Who was responsible for 9/11, and how do you know?

Here is a good question, previously posted on Fluther, that has many interesting and great answers.

Do you believe that 9/11 was an inside job?

Who do I personally believe was responsible for 9/11? I don’t know for sure. I’d like to think it was terrorists and I do believe they played a part but I also suspect that the U.S. government knew a lot more than they will ever tell the public and that is a travesty of justice in my eyes.

I don’t like jumping to conclusions and accusations. I think there are many things about the whole incident has questions that are not really answered. Planes disappearing, people who calls from cell phones on airplanes when it shouldn’t be possible to get signal.

I also find it worrying that not only doesn’t the FBI have any evidence linking bin Laden to 9/11, he himself went public and denied having anything to do with it in BBC, a quite credible media company. Also is it interesting that bin Laden himself is considered alive, even though he was severely ill and needed blood dialysis every three days running around in the mountains of Afghanistan, and still cannot be found.

I would like to see some answers. I think we deserve clarity. People can shout about inside job and all kinds of conspiracies. I just think there are reasonable questions that needs answers. That’s all.

I, as well, don’t know what to believe but I am leaning towards thinking that if the Bush administration wasn’t directly involved in 9/11, they certainly didn’t mind its consequences and what it did for their war mongering

I’m not certain but I think Kevbo was involved somehow.

Liberals and gays

What most of you don’t know is that Ronald McDonald and Biggie Smalls orchestrated the attacks on September 11th.

Why?

I’ve already told you too much…tupac liked to ask alot of fuckin’ questions too…

@upholstry lol, indeed and and…FEMINISTS!!!!

It’s interesting that nobody has offered any evidence to support any alternate theories for what they think happened. Obviously something happened.

The questions raised are:

1 to what extent was the Bush administration INVOLVED? I don’t think there’s any evidence that they were involved at all. The evidence usually put forth—that they used 9/11 to cheerlead the Iraq War—is a fallacy. It also violates Occam’s razor: an uninvolved Bush administration requires far less additional explanations to account for holes than an involved Bush administration does. (Namely, if the Bush administration was “in on it” to start a war with Iraq, why the hell didn’t they just blame Saddam Hussein directly for the attacks instead of al-Qaeda? Yes, I realize they later tried to link the two, my question is, why even bother to bring al-Qaeda in the first place?)

2. To what extent was the Bush administration CULPABLE? This is a bit harder to determine. Some people, including former Clinton officials, have accused the Bush administration of ignoring their “warnings” about al-Qaeda that they left. But I don’t believe we have any documents to show exactly how specific these warnings were. We also don’t know how—or even whether—the Bush administration could have acted to prevent the attacks based on this information.

An entirely separate issue is:

πi. To what extent did the Bush administration use 9/11 to emotionally, or dishonestly, cheerlead for the Iraq War? I’d say quite a bit, from reporting speculation about Iraq-al-Qaeda links as fact, and constantly invoking 9/11 and terrorism during the war when they were unrelated, and classifying it as part of the “war on terror.”

Now, even if you raise questions, you still need to provide some explanation for what happened. Lots of people here are saying “I don’t know, I can’t be sure.” Are you sure about the moon landing? Some people say that’s fake. Are you sure about the Holocaust? About evolution vs. intelligent design? About aliens building the pyramids? About whites/America deliberately inventing and deliberately spreading AIDS in Africa to commit genocide against the blacks? Please tell us what other “official explanations” you doubt (you can list any of the above if you like).

Jesus

America was to blame, the conspiracy theorists are right, expect there was no conspiracy, America’s Policy in the middle East throughout the 20th and early 21st Century was/is reprehensible, thus igniting the slow fuse that culminated in 9/11. In much the same way as America’s aggressive tactics to force Japan into a favourable trade agreement, contributed to a chain of events that led to Pearl Harbor. What is also reprehensible or possibly slightly sad, is that i seem to be one of the few people stating the obvious here. Maybe i have exclusive access to clandestine, material in Britain denied to American citizens, that formulates my conclusions…who knows

I don’t know if I believe that the Bush administration directly carried out the attacks, but I sure do believe that they ignored intelligence, acted slowly, and basically sat by idly despite threats. That said, I also think that while the government probably don’t carry out the attacks, if they knew at all or stood by idly or turned a blind eye to another group in order to advance their war mongering, than it’s on their heads too.

I was working for someone who said she talked frequently to a high level security official in the Middle East and that he had told her to stay away from the WTC right around that time.

She was a bit paranoid and a bit crazy, so I don’t know if it was true, but she definitely believed that he knew details about what would happen. I would have put more stock in it if she had said something before it happened.

How much the Bush Administration knew is questionable, but there is no way I would believe that they actually planned the attacks.

I agree with fireside. Somewhere between the atrocity and the absurdity lies the truth.

The thing is we will never know the whole truth; the Illuminati hold the puppet strings. I could conceive of this government orchestrating something like this to gain positions in strategic regions like Iraq and Afghanistan to counter Russia’s posturing and/or to drive a wedge into “the axis of evil”, all for regional, then ultimately global control.
Zbigniew Brzezinski proposed at a recent conference perpetuated efforts to act to the disadvantage of Russia, so that a western power base can be built in Eastern Europe and down into the Middle East and over into West Asia. This is really what Iraq and Afghanistan are all about.

It’s no secret what Iraq was really about

@mammal, saying America is to blame for the 9/11 attacks is different from says America is to blame for creating the conditions that gave rise to groups like al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

@Qingu
shrugs doesn’t sound all that different to me

Gee, I always thought it was those guys driving the planes that were the cause of 9/11.

At this point, who cares? Have we moved on to this conspiracy theory because we are tired of talking about grassy knolls?

Bush and his people were not involved in planning or carrying out 9/11. Some American policies over the last 30 years were taken by many Arabs as being really, really bad ideas and some of them decided we are nasty people who need to be attacked. A few of them were smart enough to figure out a way to use our own airplanes against us.

All Bush and company did was use it as a rallying cry to send troops into Iraq. Whether Halliburton was cheering them on or not I don’t know, but it certainly didn’t hurt their bottom line any.

@Qingu, in addition to believing (as you say), do you know your version to be true? Is this yet another exercise where every contrary opinion requires a higher standard of proof than your own?

I doubt anyone on Fluther can say that they know what actually happened.

@mammal I beg to differ, The entity you are actually speaking about is American Political Policy, not America. We, the people, are not, and were not responsible in any way. We have done everything we can to elect representatives that will act in our best interest, but they don’t always do that. Instead, they act on the behalf of those who pay their way, and the, I submit, Sir is not “America”.

Occam’s Razor—everything about the “official” explanation for the attacks DOES actually fit. The conspiracy theories are absurdly complicated and largely inane. Someone ALWAYS talks. This is not to say I accept without question the Lone Gunman theory or the classic weather balloon/swamp gas explanation. But it is HARD to pull shit off, and the explanations theorists offer are usually somewhat lacking in the “Why” department. That is, the goals they hypothesize for the conspirators could always have been accomplished by much, much simpler means. And last, but not least, every single piece of “evidence” possessed by the the so-called Truth movement is completely and undeniably refutable.

As for whether the government knew more than they will ever let on, well, I just don’t see a reason for their silence. We know that they had intelligence they ignored. Is this not indictment enough?

All 9/11 conspiracy theories are more or less baseless. Al-Qaeda networks and allied terrorists are responsible. Was George W. Bush also responsible? Yes, because he didn’t listen to Bill Clinton, his predecessor. After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing Bill Clinton took the issue of islamist extremism very seriously and described this in his 2004 book called ‘My Life’ (a very interesting read, although not as excellent as ‘The Audacity of Hope’). The following links (especially the second one) show that Bush basically ignored the Bin Laden threat.

http://www.ontheissues.org/My_Life.htm

http://www.ontheissues.org/Archive/My_Life_Homeland_Security.htm

It was the aliens. I know it because the bag lady down the road told me so.

(which is just as good as “it was the Afghans, I know because Bush told me so”)

@mattbrowne while experts say it shouldn’t be possible, the twin towers and building 7 are the only buildings in the world to have collapsed like that. And the presence found of the compounds of Thermate, are just one of many undisputable facts that should be looked into. Making up your mind without thoroughly investigating evidence is being just as bad as the people screaming jewish conspiracy.

Misguided, erratic, hysteric and crazy eyed looking, yes, but I wouldn’t say conspiracy theories are baseless.

@oratio – I said ‘more or less baseless’. I’m totally in favor of thorough investigations. If something comes up we have to take a closer look. WTC1 and 2 were hit by large planes full of kerosene. This is unique in the whole world, so you can’t necessarily deduce something fishy. As far as I know the WTC7 collapse was a consequence of the larger collapsing towers.

I’m very open to challenging my assumptions. I’ve made up my mind, yes, but that doesn’t mean new evidence couldn’t change my mind. So far however, nothing really convincing came up.

There are also the Madrid and London bombings. There’s Bali. There’s Mumbai. There were attempts to blow up trains in Germany. Al-Qaeda is real. Conspiracies in this context most likely are not. Feel free to disagree. I love debates ;-)

@kevbo, I can’t be 100% sure that my chair won’t turn immaterial when I sit on it. Absolute certainty is impossible according to mathematics and physics.

How do you know the earth revolves around the sun? Scientists could be lying to you. The photos could be faked. This is why I asked about other conspiracy theories, and I’d be curious to know what other “official” explanations you doubt.

Also, if you believe that the Bush administration purposefully killed 3,000 Americans, what exactly are you doing about it? If I believed that, I’d try to start a revolution. I’d also have trouble believing such a government would abdicate power to someone like Obama—which would make me wonder if he was in on it too.

@mattbrowne…Debates? Cool, it’s on. I’ll start.

You’re wrong because I’m right.

ha,let’s see him talk his way out of that

@oratio, are you arguing that because nobody has ever crashed fully-fueled jetliners into buildings and caused them to collapse before, doing so is physically impossible?

@mattbrowne Oh yes terrorism is real. Terrorists exist and Al Qaeda is real.

What it is, however, is a question of debate. It has become somewhat of a franchise, McDonald style. I can if I want, in an instant create Al Qaeda Sweden with my friends. It doesn’t come forward as a top-down organisation really. In the end of the bush administration, almost anyone that the US captured or came in combat with was called Al Qaeda. It is questionable what is Al Qaeda and not.

Saying that bin Laden and Al Qaeda is a mind creation however has no real base. He was – as it is unlikely he is alive – a bad dude, with a lot of lives on his conscience.

There were a core organisation. What is and what is not Al Qaeda is hard to say today.

@oratio – I agree. The boundaries of Al-Qaeda are vague.

@Qingu I didn’t say it is impossible. Many different catastrophes has happened to sky rises and scrapers, where these consequences have been absent. The buildings themselves was built with taking plane impacts in mind. I didn’t say it’s not possible. What I said was, that there are questions about how it came to be, that a building that shouldn’t have collapsed did. There has been no thorough investigation explaining how.

I agree to that to explicitly know, you would have to fly another similar plane into a similar building. Not likely that will happen.

But maybe you can explain it?

That would be great. I suspect that you will throw in assumptions about how a steel building reacts to a big plane impact.

@mattbrowne I agree. It was unique in many ways. It doesn’t mean there aren’t questions that ought to be answered. Kerosene doesn’t explain why both towers were totally destroyed and collapsed. That building 7 collapsed seem especially strange, since so many buildings have been bombed without collapsing, and collapsing buildings normally don’t get totally destroyed into tiny little pieces. The worlds long history of earthquakes makes it improbable. Of course it might be possible, but I want an explanation to How and Why? There are no.

Saying that it collapsed because of the collapse of the twin towers is not an explanation as to how exactly. It’s giving it a cause of collapse, not explaining how it made it collapse.

People shouting Jewish Illuminati Conspiracy doesn’t help by asking the same questions, they make them seem fishy and discredit the people asking them.

@Qingu, and there you go again changing the question mid-stream.

The difficulty with a conspiracy explanation is that one is decoding the “real” story from an outsider’s perspective. It’s not a spoon-fed story like some others. This also makes it easy to propogate red herring conspiracies that are infused with enough ridiculousness to make all conspiracies seem silly (which also reinforces the spoon fed version).

As far as what have I done about it, aside from voicing my opinion on Fluther, I sent an e-mail to everyone I know (including family) giving my opinion and providing a couple of videos that explain this perspective. I received 4 negative replies and 4 sympathetic relies and the vast majority of no replies. So, it seems an uprising is still premature. Really, though, the first step is awareness, and it’s difficult to spread awareness if people aren’t ready to listen.

To understand the conspiracy, you have to understand that the visible trajectory of presidential power masks power and interests held by a few factions who drive the government according to “secret” agendas that primarily benefit globalized corporate and banking interests. So Bush the person and Obama the person do little more than sell a palatable story to the American people. Bush very obviously was kept out of the way on 9/11, but Cheney was quarterbacking the air defense exercises that were happening that day.

As you know, Obama voted for FISA and from the beginning continued War on Terror rhetoric, so for me that was the tip off that his candidacy was business as usual. I was concerned about the transfer of power, and there was talk on the internet about how plans for a second 9/11 and/or war with Iran were averted by “white hats” within the government, which in turn prevented manufactured consent of enacting continuity of government plans (which would have kept Bush in power).

So al Quaeda may exist, and terrorists may have boarded planes, but the funding and power came from CIA, Moussad, and to a lesser extent the ISI.

As far as how I know or have come to believe this, I’ve already provided you with material that supports my opinion, which you’ve already dismissed as “horseshit,” so I hardly see the point in continuing that line of discussion.

Regarding what other conspiracies I believe, they include suppression of energy technologies, a secret space program, UFOs, NWO, chemtrails/weather manipulation/and profit from climate change, and probably a few others that aren’t top of mind at the moment. Rather than wasting my time discussing them further with you, I’ll just offer up other “horseshit” sources such as projectcamelot.org and benjaminfulford.typepad.com.

@mammal, does it not raise questions for you that British first responders were conducting terrorist drills on the morning of the 7/7 attacks much like hijacking/plane crash exercises were planned in the US on the morning of 9/11?

@oratio, there HAS been a thorough investigation as to why both towers and WTC 7 collapsed. The explanations are perfectly reasonable and make plenty of sense. I don’t know why you want to believe in a conspiracy, but you are picking and choosing your evidence. Talk to nearly any structural engineer and he or she will tell you that the manner and speed of the WTC collapse were consistent with their construction and a the impact of a large object traveling at hundreds of miles per hour.

@mammal, coincidences happen. And yes, that is an appalling coincidence. But you are only implying a conspiracy, because to use that coincidence as evidence is ridiculous. So they planned exercises… so what? What does this have to do with the attacks? It’s certainly interesting and thought-provoking, but it doesn’t really fit at all.

Popular Mechanics has done a good piece on this. I suggest both of you read it. Carefully.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html

@quarkquarkquark Great. I don’t know where you got that I am talking about a conspiracy, but, I guess you pick and choose what you want it to mean.

If you read what I said, I don’t talk about conspiracies, I don’t present hypothesis and I don’t present evidence. I ask questions.

It would be great if you could point to a homepage that could explain to me how a scraper with an intricate steel skeleton, suddenly – hours after the impact – goes into free fall. I don’t get it. I hear you get it. So please explain how that came to be?

Forgive my semantic indiscretion. When I use the word “conspiracy” in reference to 9/11, I am referring simply to alternative explanations other than the official, commonly accepted one, that is, that Islamic terrorists hijacked planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center, and that this and this alone caused the towers to collapse.

@oratio, I don’t want to argue what your questions imply; I agree with you that in this kind of situation people to need to be constantly inquisitive. But to ask some of these questions is in this case to ignore the evidence. There is an explanation for the collapse of the towers, and it is a valid one.

Perhaps these pages will be more to your liking:

http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc.shtml

The other one was apparently a little long for you (and, admittedly, for myself). If you don’t want to read this couple of pages, scroll down to the bottom. Those questions and answers, those are for you.

This second one is more technical and goes into a little more detail

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html

@quarkquarkquark Interesting. Good coverage of many aspects. They don’t address the pools of molten steel in the wreckage though.

Not important but a footnote. I’m not sure the author of the last one is correct. I saw an interview with Leslie Robertson where he said jet plane impact was considered at the design table, a smaller plane however and less jet fuel, but none the less considered.

Were there or were there not properties of Thermite found? How is it that Muhammad Atta’s passport being found unscathed on the street after the collapse? How is it that they can’t tie bin Laden to this?

@oratio, this is the point where Qingu labels you “intellectually dishonest” for raising more questions than answers and for focusing on minor discrepancies that probably have mundane explanations.

Isn’t that right, @Qingu?

kevbo has a point, @oratio. And I suppose it’s one that goes for anybody in your minority position, regardless of where the truth lies. I can’t argue forever. Nobody can. With an event like this, there will always be more questions than answers. And as kevbo says, most of these questions likely have mundane explanations.

But as for the thermite…

http://www.debunking911.com/thermite.htm

I hope you like science.

It’s perfect reasonable to have found Atta’s passport in the wreckage. It’s not as if everything was instantly vaporized. The implication of the question seems to be a frame-up, like somebody placed the passport there to tie Atta to the attacks. But we connect Mohammed Atta to 9/11 without his passport, so that implication is pointless.

I don’t know where you’re getting this stuff about not being able to tie bin Laden to the attacks. There is so much evidence and so much intelligence to the contrary that I just have no response. Read up.

@quarkquarkquark these sites are available for anyone who wants to do the research. It seems to me that most conspiracy followers aren’t really interested in truth, but simply in trying to badmouth the government, regardless of what really happened.

@kevbo Sure. If I were trying to prove something, my dear man, which I haven’t. I am asking questions. But since you haven’t got anything valid to add, I don’t see your point of calling me “Intellectually dishonest”.

@quarkquarkquark I can see that you don’t want to argue. I haven’t argued with you at any point.

As far as I can gather the FBI cant tie him to this. I welcome anything contrary. But I see you are tired and condescending, so I think we should stop at this point.

What about his own frequent statements that he was responsible for the attacks?

You know, it saps the effect when I have to explain my SARCASM.

@quarkquarkquark What statements are they? Sure, ill check them out if you could refer me to them. I have seen quotes and translations where he is referring to it, and is quite happy about it. What I do know is that he not one week after the attack went public and denied being behind it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he was responsible. He has been behind several attacks, including the bombings of two US embassies in africa.

As far as I know the FBI doesn’t have any hard evidence to tie him to it, though.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,137095,00.html
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/10/29/binladen_message041029.html
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1550477.cms

As for evidence, here, but it is a little long:
http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress02/watson020602.htm

@quarkquarkquark Denying it when it happened and then claiming responsibility three years later is interesting. Maybe he should be play poker instead. I am not sure why bin Laden would be so stupid as to release that one week before the 2004 presidential election. I guess he likes Bush.

Ok. A congressional testimony is not evidence, but clearly states that they consider him responsible. Haven’t read that.

@quarkquarkquark It’s interesting that alot of people claim different explanations of the same incidents and both seem valid when questions are risen to what is unexplained or seemingly poorly explained. You are supposed to take it on faith mostly. Parts of what you have linked to are not more believable as explanations as others just because you use the word “debunked” or “myth” to discredit other explanations. There are credible people who claim other explanations. I don’t know what to think.

There are a lot of things when it comes to alternative explanations I see as ridiculous, of low credibility and easy explainable. But you seem to have the same problem that these conspiracy cuckoos have. It’s either that you believe the whole official story or you are a conspiracy nut. You seem to believe anyone questioning parts of the official stories questions everything, are conspiracy freaks and of low IQ. There are questions that doesn’t seem to be answered properly, like the molten metal. You brush off the passport of Muhammad Atta found unharmed on the street as somewhat “probably explainable in some way” and since you can’t explain that, you turn to imply that I mean that it has been planted by the “Inside Job” conspirators. I would like to know how something like that could possibly happen, you don’t, cause you have made up your mind that it is nothing to question. Kind of like the conspiracy nuts.

I think we both know that there has been a lot of lying and diversions from 9/11 to present day war on terror. These lies and shady actions make it difficult to take government and military statements on faith. I didn’t raise this question. @Qingu did. This is not something I am pursuing. I am at terms with that we probably won’t know everything about what really happened. I don’t think people care anymore.

I have not once claimed anything to be eternal truth. If you look at my language I use world like “It seems” and “To my knowledge”. You on the other hand seem to know it all. Maybe you do and maybe you don’t, but one thing that comes out is that you seem to be a somewhat unpleasant person, condescending and have an opinion on peoples character for raising questions they have no answer to. I am sure it feels good to show people that they are stupid, but it’s easy to create an opponent, not so easy a friend. I hope that works better for you IRL.

easy, @oratio. I’m not personally attacking you. The reason I’m so stubborn about this is twofold. First, to raise such minor questions about an event that is easily explained (seriously, Occam’s Razor, fuck everything else) is to undermine valid intellectual discussion on the topic. Second, and I think this is more important, is that there are some ways of challenging the facts—and in my opinion this is one such instance—that are uniquely disrespectful to the victims of the attacks and to the thousands of soldiers and others who have died in the (perhaps now outsized) U.S. response to the attacks. It is to say that their deaths were in vain, that their final decisions were made in vain. It is to reduce them to pawns and divest meaning from their existence. This is why I am stubborn.

It’s easy to raise questions about anything. The followers of the Greek philosopher Pyrrho called themselves Skeptics and refused to believe in anything whatsoever, since nothing can be proven beyond a doubt. It seems as if you, @oratio, might be an adherent of this school of thought. If so, that’s fine. But, rationally, there are some explanations that are more plausible than others, and to refuse to accept perfectly reasonable assertions is simply to make trouble. I’m not sure if you actually don’t accept the official explanation—it seems like you’re arguing to show that this can be argued. I accept that point. There are people around who insist there are perfectly “valid” refutations of the notion that the earth is round, despite all evidence to the contrary. As I said before, you can raise questions about anything. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

I believe the bush admin was fully warned. It has been said that Isreal, some arab states and afew EU states intelligence agencies warned the US about the attacks. Plus Isreal pulled its people out and move their offices to New Jersey a month or so before the attacks.

I don’t believe for a second that a plane hit the Pentagon or an obscure PA field due to the lack of wreckage that should have been in both places. You can’t vaporize a 6 ton jet engine with jet fuel and the hole in the Pentagon was way too small and deep with no wreckage. There was no tail section nor even the tip of a wing. Both jets would have had to be made of pure magnesium to vaporize like that. Wonder how many of the rescuers at the pentagon came down with unexplained illnesses, say from radiation exposure from depleted uranium?

Bin Ladin was a scape goat so we could get a foot in the door in Afgahnistan and the Middle East. That is all he was. He was/is very ill due to kidney failure and his family and Bushs were very close. Hell, he might have already been dead for all we know.

Bush took us into Iraq on lies and deceit plane and simple. Saddam had nothing to do with 911 and had no WMD’s.

As for the phone calls and such? Reception would have been nil for cell phones. Who knows what happened to the plans and passengers. Maybe that was part of the wool being pulled over everyones eyes. If there were actually planes they might be in the middle of the Atlantic or parked in some obscure bone yard for all we know and the passengers might have been part of the ruse.

@quarkquarkquark I agree in many ways. But there you go with your assumptions about my character again. I haven’t refused at any point to believe something. Where did I say that you are wrong? I didn’t say you are right either. You have pushed this bro, and you wanted the discussion and too prove something. I didn’t. There is not much point to this than to keep up your mental erection.

Occam’s Razor is hardly scientific. It’s what you use when you have no idea of the answer, and have nothing else to resort to than picking one of two possible answers. It is not advisable to base decisions on this method in general.

Seeking easy explanations is one way to guide you, but not to prove something. Plausibility would be the wrong thing to base a verdict in court.

True. It is easy to raise questions about something. It is also easy to have had an opinion of something.

Talking down on me and imply lack of respect for the dead of 9/11 is cheap and a bushism. Next step is calling the person unpatriotic. I am not sure how they are worth more or less respect than any other innocent people that die for no good reason.

“As I said before, you can raise questions about anything. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”

Oh yes, on the contrary. You should raise questions about everything that you don’t understand or doesn’t make sense. If you don’t believe that, there is sooner or later going to be a big problem with the things you just accept, and it would make the world a harder place to change.

A number of things are plausible. Could have been the official story. Could have been the Saudi Government. Could have been our own government. Bush and co could have set it up, or allowed it to happen, or they could have been caught off guard, or they could have covered up for the Saudis. But even if the story we all know is actually true, that it was Bin Laden, Al Quaeda and the Taliban, essentially, Bin Laden was a creation of our government…we went into Afghanistan to drive back the Russians in the late 80s, and then when we got what we wanted, we dropped Afghanistan like a redheaded stepchild, leaving a power vacuum and forces resentful of America to take hold and eventually plot their revenge.

I happen to believe that what happened was a result of our interventionist foreign policy when it serves our needs and our desire to leave well enough alone after we have fucked things up for someone else. I think American history is full of us sticking our noses in to suit our purposes then not containing the fallout of our actions, hence screwing over the next generation who will come to distrust and even hate us. And I suspect, but have no proof (other than the August 6, 2001 memo titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside US), that Bush and co ignored the threat of Al Quaeda, either because it wanted the US to be attacked, giving them the justification to start pre-emptive wars leading to the ousting of Saddam, OR they didn’t want the US to be attacked, but were too pre-occupied with Saddam to pay attention to other enemies. The proof I think lies in the PNAC (Project for a New American Century) documents which were drafted by essentially Bush’s entire cabinet, before they installed him into the Presidency, which set the Neocon agenda in stone (creating a democracy in the Middle East by engaging in simultaneous multiple theater wars which could drag on for 50 years or more, ensuring our energy independence by making the nations who own all the oil friendly to us).

That said, I don’t know exactly what happened, and I expect I never will.

@dalepetrie True. And I think it’s the deep distrust of the Bush-government, the workings of Karl Roves shady schemes, Cheney’s lies and G.W. Bush’s alternative agenda that makes people distrust many things they are told. The attack on the constitution and questionable information from the military has been demoralizing, and I think a lot of people don’t know what to believe. In an environment like that, I believe that conspiracy theories of all kinds get fertile ground. I guess that’s what we have been experiencing.

Again, @oratio, I’m not attacking you. I’m stating my own position. The claim of disrespect to the victims is a valid and practical one, and you are welcome to disagree. It is not an invalidation of the claim to say that it is a “Bushism.” I’m not “talking down on you.”

As for @DREW_R, well, I don’t really know what to say. All of this has been addressed by neutral parties who know far more than all of us, and who claim to see no scientific problem with the accepted explanation of what happened. Quoting “Loose Change” or similar videos is not the same as providing irrefutable evidence. Granted, we could all use some clarification. @oratio‘s approach of asking questions is a more intellectually strong one, since he is not making any outstanding claims. Consider the difference between questioning what you believe to be a biased explanation and offering a biased one of your own.

and, @dalepetrie, I suppose what you said is basically the bottom line to all of this—something I hope we can all agree upon.

@quarkquarkquark I suspect you are a person who is interested in the truth, just as most people. And you have a direct way of doing it. When it comes to reading comments, the message is dependent on how you read the text. Maybe I misjudged you.

It’s of a small issue if I agree or not when it comes to what you mean by me disrespecting the victims. I know I am not feeling disrespect. I don’t think questioning how they died makes it less horrifying. I don’t think any reason for their deaths would make it reasonable. Actually, I think questioning the circumstances around any incident is a desire to find out what happened and bring clarity for the victims and their surviving families and everybody else that could have been there.

Remember that there are not so few 9/11 families and survivors that questions these things too. I feel that they have precedence over what both you and me thinks about this. The 9/11 was an attack on the US, and the victims mostly americans, but the victims were of 52 other nationalities which made it even more personal for many countries other than the US, an international issue and a world wanting to know what happened to their citizens as well.

Fair enough. I should clarify that I don’t think you feel any disrespect—my thinking is that some acts by their very nature must be construed as disrespectful. And in arguing a certain way, you take on and accept that risk, which you obviously have. I suppose we’ve reached a kind of amiable impasse, here.

It has been said, that 9/11 changed everything: except how we think. THAT DAY we call 9/11 changed my way of thinking, and ever since I have never relied on the established media or my government to tell the whole truth.

On THAT DAY we call 9/11, the media assumed the role of secretaries taking down dictation from Big Brother who manipulated we the people with FEAR of the other. Corporate media failed miserably by not asking the questions and searching for the truth, such as WHY did a few [and back then it was just a few] people in the world hate US so much that they could target and murder innocent people?

In December 2001, FOX News began a four part series [that has since been removed from their website] regarding Israel’s spying on America.

Carl Cameron reported, “Since September 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.

There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9–11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are “tie-ins.” But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, “evidence linking these Israelis to 9–11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It’s classified information.”

The Rest of “THAT DAY, This 9/11, FOX News and Bob Dylan”

http://www.paltelegraph.com/photo-story/world-stories/2150-that-day-this-911-fox-news-and-bob-dylan

I think it’s bullshit, but if it isn’t, what is the larger implication? I agree that it is a terrible and tragic thing if Israel had prior knowledge of the attacks and did not share it, but you doubtless have a further concern than how unfortunate that would be. What is it?