The government could have intercepted the hijacked planes had they followed standard protocols.

From http://www.911summary.com/:

Director of the U.S. "Star Wars" space defense program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, who was a senior air force colonel who flew 101 combat missions (Col. Robert Bowman) stated that 9/11 was an inside job. He also said:

"If our government had merely [done] nothing, and I say that as an old interceptor pilot—I know the drill, I know what it takes, I know how long it takes, I know what the procedures are, I know what they were, and I know what they’ve changed them to—if our government had merely done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to happen on that morning of 9/11, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. [T]hat is treason!" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYzwf01Z7I)

U.S. Army Air Defense Officer and NORAD Tac Director, decorated with the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Soldiers Medal (Capt. Daniel Davis) stated:

"there is no way that an aircraft . . . would not be intercepted when they deviate from their flight plan, turn off their transponders, or stop communication with Air Traffic Control ... Attempts to obscure facts by calling them a 'conspiracy Theory' does not change the truth. It seems, 'Something is rotten in the State.' "

From www.washingtonsblog.com:

The military put out 3 entirely different stories about what happened on 9/11. Specifically, Norad was forced to give 3 entirely different versions of what happened that day, as each previous version was exposed as false, or as providing evidence that the government could in fact have intercepted the hijacked planes had they followed standard protocols.

The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry, said “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”

Indeed, the falsity of Norad’s explanations were so severe that even the 9/11 Commission considered recommending criminal charges for the making of false statements.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^ponceleon:
Actually I have no problem with motive. I heard Ron Paul say at the debates that we are spending 20bil to air-condition tents for soldiers in Afghanistan... that 20bil is making SOMEONE really rich, so there is definitely a LOT of profit to be made in war.
I guess I should've been more clear. I agree that there's a full array of means, motive, and opportunity for Bushclan/Templars/Majestic 12, etc. to conspire to make the whole 9/11 attack happen in the first place.
What I don't understand is the way that suspicion has transformed into a decade-long attempt to prove that demolitions brought down the various WTC building. I simply can't fathom why anyone would do that, especially if you were a super-capable secret cabal concocting the entire scenario to manipulate people.
If it was an evil organization who could secretly wire the building with explosives, then why wouldn't they just pop the explosives and blame Al Qaeda for it? Why would they hire/manipulate Al Qaeda into flying airplanes into the building, and then demo the building Hollywood style? It seems like it'd be a huge risk (what if someone found the explosives early or evidence of them after?) for no apparent reward.
The buildings fell because of the planes that got flown into them. The real questions to be asking if you're looking for a conspiracy would be "did anyone seem to know about it in advance who shouldn't have?" or more damningly, "did anyone seem to disregard advance information about it who shouldn't have?"
You know, like someone who ignored intelligence briefings with titles like "bin Laden determined to strike in the US"...


Netrunner, what's your thoughts on Operation Northwoods?

Northwoods was a false-flag operation plan by the CIA in 1962. It called for terrorist attacks like hijacking planes, disguising US fighter jets as Cuban MIG fighters, and killing US citizens.

Journalist James Bamford summarized Operation Northwoods in his April 24, 2001 book Body of Secrets:
"Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war."


The plan was on the desk of JFK and he refused. JFK was later assassinated. The following year LBJ used the staged Gulf of Tonkin incident to go to war in Vietnam. The people that questioned that incident were called conspiracy nuts. But the truth eventually came out, and it will for 9/11 also.

The point is false-flag attacks and government manipulation of evidence is nothing new. And is certainly nothing our government hasn't done before.

>> ^xxovercastxx:

As I've said before...
>> ^xxovercastxx:
If the government wanted to destroy WTC and blame it on Muslims, why not just blatantly use explosives? It's not like the place hasn't been bombed before. Why bother with the hijacked planes and all the other shit? Blow the lower floors out and let the thing come crashing down. Dozens of terrorist orgs would have been thrilled to take credit for it.



You do realize it usually takes weeks of planning and setting up to rig a demolition, right? No way people are going to believe that foreign agents would be able to set up a demolition without being noticed. And using jihadi elements helps exploit the fear factor.
And, you're right, it has happened before. The FBI helped stage a bombing on the WTC in 1993 but it didn't terrorize the public enough for the power elite to implement everything they wanted to do. They needed a "new Pearl Harbor" to do that.

As I've said before...

>> ^xxovercastxx:

If the government wanted to destroy WTC and blame it on Muslims, why not just blatantly use explosives? It's not like the place hasn't been bombed before. Why bother with the hijacked planes and all the other shit? Blow the lower floors out and let the thing come crashing down. Dozens of terrorist orgs would have been thrilled to take credit for it.

>> ^enoch:

then you misunderstood my answer.
ii was not attempting to conclude nor answer the impetus of possible conspiracy of either terrorists of muslim origin or a homegrown attack from within our own government.
i left that to you and duckman to argue.
my conclusion can be based on either scenario with the exact same outcome.
and in the context of those scenarios:
1.muslim attack by plane destroying the towers=government uses this time of fear and grief to enact the never-ending and vague "war on terror".
2.a government planned attack on its own people by demolition.using planes as a cover.which in turn the government uses this time of fear and grief to enact said "war on terror".
now this is where the argument and debate resides but the outcome is always the same.
along with the 'profit" and "gain" question.
maybe i am misunderstanding your question but history has shown that governments/kings and dictators have gone to elaborate lengths to confuse and exploit times of fear and grief to punch through unpleasant legislation.
lets remember that even by 2005 35% of america believed that iraq had something to do with 9/11 even though by that time the evidence clearly indicated that was not the case.
again i refer to history as my guide.


I think I understand your answer just fine, it just doesn't seem you were trying to answer my main question... Let me try and phrase it again and explain it more clearly.

I'm not asking why an inside entity would want to make the attacks, or where their profit in it would be. I repeat, that is not what I'm asking.

I am asking why any entity would choose the METHOD that the conspiracy crowd is proposing. I am asking where is the profit in pre-planting explosives in all three buildings AND later hijacking planes and crashing them into the same buildings? Where is the profit in that method?

I can't see any benefit, reason or rational explanation for why any entity would benefit from pursuing both causes. It is not a situation where one can act as 'insurance' against the other. They both can accomplish the goal all alone, and pursuing both just doubles the costs and risks of exposure or being caught.


35% of america believed that iraq had something to do with 9/11
I don't wanna perpetuate a tangent, but you may want to choose more specific language. Iraq wasn't directly responsible or even aware of planning for 9/11. Saddam did however actively support terrorists, including offering safe haven to the man that mixed the chemicals for the 1st WTC bombings, and al qaeda linked extermists interested in killing the Kurds. Not coincidentally those extremists are now Al Qaeda's arm in Iraq.

If the government wanted to destroy WTC and blame it on Muslims, why not just blatantly use explosives? It's not like the place hasn't been bombed before. Why bother with the hijacked planes and all the other shit? Blow the lower floors out and let the thing come crashing down. Dozens of terrorist orgs would have been thrilled to take credit for it.

Wharrgarble! We're not "living in a different age", we're not in a "post-911" world. The TSA is a massive overreaction to one incident. That incident sucked, and there is no downplaying it. But the lesson that needed to be learned, ie that hijackers might do more with a hijacked plane that just kill everyone on board (as terrible as that alone is), has been learned.

Half the the response should be to lock cabin doors. Done. The other half should be for travelers on planes to remain alert and be willing to fight back against hijackers. Done - flight 93 accomplished that before the 9/11 attacks were even finished.

Instead, the TSA is created. Charged with the task of delaying, inconveniencing, and harassing law-abiding citizen travelers while doing absolutely nothing of any real value to prevent or limit terrorist attacks.

The shoebomber happens, all of a sudden everybody has to wait in line to take off shoes. Somebody realizes that some binary explosives are made by mixing liquids, all of a sudden you can't take a bottle of goddamn water or toothpaste on a plane. The Bush administration decides to make a massive list of names for a "no fly list", all of a sudden many completely innocent people are detained and harassed simply because they happen to share a name with someone who may have a tenuous connection to "terrorism". Not to mention the people who get put on the list out of pure spite, like reporters who question TSA practices. I shudder to think what the response to the "undies-bomber" is going to be.

Now Cheney et al are criticizing Obama for "failing to keep America safe". How about criticizing the goddamn TSA? How about remembering that you're infinitely more likely to die in a car accident, or from smoking-induced lung cancer, or even from being bitten by a snake than you are to die in an air-travel incident, terror related or not?

It bothers me these responses to Cheney running his mouth are good in that they make us remember that a lot of this crap started on the Bush administration's watch, but they don't go the bit further and point out what an obvious farce and waste of time, effort, and money the TSA is in general.

What and idiot news man

IF PEOPLE WANT TO HIJACK PLANES THEY WILL DOSE NOT MATTER HOW GOOD SECURITY IS.

the news is of such a pore quality.

looks like noam is more curious about a possible cover-up than he's letting on -
http://www.muckrakerreport.com/id359.html

he says it's impossibel to predict that the plane would hit the WTC, i dont understand to whom? the hijackers knew it would and aimed them extremely carefully. the goverenment agencies would ahve known an hour before the second plane hit that other hijacked planes were going to hit something important and accurately.

also, his reasoning is flawed when he says 'who cares?' about who did it, 'why should it matter?', saying it diverts attention from things that do. it matters exactly because of what he said at the beginning, if there's some chance that some powerful americans had a part to play in the planning of the 9/11 attacks then they would need to be found. it would be important that people who would plan such things are dealt with.

could someone put this through the front page again so people can debate this?

deedub, I doubt your seriousness. You can't honestly believe your lame defense you are putting forth.

An Emergency Command Center (that would have generators and the works in case of major power outage, crisis, etc.) and it is on the 28th floor??!! (Could it be that his buddy Silverstein had an empty floor he needed a tenant for?). The site was chosen because it was in walking distance.

How many plots have been talked about regarding WTC? How many actual explosions an serious attempts have taken place in WTC complex? Are you insane?! That is like saying no one could have imagined hijacked planes being flown into bldgs, or no one imagined the levies would break in NOLA.

HOW COULD HE HAVE KNOWN FOR SURE???! How about when your Director of Emergency Management tells you so! Maybe Rudy opened a newspaper a few years ago and read about actual bomb being detonated across the f-ing street from where he was planning a Command Center.

And Rudy didn't do jack for the homicide rate. That was a historic trend and nothing he did per se. Look at other major urban homicide rates from the same time period. Rudy is a one trick pony.

Tags changed from "gign commandos,hijack plane" to "hostage rescue, counter-terrorism, ctu" by gold star member rembar.

This is why you can't feed trolls. I can't even read past the first paragraph.. something about "the events of the last few days were carried out by terrirts"

Some people are willfully ignorant. First of all, there was nothing 'carried out'. No one had plane tickets and most didn't have passports. So don't go spreading your justified hatred around just yet. Sure, there might have been a plot, and it was thwarted. Good job, but wouldn't everyone be better off, if they just quietly dealt with it. Do you think if they were monitoring a communist spy, plotting, etc. that they would frontpage news stuff? It doesn't make sense.

If you can't realize that you are being manipulated into believing in some muslim-boogeyman... I'm really very sorry for you.

You are retarded if you think no one thought of hijacking planes as weapons "before 9/11".. Read the PDB of Aug 2001. Or millions of other gov't reports that discuss the scenario of planes being crashed into stuff.

Please, just enlist already. You can go hunt down all the cave-plotters and 100%-committed-types. I think they've recently expanded the age requirements, so if you're anywhere from 17 up to 42, sign on up. I can send you a list of Recruitment Offices and phone numbers. Do you "love your country and are willing to fight for its government"??? Is so that would be a good reason to enlist. If you don't enlist, then you either don't love your country or you are a f-ing hypocrite and should STFU.

A few comments of my own on this discussion.
The light poles are less of an impediment than a telephone pole. They are mounted on snap bolts so they break off easy. This is to protect drunk drivers, or something like that. I've seen a small pickup knock one 8 feet with a collision that was only about 30mph. As to the perpendicular position of a pole, go play pool. There are far more variables in this equation than 3. It's position is nothing special, or breaking of physics, you just haven't factored in enough of the MANY variables involved. It's easier to predict which side of a die will come up than the landing position of lightpole struck by a plane.

Lack of armed response. Wow, this isn't world war 3 with intercept planes in the air ready to respond. It takes time. And that's after you realize it might be a good idea to do so. Hijackers tend to fly off with planes, not use them as cruise missiles. Everybody thought they are going to land somewhere. Even after one crashed, it was most likely assumed to be incompetence of the highjackers, and not intentional. And why intercept a hijacked plane? You aren't going to shoot it down, and radar keeps track of it very nicely. Just send police to where it lands. There is another factor that people forget about. Shock. The first one hit, and everybody where I worked was shocked. It was a tragedy that struck at all of us. But that's all we though it was. Then the second one hit. People were dumbfounded. And I worked with intelligent problem solving people. Over half the people just stood there staring at the video feeds. Everybody was numb. There was an air of disbelief. It was as if there was a vague hope that suddenly the picture would shift to a reporter in a clown suit saying "Gotcha! April Fools!". But that didn't happen, and people eventually started leaving like shellshocked sheep. The next day, only about a third of us showed up for our shifts. Nobody said a thing.

Now as to the skipping of the whitehouse and nailing the pentagon. I don't know, but here is a possible guess. Ever try picking out landmarks at a couple of hundred miles an hour? It's a major pain. When the image has resolved enough to identify most things, it's too late to do anything about it. That's why military bases have old busted planes as decoys on the runway. To someone travelling a couple hundred mph, they look like valid targets. Now just imagine the scum who missed the whitehouse, he's probably ticked, and may even assume he can't get a second chance at that one. Then he sees a unique piece of architecture that can be easily identified from a very long distance, the pentagon. (There aren't many huge pentagon shaped buildings on this planet, it's easy to spot.) He probably decided target of opertunity. After all, the white house just has a four year bozo, the pentagon has lots of military top brass. If it was a wargame, I know which one would be worth more points, and it's not a politicians penthouse.

Ok, now as to the tower supports failing. Let's look at the explanation. Under fire conditions, those supports would not be compromised. But it is believed that when the plane struck and ripped through the building, it shredded the insulation on some of the supports. That sounds very likely to me, I've seen things get hit with less force than that, and have the same effect. Look at some trees hit by cars, notice the missing bark? Ok, now jet fuel burns hot, for that matter, so do most apartments. Bet that sucker hit flashover point and all that stuff. It didn't have to melt the supports, it just had to weaken them. A fire that doesn't even make the metal glow can cause that to happen. Just take out a couple of supports and stress the building, and that will start a cascade failure. Like knocking over dominoes. A few fail, increases stress on remaining, they fail, that makes it worse, the rest go. It can happen very fast. Once a critical threshold is exceeded, the rest often go in seconds. If you watch the video of the collapse, that's basically what happened.

Eye witnesses. Slightly better than asking a psychic, but less entertaining. It's amazing how unreliable they are. That's one of the big reasons why we use forensics. I trust the cameras a whole lot more, and with very good reason.

The government is hiding something? Well, they are always hiding something. Sometimes it's intentional, other times it's somebody that just doesn't know. And don't forget standard lack of communication and incompetence. Often government stuff assumes the less they say, the less likely they can be blamed. With regards to all the fingerpointing afterwards, well as they say, hindsight is 20/20, so stop looking out your a## at past events. You can always say someone must have realized it, but didn't. Gee, george has a report 1 on his desk, frank has report 3 in his filing cabinet, jane has read the summaries of reports 3 and 5. While Mary has report 2 sitting in her inbox, and report 5 is being faxed to george right now. Ok, now who knows what the heck is going on? Nobody. Two weeks later, who's fault is it that 5 sequential reports were filed and not acted upon, even though they spell out several low importance events that only add up to trouble when all five are together and in sequence? You don't like it, well, neither does the intelligence community, but it's what they have to work with. Those I've met from that area, have mostly been accusatory paranoid creeps. (Some were actually human.) Even so, it's not reasonable to have expected them to predict something like what happened. However, the acts of the politicians afterwards is utterly reprehensible and has definitely earned them an entire wing in the hall of shame.

One thing back to the one highjackers flying. Some have said it was absolutely fantastic flying. Well, that also assumes that what happened is exactly what he wanted to happen, and that he was a pilot who had some expectation of living through it, as well as keeping his plane intact. Those two conditions don't apply to the highjacker, and we really don't know what he expected to happen. To bring up pool again, I suck at it. I've made some shots that have had master players congratulate me. Too bad those shots were nothing like what I expected the balls to do. The praise wasn't deserved, it was an unintentional event. That is probably a case with the highjackers flying 'proficiency'.

I expect this has put a few wrinkles in some tin-foil hats, and has a few people thinking. Just remember, nobody alive is in full possession of the facts of those events, so much of what has been said is just guesswork, possibly even educated guesswork, but still guesswork.