What a timely subject. Two days from another anniversary of 9/11

Can the guests spend at least 1% of the time and energy about the Motive/Cause of why we are in Afghanistan.

One word: Osama? or Two Word: No Clue?

The problem is that we just don’t know what happened on 9/11. We don’t know who did what? How can we be so involved and force ourselves into moral, humaniterian and financial disaster before we take a good and unbiased look at the events of 9/11. Look at what somebody has posted yesterday about Van Jones – the latest victim for asking “transparency” from the government:

These are the questions that contained in the 9/11 Truth Statement. Some of them are pretty good ones. don’t see what can be possibly wrong with asking them. Plus., a long list of signatories contains very respectable names.

1. Why were standard operating procedures for dealing with hijacked airliners not followed that day?
2. Why were the extensive missile batteries and air defenses reportedly deployed around the Pentagon not activated during the attack?
3. Why did the Secret Service allow Bush to complete his elementary school visit, apparently unconcerned about his safety or that of the schoolchildren?
4. Why hasn’t a single person been fired, penalized, or reprimanded for the gross incompetence we witnessed that day?
5. Why haven’t authorities in the U.S. and abroad published the results of multiple investigations into trading that strongly suggested foreknowledge of specific details of the 9/11 attacks, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of traceable gains?
6. Why has Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who claims to have knowledge of advance warnings, been publicly silenced with a gag order requested by Attorney General Ashcroft and granted by a Bush-appointed judge?
7. How could Flight 77, which reportedly hit the Pentagon, have flown back towards Washington D.C. for 40 minutes without being detected by the FAA’s radar or the even superior radar possessed by the US military?
8. How were the FBI and CIA able to release the names and photos of the alleged hijackers within hours, as well as to visit houses, restaurants, and flight schools they were known to frequent?
9. What happened to the over 20 documented warnings given our government by 14 foreign intelligence agencies or heads of state?
10. Why did the Bush administration cover up the fact that the head of the Pakistani intelligence agency was in Washington the week of 9/11 and reportedly had $100,000 wired to Mohamed Atta, considered the ringleader of the hijackers?
11. Why did the 911 Commission fail to address most of the questions posed by the families of the victims, in addition to almost all of the questions posed here?
12. Why was Philip Zelikow chosen to be the Executive Director of the ostensibly independent 911 Commission although he had co-authored a book with Condoleezza Rice?

Posted by Alex, on September 6th, 2009 at 1:11 pm EDT
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Fact #1: We cannot fix Obama’s Afghanistan problem without looking into 9/11.
Fact #2: Looking into the events of 9/11 is the cheapest and the only bloodless way of solving the Afghanistan problem.

Please to OnPoint Producers to invite Architect Richard Gage on the Collapse of WTC7

This is not so complicated and it is not rocket science. An High-School teacher explains it to all of us. It is a matter of one single physics formula and frame by frame examining the evidence (video footages that were shown on TV). Didn’t obama say during his speeches that Change means we are respecting the role of “science” vs. woodo and silence.

http://www.ae911truth.org/flashmov13.htm

The question is when it is examined frame-by-frame did WTC7 fall at a “constant speed” or “accelerated speed”. Just like examining Michael Phelph’s finger touching the wall … frame-by-frame. There are approx. 187 frames of video footage. NIST (3-4 people) spent over $40 million to defense contractors during the last seven years to deny this simple evidence.

WTC7 WTC7 WTC7 WTC7 WTC7 WTC7 WTC7 WTC7 WTC7 WTC7

If the speed was accelerating, scientifically/physically, it means there were no resistance against gravity. This means that the structural columns that supports the steel-framework of the building were cut all at once just like it happens in every single case of “controlled demolition”.

Seeeeee, it is not that difficult. We don’t have to accuse anybody, yelling and screaming.

C’mon, WBUR …. show the leadership, show some courage, show us some Change We Can Believe In!!!

How does President Obama define victory in Afghanistan? What is President Obama’s exit strategy? Afghanistan is looking more and more like Vietnam.

Other than fighting Taliban, Al Qaeda forces, promoting a stable non government that is not a state sponsor of terrorism, and dealing with the risks that instability in Afganistan could spread and ultimately threaten the Pakistani goverment please state our specific national security interests and strategic objectives to accomplish these objectives in the Afgan theater?

What is our exit plan in Afganistan to promote a stable government, given the large ethnic division and history of tribal warfare?

How does the Obama plan to deal with the increasing volume of Al Qaeda forces coming across the border from Pakistan?

Oh boy, this should be an interesting show.

Conspiracies theories aside, it seems Afghanistan is a no win situation no matter what we do. Hamid Karzai is a corrupt politician who seems to have blatantly stolen the election. The country is run by war lords and tribal leaders and the Taliban. You can’t get anything done there without bribing everyone. I say time to cut our loses and pull out. Containment will have to do.

I have a colleague at work who’s spouse was working in Afghanistan for years in reconstruction projects such as hospitals, roads. They tried real hard to get things done but it was a complete waste of money and resources. They would build and the Taliban would destroy it. They would go back and build it again, again it would be destroyed. You had to bribe everyone, and I mean everyone. This place is sad to say gone. We can’t impose any form of government unless the people here want to change. How do you change decades of decay and war in a place that is not really a country but group of tribal areas. This is a huge and complex problem.

Pakistan, well that’s even more of a problem.

I have to say that this looks like a better lineup of guests for an honest discussion of this topic than On Point had on Sept 2 for the program titled “Investigating CIA Abuses”.

Wow,I think Putney Swope (center left??) and I center/right) have found some common areas of agreement here.

While “bureaucracy” is a very dirty word in American politics, it would be probably be helpful to our cause (albeit impossible) if the United States and/or our allies in Western Europe could export some “bureaucracy” to Afganistan as well as other parts of the middle east and Africa. A huge problem is that Afganistan (and many of these other societies throughout the middle east and Afrifa) lack even the most basic government structure institutions to effectively channel and distribute even the most basic humanitarian aid much less to protect property and provide security for the people. Unfortunately, Afganistan is not a nation/state in the sense Americans often think of the word. On a personal note, I noticed similar problems when I was briefly deployed in Somalia in late 1992 as part of the American efforts to provide support for UN humanitarian aid

Putting aside the 9/11 conspiracy theories for a minute, this is a huge and complex problem because (unlike Irag) the pre 9/11 Taliban government in Afganistan was a direct state sponsor of terrorism and provided safe harbor to Al Qaeda to plan its various attacks against American targets (and those of our allies). We know that these terrorist organizations rely on instable states to provide safe harbor, build training camps, etc…., which is why can not ignore these problems.

I wish OUR PRESIDENT only the best in dealing with this huge and complex problem that was not of his making (or for that matter his predecessor’s making either)

Shouldn’t we leave Afghanistan because we have no legal basis for being there?

See the article by Marjorie Cohn in Alternet:

Afghanistan: The Other Illegal War
Alternet.org
August 1, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/world/93473/afghanistan:_the_other_illegal_war/

Felipe, lilya, Carlos, Alex, etc.

I think we all pretty much know where you all stand on Israel and 9/11. And as far as the persistent “Why did we invade Iraq/Afghanistan question”, why don’t you just tell us. On an otherwise fascinating blog this jingoistic theme has become extremely boring. Mind you, I’m not even saying you are wrong! It has just become extremely overwrought to hear the 9/11 and Israel mantra applied to every single topic on this program, no matter how unrelated the topic seems to be.

I’m very disappoint with Lawrence Korb. I have found him in the past to be more moderate and reasoned than Anthony Cordesman, but today Korb backs Obama’s terrible decision to escalate the now 8 year old U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan. United States had the right to overthrow the Taliban en route to destroying Al Qaeda training camps and killing or capturing Al Qaeda leaders. United States still has the right to pursue those DIRECTLY responsible for 9/11, but we do NOT have the right try to determine Afghans’ future by force. They will rightfully resist us FOREVER. I agree with what Stephen Walt has to say.

I’m now with Andrew Bacevich on this. Until recently I had bought into the idea that THIS was the war we HAVE to fight, that the Bush Administration had blown it by not prosecuting this one right in 2002 and 2003; but we MUST finish it now. Col/Professor Bacevich is right, though, just as prior to 911, we should spend the billions to truly protect our OWN shores, pursue a more enlightened foreign policy (that doesn’t CREATE terrorists), and GET OUT of other people’s wars.

Both supporters and opponents of the Afghanistan policy ask and never receive an answer to the following question:

WHAT CONSTITUTES SUCCESS FOR THIS POLICY?

IT IS INCONCEIVABLE THAT THIS “WAR” CAN RESULT IN A SURRENDER OR A TREATY, because the enemy is not soverign
and no treaty or condition of “surrender” is enforcable or possible.

This is a classic case of a police action sold as a war. It is not winable, and no police action can justify civilian casualties.

It’s not about troop numbers. The Soviets had many more troops than we do, and a more ruthless set of policies, and they failed.

It’s about corruption, security, and economic development. The key question is “Why did the Taliban succeed?” The answer is not military dominance but the fact that they are legalistic. Damn them for a bunch of medieval fundamentalists, but unlike the Northern Alliance they didn’t shake people down for money. They disarmed the militias and didn’t take bribes. Justice was harsh but even handed.

The Karzai government is corrupt, our contractors a re corrupt, and the countryside is run by warlords. The Afghan National Police are shaking people down and raping children. The people prefer even the Taliban to that.

We have to accept the tribal nature of the country and adapt to that structure in an attempt to rein in and channel (we’ll never eliminate) corruption. We could bomb them for another decade and they would resist and wait us out. The solution is social, political, and economic, not military.

Putney,

I agree with you about Afghanistan. There is no winning there, and nation building there seems highly unlikely. The money being flushed there can be spent much more wisely at home. Let’s just focus on self defense, instead of some convoluted pre-emptive offensive interventionist theory. As far as Al Qaeda returning if we leave… There are too many impoverished and angry third world nations out there for us to occupy them all (Somalia, Sudan, et all)

Of course, we’ll be in Iraq/Afghanistan as long as David Rockefeller and the Council on Foreign Relations says we need to be there. Do you actually think Obama is making these decisions?

The 8 year long U.S. war in Afghanistan has not only helped to destabilize Pakistan but also every Central Asian state surrounding Afghanistan.

Lawrence Korb fails to persuade me with his pro-war point of view.

I would like to know what the rest of the international community thinks about Afghanistan today. In the direct aftermath of 9/11, when pretty much literally the entire world was with us in wanting to eradicate religious extremism and wanted to work WITH us to do so, it seemed that everyone believed that Afghanistan needed to be taken care of. (This was before our previous president decided to invade another country that had no part in 9/11, and tell the rest of the world they had to just believe him, and do whatever he said, thus making other countries no longer want to work with us, since it would actually mean working FOR him and having no say in what was done.)

Do other countries still believe that an ungoverned or Taliban governed country will again allow for terrorist bases training camps, facilitating more attacks around the world? Have Iraq and Pakistan now become similarly available for such activities, such that Afghanistan is not as necessary to such groups?

And please, please spare us the 9/11 conspiracy theory talk.

Why is the only element of this conversation the number of troops? If you really want to win hearts and minds, educate the people, build roads, build bridges, dig wells, learn their culture and respect it. Read “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. We’re spending money on the wrong things.

One quick way of assessing this nation’s commitment to war: reinstitute the draft.

Liz

@Rich: spare the 9/11 conspiracy talk?

Hey, as long as the U.S. continues to use 9/11 to justify its action in Afghanistan, then scrutiny of 9/11 continues to be fair game. Conspiracy FACT is not a theory.

After a rational study of all 9/11 facts, you’d have to be a conspiracy theorist to continue to believe the “official” government version of the event.

“Felipe, lilya, Carlos, Alex, etc.

I think we all pretty much know where you all stand on Israel and 9/11.”

Hu? I do not believe I mentioned Israel once in my posts since its last incursion into Gaza. I originally posted these 12 questions from the 9/11 Truth Statement in the context of the resignation of Mr. Jones who had put his signature under them. In my view, these are all good questions. I am a little amused to see Republicans loudly professing their distrust toward the Government at every opportunity, but become very defensive when Republicans are the ones copntrolling it. I don’t trust Bush and Cheney because they did a lot of their business in secret.

Quite frankly, I’m sick of questions about military tactics, or whether or not we can “win” in Afghanistan, and gungho propaganda about staying there till the “job is done” displacing any kind of critical inquiry as to why we invaded in the first place and what we are still doing there. Who wanted this and why?
It has nothing to do with Osama bin laden and Bush said as much when he was riding high in the Iraqi war.
How many more sildiers and Afghanistan citizens are going to die before NPR and the BBC feature critics of US foriegn policy along side the cheerleaders whose only disagreement concerns how to go about accomplishing”the mission”?

Lori wrote:

“If you really want to win hearts and minds, educate the people, build roads, build bridges, dig wells, learn their culture and respect it.”

Lori, and what would be that culture?

BTW, how many people here know the reason why Russia invaded Afghanistan?

I spend almost a year in Afghanistan in the ’70s, when it was still a very different place. Even then there was little infrastructure, almost no healthcare, to live there is a constant struggle for survival for the the local population even in the best of times. We cannot comprehend a country like that from our comfortable and pampered part of the world.
What needs to be done in my opinion is improve the lot of the common people: My suggestion would be to take some of the money spent on sophisticated weaponry and offer to purchase agricultural goods such as pomegranate, dates or other traditional local harvests at subsidized prices to make them more profitable than opium (and even some of that could be grown and purchased for medicine) to benefit the local population. The role of the military should then be to make sure the money will actually go to the people, to bypass those that impose the bribes.
As long as corruption keeps the upper hand, as long as we fight a military war there that thrives on body counts we have no chance of winning any hearts and minds.
Remember, this is is country that measures time differently than we do. They remember us pulling out after the Soviet war as if it was yesterday! It must be a long term commitment to support the population with their culture, but not to fight a conventional war and try to impose our world view on a country that is proud of their own.

I missed the show, and will wait for it to come online,

did they address the drone attacks, or increase in drone attacks that are increasing deaths and higher civilians casualty?

Both the people and government in Afghan detest them and is being used by the Taliban to sway public opinion.

Did they also talk about how much blood and treasure it would cost before its finally reasonable to leave or was it the the same saying of till the jobs done?

Lastly is their any figures on to the amount of contractors(mercs) working in afghan and the cost to the US tax payer to keep them?

“They remember us pulling out after the Soviet war as if it was yesterday!”

Gerd, who is this “they”? Osama and his terrorist buddies who are actually not native Afghanistanis? Afghani intellectuals? Common Afghani people? Warlords? Hajaras/Tajiks/Pashtuns?

Or is “they” a monolithic Afghanistani community that speaks and thinks in one voice? Just curious to know your thoughts.

Corruption in Afghanistan is so easy to see, whereas the corruption in our own Congress – where Senators and Republicans are in the pockets of moneyed interests – now that is part-and-parcel and normalized, internalized behavior which is not corruption. Oy vey.

“BTW, how many people here know the reason why Russia invaded Afghanistan?”

To provide support to Afghan’s friendly communist government, at its repeated requests, against the internal insurgency and to prevent the spread of the U.S. influence next door. Back then Afghanistan and Soviet Union had mutual borders.

The Afghan dilemna has has bedeviled the USA for 8 years. There are varying ways to deal with it.

1. Allow for for grass roots district type of government that has tribal leaders involved in some kind of council. This has worked for the Afghans for a long time, it is what they know. The Afghan wants to determine his own future and wants more tangible things, roads, water wells and schools. The people want to determine their own future. The US should continue training the Aghan army and police AND allow for the locals to act as armed militia to be the eyes and ears of the authority and be as a backup to the military. Then the US can really transition out.

2. This idea was gleaned from a former CIA spy turned author, John Baer (?) of the book THE DEVIL WE KNOW. Obama may have to do a “Richard Nixon”. That is give what Iran wants, legitimacy. Nixon made China less menacing and somewhat more approachable. If Iran is treated as a regional power in some kind of deal making, maybe they can end their backing of terrorist elements and have more say in conflict negotiation in the region. After all Iran is wedged between Iraq and Afghanistan. Afghanistan will have a fellow muslim nation to start some real constructive dialogue. It would give the Pakistanis something to really start thinking about. Do not forget, that Iraq was once part of Persia’s sphere of influence, it is predominantlty a Shi’ite majority. After all did not the Bush administration made Moamar el Qaddafi an offer he could not refuse (Libya has ended a nuclear pursuit and pretty much is behaving itself).

Afghanistan is an unusual place, it has no marketable resources save for poppy (heroine), and goat herding (although wheat production may catch on). Staying in there too long is a lose-lose situation.

The main goal is to reduce and dwindle the US military presence in the region and allow for key players to get inviolved in a more practical and pragmatic way . Case in point, China has dialogue with North Korea to keep things form getting out of hand.

The US should start making more friendlier, the relationship with Russia. When and while the ramping down of the US forces is ever possible, Russia and its outlying neighbors could be logistical road conduits.

If the US has to have a presence in the Middle East, they could place a military base in a very friendly environment: Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurds do not want the US to leave. This is a practical concept.

Just some thoughts (hopefully pragmatic and practical).

Bottom line is that Dale Carhegie was right: How to Make Friends and Influence People.

I wanted to also add this. China, Russia, all the little ‘Stans (Khazakhstan, Kirgistan, Tajikistan, etc.) and possibly Iran, are planning on creating a large trading (possible defensive) block called the Shanghai Cooperation Zone. The US must somehow learn the new lay of the land. As CNN’s Fareed Zakarias (sp)
said, this is an era of post American power. America is not really weakening, it is that the poorer nations are starting to take respsonsibility and allow for some stronger but realtively freindly heighbors to be local superpowers in thier on right (ie. Brazil in South America).

Here is a true Patriot… posting from Bill W.

I can’t remember when I’ve heard more temporizing, justifying this criminal conduct.

But let’s go back to the beginning: 9/11/2001.

There is, in my opinion (and in others more deeply steeped in this stuff), no proof that has yet been offered linking this so-called “al Qaeda attack on America, by people who hate us for our freedoms.”

Cheney claims that the US administration’s use of torture has “kept us free from further attacks.”

Well, Duuuh! If it wasn’t any “al Qaeda” attack in the first place, but rather an “inside job” involving members of our own administration (certainly Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Addington, our, allies, etc., then it would be quite a simple matter for the administration, having gotten the terrified country they sought from the spectacles (and deaths), a “shocked” nation and Congress that would roll over for any request of the “attacking government,” to forbear attacking their fellow countrymen once again.

And you do remember that 9/11/2001 was followed by “the anthrax scare” — and seven or more deaths — of weaponized anthrax (from Fort Detrick, Maryland) — of letters to chief senatorial war foes Daschle and Leahy and TV newsrooms to “nail down the emotions of fear and trembling” in our now twice-terrified country.

And who knows whether the torture (not “enhanced interrogation techniques,” but torture (can’t anyone use a non-propagandized English words any more? Or how about “detainees” “prisoners of war”)) hasn’t been used to PREVENT the torture victims from stating the truth (that there was no al Qaeda involvement in 9/11/2001, for example.)

Mr. Gerecht states that “these people” are working to kill Americans “like they attacked the US on 9/11/2001.” But I’m afraid there is still no evidence that this is what happened. And there is mounting evidence that many of the so-called “hijackers” or “suicide hijackers” did not die on 9/11, as they’ve been seen alive in other parts of the world (if we received al Jazeera, AFP, German wire services, even Canadian wire services, we here in the US would have a better idea of what our government is actually doing, rather than the deluge of verbal froth we’re subjected to by “our very own” media.

At the VERY least, we can be 99.99% certain that the three World Trade Center buildings, #7, #2 and #1, were definitely NOT brought down by “the impact of 2 jet planes (2 planes, three buildings?)” and “fires which were so intense they–what was it the “actor in the street,” the “Harley Davidson Motorcycle Guy,” said? They were demolished by explosives placed within the three buildings and triggered very carefully, probably with a computer system. And it looks now, from very recent studies, like those explosives were very new, very sophisticated “nano-energetics,” developed by our military weapons laboratories.

You should also be aware, though not everyone in the country has ever taken a ride atop an elevator car with an elevator maintenance person, that it is SIMPLE, EASY, to get on top of an elevator car and ride up and down the elevator shaft using the up/down/stop switches all elevator cars have on their “roofs,” because that’s how the elevators are maintained. I’m sure most of us have once or twice looked at the elevator inspectors’ certificate posted inside every elevator car (or now, the notice says the reports are available “from management,” as they’re no longer being put in the cars themselves.

In the case of the three World Trade Center buildings, at least in the two towers, I know from using them in the 1980s that the cars were HUGE. Maybe the size of a singles badminton court, or a racquetball court. So probably entire pallets loaded with explosives could be fork-lifted onto the roofs of these elevator cars, and the demolitions experts would be completely out of sight, day and night, as they wired their explosives in place–and ever-so-conveniently right inside the perimeter of the 47 monstrous structural steel columns that held up the three skyscrapers (only 25 core columns in WTC #7 to support its 47 floors).

I wonder if anyone has bothered to try to “reconstruct” the pattern of ‘elevator servicing’ that was going on in the weeks leading up to 9/11 — that is, assuming that the buildings were not wired for explosive demolition years before, as I believe the Port Authority and then Silverstein had tried unsuccessfully, over the years, to get NYC demolition permits to take the buildings — money-losing white elephants — down by means of explosive demolitions. When I worked there in the 1980s, Tower 2 was pretty much filled up with NYState offices, as no other tenants could be found. So this was Rockefeller, Carey and Cuomo authorizing a state subsidy to those money-losers, way back when. (And the evidence of the nano-thermite, of a much more modern vintage (like six or seven or so years?) than the old-style thermate “cutter charges”, would suggest a more contemporary rigging job.

Absent proof of what transpired on 9/11/2001, and given the necessary legal presumption that all governments lie to their people, and ours, with a Unitary Liar-In-Chief, perhaps told more lies in the 8 years of the last administration than the five administrations that preceded it, here’s where I’m left:

1). On 9/11/2001 citizens of the United States were attacked by rogue elements of our own and probably allied governments (though they probably felt “justified” in taking 3,000 lives to make certain that Congress and the American people–and people all over the world–were effectively frightened out of their skins, so they could, as they did,

2) Ram rights-limiting legislation through congress, seven years of “emergency appropriations”, separate from the military budget, could employ torture perhaps to keep the prisoners of war FROM talking (who was it that said truth is stranger than fiction?), could kidnap people off the street anywhere in the world and whisk them off to secret places and stuff them down into oubliettes, and, more to the point, invade Afghanistan, where a natural gas and oil pipeline was desired to fire up Enron’s white-elephant electric generating plant in India, and invade Iraq and gain control of its oil reserves, and to have a place in the Middle East Oil Basin where they could move the US airbases from Saudi Arabia (as that was something Bush business partner Osama bin Laden WAS exercised about–”temporary” air bases that were build during Shock & Awe #1 in 1991 for Gulf War One, but were still in place 13 and 14 years later–what did our ULIC call them? Not “permanent” bases but “enduring” bases. D’you still think Bush is actually as dumb as he pretended to be, growing “dumber” the longer he stayed away from Tejas (check the tapes of his gubernatorial campaigns with those of 2008–the difference is remarkable. Maybe he does have Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, but I doubt it.).

3) Implement a global wire-tapping infrastructure so that virtually every bit (and byte) of global digital telecommunications traffic could be captured in the NSA’s humongous disk farms in Tejas (according to author James Bamford) and, as the NSA and Israel and various contractors work ’round the clock to invent how to handle wire-taps and e-mail-taps and iChats and Twitters in real time

4). Based on this “false flag” operation, you beef up your military muscle at home, just in case any significant number of citizens wake up and smell the burning Constitution. (Definition: False Flag Operation means, you do it but frame/blame someone else for the dastardly deed; you put THIER “flag” at the top of the hill/building/Ground Zero–the folks that get blamed are commonly called “fall guys” or “patsies”– remember that that’s the noun Lee Harvey Oswald used to describe his role in the JFK assassination).

5) You demonize the patsies, in this case, “the database,” the name bin Laden gave to his Excel spreadsheet listing all the “mujahideen” he was paying, with CIA money, to fight Russia in Afghanistan in the 1980s. (At least, I’m betting that it was a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. I doubt it was Lotus 1,2,3, or even the Open Office spreadsheet. You call them “suicidal,” or “radical Muslim militants” or “Witches of the Black Sabbath”–whatever works. They “hate our freedoms” (WHAT freedoms, we should be asking, as we check our wallets.

6) And you keep on repeating “the big lie,” over and over and over. We were “attacked” on 9/11. “They are evil men, the ‘worst of the wurst’ who hate us, who will do anything to kill us.” They are planning right now to kill more of us (unless we can torture confessions out of them first). The misbelievers in Britain and Spain have to have a “taste of our terror,” so what were “police exercises” in Britain turn into–ta daaa!–real, live bombing deaths in the Underground and atop the red double-decker busses in the heart of London. In Spain, the “backpacks” that the “radical Islamic fanatics” put on the seats of their commuter trains were, the evidence suggests, actually placed BENEATH the subway cars while the trains were idled in the railroad yards overnight. And the “perps” conveniently get “blown up with their own explosives.”

7). You and your pals raid the US treasury (and any other nation’s treasury you can get hold of, by selling worthless paper, for weapons, for Heimats Versicherheit-ness-ness (Homeland Secure-secure-security. You militarize the domestic police forces. You take over the National Guard from the Governors of each state.

So now, you and your pals have most of the money and most of the military and para-military might, tasers (”Don’t Tase me, bro!”), microwave “skin-cooking canons”, rubber bullets, pepper-spray “paint-ball” guns–all supposedly “non-lethal–at least most of the time” to control any restive population.

9) And you keep talking about “threat levels” and “we’re fighting them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here” (they were never over here. WE were attacked by our very own little band of usurpers, rogues, robbers and murderers, so if the merry band thinks were forgetting to be scared enough to let them have their way with the nation, THAT’s when we’ll have another false-flag attack. I fully expected one before Jan 20th this year. But given the fact that Obama has left the Pentagon in the hands of a hold-over, has given the financial reigns to the same bunch of cronies who already bankrupt the nation, continues on in Iraq and Afghanistan, speaks of “preventive detention” (THAT is as UNamerican, is as UNconstitutional a concept as I have EVER heard in all of my three score and seven years in this country–including service in Vietnam for the US Draft.

10) And of course, you keep engaging the American people in side-shows about wire-tapping, torture, who said what, when.

11) In order to distract us all from addressing Issue #1, the progenitor of all that has followed since that day, namely: What happened on Tuesday, 9/11/2001? Who rigged the explosives throughout the 267 floors of WTC #7, #2 and #1? Who laid on the dozen or so “military exercises” that were taking place the morning of 9/11/2001? Why was Donny Rumsfeld out on the Pentagon lawn, instead of in his command bunker during this “attack on America”? Or did he know that the Pentagon’s most heavily fortified wall was the last target of the day? Why did Dick Cheney order our Air Force fighters and surface-to-air missiles to stand down and let “the flying thing,” whatever it was, hit the Pentagon wall? Who is on the list to take over the country, under the rubric of Continuity of Government Operations, when/if martial law is declared by “the President” in “a severe emergency.”

12) Not to put too fine a point on it, I’d say the 23-hour clock on the demise of our Constitution is now at about 23:56, or four minutes ’til Midnight. Our Congress is owned by the bankers, big Oil, big Pharma. Our schools have been getting dumbed down for decades–the latest is the Teach For The Test teacher performance reviews, based on the tests their students take. The understandably bored students act up, and are put on Ritalin–instead of being taught, or taking gym class, playing in the band, orchestra or mowing lawns and pruning bushes and trees.

13) Soon we’ll have MANDATORY, but private, health insurance–the best of all possible worlds for the insurance companies, and, eventually, “privatized” Social Security and Medicare accounts–which will have to be “managed” by Wall Street “Poverty Managers” (or is that supposed to be “Wealth Managers”–our poverty, their wealth?) I don’t see any “wealth” where I hang out. How about you?) And U-6, the “true” “underemployment” rate, was 16.2% in July. We’ll find out later this morning what it was for August.

If you’re curious, check here: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm. Bookmark it and check the update on the 1st Friday of each month. And torturing our prisoners of war is still a crime–even if our President and Vice President, his cabinet members, Speaker of the House, Majority Leader of the Senate and all their minority-party-counterparts can’t discern the meaning of common, ordinary household English words, oaths of office, criminal statues and, in the end, our very own US Constitution. Guess must all have been “taught by objective.” (In their case, get re-elected, no matter what it takes.)

(It is fascinating to hear one of the speakers on this segment reply to one of the callers–who said torture is torture, and torture is against the law–that “probably the Speaker of the House” wouldn’t like that interpretation, and that there was a broad consensus in Washington that, I guess, “it was OK to use torture” against those bad sausages (the worst of the wurst) who “attacked us” on 9/11/2001. So is robbing banks (or, more like, banks robbing people) OK just because all the banks are doing it? Remember that our torturing killed something like 170 of the beige people. I keep wondering if the rest of their families in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan were killed by a kid with a joystick and computer in a corrugated steel shipping/communications container in Colorado.

D’you still think four commercial jetliners couldn’t be controlled by some other kid with a joystick riding above Manhattan, Virginia, and/or PA in a Boing 747 super E-4B, those big, white 747s seen in the sky above Ground Zero, PA and DC “on the day.” Here’s what Boing calls ‘em (there are four, I believe):

“The E-4B Advanced Airborne Command Post is designed to be used by the National Command Authority as a survivable command post for control of U.S. forces in all levels of conflict including nuclear war. In addition to its primary mission, secondary missions assigned to the E-4B include VIP travel support and Federal Emergency Management Agency support, which provides communications to relief efforts following natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes.”

(And perhaps for support of our happy little gang of home-grown, insider terrorists.)

Phil Zelikow’s novel, “The 9/11 Commission Report” does not mention any large white planes flying over Ground Zero, Manhattan, PA or Washington, though witnesses testified that they had seen ‘em. And, of course, though “7 WTC” is mentioned five times on four pages (p. 284, 293, 302 and twice on 305), the fact that the 47-story building collapsed at 5:20 p.m. that same day was apparently not noteworthy–”just another ordinary building demolition job, without benefit of demolition permit,” one might say.

But all paths from Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, USA PATRIOT Act, torture, illegal wiretapping, suspension of Americans’ civil rights (speech, search and seizure, speedy trial, writ of habeas corpus,) lead right back to 9/11/2001.

It’s about time we had an investigation to find out what REALLY happened, dontcha think? ‘Specially cuz “9/11″ has been used, and CONTINUES to be use, to justify what is an incredible range of criminal and/or subversive and/or unconstitutional conduct on the part of the Bush administration, from Dubyuh on down.

A complete investigation–with subpoena power–and with ALL WITNESSES BEING HEARD, and all physical evidence and phenomena accounted for– will certainly highlight how incredibly criminal–downright murderous, in fact–have been the members of the Bush Administration for virtually all of its eight-PLUS years (starting with the “I’m John Bolton from George Bush’s campaign and I’m here [in Florida] to stop the recount!” Washington DC carpetbagger influx back in November of 2000. They of course had no standing to block a recount, given that they weren’t residents of Florida, to Dick Cheney “throwing his back out” on Jan 18 or 19, moving all The People’s Documents out of the, what, three Mosler stand-up safes Cheney had in the office?

This surely is not our Founders’ Republic any longer.

Posted by Bill W., on September 4th, 2009 at 5:21 am EDT

Posting that want 9/11 has to, must and should be looked at again by independent bodies without the corruption of Bush Admin must be honored by this radio station. We want to hear the Architect from San Francisco on Onpoint. We are getting rid of idealistic young bright minds in this government which represented and promised the exact opposite of what happened to Van Jones.

Asking questions and demanding transparency and accountability is a good thing. This guy should be honored.

Please add my voice to the outcry and plea for OnPoint to invite the architect from San Francisco over and do a program on the Reason why we invaded Afghanistan. The more I learn about the bizzarre coincidences the more creepy it gets.

People who work for Public Radio: If you don’t carry on this banner against commercial TV outlets, and if we cannot change this trend of watching this country fall apart financially, very soon you will have to work for a Security company or will lose your jobs.

Is any On Point discussion thread of Afghanistan, 9-11 or any related topic ever going to have a “tinfoil filter” installed so we won’t have to be bothered anymore by basement-dwelling blogger trolls who persist in their fanatical fervor for “the gummint done it” conspiracy theories about the WTC that have been well-debunked by actual scientists and engineers. It is tiresome in the extreme, not to mention silly in the extreme in believing that arguably the most incompetent administration since the founding of the republic could pull this off without someone blabbing.

No matter. If Osama Bin Laden walked up to one of the tin foilers screaming “No, you infidel fool … WE DID IT!” the obvious retort would be, “So YOU were in cahoots with Bush/Cheney/The CIA/The Council on Foreign Relations/The Bilderbergers/The Illuminati/The Knights Templar/The Phone Company…

Really, On Point. Do you ever review some of the patent nonsense posted on this board?

family guy puts it best

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YOh-rpvjYg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpP7b2lUxVE

Anybody who does not want a program about the Collapse of WTC 7 … there are at least three dozen radio stations for you to pick. Please do not listen to OnPoint during one hour. I am sure we will miss you immensely during that hour.

C’mon OnPoint. Show some leadership to other public radio stations. Invite Richard Gage and find out why Van Jones signed the petition.

If there is a huge corruption at SEC and if you sign a petition asking for investigation, does it mean you cannot hold a government job anymore?

What is this a Medieval Empire?

This is just a brief comment to commend Tom and the On Point producers regarding your selection of topics/ guests for the show. I enjoy hearing various viewpoints, but I prefer from those are within the broad intellectual mainstream of American political thought. NPR and On Point SHOULD NOT give an audience to these “inside job, Bush did it,etc…” conspiracy theories that have debunked by scientists and most engineers any more than you should waste air time on a show for these fools to question our President’s citizenship.

However, I do admit that it would probably be amusing to read this comment section after a 60 minute show devoting 30 minutes to those who question the US government role in 9/11 and the final 30 minutes to those of question President Obama’s citizenship.

Rob,

I like your idea. Let’s also give the 2nd hour that day to the “Israel runs the world” people. There needs to be one condition. After putting out their theories and filling the comment section with gigantic manifestos, (see Carla Gen above) they have to promise to only bring these things up on future shows if the topic is appropriate. I encourage them to express their ideas, maybe just not the daily dissertations.

Where’s Strong Bad when you need him…

Los Angeles Crime Investigation Unit is full of Left Wing Nuts

They went out to the origination point and tested the ground for remains of petro-chemical. A simple “official” test showed that some arson residue was involved. Instead, they should have mindlessly bombing the hell out the clouds which started the fires here in revenge, so that we can get even.

Did this process of standard crime investigation:
a) insult anybody?
b) tarnish the souls the firefighters?
c) did media shy away from covering?
d) did anybody say that the investigation was unnecessary
e) did it cost loads of money?

But when it comes to 9/11 NIST, one guy, one single guy, made up excuse after excuse during the last eight years for NOT running one single official chemical test on the remains and/or on a single chopped up steam beam.

If this NPR station is not convinced that there is something weird here, I wonder if they deserve to call themselves “Public”.

Why am I not surprised …Lawrence J. Korb http://mapper.nndb.com/start/?id=104580

Same thing again and again

Here is a wonderful article about why he might be advocating more bombs, staying in Afghanistan until hell freezes and/or till America defaults on its loans … copyright Jerrusalem Post
http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/rosner/entry/lawrence_korb_on_why_iran

Rosner’s Domain: Lawrence Korb on why Iran is not Hitler’s Germany
Posted by SHMUEL ROSNER
I met Lawrence Korb in Tel Aviv last week, as we were both on the same panel in the BESA-ADL conference on US-Israel relations. Korb is a Senior Fellow at American Progress and a Senior Advisor to the Center for Defense Information. Mr. Korb was also a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution; dean of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. He served as assistant secretary of defense (manpower, reserve affairs, installations, and logistics) from 1981 through 1985. In that position, he administered about 70 percent of the defense budget. For his service in that position, he was awarded the Department of Defense’s medal for Distinguished Public Service. More about his very impressive bio here.

Any defense of staying in “Afghanistan,” and/or of escalating “U.S.” involvement there rest on some weak assumptions.

To begin with, it is assumed that “we” invaded there in 2001 to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his band of merry men. If that were the intention, then “we” would have competently done so.

In fact, all the available evidence indicates that the Bush regime was a criminal operation. The 2000 election was clearly stolen. The active negligence in advance of the September 2001 attacks suggests that there may have been a reason (or two) for making the attacks possible.

The fact that the September 11 attacks and the ensuing hysteria they generated were used as excuses to invade “Iraq” suggest that there was an agenda in place before the attacks took place. Given the stolen election, the plan was probably in place beforehand.

Now our president finds himself painted into a corner, brush in hand. He campaigned on the basis that “Afghanistan” was the “country” where we need to escalate our involvement. As we are now seeing, Mr. Obama says what he thinks will work with the audience at hand. You play, you pay.

We risk not just heating up the tensions and violence in the region of “Afghanistan” and “Pakistan,” but having the conflict spread to a much wider sphere. One never knows. On of the lessons of World War II should have been that willy-nilly invading people can have unforeseen consequences, far beyond the imaginations of typical “players.”

Why not go for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people by
giving them what they truly need: homes, food, education, and medical care? We are talking about a poor country: they would probably much prefer running water and electricity to war and violence. Let’s use the defense money for humanitarian purposes. To my thinking, this is a better way for the U.S. to foster a working relationship and a stronger relationship with Afghanistan.

“Why not go for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people by giving them what they truly need: homes, food, education, and medical care?”

If this is what delivers hearts and minds why don’t we just give all that stuff to Americans? Imagine popular support for the party that gives it?

Osama bin ladin is a member of the Saudi Royal Family.

Does anyone really wonder why he is still at large?

Given the poor job performance that President Obama has displayed in dealing with the economy, I am completely pessimistic as to how he will handle Afghanistan.

No mater what America does in Afghanistan, Iraqi or any Moslem country under similar circumstances, be it pull out, stay in, stand down, increase or decrease forces, etc., whatever—America will never win anything that’s remotely recognizable to us as victory. For even though the majority of the Moslem world we face is predominately moderate, i.e. tacit … tacit does not mean benign”, and keeping silent and turning a blind eye to the atrocities of their Moslem brethren, is a painful compromise they make, between being on full blown jihad themselves, and being condemned in the Koran by Mohamed for doing absolutely nothing, which is not an option for most Moslems. It tells us a great deal about a religion and the mindset of the tribal sectarian people that embrace and practice it, and upon whom it has such a stranglehold, that considering the circumstances in which the so called moderate Moslem majority find themselves, they have not yet globally abandoned and thoroughly divorced themselves in mass from their savage and brutal conjoined twin, i.e., those who honestly believe that they will rise to heaven in orgasmic ecstasy and be lifted to paradise on a sea of innocent blood as a result of committing indiscriminate and horrible acts of mass murder and suicide … even of their own Islamic brothers! They, who tear themselves in their frustration at not being able to always make their enemy their victim in their lust for blood, consequently turn their victim, even if it’s their fellow Moslems into their enemy—but then, in the Koran, Mohamed made it explicitly clear that he had no good use, but only searing rebukes for the “stay at home Moslems” who shrink and cringe at the thought of having to go out on full blown jihad with their more adventuresome bloodthirsty fellows, and greatly encouraged those who …“contend with person and purse” … thus, leaving the moderates on the horns of a dilemma. And herein lays the paradox facing the so called moderate Moslems, who choose to compromise at the very least by keeping silent and looking the other way and leaving the dynamic carnage to their aggressive brothers. The tacit moderate Moslem majority is an exceedingly great part of the problem, and our policy toward them must change and they have to know, and be made painfully aware of the fact that, the western world and The United States of America in particular is getting painfully and dangerously close painting them all with the same brush … and I believe rightly and deservedly so. Though we can in deed understand and appreciate the paradox and grave problems that Islam both faces and poses in the world today, it is by their choice not ours. For the western world and the United States in particular have often and repeatedly extended to them a hand to extricate and deliver them from the pit they’ve dug for themselves and bring them into the light of modernity, but they would not. The hole is all they seem to have and they continue to dig, perhaps already beyond our reach, and Abba Eban the brilliant Israeli statesman once said of the “Palestinians” that … “they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” (referring to peace). And what has proven to be manifestly true of the “Palestinians” in the land of Israel is proving worldwide to be true of Moslems as a whole. And perhaps they are in deed sincere in their errant beliefs … but … they are sincerely wrong. Yet here in lay the two faces and the two sides of the one coin of Islam. For the sword of Islam and the fruit it produces has always been and will always be a brutal, bloody and blunt instrument … Tis the nature of the beast. Therefore, let us not delude ourselves into thinking that we will ever be able to remove the sword from the hand of this branch Islam by mere force … for more than fourteen centuries of Arabic and Moslem history have proven that nothing short of “The Second Coming” will be able to accomplish that. So, just as the Moslem world is on the horns of their own dilemma, so too are the western world and we the people of United States in particular, facing our own heartrending and tragic Catch-22.

“The 2000 election was clearly stolen.”

On what basis? Is there a non-partisan/independent analysis on which you base your views?

1. Out of all the disputed counties, Gore called for a recount only in those counties where he thought he had a good chance of winning. That’s clearly not about a principled stance based on the value of democracy or counting every vote, that’s about trying to win.

2. Decision of the Supreme Court – whatever logic you use regarding the judges and their decision, the reverse of it can be applied to you. Both sides looked at it from a partisan pov – so no objectivity there.

3. The Black Caucus (Representatives) raised an objection in the House when the official results were tallied. Not a single Democrat Senator came to second their objection which was necessary.

It’s nearly the end of 2009 – maybe you might want to consider moving on and living in the present instead of living in the past and holding unhealthy grudges and unnecessary grievances – just a friendly suggestion. Or maybe you’re simply looking for attention, in which case, you got it. Or maybe your name is Al Gore.

Afghanistan is another example of a lie told by Obama to get elected or he was just naive. Neither is good for us.

Lilya Lopekha wrote “I met Lawrence Korb in Tel Aviv last week”. I can’t believe anybody in their right mind would believe something as farcical and delusional as that after all the anti-Israeli, world-wide Jewish conspiracy things she has written. If she was in Tel Aviv, then she was probably on a spying/recruiting mission for Hezbollah.

Louise, Lilya did not meet Lawrence Korb in Tel Aviv.
She was posting about Shmuel Rosner who did. It was easy to mistake that she I did at first as well.

SOS… Same old s..t

Hmmmm, there are some real “interesting” rants here today.

Hey, you the righties…. it is not about me.

The issue, it is the same old story again.

If the color the tree is Green, this darn radio station to find somebody who tells the truth and somebody who claims that is not Green – just to prove that they are not biased.

This guy Lawrence Korb represents and speaks for lies, corruptionk, conflict of interest….whatever it takes so that Israel benefits from the 24×7 “state of war).

I echo those listeners who have called for WBUR to do the job it never did after 9/11. Why is Charlie Sheen the one asking these questions?

CS – Thank you Mr. President. Okay, first; On the FBI’s most wanted list Osama Bin Laden is not charged with the crimes of 911. When I called the FBI to ask them why this was the case, they replied: “There’s not enough evidence to link Bin Laden to the crime scene,” I later discovered he had never even been indicted by the D.O.J.

CS – Number 2; FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, was dismissed and gagged by the D.O.J. after she revealed that the government had foreknowledge of plans to attack American cities using planes as bombs as early as April 2001. In July of ‘09, Mrs. Edmonds broke the Federal gag order and went public to reveal that Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban were all working for and with the C.I.A. up until the day of 9/11.

CS – Number 3; The following is a quote from Mayor Giuliani during an interview on 9/11 with Peter Jennings for ABC News. “I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the Police Commissioner, the Fire Commissioner, the Head of Emergency Management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building, so we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out, walked north, and took a lot of people with us.”

WHO TOLD HIM THIS??? To this day, the answer to this question remains unanswered, completely ignored and emphatically DENIED by Mayor Giuliani on several public occasions.

CS – Number 4; In April 2004, USA Today reported, “In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.” One of the targets was the World Trade Center.

CS – Number 5; On September 12th 2007, CNN’s ‘Anderson Cooper 360’, reported that the mysterious “white plane” spotted and videotaped by multiple media outlets, flying in restricted airspace over the White House shortly before 10am on the morning of 9/11, was in fact the Air Force’s E-4B, a specially modified Boeing 747 with a communications pod behind the cockpit; otherwise known as “The Doomsday Plane”.

Though fully aware of the event, the 9/11 Commission did not deem the appearance of the military plane to be of any interest and did not include it in the final 9/11 Commission report.

CS – Number 6; Three F-16s assigned to Andrews Air Force Base, ten miles from Washington, DC, are conducting training exercises in North Carolina 207 miles away as the first plane crashes into the WTC. Even at significantly less than their top speed of 1500 mph, they could still have defended the skies over Washington well before 9am, more than 37 minutes before Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon, however, they did not return until after 9:55am.

Andrews AFB had no armed fighters on alert and ready to take off on the morning of 9/11.

CS – Number 7; WTC Building 7. Watch the video of its collapse.

CS – Number 8; Flight 93 is fourth plane to crash on 9/11 at 10:03am. V.P. Cheney only gives shoot down order at 10:10-10:20am and this is not communicated to NORAD until 28 minutes after Flight 93 has crashed.

Fueling further suspicion on this front is the fact that three months before the attacks of 9/11, Dick Cheney usurped control of NORAD, and therefore he, and no one else on planet Earth, had the power to call for military sorties on the hijacked airliners on 9/11. He did not exercise that power. Three months after 9/11, he relinquished command of NORAD and returned it to military operation.

CS – Number 9; Scores of main stream news outlets reported that the F.B.I. conducted an investigation of at least FIVE of the 9/11 hijackers being trained at U.S. military flight schools. Those investigations are now sealed and need to be declassified.

CS – Number 10; In 2004, New York firefighters Mike Bellone and Nicholas DeMasi went public to say they had found the black boxes at the World Trade Center, but were told to keep their mouths shut by FBI agents. Nicholas DeMasi said that he escorted federal agents on an all-terrain vehicle in October 2001 and helped them locate the devices, a story backed up by rescue volunteer Mike Bellone.

As the Philadelphia Daily News reported at the time, “Their story raises the question of whether there was a some type of cover-up at Ground Zero.”

CS – Number 11 – Hundreds of eye witnesses including first responders, fire captains, news reporters, and police, all described multiple explosions in both towers before and during the collapse.

CS – Number 12; An astounding video uncovered from the archives shows BBC News correspondent Jane Standley reporting on the collapse of WTC Building 7 over twenty minutes before it fell at 5:20pm on the afternoon of 9/11. Tapes from earlier BBC broadcasts show news anchors discussing the collapse of WTC 7 a full 26 minutes in advance. The BBC at first claimed that their tapes from 9/11 had been “lost” before admitting that they made the “error” of reporting the collapse of WTC 7 before it happened without adequately explaining how they could have obtained advance knowledge of the event.

In addition, over an hour before the collapse of WTC 7, at 4:10pm, CNN’s Aaron Brown reported that the building “has either collapsed, or is collapsing.”

CS – Number 13; Solicitor General Ted Olson’s claim that his wife Barbara Olsen called him twice from Flight 77, describing hijackers with box cutters, was a central plank of the official 9/11 story.

However, the credibility of the story was completely undermined after Olsen kept changing his story about whether his wife used her cell phone or the airplane phone. The technology to enable cell phone calls from high-altitude airline flights was not created until 2004. American Airlines confirmed that Flight 77 was a Boeing 757 and that this plane did not have airplane phones on board.

According to the FBI, Barbara Olsen attempted to call her husband only once and the call failed to connect, therefore Olsen must have been lying when he claimed he had spoken to his wife from Flight 77.

CS – Number 14; The size of a Boeing 757 is approximately 125ft in width and yet images of the impact zone at the Pentagon supposedly caused by the crash merely show a hole no more than 16ft in diameter. The engines of the 757 would have punctured a hole bigger than this, never mind the whole plane. Images before the partial collapse of the impact zone show little real impact damage and a sparse debris field completely inconsistent with the crash of a large jetliner, especially when contrasted with other images showing airplane crashes into buildings.

CS – Number 15; What is the meaning behind the following quote attributed to Dick Cheney which came to light during the 9/11 Commission hearings? The passage is taken from testimony given by then Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta.

During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, “The plane is 50 miles out.” “The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to “the plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the Vice President, “Do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?”

As the plane was not shot down, in addition to the fact that armed fighter jets were nowhere near the plane and the Pentagon defensive system was not activated, are we to take it that the orders were to let the plane find its target?

CS – Number 16; In May 2003, the Miami Herald reported how the Bush administration was refusing to release a 900-page congressional report on 9/11 because it wanted to “avoid enshrining embarrassing details in the report,” particularly regarding pre-9/11 warnings as well as the fact that the hijackers were trained at U.S. flight schools.

CS – Number 17; Top Pentagon officials cancelled their scheduled flights for September 11th on September 10th. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, following a security warning, cancelled a flight into New York that was scheduled for the morning of 9/11.

CS – Number 18; The technology to enable cell phone calls from high-altitude airline flights was not created until 2004, and even by that point it was only in the trial phase. Calls from cell phones which formed an integral part of the official government version of events were technologically impossible at the time.

CS – Number 19: On April 29, 2004, President Bush and V.P. Cheney would only meet with the commission under specific clandestine conditions. They insisted on testifying together and not under oath. They also demanded that their testimony be treated as a matter of “state secret.” To date, nothing they spoke of that day exists in the public domain.

CS – And finally Mr. President – Number 20; A few days after the attack, several newspapers as well as the FBI reported that a paper passport had been found in the ruins of the WTC. In August 2004, CNN reported that 9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah’s visa was found in the remains of Flight 93 which went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

I think there should be a show done on the issue of the different troubling theories surround what happened on 9/11/2001. Clearly a lot of people still have this stuff on their minds.