ANTIWAR.com runs first 9/11 Truth Editorial

It appears that there is a small crack in the ice appearing for 9/11 Truth at Antiwar.com

In the past I have pointed out that Antiwar.com runs editorials by syndicated columnist Paul Craig Roberts - with the exception of editorials he has written on the subject of 9/11 Truth. It appears that Antiwar.com is actively censoring Mr. Roberts on this subject. In fact, Mr. Roberts has contacted me and expressed his opinions on this matter.

And while Antiwar.com regularly runs editorials by Justin Raimondo in which Mr. Raimondo skillfully attempts to pin 9/11 on Israel, it appears that a very clear line has been drawn in which facts regarding American complicity in 9/11 would selectively be allowed to see the light of day.

Strangely enough, while Antiwar.com sees the logic in exposing the recent revelations by Seymour Hersch that the Bush administration is actively and clandestinely funding Al Qaeda-linked groups, it appears that Antiwar.com does not wish to connect the dots and consider the underlying history and relationship between Al Qaeda and the United States of America. George Bush is diverting American tax dollars to the very people who attacked us on 9/11?

Well, there does appear to be crack in the ice, albeit a very small one, on the subject of 9/11 at Antiwar.com.

I applaud Antiwar.com decision to run this story by Paul Craig Roberts, and encourage them to have the courage to continue running Mr. Roberts' editorials unedited:

http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10604

Americans Have Lost Their Country

by Paul Craig Roberts
The Bush-Cheney regime is America's first neoconservative regime. In a few short years, the regime has destroyed the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, and the remains of America's moral reputation along with the infrastructures of two Muslim countries and countless thousands of Islamic civilians. Plans have been prepared, and forces moved into place, for an attack on a third Islamic country, Iran, and perhaps Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well.

This extraordinary aggressiveness toward the US Constitution, international law, and the Islamic world is the work, not of a vast movement, but of a handful of ideologues – principally Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John Bolton, Philip Zelikow, and Attorney General Gonzales. These are the main operatives who have controlled policy. They have been supported by their media shills at the Weekly Standard, National Review, Fox News, New York Times, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page and by "scholars" in assorted think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute.

The entirety of their success in miring the United States in what could become permanent conflict in the Middle East is based on the power of propaganda and the big lie.

Initially, the 9/11 attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden, but after an American puppet was installed in Afghanistan, the blame for 9/11 was shifted to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who was said to have weapons of mass destruction that would be used against America. The regime sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to tell the lie to the UN that the Bush-Cheney regime had conclusive proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Having conned the UN, Congress, and the American people, the regime invaded Iraq under totally false pretenses and with totally false expectations. The regime's occupation of Iraq has failed in a military sense, but the neoconservatives are turning their failure into a strategic advantage. At the beginning of this year President Bush began blaming Iran for America's embarrassing defeat by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents in Iraq.

Bush accuses Iran of arming the Iraqi insurgents, a charge that experts regard as improbable. The Iraqi insurgents are Sunni. They inflict casualties on our troops, but spend most of their energy killing Iraqi Shi'ites, who are closely allied with Iran, which is Shi'ite. Bush's accusation requires us to believe that Iran is arming the enemies of its allies.

On the basis of this absurd accusation – a pure invention – Bush has ordered a heavy concentration of aircraft carrier attack forces off Iran's coast, and he has moved US attack planes to Turkish bases and other US bases in countries contingent to Iran.

In testimony before Congress on February 1 of this year, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said that he expected the regime to orchestrate a "head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large." He said a plausible scenario was "a terrorist act blamed on Iran, culminating in a 'defensive' US military action against Iran." He said that the neoconservative propaganda machine was already articulating a "mythical historical narrative" for widening their war against Islam.

Why is the US spending one trillion dollars on wars, the reasons for which are patently false. What is going on?

There are several parts to the answer. Like their forebears among the Jacobins of the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks of the communist revolution, and the National Socialists of Hitler's revolution, neoconservatives believe that they have a monopoly on virtue and the right to impose hegemony on the rest of the world. Neoconservative conquests began in the Middle East because oil and Israel, with which neocons are closely allied, are both in the Middle East.

The American oil giant, UNOCAL, had plans for an oil and gas pipeline through Afghanistan, but the Taliban were not sufficiently cooperative. The US invasion of Afghanistan was used to install Hamid Karzai, who had been on UNOCAL's payroll, as puppet prime minister. US neoconservative Zalmay Khalilzad, who also had been on UNOCAL's payroll, was installed as US ambassador to Afghanistan.

Two years later Khalilzad was appointed US ambassador to Iraq. American oil companies have been given control over the exploitation of Iraq's oil resources.

The Israeli relationship is perhaps even more important. In 1996 Richard Perle and the usual collection of neocons proposed that all of Israel's enemies in the Middle East be overthrown. "Israel's enemies" consist of the Muslim countries not in the hands of US puppets or allies. For decades Israel has been stealing Palestine from the Palestinians such that today there is not enough of Palestine left to comprise an independent country. The US and Israeli governments blame Iran, Iraq, and Syria for aiding and abetting Palestinian resistance to Israel's theft of Palestine.

The Bush-Cheney regime came to power with the plans drawn to attack the remaining independent countries in the Middle East and with neoconservatives in office to implement the plans. However, an excuse was required. Neoconservatives had called for "a new Pearl Harbor," and 9/11 provided the propaganda event needed in order to stampede the public and Congress into war. Neoconservative Philip Zelikow was put in charge of the 9/11 Commission Report to make certain no uncomfortable facts emerged.

The neoconservatives have had enormous help from the corporate media, from Christian evangelicals, particularly from the "Rapture Evangelicals," from flag-waving superpatriots, and from the military-industrial complex whose profits have prospered. But the fact remains that the dozen men named in the second paragraph above were able to overthrow the US Constitution and launch military aggression under the guise of a preventive/preemptive "war against terrorism."

When the American people caught on that the "war on terror" was a cloak for wars of aggression, they put Democrats in control of Congress in order to apply a brake to the regime's warmongering. However, the Democrats have proven to be impotent to stop the neoconservative drive to wider war and, perhaps, world conflagration.

We are witnessing the triumph of a dozen evil men over American democracy and a free press.

Justin Raimondo's book

does not try to pin anything on Israel, except that it was "tracking the hijackers". So yes, Raimondo is a LIHOPPER, which is to say against 9/11 truth.

PCR is great, as is this essay on the bigger picture, but it's hardly on the subject of 9/11 itself.

Should help wake up a few sleepers reading antiwar tho.

____

Real Truther a.k.a. Verdadero Verdadero

WTCdemolition.com - Harvard Task Force

 

"And while Antiwar.com

"And while Antiwar.com regularly runs editorials by Justin Raimondo in which Mr. Raimondo skillfully attempts to pin 9/11 on Israel, it appears that a very clear line has been drawn in which facts regarding American complicity in 9/11 would selectively be allowed to see the light of day." -J. Albanese

Justin Raimondo has never tried to pin 9/11 on Israel, either skillfully or unskillfully. Raimondo has always been a persistent and enthusiastic supporter of the al Qaeda fairy tale. Here are some excerpts from his infamous hit piece published on Sept. 11, 2006:

"There are those who deny the very existence of bin Laden and disdain al-Qaeda as a myth, the creation of the "real" perpetrators of the worst terrorist attack in American history – the U.S. government itself..... I agree with Cockburn's critique of the utterly daffy "controlled demolition" thesis, and the equally crackpot delusion that the Pentagon was hit by a missile instead of a jetliner. Yet there is more here than meets the eye…

Yes, governments are incompetent, but there were key people in government who were fully aware of the threat posed by bin Laden and his followers. In the monthsweeks leading up to the attack, the president was presented with the evidence, including an Aug. 6 memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

Raimondo's blind faith in the al-Qaeda myth might also be fueled by his animus against conservative Islam and its proscriptions against homosexuality (Raimondo is an openly gay man.) In this piece from last summer he tells the story a young man who has been driven out of the Muslim world by homophobia. The man ended up living in Raimondo's house.

http://www.etherzone.com/2006/raim062106.shtml

Mr. Albanese, please address this gross error in your blog. Otherwise it would seem you are slandering Raimondo in order to intimidate him and perhaps punish him for his expositions of the power of the Israeli lobby in the US government and society.

Here's an excerpt from David

Here's an excerpt from David Kubiak, former director of 911Truth.org, from a letter to Nico Haupt:

"We chose quite consciously and early on, that capital punishment for treason was quite sufficient justice for our cause. LIHOP was treason, MIHOP was treason, so we really didn't care if we hung the bastards with a six or twelve foot rope as long as all the relevant feet twitched in the air.[...]We could prove LIHOP to a fair minded grand jury now. Winning a neocon focused MIHOP indictment with the evidence now at hand is exceedingly dubious. If both paths would gain us a capital crime proceeding with full subpoena and discovery powers, why choose the most problematic way in?"-David Kubiak

So Raimondo's dismissal of the CD hypothesis hardly amounts to him hitting the 911 Truth Movement.

Capital punishment is not sufficient justice for my cause.

In fact, I have very little interest in it. Punishing whomever for treasonous LIHOP while leaving the big lies of Islamofascism and the War on Terror intact would be a failure for us and a big success for the perps.

First off, the reference to

First off, the reference to hanging and the length of rope used was a metaphor, and one need not support capital punishment in order to understand and agree with the argument. Secondly, if your goal is to deflate the lies of "War on Terror" and "Islamofascism" then you need not put forward the notion that 9/11 was an inside job. The blowback theory is quite sufficient to logically put the Islamofascism/World War 2/War on Terror meme to bed. However, if it could be proven in a court of law that the US had foreknowlege of the coming attacks and intentionally let them happen the consequences would go well beyond merely killing off the death of the so called "War on Terrorism". It would so thoroughly undermine the legitimacy of the current system that a denazification process would begin.

The phrase "capital punishment for treason"

was what I was referring to.

The "blowback theory" is certainly not capable of countering the Islamofascism, etc etc, meme. Are you kidding? "Blowback" completely reifies the "vicious Muslim" myth (or blood libel, as Kevin Barrett puts it) -- it simply posits that they have just cause to hate our freedoms (sic) or more specifically, that they are vicious Muslims who used to work for our intelligence agencies, but who have struck out on their own and are now coming back to bite us in the butt. (Ooops!) LIHOP is a bankrupt concept -- it defies the laws of physics and does nothing to deconstruct the war on terror.

Reification Backwards

For want of a better term let's call the notion that there is a primary totalitarian tendency in Islam that causes all Muslim countries to threaten the West in the same way that real fascism threatened the "Islamofascist theory," and let's recognize from the outset that nobody but racists and charlatans like Christopher Hitchens openly espouses such a theory. Instead people who want to appear credible speak of the War on Terrorism. This is, however, merely a variant of the general Islamofascist theory. Those who support the War on Terrorism recognize that there is a significant difference between Islamic fascism and historical fascism, they recognize that the difference is a matter of power and influence, and they admit that the Islamic threat is asymmetrical. Still, they claim that terrorism arises from a fascist tendency in Islam and has to be contested militarily.

Once a person understands the Blowback theory, however, one has to reject both the theory of Islamofascism and the War on Terrorism. "Blowback" makes it plain that what is considered a primary tendency that resides in Islamic traditions is, in fact, merely one tendency amongst many, further it demonstrates that this fascist tendency in Islamic cultures is hardly pervasive but rather has been cultivated by Western pressures on the region, and intentionally fomented by Western intelligence agencies.

Simply put, one need not be a 911 Truther to see through the War on Terrorism.

You said that "Blowback" completely reifies the "vicious Muslim" myth.

Reification is a special kind of category mistake, specifically it is to mistake an abstract general concept for a concrete object. You are reversing the mistake. That is, you are claiming that accepting any historical examples of Islamic viciousness, no matter how qualified the term Islamic might be, perpetuates racist concepts. This is essentially an ideological view of reality where one rejects concrete reality if it doesn't support favorite abstract conceptions.

Again it is worth clarifiying here that I'm describing the perspective in your post without making any claims about real concrete facts. It may be true that there were no Islamic players involved in 9/11, although that seems unlikely. Still your reasoning about is clearly driven by ideology and not fact.

I notice that your statement about the LIHOP position in no way follows from what you've said about Blowback, but is merely asserted. All I can say in reply is that you seem to be underestimating the severity of the LIHOP crime and the impact knowlege of the LIHOP crime would have on the general public.

historical examples of Islamic viciousness?

So you don't think that it's wrong to talk of "Islamic viciousness"? You think that to object to the term categorically is a sign of PC wimpiness?

How about if we were to read Jewish history and point out historical examples of "Jewish viciousness"? We could start in modern times with the actions of the state of Israel (though because I'm not like you and don't believe in defaming an entire religion I would call it Zionist viciousness) or even as far back as the Book of Esther and see how pre-emptive eye-for-an-eye worked in the olden days.

We could then insinuate that Judaism itself was a religion of treachery and deceit and vengefulness, just like you do by referring to "Islamic viciousness". We could then say that the neoconservatives and right wing Israelis that were behind 9/11 aren't just criminals but representative of a dangerous and virulent phenomenon called Judeofascism, and launch an open ended war against them. Since they are mainly based in Israel, it would do well to invade or at least lay waste to the country so that it could not harm us, or harbor those who would, ever again.

We would especially want to make sure that this hotbed of Judefascism lose its entire arsenal of nuclear weapons, since only a rogue state would allow itself to be run by Judeofascists.

Now I would never advocate such actions, for obvious reasons. What is not as obvious is why you can't seem to apply some common human decency to your treatment of people who we have been criminally slaughtering as a result in large part of the animosity created by the lies told about the 9/11 attacks.

How would you feel if the shoe was on the other foot? Do you realize that one day the shoe may well be on the other foot, and that the way you've made people think of muslims could easily be applied to Jews? I hope you realize how irresponsible it is to hang on to this blood libel.

____

Real Truther a.k.a. Verdadero Verdadero

WTCdemolition.com - Harvard Task Force

 

I think it's wrong to talk

I think it's wrong to talk of Islamic viciousness in general terms, but it's not wrong to point out real historical incidents of visciousness that involve Islamic agents (that is agents of action not necessarily of any given intelligence agency). The point of what I posted was that we should not deny historical facts for ideological reasons.

I think it's a terrible mistake to identify neoconservatism as a product of Judaism. One reason why it's a mistake is that it's simply an error. Another reason is that it gives people a place to hide as the neocons can then charge critics of the neoconservative agenda (an agenda that I agree borders on and occassionally crosses into the terrain of actual fascism) of antisemitism.

As to starting open ended wars that is obviously a ghastly proposition.

why does the religion of the violent agents matter?

Is my point. Terrorists who call themselves Muslims are no different than terrorist equivalents who call themselves Jewish and/or Zionists like many in the Israeli leadership, but also people like Feith and Wolfowitz. They are terrorists. They are also Jewish. So we could say that the USG has a bit of a Jewish terrorist problem, just as some middle east countries have an Islamic terrorist problem.

But we do not do so, for obvious reasons. The reasons are just obvious when it comes to terrorists who claim to be muslims who may in fact just be playing the role. If 9/11 was about anything it was about the demonization of muslims and the debasement of their legitimate cause for being upset with western countries including Israel. Reversing the damage of 9/11 means abandoning the claims of it having been an arab muslim conspiracy, for which there is no proof whatsoever, and also apologizing and atoning for falsely implicating them as an excuse to bomb them en masse and destroy their countries.

Kevin Barrett is right--Jewish people, and especially Jewish TRUTHERS should be on the front lines fighting this blood libel applied to Muslims, given the same kind of smears having been used historically against Jews (such as their being blamed for the bubonic plague). Imagine what it would mean to the world, especially to those who have been not just wrongly accused but punished in a grossly disproportionate manner.

If it turns out that Israeli agents did in fact play a role in the 9/11 attacks, and not just in creating the false case for the war against Iraq (see Feith, OSP, Israel), would any of us be OK with Jewish people being made to feel like Muslims have since 9/11? I should hope not, and for that same reason I should hope that certain people could wrap their heads around just how evil it was to pretend arab muslims were behind 9/11.

What goes around comes around, until we all come together to stop it--and talk is cheap...

____

Real Truther a.k.a. Verdadero Verdadero

WTCdemolition.com - Harvard Task Force

 

Of course the religion of

Of course the religion of the participants doesn't matter, it only keeps coming up because of the claim that somehow the exposure of LIHOP wouldn't be enough to take down the War on Terrorism, which is a bizarre claim from my perspective.

As to what any religious people SHOULD do we can discover that by looking at the central tenets of all the world's religions. That is, religious people ought to abide by the Golden rule, they should refrain from being hypocrites, they should seek justice, and so on... All of these would indicate that religious people have a responsiblity to discover the truth about 9/11 and a responsiblity to expose the lies.

Of course, even if the official story of 9/11 were true religious people would be obligated to oppose the War on Terrorism.

exactly. im against the

exactly. im against the death penalty but even if i was for it seeing the perps hang would not be nearly enough. the "war on terror" must be stopped. hanging a few insiders for LIHOP will not stop it.

why would MIHOP be more

why would MIHOP be more likely to bring on systemic change than LIHOP?

do i really have to explain this to you?

because it doesnt let anyone off of the hook and MIHOP is the whole story. LIHOP would bag a few high level government stooges like Cheney and Myers but would leave the "islamic terrorists are powerful enough and capable of changing our country and its laws" myth in place. im sorry, but LIHOP is not good enough. the "war on terror" must be stopped. LIHOP wont do that in my opinion. let me just ask you this, do you think that they let it happen on purpose or took an active role and made it happen on purpose? do you really think they would put the success of the 9/11 mission in the hands of 19 patsies with suspect flying skills? is LIHOP good enough for you in the end?

If we can prove that the

If we can prove that the government let the attacks happen then this would disprove the notion that "islamic terrorists are powerful enough and capable of changing our country and its laws" because, after all, the attacks had been allowed to happen by US players. What you're saying just isn't logical or rational. Nobody has provided any justification for their insistence that MIHOP would have a more profound impact on the country than LIHOP.

You asked, "Do you think that they let it happen on purpose or took an active role?" I think they, at the very least, took an active role and facilitated the attacks by allowing them to happen. If you're asking me whether I'm LIHOP or MIHOP I really can't say for certain, but I lean toward a MIHOP position. Still, I think the difference between MIHOP and LIHOP is a matter of logistics. That is I believe that the LIHOP story probably includes such a high degree of infilitration and surveillance of Atta and his gang that the level of complicity would be equal to a MIHOP position. Whether you push a LIHOP or MIHOP position is really a tactical question. It's a matter of which bits of evidence you consider to be the most powerful, and it has nothing to do with the level of US complicity. That is, if you believe that evidence for foreknowlege, stand downs, infilitration, are the strongest then you're for pushing LIHOP. If you believe that evidence of CD is the strongest bit of evidence then you're for pushing MIHOP.

None of this has much to do with the level of complicity.

difference between true LIHOP and true MIHOP in my view

LIHOP= murderous Arab muslim hijackers were allowed to hijack planes and crash them into buildings that had been secretly wired by SOMEONE for demolition

MIHOP= murderous American traitors/Israeli fanatics/greedy landlord collaborated to frame Arab Muslims by planting evidence after remotely flying two planes into the twin towers, with or without passengers, and then detonating the demolition charges they placed beforehand.

It makes a HUGE difference. The point is of course that it depends on how you personally define either LIHOP or MIHOP. Since they are subjective, they are not the best way to fram the debate, of course.

____

Real Truther a.k.a. Verdadero Verdadero

WTCdemolition.com - Harvard Task Force

 

what im saying is perfectly rational

you keep saying "US complicity". there IS a difference between MIHOP and LIHOP and it is important. i dont care what country the perps are from ultimately, i just want the whole power structure exposed. MIHOP will do that in my opinion while LIHOP wont. it is NOT childish to point this out like some would say(usually those who advocate a LIHOP position, which i dont have a problem with,i just disagree). i agree that LIHOP implies a very high degree of infiltration and surveillance of Atta and his gang of PATSIES. this is what LIHOP leaves out which MIHOP doesnt and further highlights the difference between the 2, LIHOP makes it possible for the islamic terror myth to basically hold onto all of its power- "yeah, they were helped along a bit on 9/11 but they were still trying to kill us etc."-that kind of thing. MIHOP destroys that and with it the "war on terror" and all of the constitution shredding, civil liberties destroying crap that goes with it. MIHOP shows 9/11 to be the sophisticated operation that it was while LIHOP makes it possible for people to believe that 9/11 was essentially still an islamic terror attack with help from officals looking the other way. you wont get too far down the rabbit hole with another controlled "investigation" centered around the notion of "letting it happen". LIHOP leads to a few top officials and maybe Pakistan while MIHOP breaks the whole thing open in my opinion. but this is an Albanese thread and it seems that you go around voting me down on a regular basis anyway so this will probably be buried : )

You've yet to do more than

You've yet to do more than assert your position. Specifically you've yet to explain why the knowlege that elements in the current administration and the US intelligence community facilitated the attacks by overriding standard procedures would leave the notion that there is a substantial Islamic threat intact.

because people will say...

that just because they were helped this one time doesn't mean they're not going to try to strike again. because 9/11 was about more than destroying the towers, it was about destroying Arab and Muslim lives by forcing them to live under a cloud of shame and suspicion. It has also been used to recruit young arab muslims into CIA and Mossad controlled terror cells--the idea being that since no people are naturally inclined to become terrorists, you have to help them along a bit in order to create the impression among the masses that yes, these people ARE more prone to become terrorists. If it's not Islamic fundamentalism, it's Arab nationalism. The point is that arabs and muslims have been treated like animals and it is time for that to stop and for those responsible to be dealt with.

I am reaosnably convinced that arab muslims did not hijack ariplanes on 9/11. Someone else commandeered the planes to hit the towers, and we must know who, not just who let them.

____

Real Truther a.k.a. Verdadero Verdadero

WTCdemolition.com - Harvard Task Force

 

Your first sentence is

Your first sentence is clearly absurd.

Substantial? Islamic?

So there's a threat, which you feel comfortable attributing to an entire religion, but it's not substantial. They wanted to come and kill us, but they needed help. OBVIOUSLY to interpret the events of 9/11 in this way leaves completely intact the underlying premise: Muslims want to kill us. (I guess we'd better kill them first.)

Terrorist groups exist

It seems to be a substantiated fact that terrorist groups exist, the fact that these groups are often heavily infilitrated and manipulated by intelligence agencies entirely changes how a people who wish to protect themselves should seek safety. I don't understand how you could fail to see this.

Again I don't think it's wise to ignore evidence for ideological reasons, nor do I find it necessary to ignore or deny all evidence of Islamic or pseudoIslamic agents (agents of action and not necessarily agents of an Islamic intelligence apparatus) to deflate the War on Terrorism or the much less prominent and obviously dubious notion of Islamofascism.

People aren't really as foolish as you seem to think they are. If it came out that elements in the government faciliated the attacks of September 11th very few people would continue to focus on Al Qaeda as a substantial threat and the War on Terrorism would be exposed as a sham.

Maybe.

Sorry, I was a little clumsy in paraphrasing what you had written. What I meant was that you proposed that there was a threat, but it was not as substantial as we have been led to believe.

I'm not ignoring any evidence for ideological reasons. What I am suggesting is that you are bolstering an extreme (as in pro-genocidal) form of bigotry or racism by persisting to use language that connects Islam to terrorism and vice versa. And your allusion to acts of "Islamic viciousness" in the past makes me think that it is more than a matter of language, but that you have accepted this connection between Islam and violence.

"It seems to be a substantiated fact that terrorist groups exist" -- it seems to me that from our perspective, we have no basis from which to discern the actual extent of anti-American terrorism independent of state-backed intelligence. We just don't.

If you examine my use of the

If you examine my use of the words "Islamic visciousness" you'll see that I am specifically arguing against any visciousness inherent to the Islamic faith. Here's what I wrote again:

"You are claiming that accepting any historical examples of Islamic visciousness, no matter how qualified the term Islamic might be, perpetuates racist concepts. This is essentially an ideological view of reality where one rejects concrete reality if it doesn't support favorite abstract conceptions."

Other than the exchange of comments in this thread I can't recall ever having written on the subject before. I have certainly not accepted any inherent connection between violence and Islam. Frankly I think this entire convesation is a distraction.

Your assumptions about the impact LIHOP revelations would have on the public need to be argued out rather than merely asserted.

I disagree

I would respectfully request that you not vote down Mister Guy's comments in this way. He is not disrupting or offering opinions that are in any way offensive.

I am frankly tired of the strong-arm tag-team voting that goes on here, designed to silence people who simply seek to debate in an honest and respectful way.

LIHOP is a completely acceptable gateway towards exposing governmental culpability. Once this door is open it would REQUIRE full accountability, trials, discovery of evidence, subpoenas, the removing of gag orders, witnesses, testimony, and ultimately lead us to the truth - whatever that is.

By claiming that MIHOP is the only acceptable road we must travel you are seeking to silence other 911 activists - and taking a position that discourages MANY newbies who are attempting to understand the fundamentals.

I am not advocating LIHOP. I am not advocating MIHOP. we need to stop with this divisive bullshit. i do not claim to have all the answers. neither should you. people do not have to take an oath to MIHOP. its frankly a little immature and unsavy to do so.

learn to respect a diversity of opinions.

Time to move on with the LIHOP/MIHOP non-issue

I guess it's difficult to accept that many thoughtful members of this board actually disagree with misterguy and easier to fantasize about "strong-arm tag-team voting." His opinions on this matter are offensive -- they reveal racist assumptions.

It may also be difficult to accept that thinking in terms of a LIHOP-MIHOP progression is no longer a useful model for understanding how people who enter the Truth movement think. Those of us who entered on the basis of Steven Jones' work were immediately in a position to see that LIHOP (narrowly construed as "They let 19 guys with boxcutters crash planes and make buildings fall down") was a physical impossibilty and therefore an absurdity. What is more serious is that people like misterguy are denying the central theme in the spectacle that was 9/11: namely, that vicious Arab Muslims want to come to our country and kill us. (I'm sure that there are people who would like to come to this country in order to kill Americans, but it should be obvious that this drama was intended to vilify Arabs as an entire ethnicity and Islam itself, which provides a nice basis for rallying the American people behind genocidal war against the inhabitants of land we'd like to control.) Being unwilling to acknowledge this libel is what gets misterguy voted down.

Do thoughtful people always

Do thoughtful people always vote down comments that they disagree with?

You wrote: "people like misterguy are denying the central theme in the spectacle that was 9/11: namely, that vicious Arab Muslims want to come to our country and kill us."

I don't think this is what you mean to say. Are you suggesting that I deny that there are vicious Arab Muslims who want to come to our country and kill us, or that I deny that this is a central theme in the spectacle that is the War on Terrorism? In either case you're incorrect. What I've said and will continue to say is that one need not deny the existence of real terrorists to see through the War on Terrorism, and one need not deny that there were any Islamic agents (agents of action etc...) to expose that 9/11 was an inside job.

...

Maybe it would be more clear to say "are denying the CENTRALITY of the Muslim-vilifying theme in the propagandistic theater of 9/11." 9/11 was instrumental, fundamental, and central to creating or nurturing the image of the Arab Muslim boogeyman in the American consciousness.

As I said above, I neither accept nor deny the existence of independent anti-American terrorist groups. I simply don't know.

As far as voting comments down, I take a very simple approach based entirely on my own opinion and understanding. Remarks advance our cause, hinder our cause, or are neutral. I may disgree with comments that fit into any of those categories, so disagreement is not the basis on which I vote something down.

I disagree with David Kubiak

As I stated in a comment here:

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2006/12/guilt.html

The truth cannot be fudged for political reasons.

I see no error

Mr. Raimondo has written such splashy editorials as:

9/11: THE TRUTH COMES OUT
Israel's 9/11 connection exposed – and you read it here first!

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j030802.html

...which seeks to connect Israel to 9/11, while ignoring all of the other available evidence of foreknowledge and facilitation by the Unites States government.

His choice to expose facts 'selectively' on the issue of Israeli foreknowledge, while 'selectively' ignoring key evidence such as Building 7 and Stock Puts and NORAD etc etc is CLEARLY an indication of BIAS.

please - Raimondo's all about pinning it on Israel

Trying to pin 9/11 on Israel "skilfully" is exactly what Raimondo has been doing ever since the day. The skillful part is in the art of insinuation, rather than a blatant out-and-out j'accuse.

But it's obvious and you can drop the pretend-deploring ("seem you are slandering Raimondo in order to intimidate him and perhaps punish him for his expositions of the power of the Israeli lobby in the US government and society." - oh. my. god. *hyperbole on!*)

Here's what Raimondo offers on 9/11:
--A blinders-on approach sees the Art Students hanging around Hollywood FL, but not all the other more direct evidence that the patsy-hijackers were under surveillance by intel agencies of multiple countries, including CIA and SOCOM. The Art Students are the "story of the century" (a phrase often used: please!).
--He reacted to Able Danger with a column saying the alleged hijackers (let's call them AJs for short) obviously had a "veil of protection" (I think they did) -- but this was thanks to Israel and its supporters.
--Warnings of 9/11 from Israel are discounted because they were not specific enough (and this was intended), even though (something Raimondo ignores) Israel provided the names of the AJ ringleaders.
--FOXNEWS is all bullshit, except for one report in which Carl Cameron vaguely insinuates something about Israeli foreknowledge. And so it goes, on and on. Dozens of columns and a book (which I possess and is a total rehash of the columns).

Here's what I wrote to their Backtalk page already back in 2002:

Dear Justin,

Have you noticed that for months you have rehashed the exact same quotes and reports in a quixotic effort to show that the Israeli Art Students were the hidden masterminds of 9/11? It's wearing thin, especially since these same reports reveal that this Israeli spy ring must have been very incompetent. (e.g. most were arrested prior to 9/11).

I bother to point this out because otherwise, I hold your work and site in high regard. Change the record. Switch for a month to the theory that elements of the domestic establishment were complicit in the attacks, and must have had the commanding role, regardless of who else was involved. You will suddenly have material enough to cover several dozen columns, without repeating yourself.

As for the research, I'm sure you don't need my pointers. You are well aware of the credible 9/11 Skeptics, some of whom have written for you in the past.

In amity...

---
"Truth is not measured in mass appeal."
summeroftruth.org

From the Sander Hicks article

In the late 80s, President Reagan’s biggest scandal, Iran/Contra, broke open and was soon covered up. Despite laws from Congress, the ascendant conservative right-wing funded anti-leftist Contra rebels in Nicaragua with drug and weapons profits from trade with Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq. 20 years ago, in Iran/Contra, the PNAC social network circumvented Congress and infused capital into a right-wing militia, using a complex international network that included massive narcotics trafficking, surface support for Islamic fundamentalism, domestic media manipulation, fake Christianity at home, and the power of the dollar. In other words, it was a lot like 9/11. The pattern is the same, and so are a lot of the names:

John Negroponte, National Intelligence Chief, presided over death squads in Honduras, while ambassador there during Iran/Contra.

Eliot Abrams was indicted for lying to Congress about Iran/Contra, yet he laid low and came back strong as one of the National Security Council’s Senior Directors in the Bush White House.

The most relevant example of the whole guilty lot of them is Richard Armitage. In 1989, he couldn’t get a job in President Bush the First’s Department of State, because of his odious Defense Department work with Iran/Contra criminal Oliver North. Skip ahead a scant 12 years later, to the summer of 2001: Armitage sails into a position as Assistant Secretary of State, without a peep from the media or Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After a lifetime in CIA/DIA circles, Armitage happens to hold the highest civilian decoration from the Pakistani military, and has deep social ties there, from his work in the Afghan/Soviet civil war.

Remember that one? That was the 1979-1988 operation where bin Laden, the Mujahedeen, and the Pakistani intelligence group, ISI, were used as proxies for the U.S. military, a mix that later created the Taliban, which helped create Al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission Report distored all this, because it’s at the core of understanding 9/11.

Also noticeably missing from the Report is Richard Armitage’s close relationship to the Pakistani funders of 9/11. The Reportincredibly states that discovering the funding for 9/11 is “of little practical significance.” However, the FBI, the Wall Street Journal, and the Times of India have all acknowledged that Pakistani ISI Chief Mahmood Ahmad wired $100,000 to Mohamed Atta on Sept. 10, 2001. Ahmad had met extensively that May with the State Department’s Richard Armitage, and CIA Director George Tenet, in Pakistan. On the morning of 9/11, Ahmad was in D.C., meeting with Representative (and later CIA director) Porter Goss and Senator Bob Graham. When news of Mahmood Ahmad’s wire transfer reached his home country, he was let go, a month after 9/11. The Pakistani ISI works very closely with the U.S. State Department, and handlers like Armitage. Ahmad was fired quietly, when he should have been arrested, extradited, and served up to the American public as a culprit for the attacks. Remember how high the passions flared in October, 2001? Instead, the whole incident was buried. Ahmad walked.

Asia Times called the Ahmad scandal 9/11’s “real smoking gun.” There’s been zero coverage in the U.S. media. The White House edited Ahmad’s name out of the official transcript, the one time Condi Rice was asked about the scandal at a press conference. Instead of prosecuting Ahmad, the U.S. gave Pakistan an aid package of $3 billion over five years, right after 9/11.

So, it’s ironic that this same State Department denounces 9/11 Truth as “conspiracy theories.” This same State Department is packed to the gills with the top criminal minds of Iran/Contra. This same State Department’s Francis X. Taylor, in July 2001, told an informant from the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Randy Glass, “we know about the threat, the terrorist threat, from Al Qaeda and bin Laden flying air planes into the World Trade Center. Musharraf [the Pakistani president] has guaranteed us—because his ISI behind it—that he can stop it if we support him publicly.”

Randy Glass is one of many 9/11 whistle-blowers who were trying to stop the attacks. If the American people really want the truth about 9/11, we’ve got to stop diddling around with theories about maybe a cruise missile hit the Pentagon, or maybe controlled demolition took down the towers. Maybe so, but let’s go there only after we’ve met the real people in flesh and blood, who have suffered to get the truth out. They are the real heroes of this whole thing: Randy Glass, Robert Wright (the FBI agent who was stopped by higher-ups from tracking bin Laden’s finances), Sibel Edmonds (a translator who discovered pro-Al Qaeda elements inside FBI, but was gagged by John Ashcroft for speaking out), Colleen Rowley (the FBI lawyer who was mysteriously stopped from getting a routine warrant to search Zacharias Moussoui’s laptop), etc. Most recently, this past year, a lot of new ground has been broken with Anthony Shaffer, the Lieutenant Colonel who did intelligence work in the Pentagon. His operation, Able Danger, identified terrorist Mohamed Atta in year 2000. But unfortunately, someone higher up was protecting Atta. The real cutting edge of 9/11 Truth is an Internet search for Shaffer’s 48-page statement. Just don’t believe what you read about him in the Washington Post.

Sander Hicks is an author of The Big Wedding: 9/11, the Whistle-Blowers and the Cover-Up, available at voxpopnet.net.

http://www.gnn.tv/articles/2558/Five_Years_Later_The_Official_Story_Fall...

***

Connecting the dots...

No source. PROVE IT.

"--Warnings of 9/11 from Israel are discounted because they were not specific enough ..., even though ... Israel provided the names of the AJ ringleaders."

Israel CLAIMS to have provided the names. Israel claims a lot of things.

This is a claim, not a fact, and should be treated with suspicion.

70 Disturbing Facts About 9/11

John Doraemi publishes Crimes of the State Blog
http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/

johndoraemi --at-- yahoo.com.

excellent

Thanks for pointing this out John. I was just going to start a blog entry saying the same thing. I've noticed how antiwar.com would never publish PCR's 9/11-related essays until today. Pretty encouraging really. Hopefully, they'll continue and escalate the 9/11 truth information that they've been avoiding all these years. Hopefully.