[HN Gopher] FBI releases 9/11 investigation document that scruti...
___________________________________________________________________
FBI releases 9/11 investigation document that scrutinized Saudis
Author : graderjs
Score : 191 points
Date : 2021-09-12 15:15 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| wombatmobile wrote:
| I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything.
|
| I just wonder how WTC7 collapsed in 5 seconds despite not being
| hit by any aircraft.
|
| The video just has always baffled me, and no explanation,
| including NIST's, has come close to passing the pub test.
|
| https://ine.uaf.edu/projects/wtc7/
| pupdogg wrote:
| NIST is still withholding the mathematical model data that was
| used for their simulation of the collapse to derive their
| results. More recent rebuttal from NIST can be found here:
| https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/20-years-later-nis...
|
| FYI: Shyam Sunder, the author of the article, was the lead
| investigator of this collapse.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > I just wonder how WTC7 collapsed in 5 seconds despite not
| being hit by any aircraft.
|
| Did you see the video of, say, the Surfside condo collapse?
| When a skyscraper starts to collapse--and it doesn't really
| matter all that much _how_ it starts to collapse--it invariably
| collapses quite quickly and in much the same way.
|
| WTC7 didn't collapse in "5 seconds". The actual observed
| portion of the collapse took about 9 seconds, and this is a
| view that only shows about the first 1/3 of the collapse. One
| of the things that greatly hampers analysis of the WTC7
| collapse is there just aren't good views of much of WTC7, and
| so the full extent of the damage it received from its front-row
| seat of a collapsing building isn't entirely known.
| throwrqX wrote:
| I generally don't pay much attention to conspiracy theories but
| with regards to WTC 7 I feel there was something missing, a
| common video I see cited for this is this one [0], where Larry
| Silverstein, owner of the trade centers, says the fire
| department 'pulled' the building down because they determined
| that would be safer than letting it collapse of its own
| volition.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZlmHvd_RZU
| oofabz wrote:
| >I remember getting a call from the fire department commander
| telling me that they were not sure they are going to be able
| to contain the fire. "I said, "you know, we've had such
| terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull
| it". And they made that decision to pull. And then we watched
| the building collapse.
|
| It sounds to me like Silverstein and the NYFD were talking
| about pulling firefighters out of WTC7. Once the fire
| department realized saving the building was a lost cause,
| there was no reason for firefighters to remain inside and
| risk their lives further. I don't hear anything in the video
| about "pulling" the building down.
| danielschonfeld wrote:
| If you're going to quote Silverstein and give him the
| benefit of the doubt, then at least quote the full quote.
| The end of your quote is "... and then we watched the
| building collapse..." leading you to understand that he's
| referring to a cause and effect.
|
| As in, they decided to pull and then the building
| collapsed. This means one of two things:
|
| 1) They pulled as in the context of some kind of an act of
| a pre determined demolition of the building
|
| 2) Something closer to what you're referring to, but with
| the foresight that the building WILL collapse and actually
| did as they have expected it to by their decision to pull
| the men (and women) and equipment. To which of course the
| first question is, why then? why at 5pm and not any of the
| hours before Larry made that decision. It only took about
| 40 or so minutes for the big buildings to fail.
|
| Option (2) is equally problematic as option (1) in the
| context of 9/11. Given that the claim is that all 3
| buildings (all the WTC complex really) has suffered an
| equal progressive fate made by 2 projectiles hitting WTC
| 1&2.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| I just checked the nist report. An airplane impact doesn't even
| matter, wtc7 wasn't hit by one. It did not collapse in 5
| seconds, 5 seconds was the visually obvious footage, but many
| things happened before that, it took 7 hours.
|
| - Debris from wtc1 ignites fire on at least 10 floors. Sounds
| believable to me.
|
| - floor 7-13 fires got out of control, primary sprinkler system
| failed, the redundancy or backup system didn't not work due to
| damage from the tower 1 and 2, the water supply for the backup
| relied on the cities water system which was mia on that day.
| This caused the fire to spread diagonally across the building.
| Sounds ok to me, I don't think anyone could make this up and it
| would be allowed into such a report without review.
|
| There's much more but assuming usual explosives, this has to be
| considered: The smallest charge capable of initiating column
| failure would have resulted in a sound level of 130 to 140 dB
| at a distance of at least half a mile. This would be quite a
| couple seconds or max a minute before the full collapse, but no
| footage had such sounds, nor did witnesses report such sounds,
| and any nearby seismology equipment would detect
| irregularities. Just for reference 130-140 decibels are much
| louder than I would have thought, 130 is peak stadium crowd
| noise, 135 is an air raid siren, 140 is a jet engine take off.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Isn't it strange that all 24 internal columns of building 7
| would collapse simultaneously?
|
| Even if the office fires burned hot enough to compromise the
| columns, wouldn't they have advanced gradually over the
| diagonal span, trigger slow sequential collapses that might
| have resulted in the building listing or distorting, rather
| than falling flat to the ground in 5 seconds?
|
| Would thermite be deployed explosively at 140db, or might it
| work over a longer period of minutes at lower volume to heat
| the steel columns to 700 degrees, the temperature at which it
| would lose structural integrity?
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| There's nothing mysterious here. Once a column begins to
| fail, the load it was supporting transfers to other
| columns. If several columns are weakened simultaneously,
| the remaining columns are pushed past their safety margins
| very rapidly, and the building enters a progressive
| collapse.
| danielschonfeld wrote:
| Should be very simple then to produce a model that would
| look like the actual video footage of the building's
| collapse in the real world wouldn't it? Yet here we are,
| 20 years later with no such model...
| mistermann wrote:
| > There's much more but assuming usual explosives, this has
| to be considered...
|
| True, but _it is possible to_ apply the same strict
| epistemology to the consensus narrative as well, like how is
| it that "many things happened" resulting in an orderly
| freefall that appeared magically homogeneous across the
| entire structure, resulting in a descent that is (afaik)
| largely indistinguishable from a controlled demolition.
|
| > but no footage had such sounds, nor did witnesses report
| such sounds, and any nearby seismology equipment would detect
| irregularities
|
| A strict epistemological examination wouldn't let such
| premises be deployed without scrutiny.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > how is it that "many things happened" resulting in an
| orderly freefall that appeared magically homogeneous across
| the entire structure
|
| I mentioned in my other comment the Surfside condo
| collapse, and that accidentally illustrates a key point
| about the WTC7 collapse. In the video of the Surfside condo
| collapse, we get a decent view of the _origin_ of the
| collapse, so we can see how the collapse progresses. But
| with WTC7, the video we have is of the roof of the back
| side (with respect to the collapse origin). So we don 't
| have visual of the collapse progress until it reaches the
| fairly homogeneous progressive collapse phase.
|
| > resulting in a descent that is (afaik) largely
| indistinguishable from a controlled demolition.
|
| All progressive collapses are going to look superficially
| similar. The most notable facet of a controlled demolition
| is the sheer sound of the charges going off to initiate the
| collapse. I've had the pleasure of being able to view a
| controlled demolition live, and I can tell you that the
| sound is loud enough and distinctive enough that all of the
| rescuers working on the debris pile that was the twin
| towers would have been reporting the explosions.
| mistermann wrote:
| > But with WTC7, the video we have is of the roof of the
| back side (with respect to the collapse origin).
|
| Which in itself seems a bit odd, not unlike the lack of
| footage of the Pentagon (publicly released footage, at
| least).
|
| > So we don't have visual of the collapse progress until
| it reaches the fairly homogeneous progressive collapse
| phase.
|
| Suggesting there is some uncertainty involved.
|
| > The most notable facet of a controlled demolition is
| the sheer sound of the charges going off to initiate the
| collapse.
|
| If one uses the traditional loud approach, agreed.
|
| > I've had the pleasure of being able to view a
| controlled demolition live, and I can tell you that the
| sound is loud enough and distinctive enough that all of
| the rescuers working on the debris pile that was the twin
| towers would have been reporting the explosions.
|
| Certainly seems plausible.
| atatatat wrote:
| How many decibels to start fires that firefighters wouldn't
| be able to touch?
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Looks like the only reason why some of these mentioned weren't on
| the planes was because they cannot operate one. With the
| described anti western and anti Jewish sentiments and views,
| being Saudi citizens(I presume) , why would they want American
| citizenship?
|
| Saudi embassy/consulate staff involved meeting these people? This
| looks so dodgy, the Kashoggi case has shown that Saudi diplomat
| staff doesn't respect territorial laws when being hosted.
| Mediterranean restaurant is some sort of key word or red herring,
| not just because of the rather offensive "beneath their status"
| statement, but clearly if it's more than just Mediterranean than
| in name, their last priority would be to cater for halal food and
| I am pretty sure that the Mediterranean dressing style would be
| viewed as "beneath their status" (but certainly not style, if I
| mad add this). So they didn't go there for the food, but to meet
| with other lackeys, to not been seen in the usual, not under
| status locations.
| pupdogg wrote:
| Whatever happened to the $2.3T (trillion) dollars that went
| missing as per Donald Rumsfeld's speech on September 10, 2001? I
| think we forgot to follow-up on this question...leading ourselves
| into greater debt year-after-year since then.
|
| Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-war-on-waste/
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Trump said the troops stole it:
|
| https://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/trump-us-troop-stole-...
| throwaway829 wrote:
| That article makes no reference to Rumsfeld's 9/10 speech.
| This is just a generic Trump is bad article.
| pupdogg wrote:
| I think you're confused. This is money before Iraq ever came
| into the picture (post 9/11). This is money that was reported
| "unaccounted for" 1 day prior to 9/11.
| jl6 wrote:
| The article makes it pretty clear that the $2.3T figure is
| about efficiency, sloppy accounting and diffuse accountability.
| It's not like there was $2.3T cash in a van that got stolen.
| pupdogg wrote:
| Agreed! But if look at the timing of it, the efficiency,
| accounting, and accountability seemed to be worsened 6x times
| more to date.
| toast0 wrote:
| Well, sure, are you going to confirm to accounting norms
| when you're not required to and you've got more urgent
| matters to attend to? Especially if you're in an
| institution that has ignored accounting norms for many many
| years?
| blunte wrote:
| But as a matter of probability and human greed, some people
| understood the system and invisibly stole from it. How much
| of the money was mismanaged vs how much was stolen is
| debatable.
| Tylast wrote:
| Trillions of dollars are NOT missing...never were. With 34
| colors of money, subdivided by Fiscal Year (FY), and where the
| RDT&E is further divided by 8 budget activities (each also
| divided by FY), it becomes a task impossible to tell congress
| (who actually created this insane level of fiscal sub-division
| in the first place) that every single dollar was spent
| according to their scheme.
|
| Think about it, there is not a single off the shelf enterprise
| accounting system designed to accommodate even a fraction of
| this maniacal minutia.
|
| Note that the cited list didn't account for JIEDO appropriation
| type (which also had a FY component) which was prevalent over
| the past 20 years, but is now defunct.
|
| A major part of the problem (save the super fragmented parsing
| of the funding) is that each service has their own accounting &
| execution systems. There is NOT a singular DoD system.
|
| https://acqnotes.com/acqnote/acquisitions/appropriation-cate...
|
| https://ndiatvc.org/images/downloads/DAU_Training/dau_color_...
| toast0 wrote:
| > "According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in
| transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.
|
| I think this is related to the very long DoD audit process, and
| there's a difference between being unable to track those
| dollars and them being missing or stolen or inappropriately
| used.
|
| Notably, it took until about 2017 for annual audits to actually
| start at DoD, and AFAIK, they have yet to have a 'clean' audit
| where all/substantially all assets and spending is accounted
| for, although it seems like progress is being made. This isn't
| necessarily unexpected as the organization wasn't built with
| auditing as a requirement and it takes some time to retrofit
| that into a large organization. Congressional oversight is
| powerful, but persistant focus is hard to come by and is really
| needed on something like this.
| kotaKat wrote:
| https://archive.is/47mdz
| jeroenhd wrote:
| That's strange, I'm getting a TLS certificate error when I
| visit that website now. Is it just me?
|
| Edit: must be a DNS issue, the website resolves to cloudflare-
| dns.com so I guess it must be part of the website's operator's
| childish fight with Cloudflare's DNS resolver for not
| forwarding the resolving IP subnet to their DNS servers.
| [deleted]
| SquareWheel wrote:
| You're probably using Cloudflare DNS.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317
| supperburg wrote:
| I recently read Islamic imperialism, a history from Yale
| university press. The first thing you need to know is that in the
| Middle East, countries do not exist. What we call countries are
| conglomerations of loosely associated factions from top to
| bottom. That's why there isn't a single middle eastern state that
| is stable and also free of brutality, except the black sheep.
| Even if some Saudi people were involved, saying that "the saudis"
| were involved doesn't make sense. The higher levels of the Saudi
| dynasty were certainly not in favor of 9/11 even if the
| fundamentalists in the country hadn't lost any sleep over it.
|
| Bin laden was an outcast. He left Saudi Arabia and went around to
| various places and at one point ended up in Northern Africa where
| he was engaged in evicting the Americans from Somalia. He said
| that the Americans he fought in Somalia were so weak and
| retreated so readily that it opened his mind to the possibility
| of inflicting real damage to the United States. But around this
| time he became more high profile and was evicted from his host
| country and wasn't welcome anywhere, including Saudi Arabia. That
| should be a big hint about the Saudi theory. He made an appeal to
| the UK for political asylum, which based on his rhetoric at the
| time was like hitler asking for asylum in Israel. If the UK had
| granted him asylum 9/11 wouldn't have happened. But they didn't.
|
| From there he ultimately moved on to Afghanistan and the tribal
| regions of the Pakistan border where there is no presence of
| government.
|
| Bin laden was a religious fanatic who outwardly pursued The
| universal adoption of islam and protested foreign occupation of
| the pan-Arab community, even the willful presence of US troops in
| Saudi Arabia after the invasion of Kuwait. He killed 3,000 people
| because the saudis willingly hosted American troops. Mind-
| bending. But this leads to the next point which is that despite
| his outward behavior, inwardly he probably had political
| ambitions and all indications point to yet another repetition of
| history in that region -- a small group of people justify
| violence in the name of Islam and then promptly transform into a
| conventional state, built upon violations of Islam, as soon as
| they have captured the material means to do so. Bin laden, who
| probably thought 9/11 would cause the United States to remove
| itself from the Middle East, only made it to step one.
|
| And this has interesting consequences for the future landscape of
| terror. We probably won't see another attack from the Middle
| East. Attacks from these groups are almost always pragmatic, even
| if they are done in the name of "Islam," and almost always the
| pragmatic target is some other player in that region.
| echopurity wrote:
| Does the report mention how the usa helps the saudis run a
| dystopian nightmare of religious brutality that created terrorist
| ideologies and the 911 terrorists themselves?
| pupdogg wrote:
| Yet the coalition of 3400 architects and engineers still do not
| have computer inputs of NIST's mathematical models used for
| simulating how the buildings were destroyed. As per NIST: "This
| information was exempt from public disclosure under Section 7d of
| the National Construction Safety Team Act because it was
| determined by the Director of NIST that release of the files
| might jeopardize public safety."
|
| References: 1. https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-
| measure/20-years-later-nis... 2.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiwpj7aa9c8
| casperc wrote:
| May I ask the HN community what your thoughts are om this?
|
| I always felt there are two parts of the "truthers": the same
| crowd that is now denying covid and the ones representing this
| point of view.
|
| The insanity is overshadowing the reasonable people in the
| truther movement, but in isolation this video (and ones like
| it) really makes me wonder.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| Because they don't want to teach terrorists how to take down
| skyscrapers?
| pupdogg wrote:
| Two planes are hijacked and then rammed into two of the
| tallest buildings in the world. Both buildings collapse,
| while causing another 3rd building to collapse as well. I'm
| not sure how a mathematical model would help/teach the
| terrorist any more than the already available public videos
| of the attacks.
| cherioo wrote:
| The model may help terrorists destroy buildings without
| hijacking planes.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Using a truck in the garage in '93 didn't work. So they
| went back to the drawing board.
|
| We all know what happened when the Rebel Alliance got the
| plans to the Death Star.
| pupdogg wrote:
| Good point but I think the planes were a crucial control
| for their simulation/modeling.
| postalrat wrote:
| So could computers. Ban computers?
| pan69 wrote:
| It sounds unlikely to me that some terrorists have figured
| out a secret way to collapse skyscrapers with an airliner
| that architects and engineers haven't figured out already and
| which wouldn't be part of the curriculum of becoming an
| architect or engineer in the first place.
| newbamboo wrote:
| "Some mysteries are better left unsolved really." Spinal tap
| barneygale wrote:
| A couple of contentions from 9/11 truthers never made much sense
| to me:
|
| Firstly, why would the government plant
| explosives/thermite/whatever in the buildings? Flying planes into
| buildings would be enough pretext to start a war on terror, if
| that was the intention. You don't need to ensure they collapse
| with additional explosives.
|
| Secondly, why would they use a missile rather than a plane when
| targeting the pentagon? If you're planning to make the public
| think a plane hit the pentagon, why not just use a plane?
| stordoff wrote:
| One suggested explanation for the first point I've seen is that
| it was to limit damage to the surrounding areas in case of an
| uncontrolled collapse. I don't recall any evidence being
| presented for this claim though, and it doesn't strike me as
| particularly plausible, as it doesn't seem worth complicating
| the plan to such a degree for seemingly little benefit.
|
| The use of a missile rather than a plane has never made any
| sense to me - one unexpected photo, or even a plausible witness
| account, gives you a problem, despite there being an obvious
| way to avoid it. It also invites questions if the result is
| inconsistent with a plane crash in any way.
| pan69 wrote:
| I'm no 9/11 truther but I'm fascinated by the subject at the
| same time. It's such a complex subject and there are no easy
| and simple answers. There are many angles to take into
| consideration. I guess the truth is somewhere in the middle as
| with most things these days.
|
| I thought this video was interesting since it doesn't really
| seem to claim anything. It's asking difficult questions though:
|
| The Debate: https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=829
|
| Part 1 - Air Defence: https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=878
|
| Part 2 - The Hijackers: https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=3378
|
| Part 3 - The Airplanes: https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=5802
|
| Part 4 - The Pentagon: https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=7011
|
| Part 5 - Flight 93: https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=8272
|
| Part 6 - The Twin Towers: - https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=9681
|
| Part 7 - Building 7: https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=16141
| timdaub wrote:
| It's weird, all my coming of age I believed that 9/11 had
| something fishy going for it. I fell for the popularized
| conspiracy theories. There were videos propagated through Google
| Videos. I don't hold them much anymore.
|
| Still to this day, I'm extremely skeptical of some of the
| official stories. I don't get the point of classified documents
| in this case. And there are still many open questions like e.g.
| why WTC 5 collapsed without an airplane impact.
|
| Dunno, I guess eventually with more years passing we'll start to
| learn more diverging stories and potentially the truth?
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Wtc 5 didnt collapse it was demolished. Wtc 7 did. Which do you
| think is worse getting hit by an airplane or getting hit by
| another massive building as it collapses?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Wtc 5 didnt collapse it was demolished.
|
| It experienced fire and partial collapse due to being hit
| with part of the fuselage of UA 175 and other debris from the
| North Tower. ("Without an airplane impact" is, of course, a
| false description.)
| mistermann wrote:
| Was the collapse of WTC 7 due to getting hit by another
| building?
| Supermancho wrote:
| Although the big media outlets of the time (CBS, NBC, etc)
| have "lost" their footage, I specifically remember a
| reporter asking a question of a NYC Fire Chief (some
| borough), after the second aircraft hit.
|
| Reporter: "what about the new that there will be a
| controlled demolition of WTC 7 because of fear of
| collapse?"
|
| Fire Chief: "What? What are you talking about?"
|
| Reporter: "There's a rumor that building 7 needs to be
| brought down due to damage..."
|
| Fire Chief: "Listen miss, I don't know what you've heard,
| but there is no damage to building 7 and there's no reason
| to bring it down. If you suggest such a thing to someone
| else, I'll have you arrested for inciting a panic. We have
| a high amount of coordination and there is limited
| information available to the public."
|
| There was more to it, but that was memorable because, as a
| kid, I realized something. In a real disaster situation,
| people would be getting conflicting information. During
| 9/11, it was a real disaster. Nobody seemed to know wtf was
| really going on or going to happen and the reporters were,
| notably, just in the way of the real work. Later, when
| building 7 fell, I thought...well...that's quite a
| coincidence. I don't feel it was a coincidence anymore.
| jcranmer wrote:
| One of my vivid memories of 9/11 is my sister's panic
| over the car bomb at the National Mall. We had some
| visitors staying with us that week, and 9/11 was the day
| they were going to go down to see the National Mall
| (needless to say, that was aborted).
|
| Yet, in trying to find more information about it, I have
| found absolutely _no_ mention about such a car bomb. It
| 's not on any "false rumors that got started during the
| day" lists; it's not picked up even by the most insane of
| conspiracy theorists as suppressed information. I'm
| actually kind of curious where the idea got into my
| sister's head--the closest I can figure is that the
| original attack on the Pentagon was reported as a blast
| in an unknown area to the southeast of the caller, and
| the National Mall was suggested as a possible site by the
| reporter.
|
| This goes to show two things. One, it's very easy to
| specifically remember facts (including reporting of
| facts) that never actually happened. Two, in a day of
| hectic reporting, it's very easy for wrong information to
| spread very quickly.
|
| FWIW, you can find archives of television news coverage
| of 9/11 here:
| https://archive.org/details/911/day/20010911.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| It was hit by north tower collapse then fire raged on for
| many hours as sprinkler system had failed etc. I think
| structurally it still shouldn't have collapsed but it
| doesn't require a grand conspiracy to explain the failure
| here.
| danielschonfeld wrote:
| Except that two people who were in that building, both
| claim a stairwell exploded under their feet _before_ the
| towers came down. Not that the towers coming down should
| have anything to do with an explosion inside WTC7 but
| regardless, something exploded inside corroborated by the
| only two people who got out of that building.
|
| So something something grand conspiracy...
|
| Also symmetric free falling, from a fire? Has fire become
| opinionated and decided to consume a steel scraper
| equally at all floors on all sides of a building all at
| once?
| mistermann wrote:
| It may if you want your explanation to be correct though.
| And technically, a _grand_ conspiracy is subjective, and
| a bit of a false dichotomy. See:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
|
| The complexity of the problem is such that it is
| extremely difficult to not make a cognitive error during
| contemplation, even leaving aside the famous
| unreliability of the multiple systems this cognition sits
| on top of.
|
| Think of how hard it can sometimes be to debug a system
| for which you have the literal source code for, which
| sits on a highly trustworthy base. Now consider reality,
| for which you have no source code, but you do know (at
| least during certain mental states, but not necessarily
| all) that it is chock full of bugs, indeterminate
| behaviors, etc.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| A lot of $10 words to say "I don't know anything so i
| choose to believe lizard people did it"
| mistermann wrote:
| Here you are not distinguishing between your perception
| of (or, rhetorical misinterpretation of) the ideas within
| my words, and the actual ideas themselves (as you also do
| with the events of that day). I wonder which one it is
| (maybe a little of both?).
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Wikipedia says:
|
| > section of the fuselage from United Airlines Flight 175
| landed on the roof
|
| The only fishiness radar I have is around the subsequent power
| grab and civil liberties rollback by the espionage
| organizations within the USA. Certainly I wouldn't have given
| more power to the organizations that so clearly failed, let
| alone who have had a track record in directly creating enemies
| for the USA.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Taking advantage of a situation doesn't mean you caused it.
| This is correlation != causation situation. Anti-vaxxers
| didn't cause covid but the captured the moment to exploit it.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Its worse than that - at very best they failed in their
| primary role of defending the nation, at worst knowingly
| let it fly and then got surprised how bad it ended up (or
| not, who actually knows keeps silent).
|
| No matter what is the reality, one thing is for sure - you
| should never, ever trust in any meaningful way a single
| word from anybody from those agencies. Whether they are
| incompetent beyond belief or just good liers is not so
| important.
| fredophile wrote:
| Read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. It basically lays out
| the idea that there are groups with legislation like this
| already prepared just waiting for an opportunity to get it
| pushed through. It's pretty shitty behaviour but doesn't
| require a conspiracy to explain it.
| 1024core wrote:
| Cheney (or was it Rumsfeld) had a saying: "Never let a
| crisis go to waste"
| jopsen wrote:
| Most conspiracy theories become impossible when you consider
| the number of people that would have to be in on it.
|
| Sure, there are bugs in our history books (and lots of
| propaganda). But if you discard facts reported in the media,
| then how do you know water is wet? :)
|
| On topic: it's hard to know if classification makes sense. But
| I'll admit I don't really feel competent to have an opinion on
| the subject.
| swarnie wrote:
| A question for the American dominated commenters on this
| forum....
|
| How many more years and anniversaries do you intend to do?
|
| You got 9/11'd, spent 20 years invading two countries who weren't
| responsible, ignored and apologised for the one country that was
| responsible and are still not very good at the Paralympics.
|
| when does it end?
| ssijak wrote:
| As long as the US is putting ~$800B into military per year, the
| answer is never.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| We had a domestic terror attack, invaded two countries that the
| terrorist organization lived and thrived in, removed and
| dismantled most of their support structure.
|
| Admittedly we failed to rebuild the Afgani state. Gotta call it
| quits eventually, 20 years is one hell of a try.
|
| We still took the most gold in the regular olympics though.
|
| So probably in another 30 years when someone else makes a gaffe
| in that area.
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| AQ lived and thrived in Iraq?
|
| After the invasion there was some activity, but before?
| pstuart wrote:
| > Admittedly we failed to rebuild the Afgani state.
|
| Funny, the only talk I remember around then was "bombing them
| back to the stone age".
|
| We had zero legitimacy in that invasion -- it was a
| jingoistic angry retaliation with no clear plan on what to do
| other than "kill terrorists".
|
| Irony alert: we probably created more terrorists than we
| killed.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| And yet we denied them the ability to carry out large-scale
| attacks in the US for the next 20 years.
| pstuart wrote:
| That's a rather Panglossian take.
|
| We sacrificed more lives than were lost in the initial
| attack. And then there's the financial cost which is
| astronomical.
|
| We had the chance to stop that attack and fucked up.
|
| And now we've handed over control to the Taliban, the
| very same "freedom fighters" we helped to create. If you
| think that's victory then you're mistaken.
|
| Meanwhile the greatest threats to America are from
| internal terrorists.
| atatatat wrote:
| Vegas, et al weren't considered large-scale?
| pstuart wrote:
| Indeed. The biggest terrorist threats we face are
| domestic.
| ssijak wrote:
| Is this sarcastic?
| mistermann wrote:
| Causality if far more complex than perceived by the
| subconscious mind.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| The cost was quite high (financial, US lives lost, local
| lived lost). Perhaps there were better ways of preventing
| large-scale attacks on the US?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > invaded two countries that the terrorist organization lived
| and thrived in
|
| al-Qaeda didn't exist in any substantial way in Iraq before
| we destroyed the regime and unleashed a previously minor
| group which affiliated with al-Qaeda for a while before
| becoming ISIS.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| At this point it's pretty clear that the "reasons" for the
| Iraq War were made up.
| atatatat wrote:
| > Upset with people who own sports team
|
| > Go and turn over then burn the closest bar that has lots of
| their fans
| atatatat wrote:
| Also, did you somehow miss the billions of dollars in toys
| we left over there for (anyone) to (use on/sell) to
| (anyone)?
| mlac wrote:
| Edit: the flagged / removed comment asked Americans when we are
| going to stop remembering 9/11
|
| I don't like the tone of your comment ("you got 9/11'd" tells
| me you were probably very young when it happened or have very
| little empathy for those involved), but if I may get patriotic:
|
| It doesn't. That day will be equivalent in history to Pearl
| Harbor in the sense that it dragged us into a long war and
| conflict, and it was an attack on American soil.
|
| Remembering the innocent lives lost, those first responders who
| gave a heroic but futile effort to rescue the innocent, and the
| resulting war (and it's associated failures - WMDs) is
| important for the fabric and culture of the country. Some of
| the other reasons to remember include that it can happen again,
| not to take freedom for granted, and that how we respond is
| very, very important if a similar event happens in the future.
|
| The Americans that died that day, those on flight 93 and those
| first responders that climbed against the crowd to try to save
| lives, they represent the best of us and the American ideal. In
| the face of adversity and uncertainty they took action to fight
| back and made the ultimate sacrifice. Why should we stop
| remembering them and what they did that day?
| [deleted]
| trasz wrote:
| It's telling that you've completely ignored the million
| innocent people you've killed using this event as an excuse.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Those people had nothing to do with why 9/11 is remembered,
| which was the topic at hand.
|
| They should certainly be remembered when we talk about how
| horrific the American response to 9/11 was, though.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| But if they're not americans, can they still be considered
| innocent? ;o
| howaboutnope wrote:
| Of course you shouldn't forget them. But if you want to honor
| them, also don't forget people who resisted starting a war of
| aggression which ended up causing two orders of magnitude
| more lives lost, helped create ISIS and other things that
| continue to this day. Remembering the dead doesn't make them
| alive, and without also holding murderers that still run free
| accountable it has no sentimental value either in my books.
| If the American public as a whole had 1% of the energy they
| have for flowery language dedicated to the values they pay
| lip service to, George Bush, Dick Cheney and many others
| would be in jail. They used this for a war of aggression, and
| enriched themselves and their buddies. How is them still
| walking free not an insult to all these people who lost their
| lives in 9/11?
|
| That people help each other in catastrophies, be that
| earthquakes or anything else, is human. The pattern of war
| and war profiteering at the cost of the public, of the very
| same average Joes and Janes that get to die, that's the thing
| the USA excels at. Just as a random example, look at
| healthcare: that does not strike me as something that is even
| _possible_ in a society where caring for others and selfless
| sacrifice is a priority, much less _the_ ideal.
|
| > If you care about other people, that's now a very dangerous
| idea. If you care about other people, you might try to
| organize to undermine power and authority. That's not going
| to happen if you care only about yourself. Maybe you can
| become rich, but you don't care whether other people's kids
| can go to school, or can afford food to eat, or things like
| that.
|
| -- Noam Chomsky
|
| I'm not disrespecting the victims in my own heart, but you
| could say I'm somewhat unimpressed by the somber display of
| respect by many people who, with their (in)actions, betray
| the values that would give such respect weight.
| Grakel wrote:
| As many as we want, just like everything else.
| acgt wrote:
| This NPR news doesn't require subscription.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/09/12/1036389448/biden-declassifies...
|
| So Saudis has connections with 9/11 terrorists, and Washington
| invaded Iraq instead?
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| As Ron Paul once said (about the Federal Reserve), "If that
| doesn't make any sense at all to you...then you understand it
| just fine."
| acgt wrote:
| I was just suggesting the Iraq war is a mistake.
| pstuart wrote:
| As were our misadventures in Afghanistan.
| mcguire wrote:
| I have never seen a coherent explanation of what was going
| through anyone's mind regarding the Iraq war. The nearest
| I've heard is that Iraq was Bush's idee fixe going into
| office. (My personal theory was that Bush realized
| Afghanistan was not going to get him re-elected to a second
| term.)
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| I think a lot of the Bush folks thought of Saddam as a
| kind of rogue asset. They'd funded him to attack the
| Iranians, and then he went off reservation when he
| invaded Kuwait, and later tried to assassinate HW Bush.
| They knew he had chemical weapons (because they had sold
| them to him), and tricked themselves into believing he
| was developing nukes. 9/11 ramped up the paranoia and
| gave the Bush administration license to lie their way
| into war.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Prior to the Iraq war Saddam was pressing the UN to lift
| a bunch of sanctions and courting Russian and European
| oil companies to come in and run their oil operations. By
| the time of the invasion Iraq's oil infrastructure had
| been gutted due to sanctions.
|
| This was a complete anathema to the PNAC psychos' vision
| of the Middle East [0]. They basically wanted to exact
| control over the majority share of OPEC producers for
| power over economic rivals (as they saw them).
|
| The PNAC [1] had been pushing for war in the Middle East
| from their founding in the 90s. They got a lot of buy-in
| from all the Nixonites in GWB's administration. Rumsfeld
| set up the Office of Special Plans [2] that stovepiped
| unvetted intelligence from a bunch of Iraqi expats and
| exiles to push PNAC narratives to GWB.
|
| [0]
| https://archive.org/details/RebuildingAmericasDefenses
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_A
| merican...
|
| [2]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans
| l332mn wrote:
| The most credible theory in my eyes as to why they needed
| to invade Iraq, was that Saddam intended to boycott the
| US dollar, and rather sell Iraq's oil in Euros.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.the
| eur...
|
| There's a de facto global tacit agreement to sell oil in
| US dollars - on pain of unilateral sanctions by the US or
| military intervention by the US military. All countries
| who deviate from this agreement are in fact deemed
| enemies of the US. This includes, Iran, Venezuela, Russia
| and China, and (formely) Iraq and Libya. When they don't,
| that means that the US can't simply print dollars as they
| please and force other countries (who purchases that oil)
| to purchase US debt as well. Pricing oil in currencies
| other than the worlds reserve currency (the US dollar)
| affects the dollar value greatly. The US printed about 10
| trillion dollars in two years. The rest of the oil-
| dependent world pays the price.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > There's a de facto global tacit agreement to sell oil
| in US dollars - on pain of unilateral sanctions by the US
| or military intervention by the US military.
|
| That is 100% how the US has managed to maintain as a
| "stable" global currency.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| There's only one conspiracy that is logically consistent
| with the outcome - that Cheney was a witting or unwitting
| asset of the Iranian regime.
| 1024core wrote:
| Not really. Cheney was under the influence of Ahmad
| Chalabi, who was a deep Iranian asset. Chalabi's job was
| to get the US to invade Iraq and dispose of Saddam. He
| succeeded admirably, and was given an award by Iran.
| atatatat wrote:
| conspiracy theory**
| bigodbiel wrote:
| iirc there were some rumors that Iraq was personal for
| him because of his father's handling of it, and
| subsequent electoral defeat.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Ron Paul ignores the entirely possible alternative of "you
| may just be an idiot", though.
| tpmx wrote:
| It's pretty widely accepted by now that the premise for Iraq
| 2.0 was manufactured by the GWB administration.
|
| Regarding 9/11:
|
| I _think_ Cheney was pulling the shots and knowingly and
| cynically ignored all of those glaring warnings, thinking they
| 'd get maybe a small attack somewhere with a smaller number of
| US deaths, which would sort of be the cost of doing business in
| the middle east, and that this could be politically expedient
| in the context of his larger vision on how to deal with "the
| Iraq/Saddam problem", and in the larger picture morally "fine".
|
| Btw: Dick Cheney is actually still around. How he and GWB never
| were indicted is beyond me. Don't get me started on the GWB PR
| rehabilitation campaign that has been ongoing during the the
| past ~6 years.
| joconde wrote:
| > I think Cheney was pulling the shots and knowingly and
| cynically ignored all of those glaring warnings, thinking
| they'd get maybe a small attack somewhere with a smaller
| number of US deaths
|
| Did he have so much control that he could suppress
| intelligence about an attack? I know he was pretty powerful
| for a vice president, but it sounds weird to me that one guy
| who isn't even in command could do that.
|
| Note I'm not American and don't know that much about that
| period.
| tpmx wrote:
| He was a very unusual vice president. Often described as
| the most powerful american VP ever. It's not clear that GWB
| was in control of these aspects during his presidency.
|
| You should watch Vice (2018).
|
| That movie really made a shitload of sense to me after
| following politics closely since a bit before the Bush/Gore
| election in 2000.
| rasz wrote:
| He shot an attorney in the face, with a shotgun, and had
| the victim apologize to him https://www.theguardian.com/wor
| ld/2006/feb/18/usa.dickcheney
|
| "Harry Whittington, the Republican lawyer shot by Dick
| Cheney in a hunting accident in Texas last weekend, emerged
| from hospital yesterday and apologised to the vice-
| president for all the trouble the shooting had caused."
| tpmx wrote:
| His face after the incident:
|
| https://newsfeed.time.com/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/9/2010/10...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Whittington
|
| > Whittington told the paper that although many media
| outlets had described Cheney and him as "good friends",
| the pair had only met one another three times in 30
| years, and had never been hunting before. The Washington
| Post article also said that Cheney had violated "two
| basic rules of hunting safety": he failed to ensure that
| he had a clear shot before firing, and fired without
| being able to see blue sky beneath his target. The paper
| also reported that Cheney has still neither publicly nor
| privately apologized to Whittington for the shooting.
| [deleted]
| api wrote:
| > How he and GWB never were indicted is beyond me.
|
| Same reason nothing will ever happen to Trump for January 6th
| (and many other things). Same reason Nixon was pardoned. Same
| reason Clinton got away with lying to Congress, nothing
| happened to Reagan or Bush Sr. over Iran Contra, and so on...
|
| Once you reach a certain level, laws no longer apply.
|
| This is a more likely explanation than more complex
| conspiracy theories for Saudi and Pakistani ISI involvement
| with the 9/11 hijackers. These people were never brought to
| justice because they are powerful, rich, or "valuable" in
| some other way. They're not subject to the law.
| Supermancho wrote:
| More like US Law is a tool and not a useful one, in
| leveraging political influence. In US Politics, the
| political presentation of events/behavior of individuals,
| are a sort of ammunition for both other individuals and
| associated groups. Nobody wants to go to war with a
| political opponent who can weaponize information
| effectively, so you never chase them down legally.
| Especially with no guarantee that legal recourse will do
| anything but drain coffers and political favors.
| api wrote:
| Back then I was fond of saying that if George W Bush were
| president during Pearl Harbor we would have declared "War on
| Aerial Bombing" and invaded Korea.
| neom wrote:
| Crux of the article:
|
| The FBI document released Saturday contains significant
| redactions, but nevertheless shows FBI officials were skeptical
| of claims by various witnesses that Saudis in the U.S. who met
| with the two hijackers did so accidentally through chance
| encounters.
|
| It was "difficult to reconcile" the connection between the
| hijackers and those who gave them support, the FBI document
| states, noting that one individual claimed he met the hijackers
| at a 7-Eleven convenience store in northern Virginia "during a
| 'chance meeting', in a uniquely similar fashion to the way
| Bayoumi described his 'chance meeting' with Hazmi and Midhar in
| Los Angeles."
| [deleted]
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Just like how, according to the 9/11 commission report, on the
| morning of 9/11 there was a "chance meeting" between the two
| guys who ran the investigation into attacks (Porter Graham and
| Bob Goss) and the guy who wired 100k to the lead hijacker
| (Ahmad).
|
| source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_Goss
| mrobot wrote:
| This article starts off with meeting between Graham/Goss and
| Mahmoud Ahmed, or 'Mehmood Ahmed' as it is spelled some other
| places. Also, what is the reason spellings always differ so
| much?
|
| https://archive.is/ttTRs
| [deleted]
| fastasucan wrote:
| How would you translate french "boeuf" to american english?
| Well, we have, "beef". But someone would also just use
| boeuf which might have a closer recemblance with the
| pronounciation of the original word. So whats most
| important, to have an as direct as possible spelling to how
| it is pronounced or just make an own version of it.
|
| We have the same with a lot of names in the west as well,
| Jacob, Jakob, Yakob, Yakov, Jakub, Jakup etc.
| kingofpandora wrote:
| Transliteration schemes from one language/alphabet to
| another are not always consistent.
|
| If I'd have to guess, Mehmood is what is used in Pakistan,
| reflecting local pronunciation, whereas Mahmoud is the more
| traditional Arabic translation of the name (which is
| Arabic).
| ithkuil wrote:
| The "oo" and "ou" spelling difference has more to do with
| the english vs french influence, with Pakistan having had
| more English than French influence.
| tailrecursion wrote:
| The spellings reflect different transliteration schemes
| that can be used for Arabic.
| tpmx wrote:
| > On the morning of September 11, 2001, Goss and Graham were
| having breakfast with General Ahmad [head of Pakistan's Inter
| Services Intelligence (ISI)]
|
| Secondary source for the $100k money transfer from the ISI
| head to Atta:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/22/usa.september1.
| ..
|
| > Significantly, Sheikh is also the man who, on the
| instructions of General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of
| Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000
| before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker.
| It is extraordinary that neither Ahmed nor Sheikh have been
| charged and brought to trial on this count. Why not?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| throwawaysea wrote:
| The ISI has also been implicated in giving harbor to Al
| Qaeda (like with bin Laden) and the Taliban (helping them
| rebuild and take over Afghanistan again). Between these and
| near constant state supported terrorism against India, how
| is it that Pakistan has escaped all accountability and
| public scrutiny? I would love to learn more about the
| foreign policy or diplomatic dynamics that may be involved
| here.
| brunnock wrote:
| Jesus. How did they get away with genocide?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_genocide
| iooi wrote:
| Read "Directorate S" by Steve Coll.
| [deleted]
| rasz wrote:
| Here is the reason
| https://www.nti.org/learn/countries/pakistan/nuclear/ .
| Pakistan has nukes making it untouchable and unmentionable.
| Media doesnt even try to link Pakistan with Taliban and
| super quick fall of Afghanistan.
| tpmx wrote:
| Reason they have nukes: Because China more or less gave
| them to the country, in an utterly irresponsible move in
| a game of asian geopolitical chess.
| brunnock wrote:
| And then AQ Khan sold nuke know-how to Iran and North
| Korea. Play stupid games...
| voldacar wrote:
| the amount of "chance" surrounding the 9/11 event truly
| boggles the mind. I can't think of any other historical
| occurence that even comes close
| [deleted]
| compsciphd wrote:
| it makes a little sense to question this. It make more sense
| that they had chance encounters at a mosque (i.e. "strange"
| visitors who are visiting an area are common to visiting local
| religious institutions).
|
| with that said, there's a joke that many jews make when they
| travel, of playing the game "spot the jew", and I can imagine
| if I ran into a jew at a random 7-11 I'm more likely to have a
| friendly chit-chat than with other random people, so I can
| imagine that the same might hold true for saudis. I could very
| easily imagine if they were in a location with a reasonably
| sized saudi ex-pat community that there would be many of these
| chance encounters with other saudis.
|
| I could imagine "white bread" FBI agents that aren't from a
| minority, might not be able to comprehend how minorities find
| each other and make connections in random locations.
|
| with all that said, it be proper for the FBI to chase down all
| these threads.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Many FBI agents are Mormons, and have the same automatic
| assumption of fellowship you speak of.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Define 'Many'. Do you have any stats?
| h2odragon wrote:
| I don't. I've _met_ some Mormon FBI agents, and read
| things like this:
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-mormons-make-
| great...
| nebula8804 wrote:
| huh well thats fascinating.
| MauroIksem wrote:
| I call it "what kind of brown are you"?
| nkozyra wrote:
| I think the details of this are a little more coincidental
| than you and I connecting randomly because we're Jewish.
| imglorp wrote:
| At least conservative jews and muslims both wear
| distinctive headwear, and sometimes grooming, so it's
| decent odds of greeting one another on the street. Most
| other backgrounds, not so much.
| compsciphd wrote:
| you mean not coincidental?
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Sure, but 911 goes much deeper than "chance encounters at a
| mosque":
|
| - it's been reported that Saudi embassies were involved in
| the US. The US govt. would have sigint on their
| communications. Stay tuned.
|
| - often mosques get stricter imams after large donations from
| KSA
|
| - the Saudi royal family is known to donate to Islamists
|
| - Canadian mosques were involved in arranging citizenship,
| etc. for one of the organizers
|
| - in Islam, the only guaranteed path to heaven is jihad, or
| funding jihad - the latter is something anybody can do with
| little risk and high perceived reward. (This is partly why
| France finds 50 people supporting each Paris attack. It takes
| a village.)
|
| When you combine the above with OBL being independently
| wealthy, you can start to understand how this happened.
| [deleted]
| will4274 wrote:
| Document here: https://vault.fbi.gov/9-11-attacks-investigation-
| and-related...
| mcculley wrote:
| Where is the actual report?
| junon wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28502758
| 10xrubberduck wrote:
| May or may not be related:
|
| https://www.rferl.org/a/saudi-russia-arms-weapons-/31425164....
|
| So seems like they are making moves on the other side. Which US
| probably doesn't like. So something's going on with the timing of
| these news.
| anticodon wrote:
| More like Saudi Arabia could be the next target for the US
| attack.
|
| Reason is simple: it possesses large deposits of fossil fuel
| but spends "too much" (from American point of view in the world
| with rapidly declining energy resources) for internal
| consumption.
|
| By bombing Saudi Arabia, killing millions and destroying
| infrastructure (e.g. oil-fired power plants), USA will reduce
| consumption of fossil fuels by Saudi Arabia and leave more for
| export to the US.
| 1024core wrote:
| Saudi Arabia is the Land of the Two Shrines. If you want to
| kick the hornet's nest (not just regular hornets, but Asian
| Murder Hornets), that is the way. You'll have 1.5B pissed off
| Muslims if the US does anything hostile against the Saudi
| Kingdom.
| dmix wrote:
| This is one of the Saudi's frequently mentioned in the report in
| connection to two hijackers, who was being financed by a Saudi
| princess married to a US Ambassador:
|
| https://911research.fandom.com/wiki/Omar_al-Bayoumi
|
| > FBI agents involved in the case had received several reports
| that led them to believe al-Bayoumi was a Saudi intelligence
| officer, living and working secretly in the U.S. His cover story
| was that he worked for an aviation logistics company owned by the
| Saudi government, but investigators found he never did any work
| for the company.
|
| > Bayoumi got the hijackers an apartment and helped open a bank
| account, obtain car insurance, get Social Security cards and call
| flight schools in Florida--and also threw a welcoming party for
| the hijackers, during which he introduced them to the local
| Muslim community.
|
| The Al Saud princess
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haifa_bint_Faisal_Al_Saud?wpro...
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