In memory of 9/11: Keith Olbermann's "Special Comment" from 9/11/2006

on 9/11/2001, i was working for united airlines at washington dulles international airport... my memories of that day are as vivid as they are of the day john f. kennedy was assassinated, the day the cuban missile crisis came to a head, and the day i arrived in vietnam for the first time as a young, scared to death, and wet-behind-the-ears army private... i stood under a jetway on the eerily quiet and empty tarmac, outside the passenger concourse, a tarmac devoid of the usual ear-splitting roar of moving aircraft, and waved goodbye to our crisis team as they boarded vans for the drive up to pennsylvania to the site of the crash of flight 93... i knew the world would never be the same...

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"Any military which can claim ... that al-Qa'ida is on the run is not capable of carrying out anything on the scale of 9/11"

robert fisk writes in the independent, for which he works as the middle east correspondent...

My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?

ah... but wait... there's more...

I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93's debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I'm not talking about the crazed "research" of David Icke's Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.

I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering – very definitely not in the "raver" bracket – are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be "fraudulent or deceptive".

Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard "explosions" in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let's claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA's list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.

But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose "Islamic" advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the "Fajr" prayer to be included in Atta's letter.

Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now – we create our own reality". True? At least tell us.

do ya suppose serious journalism folks are starting to pay attention...?

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Flight 93's Forgotten Legacy: How to Defeat Terrorism!

On September 11, 2001 we learned how far some people will go to kill. The passengers on the flights that struck the WTC had no idea what was in store for them. All they could do was wait and see.
On Flight 93, it was a different story. We have all heard about what happened on Flight 93, but maybe we missed the real message.
Faced with almost no hope of survival, ordinary folks decided not to wait for help, not to cower and hide.
They decided to go down fighting.
Every terrorist since has needed to take into account that ordinary Americans, knowing the score, wouldn't go down without a fight anymore.
Here, again, is some of what was said on Flight 93.
Excerpts from The Post-Gazette.

[...]
Sometime shortly before 10 a.m., Tom Burnett called home one last time.
"A group of us is going to do something," he told Deena.
"I told him, 'No, Tom, just sit down and don't draw attention to yourself,' " she said.
"Deena," he told her, "If they're going to crash the plane into the ground, we have to do something. We can't wait for the authorities. We have to do something now."(emphasis added)
[...]
From the back of Flight 93, CeeCee Lyles finally reached her husband, Lorne.
"Babe, my plane's been hijacked," she said.
"Huh? Stop joking," he said.
"No babe, I wouldn't joke like that. I love you. Tell the boys I love them."
The pair prayed.

In the background, Lorne Lyles could hear what he now believes was the sound of men planning a counterattack.
"They're getting ready to force their way into the cockpit," she told him.

When he had finished talking with Lisa Jefferson, finished relaying his love for his family, finished praying the Psalm that asked for green pastures and still waters, Todd Beamer put down the phone, still connected with the outside world.
"Are you guys ready? Let's roll," he said.

Honor Wainio was still on the line with her stepmother.
"I need to go," she said. "They're getting ready to break into the cockpit. I love you. Goodbye."

"Everyone's running to first class," Sandy Bradshaw told her husband. "I've got to go. Bye."

CeeCee Lyles let out a scream.
"They're doing it! They're doing it! They're doing it!" she said. Lorne Lyles heard a scream. Then his wife said something he couldn't understand. Then the line went dead.

Forty-five seconds after telling Fritz to evacuate the Johnstown tower, Cleveland Air Traffic Control phoned again.
"They said to disregard. The aircraft had turned to the south and they lost radar contact with him."

It was 10:06 a.m.
[...]

I was reminded of this while complaining to a friend about the Gallup poll results I posted earlier. He said, "Yeah, it's a shame people don't remember the what they did on Flight 93."
It hit me like a ton of bricks.
We have forgotten that the greatest enemy of terrorism is We The People. We can choose to be helpless victims. They count on our fear to achieve their goals, or we can stand and fight.
Yes, the folks on Flight 93 died. Many more of us may die as well, but at least, if we end the war in Iraq, we will die fighting here for ourselves, our homes, and our families.
We will fight for ourselves, instead of allowing our soldiers to do it all for us. We will fight for ourselves instead of sitting safe and cozy while innocent bystanders in other countries die for us.
FLIGHT 93 TEACHES US WE CAN FIGHT OUR OWN BATTLES!
Don't be afraid, we can win.
It's time we had faith in ourselves and our neighbors to defend our land.
After all, it's what the Second Amendment is all about.

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It's been Cheney all this time

here's how it looks to me... darth handled the internal, government stuff and rove handled the external, public stuff... what a team...!

think progress posts on an interview this morning with barton gellman on washington post radio... gellman is the co-author of the wapo's four-part cheney series...

GELLMAN: It’s been often speculated that 9/11 exerted a profound psychological change on the Vice President. But we did not find evidence that that’s true.

There’s a moment in the story in which we’ve got witnesses who are watching him watch the World Trade Center collapse. Everyone else in the room is groaning. And he doesn’t blink his eyes. He turns around and starts working the phones again.

And what he’s doing is he’s finding that 9/11 confirms some long-held beliefs of his. And it gives him the opportunity to press through some long-desired changes. He has not changed his views very much over the years. What has changed is he has a greater opportunity to put them into action.

it was the moment he was waiting for all his life... everything he'd done, all the philosophy of government he'd developed, all the actions he wanted to put into play, everything was just waiting for that day... you'd almost think it was simply TOO fortuitous, wouldn't you...? < adjusts tin foil hat > well, WOULDN'T you..??

from a comment on the think progress post...

Cheney did it.

What does Occam’s Razor tell you about the ODDS that NORAD would be running a series of drills on the morning of 9/11 designed specifically to simulate an attack against America involving hijacked planes flown into buildings?

What does Occam’s Razor tell you about FEMA having been prepositioned in New York for the drill - which commenced at the same moment the first tower was struck?

What does Occam’s Razor tell you about the warning sent to Israeli Nationals two hours before the first plane struck?

Ignoring everything you have seen and heard to brainwash you to the contrary in its aftermath, what are the odds that a man in a cave could beat all of the defenses of the United States of America by coincidentally timing his attack to coincide with a total shut down of NORAD?

Occam’s razor states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or “shaving off”, those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.

Pieces of aircraft were scattered over a five mile area in Pennsylvania.

WTC 7 - though untouched by an aircraft, fell directly into its own footprint less than two hours after its owner ordered the fire department to pull back from the structure in order to “pull it.”

5 Israeli Mossad Agents with explosives expertise were arrested for filming the destruction of the twin towers. Their film has never been made public. They failed seven polygraph tests. They were quietly deported to Israel.

Norm Mineta testified before the 9/11 Commission that he personally witnessed Cheney commanding one of his subordinates in the bunker on the morning of 9/11 to allow the approaching aircraft to strike the Pentagon uncontested.

The manuevers made by the planes that struck both the Pentagon and the second WTC tower could not possibly have been made by any first time pilot - according to aviation experts.

O C C A M ‘ S

R A Z O R

I N D E E D ! ! !

Where are the NSA Spy Satellite photos of the “757″ striking the Pentagon?

Where is the video that was shot by the Dancing Israelis arrested on 9/11?

Where is the flight manifest including Arab names on any of the flights on 9/11?

Two planes hit two buildings in New York, yet three buildings fell down straight into their own footprint.

A man said by his flight instructor not to be able to fly at all performed a perfect 270 degree corkscrew descent over the heavily fortified Pentagon as Cheney ordered the stand down of air defenses (per Norm Mineta) - and struck the target with military precision (according to the FAA controllers watching it all on their radar screens).

Where are the radar videos of that flight?

Where are the videos of that 757?

Where are the satellite images of that plane?

i've thought so many times, when the latest news delivers still more shockers about the criminals occupying the white house that maybe, at last, the walls will begin crumbling down... it would certainly seem - to me, at least - that they should have crumbled into dust long ago... maybe THIS time...?

do you suppose that barton gellman and jo becker may just turn out to be the woodward-bernstein superheroes of our age...?

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9/11 truth: "We are trained not to question authority and to follow it blindly even into the abyss."

Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory
by David Ray Griffin

here's an interesting book i happened to stumble across... this is the blurb from publishers weekly as it appears on amazon...

An emeritus professor of theology with no previous interest in conspiracy theories, Griffin has dedicated himself since 2003 to the "9/11 truth" movement, a group committed to "exposing the falsity of the official theory about 9/11," and this book is a thorough, highly detailed attempt to do just that. As Griffin aptly notes, "the assumption that conspiracy theories are inherently irrational" has recently taken root in American culture, making any attack on the official government record instantly dismissible, but Griffin takes to the difficult task with solid reasoning and true zeal. All but the most dogmatic readers will find Griffin's evidence-from the inconsistencies between NORAD tapes and the 9/11 Commission Report to rigorous exploration into the physics of the collapse-detailed and deeply unnerving. For instance, Griffin considers the fact that firefighters were told, five hours before the fact, that building WTC 7 was going to collapse, despite "the fact that WTC 7 was not hit by a plane, that the available photographs show no large fires, and that fire had never caused a steel-frame high-rise to collapse." Another chilling passage looks at the Pennsylvania crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 through the testimony of those first to arrive, who were unanimous in finding "no recognizable plane parts, no body parts." For anyone who doubts the government's truthfulness regarding the WTC terrorist attack, this well-researched volume will give you a trough full of ideas to chew on.

and if that doesn't pique your curiosity, check this review from a canadian-based site recently recommended to me, called the center for research on globalization...

Claims of incompetence will always remain the theme that would prevail, in order [to] justify the occurrence of 9/11. It is more benign than complicity and treason, and would disguise the military state in the flag of democracy. It is also an acceptable scenario in the minds of the fearful herds, because it would help them correlate to their own incompetence, and to the lack of control in their own lives. In addition, when a federal agency claims incompetence for its mistakes, it will receive more control, funding and resources, and will eventually expand to a bloating level in order to reduce these mistakes. Ironically, whenever an error occurs, it is usually blamed on that same bloated bureaucracy that was expanded to begin with to resolve that same problem. It is an interesting cycle, nevertheless a vicious one.

the debunking of the incompetence myth associated with 9/11 resonates strongly with me because i happen to believe there has been no incompetence in the 6 1/2 years of the bush administration... on the contrary, they have been extraordinarily successful, systematically, methodically, relentlessly pursuing their agenda of creating fear and a complaint populace, slowly erasing our constitutional freedoms, and accruing unchecked power never before seen in our country, all the while pocketing vast floods of money from lucrative contracts... and, as richard skaff, the above reviewer, says so well...

We are trained not to question authority and to follow it blindly even into the abyss. It is biblical! You don't reveal the truth and question the establishment or you will be banished from the Garden Eden and crucified!

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Where the government keeps stuff (like Flight 93) that they don't want you to see

well, well, well... this is fascinating... and how convenient that it's not too far from where flight 93 went down...



i stood on the tarmac at dulles airport the afternoon of 9/11 and bid farewell to united's emergency reponse team that was headed up to pennsylvania to the flight 93 crash site... i knew most of the people who were going because i worked with them on a daily basis... the really interesting part, to me at least, was talking to them when they got back...

for one thing, they were never allowed into the actual crash site, which i found most peculiar... after all, this was united's official emergency response team and the aircraft did belong to united... the most puzzling thing they told me was that there was a secondary crash site, some distance away from the primary crash site... to me, that could only mean one thing... the plane was already in at least two pieces BEFORE it hit the ground...

here's the piece that i think may explain it... earlier that day, i had reassigned myself to dulles lobby security... even though i was a staff guy, i had been an airport general manager, so i knew a thing or two, plus i couldn't see myself continung to sit at my desk when all hell was breaking loose elsewhere... besides dealing with all the people who suddenly found themselves in dulles airport rather than their final destination after their flights had been ordered out of the sky, there were a lot of police and fbi types running around trying to get information... since i was management, i got asked frequently to check flight data and passenger lists... the flight that was getting the most interest was flight 93... at one point i was told that we needed to be prepared to evacuate the airport because flight 93 was over southern pennsylvania and headed our way, but that they were preparing to shoot it down... ponder THAT for a while...

(thanks to casey at open your mind's eye...)

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