Thursday, February 28, 2008

Reconstructing 9/11

dr. elsewhere here

Not to overshadow Joseph's important post below, I did want to get everyone worked up about new implications of Saudi involvement in the 9/11 plot. Kudos to Larisa for extraordinary reporting, again!

Coupled with the recent revelations by Shenon's new book, The Commission, we should have a great deal of controversy surrounding the official story that serves as the propaganda pivot point in all matters political, especially this campaign.

Stay tuned.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have trouble understanding the whole "Saudi government was involved in 9/11" point of view. Maybe someone could explain to me: what the hell did Saudi Arabia gain from 9/11? And why would nobody have done anything about it (such as retaliate against Saudi Arabia)? Do you guys propose that the Saudis have managed to conceal their involvement from our government, or that our government is letting it slide, or that our government cooperated with it, or what?

To me, you take all this evidence showing that there's Saudi involvement with the alleged hijackers, put it together with the fact that the alleged hijackers were involved with drug smuggling (Hopsicker's research), and it looks like you've got Saudi involvement in drug smuggling (and presumably with the opium production in Afghanistan as well). That's interesting, but not so surprising considering how many governments are involved in the drug trade, most importantly our own.

The connection to terrorism is less obvious. Hopsicker provides no evidence that the alleged hijackers were actually involved in 9/11. All the evidence connecting the alleged hijackers to 9/11 comes from the same sources that gave us evidence that Saddam was building WMDs to kill Americans. It also stretches the imagination a little to think of a reason why a bunch of drug smugglers would want to kill themselves blowing up a few buildings in New York and slowing down the renovations at the Pentagon.

I also have trouble figuring out what is okay to say and what is not okay to say regarding 9/11 around here. Obviously CD is out. Questioning whether the 19 were guilty appears to be out. Saudi involvement is in. Drug smuggling is in. Seems like it's okay to acknowledge that there were hundreds of Israelis following around the alleged hijackers, as long as you don't suggest that this massive operation is any way important to understanding what happened. Is it okay to look into whether or not Bush and high level government and military knew anything or were involved, or is the line drawn at Saudis? I ask all of this because this post expresses enthusiasm over "controversy surrounding the official story" yet this blog in general seems to be a bastion of support for the official story. What it is okay and not okay to talk about here regarding 9/11 seems completely arbitrary.

Anonymous said...

reader, appreciate your input, though it's not entirely coherent.

at the risk of getting involved in a debate on this, because i don't really want to, i would have to ask you just what part of saudi involvement doesn't make sense to you? try making the distinction between 'the saudi government' and 'saudi officials in the government'. it's a nontrivial distinction to make, and applies just as well to our own country's involvement. in other words, no, bush likely did not know squat about anything prior to the attacks - have you ever noticed any sign the guy has a clue about anything? but yes, i have always suspected that some folks at some levels of authority facilitated the events. and they quite possibly did this without knowing what the end result would be; taking a bribe to allow saudis into this country despite questionable background checks, well that sort of thing is all it takes, really.

as to what the saudis have to gain from this, is that a real question? are you not aware that there is an enormous faction within saudi arabia - importantly NOT part of the official policy - that is sick to death of american/infidel involvement in their country, even what they perceive as control over their country. that fact is so well-known it's like knowing corporations are greedy; so what else is new? but that awareness crucially informs how one understands events in the world, and particularly an event like 9/11.

you make the serious error of conflating a lot of details to assume that, because a lot of illegal things are committed by a lot of individuals within a govt - be it saudi or american - that 'therefore' the govt is doing it. this is not necessarily the case, and i don't believe even people like hopsicker believe that.

i assume that these reporters you reference are savvy enough to realize that, when you have leadership that is clueless, corrupt, and superficial, you are likely to get a whole lot of crimes being committed by the folks they put in powerful places, not because they would be good leaders there, or not necessarily because they would be good criminals there (though we've seen some of this specific thing occur with the lawyers put in place in the DOJ for torture and politicizing the US atty system), but because they're good ol' boys.

i can envision scenarios like this. a situation emerges where drug smuggling becomes jeopardized because an atty is snooping around. it's brought to a repug official's attention not because the official has been invested in the smugggling but because he's been invested in the money he's been getting, not wanting to know its source. he's presented with a choice; either get involved with the smuggling enough to protect this kingpin, or give up the cash flow.

apply that scenario to the saudis and 9/11, and it's not that hard to see how something like the attacks could happen without a whole lot of knowing intent on the part of the several players necessary to pull it off.

so to that extent, you just don't need a whole lot of active 'conspiracy' to see how something like 9/11 could happen.

what you DO see is just a WHOLE LOT of INCOMPETENCE, mixed in with a great deal of hubris. this administration has always been so full of itself without anything to be so proud of, so it has never been inclined to actually hear warnings of dangers. they ignored the warnings of 9/11 not so much because they had helped plan it but because they thought they knew what the real threats were; they had their own agenda.

apply this description to the saudis. the royal family is no less insular than bush and cheney; they're fat cats with little patience for messy realities. they spend money like it was going out of style, and there has been speculation that they may be running out when their oil (which peaked years ago) dries up. but those at the top don't want to hear that; they only want to hear how much they can spend, so the minions must see to it they get it. and then there are the minions who harbor great anger for the humiliation from american control, so they get involved in some of the criminal money gathering in order to support their causes, and voila! big global messes.

as for believing (or not) that the hijackers were who the FBI has said they were, remember: the FBI was watching them! that's why the whole thing is such an embarrassment of incompetence; there were so many dots but no incentive to connect them.

and this is NOT the same source as the WMDs; you're conflating again. the FBI is NOT the CIA is NOT the OVP!!! keep these suckers clearly distinguished in your mind and you'll have far less confusion. well, at least it will start to make more sense as an exhibition of human behavior instead of cardboard cutouts for some video game.

(e.g., the FBI actually ratted out the CIA's use of torture in gitmo; members of the CIA refused to sex up the intel on WMDs, etc.)

so that's at least my perspective on the conspiracy end of things. as for where the lines are drawn, well that's not so hard, either. facts fall on one side of that line, and we revel in those; those things that have been shown as patently false we just don't have time for. the CD notion has been soundly panned, by experts, over and over ad nauseam, and it's beyond tiresome. there are just WAY too many very real and very urgent issues out there to get bogged down in such a distracting falsehood.

drug smuggling is in because there is just ABUNDANT evidence to support the factuality of that issue. the connection to 'terrorism' is actually very obvious; these folks have to fund their activities somehow, and it's pretty hard to do it with a legit business. notice how afghanistan went from producing NO poppies to becoming the world's #1 producer within two years of our invasion? in those two years, AQ was recruiting like mad; they had to feed those guys and buy them bullets with something!

the need for the drug trade in this country applies in the same way. notice how little money the RNC has to throw around on this year's campaign. this is not just because they're hemorrhaging members and donors, they've also lost their most generous illegal sources, abramoff and delay being the biggest examples.

questioning whether the hijackers were guilty is out because that doesn't make any sense. the FBI had all the passenger lists, and so could easily rule out and rule in everyone on that list. they were clearly able to do that within hours. that makes perfect sense to me; what's so hard about that? we don't talk about 'hundreds of israelis following them around' because this just isn't so; supposedly mossad had a few on the beat, and had done more dot-connecting than the FBI, but that's it. and that makes sense to me, too.

as for this post showing enthusiasm for exposing cover-ups in the commission's report, well we've all known all along that the commission would work to protect the administration from itself and its incompetence. if you have actually read the link i posted, you'll see that it focuses on the activities of 2 hijackers in southern CA and their connection to a third saudi who actually had his own connections to the saudi government. this would be an example of our government working to protect the saudi government. this also does not surprise me given bush and cheney's close ties to them. and this is specifically what makes it so suspect.

you see, these things are NOT at all arbitrary and in fact follow a very logical train of FACTS. there is a suspicion that something is fishy, and we know bush and dick and prince bandar are chummy, so you go with that, but only as far as the facts let you. there is simply not enough evidence to consider that those two governments planned 9/11, which is something i keep hearing from what joe affectionately refers to as 'the trannies.'

the fact that joe insists, and i support, keeping the discourse here on track with reality-based evidence is hardly arbitrary, and is in fact quite the opposite, given all the reasons i've taken the trouble to list here. though your query is very measured and civilized, i have to say, with all due respect, that your concerns are what appear arbitrary, to my mind, at least. but then, even that opinion fades when i realize that you appear to have approached this situation with your conclusion driving your fact-finding, which i hasten to remind you, is precisely what bush and cheney have done with most events. it is THAT kind of thinking that leads to arbitrary and illogical results; dead ends. we're not interested in that here.

you just don't need to think of all these events occurring as if they were all planned by those at the top; the crime is that they were not prevented. start there, and approach each fact and detail with an open mind. could be you discover that it was a conspiracy between cheney and bandar all along, but not likely. whatever; at least with an open mind you don't end up with your head up your ass like georgie and the dick.

AitchD said...

dr, Great job. That's better than most legal briefs the SCOTUS hears.

Anonymous said...

The belief that just the SAUDIS did it is what you call a limited hang out. It willfully ignores the fact that Israeli, German, French and American intelligence all watched the hijackers pretty much up until they did 9/11.

The real truth is that they were all involved to a degree. The planners must have been people very high up. The type of people that could tell a bunch of drug runners when to get on planes and where to go. Bring them into San Diego and give them a home. Bring them to Huffman Aviation in Florida to for flight training. Organize wargames on the day they made the flights. etc. The real truth IMHO is that 9/11 was an inside job with many players from many countries who had an interest in going into the middle east and disentegrating a few troublesome states so that others could loot them.

Anonymous said...

p.s. - why do so many on this site and a few others shy away from the concept that 9/11 was MORE than just incompetence and a few Muslim nutjobs who got lucky. And that there was actually secret(ie. conspiratorial cooperation) at high levels???

I've noticed a tendency on this site to assume certain things and completely rule out others. How do we know 19 hijackers pulled off 9/11 and fully knew what they were up to. How do we know HOW exactly the two towers were made to come down?

Some of you guys here seem willfully ignorant of the concepts of "Agent Provocateur" and "Patsy." Everything always boils down to incompetence, rag tag criminals teaming up to make more loot... seems like there's always this attempt here to steer people away from the possibility that something a bit more sinister is going on behind the scenes. How do half a dozen intelligence agencies all watch the hijackers and not know what they were up to. Something other than intelligence is going.

CapnDudeGuy

Anonymous said...

dr. elsewhere did you read this


Larisa seems to have overlooked Abdussattar Shaikh...not sure why - but you can find more info on that from Hopsicker -written back in 2004 & 2005.
more

more

I looked into this back in 2003 on GNN, but unfortunately, that forum has closed down and the records do not appear to be available in the wayback machine. Hopsicker does an excellent job covering this with the dirty details and his sardonic wit.
kc

AitchD said...

CapnDudeGuy, can you rule out the possibility that the (presumed) 19 skyjackers pulled off their attacks on their own, and maybe against the wishes of their superiors or without their knowledge? Or that someone, someone likely full of holy fundamentalist darkness, asked Won't someone rid our holy land of these meddlesome infidels?

Then again, is it possible that the attacks of 9/11 have been blown way out of proportion, owing to their shocking audacity and sudden loss of many thousands of lives, in addition to the obvious and terrifying vulnerabilities that were exposed in an instant?

Anonymous said...

I'm open minded about all of this. But I lean heavily towards the position that 9/11 was not the brainchild of 19 Muslim fundamentalists. The people who have suffered the most from 9/11 have been Muslim fundamentalists. Taking the view that they were getting back at the U.S. for interfering in the Mideast then their plans backfired. 9/11 has led to MORE intervention in their countries in the Middle East. But if they are that stupid how did they pull off 9/11? The people who have benefited were defense contractors, corporation and the militaries of those countries that played a part in this blood pact.

From everything I have seen it appears that the 19 hijackers were patsies. They were taken in by handlers in Germany, Venice Florida, San Diego and other places. The FBI just reported that in San Diego they had someone waiting for them(another informant who was allowed to get away apparently)

Some were infiltrated by the FBI and driven around by FBI informants to their targets (just like the Oklahoma City Bombing BTW).

And like often happens with these informants, many of them were allowed to flee the united states without punishment. The Informant and Provocateurs always seem to get away(think Andreas Strassmeier, Ali Mohammad, Osama bin Laden) which implies they are being protected higher up.

Then there is the fact that a bunch of intel agencies from different countries had watched these guys and did nothing. These agencies have the Technology to read your emails, tap your phones, hear and see through solid walls, using heat, tv radiation, sound vibration. track with gps and satellite, etc.

So what did the Israelis learn while following them around in Texas, Oklahoma and Florida? What did the Germans learn while they were watching these guys in Hamburg? What did the CIA learn while watching them there? What were there connections with Bojinka plot guys in the Philippines who planned to take out some planes? Or those connections to Oklahoma City? Are we all supposed to believe that no one can get on the internet or their top secret profiling databases they compile on people and connect some fucking dots???

People within the U.S. goverment and other governments VERY HIGH UP KNEW. That's why some of them stopped flying planes before 9/11. Why they were running wargames on 9/11 involving hijacked planes. And why minutes after 9/11 occured they could already finger the 19 patsy hijackers.

So understandably, some of us are tired of all of the bullshit and lies. Tired of people like Hillary Clinton and John McCain who are part of the fucking system that keeps this parade of criminals, killers and retards rolling.

Other than a couple of passports that magically floated down from the sky on 9/11. Where is the proof these guys planned 9/11??? Where is the audio from the planes with the voices of the hijackers making demands??? Where is the audio of distressed captains freaking out as their cockpit is bumrushed???? Other than the stuff off flight 93 DID ANYONE ANYWHERE RECORD IT FOR THE OTHER FLIGHTS????

Anonymous said...

p.s. forgot to sign off on the last one...

CapnDudeGuy

AitchD said...

There wasn't much Internet in the late 1980s when Saddam wanted OPEC's sympathy and higher oil prices, plus reparations from Kuwait, plus cease-and-desist sanctions against Kuwait for allegedly stealing crude from Iraq via sneak-drilling. OPEC told him to pound salt. And then Saddam asked the US State Dept politely if the US would object when Iraq's army would cross into Kuwait and take what Iraq believed belonged to Iraq (an imperfect analogy: 'Kuwait' was made out of 'Iraq' not long after 'Panama' was made out of Colombia), and the US State Dept's April Glaspie told Saddam (essentially) that the US does not have an official opinion on such matters like the border dispute between Iraq and Kuwait; so Saddam's army invaded Kuwait, and the US POTUS GHW Bush deployed humongous military forces to Saudi Arabia to protect its ass from Iraq's pissed-off dictator and to extract him from Kuwait, which would decimate or destroy his military forces; and the presence of humongous numbers of fornicating porkeaters in the Sovereign Kingdom of the House of Saud depended on not even god knows what kind of quids pro quo - coalition warfare is a terribly expensive enterprise, but I'm not the first to point out that Saddam and his secular ass were supposed to be got rid of, like he didn't know that, so he lobbed SCUDs at Israel and tested the US-deployed anti-missile Patriot defense gizmos which were basically helpless, and SCUDs could just as easily be lobbed at Saudi Arabia, and, well, Bush rescinded the contract on Saddam, but the fornicating porkeaters stuck around in Saudi Arabia, restricted to their military bases, a perceived and nevertheless a real pollution in the kingdom's midst, and one of the Sauds, the bin-Laden one, demanded that the pollution be eliminated, and eventually the US forces left the kingdom. Maybe those demanding 9/11 attacks also upped the stakes: get rid of that secular asshole Saddam like you agreed or we'll hit you again knowing how easy it is to do, and no more secular crap around our region. Sure, it hearkens directly back to circa 400 BCE, but it's the atheistic corporations and the god worshippers who were hell-bent on containing the USSR, especially its world-class supplies of oil/coal/natural gas/steel/copper, and on ensuring the USSR had no warm-water port, e.g., Persia-become-Iran, whose 1979 revolt was inevitable, given the events circa 400 BCE. If it wasn't so long a movie and so late, I'd watch "Reds" again now.

Anonymous said...

Dr. Elsewhere:


i would have to ask you just what part of saudi involvement doesn't make sense to you?


Well, lack of motive for one thing. Also, lack of evidence for involvement in 9/11 other than involvement with the alleged hijackers (obviously if the alleged hijackers didn't do it, then there's no evidence of Saudi involvement in 9/11).


try making the distinction between 'the saudi government' and 'saudi officials in the government'. it's a nontrivial distinction to make, and applies just as well to our own country's involvement.


Right, I understand that distinction fully. I'm sort of using "Saudi government" as shorthand for "elements within the Saudi government". I think that's a pretty standard way to speak.


no, bush likely did not know squat about anything prior to the attacks - have you ever noticed any sign the guy has a clue about anything?


Um, yeah, there's heaps of circumstantial evidence. The fact that he just happened to be 40 miles or so from where the flight school was on 9/11, the reports of several Middle Eastern men attempting to meet with him the morning of 9/11, the fact that he lied about seeing the first plane hit the towers on TV (not possible as it was not shown until the following day), his utter non-response when told about the second impact (along with the short duration of Andrew Card's statement to Bush in the classroom indicating that he didn't actually explain "a second plane has hit the second tower at the WTC" as claimed), the fact that the secret service didn't immediately rush Bush to safety, etc. (to list things just off the top of my head).


as to what the saudis have to gain from this, is that a real question? are you not aware that there is an enormous faction within saudi arabia - importantly NOT part of the official policy - that is sick to death of american/infidel involvement in their country, even what they perceive as control over their country.


And how did 9/11 facilitate the goal of ridding Saudi Arabia of American involvement in their country? How would it even plausibly have done that? And wouldn't someone within Saudi Arabia have claimed credit for the attacks if this was the goal? This proposed motive makes absolutely no sense.


you make the serious error of conflating a lot of details to assume that, because a lot of illegal things are committed by a lot of individuals within a govt - be it saudi or american - that 'therefore' the govt is doing it.


To reiterate what I said above, I'm referring to elements within a government here. You are right that whether the involvement reaches the highest levels may be questioned (although, I believe it does in the case of US involvement in 9/11 for many reasons).


so to that extent, you just don't need a whole lot of active 'conspiracy' to see how something like 9/11 could happen.


Hmmm, no, you need a lot of active conspiring to explain 9/11, under any scenario, including the purest form of the official story.


they ignored the warnings of 9/11 not so much because they had helped plan it but because they thought they knew what the real threats were; they had their own agenda.


Well, whether or not they "ignored warnings" (or whether there were even warnings to ignore) obviously hinges on whether or not these guys did 9/11. Also you can't help but notice that 9/11 fits right into the plans of PNAC (from which much of Bush's administration is drawn) requiring "a new Pearl Harbor". It makes little to explain every piece of suspicious evidence with "that's just incompetence!"


and this is NOT the same source as the WMDs; you're conflating again. the FBI is NOT the CIA is NOT the OVP!!! keep these suckers clearly distinguished in your mind and you'll have far less confusion. well, at least it will start to make more sense as an exhibition of human behavior instead of cardboard cutouts for some video game.


Okay, but you're still all the evidence through the Bush administration (via the mainstream media). Independent investigators (such as Hopsicker) turn up squat when looking for evidence of the alleged hijackers in 9/11, which was one of my main points in my post, and which you did not address. Could you (or SOMEBODY) address this point please? I have never heard a realistic explanation of why this should be so, considering how much information on the alleged hijackers about every other activity they engaged has been unearthed, and considering how extensive the planning for 9/11, and how so much evidence was supposedly available to the FBI.


notice how afghanistan went from producing NO poppies to becoming the world's #1 producer within two years of our invasion?


This is not true. The Taliban's claims that it was cracking down on opium production were likely just an attempt to win international approval. Any real cutback in opium production was likely a way of raising prices (Hopsicker talks about this in his book, I believe citing The Politics of Heroin by Alfred McCoy). I suspect one of the motives for 9/11 was to overthrow Osama and the Taliban and their whole organization (of which the alleged hijackers were a part), which is why the attack was pinned on them. To me, the key is that different people are profitting from the opium now than before 9/11, not that production has (probably) gone up.


questioning whether the hijackers were guilty is out because that doesn't make any sense. the FBI had all the passenger lists, and so could easily rule out and rule in everyone on that list. they were clearly able to do that within hours. that makes perfect sense to me; what's so hard about that?


That assumes that the FBI is honest. These passenger lists have never been released to the public, despite the fact that we supposedly know everyone who was on these planes. Why is that?


we don't talk about 'hundreds of israelis following them around' because this just isn't so; supposedly mossad had a few on the beat, and had done more dot-connecting than the FBI, but that's it. and that makes sense to me, too.


No, documents from the DEA available on the web list over 100 names of Israelis. I know Joe has written about them as being suspicious before, although nobody here seems to try to figure out how they fit into the greater puzzle.


you see, these things are NOT at all arbitrary and in fact follow a very logical train of FACTS. there is a suspicion that something is fishy, and we know bush and dick and prince bandar are chummy, so you go with that, but only as far as the facts let you.


It seems you're pretty selective in terms of the facts you're willing to look at. What doesn't fit your theories you brush aside too quickly. I think independent investigations into 9/11 have this "blind men and the elephant" problem generally.


you just don't need to think of all these events occurring as if they were all planned by those at the top; the crime is that they were not prevented.


Again, I think you've assumed this from the start, and then you ignore any evidence that would contradict this by saying that it's merely incompetence or coverup of incompetence. That's not exactly rigorous thinking.


start there, and approach each fact and detail with an open mind.


I am approaching things with an open mind. Starting with an unsubstantiated assumption, as you advise, is the exact opposite of keeping an open mind.


could be you discover that it was a conspiracy between cheney and bandar all along, but not likely.


Not what I think at all. As I've said, I think Saudi involvement in 9/11 is unlikely, due to lack of evidence that they were involved, lack of any plausible motive, and lack of any evidence that they benefitted from 9/11.


So, you wrote a book in response to my original post and I've written a longer book in reply, but instead of responding to all of this how about addressing my original questions:

1) Why is there no plausible motive, either for a bunch of drug smugglers or elements within the Saudi government, to carry out 9/11? Plausible motive means something like: they did 9/11 to faciliate some goal which they perceive to be in their best interest, then you either show how 9/11 helped them achieve that goal or explain why they did not achieve that goal despite the successful execution of the 9/11 attacks. Saying "they did it to rid Saudi Arabia of American influence" doesn't cut it unless you explain how 9/11 was going to help achieve that by some stretch of the imagination. Assuming that these guys just wanted die in order to blow some shit up for the hell of it or because "they hate our freedoms" strikes me as too irrational for a bunch of guys so obviously oriented around hedonism and making money.

2) Why do independent investigators provide no evidence that the hijackers were involved in 9/11? All the evidence, at present, comes through government channels. Hopsicker has found nothing despite years of searching. Presumably 9/11 was complicated to plan, so we expect that evidence should exist. Supposedly the FBI, the Mossad, and others were able to turn up loads of evidence. So why do independent investigators turn up nothing?

My view is: I think the alleged hijackers were framed. I think the Mossad agents following them probably did the framing. I think one motive for the attacks was that Bush had a stake in Afghanistan's opium but had been cut out of the loop by Osama, his former partner who turned on him. I think another motive was to provide a motive for the neocons' war on Iraq, which explains the Mossad involvement. There's probably more to it than that, but here I've at least got reasonable motives and I don't see much evidence that contradicts my theory - i.e. I don't have to keep my head up my ass and ignore facts in order to maintain this view.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

It's really very simple...
The official 9/11 conspiracy theory doesn't work. There are literally 100's (many more actually) of experts in various relevant fields who are crying out for a new investigation, some with some risk to their reputation or jobs or what have you. And, isn't there a growing international awareness?

You folks here... aren't experts.


What are we experts in? Connecting the dots, proposing new lines of connections that others have missed. Sometimes you sleuth or deduce new dots to connect. Let's keep our eyes and ears open.

Anonymous said...
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Joseph Cannon said...

Wow. Tranny crap and the SIBPATS speech in one brief paragraph. It was a work of art. Too bad it had to go.

My Illuminati masters have warned me to tell you to take it elsewhere. Otherwise I may not get that vacation in Bermuda that they promised me.

Anonymous said...

Okay, but can I get a response as to why Hopsicker can't come up with any evidence of the hijackers' involvement in 9/11? Seems like the answer to that question, whatever it is, is probably meaningful. Really, at least brush it off by saying that the evidence is too hard to find or he'll come up with it Real Soon Now or something and I'll be happy.

Obviously it's your blog and you don't have to answer me but, c'mon, you know we "trannies" aren't very bright, so have pity on a mentally handicapped person who's honestly trying his best to sort things out here.