And here's a link to an English translation of a Der Spiegel article about conspiracy claims surrounding 9/11:
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/english/0,1518,druck-265160,00.html

________
You have to give up.

quote:

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Originally posted by M:
Before 9/11: even though there was probably intelligence that something big would happen, no one could imagine what actually happened. I am certain there was no real knowledge of the plans, and everything else must have been speculative, and hard to act on.

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No-one had to imagine what would happen. The Russians gave the US specific intelligence that Al-Qaeda were planning to hijack aircraft and crash them into buildings, even down to the month the attacks were planned to take place. This is well documented.

While I doubt that the government were complicit in the attacks, they did give an easy excuse for the US to attack the Taleban, who needed to be dealt with to release the massive oil and gas reserves in the region. It also gave Bush an excuse to finish off the work his father had started in Iraq. Both these facts are food for the conspiracy mill.

Wasn't the Pentagon explosion first reported as a truck bomb? Or maybe I'm not remembering correctly?

What's so unbelievable or inconceivable about the US government being a party to or complicit in the 9/11 attacks? I'm not saying the US is, I can't see the benefits of doing so. I just find it curious that people find the concept outside the realm of possibilty.

I'm not up on my foil-hat literature, but what about Mossad? I can't halp but think that Isreal might benefit if the American military rolled into the Middle-East and cleaned house a little. It'd take some of the heat from them and possibly cripple the some of the infrastructure aiding those pesky Palestinians.

nt

quote:

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Originally posted by Marshdrifter:
Even if only 20 passengers
were determined enough to stop them, those four
terrorists would have to be packing some pretty
intense zanshin to stop them

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Prior to 9/11, however, most hijackings resulted in very, very few deaths. It's entirely possible that the passengers thought that they were going to LAND and NEGOTIATE.

The whole cell phone's from the planes thing bothers me as well. In addition to being, techinically, hearsay and hence inadmissible as evidence, I'm not sure the people purporting and promoting the calls are entirely trustworthy.


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"What's so unbelievable or inconceivable about the US government being a party to or complicit in the 9/11 attacks?"

Ok, how about this? If you were planning on running some of your own planes into your own buildings to foment war for oil, why pick the WTC? Sure, it's a symbol of American commercial power and all, but it's one helluva slap to the economy to knock down a couple buildings in the heart of NYC.

You'd get more bang for your buck going after more symbolic but less economically damaging sites. Hell, presidents travel a lot, blowing up the White House would be a cake-walk, and going after Congress would probably be an added bonus if you're some cloak and daggar shadow gov't type.

But the WTC? Too much economic damage, plays into the hands of 'American econo-imperialism' attitudes if what you're really after is riling up the American public to bloodlust. Flight 93 is thought to have been aimed at the White House or Congress. The Pentagon would have made a good conspiracy target, get a little sympathy for the military in the process, but the WTC? Better to attack Wall Street and the stock exchange, easier to recover from it, and it makes the same symbolic point.

There's no point in asking why 9/11 couldn't be a conspiracy if you're not willing to consider why it might not be.

Bellham
~Arguing principle from convenience is no principle at all.~

Personally, I've been having doubts about my own existence lately.

Damned Evil Deceiver. I hate that guy.

Politics is a big whore. -Romanian proverb

In another attempt to steer the thread away from conspiracy chat and back toward the less exciting but more edifying discussion of inconsistancies (ahem), there's a very interesting article about the latter on the front page of today's WSJ.

Unfortunately, there's no free ride with WSJ, so you'll have to buy/borrow/steal a copy.


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"the less exciting but more edifying discussion of inconsistancies (ahem)"

My apologies, I thought inconsistencies within the conspiracy theories themselves were fair game.

So, I take it back, I really do know what you had for breakfast.

Bellham
~Arguing principle from convenience is no principle at all.~

quote:

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I thought inconsistencies within the conspiracy theories themselves were fair game.

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Well they are. It's just that there are so many C theories from which to choose. I'm taking the approach that first you need to document all your inconsistencies; next, decide which are innocuous and which are real anomalies; and THEN assign sinister meaning to the anomalies. Only then will you produce an truly paranoid conspiracy theory.

On a lighter note, the NSA called this morning and they'd really appreciate it if you stopped hacking into their feeds of me.

Seriously, though, there are a lot of non-paranoid, mainstream folks (read: senators) who also see big holes in the “facts” as reported. As I said before, I don’t really believe there was one, overarching conspiracy, but it does appear that at the very least a lot of folks really dropped the ball. Yes, I am open to the idea that there were one or more plots other than those of AQ, but I’ll say again that I’m agnostic about it.

I think the more important issue here is the utter lack of transparency in how the US responded to the events on 9/11. We can’t fix problems were not aware of, and I for one strongly suspect that the folks in office now who are supposed to be doing the fixing were the ones who broke it in the first place (now THAT’S a tortured extended metaphor).

So this is why, for example, I wanted to discuss things like why people still debate whether or not failure in the tower’s steel (or the joinings) were to blame for it’s fall. The problem just become so complex and conspiracy laden - note the reports by several firefighters saying that they heard charges exploding in the towers before they fell - that I was hoping to get some more rational and informed opinions from the Gentle People of the Board.


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Whoa, did you just say that US Senators are "mainstream"??

Whoa, did you just say senators are "non-paranoid"?

Bellham
~Arguing principle from convenience is no principle at all.~

Grrrrrrrrrrr

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"but it does appear that at the very least a lot of folks really dropped the ball."

Ok, but at that point, we've moved squarely into the "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." camp.

Bellham
~Arguing principle from convenience is no principle at all.~

OK, the primate throws his hands (which I might remind you have opposible thumbs) into the air.

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Incompetence.
Were any reprimands exerted? Did any big guys resign, got replaced?
Hell, they almost threw Bill out for lying to Congress about where he kept his salami in the Oval room. Surely the lack of foresight, planning, the slow response after the attacks would have merited some scathing internal memo, at the very least?

quote:

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Originally posted by digitalprimate:
We can’t fix problems were not aware of...

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But now you have to take off your shoes before you enter the terminal! We must be safer.

Now, to keep my input constructive-

http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/video%20archive/

I take no responsibility for the content, but the videos are pretty cool.

quote:

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Originally posted by digitalprimate:
OK, the primate throws his hands (which I might remind you have opposible thumbs) into the air.

_ This post brought to you by: Your Ad Here._

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Heh, I got thumbs too. Thumbs are cool. If dogs had thumbs they'd rule the world

"OK, the primate throws his hands (which I might remind you have opposible thumbs) into the air."

You're not fooling anyone, we can clearly see your tail still wrapped firmly around the branch.

Bellham
~Arguing principle from convenience is no principle at all.~