generalisations to keep you hating, and dividing you from, the evil liberals. It's ever so helpful for the country.
For 6 years we have had more than enough evidence that the bush administration has done despicable evil the world around. However, for those same 6 years we have accumulated more than enough evidence that this despicable evil was perpetrated through ungodly levels of incompetents. To say this administration has the power, the ability, the knowledge, the cunning, the competence to pull off such an attack on American soil, while still covering up all their tracks (destroying the evidence getting off free etc), is attributing a level of competence to this administration that i am positive they do not deserve. Please, don't be so quick to give them that much credit.
Finally a sensible post about the alleged conspiracy. On the one hand, the Bush administration is incompetent, having botched the Iraq war beyond belief. In my opinion, some of there mistakes are so amazing that I feel most boot camp recruits could have avoided them.
That said, suggesting that this administration, or any administration for that matter, would be capable of of effectively orchestrating and covering up such a massive conspiracy is simply lacking in common sense. the government can't get anything right but 9/11 they pulled off? Hmmmm..
In answer to the melting of steel. The melting point of steel is approximately 2500 degrees. I may be wrong, but the jet fuel shoudl not have reached temperatures greater than 1500 degrees. In most areas, the temperature probably hovered around 750-1000 degrees Fahrenheit.
This is not enough to melt steel. However, this is enough to challenge the structural integrity of the steel by causing deformation. Furthermore, it is enough to cause for the steel to weaken. Steel looses strength upon heating. This is how blacksmiths work with steel to bend it, flatten it, etc. The combination of distortion and weakening of maybe 30-60%, not to mention the loss of several columns in the vicinity of main impact, were enough to weaken the structure enough to where the floors above the fire were able to provide enough load in comparison to the relative strength of the remaining supports to cause a collapse.
The structure collapsed on iself because it wasn't designed to handle this highly improbably and unforeseeable situation.
i agree with you. i think it's quite likely that many of the columns in the interior were damaged, because they surrounded the emergency stairs and they were blocked. that's proved by the fact that almost no one above the impacted floors got out. nor did the floors fall in a completely even way. you can clearly see the top of one tower is at an angle as it begins to collapse.
On September 11 I was working at a construction site in Brooklyn and a guy on the site told me that he had worked on the towers when they were being built and that some of the interior columns were eliminated for more retail space. I have no clue if this is true or not.
I highly doubt the overall structural design was compromised to make room for additional retail space.. There are many ways to transfer loads to give flexibility for changes like you mentioned... Remember there are licensed professional structural engineers who are ulitmately responsible by law to design a safe and sound structure.. If something fails because of their miscalculation, legal action would ensue on them and the firm responsible.. Usually noone wants to lay that on the line for any developer..
The overall design of these buildings was different than other buildings, but it was still structurally sound. It had a very strong core combined with a very strong external wall that took the place of the typical building with supports throughout the structure. It was more open than typical buildings, but it was not a sacrifice in structural integrity. It was a result of a different design, not from a weakness in the design.
O'Reilly: Because you're basically saying -- the people who believe this -- that the president of the United States sat there and allowed 3,000 people to be murdered for whatever reason.
Well no, not on 9/11.
Just in Iraq.
=====
There certainly are those on the extreme far-Left that buy into this 9/11 conspiracy theory. But their numbers are likely miniscule and barely a bleep on the radar.
Of course now & then I think Cheney, Kristol, Wolfowitz, Perle & the rest of the neocons associated with the PNAC might have been capable of just about anything. But then I tell myself, they may be evil, but even they couldn't have pulled 9/11 off....
Well,
To be a stickler, he did literally sit there while 3,000 people died. He heard about the first plane before he went into that Florida classroom, and then sat there for seven minutes after he heard about the second plane.
So he should have just panicked and flew into New York City right away, not knowing if more attacks were coming and if he'd even be safe? Bush did exactly the right thing here. He showed calm in the face of the storm. Bush responded to 9-11 magnificently, and it was the finest moment of his presidency. As you can remember, Bush had about a 91% approval rating right after 9-11. You were obviously part of the extreme 9% who disaproved.
“So he should have just panicked and flew into New York City right away, not knowing if more attacks were coming and if he'd even be safe? Bush did exactly the right thing here.”
When you’re the president of the U.S. and someone tells you that America is under attack, you just don’t sit there (it was embarrassing). You tell the kids you have presidential business to attend to and go get an assessment of the situation from your advisors and the intelligence community and find out what measures are being taken to secure venerable areas of the U.S.
“He showed calm in the face of the storm.”
He looked like a deer caught in headlights. It looked like he had no idea what to do (that’s what you get when you have a dunce as president).
“Bush responded to 9-11 magnificently, and it was the finest moment of his presidency. As you can remember, Bush had about a 91% approval rating right after 9-11.”
I don’t think so. If I knew then what I know now, he wouldn’t have gotten my approval.
LOONZ:
RINO HUNTER is Right: the reading of the "The Pet Goat" while Americans died may well be Bush's finest moment as President.
Desperate first responders, such as "scramble" fighters tasked with defending the airspace over DC, were looking for rules of engagement with potential enemies (i.e. commercial airliners taking bizarre flight paths). Can we shoot them down? SHOULD we shoot them down? These orders could ONLY come from the President himself.
Americans in the millions were watching in horror as the towers collapsed, waiting for the explanations and reassuring words of their president.
Yet, the President did nothing. The nation was without doubt under attack, and his instinct was to act as if nothing was wrong. Denial, and a aborgation of his duties as a leader, as Commander in Chief.
Incompetence? Scared into Inertia ("scared stiff" is the colloqueal term)? Without any notion as to what he should be doing, what the consequences might be, WHO might have answers for him instantly to guide his actions (i.e. demanding instant communications commence)? Terrified that if he did something, it might be PERCEIVED as "wrong", not realizing that doing NOTHING can be WRONG when doing something is definitely called for?
Of course, the final resolution was that Bush himself needed to get "out of harm's way" ... wherever that might be.
So, I agree, RINO HUNTER may be exactly correct: It may have been Bush's finest moment. This would be true, because all his OTHER "moments" have been WORSE, from the standpoints of courage and leadership and competence.
"The nation was without doubt under attack"
Somebody should have told the air controllers who were watching the blips disappear and wondering why... Maybe they could have filled GWB in..
Hindsight is a bitch..
he already knew about the first tower being struck before he went into the classroom. given the history of the threats and attacks to that building he should have been doing his job.
MEFIRST:
What would you have done in that situation? Certainly, with the country under attack, Bush couldn't take off in Air Foce One right away. They had to figure out a plan first and decide where to go. Those decisions would have been made by Bush's security people. The president could have sat on a tarmac for several minutes, or he could have sat calmly in the classroom as preparations were being made.
You moonbats also forget that John Kerry told Larry King that he sat for 40 minutes unable to think after the WTC was hit. Yet I bet most of you voted for Kerry.
and those were the only two options available, sit in the classroom or sit on the tarmac? how about get up from reading a book, huddle with his aides, ask what's the latest, is the air force in the air,,,,etc. in other words, act like the commander in chief and the leader of the country, not some clueless fool who has to sit while his aides decide where he goes. and again kerry was not in charge of anything. as for your moonbat nonsense, stick it.
Are you kidding? Everyone knew when the second tower was hit that we were under attack. Bush had been told about the first tower before he went into the classroom. If you're saying that he didn't realize that we were under attack when told about the seond tower, then you must think he lacks any cognitive capacity.
No, but he should have done something other than sit around in a well publicized location for a long time and then zig zag haphazardly on Air Force One. And we could have elected Paris Hilton and she would have a 91% approval rating at that point.
"Bush responded to 9-11 magnificently, and it was the finest moment of his presidency."
AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHA!!!!
Yes, his magnificent response amounted to: Do nothing in the face of a threat, and then run and hide when the threat is realized. That thar's the kind of leadership this country needs.
You are beautiful, Rino. I've always suspected you were an act, and now I know it's true. This is the funniest thing I've read all day.
Rino,
Do me a favor. Pretend you are PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. You have just been told that America is under attack. Now look at your watch. For the next seven minutes just sit there. No going to the fridge. No checking out the sports scores in the paper. No bathroom break. Just sit there and see how long seven minutes is when the fate of the country you have promised to preserve, protect, and defend has been attacked.
Now what do you think?
Tell us, wise one, what you would have done as your security team wasn't making plans to ensure that the president was able to leave the classroom safely.
so he had no responsibility to take any actions or make any decisions? his job is to sit there?
First of all, I am wondering why my protective detail isn't ready to move me out of a dangerous situation at a moments notice. They had Reagan in the car and on the move within 10 seconds after he was shot. Second, maybe I would get a cell phone from someone and start to gather information and, perhaps, make a decision or two.
I may not be "wise," but those thoughts cross my mind...
In a national emergency such as we were having, there is protocol for moving the President. During the seven minutes that Bush stayed in the classroom, preparations were being made by the secret service to move him. The left's portrayal of Bush "freezing up" in that situation is a dubious claim.
he's the leader of the country. he should have been up and out of that classroom and attempting to find out every bit of info he could.
Gee, I wonder if the president of the United States has people who gather information for him. You moonbats have to be the dumbest people in the world.
you obviously have run out of arguments and are content to make a fool of yourself.
The Secret Service can work faster than than seven minutes to get him to another room, Bruce. He's the president, the "Decider", the "Commander Guy", he can decide to get up and command when he wants, but it's plain that he froze. No amount of spin can change that.
So if someone had brandished a gun in the classroom, it would have taken the Secret Service over 7 minutes to get him the hell out of there?
I don't think so...
I love this! Monday-morning quarterbacking lugs who act like they have a clue how the Secret Service works, and how a president should act in the event of an attack on our country.
what i do know is that he should not sit and listen to ten year olds read a book, when he should be gathering all the information he can, and making decisions. the pentagon was not hit until 930. that might possibly have been avoided. this whole incident was repeated in katrina. when it was revealed that bush sat in on a meeting where the head of the national hurricane center said there was a grave danger of the levees overtopping and yet bush did not ask a single question, the white house excuse was that he was there to "observe". obviously the idea of a stuffed suit as president is okay with you, as long as there's a "r" behind his name.
Okay, I know it hurts, but think about this:
Bush sitting in the classroom was a publicized event, There were people and press all around, he gets word that we are under attack. He is Commander-in-Chief of the greatest country in the world. Should he not wait while the area around him is secure. What is so difficult about that? In my opinion, the way he handled it was much better than how I heard the Democrats at their National Convention would handle it.
BTW, what does Katrina have to do with anything? A natural disaster is no comparison to a direct assault on our homeland. Please get that straight.
oh please, that whole school area was not secure? he had to sit in that specific classroom? he couldn't go out and meet with his aides in the cafeteria, an empty room? and i will spell it out for you since you don't get it. katrina showed the same kind of non-response to a threat.
I don't believe al Qaeda was in that classroom, moonbat. I'm pretty certain they were outside the classroom.
O'Reilly: Because you're basically saying -- the people who believe this -- that the president of the United States sat there and allowed 3,000 people to be murdered for whatever reason.
"Well no, not on 9/11. Just in Iraq"
That's completely absurd. The soldiers who are fighting in Iraq volunteered to do so, because they believed in the cause. They believed that trying to bring freedom to people who had never had it before was a noble thing to do, as was removing a brutal dictator who had killed thousands of his own people. You can say that the Iraq War hasn't been worth the price, but our intentions were certainly noble, and our soldiers have performed excellently. You just denigrated our entire armed forces with your remark.
"You can say that the Iraq War hasn't been worth the price, but our intentions were certainly noble, and our soldiers have performed excellently. You just denigrated our entire armed forces with your remark."
These soldiers are fighting an oil war for Bush. He is responsible for all of their needless deaths and injuries.
At least your username fits you well. That's about all I can say.
That's usually about all you do say.
Whether or not our soldiers are capable, noble, and competent (I believe that they are all three, and every liberal I know feels the same) has nothing to do with the flawed mission that Bush has sent them on.
If you denigrate the troops' mission and claim that our President allowed them to be murdered for no reason, you're denigrating them as well. They signed up for the mission and believe in the mission. There's no seperating these things.
Rino,
I've tried that argument before.. these lefties just don't get it..
Because it's a BS argument, and you got smacked around when you tried it too. There's no valid point to "get".
How do you know they support this mission? There are polls that state the opposite. Many feel that their lives have been put on the line for a failed policy. Many feel that they didn't sign up for a second, third, or fourth tour. Many wives and families are angry at the administration for changing it's reasons for going into Iraq, and it's reasons for staying in Iraq.
How do you know these two elements (signing up for and believing in this mission) are inseparable?
At which point will this "Mission" be successful? How will we know it when we see it? How much more death and maiming are we willing to endure?
When will those who cry the loudest for war start sacrificing their own for their cause?
"They signed up for the mission and believe in the mission"
Wow! You speak for all the troops, too? How about those troops who are now thinking WTF am I doing here...? If you support the troops then you don't want troops to DIE, especially because of the incompetence of their Commander in Chief... it's that simple.
"If you support the troops then you don't want troops to DIE"...
You might want to call up the congress with that quote while they're busy playing politics and trying to be popular..
Do you ever respond to the actual point of the post? Note to CD, regurgitating the newest GOP talking point you heard on Rush Limbaugh doesn't make you a well informed or thoughtful.
Just keep ignoring the fact that the majority of the American people do not support what is taking place in Iraq. Keep ignoring the fact that the Republican party lost multiple seats in both houses of Congress because the American people want more then a rubber stamp on Bush policy. The House is suppose to represent the will of the people and the majority of the people do no support the efforts in Iraq as the president has little to no plan on what to do after the initial attack on Iraq and we have had little to no progress.
Protecting the country and our freedoms should not be driven by what is the popular thought.. remember WWII.. wasn't exactly a popular endeavor.. took a little wake up call there and it still wasn't popular..
I too struggle with the obvious underestimating of the way things could have turned and eventually did with the rivaling factions in Iraq...
Was that more to the point your highness?..
Comparing Iraq to WWII is beyond absurd, unless Iraq was running roughshod over the Middle East and we just never heard about it.
Why do you think we were so hesitant to get involved in WWII? Because we liked the Germans? No, it's because we weren't convinced it was worthwhile. We carried that sentiment too far for too long, but if we had an ounce of that cautiousness today we wouldn't have let the Iraq war get past the planning stage.
So your answer now is the same as it was back then.. We'll just wait and see what happens, talk with them and maybe change their mind by our kind thoughts and overwhelming compassion for their way of life and personal goals.. If they came over to our turf and start trouble, then we'll get together and figure out a stronger line of diplomacy and dialogue...
Look I mentioned I'm not thrilled out the ways things are going, but I do agree with the intial attempt at being proactive rather than reactive.. Regardless of whatever conspiracy some folks on here think is behind it..
Saddam was contained. We had inspectors on the ground. You can call pulling those inspectors out and rushing to invasion "proactive" but that's about the most extreme spin I've ever seen.
There was no link between Saddam and 9/11. There was no reason to believe anyone from that country was coming over here for anything.
Now if you're talking about terrorists in general, that's exactly what makes your comparison so absurd. There is no country called "terror". We don't know who the enemy is in conventional warfare. And the flypaper theory is not only ludicrous but highly contemptible as it uses our soldiers (and residents of the country) as bait, under the notion that you can never pull them out because then the terrorists will be "free" to attack America again (as if our presence in Iraq requires every single terrorist to flock there).
That doesn't deserve praise for being "proactive" any more than a fireman deserves praise for using kerosene on a fire.
Actually I wasn't referring to Iraq in particular, nor do I think I have ever defended our moving in there.. My point of being proactive is to go after those who did us wrong such as the Afghan/Talibans.. I am on the fence on the whole Iraqi thing, but still think a proactive presence there keeps pressure on those who might think otherwise if we were just sitting back on our heels..
We maintain a proactive presence in many countries that became unstabilized and required our intervention.. It is not a new idea, albiet, a little more twisted in the Iraq ordeal.. Good intentions, bad follow through..
Let me get this straight. We've had five or so posts specifying Iraq. I said Iraq wasn't like WWII, and you didn't say that you were specifying Afghanistan. Your above response was in regards to the popular support for Iraq, claiming that popular support shouldn't be a factor (hence the WWII comparison). When I specified Iraq, you only talked about "them", now apparently you were referring to Afghanis without providing any clue at all that you had switched countries.
Could you be any less honest, really?
And being proactive in unstable countries is one thing, overthrowing a sovereign country going for some sort of "domino effect" of stablilizing the entire region is quite another. I didn't have a problem with Afghanistan, and neither did most people as far as I saw, since there was an obvious justification for doing so.
Can you prove that a majority of the American people do not agree with what is taking place in Iraq?
It appears to be the case all the way back to 2004.
From the sage Rino:
"They signed up for the mission and believe in the mission."
I must have missed that mass enlistment of 135,000 new soldiers after Bush announced his "ultimatum" to Hussein. It wasn't covered by the news? Dammed liberal media...
R Hunter, I would respectfully say that very few of the National Guard toops who are in theater signed up to "bring freedom". I can only speak about the ones I know and have discussed this with. Except of course for my freind Ralph who was killed his first day in Mosul. The National Guard troops I know signed up to protect this country, and to help out in disasters. My co-workers husband is extremely bitter that he has been sent overseas to Iraq twice.
Nullifying right-wing BS, Part 1:
"If you denigrate the troops' mission"
Their mission is to serve this country by following the orders of the President. They are completing that wonderfully. There is nothing within the realm of possibility in terms of military might and action that our men and women cannot achieve. Period.
"and claim that our President allowed them to be murdered"
He is allowing them to serve as cannon fodder while he runs about pretending that everything is hunky-dory and occasionally visits them for a well-planned photo op. Make no mistake - when a jackhole in power lies to take us into war, lies to keep us in war, and doesn't encourage his own party to equip those men and women who are fighting FOR HIM on the ground, he is responsible for their deaths as surely as if he had set off the IED himself.
"for no reason, you're denigrating them as well."
BS. Try coming up with an actual argument - that talking point stopped working in 2006, where the majority of Americans recognized the harm the Republican party and their boy King have done to our nation, our wealth, and our soldiers.
"They signed up for the mission and believe in the mission. There's no seperating these things."
Again, BS. They signed up to protect their country and to serve the President. They did not sign up because they were hoping they'd make money for Halliburton, they did not sign up with the intent of destabilizing an entire region of the globe, they did not sign up with the intent of destroying much of what makes this country great - as a matter of fact, their actions and devotion to this country and its military are not causing these problems. The problems stem from the head-up-the-rear direction from the administration and its "Decider."
Re-enlistment is up, so to speak. Men and women who can walk away from Hell enter back in - willingly - not because they are supportive of the President's lack of vision in the middle east, but because they feel a personal responsibility to their unit and want to ensure that those they have lived with for the past X years are protected and cared for. It's a familial unit, and is often stronger than blood. These people have fought and bled together, and have watched friends die together. If the brother of your heart is stuck in Fallujah and you have the opportunity to leave it - and him - behind, you had better believe you'd sign in again to ensure that he is protected, and you will trust that he'll do the same for you.
Soldiers believe in their unit, soldiers believe in their family, soldiers believe in their country. Soldiers follow the orders of their President - but that does not mean they believe in him, or in his Quixotic vision.
No, Rino, they believed they were avenging 9/11. Why didn't you go to Iraq?
Most of the soldiers in Iraq didn't sign up to fight in Iraq. They signed up to defend America against it's enemies.
Many signed up after 9/11 and if they think that by fighting in Iraq, they're responding to the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center then they're delusional. Are you linking Iraq to the attacks on 9/11? Why aren't the troops bringing a sh_t storm to the Taliban? There is evidence that puts this at their doorstep, not Iraq's.
The administration has been denying that a link exists between 9/11 and Iraq, except for Dark Lord Dick.
Can you please straigten us all out? Which is it?
You can say that the Iraq War hasn't been worth the price, but our intentions were certainly noble
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Rino,
You really don't get it do you?
They believed that trying to bring freedom to people who had never had it before was a noble thing to do, as was removing a brutal dictator who had killed thousands of his own people....by Rino
Here is the List of the World's Worst Dictators:
http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2007/edition_02-11-2007/Dictators
Should we invade those countries & take out their leaders? You seem to be suggesting that was our reasoning behind Iraq. It wasn't. Bush & Co. just kept changing the reasons...
The U.S. was under NO imminent threat from Iraq. There was NO reason to invade that sovereign nation. Bush & the neocons have changed the reason for the invasion numerous times. And you've bought into it like a lapdog. Think for yourself!
I have 3 sons. None are in the Military. But if they were, I would round them up and whisk them off to Canada.
The Iraq War has accomplished ZERO. And never should have happen!!! My heart goes out to our brave troops & their families caught up in Bush's fiasco.
My point is simply that we had noble intentions, even if they were unrealistic. We obviously can't go and remove every dictator in the world. My point is simply that our intentions were noble. We didn't go in there for oil or halliburton or any of the other BS that the liberals come up with. After looking at the price that we are now paying for the war, I would say that we would have been better off not going in there in the first place. However, I still believe that we had noble intentions and our soldiers performed brilliantly. They weren't "murdered" by our President. They volunteered for the mission. The statement that you made sounds like something a far left Democrat would say. Our soldiers are fighting in Iraq in order to try to bring the people there freedom. It may be an impossible goal and one that we never should have attempted, but it's certainly noble, and the last thing our troops need is people like you telling them that our president is "murdering" them for no reason. That's disrespecful and disgusting.
It doesn't make a damn difference if the intent was "noble" or not. The entire plan is irresponsible on a massive scale, and so Bush is responsible for those lives lost. The military is not a tool for every half-baked social experiment.
You may have had noble intentions, but BushCo didn't. You've been mislead.
My gawd, you're naive.
A predisposition to believe in conspiracy theories has nothing to do with being "far-left". People of all political stripes are susceptible.
Indeed, even 9-11 theories are not contained to the "far left". Alex Jones is one of the biggest purveyors of the 9-11 truth movement, and he is a conservative who supports Ron Paul for president.
http://www.infowars.com/
well all the scientific evidence is against the idea of bush having pulled off the attack. Liberals are known for reasonable, educated thought. I don't want to be proven wrong in that assumption
Lynn, absolutely with you - Bush didn't help pull off the attack. Ignored the probability? Absolutely. Why else would the right wing be so rabid on bringing up the "Clinton had Osama on a platter from Africa and he let the opportunity slip by" line?
Maybe because it's a fact...
Crescent Drive says that it's a fact that Clinton had Bin Laden's head on a platter and rejected the opportunity to take him out.
Crescent Drive lies. It has to be a lie, because anyone who knows about that 'offer' would also know that it never happened that way.
something I read in that 9/11 Commission Report.. but I forgot it says sort of negative things about the Clintons, so it can't be true..
WTF
Just because The Path to 9/11 claimed to be based on the commission's findings doesn't make it true.
the report, not the movie... I'm not surprised by your response though.. the report is over 500 pages, so it took me a while being a blind ignernt conservative.. but it's in there.. wasn't going to be a popular thing to do so... you know the rest..
Actually it's not in the report. It's only in the movie. It was one of the things the movie was attacked for, and not just by Clinton, but by the commission members as well.
not exactly like Snoop described, but the report clearly states the opportunity... the movie version was better... it had moving pictures
What page? You must be able to cite it, if it's right there.
Dam, I was reading the script to the movie... I think I said not exactly as Snoopy originally posted, but the report cites instances of opportunity..
your claim was that the 9-11 report said that there were offers to turn over bin ladin to clinton. offer those or shut up.
crescent, you're a liar or you can't read. here's the 9-11 report page 110: "sudan's minister of defense, fatih erwa, has claimed that sudan offered to hand bin ladin over to the united states. the commission has found no credible evidence that this was so. ambassador carney had instructions only to push the sudanese to expell bin ladin. ambassador carney had no legal basis to ask more from the sudanese since, at the time, there was no indictment outstanding." looks like you didn't retain a lot when you read the report.
Crescent,
I did read the report and what you are claiming isn't in it. I think this is the saddest of all of your posts so far. To claim to read something you know you didn't to appear credible and educated shows you as the dishonest person you are.
I encourage you to take your own advice and acquire knowledge on a subject before speaking.
"Why else would the right wing be so rabid on bringing up the "Clinton had Osama on a platter from Africa and he let the opportunity slip by" line?"
Oh, I don't know. Maybe because Clinton admitted to it?
Was that before or after he went into meltdown on national TV?..
You mean when Chris Wallace was almost in tears?
You mean when Wallace went way off topic with a very loaded question and Clinton called him on it and fought back. It was pretty funny watching Wallace scared and scrambling to get back on topic while Clinton was making him look like the hack he is.
I don't think many folks have seen Bill's grumpy face... Caught me off guard as well..
The truth often catches you off-guard. How about responding to the words that actually were in the 9/11 report instead of the words that were in the version you pulled out of your ass?
See above.. and stop posting about my ass..
see above also. provide the quotes you claim are in the 9-11 report or shut up.
And the "my pet goat" moment. Only a shell shocked idiot would sit there for minutes on end vs. taking immediate action and leading.
Your right... He should have called the "The Governator" immediately, teamed up with Stallone, grabbed the old bat-mobile and went to work.. I'm really not sure how someones expressions can be construed as "he is an idiot"... Maybe "I need to call Dad"...
Geesh, put yourself in his place... I know I was in dis-belief that day and I was watching on TV..
Yeah, but noone expected Crescent drive to do anything, because you weren't elected to protect this country as your first job.
Of course, neither was Bush, but he got the job anyway.
I don't know how anybody else reacted, but I was lying in bed that morning, half asleep at about 6am, heard it on the radio, and immediately got up and turned on the tv to get more information. Hell, I took more action and showed more curiosity than Bush did.
Let me see, what did I do that day? I remember. I said Bush will probably push another tax cut. Darned if I wasn't right!
John Kerry admitted on CNN to sitting in the Capitol building for 40 minutes unable to think after the second tower was hit.
Well, we know he's an idiot, so maybe Snoppy has something there..
Amazing that after all the complaining about Clinton and Kerry, it turns out conservatives voted into office someone who's functionally equal to them, isn't it?
They must be so proud to be defending this clone of disliked democrats.
kerry was not in charge of the federal response. there was nothing he could do.
Kev must realize that the Bush first response to 9/11 was woefully inadequate as the best indicator that you have a rovebot on the ropes is the famous "but what about democrat X" response instead of a real answer. Are you suggesting that a member of the Senate should have done the presidents job on 9/11? What was the rest of the Senate doing then Kev or are you only interested in Democrates?
And once again, Kev leaves the building instead of answering a question about one of his illogical attempts at deflection.
I found these poll results rather startling, too, when I heard Bill O'Reilly talk about them last week. But the first question that came to my mind was "How was the question worded?" Now I'd like to know what questions came before and after the critical question od whether Bush "knew". There's something just "not right" about this... it would be disappointing to think that so many Americans would believe that Bush was somehow complicit in the attacks by deliberate omission (or commision). It's just hard to swallow that so many Americans would be that paranoid. I really hope there is an explanation for these results and that the poll does not mean people think Bush actually had something to do with 9/11.
IMO, Bush has been an extremely incompetent President. Although it may not have prevented the 9/11 attacks, he could have (and should have) paid more attention to the pre-9/11 warnings about Al Qaeda. But it's a great (paranoid) leap to even suggest, without evidence, that Bush was somehow deliberately complicit in that horrible event. There has to be some explanation for that poll... people can't possibly be THAT crazy.
I went to Rasmussen Reports for more information about the poll and the other question asked was whether the CIA knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks. 29% of those polled answered "yes". I would have to assume that people responded to the questions in the context of whether the CIA or Bush had any information about an impending terrorist attack. In that regard, there have been numerous reports that CIA reported increased "chatter" about possibly an attack and you also have the now famous PDB, "Bin Laden Determined To Attack Within U.S.", that was given to Bush. In that sense I could understand the affirmative answers. But the poll questions are vague and subject to interpretation... not that you'd hear that from Limbaugh or O'Reilly.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/22_believe_bush_knew_about_9_11_attacks_in_advance
polling science = man-made global warming science
"There has to be some explanation for that poll... people can't possibly be THAT crazy."
Keep in mind that we are talking about Democrats, the same people who might nominate Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as their presidential candidate next year.
And the same people who nominated John Kerry in 2004.
And the same people who don't think Bush and the Republicans ever linked 9/11 and Iraq.
Well, Kevin... in the same Rasmussen 15% of Republicans polled said Bush knew about 9/11 in advance. A majority of Republican voters in 2004 believed Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. And Republicans twice elected Bush.... So you guys can't be that smart.
"A majority of Republican voters in 2004 believed Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11"
Don't seem to recall that campaigning point.. a viable threat to the region maybe, but directly responsible?
It wasn't a campaign point... because it wasn't true. But polls showed Republican voters believed Saddam was behind 9/11. Maybe Dick Cheney and the boys at FOX had something to do with that notion...
"It wasn't a campaign point... because it wasn't true. But polls showed Republican voters believed Saddam was behind 9/11. Maybe Dick Cheney and the boys at FOX had something to do with that notion..."
Show us one of those polls.
And, according to a study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, a higher percentage of CBS News viewers (33%) than Fox News viewers (24%) believed "Iraq was directly involved in September 11."
Before the 2004 election a USAToday/Gallup poll showed a majority of Republicans still believed Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. At one point after 9/11 as much as 70% of all Americans believed the connection. The numbers went down steadily, except that a majority of Republicans still believed the lie in 2004. Google the polls and see what's still available...
Seems appropriate again.. including the MMFA headline that started it all
polling science = man-made global warming science
I see that the propaganda parrots are out in full force today. The fact that someone needs to explain to you the difference social science (liking conducting a poll) and the natural sciences (biology, chemistry, physics) speaks volumes about how completely brainwashed or ignorant you are.Maybe if you repeat it 10 more times someone might actually believe you.
Bear in mind that - as is evinced often and recently in this thread - brainwashed and ignorant are not mutually exclusive.
Crescent,
I'm beginning to think you are actually a Democrat who is saying the most absurd things he can think of to parody Republican ignorance regarding world events. If so you are a genius, if not you certainly are uneducated and need to spend a lot of time hitting the books.
How a person could ecuate polling to scientific consensus regarding climate change (twice so far in this thread) is absolutely astounding and sad.
Crackpot,
Keep your faith in those number crunchers... All math, polling or scientific requires input data and analysis.. In your world of course none of the input could ever be flawed or massaged.. and you guys talk about blind faith, WOW
CD, the thing is that you need to have some reasonable basis for doubting either, besides the results being at odd with your personal beliefs. Otherwise you're just selecting your own reality piece by piece.
..and your reality is to open up and swallow it whole?.. thats when it doesn't go against your personal beliefs, of course..
You don't have to treat it as gospel, but you don't dismiss it unless there are grounds to do so. There's a general credibility to these things, and they're the only way we have any understanding of the world.
Take any poll, for instance. If the questions are fair, if the reputation of the pollsters is good, if the results aren't radically different from those found by other outlets, then you have no reason to think it's wrong.
We've had right-wingers on here who have dismissed polls entirely, then you know what they would when they found a poll that supported their view? They would link to it. You can be that way if you like too, but it's not going to earn you much respect.
I understand the basic premise and that across the board if all things line up, it is about the only way to gauge the publics thoughts.. What bothers me is when the media says someone has slipped 6 points in some poll that has an MoE of 3+/- and they're all giddy over it..
That is understandable, but that's a far cry from comparing it to GW science, and talking about how numbers can be manipulated. Once again, when your point doesn't fly, you try to change what you actually said.
"Well, Kevin... in the same Rasmussen 15% of Republicans polled said Bush knew about 9/11 in advance."
So. That's less than half of 35%.
"A majority of Republican voters in 2004 believed Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11."
You're lying. No poll ever showed that.
"And Republicans twice elected Bush.... So you guys can't be that smart."
Actually, Bush was also elected by independents and some Democrats who knew Gore and Kerry were jokes.
No, Kevin... you're lying. One particular poll was a USA Today/Gallup Poll... It's not my fault they don't archive the polls.
This poll does Kevin:
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=508
Thank you for looking that up. There it is in black and white:
Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001: 52 percent of Republicans agreed, while only 23 percent of Democrats did.
In other words, over twice as many Republicans believe in a conspiracy theory as bad as the conspiracy theory that Bush knew of 9/11 in advance and did nothing to stop it.
Kevin, aka Mr. Moonbat, likes to selectively quote facts and insult posters who are not fooled by his conclusions. Humorously, he is writing a book on the faults of Clinton. It should be a nice polemic, as worthwhile as, say, something Fox's Gibson has produced.
Either of whom would be a vast improvement over the current incompetent-in-chief.
Im actually surprised by the responses. The last time a similar topic came up, the blog was littered with people writing 12 page essays on how 9/11 was an inside job, and anyone who cant see it must be a crazy liberal knuckle-dragger. Maybe its past all those guy's bedtimes.
"Maybe its past all those guy's bedtimes."
Either that or their weekly meetings are on Tuesday nights. ;>)
On the home page in upper left corner, it looks like Limbaugh is in blackface.
This is off topic but this family guy video clip had me cracking up.
Also off-topic. Eh, it was OK. Ever since they resurrected family Guy the show has been quite lackluster to me.
He later claimed that it indicated that "35 percent of Democratic voters believe that President Bush stood by and allowed 3,000 Americans to die on the streets." O'Reilly repeatedly referred to this as "madness," and claimed, "Sane people do not make that kind of leap."
I thought this was priceless. Since O'Reilly is the one who made "the leap," about Dems, technically, he's right. You would have to question his sanity.
If you really think about it, the fact that Demos answered the literal question correctly -- As per the August briefing, Bush DID have advance knowledge --it really goes to show that (as most surveys have) that conservative news sources did not properly inform their viewers/listeners. I think that the poll really shows that this is the case.
"If you really think about it, the fact that Demos answered the literal question correctly -- As per the August briefing, Bush DID have advance knowledge...."
There was no specific information in the August 6 PDB concerning an imminent attack on U.S. soil. The bulk of the PDB concerned past event and uncorroborated reports. So, no, the moonbats did not answer the "literal question correctly."
yeah, it didn't have the name and addresses of the hijackers. but you're ignoring the part where a cia briefer went to crawford to emphasize the seriousness of the threat. bush did nothing.
You're lying.
about? 9-11 report page 260: "he [bush] did not recall discussing the august 6 report with the attorney general or whether rice had done so." so he gets a warning "bin ladin determined to strike in u.s.", delivered personally by a cia briefer to emphasize the threat, and he does not discuss it with the ag, who is in charge of the fbi.
Good comeback, and no he's not.
I believe the phrase Bush reportedly used was "you've covered your ass now". If that's true, that says a lot about Bush's attitude. It's not about solving problems, it's just about deflecting blame for the consequences.
"but you're ignoring the part where a cia briefer went to crawford to emphasize the seriousness of the threat. bush did nothing."
-----
That's not true. Bush did do something. He told the agent, "OK, you've covered your ass now."
He then continued his month-long vacation.
What always amazes me about kool-aid drinking half-wit neocons such as yourself is that you are even capable of using a computer. Your comment inspires me. Your next goal should be either (a) opposable thumbs or (b) a brain stem.
MMFA is being extremely dishonest on this one:
"Indeed, President Bush received a [link to www.cnn.com] color="#0052a3">briefing on August 6, 2001, titled 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US,' which indicated that Osama bin Laden wanted to conduct terrorist attacks on U.S. cities, that members of his Al Qaeda terrorist network had lived in or traveled to the U.S. for years, that bin Laden had previously said he wanted to hijack an American aircraft, and that 'FBI information since that time indicate[d] patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings.'"
The information from the August 6 PDB concerning hijackings was from an uncorroborated report from 1998! The reason cited for possible hijackings was to win the release of Islamic extremists in custody in the U.S. The August 6 PDB said absolutely nothing about using airliners as missiles. Note to MMFA: If you fly airliners into buildings, you've lost any bargaining chips you had hope to use to win the release of extremists.
MMFA also ignores the final paragraph of the August 6 PDB, which clearly indicates that the government was not ignoring the threat. See http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/august6.memo/
The only credible report of possible terrorist attacks that were ignored concerned the August 1998 attacks on our U.S embassies in Africa. See http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/010999africa-bomb.html
There are also reports that we received early warnings concerning the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, yet ignored those warnings.
The only rational conclusion normal people can draw from Rasmussen's poll is that over a third of Democrats are out of touch with reality. Of course, that is not really a surprised.
"The only rational conclusion normal people can draw from Rasmussen's poll is that over a third of Democrats are out of touch with reality."
Gee, I hope you spoke with some "normal" people to obtain that insightful analysis.
Can't address the points, can you?
Tell you what. Let's imagine you were president when the August 6 PDB was issued. After reading it, what specific steps would you have taken that would have prevented 9/11?
I've never said Bush could have prevented 9/11... but if I had gotten that PDB as President, and considering that George Tenet (who briefed Bush every day) had concerns, I would have immediately called everybody to the White House for a meeting and made it clear that pulling out all stops, ASAP. in uncovering and preventing a terrorist attack was top priority.
By the way, did you read that part of the disclaimer at the top of the transcript of the August 6, 2001 PDB, which said the following?
Parts of the original document were not made public by the White House for security reasons.
And also, by the way, if the concerns of Prudence Bushnell, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, were ignored in the Spring of 1998, would the subsequent Embassy attack have not been a wake-up call to not ignore even the vaguest of potential terrorist threats, especially proposed threats inside the USA?
Again, I have never said that had Bush acted more decisively that 9/11 would have been prevented. But we'll never know if 9/11 may have been prevented, because by most credible accounts of former White House insiders Bush did not make Al Qaeda a top priority when he took office, despite warnings that he should. The neocons who surrounded Bush scoffed at the notion that Al Qaeda was, by itself, such a powerful threat, and focused instead on issues of so-called "state-sponsored" terrorism. How do you think we got into Iraq?
"And also, by the way, if the concerns of Prudence Bushnell, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, were ignored in the Spring of 1998, would the subsequent Embassy attack have not been a wake-up call to not ignore even the vaguest of potential terrorist threats, especially proposed threats inside the USA?"
Perhaps. But that wake up call was not heeded. Clinton & Co. ignored reports that al Qaeda planned to attack U.S. ships in Yemeni waters.
And again, the last paragraph of the August 6 PDB shows that even the vaguest of potential terrorist threats were not being ignored.
"And again, the last paragraph of the August 6 PDB shows that even the vaguest of potential terrorist threats were not being ignored."
You are, of course, referring to the edited (by the White House)version of the PDB, I assume...
Which part of the last paragraph was edited? Do you have evidence that the last paragraph is untrue?
If anything is edited out by this White House then you can assume it must be something damaging to Bush...
"I've never said Bush could have prevented 9/11... but if I had gotten that PDB as President, and considering that George Tenet (who briefed Bush every day) had concerns, I would have immediately called everybody to the White House for a meeting and made it clear that pulling out all stops, ASAP. in uncovering and preventing a terrorist attack was top priority."
Given that the information about a possible hijacking was from an uncorroborated 1998 report, why weren't all stops pulled out then? Instead, the 9/11 pilots were allowed into this country even before Bush was elected president.
That was a nice little smackdown there. Keep up the good work!
Actually, the Gore Commission of 1997 studied the possibility of terrorist attacks and hijackings involving airliners. This was after an airliner blew up during the summer of 1996. In Glenn E, Schweitzer's "The Faceless Enemy: The Origins of Modern Terrorism," the author noted that Gore's panel caved in to "Arab-American and civil liberties groups who opposed the panel's proposed profiling policy. In other words, the Clinton administration placed political correctness before airline security.
There are liberals who say that Bush should have ordered all airlines to secure their planes' cockpits after he read the August 6 PDB. Again, the information about hijackings in that briefing was from an uncorroborated report from 1998. If that information was enough to justify new doors on airliners, why weren't those doors installed in 1998?
So, you're saying Al Gore is a brilliant guy with great forethought, whose conclusions we should listen to. BTW, Bill Clinton was President, not Al Gore, and Congress was Repblican.
Again, I don't know where you're trying to go with all of this... If Clinton screwed up so badly why didn't Bush go after Al Qaeda the moment he took office? There is a lot of blame to spread around, but the fact is that while, according to people like George tenet, warning lights were blinking in the summer of 2001, And according to former White House insiders the White House neocons had scoffed at the possible threat of Al Qaeda. Yea, maybe Clinton didn't do enough, but Bush apparently didn't do anything until after 9/11... and then he invaded Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11.
"Yea, maybe Clinton didn't do enough, but Bush apparently didn't do anything until after 9/11... and then he invaded Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11."
Again, the last paragraph of the August 6 PDB shows that you are wrong when you say Bush did nothing concerning the threat posed by al Qaeda.
Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism that we believed had WMD. It wouuld have been foolish to conduct a global war on terrorism without taking Iraq into consideration. Richard Clarke made the following statement in 1998:
"I frequently get accused of wasting the taxpayers' money on an extravagant program of chem-bio defense that is unnecessary, that is a pork barrel, that is an overreaction to one incident by a religious cult in Japan. Let me try to tell those who say that, why they are wrong. There are two lists that I want to talk about. One is the list of state sponsors of terrorism that the Secretary of State issues every year, by law. You know who is on that list. It is a public document.
"There is another list that the Director of Central Intelligence issues on a classified basis every year, and that is the list of states that have chemical or biological weapons. There is almost a one-for-one copy of the terrorist state sponsors list resident within the list of states that have chemical and biological weapons. What does it mean to be a state sponsor of terrorism? It means that you have trained, equipped, financed, provided sanctuary to, provided leadership for, provided intelligence to, and armed terrorist groups.
"Now if these state sponsors of terrorism have done all of that, do we want to bet the security of our people here at home that those state sponsors will not go the additional step of providing terrorist groups with the chemical and biological weapons that are already in the inventory of the state sponsors of terrorism? I don't want to. The president doesn't want to. And I'm glad to see that the majority of the U.S. Congress does not want to because they have been voting consistently since the president made his proposal in May for the funds that the president has asked for." http://usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/press/whouse/archive/1998/october/wh191013.htm
Iraq was on both of those lists in 1998 and it was on both of those lists in March 2003.
So then you are saying Richard Clarke is credible when he said that Bush ignored his efforts to draw his attention to the threat of Al Qaeda... and when Bush directed him to focus on Iraq after 9/11?
You're mistating the facts concerning Clarke and Iraq.
As I recall it, Clinton admin had spent alot of $$ and time which resulted in a 100 day plan to deal with Al Q. Unfortuanately, Clarke was told to stop the 100 day plan as the Bush admin wanted to basically duplicate the effort that created the 100 day plan. Of course we'll never know if the original 100 day plan would have prevented the 4 hijackings, but the Bush admin had not started on their study as of 9-11.
Here we go again with the same BS. Iraq may have been on the list of supporters of terrorism, but so were the occupied territories, the home of the Palestinians, who have no standing army and are no threat to the US.
Iraq was absolutely no threat to the US. It was known he was no threat to the US beforehand. Before we invaded Iraq, no one believed that Iraq had any plans against the US. There was just about zero proof that he had working ties with Al Quaida, whom he viewed as an enemy. Attacking Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terrorism.
And the "chatter" suggesting a pending attack that George Tenet and others have often referred to occurred when exactly? Oh... the summer of 2001.
BTW, weren't the CIA and FBI stepping on each other's d*cks trying to keep track of potential terrorists, but not sharing info with each other? And weren't we actually trying to track some of the 9/11 hijackers... like those two guys in San Diego?
I'm really not sure what point you're trying to make. That Bush had absolutely no forewarning of 9/11? That 9/11 was entirely Bill Clinton's fault? It's a little more complicated than that, Sparky...
"BTW, weren't the CIA and FBI stepping on each other's d*cks trying to keep track of potential terrorists, but not sharing info with each other?"
They were not legally allowed to share information with each other because of Gorelick's "wall." That is just one of the reasons Clinton failed us.
That "wall" has been around for decades. I know you righties like pretending Clinton created it but it doesn't make it true. Clinton fixed it up to allow them to work more efficiently. You might try not repeating debunked neocon crap, it doesn't help you any.
That's funny.. I've always viewed Bill as a fixer-upper... good one..
Debunked? How so?
talk of the "wall" is just another right wing attempt to cover the fact that bush was paying no attention to counterterrorsim. the fact, note fact, is that the investigations into the flight schools, which culminated in the phoenix memo in july 2001, were a fbi responsibility. but the cia knew about them. 9-11 commission page 275: "on august 23 [2001], director of central intelligence tenet was briefed about the moussaoui case in a briefing titled 'islamic extremist learns to fly'."
And one more thing for you, Kevin 455, are you happy being such a pathetic excuse for an American that you still, to this day, deny that Bush has even done anything wrong? How naive can you be?
Al Franken once said that the Republican party loves America like a parent loves a child -- Hide all of the bad news and only tell them what you think they are capable of handling with a child's mind.
He also said that Democrats love America like a spouse or adult lover -- you can acknowledge weaknesses or differences of opinion, but you learn how to work through them in a mature and adult fashion.
You, Kevin 455, are obviously of a child's mind.
"Conservative media tout flawed poll to call Dems 9-11 conspiracy theorists"
How exactly was the poll flawed? Media Matters never said.
"Did Bush know about the 9/11 attacks in advance"
Seems like a pretty valid question to me. There's nothing flawed about it. I'm actually surprised that only 35% of Democrats believe that Bush knew about 9-11 in advance. I thought the number would be higher than that.
"Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US,"
Wow! What a specific memo. I never would've guessed that Osama Bin Laden wanted to attack the U.S. What an illuminating memo that was.
"How exactly was the poll flawed? Media Matters never said."
It was flawed because it showed that more than a third of Democrats are out of touch with reality. No one is supposed to expose that fact.
No, it was flawed because it only showed that 15% of Republicans (who also said Bush knew about 9/11 in advance) are out of touch with reality. Actual observation would plcae the number much higher than that.
It's flawed because of this question:
"Did Bush know about the 9/11 attacks in advance?"
The question is, as the article states, ambiguous. Does it mean the memo and warnings or a conspiracy theory?
The obvious assumption is that the vast majority of the 35% of the Democrats that said "yes" were referring to the memo. Yet the talking heads used it to call the Dems conspiracy theorists.
And for being "out of touch with reality" you might want to look inwards. You have repeatedly attacked Clinton throughout these comments claiming he failed the US. You simultaneously defend Bush for his lack of action in response to that memo; you go so far as to pretend he did something about it. Yet you ignore that when Clinton went after Al Qaeda Republicans attacked him saying he was "wagging the dog" trying to distract the nation from the Lewinsky scandal. Bush got in the White House and he and the Republicans decided terrorism wasn't a big deal...until 9/11. According to George Tenet Condoleeza Rice totally blew off his dire warnings in regards to a terrorist attack.
LEST WE FORGET, the attack on the COLE happened a MONTH before Bush became President, and response to that attack fell to the incoming president ... once the culprit was found to be Bin Laden (which they reported in December, AFTER the election. Bush was to be the new president.).
Any COLE response would reflect the new Bush Administration's response to terrorist attacks. The outcome? They did NOTHING. Nothing at all.
"LEST WE FORGET, the attack on the COLE happened a MONTH before Bush became President, and response to that attack fell to the incoming president ..."
Wrong. The attack on the Cole occurred THREE months before Bush became president. It took Clinton less than three weeks to retaliate against al Qaeda after our U.S. embassies were bombed in Africa.
"once the culprit was found to be Bin Laden (which they reported in December, AFTER the election. Bush was to be the new president.)."
There was no need to wait for confirmation before striking againist bin Laden. The U.S. had already determined that bin Laden was responsible for the August 1998 attacks on our embassies. Just because Clinton missed him then didn't mean that Clinton could not strike against him again in October 2000. The justification for retaliation was already there.
"Any COLE response would reflect the new Bush Administration's response to terrorist attacks. The outcome? They did NOTHING. Nothing at all."
The attack on the Cole occurred on Clinton's watch. He had more than three months to retaliate. He did nothing. Nothing at all. The reason. If Clinton began firing missiles at Afghanistan, it would have contradicted Gore's "peace and prosperity" message. In other words, Clinton put opolitics above our national security.
The problem is, Kevin, they didn't confirm that the Cole bombing was Bin Laden's responsibility until AFTER Bush was inaugurated. Why didn't HE do anything to retaliate?
"The problem is, Kevin, they didn't confirm that the Cole bombing was Bin Laden's responsibility until AFTER Bush was inaugurated. Why didn't HE do anything to retaliate?"
You're missing the point. We had already confirmed that bin Laden was behind the bombings of our embassies in August 1998. There was no need to confirm his role in the Cole bombing since the justification for retaliating againist bin Laden was already established more than two years before the Cole bombing.
The reason Clinton did not take action after the Cole is because to do so would have contradicted Gore's "peace and prosperity" message.
When did the Clinton administration stop looking for Bin Laden after the Embassy bombings?
Perhaps when they started bombing Iraq in December 1998? Or when they started bombing Kosovo in March 1999?
Are you seriously arguing that a bombing campaign prevents our vast military resources from looking for Bin Laden?
You are such a horse's behind that I feel like I need to get my wife pregnant again, so that just in case you ever find someone to mate with then I can try to keep some advantage to keep the human race moving forward.
Or you could start to donate twice a week at the lesbian fertility clinic, like I do. That way my liberal genes are assured of passing on since I have technically fathered over 50 children.
Just kidding, only 10 kids so far.
If the US only needed to know that Bin Laden was behind previous attacks to prove his guilt in the Cole bombing, why didn't Bush use that same reasoning to deduce that Bin Laden might attack the US itself? You argue that Clinton didn't need proof to go after Bin Laden, but at the same time Bush had no proof that Bin Laden would attack and therefore bears no responsibility for not forseeing 9/11. In other words, you have a double standard regarding Clinton and Bush.
RICE: I do not believe to this day that it would have been a good thing to respond to the Cole, given the kinds of options that we were going to have. ... We really thought that the Cole incident was passed, that you didn't want to respond t*t-for-tat. ...Just responding to another attack in an insufficient way we thought would actually probably embolden the terrorists -- they had been emboldened by everything else that had been done to them -- and that the best course was to look ahead to a more aggressive strategy against them.
See, if Clinton had done anything about it, he probably would have been emboldening the terrorists.
BTW, the web gurus here need to figure out a way to make an exception for "t*t-for-tat". That's not a dirty phrase, people.
Liar.
"The attack on the Cole occurred on Clinton's watch. He had more than three months to retaliate. He did nothing. Nothing at all. The reason. If Clinton began firing missiles at Afghanistan, it would have contradicted Gore's "peace and prosperity" message. In other words, Clinton put opolitics above our national security."
The attack did happen while Clinton was President. The verification happened well after the electiion, and rather than begin something that Bush would have to finish, Clinton politely agreed to defer action so that Bush could handle the issue. Punishment for the bombing didn't have to happen in December. That punishment could have come at any time. Bush did nothing, and had no good reason for doing nothing, in response to the Cole bombing.
If Clinton was wrong to not react in the last weeks of his presidency, why is Bush not 10 times as wrong for not punishing Bin Laden in the first 8 months he was in office? Answer me that, dunce!
If Bush was in office, and he didn't have to honor Gore's supposed "peace and prosperity" goals, why would you suggest that somehow that was a flaw on Clinton's part, but you don't jump down Bush's throat twice as bad, since he had no obligation to honor Gore's plan?
You make no sense!
"You have repeatedly attacked Clinton throughout these comments claiming he failed the US. You simultaneously defend Bush for his lack of action in response to that memo; you go so far as to pretend he did something about it."
Again, the August 6 PDB contained no specific information about an imminent threat. The information concerning possible hijackings was from an uncorroborated report from 1998. If the memo required a response, why was there no response in 1998?
"Yet you ignore that when Clinton went after Al Qaeda Republicans attacked him saying he was "wagging the dog" trying to distract the nation from the Lewinsky scandal."
That's a falsehood. Newt Gingrich in the House, Bob Dole in the Senate, and even George W. Bush in Texas expressed support for Clinton's retaliation against al Qaeda in August 1998. You cannot name one Republican in the leadership who accused Clinton of wagging the dog.
"Bush got in the White House and he and the Republicans decided terrorism wasn't a big deal...until 9/11. According to George Tenet Condoleeza Rice totally blew off his dire warnings in regards to a terrorist attack."
That is also a falsehood. George Tenet had no specific information concerning an imminent attack. And it's Condoleezza.
9-11 report page 118: "some republicans in congress raised questions about the timing of the strikes."
MEFIRST:
Again, you cannot name one Republican in the leadership who accused Clinton of wagging the dog.
The people who made the most accusations about wagging the dog were the Iraqis, who were bombed for four days during Clinton's impeachment (and just four months after al Qaeda bombed our embassies in Africa).
that was not the question. the leadership gave it the proper lip service while some of the members did the wag the dog talk. and as far as "four days" during clinton's impeachment, you're talking about a total process, from when the news broke about lewinsky to the final vote in the senate, of well over a year. there was no event that removed it from the news for long.
Do you mean to say that over 1/2 of the Republicans are out of touch with reality because they believe Saddam helpled plan 9/11? Is that what you are talking about, Mr. Moonbat?
Or that over 1/2 of Republicans are so out of touch with reality that they believe Saddam had WMDs?
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=508
"What an illuminating memo that was."
Yea... and look how wrong it was, too.
Bush had a guy looking out for Al-Queda helicopters for quite some time.. He just got tricked, that's all
Pretty rich of Republics to accuse anyone of being paranoid. But, whatever. All that matters is that the republic party is imploding, their "war" is lost, Bush is ruined, and there is a lot of cleaning up to do.
Now all the dems have to do is come up with something that could be considered an actual plan of action.. I've said it before.. If Hillary or whoever stepped into office tommorrow, there would not be a mass exit out of Iran.. Regardless of your thoughts on oil and Bush, there is too much at stake in the region to walk away.. The dems would start to worry about public opinion and think twice..
"their "war" is lost"
Harry Reid? Is that you?
Do you know Reid's full statement, or are you using the Publican tactic of cherry-picking to pull quotes out of your nether regions yet again?
"Wow! What a specific memo. I never would've guessed that Osama Bin Laden wanted to attack the U.S. What an illuminating memo that was." - RINO Hunter
I agree with this sissie. Bush just got out-played by Bin Laden
"Wow! What a specific memo. I never would've guessed that Osama Bin Laden wanted to attack the U.S. What an illuminating memo that was." - RINO Hunter
I agree with this 'wino" sissie. There was no conspiracy. Bush was just out-played by Bin Laden. The more skilled player justs walked right on up-n-over Bush, and continues to do so to this very day. Bush is just not up to the task of out-thinking or out-strategerising Bin Laden. He is simply no match for the dude. It's no crime to be dumb as a hat-full of assholes.
And yet, where brighter men would be humiliated into a foetal ball by being constantly pwned by the lanky dialysed cave-dweller, Bush just up and dusts himself off, only to get America's national ass publicly handed to him by Bin Laden again and again, and again, every damned day. Remarkable, when you think about it.
So you couldn't think of what you wanted to say the first time, and it took you eight full minutes to complete your thought? Wow, and you're saying that Bush has an intelligence problem.
Wow, it took you 7 full minutes to come up with that response.
What, were you in the middle of "my pet goat"?
How about Somalia in 1993, the Khobar Towers in 1996, the U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, anf the USS Cole in 2000? Who got outplayed then?
"Who got outplayed then?"
America... same as now.
Dang, I thought that post had disappeared. Like the WMDs, Bin Laden, American influence and credibility, habeus corpus and republic values.
But, it turns out that it was still there. Like Bin Laden, and 6,000 American graves.
Thank your boy Billy for that... indecisiveness run deep... deeper than your usual blather about the current situation..
We are not being told the truth regarding the evidence of 9/11...
I have been researching 9/11 for over four years and there are serious unanswered questions from that day. Although, most in the mainstream media and lots of others call anyone that questions the official story a nut job, crazy or unpatriotic I appreciate that you would involve yourself in this delicate subject. People are attacked for proposing alternative theories without discussing the subject matter of what the person is proposing. see ad hominem logical arguement. There are many important unanswered questions from 9/11, I will propose 5. I hope you investigate these for yourself. 1) Never in the history of steel structures has a building collapsed from fire yet 3 did on 9/11; WTC tower 1,2 & 7. all three buildings came down at free fall speed with no resistance, tower 7 was never hit by an airplane yet came down symetrically in seven seconds? Additionally odd, tower 2 fell before tower 1 although tower 1 was hit first and tower 2 was hit with a glancing blow. The explosion/ collapse in tower 2 started above where the plane hit the tower?
2) There is no large plane wreckage in front of the Pentagon from the 757 that hit it. Taking from the official story, the 757 that hit the pentagon flew over a highway, parallel and 15 to 20 feet above the ground and impacted the pentagon between the 1st and 2nd floor. (official story) The airplane did not leave any markings or large debris (ex wings) on the front of the pentagon. the 757 suppossedly was sucked into a 16ft by 24ft hole, before the ceiling collapsed a 1/2 hour later, and incinerated. how did this plane hit only 15 ft above the ground after descending so rapidly without ever hitting the ground and flown by an amateur pilot? The 3 slides the pentagon released to the public shows a small shaped device flying horizontally, very low to the ground and leaving a small smoke trail.
3. All four hijacked planes flew for an average of 40 minutes, 1 hour 50 minutes total, without any fighter jet intercept over NY and Washington. As you are aware, NY and Washington are some of the most protected airspace in the world. 4. Where is the plane wreckage from the plane crash in Shanksville, PA? in pictures and video all you see is a small ditch with no fires, plane debris, seats, bodies, etc.? 5. How was the Patriot Act and the War on Terror so quickly developed after 9/11? Was this new program a reaction to 9/11 or something that was worked on before September 11th and just conveniently ready for a terrorist attack? 9/11 was an inside job, a false flag operation. Sadly, the sophistication of this operation points more towards state sponsored terrorism than a small group of bandits inside a cave. fight on in peace. I hope you decide to investigate the truth of 9/11 for yourself. PS For a summary and the best documentary of 9/11 I recommend watching Loose Change 2. You can watch it for free here- [link to video.google.com] face="Courier New">http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7866929448192753501&q=loose+change+2&hl=en or visit www.wtc7.net or www.st911.org and start your own research... Lastly, alot of the public does not know that Rosie O'Donnell and Charlie Sheen are not the only ones questionning the official story of 9/11. Hundreds of scholars, public representatives, high ranking officials and survivors are questionning it as well. please see www.patriotsquestion911.com for more on this.
||Sorry, you lose.
Now that's what I came to see.. Good job Shawn..
shawncooper87263
Sigh. Yes, there are examples of steel structures being compromised by fire. Within the past 3-4 mongths an overpass "melted" in Ca after a tanker truck fire. Chicago's Mccormack Place is another example. Further research will turn up additional examples.
The buildijngs did not fall at "free-fall" speed or a speed faster than freefall. Research that more thoroughly.
Plenty of wreckage was found in the PA field and the bodies of all passengers were forensically identified. Your assertions are, again, patently false. As to the Pentagon there are some questions that remain about that crash but if it wasn't the missing "757" that hit the Pentagon where is that plane and where are the passengers? I suppose Bush had em killed or "relocated?"
Citing "loose Change" as a reputable source does little to add to your post's credibility. A couple of kids made that movie. They have no applicable degrees. No scientific experience and their content is edited placing numerous quotes out of context or in a state of incompleteness. There are NO reputable scientists, not a single one that supports the assertions made in loose change. now why is that?
I would just like to know if Jonah Goldberg thinks conservatives are out of their gourds because a significant numbe of them believe the Clintons killed Vince Foster.
Sorry. I didn't know bu*****t was profanity. The current Administration seems to feed on it.
Well I'll be donkey dipped! Democrats are all crazy, Repubicans are all sane, and Bill O'reilly is the wise man who knows that Soros is behind all of this.
I feel much better now. Yeah, right!
Dig it: Bush is absolutely and completely responsible for the 3,000+ Americans who died in his unnecessary illegal and immoral war in Iraq. He is also repsonsible for the 3,000 or so who died on 9/11/01 because his Adminstration chose to ignore the advice and evidence they received about the possibility of the attacks. So that makes him responsible for the deaths of 6,000+ Americans, for the maiming 20,000+ Americans, and for allowing the poisoned post-9/11 air in NYC to incapacitate hundreds, possibly thousands of other Americans
I'm sure this pathetic little nutbag is proud of his record. While Governor of Texas he was able to kill more than a couple hundred Americans. The executions he permitted always gave him reason to smile and joke and mock the condemned. But he wanted more -- and, by golly gumtree, he got the opportunityit -- and did not waste it -- when the Lord made him president.
I wonder if he gets a bigger rush contemplating the Americans whose deaths he facilitated, or the Iraqis whose deaths he also facilitated?
What about this poll which shows, in 2004, that a majority (52%) of those who preferred Bush felt that "Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the highjackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001."
40% of Bush supporters thought "several of the highjackers were Iraqis."
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=508
It's my understanding that a) Bush was warned that Bin Ladin was "determined" to attack the U.S. b) Bush did absolutely nothing to prevent the attacks, and c) Americans died in the streets.
So... which one of those beliefs makes me insane?
"It's my understanding that a) Bush was warned that Bin Ladin was "determined" to attack the U.S. b) Bush did absolutely nothing to prevent the attacks, and c) Americans died in the streets."
Your understanding is incorrect. The August 6 PDB (your a.) contained no information about an imminent attack on U.S. Given that there was no specific information, tell us what you would have done if you were president after reading that PDB.
How about showing any signs of interest in responding to the matter at all? Seems a bit silly to argue that because they didn't have a pile of specific details that they should just sit there and make no efforts.
Given that there was no specific information, tell us what you would have done if you were president after reading that PDB.
Start looking for some specific information. I guess that's too much to ask for in a month.
Can we also note that Kevin simultaneously argues that A)Clinton should have launched a military operation against Bin Laden immediately after the Cole bombing, even though we didn't know he was responsible, because he was responsible for bombings that took place two years earlier, and B)Bush didn't have any specific details about Bin Laden's plans, so it's understandable that he didn't take any action. I mean, what was he supposed to do?
But he did know that Bin Laden was planning something, and soon. Clinton should have felt free to launch an operation based on the idea that even if Bin Laden wasn't responsible, it would be fine because of the Embassy bombings. By the same standard, since Bush knew Bin Laden was plotting something, he could have done something based on the Embassy bombings and the Cole bombing. This is especially true considering that the damage had already been done on the Cole, while Bush was in a position to take preventive measures, a much more urgent situation.
By Kevin's logic, whatever Clinton was supposed to do after the Cole should have been done by Bush after getting the 8/6 PDB. Or really, as soon as it was determined that Bin Laden was responsible for the Cole.
I certainly wouldn't have said "Okay, now you've covered your ass."
"Did Bush know about the 9/11 attacks in advance?"
I would never have asked the question like that... how the heck could any American Person (I take it the 800 who were asked this question were Americans) say that they KNOW George W. Bush knew of the attacks of September 11, 2001 in advance?
Shouldn't the poll question have been:
"Do you BELIEVE George W. Bush knew about the attacks of September 11, 2001 in advance?"
When asked the question as Rasmussen asked it, if a respondent says "yes, Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance", then the follow-up question of "how do you KNOW that?" becomes unanswerable, even embarrassing, as the respondent struggles to find the words to explain how they KNOW Bush knew of those attacks in advance.
On the other hand, had the poll question been about what the respondent BELIEVES, and the respondent said "yes, I believe George W. Bush knew about the attacks of September 11, 2001 in advance...
...then the respondent can answer the follow-up question of "why do you believe that?"
"Why do you believe that George W. Bush knew about the attacks of September 11, 2001 in advance?"
"I don’t… I can't honestly say I believe Bush 'knew' of the 9/11 attacks in advance... I don't have any information to support such a belief, and maybe nothing even exists that could ever support that belief... because there's no real reason I can think of to suggest the president knew in advance of the attacks of 9/11...
...but I believe there may be some number of persons in his administration that knew in advance those attacks would occur, if not on September 11, then some time around then, and if not the exact nature and location of those attacks, then generally that they would involve hi-jacked commercial airliners, and New York City."
"Why do you believe that?"
"Well, because the Investigation conducted by the Congress, by a Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, concluded in their Report that the hi-jackers received financial support from the saudi 'royal family', in addition to their having been assisted in this country by a representative of something called the "saudi Civil Aviation Authority" (since disbanded), and it's that same CAA under which atta and his pal made their reasons for taking jumbo jet flying lessons at Huffman Aviation...
...and when I consider how close, both personally and professionally, that saudi 'royal family' is to the president (and again, I note here, the JCI's Report having that 'royal family' complicit in the attacks of 9/11), and how not only are the president's private financial interests of oil and arms the same interests of his "good friends" the 'royal family', but that his political fortunes are tied to their's also, in this country...
...and when I further consider how those attacks that day solidified the president's power and authority (in a way unequaled in my memory), and guaranteed near unlimited defense spending (again unequaled in my memory) and also a second term...
Well, that just made the whole thing seem suspicious is all, that the president's "good friends" and business partners would commit these attacks, that then gained so much power and authority and defense spending and a second term, for their "good friend" and business partner, George W. Bush...
But you know what it was that truly made me believe that perhaps someone in the administration, if not the president himself, was complicit in the attacks of September 11, 2001?"
"What?"
"When George W. Bush suppressed the Findings of the Joint Congressional Inquiry's Report on the Attacks of September 11, 2001, that's what.
I mean, I can't figure out why he did that, why he covered up for his "good friends" and business partners, by hiding their complicity in those attacks, from the American People...
...his suppression of that Report's Findings, the entire 28 page Conclusion of that Report SUPPRESSED by George W. Bush...
Well, that has appearance enough to me, of complicity right there, after the fact... that covering up for the financiers and directors of the attacks of 9/11, the saudi 'royal family'... George W. Bush's "good friends" and business partners...
That's why I believe what I believe."
First of all, the failure of the US military to intercept any of the hijacked planes is telling, but not conclusive.
The main red flag about the collapse of the 3 WTC buildings is the near-freefall rate of acceleration, suggesting the buildings were in pieces *before* they began to fall. This is not consistent with steel, because of the (sub-melting point) heat, no longer able to take the weight of the buildings. Heating is not likely to cause sudden, catastrophic failure of an entire steel structure. If anything, exposure to heat makes it more likely to bend before breaking.
If the top floors fell onto the lower floors, causing them to fall to lower floors, etc., as was originally proposed by NIST, you wouldn't see anything near freefall acceleration.
"First of all, the failure of the US military to intercept any of the hijacked planes is telling, but not conclusive.
The main red flag about the collapse of the 3 WTC buildings is the near-freefall rate of acceleration, suggesting the buildings were in pieces *before* they began to fall. This is not consistent with steel, because of the (sub-melting point) heat, no longer able to take the weight of the buildings. Heating is not likely to cause sudden, catastrophic failure of an entire steel structure. If anything, exposure to heat makes it more likely to bend before breaking.
If the top floors fell onto the lower floors, causing them to fall to lower floors, etc., as was originally proposed by NIST, you wouldn't see anything near freefall acceleration. "
Nonsense, nonsense and more nonsense.
The military didn't know about any individual plane in time to intercept any one of them. There's nothing sinister about that.
The collapse didn't happen in free-fall time. The conspiracy theorists understate the time it took the building to collapse, but they did collapse fairly quickly, but when tons of upper floors are falling onto lower floors, it doesn't take too long to collapse those floors. There is nothing in the speed of the collapse that says that they had to be already disabled floors before they were hit by those heavy upper floors.
The floors where the impact happened did have weakened steel from heat. The lower floors didn't have weakened steel. They were hit by heavy upper floors!
If you have heavy upper floors hitting lower floors, you are, in fact, going to see a collapse that takes close to free-fall speed. The fact that you don't grasp that means that you believe in nonsense.
They would not break instantaneously, though. Just because the top of the building is "like awesomely heavy" doesn't it mean can set an equally heavy section below it in motion instantaneously---unless the collision were elastic (like marbles). But, it would have been far, far from elastic--or else there would have been large sections of the buildings intact.
The best common-sense, mathematically rigorous calculation for the best-case collapse time (about 45 seconds) is by former engineering professor Judy Wood (who, unfortunately, also believes mini-nukes or rays caused the collapses, but her calculations are good).
BTW don't just assume I don't grasp things and assert "it would too" collapse at near freefall speed. I do.
Someone up there quoted Newton's third law (action-reaction) spuriously. It's really the second that is telling: F=ma. If a is nearly g (acceleration due to gravity) then F is the force of gravity, almost unopposed, by parts being attached to other parts that are attached to the ground.
you had many floors hitting each individual floor with a tremendous weight. it would not take much time to collapse each individual floor. if it was not the planes by themselves, what was it?
First of all, the "tremendous weight" is irrelevent. Things scale. A bigger building has more weight, but more mass to accelerate and, presumeably, more structural support to hold it in static equilibrium.
If the top floor hits the next floor, which hits the next floor down, etc. the whole thing could fall at close to g (32ft/sec/sec) if the collisions were elastic, that is, mechanical energy is conserved. If the masses were roughly equal, all the energy from one floor would be transferred to the next, the original floor would come back to rest, and then start falling again. It would be just as if you had a stack of marbles closely spaced and lightly constrained--in a loose-fitting tube, say. Drop a marble on top and the wave of marble fallings proceeds at roughly g. Only problem is the floors were not lightly constrained, they were attached to all the steel columns. Mechanical energy is not conserved because it consumes energy to break loose from all those columns, sever all those columns into pieces no longer than 30 feet, and pulverize all that concrete. If the energy it took to do that was so insignificant compared to the gravitational potential energy available that it only slowed it down by 2 seconds (9 seconds freefall versus 11 that it took) the building would never have stood in static equilibrium all those years in the first place.
Much is made of the theory that steel loses half its tensile strenght at a temperature attainable in the fires. Half? If all it took is a50% reduction to cause catastrophic failure that is not very impressive engineering. But of course, I believe the buildings were competently designed and that it wasn't the heat that caused the collapses.
One thing that happens to steel when it is exposed to high temperatures for any length of time is it anneals--becomes ductile. Therefore, it's even less likely to sever, more likely to bend, when a load is put on it. That's what happened to that bridge: collapse, yes, but not breakage into many, many pieces.
When a moving object hits another object one or the other or both may break if stopping the motion does enough work to deform the objects past their breaking points. That work can be a large force over a small deformation, or a relatively small force over a larger deformation. Steel deforms quite a bit before it breaks--more so after it has been heated. So why did we not see large sections of bent columns instead of many relatively small sections?
Most scientists and engineers work for universities or large corporations. Many are reluctant to go public with statements about what are still regarded as crackpot theories, as evidenced by the response they have gotten here. Stephen Jones lost his job at BYU, Judy Wood at Clemsen. Wood, unfortunately, does espouse some crackpot theories.
What I liked about her refutation about the "pancake collapse" theory (which I understand NIST has retracted) is that she makes perfectly clear what her assumptions are and backs up her conclusions with math that anyone with an understanding of basic mechanics can follow. She does not obfuscate, or dismiss anyone elses conclusions without explaining the reasons why.
so the buildings were fitted with explosives and blown up on 9-11?
I tend to dismiss this part of the theory, personally, not because it suggests a conspiracy or a horrible act by our government, but because it's not necessary.
I wondered about if the administration wanted to use this as an excuse to invade Iraq, if they could have prevented it and still used it. The answer is "no". There's no imagery connected with it, nothing tangible to manipulate people's emotions with. The image of the hit buildings is good enough. Nobody even has to die, except for those on the airplanes of course. They could have claimed a "tip" shortly beforehand and evacuated the buildings.
They didn't need the buildings to fall to acheive the PNAC goals. It would make it more effective, obviously, but they could push for what they wanted without it. That's what leads me to believe that it was negligence/cockiness ("bring it on!"), not conspiracy. Maybe some in the administration did let this happen, knowing that the death toll could easily be over 10,000, but then they're bigger monsters than I could ever imagine.
i just do not think bush knew exactly what would happen on 9-11. but i still blame him for creating an atmosphere that led to it. i think it could have been easily stopped if the info about the flight schools came to the top.
Why are Judy Wood's calculations "good"? And if they are so good, surely these calculations must enjoy widespread support from fellow academics, structural/mechanical engineers and pysicists.
But they do not! Again, not one reputable expert agrees with any of the contentions of the conspiracy theories or of the 911truth movement of which Judy Wood was a key member.
One is a "delusional conspiracy theorist" to suspect that Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance? That seems completely backwards to me. I would argue that the delusional conspiracy theorists are those who swallow the government's conspiracy theory, i.e., that 19 hijackers completely bypassed security, crashed four commercial airliners with no interruption from the military in the most guarded airspace in the world.
Oh, but those are just the insane rants of a paranoid American liberal.....
Side note:
http://www.smartup.tv/video/7889--ron-paul-attacked-by-sean-hannity-after-2nd-gop-debate.html
Looks like we have yet to break in the new cons floating around this board. I'm sorry I missed all the action. It seems they suffer from the usual symptoms of Bush disease. That is the inability to comprehend the failures of an absolute ass. They blame Clinton all day long and give Bush and the rest of the neo-con traitors a complete pass while displaying an absolute ignorance of history and an uncontrollable desire to blame liberals for everything.Rino and the rest with their pseudo facts have no response but "you're lying" when given actual proof of a claim. Forget an actual discourse from these interlopers, all we get is GOP talking points. Oh well, you can't make people think let alone sift through BS from Rush Limbaugh and actual facts.
Bill is opposed to conspiracy theories now? I mean everyone knows that 9/11 was done by George Soros in cooperation with Media Matters and the ACLU...
I think it only wise to be skeptical of the official explanation when the event has been used to such political gain. I hear rightist claim that Bush gained nothing from 911. Yet it is the skeptics that are called crazy!!! The single most problematic aspect to me is the failure to even have an anti-aircraft battery on alert and firing to defend the pentagon and capital. Do you all think that there are none around Washington and the Pentagon? Do you all think that it should take high military command that long to think of such a simple and standard defensive measure? I see this as evidence of complicit intent but if not, it is evidence of the most incompetent moment in military history of the US. It seems like it must be one or the other : complicity or military incompetence. The right sees neither and yet it is the skeptics who supposedly are in denial. Anyone study the history of carrier battles and tactics? I have and the right accuses me of being wacko because I do not accept as gospel that this is normal.
Upon reading most of the posts in here, I have come to the conclusion that there is absolutely no reason why O'Reilly should be targeted here since it is obvious that the lefties believe that Bush is responsible for 9/11. Given that, what they are being accused of is true. I guess the complaint is that they realize that the general public does not look too kindly on far-out conspiracy theories (as I have been accused of the same far-out thinking in here before).
It amazes me, though, how someone who can be touted as being so dumb and ignorant can also be so unscrupulously clever as to pull off a scheme like that and get away with it! The man must be a genius!
I still have yet to be shown the proof where the majority of the American public disagrees with what we are doing in Iraq. I keep hearing this but the lack of evidence tells another story.....
Here's what it says on the website:
Survey of 800 Likely VotersApril 30-May 1, 2007
There is no indication that this poll is scientific.
This survey is "likely" meaningless.
How about this one:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/20/poll/
or this one:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0901/dailyUpdate.html
or this one: http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
The last one is the best....
Doug, you can't be serious. Public support for this war has waned. It's about 60-4- against I believe. What that has to do with the topic of this thread though is a mystery.
To Doughpro: Do not mis-state the skeptical position. I complain that the evidence is such that a reasonable theory considers the possibility of complicity by someone with real authority. We should be very vigilant about the real possibility of people in power being behind events when 1) they benefit from the events and 2) their own failures contributed to the event. I do not know that anyone--Bush Cheney --or who ever was complicit. But on the other side there is an a priori rejection of the possibility by the Faithful. I hear ridiculous arguments from the Faithful that , for example, Bush/rightwing did not benefit from 911 while hearing in every election cycle how 911 compels us to vote republican and how 911 compels us to allow the end of 4th Amendment protections and Habeus Corpus, and how 911 compels us to cut taxes and as cause for every platform the right has wanted for years. When one discusses 911 the eyes of the Faithful glaze over and their ears hear nothing. Most skeptics I know listen and address the arguments of the other side. One can argue about intercepts by fighters(ever hear of a Defensive Air cap?) and such but the most rudimentary understanding of Air tactics would have resulted in anti-aircraft batteries being on alert to protect the space over our vital command centers after the second strike in N.Y. To suggest otherwise insults our intelligence.
Yes That is What It Means Limbaugh (Correction Made)
The meaning of the poll may not reflect what Russ Limbaugh claims. However, it does mean we are not lock step, in a straight line, willing to believe everything presented to us. Limbaugh's rant exposes another effort to misinform the general public with polls. Rasmussen results of his poll">[link to www.rasmussenreports.com] question speaks to what I think is a consorted effort to create very false fact looking realities. Gallup would also be what I call a "Talking Points poll."
The 10% Tack On
Rasmussen and Gallup has histories of high end numbers that range between 5% and 10% higher in favor of Republican candidates or Republican issues. Gallup/CNN was especially guilty of this during the 2004 presidential election. There was a very interested turn in their polling numbers the day before the actual election. Gallup/CNN released a poll that reflected a very close race 51/49 in favor of Bush.
Absurdness Defense
Since when should me, a Democrat, be holding to Limbaugh's absurdnesses? I could care less how absurd this man is. If that is his best defense for countering the believe the president had something to do with 911, George better pull his card quickly.
Lost Confidence
Less then half of Washington, United States, and the world have confidence in the information Bush cooked up to go to war. The bottom line is over half million people have lost their lives to this war. If he is responsible for the deaths of the noted, is it that much of an absurdness to think he constructed the event that lead to war?
I tell you this: we cannot say what the truth is because of the lack of oversight present in this administration. To add to that, this administration will not release any information of a telling nature. In other words, we will have to wait until the Republicans out of office before we get to the truth.
Joseph