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Do you believe there is a U.S. government cover-up surrounding 9/11? (pg. 31)
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| skot_e |
| quote: | Originally posted by tiesto14
because i am curious....can you answer...do you think the Bush administration killed 3000 of its own people? |
I know this is not directed at me, but anyway... NO.
i don't think they had agents pilot the planes into the buildings etc, I do however think that the govt is trying to hide something. What I don't know, but something. Otherwise why do they not release ALL the relevant photo's video's documents etc. What harm can it do other than clear up peoples misconceptions.
Why seal documets as classified if the contents do nothing to threaten the security of a nation (all govts not just US), unless there is something that may weaken the govt in the eyes of the people.
Maybe that is the real reason the US is trying to hide the info, maybe there are real concerns at the top about the security in the US and it's inablility to properly defend itself from futher attack. Tho I doubt it. |
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| skot_e |
On a side note: taken from Jan press conference at the whitehouse...
Q Scott, does the administration believe that the President's wartime powers gives him the authority to authorize an extension of Patriot Act-style counter-terrorism techniques, whether or not Congress renews the act?
MR. McCLELLAN: The extension of the -- we want to see Congress reauthorize the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act is an important tool in helping us to prevent attacks. It has helped us to disrupt plots and prevent attacks from happening, and that's why it's so important that Congress move forward on renewing the Patriot Act.
Avoiding the question? |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by skot_e
Avoiding the question? |
Apparently that's part of his job - deflecting serious questions that the Bush administration wouldn't want to answer. |
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| Trancer-X |
How Bush Hit the 'Trifecta' on 9/11 - and the Public Lost Big-Time
It is sickening to contemplate an administration intentionally looking the other way while terrorists scheme so that whatever havoc they wreak can provide cover for the president to raid Social Security.
by Brad Carlton
Bush, in the weeks before September 11, pledged to honor the sanctity of the Social Security lockbox except in the event of recession, war, or a national emergency. But after "everything changed" on 9/11, he reportedly gloated to his budget director, Mitch Daniels, "Lucky me--I hit the trifecta!" At the time, this comment (a variation of which is being recycled for laughs at current GOP fundraisers) seemed merely offensive. But in light of revelations that Bush's August 6 briefing memo was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S.," Bush's "luck" and weird prescience are worth more than passing scrutiny.
Whenever someone is suspected of a crime, investigators look for a motive in addition to actual proof of guilt to determine, a posteriori, whether there was malice aforethought. In cases of criminal negligence, motive must also be deduced, a priori, to answer the question: were preventive failures due to craftiness or mere cluelessness?
The serial apologists of the Bush Is Not Stupid crowd are rather incongruously opting for the latter, this in the wake of the scandal about pre-9/11 failures to issue precisely the kinds of public warnings and security directives that accompanied the also "non-specific" Y2K threats. For now, it is difficult to say who knew what when because the administration is not exactly being forthcoming, preferring instead to use the scandal as an excuse to broaden the FBI's snoop powers. However: there was a potential motive for the administration to sit on perceived terrorist threats.
Think back to the days before 9/11. The topic on everyone's lips (Condit aside) was: what will happen when budget realities force Bush to raid Social Security? He had explicitly promised during his campaign to establish a contingency fund for severe emergencies that would keep Social Security untouched. But the economy was tanking and the costs of the tax cut made the raid inevitable. Even Daniels acknowledged that the government would be forced to tap Social Security to the tune of $14 billion to fund pending legislation. Strangely, Bush kept insisting, "We can work together to avoid dipping into Social Security." But, beginning August 24, he gave himself an escape clause: "I've said that the only reason we should use Social Security funds is in case of an economic recession or war." (Three days earlier he had said that there should be "special consideration" in the budget for these contingencies. Otherwise, this was completely new rhetoric.)
September 4: businessman and commentator Ben Cohen ran a mock "help wanted" ad reading, "Serious enemy needed to justify Pentagon budget increase. Defense contractors desperate." Same day: a CBS poll found that 66 percent of Americans did not think a recession (extant, but not yet confirmed) was reason enough to tap Social Security. September 6: Bush invented another exception. "The only time to use Social Security money is in times of war, times of recession, or times of severe emergency." September 11: he had all three. Lucky Bush.
Then, on the morning of September 12, Bush announced his very first post-9/11 policy move. Because the attacks were "more than acts of terror; they were acts of war, this morning I am sending to Congress a request for emergency funding authority." On cue, pundits like Tim Russert chirped, "Suddenly the Social Security lockbox seems so trivial." Since then the trust fund has been strip-mined to subsidize pork barrel and deficit spending with no political fallout for the president.
These extraordinary coincidences have gone unremarked in the media, who have entirely missed that the terms of the "trifecta"--note that the word connotes something you bet on--was never mentioned until two-and-a-half weeks after Bush's August 6 briefing and days before 9/11. (He has since claimed the 'trifecta' was a campaign promise. This is a lie.) It is sickening to contemplate an administration intentionally looking the other way while terrorists scheme so that whatever havoc they wreak can provide cover for the president to raid Social Security. But we journalists are paid to have strong stomachs, and we should be hardy enough to admit that the scenario is conceivable, for three reasons.
First and most obviously, defense contractors contributed more than $8.7 million to Republican campaigns in 2000. They stood to gain billions from the fallout of a successful terrorist strike.
Second, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill advocated the abolition of Social Security and Medicare in a May 20, 2001 interview with the Financial Times. "Able-bodied adults should save enough on a regular basis so that they can provide for their own retirement, and, for that matter, health and medical needs," he said, adding, "The president is also intrigued about the possibility of fixing this mess."
Third, and by far most importantly, Bush needed to save his presidency, which by August was already in serious danger of sinking into fiscal chaos and one-term ignominy. This is a viable motive. Whether or not Bush or someone in his administration acted on it by winking at hijacking threats remains to be seen.
But it was unsettling, though still inconclusive, to read in the May 17 Washington Post, "Members of congressional committees investigating the pre-Sept. 11 warnings said yesterday that there is far more damaging information that has not yet been disclosed about the government's knowledge of and inaction over events leading up to Sept. 11."
Outrageously, the public is now being told that there aren't sufficient votes in Congress to approve an investigation by a blue ribbon panel. The alternative intelligence committee investigation is only pro forma public anesthesia. It will not do: the committee's oversight role potentially implicates its own members. To clear up all doubts, there must be an independent, public inquiry. It is well past time to insist on a return to open government.
Brad Carlton is an investigative reporter currently living in South Carolina.
http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/trifecta_jun02.shtml |
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| Trancer-X |
On February 1, 2006, BYU Professor Steven E. Jones gave a public lecture on the various anomalies of 9/11. The lecture took place at the Utah State Valley College in Orem.
The nearly 2-hour lecture was broad in scope, and very well attended. Everything you ever wanted to know about 9/11 is here, presented professionally and conclusively.
http://madcowpolitics.com/byu.wmv |
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| ogvh5150 |
| quote: | Third of Americans suspect 9-11 government conspiracy
By THOMAS HARGROVE
Scripps Howard News Service
More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.
The national survey of 1,010 adults also found that anger against the federal government is at record levels, with 54 percent saying they "personally are more angry" at the government than they used to be.
Widespread resentment and alienation toward the national government appears to be fueling a growing acceptance of conspiracy theories about the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Suspicions that the 9/11 attacks were "an inside job" _ the common phrase used by conspiracy theorists on the Internet _ quickly have become nearly as popular as decades-old conspiracy theories that the federal government was responsible for President John F. Kennedy's assassination and that it has covered up proof of space aliens.
Seventy percent of people who give credence to these theories also say they've become angrier with the federal government than they used to be.
Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them "because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East."
"One out of three sounds high, but that may very well be right," said Lee Hamilton, former vice chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also called the 9/11 commission.) His congressionally appointed investigation concluded that federal officials bungled their attempts to prevent, but did not participate in, the attacks by al Qaeda five years ago.
"A lot of people I've encountered believe the U.S. government was involved," Hamilton said. "Many say the government planned the whole thing. Of course, we don't think the evidence leads that way at all."
The poll also found that 16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed.
Conspiracy groups for at least two years have also questioned why the World Trade Center collapsed when fires that heavily damaged similar skyscrapers around the world did not cause such destruction. Sixteen percent said it's "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that "the collapse of the twin towers in New York was aided by explosives secretly planted in the two buildings."
Twelve percent suspect the Pentagon was struck by a military cruise missile in 2001 rather than by an airliner captured by terrorists.
That lower percentage may result from an effort by the conservative Washington-based Judicial Watch advocacy group to debunk the claim. The group filed claims under the Freedom of Information Act and got two fill loops released from Pentagon security cameras.
"Some people claim they can't see anything, but I see a plane hitting the Pentagon at incredibly high speed," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "I see the nose of the plane clearly entering the frame of one video and the tail of the plane entering the Pentagon in the other video."
Many conspiracy Web sites have posted the video loops and report the films are inconclusive or were manipulated by the government.
"Some folks will never be convinced," Fitton said. "But I'm hoping that these videos will dissuade reasonable people from falling into a trap with these conspiracy theories."
University of Florida law professor Mark Fenster, author of the book "Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture," said the poll's findings reflect public anger at the unpopular Iraq war, realization that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction and growing doubts of the veracity of the Bush administration.
"What has amazed me is not that there are conspiracy theories, but that they didn't seem to be getting any purchase among the American public until the last year or so," Fenster said. "Although the Iraq war was not directly related to the 9/11 attacks, people are now looking back at 9/11 with much more skepticism than they used to."
Conspiracy-believing participants in the poll agree their suspicions are recent.
"I certainly didn't think of conspiracies when 9/11 first happened," said Elaine Tripp, 62, of Tabernacle, N.J. "I don't know if President Bush was aware of the exact time it was going to happen. But he certainly didn't do enough to stop it. Bush was so intent on having his own little war."
Garrett Johnson, 19, of Manassas, Va., said it was "well after the fact" before he started questioning the official explanation of the attacks. "But then people I know started talking about it. And the Internet had a lot to do with this. After reading all of the different articles there, I started to think we weren't being told the truth."
The Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University has tracked the level of resentment people feel toward the federal government since 1995, starting shortly after Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City. Forty-seven percent then said they, personally, feel "more angry at the federal government" than they used to. That percentage dropped to 42 percent in 1997, 34 percent in 1998 and only 12 percent shortly after 9/11 during the groundswell of patriotism and support for the government after the attacks.
But the new survey found that 77 percent say their friends and acquaintances have become angrier with government recently and 54 percent say they, themselves, have become angrier _ both record levels.
The survey also found that people who regularly use the Internet but who do not regularly use so-called "mainstream" media are significantly more likely to believe in 9/11 conspiracies. People who regularly read daily newspapers or listen to radio newscasts were especially unlikely to believe in the conspiracies.
"We know that there are a lot of people now asking questions," said Janice Matthews, executive director of 911Truth.org, one of the most sophisticated Internet sites raising doubts about official explanations of the attacks. "We didn't have the Internet after Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin or the Kennedy assassination. But we live in different times now."
Matthews' Web site averaged 4,000 "hits" a day last year, but currently has at least 12,000 visits every 24 hours. The site, according to its online policy statement, is dedicated to showing the public that "elements within the U.S. government must have orchestrated or participated in the execution of the attacks for these to have happened the way in which they did."
Participants in the poll were asked to respond to "several serious accusations that some people have made against the federal government in recent years." Five conspiracy theories were described and participants were asked if each was "very likely, somewhat likely or unlikely."
The level of suspicion of U.S. official involvement in a 9/11 conspiracy was only slightly behind the 40 percent who suspect "officials in the federal government were directly responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy" and the 38 percent who believe "the federal government is withholding proof of the existence of intelligent life from other planets."
The poll found that a majority of young adults give at least some credence to a 9/11 conspiracy compared to less than a fourth of people 65 or older. Members of racial and ethnic minorities, people with only a high school education and Democrats were especially likely to suspect federal involvement in 9/11.
The survey was conducted by telephone from July 6-24 at the Scripps Survey Research Center at the University of Ohio under a grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation. The poll has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
(Thomas Hargrove is a reporter for Scripps Howard News Service. Guido H. Stempel III is director of the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University.)
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ARTICLE USED WITHOUT PERMISSION FOR EDUCATIONAL, NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. |
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| Haunted |
| its funny how the evidence supporting the theory is adding up by each passing day, and yet all you brainwashed idiots can't think of any arguments so you just attack people for thinking outside of the box. do you enjoy being a sheep? |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
whatever you reckon einstein. every piece of so-called 'evidence' has been taken to task and shown to be lacking in any real substance. sheep? youre the ones following obscure websites and conspiracy nuts. get a life.
| quote: |
I've been getting a lot of email lately from people sending me this stupid 9/11 conspiracy video called \"Loose Change.\" I've tried to ignore it for months now, but you morons keep forwarding it to me, and I keep having to add more email addresses to my spam filter. The ironic part is that I'm a huge conspiracy nut, and even I can't stomach this bull. For example, I believe that there is a small, reptile-like creature called Chupacabra that sucks the blood of goats in Mexico. Area 51? Hell yes. Roswell? Pass me the Kool-Aid. But \"Loose Change\" elevates bull to an artform. Watching this video is like being bukakked with stupid.
Unlike others who debunk 9/11 conspiracy theories, or \"cons\" for short, I'm not going to bother with going through intricate point-by-point rebuttals, or pointing out the hundreds of factual inaccuracies and outright lies in this \"documentary,\" because I don't need to. In fact, I can debunk the entire story with one simple observation:
The fact that this man is alive...
...is proof that \"Loose Change\" is bull.
Here's why:
1. The man in the picture above is Dylan Avery. To be more precise, the fact that Dylan, his friends, and family are alive, is proof that \"Loose Change\" is bull. He, along with a couple of his friends, created a 9/11 conspiracy video claiming that the US government and the military caused 9/11. Take a closer look at the last part of that last sentence: he's claiming that the US government, for whatever ends, killed nearly 3,000 innocent Americans, and tens if not hundreds of thousands of more lives in the conflicts that ensued because of it.
2. Since Dylan's arguing that the government has no problem killing 3,000 innocent people, this raises the question: if his documentary is true, and we've established that the government has no ethical qualms about killing thousands of its own people, then why wouldn't the government kill Avery and his friends as well? What's a few more lives to them to ensure the success of this conspiracy?
Whatever reason it may be that the government supposedly orchestrated this conspiracy, it must have been worth it to them to cause so much suffering and loss of life. So if there's any truth to this, then you can bet your ass that the government wouldn't let a couple of pecker-neck chumps with a couple of Macs and too much time on their hands jeopardise their entire operation by letting this stupid video float around on the Internet. I can picture you morons emailing me now: \"BUT MADOX, MAYBE DYLAN POSTED IT ON THE INTERNET BEFORE THE GOVERNMENT HAD A CHANCE TO REMOVE IT LOL.\" Yeah, too bad this rebuttal is inconsistent with the premise of Dylan's -festival of a movie: that the WTC was brought down \"in a carefully planned and controlled demolition ... and it was pulled off with military precision.\" Now we're expected to believe that the same government that was able to commit the largest terrorist operation in history--with military precision no less--is suddenly too incompetent to sniff out and shut down a little website set up by some college losers within days, if not minutes of its creation?
I win. There is no conspiracy. Eat my , losers.
The other type of 9/11 conspiracy email you dips keep sending is the $20 dollar WTC conspiracy. Glenn Beck--a loud-mouthed, fat-faced on CNN--has a copy of it on his website:
The new U.S. $20 dollar bill contains hidden pictures of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks!
Yes! see for yourself...
1st) FOLD A NEW $20 BILL THIS WAY:
2nd) CONTINUE TO FOLD THIS WAY
Compare your fold precisely to this picture.
3rd) FOLD THE RIGHT SIDE UNDER,
exactly as you folded the left side.
You'll immediately see the Pentagon ablaze! (red circle)
4th) NOW FLIP IT OVER AND SEE OTHER SIDE
The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center are hit and smoking.
What are the odds that a simple geometric folding of the $20 bill would accidentally contain a representation of both terror attacks?
What are the odds that a simple geometric folding of a $20 bill with elements of design that were conceived in 1928 by a committee of treasurers, a full 42 years before the World Trade Center even existed, could accidentally contain a representation of both terror attacks? Pretty good, apparently.
The article on Beck's page goes on to ask: Need even more proof? No, you cock! You had me at \"the U.S. $20 dollar bill contains hidden pictures of the World Trade Center.\" As if a folded picture of shrubbery on a bill that kind of looks like smoke wasn't convincing enough of a conspiracy, Beck offers this gem on his site to sway those few remaining skeptics:
This is followed by the fact that 9+11 = 20, and in big red letters:
COINCIDENCE? YOU DECIDE!
The question mark at the end of \"COINCIDENCE\" is clearly there to denote a rhetorical question, as clearly, this is not a coincidence. To help out Glenn Beck, I sat down with a $100 bill and tried to find any hidden messages the bill might contain. Here's one that he hasn't found yet:
Step 1:
Fold the bill so that the \"ON\" of \"ONE\" is covered:
Step 2:
Fold again like so, covering \"HU\" of \"HUNDRED:\"
Step 3:
Another fold covering part of \"DOLLARS:\"
Step 4:
Finally make one last fold, and with a magic marker, add the following letters to reveal a hidden message!
Coincidence? YOU DECIDE!
Further Reading:
For anyone interested in a point-by-point debunking of some of the most popular conspiracy theories out there (like the fact that steel melts at 1525° C, and although jet fuel burns only at 825° C, it doesn't have to burn hot enough to melt to cause the buildings to collapse, since steel loses 50% of its strength at 648 ° C), check out the following links:
Popular Mechanics
Loose Change guide
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| Haunted |
wow you really debunked all the conspiracy theories with that article, nice job.
no one has proved anything. maybe steel does lose 50% of its strength or whatever, but that doesn't disprove the governments involvement in what happened, and the fact that theres so much information missing in the official "investigation" report. if you think the cops stole your car, would you let the cops run the investigation? |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
omg. how simple are you? that article had nothing to do with debunking any of your , it was merely mocking your abject stupidity.
ive watched many of the vids, read many of the sites, and youre all still grasping at straws. so many experts from so many fields have taken the time to analyse these nutjob theories, so how about you take the time to read their rebuttals instead of repeating already debunked bull? |
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| Haunted |
| ok show some rebuttals then. particularly one that proves that the government was not involved, i could care less what temperature steel melts |
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