Kean & Hamilton Explain U.S. Military Failure to Intercept Flight 77
(This ironic look at Kean and Hamilton's tag-team book; "Without Precedent" is posted over at DemocraticUnderground.com. Maybe they should have called the book, "Without President".)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x120755
“Without Precedent – The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission”, written by the two co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, is in their words “the compelling inside story of how the … 9/11 Commission managed to succeed against all odds in producing a report that made clear what went wrong and why.”
In this post I describe the authors’ attempts to justify just one of their major findings – a finding that to many people, including me, is the most incredible of the whole incredible story of 9/11. That is the explanation of how the most expensive, powerful, and technologically advanced military that the world has ever known failed to prevent an attack on its capital city despite what appeared to be plenty of time to prevent it. For clarity, my editorial comments in response to various statements by the authors are in red.
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Don Wright
Palm Beach Post Cartoonist Don Wright knows fact from fiction.
Here is his cartoon for 9/13/06.
http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/9035/02jh2.gif
C&L sucks.
but it was the first place i found this. interesting comments by Olbermann. heavy on 9/11. not heavy enough of course, but still very good comments.
And finally tonight, a Special Comment about President Clinton’s interview. The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.
It is not important that the current President’s "portable public chorus" has described his predecessor’s tone as "crazed."
Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as Al-Qaeda; the nation’s "marketplace of ideas" is being poisoned, by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit. Nonetheless.
The headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done, in five years. He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.
"At least I tried," he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. "That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried."
The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama Bin Laden before 9/11.
The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.
The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S."
The Bush Administration… did… not… try.—
Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest "pass" for incompetence and malfeasance, in American history!
President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs — some of them, 17 years old — before Pearl Harbor.
President Hoover was correctly blamed for — if not the Great Depression itself — then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the Stock Market Crash.
Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War — though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.
But not this President.
Thus instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us "safe" ever since — a statement that might range anywhere from Zero, to One Hundred Percent, true.
We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.
And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush — you got the name of the supposedly targeted Tower in Los Angeles… wrong.
Thus was it left for the previous President to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:
You did not try.
You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.
You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.
Then, you blamed your predecessor.
That would be the textbook definition… Sir, of cowardice.
To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.
That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair — writing as George Orwell — gave us in the novel "1984."
The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me.
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power…
"Power is not a means; it is an end.
"One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
The "free pass" has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush…
You did not act to prevent 9/11.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/25/olbermanns-special-comment-are-...
I wish Olbermann
would really address the issue, instead of beating around the bush.
"There's a shadow on the faces of the men who send the guns to the wars that are fought in places where their business interest runs."
no doubt, but did you
no doubt, but did you actually watch the clip? for a cable news man it was truly amazing regardless of its lack of 9/11 truth.
His handlers loosen the leash every now and then
so that us common folk can say "oohhh a glimmer of hope"
I don't buy it.
"There's a shadow on the faces of the men who send the guns to the wars that are fought in places where their business interest runs."
dude, i get it, you dont
dude, i get it, you dont like or trust the MSM. i dont either. but give a little credit where credit is due. did you even watch it? was he not right on? sure, he didnt go far enough, but your dreaming if you think anyone on the G.E. network would. seriously, give credit where credit is due. it was a great commentary.
Pretty good article from
Pretty good article from Ruppert.
PAKISTANI PAYOFFS:
Deceiving the Public for Fun, Profit, and Votes--
Cynical Manipulation Beyond Belief
by
Michael C. Ruppert
September 25th 2006, 2:20PM [PST] - Caracas – It was a slap in the face of galactic proportions to the 9/11 research community and a cynical statement about just how stupid and gullible the Bush administration views the general public, as stories of Richard Armitage’s allegedly-relayed post-9/11 “bomb you back into the stone age” threat to Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf played across newspapers and TV screens around the world this week.
That threat was, according to Musharraf, delivered directly to his then-intelligence chief, General Mahmud Ahmad. Armitage, a lifelong weight lifter who bears striking resemblance to an armored car on legs, would have been the perfect messenger to deliver such a message. On 9/11 he was Colin Powell’s deputy Secretary of State. Armitage’s career shows a long and deep friendly record of collaboration with Pakistan and its leaders, especially during and after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Last week’s flap – in advance of a 60 MINUTES interview with Musharraf scheduled for September 24th – has put a lot of money in Musharraf’s pocket. It should ensure his continued silence on 9/11; a last big payoff before he leaves office. It has also given the Bush administration millions in free (and absolutely false) “tough on terrorism” publicity less than 50 days before the US midterm elections. All of this because of a never-before-revealed event that Musharraf recounts second-hand and Armitage now says he doesn’t remember. Not bad. Bush, Cheney, Musharraf and Armitage must have been laughing themselves silly when they cooked this one up.
According to the statements of both Armitage (an Iran-Contra criminal about whom FTW has written much) and the Pakistani President, on September 12th, 2001, Armitage met face-to-face with Ahmad in Washington, telling him that either Pakistan would cooperate fully with the post-9/11 US war on terror or be bombed back into the stone age.
That’s right, Ahmad was actually having a convenient breakfast meeting with Congressional leaders in Washington when the attacks took place. Just days earlier he had personally ordered $100,000 wired to lead hijacker, Mohammed Atta, in Florida. The FBI knew it and was later forced to admit that they knew it. Pakistan was already fully “on board” when the attacks took place. It was on board as a criminal co-conspirator with the United States government in perpetrating the attacks.
When excerpts of the 60 MINUTES interview where Musharraf recounted Armitage’s threat were “leaked” last week, news flashes scattered like shotgun pellets, headlines were re-written, and the subject dominated a subsequent presidential press conference where Bush and Musharraf cheerfully stood side-by-side just days before the conveniently-timed release of Musharraf’s memoirs by Simon and Schuster. Coyly (cha-ching, cha-ching), Musharraf said he couldn’t comment because of agreement with the publisher and Bush chimed in saying, “That means buy the book!”
If Noam Chomsky’s latest book got rocketed into the top ten after Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez touted it at the UN, what will Bush’s comments do for Musharraf’s book? Tit for tat?
The problem with these absolute fabrications is that, according to government sources and reporting from respected major publications, the US government knew full-well that General Ahmad had ordered al-Qaeda-linked Omar Said Sheikh1 to wire $100,000 directly to Mohammed Atta just days before the attacks. Armitage should have been arresting Ahmad instead of “pressuring” him to cooperate as an ally. The reason why Armitage did not arrest Ahmad is that Ahmad had been doing US bidding by helping to finance the hijackers so that the attacks could proceed in the first place.
Very shortly after 9/11, thanks to some uncensored reporting out of India, the FBI and ABC news were forced to confirm the fact of the wire transfer and could not deny or refute Ahmad’s role in it.
As I demonstrated in a series of articles including our famous “Oh Lucy” Timeline, both CIA Director George Tenet and Armitage had made urgent trips to Pakistan just before the attacks and the wire transfer. The head of US intelligence had surely met with the head of Pakistani intelligence while he was there, and so had Armitage.
The 9/11 community has not forgotten these revelations. Will the world remember? Does the world care?
[All of these events are described in blood-curdling detail with unimpeachable sourcing in Chapter 8 of Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil; “Setting up the War”.]
As Chossudovsky wrote on June 20, 2002 in Political Deception: the Missing Link behind 9-11:
The FBI confirmed in late September 2001, in an interview with ABC News (which went virtually unnoticed) that the 9/11 ring leader, Mohammed Atta, had been financed from unnamed sources in Pakistan.
“As to September 11th, federal authorities have told ABC News they have tracked more than $100,000 from banks in Florida, to accounts held by suspected hijack ringleader Mohammed Atta… Time Magazine is reporting that some of that money came in the days just before the attack and can be traced directly to people connected to Osama bin Laden…”
As Chossudovsky then brilliantly documented, it was disclosed that The Times of India had obtained cell phone records showing that Said Sheikh, who carried out the transfer, had received his instructions directly from Ahmad. To our knowledge, the US and Pakistani governments have never been able to or even tried to refute these charges.
So well did Chossudovsky prove the case that in a May 16, 2002 press conference, then National Security Adviser Condi Rice was forced to (not very convincingly) deny having any contact with Ahmad while he was in Washington, D.C. Matters got worse when Chossudovsky later obtained records showing that CNN and the White House News Service had lied in transcripts by saying that Ahmad’s name had been unintelligible when used in a question on the subject at the press conference.
A little over four years ago Ahmad’s name was unmentionable in Washington. In other words, four and half years later the Bush administration is so confident that it has gotten away with 9/11 that they can say Ahmad’s name with assumed and smug impunity. Both Musharraf and Armitage have used it in recent interviews.
Ahmad was replaced as Pakistani intelligence chief shortly after the attacks and the embarrassing revelations. His current whereabouts are not known to FTW, and apparently no one can find him to comment on Musharraf’s statements. In other words, there is no confirmation that the event ever took place.
There are many unresolved evidentiary threads that – without the need for scientific evaluation – demonstrate the US government’s guilt in creating, financing and executing the attacks of 9/11. Only time will tell if anyone will ever pick up those threads and start asking the questions that so many have waited for so long to have answered.
In the meantime, the perpetrators still insultingly mock all of us.
"Pretty good article" is an understatement... :-)
...it is a smashing one!
I nominate that from now on,
I nominate that from now on, everyone refer to Kean and Hamilton, not as the 9/11 Commission's co-chairmen, but as the 9/11 Commission's co-conspirators or 9/11 Commission's co-henchmen.