Members might be interested in watching the second edition of Loose Change:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=78...se+change+recut

I would hope they will also do some follow-up here.

See this interesting article of how these three young men created a film that has been seen by an estimated 50 million people. Over 4 million have seen it at Google Video alone.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/st...1998179,00.html

This is an example of how the world of media is undergoing a revolution. When I say revolution I mean revolution. A power shift is taking place in the world of communication. The dominant ideology is under threat.

Like most things, it is a double-edged sword. Although people can get the message out there, people can also get incorrect messages out there; it doesn't encourage people to actually investigate, research, and verify what we are told (I saw it on the internet so it must be true).

Loose Change SE, like the original Loose Change, is full of errors:

http://www.loosechangeguide.com/LooseChangeGuide.html

Yet millions of people have watched it, and no doubt a large proportion of them believe it - without checking on the verisimilitude of the claims or material. So is truth a popularity contest?

On the other hand, it has done much good - exposing the maltreatment of Iraqi prisoners and other examples.

It really comes down to something I was taught a long time ago: listen to what everyone has to say, but don't necessarily believe them until you research what they have to say.

Loose Change is so full of errors I’ve seen “truthers” suggest that its makers are “disinfo” agent sent to discredit the movement. 911 Research probably the best researched “inside job” site has been particularly critical of the movie.

“Because of its flaws, the film is an easy target for debunkers defending the official story”

http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/loose_change/index.html

“…if it is not naive, foolish, uninformed and ignorant, then it is the work of a calculating mole or at best a naïf who has been used by such.” Note this refers to the 1st edition many but by no means all the errors were corrected in the 2nd the 1st quote refers to the 2nd edition.

http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/green/loose_change.html

Oil Empire called it “Loose with truth” and a “hoax” which used “fake evidence”

Mike Ruppert wrote:

"I have watched “Loose Change” and in my expert opinion it is a very fine piece of CIA disinformation, one that fits an astute maxim by Professor Peter Dale Scott: “Disinformation, in order to be effective, must be 90% accurate.” Even though the film opens with some of my original research (including images taken from the FTW web site), it quickly sinks into a repeatedly debunked and confabulated hypothesis that no airliner hit the Pentagon…Once the audience buys into all the credible research at the front, they are quickly swept away in a flood of easily impeached high-tech nonsense, and that was the film’s intent".

In addition to Ruppert and the webmaster’s comments the page excerts of / links to other critiques of the film.
http://www.oilempire.us/loose-change.html

In addition to the debunking sites already cited this one is also very good

http://internetdetectives.biz/case/loose-change

I don’t care for their conservative political views but the “Screw Loose Change” bloggers have also found numerous errors in the film.

http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2006/...st-mistake.html

It is interesting to note that even Korey Rowe, the “documentary’s” producer admitted there were errors that were left in intentionally but gave a rather peculiar explaination for doing so

“We don’t ever come out and say that everything we say is 100 per cent. We know there are errors in the documentary, and we’ve actually left them in there so that people discredit us and do the research for themselves—the B52* [remarked to have flown into the Empire State Building], the use of Wikipedia, things like that. We left them in there so people will want to discredit us and go out and research the events yourself and come up with your own conclusions….”

* They originally said a B52 had flown into the ESB when in fact the plane had been struck by a much smaller B25

http://smithmag.net/2006/08/10/korey-rowe-...e-cannon-of-911

On another occasion the filmmakers admitted their video had numerous errors but I can’t find the link. I’ll update this post when I do.

I re(found) the quote. During a debate on a NYC cable public access show Dylan Avery, with Jason Bemas at his side, said the following at the 6:47 mark:

“We made that film essentially as a bunch a kids. That’s, that’s the reality of the situation. We’re a bunch of kids tackling a subject far beyond the scope of any one documentary. I will be the first to admit our film definitely contained errors, it still does contain some dubious claims, and it definitely does come to some conclusions that are not 100 percent backed up by the facts.”
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=142975074341498508

That's probably the truest thing he has ever said regarding 9-11 or his "documentary"

Since so much time had past I decided to make a new post rather that simply updating my last one.

Len

If that's true then it's sick. Only people who have the time and resource to investigate this for themselves will discover this dis-information. They must be well aware that certain people will quote their video as gospel without bothering to research it - disingenuous research at it's worst.

If they have a genuine message they should portray it as such, rather than ridicule themselves by adding deliberately false statements in the hope that people will find them for themselves. They must have known the minutiae of their comments would be dissected - admitting to errors is acceptable and congruous - saying they were put there on purpose to encourage debate is nonsensical.

Which would be worse if he was telling the truth or if he was lying?

Good point. Putting deliberate errors in would IMHO be worse than making a genuine mistake then lying to cover it up. Neither shows the authors in a good light.

There is a virus sweeping the world. It infects opponents of the Bush government, sucks their brains out through their eyes and turns them into gibbering idiots. First cultivated in a laboratory in the US, the strain reached these shores a few months ago. In the past fortnight, it has become an epidemic. Scarcely a day now passes without someone possessed by this sickness, eyes rolling, lips flecked with foam, trying to infect me.

The disease is called Loose Change. It is a film made by three young men that airs most of the standard conspiracy theories about the attacks of September 11 2001. Unlike the other 9/11 conspiracy films, Loose Change is sharp and swift, with a thumping soundtrack, slick graphics and a calm and authoritative voiceover. Its makers claim that it has now been watched by 100 million people.

The Pentagon, the film maintains, was not hit by a commercial airliner. There was "no discernible trace" of a plane found in the wreckage, and the entrance and exit holes in the building were far too small. It was hit by a cruise missile. The twin towers were brought down by means of "a carefully planned controlled demolition". You can see the small puffs of smoke caused by explosives just below the cascading sections. All other hypotheses are implausible: the fire was not hot enough to melt steel and the towers fell too quickly. Building 7 was destroyed by the same means a few hours later.

Flight 93 did not crash, but was redirected to Cleveland airport, where the passengers were taken into a Nasa building and never seen again. Their voices had been cloned by the Los Alamos laboratories and used to make fake calls to their relatives. The footage of Osama bin Laden, claiming responsibility for the attacks, was faked. The US government carried out this great crime for four reasons: to help Larry Silverstein, who leased the towers, to collect his insurance money; to assist insider traders betting on falling airline stocks; to steal the gold in the basement; and to grant George Bush new executive powers, so that he could carry out his plans for world domination.

Even if you have seen or read no other accounts of 9/11, and your brain has not yet been liquidised, a few problems must occur to you. The first is the complete absence of scientific advice. At one point, the presenter asks: "So what brought down the twin towers? Let's ask the experts." But they don't ask the experts. The film-makers take some old quotes, edit them to remove any contradictions, then denounce all subsequent retractions as further evidence of conspiracy.

The only people they interview are a janitor, a group of firemen, and a flight instructor. They let the janitor speak at length, but cut the firemen off in mid-sentence. The flight instructor speaks in short clips, which give the impression that his pupil, the hijacker Hani Hanjour, was incapable of hitting the Pentagon. Elsewhere he has said the opposite: he had "no doubt" that Hanjour could have done it.

Where are the structural engineers, the materials scientists, the specialists in ballistics, explosives or fire? The film-makers now say that the third edition of the film will be fact-checked by an expert, but he turns out to be "a theology professor". They don't name him, but I would bet that it's David Ray Griffin, who also happens to be the high priest of the 9/11 conspiracists.

The next evident flaw is that the plot they propose must have involved tens of thousands of people. It could not have been executed without the help of demolition experts, the security firms guarding the World Trade Centre, Mayor Giuliani (who hastily disposed of the remains), much of the US air force, the Federal Aviation Administration and the North American Aerospace Defence Command, the relatives of the people "killed" in the plane crashes, the rest of the Pentagon's staff, the Los Alamos laboratories, the FBI, the CIA, and the investigators who picked through the rubble.

If there is one universal American characteristic, it is a confessional culture that permits no one with a good story to keep his mouth shut. People appear on the Jerry Springer Show to admit to carnal relations with their tractors. Yet none of the participants in this monumental crime has sought to blow the whistle - before, during or after the attacks. No one has volunteered to tell the greatest story ever told.

Read some conflicting accounts, and Loose Change's case crumbles faster than the twin towers. Hundreds of people saw a plane hit the Pentagon. Because it collided with one of the world's best-defended buildings at full speed, the plane was pulverised - even so, plane parts and body parts were in fact recovered. The wings and tail disintegrated when they hit the wall, which is why the holes weren't bigger.

The failure of the twin towers has been exhaustively documented by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Far from being impossible, the collapse turns out to have been inevitable. The planes cut some of the support columns and ignited fires sufficient to weaken (but not melt) the remaining steel structures. As the perimeter columns buckled, the weight of the collapsing top stories generated a momentum the rest of the building could not arrest. Puffs of smoke were blown out of the structure by compression as the building fell.

Counterpunch, the radical leftwing magazine, commissioned its own expert - an aerospace and mechanical engineer - to test the official findings. He shows that the institute must have been right. He also demonstrates how Building 7 collapsed. Burning debris falling from the twin towers ruptured the oil pipes feeding its emergency generators. The reduction in pressure triggered the automatic pumping system, which poured thousands of gallons of diesel on to the fire. The support trusses weakened and buckled, and the building imploded. Popular Mechanics magazine polled 300 experts and came to the same conclusions.

So the critics - even Counterpunch - are labelled co-conspirators, and the plot expands until it comes to involve a substantial part of the world's population. There is no reasoning with this madness. People believe Loose Change because it proposes a closed world: comprehensible, controllable, small. Despite the great evil that runs it, it is more companionable than the chaos that really governs our lives, a world without destination or purpose. This neat story draws campaigners away from real issues - global warming, the Iraq war, nuclear weapons, privatisation, inequality - while permanently wrecking their credibility. Bush did capitalise on the attacks, and he did follow a pre-existing agenda, spelt out, as Loose Change says, by the Project for the New American Century. But by drowning this truth in an ocean of nonsense, the conspiracists ensure that it can never again be taken seriously.

The film's greatest flaw is this: the men who made it are still alive. If the US government is running an all-knowing, all-encompassing conspiracy, why did it not snuff them out long ago? There is only one possible explanation. They are in fact agents of the Bush regime, employed to distract people from its real abuses of power. This, if you are inclined to believe such stories, is surely a more plausible theory than the one proposed in Loose Change.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...2006831,00.html

Which I assume you don't believe.

My only quibble with your post is, do you really believe that the man shown on the left below is the same person who is shown on the right?

Yes actually, if you watch the actual video instead of just looking at that one carefully picked frame, it's clearly him. That one frame was picked where the lighting is odd and his facial expression is different, and then very poorly captured and compressed for the web, to make it look like someone else. But whoever grabbed that frame clearly saw the rest of the video and had dishonest reasons for picking that particular frame out of it instead of the thousands of others that look just like him.

Okay, tell me this. Does the person in this link look at all like Bin Laden?

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200512/2...227_231145.html

No - and I'm sure the subject is greatful!

I enjoyed reading George's article this morning, in fact, I read it on the forum before I had a chance to read it in the guardian. Perhaps this is another example of the changing face of the media. He is correct in his assessment on loose change. The makers of the film continually refuse to accept expert advice on the topic, including the research from the magazine 'popular mechanics'. See here a debate between the makers of loose change and two writers from popular mechanics, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stVmEmJ666M .

The general demeanour of the film makers is adolsecent at best. Their research is exposed as highly flawed and has served to discredit their 'cause' more than highlight it. The very people whose research they based their film on have denounced them (Michael Ruppert).

I am particularly glad that this article appeared in a publication such as the guardian. In publishing this, it distances the left from the less credible elements of political and critical research.
I had considered writing an article not too different from George's article for a new publication that I am starting up. I don't think that it can be bettered, so I shall leave it be.

Just to continue the theme of the 'chaning face of the media', I am currently establishing an alternative newspaper in my college. In addition to a print publication, the paper will be available online in blog form, allowing immediate reader comment. To my knowledge, we will be the first Irish student newspaper to do so.

John Geraghty

That's a novel suggestion. As I understand it, the Osama-the-stout pic on the left was the one supplied by the US in December 2001, and the rest of the video looks just like it. They look like two different people to me.

I've seen the various Guardian anti-conspiracy pieces, and note that the Guardian has also printed pieces leaning strongly in the opposite direction by Michael Meacher and Gore Vidal. Their articles seemed more persuasive to me than the one above. Likewise, quoting the NIST piece as conclusive proof of how the WTC collapsed doesn't convince me in the light of the detailed critiques of it that have appeared in the writings of David Ray Griffin and the long, extensive 9/11 MYSTERIES doco. Forget LOOSE CHANGE (which I've never seen, and don't need to) - the 9/11 MYSTERIES doco features audio recordings of firefighters that heard explosions, footage of a dozen or more eyewitnesses that saw explosions, an audio recording of a firefighter describing the internal blaze as small and isolated, footage of the oxygen-starved fires belching 'cool' black smoke, and so on and so on.



Many of those are featured in 9/11 MYSTERIES, which runs for almost two hours, is solely devoted to discussing the collapses and which has convinced everyone I've shown it to. Maybe it's LOOSE CHANGE with a brain... It's easily viewable on GoogleVideo for anyone that cares.

John Ashcroft places a gag order on Sibel Edmonds, folks who knew Atta in Florida are advised by the FBI to keep their mouths shut... the 'Jersey Girls' 9/11 widows have slammed the 9/11 commission report as ignoring 80% of their requested questions.. Bush and Cheney demand that their 9/11 testimony be kept private, with note books confiscated... an FAA official cuts an audio recording tape into pieces.. Of course, none of this happened in the happy-go-lucky world of the article above, where all government officials are chatty and gabby and the Commission Report members were all ears to criticism.



The articles focus on LOOSE CHANGE as the source for all opposition to the official story seems clearer after this comment, as only someone really keen to avoid the more difficult questions would bother. A single click to the link below -

http://patriotsquestion911.com/

- gives a long and literally tiring list of of former and sitting US Senators, former and current US military officers, members of the prior Reagan and Bush administrations, former members of MI5, journalists foreign and domestic (including Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg), scientists and ex-members of the CIA (including Ray McGovern), all of whom couldn't be any clearer or blunter in their unhappiness with the official story and their suspicion that there is a cover-up. Perhaps all these government and intelligence officials were happy with the official story until they saw LOOSE CHANGE, in which case I should probably thank the author for pinpointing LOOSE CHANGE alone as the source of all those niggly questions.



The explanation here is that any figure in any walk of life - policeman, doctor, lawyer - can commit a crime, or be accused of criminal activity, but as soon as a high-level government politician is involved it's a 'stuff up', a big mistake, and something where criticisms get dismissed by mainstream journalists in jocular fashion and the politicians get the benefit of the doubt, because criminal activity is impossible and those politicians, evidence of corruption and deceit notwithstanding, all ultimately have our best wishes at heart. Rather than bothering with the teenybopper LOOSE CHANGE boys, I'd love it if 'conspiracy theory' boosters bothered to tackle the comments made by Ray McGovern, Robert Baer, Barbara Honegger and countless other harder-to-dismiss authorities at the link above, but I suspect those criticisms would prove harder for the lifestyle page at The Guardian to nervously reduce to a comic hit-piece for the ill-informed.

Possibly, I haven't dug up the origin of that specific frame. But the government didn't just release that one frame, so the same point still applies, why does the conspiracy theorist pick the worst of the bunch, mess with the quality of the image, and ignore the rest of the video?


This site has some more images from the same video, looks like him to me.

http://www.september11news.com/OsamaEvidence.htm

I haven't seen evidence of either of those assertions. That still frame of the 'fat' Osama appeared in regular mainstream papers here in Australia at the time of the original story, and looked no better then. Thanks for the link with still images from the rest of the video - are you basically suggesting that the 'fat' Osama pic has been deliberately adjusted or distorted in Photoshop or something by a 'conspiracy theorist'?

I've seen a number of reports online, and some in print, that questioned the validity of the translation. I'm at work so no time to be as indepth as my previous post but

http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/16801

is a random example. More to the point, there are transcripts around of Bin Laden statements prior to December where OBL denies direct involvement, though he still registers general approval, and there's a longish interview around with Al-Jazeera journalist Abid Ullah Jan (who interviewed Bin Laden a couple of months before 9/11) who states point blank that he's seen the video and it's not the same guy. Without immediate links to these I don't expect them to immediately change your point of view, but I thought I'd mention them.

"Loose Change" is more credible than the official account of what happened on 9/11, no matter how many alleged "mistakes" are in it. What is undeniable is the fact that our state-of-the-art defense system stood silent and didn't react at all for over an hour while hijacked planes were flying into the WTC and even directly over Washington, D.C. If our defense system isn't triggered to react when a known hijacked plane is flying directly towards the Pentagon-the heart of the our defense system-then the taxpayers certainly have a right to demand an accounting of where the trillions they've spent on all those magnificant missiles and fighter planes went. Remember, just a few years prior to 9/11, the plane that professional golfer Payne Stewart was flying in didn't respond to radio communication. Within 15 minutes, two fighter planes were riding abreast of Stewart's plane, to ensure it didn't crash in a populated area. If NORAD is designed to respond like that to a single plane that is not responding to radio communication, how can anyone believe they didn't respond at all on 9/11, especially after the second plane hit the WTC?

This is a complex issue, much like the JFK assassination. Instead of discrediting people who are trying their best to bring out issues the mainstream press will never touch, we ought to focus on questions like; why did WTC building 7 collapse? Nothing hit it- so the jet fuel argument won't fly. Before 9/11, no high-rise building in the world had ever collapsed from fire. None have since. On 9/11, three did, and one of them was not hit by any plane. There are so many aspects of this case to investigate. For instance, there are witnesses who were in the basement of the World Trade Center North, who experienced what to them was an explosion IN THE BASEMENT at the time the first plane struck. The walls crumbled, there was a loss of power, and they were lucky to get out of there alive. One of them (sorry, would have to look up the name, but I believe he was hispanic) became a hero when he rescued several people from the crumbling basement, and was even interviewed locally in the immediate aftermath and lauded for his bravery. He later appeared on a radio show (probably Alex Jones or Black Ops- don't imagine anyone else would interview him) and expressed surprise at being ignored completely after that. Of course, the media had to ignore him, because even they couldn't explain how a plane hitting a building 80 stories above could cause significant damage to the basement.

I don't see how anyone who has studied the JFK assassination, with all the lies, distortions and the massive coverup (which is still ongoing) can not see the parallels in the 9/11 "investigation." Those who conspired to murder JFK didn't suddenly become evil in November, 1963, and then suddenly go back to being good and non-conspiratorial afterwards. Those who rule us are seemingly always conspiring against us, to maintain their hold on power.

This is a common error; it took about 80 minutes for the aircraft to be intercepted.

At about 0933 EDT, the aircraft failed to respond to calls from ATC. At about 0954 CDT, the F-16 was alongside the aircraft. The difference between EDT and CDT at the time was 1 hour. That makes the intercept time about 80-odd minutes.

Don,

The firefighters on-scene reported that the collapse of WTC 1 & 2 damaged WTC 7 - so much so that they reported "...about a 20 story hole ..." in the side of WTC 7.

Wasn't this a factor in its collapse? If not, why not?

Thanks.

9/11 MYSTERIES which you are so enamored of has already been critiqued on this forum I only watched the 1st 20 - 30 minutes or so and found numerous errors and distortions and gave up. For example the fireman who said the fire was small was referring to his location which was a fire protected stairwell on a floor NIST itself said only had limited fires. Griffin isn’t much better many of his claims are unsourced or drawn upon sources that don’t document their claims he once even cited the manual of a consumer computer flight simulator as a source regarding FAA policy. He also suffers from a sever misunderstanding of fire engineering. He for example claimed that because some steel framed buildings stood after 10 hours of fire that steel frames could withstand 10 hours of exposure. Sounds reasonable except the same area isn’t continuously on fire for that amount of time, fire burns until all the flammable material has been consumed and by then has spread to other areas.

As for the explosions HEARD (there are only 1 or 2 reports of seeing explosions) 1) many things can produce explosions like noise and lots of things (like transformers and stores of flammable cleaning, photocopying etc supplies) that aren’t bombs would have exploded in the towers. There were reports of explosions in the Edifico Windsor fire in Madrid as well, do you think there were bombs there too? As for the smoke find me a fire fighter or fire engineer who agrees with the inside jobbers that the fires in the towers were weak.



As I stated above I only got through the 1st few minutes before I gave up because it was such crap. Perhaps you can tell us the names and credentials of these experts and at what point they appear. Funny that no other truth sites seem to have cited them.



Edmonds only joined the FBI after 9/11 and was a low level translator of Turkish, Persian (Farsi) and Azeri, languages unlikely to have been used by any of the suspects from the “official” version, show me where she indicated she thought 9/11 was an “inside job”

Please provide a citation for you claim about the people who knew Atta.

Show us where the Jersey Girls indicated they suspected an “inside job”.

Bush and Cheney are unlikely to have confessed during their testimony.

The cut up tape was of the recollections of flight controllers after the fact nothing would have prevented them from repeating what they said. There is no indication the recording was indicative of a stand down.



And if you whittle out those who weren’t in office anytime around 9/11 and those who don’t say they suspect an inside job your let with only one or two politicians.


McGovern, Baer and Honegger had long since left their intelligence jobs none of them claims inside information Baer only indicated that he suspected an inside job. Serious questions have been raised about Honegger’s sanity. http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2007/...e-honegger.html

Its not true that the US’s air “defense system stood silent and didn't react at all for over an hour”. Thought it’s true it wasn’t able to intercept any of the planes. The system was set up to defend against external invaders. The issue has been debated on other threads here. The only planes they reasonably could have been expected to intercept were flights 93 which crashed far from its target and 77. The problems with intercepting 77 are complex there is no evidence the Pentagon is defended by anti-aircraft missiles.

As Evan already noted 7 was extensively damaged by debris from 1 WTC, it contained thousands of gallons of diesel fuel and burnt without intervention for several hours there are numerous reports from firer fighters of it looking like it would collapse long before it did.

Also if you had bothered to read the NIST, ASCE/FEMA or 9/11 Commission reports or any of the articles by engineers about the collapses you’d have known that building materials rather than jet fuel were considered the main fuel source. It is unreasonable to doubt the well documented explanation of an event if you are unaware of the basic facts.

.

That was William Rodriguez and he like all the point you bring has already been discussed here. He was interviewed live on CNN on 9-11 and said nothing about an explosion from below, nor did he mention this in his numerous other interviews nor even in the RICO suit he filed against Bush and others he only mentioned this years after the fact, he was a hero but his claim isn’t credible. Like the 2 or 3 co-workers who back his story he is party to a multi-billion dollar lawsuit.

Here\'s a link to the NTSB report on Payne Stewart\'s jet so one can see the timing for themselves
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_id=...A005&akey=1
As you can see, the time changes from Eastern to Central which adds an hour to the overall time.

Also of note is that the planes that first intercepted Stewart\'s jet were not planes dedicated to air defense but rather unarmed ones that were already airborne for another unrelated mission. It took even longer to get air defense jets to Stewart\'s plane.

The 9/11 debate, like so many other issues, is determined in large measure by the faith of those who are debating. In the case of those who defend the government's official story of what happened, this faith is grounded in establishment bulwarks like the 9/11 Commission, the journalists at Popular Mechanics and other mainstream media debunkers, scientists cited as experts by the government, etc. In the case of conspiracy theorists like myself, we are predisposed to distrust those same establishment forces, and thus will usually place more credence in alternative sources like the internet. I freely admit to being predisposed towards conspiracy theories. What is just as obvious, however, is that those who passionately try to debunk these theories are just as predisposed to disbelieve them. It becomes a case of "I'll ignore your evidence, and you'll igonre mine." The case of WTC building 7 is critical here, I can't see how any large hole in the side of that building could make it collapse. The whole collapse theory is based on jet fuel melting the steel beams; there was no jet fuel in WTC 7, so why did it collapse? I'm sure you'll claim he was taken out of context, but the owner of the building was recorded as saying "we had to pull it," apparently meaning demolish it, in reference to WTC 7.

I only heard the one interview with William Rodriguez (thank you for coming up with his name), and he certainly never mentioned those other interviews. If he never mentioned the explosion or the fact he rescued others, then his credibility is certainly greatly diminished. I'll have to research that more. As for the failure of our defense system to react to what an attack on our infrastructure, as an American, I am outraged by that alone. I don't know how many of you here are Americans, but for those that aren't, we boast early and often in our country about the incredible national security system we have, which is of course centered in the Pentagon. Really, it is just as unbelievable to me as the magic bullet theory to accept that this well guarded command center could stand idly by while a rogue plane was flying overhead for some 30 minutes or more. If that's the best they can do with my tax money, then I want a refund!

We need to have an independent investigation of what happened that day; the 9/11 Commission, like the Warren Commission, was a whitewash designed, in its own words, "not to point fingers or assign blame." A real independent investigation would call all those witnesses-government officials and conspiracy theorists alike-and try to determine what really happened. Are any of the supposed hijackers really alive? That definitely needs to be answered, because if even one is, that alone destroys the muslims-gone-wild theory of 9/11. President Bush should be questioned about his curious actions on September 11, 2001. How did he learn about the planes flying into the WTC? Why did he continue to calmly read the goat story to the children?

On 9/11, over 3000 Americans lost their lives. To date, the only "investigation" into why they lost their lives was conducted by the woefully inadequate, toothless 9/11 Commission. We deserve anwers, not riducule. If all these "theories" are "wacko," or just plain wrong, that could be easily demonstrated by an independent investigation. A bipartisan congressional committee would hopefully do a better job of ferreting out the truth than the 9/11 Commission. The strongest voice in Congress for such an investigation was Cynthia McKinney, but she was defeated in the November elections. Right now it looks like the debate will continue to be ignored by television networks and largely confined to internet forums.

I have no intention of addressing all your points, but this one jumped off the page at me. "Nothing would have prevented them from repeating what they said"? How about fear?

How many employees, if a supervisor deliberately and demonstratively destroys something they said, are going to keep running their mouths or repeat themselves, once they start wondering what might happen to them if they don't keep their mouths shut, particularly on something as deadly as 9/11?

There's a TV show called "The Fear Factor." I've never watched it, but I don't have to watch it to know that a fear factor exists, something that debunkers of government conspiracy theories ignore when they ask where all the whistleblowers are. (Just as in the JFK case, I imagine that a lot of potential whistleblowers on 9/11 are dead, and a lot of others know it.)

Well said.

People have been warned down through the ages not to trust any government. But they go right on doing it.

And that's one of the mistakes that CTs make in their judgement of non-CTs. I don't trust the government very much at all, and I don't believe the official story because of its source. My belief in the official story is based on the facts as I've seen them and my knowledge of the relevant fields, and the research I've done in the years since 9/11. None of the CT claims hold up to any real scrutiny.

The quality of that one frame doesn't match the rest of the video, draw your own conclusions.

It’s not necessarily a question of who you trust as much as who gives the most logical answers and who best documents their claims and who has the backing of people with relevant expertise who examined the relevant issues. Many CT sites don’t document their claims or base their claims on non-authoritative sources other distort evidence and take it out of context. Quote abuse is rife in the truth movement often quotes are divided up by ellipses (…) and when you see what they left out you see why, the person didn’t mean to say what the “truthers” would have you believe. I’ll give two examples truthers quote an air traffic controller as saying "The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane" but they leave out the complete quote "The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane," O'Brien said. "You don't fly a 757 in that manner. It's unsafe." http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/hijackeWr.htm

In Loose Change they quote someone from a flight school as saying Hanjour was such a bad pilot he wouldn’t rent him a Cessna but they leave out the part where he said he was sure Hanjour would have had no trouble hitting the Pentagon.

But you’re not an engineer as with the Twin Towers it was acombination. Fireman reported the outer walls of the building leaning over or bowing long before collapse



No you misubderstand the “official story” as do a good number of “inside jobbers” office content fires triggered by jet fuel fired weakened (not melted) thin floor trusses which cause them to sag and pull in perimeter and core columns. Crash induced structural damage especially dislodging of fireproofing was a crucial fire. You should really be familiar with the “official version” before questioning it. 7 WTC presumably had a similar level of fire loading (flammable material per square foot/meter) as the towers it also contained several tanks of diesel to power generators. Fires burned in the building unabated for 5 – 7 hours before it collapsed.

That’s not what he said and it was taken out of context, “pull” does not mean demolish a building with explosives

I only heard the one interview with William Rodriguez (thank you for coming up with his name), and he certainly never mentioned those other interviews. If he never mentioned the explosion or the fact he rescued others, then his credibility is certainly greatly diminished. I'll have to research that more.

I’ll start a new thread documenting this soon

As for the failure of our defense system to react to what an attack on our infrastructure, as an American, I am outraged by that alone. I don't know how many of you here are Americans, but for those that aren't, we boast early and often in our country about the incredible national security system we have, which is of course centered in the Pentagon. Really, it is just as unbelievable to me as the magic bullet theory to accept that this well guarded command center could stand idly by while a rogue plane was flying overhead for some 30 minutes or more. If that's the best they can do with my tax money, then I want a refund!

Though some training exercises entailed scenarios similar to 9-11 the system was set up to defend against hostile planes entering US and Canadian airspace. It had been years since a plane was hijacked in the air in the US, the only intercept over US airspace in the years preceding 9-11 (Payne Stewart’s plane) took over an hour and that was for a plane flying in a straight line with its transponder on in uncrowded airspace, the 1st intercept was already in the air for a training exercise, before 9-11 few people imagined it would be critical to intercept a hijacked plane in minutes.

We need to have an independent investigation of what happened that day; the 9/11 Commission, like the Warren Commission, was a whitewash designed, in its own words, "not to point fingers or assign blame."

You haven’t presented evidence that it was but I agree that to a degree it was a whitewash because it avoided some prickly issues such as:
1) Did the PANYNJ not having to comply with NYC fire and building codes contribute to the collapses.
2) Intelligence failures of the Clinton and especially Bush administrations.

I personally don’t rule out LIHOP theories but have yet to see any substantial evidence backing them.

A real independent investigation would call all those witnesses-government officials and conspiracy theorists alike-and try to determine what really happened.

Can you list any witnesses to the events of 9/11 or people with relevant expertise who weren’t called, I don’t think for example Alex Jones or Jim Fetzer could have added much.

Are any of the supposed hijackers really alive? That definitely needs to be answered, because if even one is, that alone destroys the muslims-gone-wild theory of 9/11.

There is no evidence any of them are.

President Bush should be questioned about his curious actions on September 11, 2001. How did he learn about the planes flying into the WTC?

I think he claims he was told by some aids, why is that relevant?

Why did he continue to calmly read the goat story to the children?

That is a good question could it be that he is a clueless idiot who doesn’t know what to do in public unless he’s rehersed it a few times. IIRC he staid in the class room for another 10 minutes or so. Now if this had been planned don’t you think Rove and card etc would have planned a script for him acting in a decicive and presidential manner instead he ended up being mocked in some dumb Leslie Nilsen movie (I don’t remember the title I only saw the trailer)

If all these "theories" are "wacko," or just plain wrong, that could be easily demonstrated by an independent investigation.

Since no legitimate concerns have been brought up it would be hard to justify another investigation.


A bipartisan congressional committee would hopefully do a better job of ferreting out the truth than the 9/11 Commission. And when it came to the same conclusions as the commission you’d call for yet another investigation.

Right now it looks like the debate will continue to be ignored by television networks and largely confined to internet forums. It could be argued that’s all it deserves but the truth is such theories have been covered by the networks, cable channels and mainstream newspapers and magazines.

I urge Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Thorne to go over the other 9-11 threads on this forum, most of the point you’ve brought up have already been addressed. I also recommend the following sites:
http://www.911myths.com/index.html
http://www.jnani.org/mrking/writings/911/king911.htm
http://www.debunking911.com/
http://internetdetectives.biz/case/loose-change



Ron how do we know about this incident? Presumably it was because one or more of the flight controllers talked. Why he, she or they have only told half the story? Wouldn’t that be the most dangerous thing to do? They could have spoken to the press anonymously. Do you think the FAA supervisor was in on it too?



I’ve yet to hear of mysterious deaths of anybody related to 9/11. Rodriguez is still alive so is Scott Forbes so is the pseudo-fireman who said he saw three of the black boxes from the WTC crashes and so is the fireman who claimed to have found them.

Why? I never said that she did. The way I phrased it was that she and others were extremely unhappy with the official story and suspected there was a cover-up. Just Googling her name brings up many interviews and articles that support that assertion, and your comment begs the question – if she’s so irrelevant, why has she been slapped with a gag order?



Sander Hick’s THE BIG WEDDING, covered elsewhere on this forum.

Again, your choice of words, not mine, and they express their strong unhappiness with the official report on camera in 9/11-PRESS FOR TRUTH.



Good for you, but if you want me to engage in a critique, try watching the whole thing, otherwise I'd have an unfair advantage.



As with your comments about the tape being destroyed, if these things are so irrelevant, why are they being covered up?

Nice to see some supportive comments in this thread – I’m not overly interested in ping-ponging back and forth with rebuttals, as I’ve seen little to change my mind and doubt anything I say will change Kevin’s, which is fine. I’ll dig into the older 9/11 threads on this forum at a future date.

Len,

You refer to "non-authoritative sources," which is the usual way that non-governmental or non- mainstream media sources are referred to. Most of us "conspiracy theorists" believe that very powerful forces were behind the events of 9/11. Thus, we are not likely to trust any source that the establishment has decreed is "authoritative." I realize this puts the conspiracy theorist in the advantageous position of being able to deflect the views of various "experts" by claiming it's just another part of the coverup. You touch on this when you note that I'd likely not trust the results of a congressional investigation. You're probably right; while calling for a congressional investigation, most of us would be resigned to the fact that such an investigation would probably just rubber stamp the official version of events. I remember how disappointed I was in the House Assassinations Committee all those years ago. The Senate Select Committe on POW-MIAs was similarly disallusioning. On this side, we'll have to debate the issue as best we can with the sources we have. At least we can agree on the fact that our president is an idiot.

People often conflate any questioning of the report with “not believing the official story”. It’s my impression that Edmonds’ and the Jersey Girl’s view is closer to mine than it is to yours i.e. that the 19 named hijacker carried out the attacks at the behest of OBL and that although they didn’t have direct foreknowledge of the attacks various government officials failed in their responsibilities by ignoring various warning signs and that the 9/11 Commission glossed over or even covered up those failures.

Kristen Breitweiser, one of the Jersey Girls called for Bush to implement the Commission’s recommendations which would be odd if she though the conclusions they were based on a sham.

"We told them from the beginning when we lobbied for this, that independent commission reports are pointless if they sit on a shelf collecting dust. We will make sure, more than anything, that these recommendations are put into effect."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...R7EB37.DTL&

She also said, “I'm anti-terrorist” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-breitweiser/ 10-30-2006 post

If I’m wrong perhaps you can point out where they contradict this. At what point in the video do the Jersey Girls spell out their gripes?



Yeah I saw that thread it only had a handful of posts and that aspect was not delved into. For the benefit of those of us who don’t have the book perhaps you could outline what they said and tell us how it casts doubt on the belief that he carried out the attacks for OBL. You could try plugging snippets of the appropriate passages into Google to see if they are online. Hicks made Chapter 9 available online; I’ll read it when I find time http://www.sanderhicks.com/chapter9.html.



I don’t have unlimited time so I am unwilling to watch a 2 hour “documentary” what ever its subject or viewpoint after spotting numerous errors and distortions in the 1st few minutes (plus I find the narrator’s voice irritating). The film itself is not especially interesting to me. If however you want to highlight specific claims it makes and tell me where they are made (i.e. how many minutes and seconds from the begging) I’ll be willing to take a look.

I commented on the video here:
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...mp;p=84656&
and here:
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...mp;p=76613&



Why would Bush and Cheney want their testimony kept secret. I can see a number of reasons:

They are very big on the idea of “executive privilege” they didn’t even want to testify and only did so due to extreme pressure part of the whole imperial presidency. They might have done so because they could, just to show “who’s boss”.

They might have made embarrassing revelations.

They might have lied, no record = no repercussions or perjury charges, Clinton was impeached and almost removed from office for lying about a sex act.

They could have had legitimate national security concerns.

Griffin cited the manual for a consumer flight simulator regarding FAA policy, I don’t consider that authoritative nor do I for example consider Alex Jones authoritative because his claims are normally on backed by other pages from his site and when he cites independent sources he frequently misrepresents what they have said.

Numerous CT sites claim the Edificio Windsor in Madrid was a steel framed building but don’t cite any sources all news accounts and fire engineering articles I seen about the fire said it was a concrete building except for its steel perimeter columns.

I consider the lead structural engineer of the WTC and other engineers with expertise in high rise construction authoritative sources I don’t consider someone with a “masters degree” in “architecture” from a non accredited school with almost no classes on structural mechanics an authoritative source.

"The Senate Select Committe on POW-MIAs was similarly disallusioning."

It’s always been my impression that there was no real evidence that Vietnam or other southeast Asian countries continued to hold US POWs after 1975, perhaps you could start a thread on the subject. There are a few Vietnam and Vietnam era veterans who are members here.

"At least we can agree on the fact that our president is an idiot."

Too bad we can’t agree on something positive! But if we try hard enough I’m sure we can.

bump

All good questions Len, I have some specific answers for you but it'll have to wait till this Sat/Sun.

I didn't get as much time over the weekend as I'd hoped, but I'll tackle questions as I get the time.

My original mention of Atta was “..folks who knew Atta in Florida are advised by the FBI to keep their mouths shut...” – this after you basically suggested that the ‘confessional culture’ in the US would allow anyone with a juicy story at variance with the official one to get airtime or attention. This description of those ‘people that knew Atta’ comes from page 36 of THE BIG WEDDING, in the midst of Sander Hicks’ profile of BARRY AND THE BOYS author Daniel Hopsicker – Hopsicker eventually wrote a Florida-specific investigation into the background of the 9/11 attackers titled WELCOME TO TERRORLAND.



As far as how Hicks’ book ‘casts doubt on the belief that he [Atta] carried out the attacks for OBL’, I’ll just quote the book directly – this isn’t a piece by piece breakdown of the evidence Hicks uses to make his case, just a summary of his general argument.



Hicks then devotes his next chapter (“The Enigma of Atta, and the Precedent of Double-Agent Egyptians”) to that same topic, going through the 9/11 Commission Report and using mainstream articles that contradict it (along with interviews he conducted with Peter Dale Scott and TRIPLE CROSS author Peter Lance) to make his case. More later, if anyone is still interested.

I’ve read some of Hopsicker’s work and wasn’t very impressed though some parts were interesting. Can you be more specific about who these people were? I wasn’t the person who used the “confessional culture” argument but I think the author was referring to participants in the “plot” not witnesses. Presumably there is no documentation for these claims and Hopsicker and Hicks can report them because the people supposedly told to “keep their mouths shut” didn’t.

Hopsicker made a big deal about that too, I don’t think it makes a difference one way or the other if he lived in Venice or Miami an hour or two away. You have yet to provide any documentation for these claims.



There is evidence she was talking about somebody else and it’s possible that the sect of Islam Atta belonged to permitted the kind of behavior she described.
http://911myths.com/html/strip_clubs.html . Who backs Hicks’ and Hopsicker’s claims?

In any case putting too much weight on one witness is unreasonable if we don’t know his or her reliability. This is especially true of strippers, I’ve known a few ever dated one.



Ditto above I’d like to see evidence other that the word of a coke head stipper who might have been talking about someone else.

double post!

But I'll make this a PS

After denying it at first Atta's dad basiclly admitted his son had been one of the hijackers

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/07/19/...rror/index.html

'You did this hit piece because your corporate masters instructed you to. You are a controlled asset of the new world order ... bought and paid for." "Everyone has some skeleton in the cupboard. How else would MI5 and special branch recruit agents?" "Shill, traitor, sleeper", "leftwing gatekeeper", "accessory after the fact", "political whore of the biggest conspiracy of them all".

These are a few of the measured responses to my article, a fortnight ago, about the film Loose Change, which maintains that the United States government destroyed the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Having spent years building up my leftwing credibility on behalf of my paymasters in MI5, I've blown it. I overplayed my hand, and have been exposed, like Bush and Cheney, by a bunch of kids with laptops. My handlers are furious.

I believe that George Bush is surrounded by some of the most scheming, devious, ruthless men to have found their way into government since the days of the Borgias. I believe that they were criminally negligent in failing to respond to intelligence about a potential attack by al-Qaida, and that they have sought to disguise their incompetence by classifying crucial documents.

I believe, too, that the Bush government seized the opportunity provided by the attacks to pursue a longstanding plan to invade Iraq and reshape the Middle East, knowing full well that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Bush deliberately misled the American people about the links between 9/11 and Iraq and about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. He is responsible for the murder of many tens of thousands of Iraqis.

But none of this is sufficient. To qualify as a true opponent of the Bush regime, you must also now believe that it is capable of magic. It could blast the Pentagon with a cruise missile while persuading hundreds of onlookers that they saw a plane. It could wire every floor of the twin towers with explosives without attracting attention and prime the charges (though planes had ploughed through the middle of the sequence) to drop each tower in a perfectly timed collapse. It could make Flight 93 disappear into thin air, and somehow ensure that the relatives of the passengers collaborated with the deception. It could recruit tens of thousands of conspirators to participate in these great crimes and induce them all to have kept their mouths shut, for ever.

In other words, you must believe that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their pals are all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful, despite the fact that they were incapable of faking either weapons of mass destruction or any evidence at Ground Zero that Saddam Hussein was responsible. You must believe that the impression of cackhandedness and incompetence they have managed to project since taking office is a front. Otherwise you are a traitor and a spy.

Why do I bother with these morons? Because they are destroying the movements some of us have spent a long time trying to build. Those of us who believe that the crucial global issues - climate change, the Iraq war, nuclear proliferation, inequality - are insufficiently debated in parliament or congress, that corporate power stands too heavily on democracy, that war criminals, cheats and liars are not being held to account, have invested our efforts in movements outside the mainstream political process. These, we are now discovering, are peculiarly susceptible to this epidemic of gibberish.

The obvious corollorary to the belief that the Bush administration is all-powerful is that the rest of us are completely powerless. In fact it seems to me that the purpose of the "9/11 truth movement" is to be powerless. The omnipotence of the Bush regime is the coward's fantasy, an excuse for inaction used by those who don't have the stomach to engage in real political fights.

Let me give you an example. The column I wrote about Loose Change two weeks ago generated 777 posts on the Guardian Comment is Free website, which is almost a record. Most of them were furious. The response from a producer of the film, published last week, attracted 467. On the same day the Guardian published my article about a genuine, demonstrable conspiracy: a spy network feeding confidential information from an arms control campaign to Britain's biggest weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems. It drew 60 responses. The members of the 9/11 cult weren't interested. If they had been, they might have had to do something. The great virtue of a fake conspiracy is that it calls on you to do nothing.

The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a displacement activity. A displacement activity is something you do because you feel incapable of doing what you ought to do. A squirrel sees a larger squirrel stealing its horde of nuts. Instead of attacking its rival, it sinks its teeth into a tree and starts ripping it to pieces. Faced with the mountainous challenge of the real issues we must confront, the chickens in the "truth" movement focus instead on a fairytale, knowing that nothing they do or say will count, knowing that because the perpetrators don't exist, they can't fight back. They demonstrate their courage by repeatedly bayoneting a scarecrow.

Many of those who posted responses on Comment is Free contend that Loose Change (which was neatly demolished in the BBC's film The Conspiracy Files on Sunday night) is a poor representation of the conspiracists' case. They urge us instead to visit websites like 911truth.org, physics911.net and 911scholars.org, and to read articles by the theology professor David Ray Griffin and the physicist Steven E Jones.

Concerned that I might have missed something, I have now done all those things, and have come across exactly the same concatenation of ill-attested nonsense as I saw in Loose Change. In all these cases you will find wild supposition raised to the status of incontrovertible fact, rumour and confusion transformed into evidence, selective editing, the citation of fake experts, the dismissal of real ones. Doubtless I will now be told that these are not the true believers: I will need to dive into another vat of tripe to get to the heart of the conspiracy.

The 9/11 truthers remind me of nothing so much as the climate change deniers, cherry-picking their evidence, seizing any excuse for ignoring the arguments of their opponents. Witness the respondents to my Loose Change column who maintain that the magazine Popular Mechanics, which has ripped the demolition theories apart, is a government front. They know this because one of its editors, Benjamin Chertoff, is the brother/nephew/first cousin of the US homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff. (They are, as far as Benjamin can discover, unrelated, but what does he know?)

Like the millenarian fantasies which helped to destroy the Levellers as a political force in the mid-17th century, this crazy distraction presents a mortal danger to popular oppositional movements. If I were Bush or Blair, nothing would please me more than to see my opponents making idiots of themselves, while devoting their lives to chasing a phantom. But as a controlled asset of the new world order, I would say that, wouldn't I? It's all part of the plot.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...2017006,00.html

Hear, bloody hear. its this stuff that allows the right to portray all progressive movements as head in the clouds, paranoid lunatics.

It is an interesting point. If Bush is all powerful, why did he fail to plant WMD in Iraq. Why was he unable to plant information in the US to show that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11? The New Con memo called for a "Pearl Harbor" incident. 9/11 was not actually that. We have clear evidence who bombed Pearl Harbor. Yet 9/11 cannot be traced back to Iraq or Iran. If it was a conspiracy, it was not a very good one.

I posted the following also on the "Conspiracy of Conspiracies' thread.

We seem to have paralllel debates in progress...


Well George, put me down as another reader you have failed to convince.

Your initial article - and this more recent follow-up - is a real beat up, IMO.

You paraphrase and ridicule your opponents. You grapple only with the extremities and weaknesses of your opponents' positions.

You do nothing to weaken my concerns that 9-11 was a Zionist false flag operation, in the tradition of the Lavon Affair but on an much, much grander scale as befits our modern times.

You describe, for instance, the work of physics911.net and David Ray Griffin as a "concatenation of ill-attested nonsense". That's a nice phrase, George. It's effective writing.

But is is it a serious rebuttal?

I don't think so.

Most irritating of all, to someone like me, is the way you patronize those of us who believe there are serious flaws in the fundamental workings of our society, failings of morality, justice and accountability with major socio-political implications, exemplified by pyrotechnic mass sacrifices such as 9-11, rather obviously unsolved murders such as the JFK assassination - and above all the failure of academia and the mass media as a whole to examine such issues without fear or favour and try to establish the truth.

You suggest we should spend time instead on more serious issues such as campaigning for the environment, human rights or an end to hunger - and that we have allowed ourselves to be distracted by illusions and trivia.

It's plausible argument. But if I may indulge in analogy too, it's like ignoring the stench of a rotting corpse in the kitchen cupboard (don't go there!) while trying to keep the benchtop spotlessly clean. At some time, the smell makes the kitchen utterly unihabitable even if all observable surfaces are clean and tidy.

Since 9-11 hijacked the global agenda in the direction of new wars and a ludicrous 'War on Terror', focus on serious global issues has been effectively impossible.

The struggle for truth and justice is ultimately the same as the struggle for peace and well being.