Fomer Democrat Bob Kerrey- Worked with the Project for the New American Century with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby (Cheney chief of staff) to develop mid-east policy (early 90's) Joined right wing republicans in sponsoring the Iraqi Liberation Act in 1998, worked with the Iraqi National Congress headed by convicted embezzler Ahmed Chalabi. Wrote the Wall Street Journal article "Finish the War: Liberate Iraq" strongly supporting Pres. Bush's justification for the war and made the phoney claim that Mohammed Atta was working with Iraqi intelligence in Prague, Czech Republic which was discredited by the CIA since it was later officially determined Atta was in the US at that time and did not leave the country. Philip Zelikow (Executive Director of the Commission) Zelikow wrote a book in 1995 with Condoleezza Rice and was selected by Bush as a part of his transistion team for the National Security Council. Zelikow was a close friend of Rice and worked with her as a member of President Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. His role on the Kean Commission was to determine the focus and scope of the investigation. He fought to keep Ms. Rice from testifying under oath. He worked with Richard Clarke, Sandy Berger and Rice on US policy towards Iraq as early as December 2000. Thomas Kean (chairman) Thomas Kean is a director of Amerada Hess Corp. which was involved with the trans Afghan pipeline consortium with Uno-Cal. The negotiations with the Taliban to secure the pipeline was handled by Enron on behalf of the Hess Corp. The invasion of Afghanistan was vital to the success of this project benefiting Amerada Hess Corp. Thomas Kean was also co-chairman of the Homeland Security Project under the work of the Century Foundation. Kean was part of the team that drafted the Homeland Security framework that later became the legislation for the Office of Homeland Security. All of these neo-con projects were clearly in support of the Bush agenda. I could go on and on but EVERYONE in this so called "independent" commission has deep neo-con and Bush ties. Lee Hamilton (another one of the democrat neo-cons)- worked with Dick Cheney of Wyoming on the Iran Contra hearing cover-ups and is a long time Cheney supporter. etc etc etc If you really care about 9-11 drop all the conspiracy websites, read Michael Ruppert's book, Crossing the Rubicon and then start researching his footnotes. You will learn more about what is wrong with 9-11 from 'respectable' sources than you will Alex Jones and the conspiracy crowd. There is not one reference to any of the so called 9-11 'truth' websites or Alex Jones or any of the 'conspiracy' theories in the book. Those are just red herrings anyway.
again, you missed my point - all i was doing was pointing out the fact that building 7 is not mentioned at all in the 9/11 commission report - i wasnt trying to argue anything about building 7 or conspiracy theories surrounding it. i wasnt questioning anything about...simply pointing out that the 9/11 commission report does not mention it at all. i would think that in a 1000 page report they would have at least made mention of the 3rd building which collapsed that day. kind of odd, imo. what is laughable? the fact that flight control operators were asking "is this real world or exercise"? the fact that our own military wanted to carry out terrorist attacks in this country against us? you can take it however you want, but these are the facts. i never claimed any superiority or enlightenment over anyone. just pointing out some facts - you can take them how you want. i think you are being a little oversensitive. no, i got your point. i just wanted to clarify what you said - you had stated that "there was NEVER any exercise on 9/11 regarding hijacked planes into the twin towers". just wanted to point out however, that there were wargames drills going on though and in the past drills had been done on hijacked planes hitting the wtc.
jomama- we are going round and round again and getting nowhere fast... my statement is accurate... on september 11th, there was no drill that had anything to do with the twin towers, as ryan17wagner stated... i'm not talking about prior scenarios, prior drills, or other war games on that day... and you are correct- the 9/11 report does not mention wtc7- you are correct- well done... my reasoning why it doesnt is because wtc7 was not a part of the attacks on America... I'm being pretty clear, aren't I? not trying to be oversensitive, but the my rebuttals are obvious and quite easy to comprehend, using logic and common sense... thank you for contributing to my debate with ryan17wagner, who was a bit confused about the drills being performed on 9/11
The 'key' drill the morning of Sept. 11 was a live-fly hijack drill- exactly what was happening in real time. If you haven't thoroughly researched Vigilant Warrior, Vigilant Guardian, Tripod II, Northern Guardian, an Northern Vigilant then you do not know enough about the drills going on the morning of Sept. 11. And yes the drill had everything to do with hijacked airliners and thus the twin towers. If you email me I will get you verifiable documentation of this or just read Ruppert's book- Crossing the Rubicon, he has enough documented to convince you- Chapters 18-21.
The commissioners weren't plucked out of thin air and they all had long histories in politics. Given how long Cheney and others in the Admin. have been around its not surprising that they have dealt with the commissioners before. Its likely impossible to find anyone of any recognized political stature who had never had any dealings with the people who are supposedly benefitting from 9/11. For instance while Lee Hamilton and Bob Kerrey have worked with Cheney and other neo-cons on legislation and other things they have also frequently been opponents of them too. Bob Kerrey headed the Democratic effort on the Florida recounts trying to prevent Cheney from taking office. The problem with arguing for such a large and complicated conspiracy is that given the nature of US politics all sorts of ties could be found between almost anyone who has worked in DC. Its also the nature of something as large as 9/11 that conspiracies could be manufactured depending on how selective you are on presenting the facts. This could apply to any major event and it would be just as easy to generate conspiracies regarding Katrina or the Asian Tsunami. For example if I said there was a conspiracy or complicity regarding Katrina. Consider that it has long been known that a major hurricane could hit New Orleans and it was known that the flood wall / levee system couldn't withstand more than a Cat. 3 storm so why wasn't there major upgrades to them. If Bush Admin. is so clever why did they appoint someone as incompent as Michael Brown to head FEMA? Could it be possible that Michael was intentionally appointed to botch the FEMA response so that he wouldn't disagree with handing over contracts to Halliburton KBR and other groups with ties to the Bush Admin..? Was it possible that he isn't incompetent at all but is doing what he was intended? Consider New Orleans itself. New Orleans is a great tourists destination yet has been plagued by crime and poverty. What better way to clear out the poor and criminal class of New Orleans than to have a disaster that requires them to be relocated and botch the recovery effort. Consider that Ray Nagin was elected with the support of the business community so what better way than to have a seemingly incompetent mayor make it difficult for the poor to return to New Orleans and leave it open to business development. Just by that sort of reading of the facts with a few slants a conspiracy could easily be generated that points to the government seeking to have a disaster taht would alter New Orleans. The problem is though that conspiracy ignores a lot of facts like how much political and financial damage such a conspiracy would do to those who might benefit from it and also failing to consider if there are other easier and more politically palatable ways to accomplish the same goals. The same reasoning applies to 9/11 though. While there are people who have benefitted from it also a lot of the same business and other interests have been harmed by it. Halliburton KBR while getting a short term windfall has taken a hit to its reputation due to its close ties to the Bush Admin. and poor performance. We aren't anywere near building a pipeline through Afghanistan and since Pakistan was politically destabilized a pipeline through Afghanistan is perhaps even less likely than on 9/10/2001. It just seems unlikely to believe on the one hand that these people are so smart that they can carry out something as complex as a 9/11 conspiracy and not then fall victim to such obvious problems later on. So while conspiracy or complicity on the part of the US government and other shadowy financial and industrial forces isn't impossible it strikes me as very very unlikely.
These are good points and understood, but there is a difference between having a past association and a vested interest. Forget about conspiracy for a moment. That one word destroys any objectivity you might have. Do some research- find out if these men and women on the commission had enough stake in the official version to be biased. If you do the research and you don't see any basis for bias, that's fine. We all have the amazing abibility to take logical steps to the wrong conclusion, that is why over 50% of business start ups fail, over 50% of marriages last less than 2 yrs. and the American vote is split about 50-50; we can't all be right
Great news!! I'm not saying they do, but if these numbers reflect the US as a whole, imagine......10's of millions of people. Shoot, even if was more like 25%, we are still talking millions. But it doesn't matter what we think.....we are all 'idiots'...
and those idiots have more idiots and so on until civilization crumbles and has to start over again. woohoo!
I would but the whole point of this thread is about conspiracy. What else does "Was 911 an Inside Job?" mean but if there was a conspiracy around 9/11. I'm familiar with the background of several of the commissioners and I agree that there could be the potential for bias. That said its far from clear that there is enough to say bias. To me it comes down to if you believe that there was bias leading to conspiracy or complicity you will look for it with presumption it is there. That strikes me as pre-judging the evidence. At the sametime though even pre-judging the evidence the results of that bias have to be looked at. While yes people make mistakes it still strikes me as very odd that people who could pull off such a complicated conspiracy or be complicit enough to cover something like this up and yet still blunder. It requires having to believe two conflicting views that there are super powerful forces out there manipulating things yet these forces also make alot of obvious mistakes.
yeah, and 25% of people think George Bush is doing a good job. You will always have people who believe in UFO's, the Loch Ness Monster, and that 9/11 was an inside job.
And people think the right is crazy for incorrectly believing that Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda. The left is just as crazy...
While people are certainly free to believe what they want I do think the amount of people who believe that 9/11 was an inside job is a bad sign for our government and society. While I am very unconvinced that there was a government conspiracy or complicity about 9/11 there is no doubt that our government historically and this Admin. has engaged in very shady and questionable activities. That so many people will readily embrace the idea that the government would deliberately be party to the murder of thousands of Americans in this country shows a disturbing lack of faith in our government. Democracy is more than just having the vote but also having faith in our political system. What point would there be in a vote if you believe that everything is fixed already. The danger I see is that if enough people don't have faith in our system, of even if a few people get desperate enough, our system collapses and the only tool for change will be violence. I don't think we are near there yet but I think its something we should be worried about. I also don't necessarily blame those who hold these beliefs and lay most of the blame on our political leaders and their inability to engender enough trust that so many people would feel the need to believe things like this.
Neither side is immune to having it's share of stupid people. This is why I am an independent now. I think both political parties are really just the same, just one is covered in piss and the other in crap. Perhaps this is why people believe in conspiracy theories in the first place, it's the only way they can live with the crapola gov't we have and make sense of how rotten to the core it's becoming. Perhaps this is how great nations decline.
