Sunday, September 17, 2006

the “official conspiracy theory" of 9/11

* Frank rich (unleashed):
" RARELY has a television network presented a more perfectly matched double feature. President Bush’s 9/11 address on Monday night interrupted ABC’s “Path to 9/11” so seamlessly that a single network disclaimer served them both: “For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression.”
[]
The untruths are flying so fast that untangling them can be a full-time job. Maybe that’s why I am beginning to find Dick Cheney almost refreshing. As we saw on “Meet the Press” last Sunday, these days he helpfully signals when he’s about to lie. One dead giveaway is the word context, as in “the context in which I made that statement last year.” The vice president invoked “context” to try to explain away both his bogus predictions: that Americans would be greeted as liberators in Iraq and that the insurgency (some 15 months ago) was in its “last throes.”

The other instant tip-off to a Cheney lie is any variation on the phrase “I haven’t read the story.” He told Tim Russert he hadn’t read The Washington Post’s front-page report that the bin Laden trail had gone “stone cold” or the new Senate Intelligence Committee report(PDF) contradicting the White House’s prewar hype about nonexistent links between Al Qaeda and Saddam. Nor had he read a Times front-page article about his declining clout. Or the finding by Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency just before the war that there was “no evidence of resumed nuclear activities” in Iraq. “I haven’t looked at it; I’d have to go back and look at it again,” he said, however nonsensically. "
* jpost:
"US to spoil Arab plan for peace meeting: The US is trying to block attempts by Arab countries to turn the UN Security Council into a key player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the upcoming General Assembly opening next week.

In discussions among Israeli and US officials over the past few days, it was agreed that the US will use its diplomatic power to sideline the Arab League initiative, which intends to use the Security Council as the main vehicle for convening an international peace conference to deal with the conflict."

* jpost:
"(Condi) Rice said. "It goes without saying that it's hard to have a process for peace if you do not renounce violence.""
ironing is dead.

* winterpatriot:
"I don't know whether you've noticed, but I have: billions and billions of op/ed pieces coming out every day lately, purportedly "debunking" the so-called "conspiracy theorists" on the subject of 9/11. A glutton for punishment, I read as many of them as I can get my grubby little hands on.

One thing they do — one thing they all do — is fasten onto one or a few of the least plausible suggestions ever advanced by anyone who didn't believe the official story of 9/11, shred them (yes, very easy to do!) and then act as if such shredding nullifies every question raised by every person who does not believe the “official conspiracy theory" of 9/11."

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's a couple of interesting articles quoted at length in the comments at WUFYS, which I've reposted in my blog. One is about two Israelis captured carrying explosives into Mexico's Congress a month after 9/11. The other is about an Israeli diplomat allegedly caught carrying explosives in Argentina on 9 Aug this year. The common theme: false flag terrorism exercises by Israel. Draw your own conclusions.

Anonymous said...

D - don't tell me you are Anti-The-Lobby!!!

lukery

Anonymous said...

L - not at all. With my fucked up, generally incompetent handle on everything I need all the help I can get. Michael Ledeen helps me join the dots.

lukery said...

Ledeen makes me dizzy

lukery said...

if only we had a kook free world...

Anonymous said...

"And whose fault is that?!"

Respectfully, I have to disagree with you on this one Scott. There is a social - and in many ways, legal - contract in place between the people and those who govern. There are several aspects to this:

The explanation of the collapse of the buildings on 9/11, for example, occurs in a political setting where, in western democracies at least, there has always been an implied contract between governments and their people that in the official assesment of natural disasters, national tragedies or crime scenes these should be (1) conducted independantly, (2) follow best scientific practices, (3) provide an adequate account for the evidence involved and, (4) wherever possible, provide the public with the means to independantly satisfy themselves not only as to the conclusions obtained but that the features (1) (2) (3) have all occurred. It's what we call accountable government. In a democracy it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that these aspects are fulfilled and it is the absolute right of the public to reject any explanations that it believes do not meet these standards. Clearly, individuals will make different judgement on this. It is a noteworthy social phenomenon in regard to the 911 building failures that while there are critics of the official story who can be denounced as crackpots, there is an entire global scientific community that has either made no comment about the issue or who have appeared to have uncritically accepted features of the official explanation that are in serious conflict with the principles (1) - (4).

Here's an example: the official NIST report on the twin tower collapes was based on a computer simulation where quite severe input values had to be used in order to obtain an outcome where one or more floors started to collapse (their preferred hypothesis). NIST then stopped analysing what happened to the buildings after that. They did not examine the full collapse sequence.

From their final report: "The focus of the Investigation was on the sequence of events from the instant of aircraft impact to the initiation of collapse for each tower. For brevity in this report, this sequence is referred to as the "probable collapse sequence," although it does not actually include the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached..." (NIST, 2005, p. 80, fn. 12;)

The does not seem adequate, for a supposedly comprehensive scientific investigation, and yet it has not been condemned by the scientific community at large. I mention this to argue the case that 9/11 not only evidences security and building failures but also large-scale social disfunction whereby the agencies and social mechanisms we rely on may have gone 'missing in action' for various reasons. This includes the media. It's not necessary to posit grand conspiracy theories here.

I take the view that it is the government that is failing the people and not the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. What scope would such theorists have if the government had released all the videos of the Pentagon? Or made the WTC building plans available? Or actually published a meaningful assesment of the collapse of WTC7? Or invited reputable scientific bodies to independantly review the NIST findings and share with them all the evidence?

I accept that 9/11 has brought out every looney tunes under the sun (I'm still toying with the idea that the Israeli lizards were operating the hologram machines.) But these people are entitled to their views. And there are many good questions about this government that would never have seen the light of day, if it wasn't for their questioning. However it's sliced and diced, the Bush administration has failed to meet the principles (1)-(4) I mentioned earlier. I am a lot more contemptuous of a bunch of Nazi criminals who have stolen the US government than sincere amateurs struggling to put together the pieces of 9/11. If you can't wear a funny tin hat in a democracy, then where the hell can you?

Track said...

I recently read the book Wake-Up Call, The Political Education of a 9/11 Widow by Kristen Breitweiser. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand why the 9/11 Commission report deserves to be distrusted.

Breitweiser describes an informal meeting at Starbucks with Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission. She was quizzing Zelikow on his glaring conflicts of interest when he spazzed out:

"That's right Kristen. Everything is connected. The hip bone is connected to the thigh bone is connected to the knee bone is connected to the ankle bone. It is all connected!" He stormed out of Starbucks. (pg. 148)

lukery said...

thnx Noise, D. f/p'd.