Washington's Blog

Preface: Now that Bin Laden has been confirmed to be dead, it has been established that Saddam Hussein was not behind 9/11 (one of the main reasons for the Iraq war), and Iran has been accused of having a hand in 9/11 - potentially forming the basis for a war against Iran - it is time to revisit some important, unanswered questions.

This essay does not argue that bombs brought down the Twin Towers or World Trade Building 7, even though many top structural engineers believe that is what happened, and people could easily have planted bombs in the trade centers without anyone noticing and without the conspiracy being discovered.

It simply addresses the frequent argument that fires caused the metal to sag, which brought down the 3 buildings, and that the case is closed.

The Fires at the World Trade Centers Were NOT Very Hot

The government agency in charge of the investigation of why three buildings collapsed on 9/11 - the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) - says that paint tests indicated low steel temperatures -- 480 Fahrenheit -- "despite pre-collapse exposure to fire". NIST also said that microstructure tests showed no steel reached critical (half-strength) values of 600 Celsius (1112 degrees Fahrenheit) for any significant time.

Numerous top fire protection engineers have said that the fires in the World Trade Centers were not that hot. For example:

• A mechanical engineer with 20 years experience as a Fire Protection Engineer for the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, and Veterans Affairs, who is a contributing Subject Matter Expert to the U.S. Department of Energy Fire Protection Engineering Functional Area Qualification Standard for Nuclear Facilities, a board member of the Northern California - Nevada Chapter of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers, currently serving as Fire Protection Engineer for the city of San Jose, California, the 10th largest city in the United States (Edward S. Munyak) says that the fires weren't big enough to bring down Building 7:

Washington's Blog

Preface: This essay does not argue that bombs brought down the Twin Towers or World Trade Building 7. It simply addresses the often-made argument that no one could have planted explosives without people noticing.

Tightrope walker Philippe Petit snuck into the World Trade Center with a friend in 1974 with massive amounts of equipment, smuggled the equipment to the top floor and rigged up a highwire for his tightrope walking stunt without being detected.

In 1978, the 59-story story Citicorp building was secretly retrofitted at night over the course of several months without the knowledge of tenants, the general public, or the media:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_ekNosnieQ 

In 2009, Raw Story notes:

A Government Accountability Office investigator smuggled live bomb components into a federal building in just 27 seconds, then assembled a bomb in a restroom and ventured throughout the building without being detected, a leaked tape revealed Wednesday.

In addition, congressional investigators were able to penetrate every single federal building they probed without any difficulty — 10 in all.

And see this.

In fact, there is additional evidence that bombs could have been planted in the World Trade Center without anyone knowing:

• Bomb-sniffing dogs were inexplicably removed from the Twin Towers five days before 9-11

• The Twin Towers had been evacuated a number of times in the weeks preceding 9/11

• There was a power down in the Twin Towers on the weekend before 9/11, security cameras were shut down, and many workers ran around busily doing things unobserved (confirmed here)

• And -- as an interesting coincidence -- a Bush-linked company ran security at the trade centers, thus giving it free reign to the buildings

The chief electrical engineer who wired the World Trade Centers (Richard Humenn) says that people working on the elevators could have planted explosives:

Washington's Blog

Preface: This essay does not question whether Bin Laden and Al Qaeda attacked us on September 11, 2001, or whether Iran, Saudi Arabia or another nation-state had a hand in the attacks. It focuses solely on a peripheral issue regarding the third building which fell on that terrible day.

Former commander-in-chief President Bush said:

"Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories."

Indeed, the 9/11 Commission was warned not to probe too deeply. For example, ACLU, FireDogLake's Marcy Wheeler and RawStory reported (quoting RawStory):

Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to a document recently obtained by the ACLU.

The current commander-in-chief, Barack Obama, has also warned against questioning 9/11:

As anyone in the military knows, you can't give your opinion unless you get first "permission to speak freely".

We're not in the military. However, I am not entirely sure that matters, given that speaking out against government policies may be considered a type of terrorism in America today.

Many hundreds of high-level military officers, intelligence officers, congressmen, legal scholars and experts have broken the commander-in-chief's orders not to question the government's official narrative regarding 9/11. And see this and this.

But neither Bush nor Obama has instructed us not to discuss World Trade Center Building 7. Indeed, they have never once mentioned the fact that a third building collapsed on 9/11 (and the 9/11 Commission never mentioned it either), even though that building was not hit by a plane.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/04/official-bin-laden-death-photo-is-fake.html

Preface: This post does not speculate on whether or not Bin Laden was actually killed last week or died previously, or on what images the government may possess, but only on what actually happened and what photographs have been released to date.

The White House said that Bin Laden had a weapon and tried to hide behind his wife like a coward. Now, the White House has admitted both claims were false.

Many of the largest news outlets ran a supposed death photo ... but it was quickly proven fake (and see this).

The government now claims that it has a photo showing a dead Bin Laden ... but won't release it.

The photo was supposedly taken in a hangar in Afghanistan. As CNN notes:

Photos of OBLs body at a hangar after he was brought back to Afghanistan. This is the most recognizable with a clear picture of his face. The picture is gruesome because he has a massive open head wound across both eyes. It’s very bloody and gory.

The fact that the photo wasn't taken right after the raid in Pakistan - but in a different country - makes it harder to confirm when the photo was taken.

Moreover, Senator Scott Brown first told Fox News that he had personally seen the gruesome death photo: http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/morning/sen-scott-brown-on-attack-ad-bin-laden-20110504

But he later told Fox that he - and a lot of other people - had been shown a fake:

Scott Brown tells FOX25 - "The photo that I saw and that a lot of other people saw is not authentic."

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/05/bin-laden-dead-why-didnt-we-get-him.html

President Obama announced tonight that U.S. special forces killed Osama Bin Laden.

That's great ... but we could have killed him years ago.

As I noted in 2009:

According to the U.S. Senate - Bin Laden was "within the grasp" of the U.S. military in Afghanistan in December 2001, but that then-secretary of defense Rumsfeld refused to provide the soldiers necessary to capture him.

This is not news: it was disclosed in 2005 by the CIA field commander for the area in Afghanistan where Bin Laden was holed up.

"Resistance to Tyranny is Obedience to God"

I've previously written that real men stand up to fascists:

How to Persuade Stubborn People

As anyone who has tried to educate people with facts knows, it is very difficult to persuade stubborn people.

New research sheds some light on this frustrating dynamic.

As NPR noted in July:

New research suggests that misinformed people rarely change their minds when presented with the facts — and often become even more attached to their beliefs.

***

A new body of research out of the University of Michigan suggests that's not what happens, that we base our opinions on beliefs and when presented with contradictory facts, we adhere to our original belief even more strongly.

The phenomenon is called backfire, and it plays an especially important role in how we shape and solidify our beliefs on immigration, the president's place of birth, welfare and other highly partisan issues.

***

41 Facts About The History Of Central Banks In The United States That Our Children Are No Longer Taught In School 

We've been told that 9/11 changed everything.

Is it true?

Let's look:

• The Afghanistan war was planned before 9/11 (see this and this)

• The decision to launch the Iraq war was made before 9/11. Indeed, former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11, and inserted "crap" in its justifications for invading Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill - who sat on the National Security Council - also says that Bush planned the Iraq war before9/11. And top British officials say that the U.S. discussed Iraq regime change one month after Bush took office

• Cheney apparently even made Iraqi's oil fields a national security priority before 9/11

• The Patriot Act was planned before 9/11

SEC: Government Destroyed Documents Regarding Pre-9/11 Put Options

On September 19, 2001, CBS reported:

Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market.

An extraordinary number of trades were betting that American Airlines stock price would fall.

The trades are called "puts" and they involved at least 450,000 shares of American. But what raised the red flag is more than 80 percent of the orders were "puts", far outnumbering "call" options, those betting the stock would rise.

Sources say they have never seen that kind of imbalance before, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. Normally the numbers are fairly even.

After the terrorist attacks, American Airline stock price did fall obviously by 39 percent, and according to sources, that translated into well over $5 million total profit for the person or persons who bet the stock would fall.

 

 

Chairs of Both the 9/11 Commission and the Joint Intelligence Inquiry into 9/11 Said That Government Minders Obstructed the 9/11 Investigation -- Washington's Blog
Tuesday, March 16, 2010

As I detailed previously, both the Joint Intelligence Committee and 9/11 Commission investigations into 9/11 had government "minders" intimidating witnesses into not saying anything the government didn't like.

You may assume that the issue of "minders" is overblown, and is not really that important.

But, as the New York Times noted in 2003:

The panel [i.e. the 9/11 Commission] also said the failure of the Bush administration to allow officials to be interviewed without the presence of government colleagues could impede its investigation, with the commission's chairman suggesting today that the situation amounted to "intimidation" of the witnesses.