Monday, June 21, 2004

ahh - ok - the joke is: 'so three dyslexics walk into a bra...'

the punchlines:
if u are johnq, you are kinda grumpy becos if everything fell into place, the whole 911 thing could have been stopped - to quote maxwell smart, "we were *this* close". but u understand that 'we couldnt have imagined' so we can kinda forgive the white people for not being able to save us all - however if we triple the security budget and give ashcroft the ability to round up muslims before they become terrorists, and if we all take our shoes off at the airport, and we build StarWars, then we might prevent the next "inevitable" attack, "in the next few months". unfortunately, we need to be right all the time, and the trrirsts only need to be successful once.
"The details of what happened on the morning of Sept. 11 are complex. But the details play out a simple theme. Norad and the F.A.A. were unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. They struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improvise a homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge they had never encountered and had never trained to meet."

if you are conspiracy inclined, your only real concern is when/whether they will all hang together, or hang separately.

some (mostly unrelated) points:
1. "In a series of interrogations in secret locations with United States officials, two of the plot masterminds, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, have provided the most detailed account yet of the origins of the Sept. 11 attacks and the challenges faced by the group's top lieutenants."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/politics/17intel.html
ie most of the info has come from 2 people who they presumably have in custardy, and are presumably torturing. somewhere. without lawyers or videotapes. if one draws a short line between say, the padilla case, we know how much rubbish we can end up with.

2. "The date of the attacks was not settled until mid-August, the report says, and even in the final days, Mr. Atta and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, another top Qaeda lieutenant, had not decided whether the fourth plane, the one piloted by Mr. Jarrah, should aim at the Capitol or the White House."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/politics/17plot.html
yada yada

3. "The president had been told minutes earlier about the first crash, but Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, who was on the (goat-reading) trip, said initially that the plane that crashed was a twin-engine aircraft. When the second plane hit, however, White House aides said they knew it was no accident."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/18/politics/18minutes.html?pagewanted=all&position=

vs

"Bush and Cheney told the commission that they remember the phone call; the president said it reminded him of his time as a fighter pilot. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who had joined Cheney, told the commission that she heard the vice president discuss the rules of engagement for fighter jets over Washington with Bush." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50745-2004Jun17?language=printer

i mentioned this in passing yesterday - somehow rice got from the goatbook in texas to cheneys bunker by 10am-ish - early enough to overhear cheneys end of the 'shoot-down' confirmation. curiously no-one else in the bunker can remember the phcall. if this is a lie, it would be nice to know why its so important to them... hmmm. notice how they slip in the innocuous 'rice, who had joined cheney' without any timing detail or anything, which is kinda odd given that we are talking about timelines at the minute detail-level. hmm.

4. "The vice president states that the purpose of his call to the president was to discuss the rules of engagement for the combat air patrol (CAP). He recalled he felt it did not do any good to put the CAP up there unless the pilots had instructions to tell them whether they were authorized to shoot if the plane would not divert. He said the president signed off on that concept. The president said he remembered such a conversation, and that it reminded him of when he had been a fighter pilot. The president emphasized to us that he had authorized the shoot-down of hijacked aircraft." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/18/politics/18ptext.html?pagewanted=all&position=
lol - priceless 43. but more importantly, it sounds as though this phonecall didnt happen (i think its the one that rice overheard from cheneys (rear) end), and itd be nice to know why they see it as so important. partly to make 43 look in charge, but praps more than that...

5. "Rice, who entered the conference room shortly after the vice president and sat next to him, recalled hearing the vice president inform the president that, "Sir, the CAP's are up. Sir, they're going to want to know what to do." Then she recalled hearing him say, "Yes sir.""
how the fuck does condi get from texas to the bunker before 10am?

6. meanwhile, rumsfeld's immediate response is to run outside and help people for 30 mins or so, on camera. nice work, general. how bout getting on the fucking phone?

7. "Conspicuously absent for the crucial first 40 minutes of the call was a representative from the Federal Aviation Administration, which controls all civilian air traffic. The official who ultimately joined the call at 10:17 had no familiarity with hijackings, no access to senior agency decision makers, and none of the information available to senior F.A.A. officials by that time, the report said."
it looks like the faa is getting hung out.

8. the other 'finding' of interest is that there was no (institutional) saudi funding of alq
"The staff of the Sept. 11 commission has put forward what amounts to a major revision of a widely held perception in Washington that top Saudi officials gave money to Al Qaeda.
The new account, based on 19 months of staff work, asserts flatly that there is "no evidence" that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials financed the group"
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/19/politics/19QAED.html?pagewanted=all&position=
(the journo jehl is a neocreep)
"At a minimum, the emphatic tone of the staff report and the extent of work on which it was apparently based pose a major challenge to the view that Saudi Arabia and its royal family somehow financed the Sept. 11 attacks."
(ftr, i dont remember jehl highlighting the emphatic tone or the extent of work wrt the 'no iraq/alq' finding)

9. the whitehouse noise about alq/iraq seems like a fauxfite/redherring.

in summary, i dont think we are gonna see mainstream 'whitewash' claims when the final report comes out like we saw with all the uk papers screaming WHITEWASH when the hutton report came out. the incremental release strategy seems to be more successful than a big surprise at the end of the process.



On Sun, 20 Jun 2004 23:42:13 -0400, Michael wrote:

>
> Ummm, I mean, what did I learn from the hearing? As John Q. Public, what do
> I think now? As a conspiracy theorist, what do I think now?
>
> I kinda feel like someone might have told a joke, so I'm laughing to be
> polite, but don't really know if I got it ...
>
> I guess I'm asking you to retell the joke, slowly.
>
>
> On 6/20/04 5:08 PM, "luke@lukeryland.com" wrote:
>
> > hmm - not sure at which level to answer your question...
> >
> > do u mean 'why have the hearings?' or do u mean 'why the
> > questions/inconsistencies?' or something else?
> >
> > a) 'why have the hearings?' - cos they have to, cos it was the biggest
> > criminal
> > act ever, altho theyve done everything they can to stop/limit it.
> >
> > b) 'why the questions/inconsistencies?' - cos the official story isnt true -
> > it
> > was an inside job. ftr - the entire 911 plot as unravelled by 911comm has
> > virtually all come from the *transcripts* of interviews of 2 people, neither
> > of
> > whom the commission has interviewed.
> >
> > c) did i miss your point?
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, 20 Jun 2004 14:01:13 -0400, Michael wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> So, what is your conclusion about the "why" of the 9/11 hearing?
> >>
> >> What should I take away from the strange process?
> >>
> >>
> >
> > ________________________________
> > christian converts rule!
> > wotisitgood4.blogspot.com

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