Quote from: LostInTime on October 17, 2006, 01:52:26 PM
That being said, I do not believe we are seeing echoes of Nazi Germany and those who throw the term Nazi about loosely only diminishes the history attached to it. We still can make a difference and should do so every chance we get. Pull the levers [etc etc... ]
1) My BS filter is aroused whenever I hear/see the phrase 'that [being] said'.
2) One small
Noto Bene: Adolf Hitler was voted into office.
Quote from: Rana on October 14, 2006, 06:08:38 AM
I can remember 9/11.
right.Some observations - EG:
That Jonathan Bush's Riggs Bank has been found guilty of laundering terrorist funds and fined a US-record $25 million must embarrass his nephew George,
but it's still no justification for leaping to paranoid conclusions.That George Bush's brother Marvin sat on the board of the Kuwaiti-owned company which provided electronic security to the World Trade Centre, Dulles Airport and United Airlines
means nothing more than you must admit those Bush boys have done alright for themselves.That George Bush found success as a businessman only after the investment of Osama's brother Salem and reputed al Qaeda financier Khalid bin Mahfouz
is just one of those things - one of those crazy things.That Osama bin Laden is known to have been an asset of US foreign policy
in no way implies he still is.That al Qaeda was active in the Balkan conflict, fighting on the same side as the US as recently as 1999, while the US protected its cells,
is merely one of history's little aberrations.
The claims of Michael Springman, State Department veteran of the Jeddah visa bureau, that the CIA ran the office and issued visas to al Qaeda members so they could receive training in the United States,
sound like the sour grapes of someone who was fired for making such wild accusations.That one of George Bush's first acts as President, in January 2001, was to end the two-year deployment of attack submarines which were positioned within striking distance of al Qaeda's Afghanistan camps, even as the group's guilt for the Cole bombing was established,
proves that a transition from one administration to the next is never an easy task.
That so many influential figures in and close to the Bush White House had expressed, just a year before the attacks, the need for a "new Pearl Harbor" before their militarist ambitions could be fulfilled,
demonstrates nothing more than the accidental virtue of being in the right place at the right time.That the company PTECH, founded by a Saudi financier placed on America's Terrorist Watch List in October 2001, had access to the FAA's entire computer system for two years before the 9/11 attack,
means he must not have been such a threat after all.That whistleblower Indira Singh was told to keep her mouth shut and forget what she learned when she took her concerns about PTECH to her employers and federal authorities,
suggests she lacked the big picture. (And that the Chief Auditor for JP Morgan Chase told Singh repeatedly, as she answered questions about who supplied her with what information, that "that person should be killed," suggests he should take an anger management seminar.)
That on May 8, 2001, Dick Cheney took upon himself the job of co-ordinating a response to domestic terror attacks even as he was crafting the administration's energy policy which bore implications for America's military, circumventing the established infrastructure and ignoring the recommendations of the Hart-Rudman report,
merely shows the VP to be someone who finds it hard to delegate.That the standing order which covered the shooting down of hijacked aircraft was altered on June 1, 2001, taking discretion away from field commanders and placing it solely in the hands of the Secretary of Defense,
is simply poor planning and unfortunate timing. (Fortunately the error has been corrected, as the order was rescinded shortly after 9/11.)
That in the weeks before 9/11, FBI agent Colleen Rowley found her investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui so perversely thwarted that her colleagues joked that bin Laden had a mole at the FBI,
proves the stress-relieving virtue of humour in the workplace.
That Dave Frasca of the FBI's Radical Fundamentalist Unit received a promotion after quashing multiple, urgent requests for investigations into al Qaeda assets training at flight schools in the summer of 2001 does appear on the surface odd,
but undoubtedly there's a good reason for it, quite possibly classified.That FBI informant Randy Glass, working an undercover sting, was told by Pakistani intelligence operatives that the World Trade Center towers were coming down, and that his repeated warnings which continued until weeks before the attacks, including the mention of planes used as weapons, were ignored by federal authorities,
is simply one of the many "What Ifs" of that tragic day.That over the summer of 2001 Washington received many urgent, senior-level warnings from foreign intelligence agencies and governments - including those of Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Afghanistan and others - of impending terror attacks using hijacked aircraft and did nothing,
demonstrates the pressing need for a new Intelligence Czar.
That John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial aircraft in July 2001 on account of security considerations had nothing to do with warnings regarding September 11,
because he said so to the 9/11 Commission.
That former lead counsel for the House David Schippers says he'd taken to John Ashcroft's office specific warnings he'd learned from FBI agents in New York of an impending attack – even naming the proposed dates, names of the hijackers and the targets – and that the investigations had been stymied and the agents threatened,
proves nothing but David Schipper's pathetic need for attention.That Garth Nicolson received two warnings from contacts in the intelligence community and one from a North African head of state, which included specific site, date and source of the attacks, and passed the information to the Defense Department and the National Security Council to evidently no effect,
clearly amounts to nothing, since virtually nobody has ever heard of him.That FBI Special Investigator Robert Wright claims that agents assigned to intelligence operations actually protect terrorists from investigation and prosecution, that the FBI shut down his probe into terrorist training camps, and that he was removed from a money-laundering case that had a direct link to terrorism,
sounds like yet more sour grapes from a disgruntled employee.That George Bush had plans to invade Afghanistan on his desk before 9/11
demonstrates only the value of being prepared.The suggestion that securing a pipeline across Afghanistan figured into the White House's calculations
is as ludicrous as the assertion that oil played a part in determining war in Iraq. (ad absurdum)
Right?
Njc
