Loose change

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Most people rather than being shocked have come to expect such behaviour from President Bush. The secrecy surrounding much of the war in Iraq - such as the British governments attempts to hush up a leaked government memo alleging that the American president considered bombing al-Jazeera's offices in Doha, the capital of Qatar - provides a fertile ground for conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists can be quite logically argue that if George Bush seriously recommended that an independent news organisation located in a US ally's territory be bombed in order to stop unfavourable coverage of the Iraq war, than he is quite capable of organizing attacks on innocent people in America simply to further his political agenda. Hence the existence of discussions such as this.

 

Oh boy. Another thread relegated to Bush bashing....

 

I don't think there was any conspiracy, but I do think that Bush messed up really badly, and could have easily repelled the attack, but a gigantic cock-up meant that all of the radars that would have picked up the incoming planes were pointed in the wrong direction. Of course, you could just as easily claim that Bush knew it was going to happen, but chose to do nothing.

I just think it's funny that some people express their disgust with Bush by not voting. I'm not sure about the logic behind that one.

 

Attributing Bush's words to Bush is no more "Bush Bashing" than pointing out that Clinton got a BJ from an intern in his office would qualify as "Clinton Bashing". They are true.....and acknowledging a truth isn't quite the same thing as bashing someone.

 

How? Up until 9/11 there was NO WAY a domestic commercial airline, filled with passengers, would have been targeted and shot down intentionally in American airspace. No one at high levels believed something like this could happen -- in fact, very few people around the world believed such an attack was feasible.

What radars are you talking about? Radars are onmidirectional. They spin 'round and 'round and pick up nearly everything in a 360° arc. The radars operated by the FAA followed the planes until they went too low. The operators just didn't realize there was a threat (see my first paragraph).

There are no 'special radars' to pick up commercial planes flying into New York.

Edit: I see that MM changed some of his comments while I was writing mine.

 

ugh... I can't believe I'm getting in on this again...

Look it happened, and I was there a mile away when it did. Thousands and thousands of other people saw it happen. I think people just wierd themselves out watching low quality telly footage again and again and again, imagining detonators etc...

And nothing at all surprising about how the buildings went down...

@Shoshino- yes the cia's done plenty of things no one should be proud of (although I'd also argue on balance they've done some ok things), but you could make a similar list for the intelligence services of any number of countries... it's a messy world out there. And plenty of the things you list were collaborations, both local and with other outside interests... the cia can't just step in and take over a country without anyone knowing any better...

@edorien: the 2001 bbc story has been pretty much debunked (even on wikipedia). Yes there was another guy with a similar name who's still alive. Even Mohammed Atta's dad claimed he was still alive for a few weeks, if I recall correctly.

Sure there are plenty of questions that still need to be answered, and this administration has had a terrible record with holding onto information that might make it look bad. But it's absurd to think that this points to them pulling the strings (as opposed to trying to cover their @sses for negligence and stupidity, for example)...

 

The radar at NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) was pointed in the wrong direction. They were also told that the planes had been hijacked at 8.25 AM, but were not officially told until 9.00 AM.

There were no planes available in North America that morning, meaning that any plane within that area would have obviously been hijacked, and I doubt that the American government would sacrifice hundreds of lives by not intercepting a plane, regardless of whether it had innocents on it.

 

Has it occured to you that, while we may have known that the planes were hijacked, we didn't know that they intended to crash the hijacked planes into the world trade center, the white house(theorized to have been the target of the failed hi-jacking attempt), and the pentagon? Hi-jackers usually want to go somewhere.....not crash into something.

 

Eh. You're probably right on that one. I don't really have a solid stance on 9/11, so I'm open to valid points.

 

I doubt severly doubt the attack was orcestrated by elements within the US but I dont hold it above for some of those elements to ignore warnings about such an attack since it would be in their best interest.

The only ones who benefitted from the attack were elements of the Bush administration and Bush himself and I wouldnt at all be surprised to find out that they might have known about it and worked actively for ntohing to be done to stop it. 9/11 gave basically a free card for those people to do exactly what they wanted and bring lal their plans to fruition. The deaths of thousands of Americans was the best thing that have happened to Bush and his puppeteers in his whole life and they havent been shy in cashing in.

 

We knew that Usama Bin Laden was planning an attack and we also knew that hi-jacked airplanes could potentially be one of the methods that were employed. Clinton saw the US vulnerability to terror attacks had actually drafted a dept of Homeland Security, but didn't have quite enough time to fully implement it before leaving office, so he handed the reins of the project over to Bush....who promptly shelved it when he took office (and then took credit for the idea himself after implementing it 6 months too late). We were warned about 9/11. We didn't know when, or exactly how, but we knew it was coming. Clinton had even drafted up an organisation whose sole purpose would be to find such threats and eliminate them.

Given Bush's (in)actions regarding Hurricane Katrina, I think it's safe to say that Bush failed to do what was necessary out of incompetence, not malice.

[ June 18, 2006, 05:36: Message edited by: Drew ]