zzzz....

Sorry after reading a page and a half of waffle from the conspiracy bloke I am ready for bed (30min after I got up). I really can't read the rest until I get a case of insomnia....

Already I have forgotton most of his ramblings as they just don't make any sense to me... he seems to spend more time building paper castles and attacking anyone who dares to question his daft meanderings than putting anything logical in place.

Off to find coffee so I can go to work....

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I'm honored to be the first commentator on such a great piece of journalism. I live in New Zealand, so I'm awake while most of you sleep... (I finally got my permanent visa for NZ last week. Guess why I left the USA...)

To the topic, I can believe that 9/11 was organized by a group of pissed off, Allah-loving Arabs. And I can believe that Dick and Bush helped (there's no need for a big conspiracy to set up a few terrorist cells when Daddy used to head up the CIA). As with the Kennedy assassination, we may never know the truth. But either way, the larger crimes of the 21st century, in the eyes of history, have already turned 9/11 into merely a prelude.

Did somebody say $810,000,000,000?
1,000,000 dead Iraqis?

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The best man at my wedding who lives in Washington, D.C., saw the AA 757 circle at low altitude around the Capitol Building before disappearing below the horizon near the Pentagon -- seconds before a ball of fire shot up in the air.

That was a "missile"?

Give me a fucking break. You 9/11 conspiracy people are nuts.

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What has been established without doubt is that a 9/11 coverup -- that even Kean and Hamilton will no longer defend -- continues to be used and abused as the pretext for ongoing mass murder genocide of a thousand lies at 9/11 "war on terror" for power grabs galore.

There are so many vast holes, gaps and traps in the official 9/11 snow job nobody outside of beltway jesters like Matt Taibbi and an establishment Washington-MSM circus axis could pretend to take it seriously let alone defend it.

But denial is the most powerful drug of all.

And people would apparently rather cling to it than face up to the fact their U.S. “government” is a hollow farce in the Fascist pocket of monopoly parasite Organized Corporate Crime .

Put another way, Anglo-American “leadership” on the world stage is no shepherd but a Fascist wolf with blood money on its face.


"This [9/11 Commission] is a scam…It's disgusting. America is being cheated."
“It is a national scandal. This [9/11] investigation is now compromised."
Senator Max Cleland (resigned from the 9/11 Commission. In an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN 11/13/03 & 11/13/2003 Boston Globe)

"“the Commission was set up to fail…There is... well, a lot of people have things to hide [on 9/11] … right up to Bill Clinton or George Bush.”
Lee Hamilton (chair 9/11 “Commission” CBS interview 8/21/06)

"I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act…
Osama Bin Laden (Pakistan Karachi Ummat news interview suppressed in the United States and Britian - September 28, 2001)

“I saw papers that show the U.S. knew al-Qaeda would attack cities with airplanes… I gave [the 9-ll Commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented.”
MRS. SIBEL EDMONDS (whistleblower & former top-level FBI translator. The Bush/Cheney regime silenced Edmonds with a court gag order citing the rarely used “state secrets privilege”. Interview UK Independent 4/2/04)

"I can state: the planning of the attacks was a master deed, in technical and organizational terms. To hijack four huge airplanes within a few minutes and within one hour, to drive them into their targets, with complicated flight maneuvers! This is unthinkable without years-long support from secret apparatuses of the state and industry…When one is dealing with intelligence services, one can imagine manipulations of the highest quality.”
Andreas von Bülow (ex-state German secretary Ministry of Defense and for Research and Technology. Also a member of the German Bundestag [German Parliament] and a Control Commissioner for the German Secret Services – Quote German newspaper Tagesspiegel 1/13/02)

"Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation with four hijacked planes without the support of a secret service."
Horst Ehmke (former coordinator of the German secret services, member of the German Bundestag and German Minister of Justice as well as Federal Minster for Research and Technology Quote 2002)

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I am an avid reader of Alternet but when I read Matt Taibbi's Sept. 26 article The Idiocy Behind the '9/11 Truth' Movement I was appalled by his intellectually weak yet vitriolic attack on the millions of intelligent and thoughtful Americans who have serious and highly warranted questions about the event that been the excuse behind two criminal wars (so far!) and the shredding of our Constitutional rights. Taibbi's arguments against the 9/11 truth movement are sophomoric and insulting but I'm grateful to Alternet and even to Matt for doing this feature. Let your readers hear the arguments and decide for themselves. This article with David Ray Griffin is only fair in lieu of Matt Taibbi's original insult to my intelligence and millions like me.

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Talk about amateur night.

For a sign of these sad Orwellian times it's no accident people like Taibbi are picked out by corporate media to pretend to be agents for progressive justice.

He's in way, way over his head here.

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"First, the conclusion that the Twin Towers and Building 7 were brought down by explosives is now beyond reasonable doubt. Besides the fact that total collapse has never been induced in steel-frame high-rise buildings from any cause other than pre-placed explosives in the process known as controlled demolition, there are at least a dozen features of the collapses that can be explained, and only explained, on the supposition that such explosives were used (such as the fact that the buildings came straight down and at virtually free-fall speed; that there were horizontal ejections over 500 feet of steel columns weighing thousands of tons; that steel was melted and even oxidized, processes that required temperatures far greater than the fires could have been; that hundreds of witnesses, including firefighters, police officers, reporters, and WTC employees, reported massive explosions going off in the Twin Towers long after all the jet fuel would have burned up; and that several people, including two city officials who were in the building, reported explosions in WTC 7 [as I discuss in my new book, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited]).

This conclusion is now publicly endorsed by many hundreds of professionals in the relevant disciplines, including physicists, chemists, architects, engineers, pilots, intelligence officers, and philosophers of science (see Patriots Question 9/11)."

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9/11 was Never investigated.

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Anyone with common sense combined with just a little objective "digging" can clearly see that the government's official story is NOT true. That the government tells us lies on a consistent basis is no secret to anyone. That being said, how about a REAL investigation? One that is fully funded, independent, and with subpoena power. Wouldn't ANYONE want that?

We can conjecture all we want - the problem is we need to know from an independent, professional source what happened based on facts and evidence. I think the truth movement gets hurt in the conjecture area - so I think we need a REAL investigation. Can we garner enough citizen support to do this as a first step for real justice?

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No amount of evidence that, the WTC bombing was hatched 16 months previously by our own Alphabet Agencies will convince the Zealot. You could drown the blighter with minutia of excruciating detail and accuracy, but the BDI SOB will puff himself up with denial deeper than that River itself.

No amount of supportive testimony, no avalanche of physical phenomena will convince the Bull Headed ball bat of anything other than you are crazy and should be locked up or better killed to shut your mouth! Meanwhile the monsters that have done this thing go blithely about their way chortling to themselves over the confused Sheeple. John Q Public you have a secret enemy and its’ name is Abaddon it will pursue all of mankind to the pit and push us into it if we let it.

One need not be Jewish to know this. One only needs to understand that human habits are next to impossible to break without perseverance. I am not Jewish, but believe when I tell you there are worse things to be, for instance one could be among the self enforced ignorant. For ignorance there is a cure, but for stupid there is only forever! Forget the stupid and the dead, you are living and you must follow the living. The alternative here is too terrible to contemplate, dead humans everywhere!

Protect your own frontier; do not let some shady fly-by-night alphabet agency whack your ass into a war. Once upon a time when this country was REALLY new people had the RIGHT to keep and bear arms, and the added responsibility to explain to the novice what they were for and why they were necessary. Today even thinking like this can get your butt tossed in the clink for encouraging terrorism. Because, self defense to these stupid frightened politicians, is terrorism!

We bought into this dumb feces honestly enough by believing that if you eliminated weapons no one would offer violence, excuse me folks I have to barf a little here. As long as humans cannot love there will be violence. Love cannot be enforced, only nourished. If you don’t get that then you should at least learn to carry arms and be at one with others in the need for self protection and the defense of your neighbor. Humans are still very sick; we have a rampant emotional plague to contend with. First learn what that plague is and you may have a chance to insure its defeat.

Along about the intervention of Mark Twain, James Joyce, and Ambrose Bierce the person writing this pretty much gave up on humans being the mote of stars tuff, the mote part is right, the star stuff is pushing it a little but the rest of it is drowned in the pollution and insensitivity of a self destructive race that must subjugate every living thing on this planet or destroy it out of hand as unworthy of existence; then self-righteously deny that it has done any of the kind; pointing at this or that dung heap of concretized earth or deforested wetland as "Progress" here here for the pruning of other species cheering undauntedly about having eradicated yet another life form that was formerly enjoyed by the once teaming blue marble hanging in the black void in the most uninhabited portion of this spiral arm of one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the firmament, meanwhile so-called science cannot Quantify nor pale zombie religious Qualify the meanness nor insanity of the race calling itself man; if there is a universal scourge apt of the name and rogue in the game this nearly hairless primate is the paragon of all that is perfidious foul in nature and excuse making of the alibi inventors in the animal kingdom: assuring itself and anyone who will listen to the tripe that they are not animals at all but godlike in stature mien and bearing more capable than any other creature on the planet of naming the path of moral inclination to be followed by all having thus delivered you to the treacley cup of Socratic sour grapes I take my leave...

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Taibbi would have you believe there are no credible critics of the official account. However, consider the following:

- Raymond McGovern, PhD - Former Chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) and 27-year CIA veteran. "I think at simplest terms, there's a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke." (According to the CIA, NIE's are "the most authoritative written judgments concerning national security issues.")

- William Christison - Former Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis, overseeing 250 CIA analysts. 29-year CIA veteran. "I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. ... An airliner almost certainly did not hit The Pentagon. ... The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center almost certainly did not collapse and fall to earth because hijacked aircraft hit them."

- Melvin Goodman, PhD - Former Division Chief of the CIA's Office of Soviet Affairs and Senior Analyst from 1966 - 1990. "The final [9/11 Commission] report is ultimately a coverup. I don't know how else to describe it."

- General Albert Stubblebine - Former commanding general of U.S. Army Intelligence. 32-year U.S. Army veteran. "I look at the hole in the Pentagon and I look at the size of an airplane that was supposed to have hit the Pentagon. And I said, ‘The plane does not fit in that hole’. So what did hit the Pentagon? What hit it? Where is it? What's going on?"

For decades, we relied on these individuals to collect information essential to our national security and provide critical analysis during which time the U.S. faced far more real and much more serious threats than anything today. We must not now ignore their stunning condemnation of the official account of 9/11.

Information about 1,000 other credible critics of the official account of 9/11 is available at http://PatriotsQuestion911.com

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You are Doomed to repeat it ( or fail to see the blueprint plans)
First to explain 9/11 we must return to the '70's. Between the Hostage Taking , the Highjackings and the Oil 'shortage', Who could not sumise We have serious Problems emminating from the M.E..follow the smatterings of Highjackings and Bombings Right Through WTC'93.Hell add in the Home grown terrorist attack of the Fed Building,the Olympics, Planned Parenthood (just as re- confirmation of potential for major Devastation by any extremeist group)
So NOW tell me 'No one saw the potential for Planes to be highjacked & used as weapons'.It's called Deductive reasoning with HISTORY as it's foundation!
Next add in The US backing of AQ and Bin Laden against the USSR- not only became a quagmire for that Superpower, it crippled their economy..Still thought Iraq & Afhgnaistan would be a 'Slam Dunk'- HISTORY SAYS NO!
Add to the fact that instead of reducing or eliminating our dependence on M.E. Oil we were CONNED into Increasing it 3 Fold!Which only inceased the Connection between US and the Oppressive Oil Royals in the Region- Making US their Scapegoats.Lets Not Forget Most o fthe 19 Were Saudi nationals- Born & Raised in SA, then shipped off to COLLEGE in afhganistan, Yet NOT one thing has SA been held accountable for!
Why did W. sit for 7 minutes..He's a Shitty actor- Ronny Would have Played His Part far better ah DICK!
Then all one has to do is following the progression of Reduced Constitutional Rights, increased Profits by Sub Contractors and Increased Miltiary Spending over the last 7 yrs and You have PROOF of Complicity
Please, Who has Caused far more Devastation to this country's economy, Freedoms and Rights and Future..Cheney or bin Laden?Who has Proven THEY hate US for Our Freedoms..Those who have worked So diligently to Take them away!
9/11 Was a 'calling Card' from the Saudi's 'Pay Up',so this Admin and their Oil Buddies invaded Iraq to pay off THEIR debts to their Lenders. Funny how neither Bush or McCain were willing to leave until the Iraqi Pres had to Broadcast he want US out? Ya think He just decided that on that Day? NO, it was they only way he could force them to leave- reveal their hand to the world..Not here to help build an Independent Iraq, but to build Saudi Oil field Portfolio..Same reason they want to stay so they can launch their next 'services Rendered' into Iran.
Frankly for as many High crimes that this admin & the Oil Syndicates have Committed, Hanging them again for 9/11 would be Unnecessary.Come On Matt, You have fallen into the exact Mindset this Organized Crime Syndicate Banks On...To Horrific to consider, even in the face of undeniable Evidence to the contrary. If it makes you feel better, then they are at LEAST responsible for Setting Up the scenario by financing AQ against the USSR- Just like they had backed Saddam against Iran.Backing Sociopathic Terrotist Regimes is a matter of Complicity!
By the Way Have we heard any more about those 16 boxes found in Houston regarding JFK's assaination?? No
If nothing Else One Great aspect which should always be practiced in a True democracy is QUESTIONING those Under Your Employment. so Matt Even if you can't buy the 'Demo' explanation of why they Towers Fell..You should be able to accept facts of what happened afterwards and the Responsiblity of being in a FreeDemocratic society which ALWAYS demands ANSWERS from their 'Public Servants'.
One Way or another Blood is one the hands of Cheney and His minions and Sponsors, for 9/11 and All that has followed.It was just a Link in a LONG line of Treasonous Behavior.But if it takes 9/11 Complicity to get these SOB Hung by the Neck so be it, I'm Satisfied Beyond a shadow of a Doubt on the Grounds of Reckless endangerment with Forethought and malice.Cheney is not guilty of Just One Day's High Crimes...But 40 Yrs of High Crimes!

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Look, this isn't a 'showdown'. How could it be? Dr. Griffin is a professor emeritus who has written over 30 books, about a half dozen on 9/11. His research has been undertaken as a professional academic, meticulous and well-documented. Matt Taibbi has a BA? Or did he graduate? He was born in the same year Dr. Griffin got his PhD. As someone who has worked on a PhD, I've always admired people who have gotten through the grueling and difficult work involved--much more difficult than a masters degree. Much of the public doesn't understand what scholarship means; unless they've gone through graduate school, they often think 'anyone' can do it, that it is really no different than 'job experience'. Sorry. There is a vast gulf between a journalist like Matt Taibbi and Dr. Griffin. Forget this article which was under the control of Taibbi and look at the TOC, footnotes, and index of Griffin's latest book. That will give you a sense that there is no contest here. Those who have questioned 9/11 have found themselves challenging an official mythology that has been ever-changing, massive lie that has NEVER been proven, much less substantiated.

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If you're interested in additional David Ray Griffin media including his recent interview on New Zealand National Radio, please visit:
http://www.davidraygriffin.com

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There is no doubt, and never has been, that 9/11 was a government conspiracy. Building 7 tells the whole story....

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Why did Taibbi interview the long-discredited Griffin instead of Dr. Steven Jones?

Jones, a physicist, has consistently focused on evidence-based research on the trade center, and only the trade center, collapses.

There are numerous peer-reviewed, scientifically-grounded research papers on that subject at his journalof911studies.com website.

Written by scientists and engineers, they focus on physics, chemistry and metallurgy evidence that indicate traces of thermite explosives were found at the site after the collapse.

Jones claims to have obtained debris from the site and tested it.

Jones apparently broke with Griffin some time ago.

Griffin's focus on largely-unprovable theories like the idea 'no planes' actually hit the Pentagon or in Pennsylvania have largely been ignored by science-based investigation into 9/11.

His writings have, however, often served to discredit legitimate scientific questions into trade center discrepancies. Ones Taibbi has chosen to ignore completely.

Taibbi's focus on the silly, when there are claims of provable forensic evidence, is surprising.

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Matt,

Even your arguments, such as they are, do not pass logical scrutiny. I have no opinion on who did what on 9-11. I am only interested in the evidence.

An old family friend who is a former Boeing lead engineer and designer told me that the maneuvers are not within published or unpublished safety specs for the plane that hit the pentagon. He also said that he just doesn't know as the plane could have been pulled apart by the turn, etc, but then why wasn't their debris all over the place. He still has an open mind about this but he is skeptical about the original claim.

I don't know what the truth is but MT's arguments just don't pass the IQ test.

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...right out of the gate in this article. What gives with the implication that Griffin's work is inaccurate?

I could care less what Taibbi's academic credentials are, a point that another post raised as an issue. Clear and balanced thinking does not need certification, and as evidenced here in this exchange, Taibbi is neither clear or balanced. He's merely a clever-boy circus-barker.

No, I've force myself to stomached enough of Taibbi's writing in the past to have the impression that Taibbi is an arrogant and cynical blowhard. I'm not a gambler, but I'd be willing to wager that guy hasn't suffered much yet in this life.

I don't know about everyone else, but there is an intellectual honesty and humility about Griffin that I find very refreshing, and very appealing.

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I doubt we will EVER know the TRUTH. Bush is a proven LIAR, his little "mini=me" McBush is a compulsive LIAR. The Sheeple are getting hoodwinked by their own Leaders. Thats life in the Bush Regime folks!

Jiff
Online PRivacy when it Counts

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Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK. Sirhan Sirhan killed RFK. James Earl Ray killed MLK. Osama bin Laden killed America on 9/11. Government commissions said it, we're supposed to read it, that's it! Why can't Americans be more like Anita Bryant and accept the inerrant word, after all some guy named "god" blows in our principal airhead's ear and that should be enough for all true believers. Huh?

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Whether 9/11 was an inside job or not, the government has used that day as a way to seize power than is constitutional. Taking away the liberties of people everywhere and having everyone hate America. Than again I did not lose anyone on that day, although I know people who have. Dont think I am being cold...

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Why would a government agency organize an extremely complex "inside job" when all they needed to do was politely step aside and allow Alqaeda do the job for them? Thus, Bush became a "hero" overnight and eventually a virtual dictator. That whole "inside job" theory is a sidetrack to divert attention away from the real question of who seeded the twin towers and Bldg # 7. No steel structure has ever collapsed from fire alone, yet the twin towers and bldg #7 each collapsed in a free-fall. Only carefully placed demolition charges could have accomplished that. 9/11 Research explains it.

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...took far too long to make its central point, and thus gave credence to factions that make a living by making sh*t up.

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Larry Silverstein's confession that he had Building 7 "pulled" was filmed for TV.

Silverstein said: "There was such a loss of life that day that I decided the best thing to do was to just pull it. So we pulled it and we watched the building fall."

Problem: It takes weeks to set up a controlled demolition of a skyscraper like Building 7. You don't just go running in, throw in a stick of dynamite, and run back out holding your ears.

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For those looking for the other side of these things, since it looks like the DRG fan club got a memo to comment here and in the interest of balance:

Steven Jones' Thermite Claims debunked here

The home page of the link above here (with links to every facet of 9/11 conspiracy lore): here

9/11 Myths

Ryan Mackey's authoritative 300+ page take-down of David Ray Griffin's "Debunking 9/11 Debunking" here. A commenter above asked where have DRG's arguments been deemed to be flawed?

Its right there. And even if you're on his side, shouldn't you test yourself - and him - by reading Mackey's work? If DRG is right then see if he stands up to scrutiny.

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... I'm sure this site will get a lot of traffic as a result!

It's going to take me a while to sift through all the stuff here. Griffin raises interesting points and while I have A LOT problems with overzealous "9-11 truthers," I do appreciate DRG telling Matt Taibbi that he's been quite mean-spirited to those who question the official story. Not everyone who questions what happened that day is a nut. Like I said, I get frustrated by truthers overzealousness, but not everyone is like that. Sometimes I think labeling them as freaks pigeon-holes them into an unfair characterization that compromises meaningful discussion.

That being said, I still believe this was gross incompetence on the part of government officials and government agencies. If Hurricane Katrina is any indication, it should be no surprise what transpired on 9-11 rests on government inaction. I don't know everything that happened on 9-11. I don't think any of us do. But I still think DRG's theories have plenty of holes in his logic, although he still presents a compelling case.

I guess the other thing is the fact that he relies on ridiculous "indy journalists" like Daniel Hopsicker does not help DRG on who he looks to for definitive sources.

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This is for all of us "Idiots" who have taken the time to question the so called "facts" or "fairy tale" issued by the government. We "idiots" have taken the time to look into the facts and it is quite clear that the government "fairy tale" is not plausable. The 9-11 report is full of misstatements and omissions of fact.

Finally why would this administration restrict the access to the evidence if it had nothing to hide. Unfortunately we are dealing with a criminal group in Washington and now everyone in knows it.

In a court of law if a person lies about one thing it is to be presumed that their entire story is suspect. Bush lied, Cheney lied, Rice lied, Rumsfeld lied. We don't have to prove anything, they need to release all the classified documents because they have no credibility.. It is our country, So Matt whoever you are go back rolling stone and cover music, that need little brain power and any "Idiot" can do it.

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My appetite was throttled almost instantly by Griffin's spill of words evading Taibbi's initial question: If this was in essence a propaganda operation, why make the government look like incompetent idiots?
It's the non-answers to such basic questions that should tell readers that their time is wasted by Griffin and their lot. Griffin's previous oeuvre has been proven to be totally untrustworthy by Ryan Mackey who wrote a 200 page paper "On Debunking 9/11 Debunking".

As Mackey demonstrates with scientific rigor, any neutral observer will agree that Griffin's methods for quoting, his selective use of evidence, his references not to the NIST study itself but to the NIST FAQ, disqualify him personally as a scholar and his writings in particular. He simply has a pet idea which he pushes, raising all the flags in Carl Sagan's baloney detection kit. Where he actually commits to a claim (for the most part he prefers vague insinuations) he is easily proven wrong.

Read any chapter in Ryan Mackey's paper and you will see that Griffin is a manipulator with an agenda, not a scholar using the scientific method.

Personally, I'm not 'defending the official conspiracy theory' as Griffinites will reflexively claim (Griffin himself does so within the first few paragraphs), I'm arguing that an approach based on logic and the use of scientific rules of evidence has succeeded in tossing out the grab bag of incoherent allegations sprouted by the Griffin cult.

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Taibbi is out of his league here. His arguments, not the "conspiracy theorists'", are hysterical and desperate. Griffin sticks to objective assessments of the known events.

Free thinking beings with a curiosity for the truth must admit that there are as many holes in the official version of 9/11 as any "conspiracy theory."

I will now give way to those who wish to rebuke my stance by questioning my sanity and expressing that how incredulous it is that one questions the US government in this matter.

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I learned who was Palin's debate coach. Griffen does a great job of avoiding the question asked and goes off on tangents that he wants to speak about, whiling debating around the question.

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I've always wondered why anyone ever thought Matt Taibbi was a reporter. He's a writer for an entertainment magazine. No more, no less, and the interview shows he's really not very well informed about 9/11 — only really emotional about it.

Griffin makes Taibbi looked stupid — or more correctly, Taibbi makes Taibbi look stupid.

Why has there never been a real investigation of 9/11? What will it take to get one?

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guardian.co.uk

"His new analysis, which will be published in the American Society of Civil Engineers' Journal of Engineering Mechanics, calculates the average strength of a given story of the building away from the impact area as it was being squashed flat."

"This allowed him to define the "residual capacity" of the building, which he then used to develop a dynamic model of the collapse sequence, simulating the successive squashing of individual storeys based on the residual capacity already identified."

"From this, Dr Seffen predicted that the residual capacity of both buildings was limited and once collapse had started it would take only 10 seconds for the building to go down. This shows that the speed of the collapse as actually occurred was consistent with a "pancaking" effect caused by the dual impacts of the planes. As such, the mechanics of this pancaking process were exactly the same as a controlled demolition, but starting from the top and moving downwards, he said."

And yes, the 9/11 Truth Movement is a well-structured PR campaign, designed to distract and confuse the public with ridiculous claims:

Jimmy Walter, a millionaire from California, spends more than $5 million promoting the theory that there was a US government conspiracy behind the 9/11 attacks. Walter, the heir to an $11 million fortune, runs full-page adverts in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, and Newsweek. He also runs television adverts: One of these questions why Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11 despite not being hit by any plane, another suggests that Flight 77 never flew into the Pentagon. He offers a prize of $1 million to anyone who can prove that the WTC buildings collapsed in the way the US government says, without the use of explosives. Walter tells the New York Times, “It just isn’t possible that 19 screw-ups with box cutters pulled this whole thing off.”

historycommons.org

Wonder if he's gonna pay out his $1 million?

And yes, the government PR folks regularly cook up ridiculous conspiracy stories and feed them to the "alternative press" - it's just a smear tactic, the whole goal being to promote the following line:

"Those crazy, wild-eyed activists! Just ignore them."

Of course, some conspiracy theories are more believable than others - such as the notion that Bush & Cheney sabotaged efforts to capture or kill Bin Ladin in Afghanistan in 2001, because then there would have been no justification for invading Iraq and seizing the oil.

That was the subtext behind CBS's 60 minutes this week:

cbsnews.com

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If you have ever watched a controlled demolition (as I have) you will note that you can see the small explosions all throughout the building as the supports blow. The building then collapses starting from the bottom. There is undisputed video footage and thousands of eyewitnesses that saw planes hit the WTC. In the video you can see that the collapse begins where the planes hit. Then the subsequent floors collapse.
Also, I have worked with demolitions. I know the painstaking work involved in setting up even a small demolition. To bring down something as large as just one of the towers would take hundreds if not thousands of man hours and tons of explosives not to mention be quite obvious as there would be explosives and miles of det cord running throughout the entire building.
So how exactly was all this done in secret, with all the explosives and det cord hidden, with no evidence of explosions other than the planes themselves, with nobody noticing that for weeks people were planting explosives throughout the building? Not to mention that whoever planted the explosives was able to calculate the exact spot that the planes would hit.
Also there is the task of getting everyone involved to keep their mouths shut for 7 years and counting. Icing on the cake? Getting some extremist named Osama to confess to the crime

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Come on, I didn't need all this information to know the Administration was guilty. It is nice to know that my knowledge has been supported.
Motive:
1. GWB was the weakest President in History.
2. The most powerful after 911.
Ability:
3. The Bush and Saudis are like one family.

4. Dick Chaney. Do I need to say more?
Obvious details:
5. W didn't want a 911 commission, until it was negotiated on who would be on it and lead it.
6. W opposed increase in airplane security.
7. Osama was surprise by the falling of the buildings and he was an engineer by training.

The motive, the ability, and results all spell that the administration is guilty.
There is more evidence pointing to guilty, than innocents.

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The following is from memory and may not be 100% correct. Find all the links yourself its not hard

Basically he gave a very revealing interview to the people who did Loose Change - only part of which was published. He then did an interview with the BBC - which I haven't seen where apparently he changed some parts of his story. He then pleaded with the Loose Change people not to release the full interview because he was being threatened with loss of job, pension etc.

At some point they did release the full interview. At first I thought it was after his death - but now I'm not so sure.

I hope all the people involved respected his wishes and that they didn't make any decisions that led to his death.

I don't know anything about the circumstances of his death - in fact he may not even be dead - but is reported to be.

What he actually said was about being trapped in WTC7 for many hours - even before the Second Twin Tower was hit - and bombs going off inside the building - many hours before it was "pulled"

I guess many 911 truther's have been totally spooked by his death. Who's next they might well ask? All sounds a little bit like David Kelly.

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disclosure: I’ve enjoyed Matt Taibbi’s writing for some time now. I’ve read some of David Ray Griffin’s work (and heard a podcast, on EP I think) and enjoyed that as well. And I’ve been intensely interested in this issue since about 10:00 AM on the morning in question. I generally hang with the tinfoil-hat crowd and ascribe to Gleason’s Second Law: “No matter how paranoid you are, what they’re really doing is worse than what you think they’re doing.” Enjoyed the exchange…

It seems these guys are talking past each other, or perhaps just defending their respective semiotic turf. Rather than getting all wrapped around the axle with minutia, there are a couple of macro questions I didn’t see addressed very well here.

The obvious one of ‘who benefits?’ Muslim extremists? The PNAC crowd? The administration? The military-industrial complex? Israel? That guy who owned the buildings? The short-sellers? All of the above? Nobody? A clear answer here would go a long way towards clarifying some of these arguments. A complicating factor is that all governments (and al-Qaeda presumably) seem to engage in disinformation operations. This makes discovering ‘the truth’ difficult, if not impossible.

A second is the remarkable removal of evidence, obfuscation, stonewalling and obvious reluctance of the government to engage in a serious investigation of any kind. If memory serves, the Bush administration had to be dragged kicking and screaming into conducting even a superficial inquiry by the families of victims. This suggests (to my mind) a level of involvement (whether passive or active) deeper than the mere bureaucratic desire to CYA, as Taibbi suggests.

For the record, I find the opinions of firefighters, pilots, physicists, engineers and architects that I’ve read pretty compelling.

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Griffin never uses one word when he can use three. His points, such as they are, bob and weave and shift within his cloud of words and self-contradictions (e.g., eyewitnesses not to be trusted about Pentagon crash, followed by claims based on what eyewitnesses said they didn't see).

Taibbi rattles off a list of pre-packaged questions and never engages Griffin's answers, even when those have substance. It's hard to blame him for his apparent fatigue with this subject, but he should have handed this non-interview assignment to somebody else.

Please try again, Alternet.

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you say "...What we have here are the preeminent writers on both sides of the 9/11 Truth argument..." - not exactly. Griffin is indeed the preeminent expositor of those demanding an official investigation into this crime, but Taibbi is just another crazy conspiracy theorist running around shouting at and trying to distract those of us trying to get people to understand the massive lie that the Official Conspiracy Theory is and get some real investigation going to find the truth. Alternet has not been looking very good giving him the space it has, but this does not make him something other than he is.

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There is a very long record of this kind of thing - some wealthy anonymous groups set up some organization/news outlet in order to promote their agenda. In this case, the agenda is to mix ridiculous conspiracy theories into the public debate, as a means of distracting the public's attention from the real crimes committed by the leaders.

This is also used heavily in U.S. foreign policy as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy. It was most blatantly seen in Iraq, where it was used to weaken the united Iraq insurgency by pitting Sunnis against Shias.

All the U.S. had to do in Iraq was to start killing people at random, using mercenary forces. They would go into peoples homes, drag out Sunni or Shia youth, kill them, desecrate the bodies, and leave. They would then back this up with messages left on doors (i.e. a bullet and a message "get out").

The logic is pretty obvious - they'd rather have Shias fighting Sunnis than Sunnis and Shias working together to attack U.S. troops and government figures.

The same mentality applies to government efforts to disrupt anti-war movements - they'd rather have the public at one another's throats than as a unified opposition to their invasion plans.

However, these efforts need media platforms in order to be effective - they need controversy, they need coverage, they need "buzz."

The media platforms that promote "the 9/11 truth movement vs. the debunkers" are working to inflate the buzz, not deflate it. They are "covering the story" - a story which has been entirely manufactured by the likes of Jimmy Walter and other "philanthropists."

This leads us to that archetypical philanthropic organization, the Ford Foundation, which some claim is largely a private arm of the CIA and the State Department (with good justification).

http://www.fordfound.org/newsroom/speeches/217

This year the Ford Foundation celebrates 70 years of delivering on a promise to improve lives and create opportunity. It has provided over $13 billion for grants, projects and loans. These funds derive from an investment portfolio that began with gifts and bequests of Ford Motor Company stock by Henry and Edsel Ford.

The Ford Foundation was set up to oppose the policies of FDR, at the same time that Ford was heavily involved in business with Hitler and Mussolini. Ford and GM supplied those regimes with trucks and equipment as well as investing money in I.G. Farben plants, throughout the 1930s - Hitler's armies relied on Ford and GM trucks.

"Most of Ford’s work is in the category of strategic philanthropy. We see our role as a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide, providing risk capital for pilot programs, research, institution building and developmental activity. Strategic philanthropy recognizes that bringing innovations to scale requires partners such as government, business and civil society which have capacity and reach far beyond the abilities of any single philanthropic endeavor."

So, the goal here is to shape the public's consciousness into a form acceptable to the billionaire donors who supply Ford and similar foundations with cash. The foundations are there, quite simply, to hide the real source of the funds.

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With respect to 9/11, their goal is to promote the most ridiculous conspiracy theories in order to draw attention away from the real crimes - such as Bush's failure to warn the airlines after getting an Aug 6th PDB stating that the FBI had observed "preparations consistent with hijackings":

5:43 a.m. September 11, 2001: Hijackers Check in at Portland Airport; Atta Becomes Angry with Ticket Agent

historycommons.org

"Tuohey thinks the pair seems unusual. He notices they both have $2,500 first-class, one-way tickets. He later comments, “You don’t see many of those.” Atta looks “like a walking corpse. He looked so angry.” In contrast, Tuohey says, Alomari can barely speak English and has “a goofy smile, I can’t believe he knew he was going to die that day.” Tuohey will later recount, “I thought they looked like two Arab terrorists but then I berated myself for the stereotype and did nothing.”

What if Tuohey and all other airline employees had been warned by Bush that Arabic hijackings were expected?

Personally, I believe that Gore, after receiving that PDB, would have warned the airlines. I also believe that Bush and Cheney did not do so because they wanted some kind of terrorist hijacking to take place - but they didn't expect the planes would be flown into the WTC and the Pentagon - they expected a typical airline hijacking scenario, which they could have used to justify military action in the Mideast all by itself (Vietnam was started with whale farts, remember?)

So, that's a real scandal - but instead of discussing that, we see endless articles aimed at "debunking" the most ridiculous conspiracy theories one could imagine.

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I've so read only up to the 6th section of the interwoven article, and am printing the rest for later amusement.

I've previously read articles by Matt Taibbi: found some of interest and others bordering on the obnoxious due to his indulgence in crudities that do not advance his argument.

Today's headline grabbed my attention. My reading to this point reminds me of the Gurdjieff tradition and that old rogue's game of the "Greater Idiot".

Seems to me that Taibbi respects neither his readers nor Griffen when he resorts to supporting his views with the aid of "idiocy".

My vote is that in his boorish effort to tarnish Griffin's credibility he discloses himself to be the "Greater Idiot".

My way of disclosure, I've read one of Griffin's books and watched a video or two on his 9/11 views. I'm not religious and was initially cautious on learning that he is a theologian. I confess to being a recovering philosophical type... all the while recognizing that there is no recovery.

That said, my findings have been that Griffin is a very careful and circumspect thinker, writer and lecturer. I have just finished reading Peter Dale Scott's 'Road to 9/11' in which Scott remonstrates just a tad with one of (his friend, I believe) Griffin's points by adding an alternate possibility: might Cheney have given the purported stand-down order regarding a "plane" thought to be headed for DC the morning of 9/11 ....for some "innocent reason" - yes, says, Scott... it is "possible" that Cheney knew the plane to be one of many reported phantoms.

I take Scott's point: it is possible, though it may not be plausible.

That arcane issue aside, I know of no substantive criticism of Griffin's 9/11 analysis... and so I was excited at the prospect of Taibbi's disclosing Griffin's discovered "idiocy". Like most, I think, I don't want to continue wallowing in what others clearly see as idiocy.

It took very few "Taibbisms" to validate my gut reaction that his use of sophomoric vulgarity was again a sign that his analysis would disappoint.

Kudos for presenting this exchange.

I'll be shocked if there is an editorial decision to again subject your readers to Matt's puerile style, unless your contemporaneously publish the antidote.

Was it the intent to "out" Matt as incoherent?

George Collins
Goffstown, NH

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My feeling has always been that like Roosevelt before him, Bush and the intelligence community knew SOMETHING was going to happen but not WHAT exactly, so they took a chance and let it go down... the look on Bush's face was the "Oh fuck" look of someone who knew he could have stopped it but didn't know how severe an attack was coming. They did have what became the Homeland Security Act all written up and were wringing their hands wondering in the absence of an emergency, how to implement it. So they got their opening, didn't they? Then the real stupidity happened. Instead of hunting down terror cells and their leadership we go in and attack first Afganistan because they allegedly harbored terrorists, and then they attacked Iraq because Bush didn't like Saddam, but Saddam was a target of those same terror cells BECAUSE of his intolerance of organizations like Al Kaeda. It has only been SINCE the US invasion that AK has been able to set up operations in Iraq... they couldn't ever get a foothold under Saddam. All we've accomplished is the assured hatred for generations of anything American by descendants of whole families killed by our troops we're all supposed to be so proud of and support. Don't blame anyone but yourselves. We allowed this to happen. There should have been a national strike when the courts gave the election to Bush in the first place but that isn't in the American vocabulary is it?

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Your title implies that the material presented here is somehow a reckoning, or a discussion between two holders of different views, that might result in some reconciliation of views, or information presented so that a reader could recognize truth. Thankfully, for close readers, I believe the latter is possible, though the word showdown implies a dynamic that is not present at all.

It is indeed curious to me that in this entire piece, David Ray Griffin provides definitive answers to dozens of questions posed by Mike Taibbi, and in response, Mike Taibbi even ATTEMPTS to address or answer, hmmm... let me see, er, exactly ZERO of David Ray Griffins questions.

In my mind this makes Mike Taibbi typical of being what Paul Krugman labelled "lazy bullies." Those who insist on being right, but HAVE NOT DONE THE WORK. Mike just keeps pressing the party line, as if saying again make it more true. hmmm... Rovian.

Not only was this not a balanced exchange, it wasn't an exchange at all.

Thank you David Ray Griffin.

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There is no need anymore to discuss the various contradictions of the official account on 9/11.

As there exists not a shred of evidence that any of the accused Arabs boarded any of the four aircraft that reportedly crashed on 9/11, the most plausible conclusion is that these Arabs did not hijacked and pilot these planes. In that case, the official account on 9/11 is a plain fraud and everything told publicly on these events is tainted by this foundational lie.

See: No evidence of Muslims in the planes of 9/11

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He works for a Jewish publication... he does hit pieces on the POPE and the Religious Right.

And he could also be a JEW

I am scouring the web for info on him and his dad... they could be jews.
anybody know?

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to further their aims.

History has shown that our government has spied upon its own citizens in the past; that it has planted agents in groups dedicated to human rights, especially the civil rights movement. It has been determined that MLK Jr. was the target of the FBI because of his activities. Why is it beyond the realm of possibility that Bush, Cheney and their cohorts wouldn't stoop to this kind of violence in order to go after Saddam Hussein? After all, if lies don't do the trick, the next best thing is to scare the living crap out of the American public.

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There is no justification for assuming that anyone inside the Bush Administration had foreknowledge of the attacks, or was in some way complicit.

So far, no one of any importance has been arrested or charged by anyone who is in a position to do the arresting.

Will this situation change after the election? Motions have been brought before Congress that seek impeachment of Bush and others, but action can only presumably be taken once they are no longer in Office.

If there is any likelihood of this happening, then my guess is there won't be any election. Instead a reason will be found to impose martial law and to have the election cancelled, thus allowing Bush et al to remain in power in perpetuity.

Even if 100% of the American population were convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bush etc are guilty in some measure or other, it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.

Presumably, a branch of the Justice Department would have the power to arrest Bush and others, but since they all sing from the same hymn sheet, there's not much chance of that happening.

Therefore, if Bush et al are guilty, who is going to arrest them and bring them to trial?

The answer is no one. So from this standpoint, it doesn't matter one way or the other.

Who would be the arresting authority? The Arresting Authority is borne out of the Ruling Class, and they are enclosed in a very powerful shield that protects them from the outside world.

Huge publicity was given to the sum of $700 billion that pales into insignificance against the $500 trillion derivatives market on which the rest of the financial system rests.

Thus, it was no more than a public relations exercise, but one with a motive that is far from obvious. Transactions between Government and the FED of equivalent sums are normally conducted away from the eyes of the public, so why so much publicity to this particular one?

None of it makes any sense, except to say that taken overall, some Government actions receive publicity while the vast majority never do.

There's no particular reason why excuses had to be given to invade Afghanistan or Iraq. This could all have done without any fanfare. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was little more than an extension of the 1990 invasion.

The people that drive world events have their own agendas, and while public attention is focused on one particular thing, you can bet your bottom dollar that something far more sinister is taking place at the same time.

Now that the dust has settled on the bailout, and everyone is now realising it will do nothing to solve anything, we have to wonder what all the fuss was about, and what did we miss as a consequence.

Is it all just electioneering, or is it something along the lines - no matter how openly and arrogantly we screw the US population, you will still be voting us in.

The Ruling Class selects the candidates the people get to vote for. Obama is as complicit as McCain, so why bother to vote?

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I love Matt, but all this piece did was confirm my gut reaction that with regard to 9/11, he's just a mainstreamer posing as someone who gives a damn. His rhetorical flaws are like gaping holes. As for the other guy, sometimes there are gaps and sometimes there seem to be misses... but on the balance, it's a hell of a lot easier given the long history of owning-class malfeasance and the use of the US government by that miscreant owning class to go with the conspiracy... even without listening to the more nutty of the bunch (those guys are just distractions anyway).

For the working person, the bottom line is, 9/11 kicked up a shitstorm and the people who seem to have exploited it best benefited. Those same folks have a documented track record of causing similar incidents in the past which they exploited with great success. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand gravity. You don't have to be robbed to understand how the owning class is usually behind most crime.

But as long as people wanna fight it out, it's just like global warming... it's a clusterfuck but all you dickheads wanna do it bitch over the details... meanwhile, here' comes the sixth cat-5 hurricane... those who quibble over the details are just plain morons.

Like Hugo says, "jdfu." Either that or just be ready to dodge duck dive dip and... dodge. the rich people are still rich and they comin' for round three...

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"They have the ways, the means and the will to do this." - Hunter Thompson

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1. 911 was the crime of the century, and a horrific mass murder.
2. The 911 commission "report" is a mountain of insulting lies, therefore a coverup-but of what?
3. Whether or not the bush regime (or rogue elements within it) committed this crime, they've certainly proven themselves capable of such an evil, considering subsequent events directly attributable to them, and there for all to see.
4. It is of vital importance that 911 be truly investigated to the best of our considerable ability to root out the cause and those guilty of the crime.

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um...
wow...
um...
i *guess* the 'standards' at rolling stone must have gone to shit...
tabbbbbibbi's simplistic 'analysis' passes for even rudimentary knowledge of nine one one, the truth movement, and mr griffin's tightly reasoned and transparent arguments and assertions ? ? ?

so far (i'm not sure i have time to finish), ALL his -*ahem*- bullshit has been TOTALLY based on almost childlike assertions of how this person or that institution simply *couldn't* have done X; he simply asserts it can't be so !
they simply dasn't be so dastardly ! ! !

ALL he 'argues' is that it was simply: A) personally, B) institutionally, C) professionally, D) systemically, or E) socially "impossible" for any mainstream politician (OR unseen spook) to act as "irrationally" as has to have happened under *whatever* k-k-k-konspiracy theory is weally twuly twue...

oh, wait, his other 'argument' that -you know- blows griffin out of the water, is that he said some 'sciencetificatin' friends of his told him that, um, everything 'truthers' said was bullshit... end of story, no need to bother matt's beautiful brain with reading any of that shit himself...
*whew* that almost got difficult...

*besides* the detailed schooling prof griffin had to lay on the proud ignoramous about basic logic and reasoning, it is also notable that tabibbibibi does not respond to griffins answers...
i'm *certain* it isn't because he doesn't know what the fuck he is talking about, but -dog damn it!- he *knows* there damn sure can't be any truth to the truthers...
loudmouthed bastards...

okay, i finished now... what a fucking joker, so *now* i can safely discount any and all, um, assemblies of letters and words by this guy; he couldn't reason his way out of a wet paper bag if you spotted him a knife...

as i recall another poster (maybe not in these environs) making this point: WE HAVE (by the judgments of a literal handful of neo (nazi) con (artiste) KILLED over ONE MILLION mostly innocent iraqis...
repeat: WE HAVE, OUR TAX DOLLARS HAVE, OUR YOUNGEST AND STUPIDEST HAVE, KILLED OVER ONE MILLION INNOCENT IRAQIS...

...and you're telling me the immoral monsters who played this geopolitical oily game would balk at a couple thousand janitors and stockdroids ? ? ?
yeah...

who benefits, kampers ?
we know who...
...and its not us

art guerrilla
aka ann archy

eof

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9/11 Truth nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 2008
4 October 2008
http://www.911blogger.com/node/18054

[This is the auto-translated Google English version of the story currently headlining the site 9/11 Truth Norway.]

Reason for the nomination of
David Ray Griffin and the 9/11 Truth Movement to the Nobel Peace Prize 2008
Supported by 10 professors, or current or former MPs--

The wars of the 21st century – what the U.S. President has called 'The global war on terror' - are justified with a tragic event: the attacks against New York and Washington 11 September 2001. This event would come to justify pre-emptive war on enemies who seemed to be everywhere and nowhere. From 2001 terrorism was presented as the biggest threat to Western society, and the foremost evidence of this threat, we were told, were the events of 11 September.

In recent years, however, the 9/11 Truth Movement and their outstanding academic David Ray Griffin presented strong evidence that the attacks of 11 September were not carried out by Islamist terrorists, as we have been told, but by a U.S. 'war lite' as an excuse to go to war against Afghanistan and Iraq (wars that were already approved). David Ray Griffin and the 9/11 Truth Movement have presented convincing evidence showing that this 'war elite' carried out these attacks to establish a new enemy after the Cold War, and to start wars in line with their economic and political interests. We believe the most important contribution to peace in the 21st century is the disclosure of these elite political games and the removal of the false reasons for its aggressive wars. This Griffin and the 9/11 Truth Movement have done in an excellent way. If the attack on 11 September was a U.S. 'false flag operation' to justify wars in the Middle East, the disclosure of that fact should be honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. We therefore nominate this David Ray Griffin and the 9/11 Truth Movement to share the Nobel Peace Prize for 2008. [SNIP].

---
Also, check out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XgkeTanCGI
Naomi Wolf - Give Me Liberty--THERE HAS BEEN A COUP.

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Matt Taibbi, should in the future, avoid reasoned debates with people whose intellectual prowess exceeds his by an order of magnitude. He might want to find another cause other than being a reporter/supporter of the greatest fraud of the century. After reading Dr. Griffin’s work, he found a number of weak and spurious responses to which Dr. Griffin answered his concerns with strong logic and restrained tact. Mr. Taibbi has picked the wrong horse to ride and is seated backwards in the saddle.

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I think the argument has been made before, but here we go again. When people are confronted with the utterly random and violent nature of the world they seek solace in myths. The idea that a few nutters could kill thousands, cast fear into millions, and change the course of history is scary. People don't want to think about how often their lives dangle over knife point; how the most minor fluctuation of order can destroy them and everything they know. So we (by which I mean humanity) create myths to help ourselves cope. The idea that there is a grand government conspiracy behind 9/11 is such a myth. If there were, then we would have a much easier time identifying the enemy, the world would no longer be so random and scary, and we could fight back with political action. The same thinking is seen on the "realistic" side, too. Al Qaeda is no longer seen as the ragtag group of maniacs they are, living in caves in third world countries, and loosely connected to each other. Now they are a great power; an international cabal of lunatics, with links throughout the world, and, this is key, a formal political structure. All of these things make us feel safer because if it takes a massive conspiracy to carry out 9/11 then all of those little people who hate us couldn't possibly hurt us. Unfortunately, that is not the reality. History is filled with lone nuts and tiny groups of terrorists who deal incredible damage to the world. The assassination of William McKinley was carried out by a guy with no links to anybody (not even anarchists would talk to him). The Oklahoma city bombing was the result of two deranged racists. The Kennedy assassination was carried out by one man with a decades old rifle. These things happened, but I'm sure most of the 9/11 truthers have their own "real" versions of the events.

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...is an incredible thing.

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Watch building 7 collapse online and don't let anyone tell you that you didn't see what you saw.

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Taibbi is there to appeal to the shitheads out there who are either incapable of, or never learned how, to formulate or understand a rational argument. Just as Palin is there to appeal to millions of Americans who mispronounce the names of countries they are destroying or are about to destroy (there is no eye in Iraq or Iran) with her faux folksiness and appeals to fear, bigotry and stupidity.

There is no rational defense of the official story, so instead we have junkyard dogs like him barking and snarling in defense of the indefensible.

"Yeah, I read it, Matt sure tore that asshole traitor egghead a new asshole!"

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• NIST needs a free fall of the top part of the tower onto the bottom, but the account directly contradicts this because the steel weakens. They said the fire was not hot enough to melt the steel. But their account would make the top sag down. That is the meaning of the word they used: weaken. They did not use the word vanish, though the successive account requires it. It’s a direct contradiction built into their argument: the steel both weakens from the low level fire and suddenly vanishes to institute free fall. Which is it? It cannot be both. Hence – NO COLLAPSE (say this over and over). It’s easy to show.

• We’ll just skip the fact that, by NIST’s account, the fire didn’t even become hot enough to weaken the steel and we’ll skip the fact that the fire was visibly not a hot one by the lack of flames and the thick smoke. No collapse, as far hotter skyscraper fires demonstrate. No skyscraper has ever collapsed from fire, except on 911.

• And we’ll skip the fact that, by NIST’s account, the much softer aluminum only violated the integrity of the solid steel structure by at most 25% and that it was built to withhold at least four times tolerances, really, up to twenty times, at least according to lead engineer Frank DeMartini, who also said the towers could take multiple aircraft collisions. Watch the video on you-tube.

• Let’s also skip the MIT estimate that sufficient fireproofing could not have been removed by the airplane because it would have needed to turn entirely into shotgun pellets aimed directly at all the diversely located steel frame.

• Let’s also the skip the total lack of NIST testing, except for the steel heat test which directly contradicted NIST conclusions. It showed that the metal would not have softened under a far hotter fire than NIST claimed occurred! Not incidentally, that’s when they stopped the scientific process of laboratory tests and relied solely on complex computer modeling. (The recent financial debacle has a similar failed history, ironically.)

• So, let’s give them the easily demonstrated free fall perjury so that we can show how, at every stage, their argument is nonsensical. NIST has the top transfer a shock into the bottom to rupture the steel below. Logical enough, until you visualize it with some detail.

The concrete flooring simply gives way to the steel as it smashes through. The lighter pieces of cross-member steel would intersect and break one after another, arresting collapse over a few seconds. There would be no sudden, single impact which their theory requires to rupture the lower connections. To attain it, the steel needs to strike top severed beam to bottom severed beam for virtually all 248 beams. Without that, NO COLLAPSE. Considering the beams are only 1/1000th the surface area, it’s impossible. And we see in the North Tower videos the steep angle of the top as it falls. There was no sharp impact, only a gradual edge-on crush. NO COLLAPSE. The arrest would take four or five stories at a maximum. The math is simple, which is why we have nearly 500 architects and engineers and they have only 20.

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"What we have here are the preeminent writers on both sides of the 9/11 Truth argument"

"Preeminent writer" describes Griffin only. Taibbi should be driving a cab or flipping burgers, not playing make-believe at "journalist". His smarmy rants on the issues of the day are about as insightful as a fart at a frat party and even less meaningful.

This latest display by Rolling Stone (more like Rolling Clod) hack Taibbi confirms the shallow, immature and bigoted nature of a constant 9/11 con job on the nation backed by his magazine. Americans have every reason to distrust Washington as well as the MSM on virtually everything that has led to a murderous "war on terror" travesty for ever greater corporate gains. That especially includes 9/11.

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The only thing more onerous than the long history of our Rightwing fascist conspiracies against the better elements of their own democracy and government is the sycophantic acceptance of their lies and deeds by so many liberals, alledgedly on the Left. There are elements from Orwell's "1984" lessons all over such alliances, but the betrayal is almost more difficult to accept than the obvious crimes and cover ups themselves. One can easily find all the corroborated evidence one needs on the internet and from well selected authors and books on these issues, from JFK's murder to 9/11, but if truth and consequent justice is secondary to peer group conformity than there is no case to be argued for such deafened ears and dark hearts. Without justice (and an objective media to raise the challenge) there can be neither peace nor a civilized society.

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I was surprised by the overall ignorance of the subject by Taibbi, whom I've only read occasionally. Not surprised, of course, by the clear, logical, and to the point comments of DRG.

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After reading thru the entirety of the exchange, it is clear that the dialog was not properly billed; it was not about the accuracy of Griffin's book, but the audacity of Griffin's book. How dare he say these terrible things. Taibbi is not interested in refuting Griffin's facts; he's interested in dismissing the broader implications of what Griffin's facts suggest.

Put simply, Taibbi is in denial. That might not be accurate, because denial is the first stage of grief, and Taibbi is using everything at his disposal to dismiss the very painful reality that Griffin's book insinuates.

And who can blame him? Didn't we all in the truth movement resist the truth at first? I did. The implications of 9-11 are so horrific because, not only has our government intentionally attacked its own citizens (after all, it kills hundreds of thousands of other people all the time), but they're getting away with it! And what does that mean? It means that the media has failed us, our Congress has failed us, and even our dissidents and alternative media have failed us. Such a reality only compounds the terror, because it eats away at our longstanding hopes for this country and for the world. Indeed, if there is anything anyone could write to make me disregard the evidence and facts, and to simply dismiss the implications of this reality, many of us would drink that kool-aid in a heartbeat.

Because the alternative is so sinister, and makes us feel so powerless and betrayed. We, who think we've developed a complex understanding of our culture and politics over the years are suddenly forced to wipe away everything we thought we knew, and forced to begin rebuilding our understanding of reality. And this new reality is so very ugly. And worse, it is not isolated to the U.S., but extends globally. Yes, it was not just 9-11 that was carried out by those supposedly on "our" side, but also the 7/7 London bombing, the Madrid bombing, Bali. Who knows where it ends? Who really understands why? Not just why the military industrial complex wants to have a global war on terror (hey, the Cold War was over, they had to do something, right?), but, why is the media covering this up? What are we to make of the global media? Why is academia not speaking up? Why aren't the big names we've trusted, like Bill Moyers, not now speaking out?

Nobody wants to feel such a massive betrayal, not just by a handful of rogue PNAC neo-cons and our notorious CIA, but by our own trusted community, and our own trusted worldview. So of course Taibbi, wants to deny. We all do. Apparently some of us are simply better equipped to ignore and obscure the facts, while the rest of us try to map our way through this new, stinking reality.

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WHY ARE AMERICANS SO AFRAID OF THE TRUTH?
THIS BUSH/CHENEY DICTATORSHIP SCARES THE SHIT OUT OF ME!!!!

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I'm not an engineer and not a physicist, but I think anybody would agree with these obvious points:

1. concrete does not aerosolize without an explosive and concrete does not melt or burn, yet we are to believe that all of a sudden the reenforced concrete structure of the Twin Towers and Bldg. 7 just went poof because supposedly some steel girders were bending? Why was all the evidence whisked away so quickly, even used to fill potholes?

3. steel does not melt or bend or do anything without heat that is at least twice as hot as the burning diesel fuel of the planes of 9/11.

4. fires that are all smoke, and especially black smoke, show the fires are oxygen starved and dying out. We all know that. Anybody who has tried to burbln their garbage or start a fire knows that lots of smoke means a dying fire. Lots of black smoke means the fire is about shot.

5. the people standing in the windows next to the flames were not melting, yet we are to believe that the steel was melting. Even if some of the girders were warping, which is impossible, but assuming there were some that were warping, this is going to make the whole building go splat?

6. floors that were made of steel girders do not freefall at the speed of gravity through 110 floors into its own footprint in 8 seconds, speed of gravity. At least give it one second per floor due to the resistance of the floors.

7. floors that are pancaked do not end up as a pile of dust and shoot steel beams into nearby buildings to be embedded, nor do they send bone fragments to the tops of buildings way down the street. Even if the bottom floors were pulverized to dust, the top floors would be laying as pancakes, would they not?

8. if the planes hit the top floors, why were the bottom floors, the lobbies, all blown out when the people came down the stairs to escape the building and testified later to what they saw?

9. why did the second building to be hit, which also had the jet fuel burn up in a fireball outside the building, go down first? Logic would say that with less fuel to burn and less time since it was hit, that it should fall second, not first.

10. why, if this is the first time these kinds of buildings had ever fallen freefall into their footprints from burning kerosene, why did this happen three times in one day? Isn't this stretching the odds of probability just a wee bit?

11. somebody explain the molten steel, plainly visible in the videos of the falling buildings, white hot molton steel running down the sides of the building. explain the witnesses seeing the molten steel in the basement. (see the documentary 911 Mysteries for the molten steel, google Rodriguez' testimony also.)

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so, can we assume that President Obama will get the truth?
WIll look into it?
Will TELL us what he finds?

Surely, the Commander In Chief of the Armed Forces, can ASK the military exactly what they WERE told on Sept 11 2001... and they would HAVE to tell him... right?

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The molten steel pouring out the side of the towers just before they fell, collecting in pools to burn like a furnace for weeks to come, is the proof that incendiary explosives were used to bring down the towers -- all three including Building 7.

This video is about six minutes long, shows what thermate will do to steel -- amazing. Thermite is hot, thermate is hotter, cuts steel like butter, and keeps it burning.

click here for video on molten steel produced by thermate incendiary explosives on 9/11

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I appreciate greatly David Ray Griffin's work. I am astonished, still at the resistance to the obvious. Nonetheless, we need courage more than ever, in light of the financial 9/11 that is taking place now. Bush is trying to scare the country.

The $850,000,000,000 bailout bill was rushed through Congress (much like the
PATRIOT Act). In my research (no surprise to me and those who have been keeping an eye on this government), those most responsible for the crisis (like those most responsible for 9/11) are the ones who will benefit from the bailout and undoubtedly hope to benefit greatly from whatever follows. 9/11 didn't "just happen" and neither did the crisis, it was engineered. Naomi Wolf lays it out very well in a recent speech. Bush is following the textbook path to constructing a Facsist Dictatorship.


His basic message to Congress and the American people in September was "Panic! Be very afraid! Only I and my cronies can save you, trust me." And on October 1, 2008 he brought in an army battalion to help him "maintain control."

Most Americans don't even realize we are living under Continuity of Government, in a State of Emergency, the world is Bush's battlefield and he can designate anyone, anywhere, anytime a terrorist or enemy combatant and have them disappeared, rendered, tortured, killed. Wolf suggests our best hope at this point, in light of Congress's failure to stand up to Bush last Friday and caving in to the pressure- urge State Attorney Generals to arrest Bush. We can't give in to fear, we must stop him before the situation gets even worse than it is now. Paulson was one of the architects of the crisis, he should be in jail, not determining which institutions go belly up, and which survive, and which will profit handsomely as they devour their rivals.


I am running for Congress on a 9/11 Truth, Impeachment, Peace platform and I spent the last three days writing Evolution of the Apocalypse- Empire’s Demise- Human Renaissance about the financial crisis and 9/11, but there is still so much resistance to 9/11 Truth that I doubt if any of the so called "progressive websites" will even publish it.


I'm glad that Alternet, at least allowed David Ray Griffin's voice to be heard.

Carol Brouillet
Publisher of the Deception Dollar,
Organizer of the San Francisco International Inquiry into 9/11,
Producer of Behind Every Terrorist- There is a Bush
Green Party Candidate for California's Congressional District 14

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Long the jewel in crown of the Truth movement, due to the fact that it was never hit by a plane, and had little damage, WTC7 was considered the strongest anomaly in the pantheon.

Now the NIST has an "explanation" which the shills, sorry editors, at PM have popularized for us! Thanks guys! And it only took 7 years!

So what brought a 47 story building down? The furniture.

The furniture? Really?

Comments anyone? Anyone?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/
(split url) science/research/4278874.html

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Here's something everyone can agree on. Prof. Griffin says that there are 85 videotapes from the Pentagon. Can we call agree that they should be released?

Wouldn't that resolve the question of the plane? Who wants to start the petition?

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Question: "How dare you think it was an inside job!!! Who, within the US Government, would wantonly murder 3000+ Americans?"

Answer: No one, but the question is flawed.

Background: There have been numerous purges of the US Intelligence Community over the years. JFK purged Edward Lansdale. Carter purged Singlaub and Shackley (Operation Phoenix). Other less notable Intelligence Personnel were shed in US Government purges over the years. Unlike old soldiers, as MacArthur once noted, old intel guys don't fade away ... they go Private Sector, as Private Military Firms (PMF) or Private Intelligence Organizations (PIO). To clarify, purged US Intelligence personnel go into the private sector WITH all of the connections and assets they accumulated during their careers, but without US Government oversight.

William Casey, Ronald Reagan's campaign manager and CIA Director was an old OSS man with contacts to all of the men purged by the Presidents. In order to get around the prohibitions to CIA activities set forth by the Church Commission (Ford: Executive Order 11905) and bring his purged friend's back into the US Intelligence fold, Casey steered Reagan to implement Executive Order 12333. Executive Order 12333 has a key, frightening component:

2.7Contracting. Agencies within the Intelligence Community are authorized to enter into contracts or arrangements for the provision of goods or services with private companies or institutions in the United States and need not reveal the sponsorship of such contracts or arrangements for authorized intelligence purposes. Contracts or arrangements with academic institutions may be undertaken only with the consent of appropriate officials of the institution.

In essence, any Intelligence activity prohibited under Ford's EO11905 were now outsourced to the private sector. To a band of individuals that were fired by the US Government.

EO12333 opened the door to "The Enterprise" and the Iran/Contra White House basement operation.

Ron Suskind in his book "The Way of the World" goes into the diminishment of the US Intelligence apparatus and the privatizing of same. Sterling and Peggy Seagrave go into the Casey EO12333 coup in "Gold Warriors".

Conclusion: My point is this, some of the most dangerous men, for their knowledge, contacts, talents, and guile have been moved from Government Oversight to the Free Market. I would imagine that the majority of these individuals are Patriotic Americans even outside the US Government, but some are also just businessmen with highly tuned intelligence capacity for whom a "hit is just a hit", nothing personal. Also, who's to say that with some of the extreme Right Wing Ideology percolating through American Society today, with the ends justifies the means philosophy of the Intel Community ... there aren't Extremist Americans who may view the 911 attacks as a Patriotic Act that furthered their World View?

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is it worth responding to a man who uses the word 'idiot'?

NOTE: that ALternet is not very consistent. Its rules say:

'AlterNet will not tolerate:

personal attacks on our writers or readers
excessive profanity
racist, sexist or other discriminatory or hateful language '
etc

And yet what does Tabibi do??? Throws out insults at 9-11 truth people. Is this his idea of a debate? That he needs to use such language shows he is embarrassed having to shill for the Bush administration.

Sorry Matt.,..you are shipping on the Titanic.

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as Griffin tells us:

'David Ray Griffin Responds: I'm pleased to see that you believe that a conspiracy theory, like any theory whatsoever, is not credible if it contains inconsistencies. I would think, therefore, that the 25 inconsistencies I have pointed out in the official conspiracy theory would lead you to consider it unworthy of credence. I have, however, seen no sign that you are troubled by these inconsistencies.'

Is Taibbi a real journalist?

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Matt says:
'Exactly what do you believe is the significance of Hani Hanjour's record of poor piloting? Do you believe someone else was flying the plane? Do you believe it wasn't a plane at all? Why don't you just come out and say what you think? Because we know this much: somebody piloted a jet liner into the Pentagon, and that somebody did a pretty good job of it'

No Matt: we DONT know for sure flight 77 was piloted into the Pentagon. All we know is something hit the pentagon. Evidence to show what it might have been (security videos) has been withheld from the public: you and me.

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Matt said:
'What does it matter if the ostensible pilot had a poor flying record? Who cares? Because unless you've got hard evidence that something else happened that day, that it wasn't Muslim hijackers but some other fanatical suicidal terrorist (for whoever it was was a fanatical suicidal terrorist) the detail is irrelevant. '

It matters because then he couldnt have flown that plane! Where is YOUR hard evidence? All i see from you is bear-bating attacks on Dr Griffin. Even the media reported the alleged fanatical hijackers behaved like party animals.

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Matt:

'Because unless you've got hard evidence that something else happened that day, that it wasn't Muslim hijackers but some other fanatical suicidal terrorist (for whoever it was was a fanatical suicidal terrorist) the detail is irrelevant. But you don't even have a theory about that day. Or do you'

What do you want Matt? Evidence or a plausible theory? You have neither.

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'Do you have a theory '

He launches this sally against Griffin again and again. Meanwhile he ignores all that Griffin says.

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Taibbi:
'Do you really think that people like Ted Olsen and Lisa Beamer are lying about receiving phone calls from their spouses in those last moments'

Olson is on record saying:

'2002, Likely Attorney General Nominee Ted Olson Said It's Okay to Lie to US Public!
Edited on Sat Sep-08-07 03:04 PM by paulthompson Check this out. From a Sydney Morning
Herald article in 2002:


The United States Government's top lawyer has said that officials have the right to lie
to American citizens, telling the US Supreme Court that misleading statements are
sometimes needed to protect foreign policy interests.


"It's easy to imagine an infinite number of situations where the government might
legitimately give out false information," the Solicitor-General, Theodore Olson, told
the court on Monday.


"It's an unfortunate reality that the issuance of incomplete information and even
misinformation by government may sometimes be perceived as necessary to protect vital
interests." '


WHY IS TAIBBI defending the US govt as a bastion of integrity???

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Carol Cleveland writes aptly:

'the scholar and the hedgehog


For those who want to assess the character of the alternative conspiracy theorists and the official conspiracy theorists, there could be no better illustration than this Griffin/Taibbi "discussion". I cannot call this a discussion because only Dr. Griffin discusses, in a calm, organized, civil fashion--in the same tone as all of his books. Mr. Taibbi, by contrast, indulges in a series of rants, frequently destroying single-handedly straw men of his own creation. Taibbi never responds to the actual arguments Griffin makes, or the evidence Griffin presents for them, and Taibbi resorts frequently to calling those arguments ridiculous and their author an idiot. Griffin calls out two strawmen, but I suspect that a careful count would reveal several more.



Taibbi reveals a closed mind, an impenetrable set of preconceptions, and the manners of an enraged hedgehog--all bristle, protecting a tiny, fearful body. If he has gotten away with prose of this stripe for any length of time, and is being paid for it as journalism, it's merely an glimpse of the bottom that many journalists are feeding on. '
The scholar and the hedgehog

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Taibbi has no arguments pro or con on this subject. But Griffin does and we can use his arguments as a jumping off point for a good discussion.

9/11 is central to everything terrible that's happening to us and to the rest of the suffering world today.

When people wake up to 9/11 we will be free from the devil worshipping tyrants who are playing with us, sucking us dry, and destroying life as we know it on planet earth, everything good and decent.

9/ll is the pivotal event of this millenium. Humanity must break free from the brainwashing and lies that have been fed to us for centuries, and this is what will do it, the truth about 9/11.

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first off congrats to alternet for having a significant 9/11 article

mr griffin displays remarkable restraint with regard to the abusive and disrespectful, literally crazy, comments from mr tabibi

mr griffin is a leading american scholar on modern Christianity, ethics and truth and he has written many books on those topics to great acclaim

to have to deal with a burned out and bitter person such as mr t is an insult to a great man

the discussion could not be more stark - with mr t spewing venom and ignorance with every post - even running himself down as crazy

interesting ploy but quite ugly

mr griffin calmly and eloquently made his points

this kind of abuse is typical from the government shills on 9/11

mr griffin persevered through a disrespectful and ignorant man's tirades

as we all have done in the truth movement

we shall prevail

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Taibbi's denial that a 911 conspiracy to commit murder is indeed naive and baseless. However, Griffin's theory is extreme and it does not consider that the "incompetence" theory offers a better explanation as to what could easily explain the attacks on 911. I think the Bush administration would be thrilled with an incompetence verdict, since incompetence is not illegal, immoral or a crime against humanity.

I think Bush, Cheney, et al allowed 911 to occur, either knowing that bin Laden was going to attack and doing nothing, or that bin laden is a CIA operative who built an Islamic terrorist movement in order to fulfill the imperialist ambitions of neo-cons.

I would begin with the evidence known as The Project for a New American Century web site where Dick Cheney's "Strategic Defense Strategy" is a featured part of the plan. Authored in the early 90's, the document offers a clue to the desire of the neo-cons for a Pearl-Harbor-like precursory event that would open the door for Cheney's and the neo-cons imperialist ambitions.

Second, bin Laden as patsy, scapegoat, or more nefariously, CIA operative is even more plausible an argument than a Bush administration orchestrated destruction of buildings killing several thousand people. Bin Laden's participation is much harder to prove, since bin Laden was never found, and "using" bin Laden as a scapegoat would involve fewer people with knowledge of the crime.

Moreover, the Bush family connection to bin Laden is there. George H. W. Bush was a former CIA head, giving him insight into CIA activity and abilities. Bush I was also privy to other secret wars during the Reagan administration. Bin Laden's connection with the US/CIA/Pakistan funding the Afghanistan resistance to Soviet Union invasion is there. Bin Laden was trained by the US and would make a perfect scapegoat or operative, either way.

Also, Bush II ignored a report from National security advisor Condi Rice that a terrorist attack was imminent. Richard Clarke also reported that then Attorney General John Ashcroft brushed off information that an Al Queda cells were planning a terrorist attack.

Again, incompetence is easy to accept in any administration, since we've seen numerous examples over the (past eight) years. Yet, this is the most plausible explanation for a 911 conspiracy, if there is indeed a Bush Administration conspiracy, because it is less provable, easier to carry out, and evidentially possible.

I certainly have not thoroughly researched this notion, but it seems more plausible given the evidence I have gathered from the mainstream news.

Any comments?

peace

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It makes perfect sense that Griffen is a professor of theology: he's clearly comfortable with interminable, picayune arguments over the unprovable and the nonexistent. Unlike a serious journalist or researcher, he doesn't actually have to prove anything, or offer any substantiation at all. He admits that he didn't do any original research for this book--like asking questions of actual human beings--he just culled information from that prestigious peer-reviewed scholarly journal, the internet. He uses a lot of the same rhetorical devices I remember from reading "The Mysterious Monsters" and other books about Bigfoot, UFOs, and the occult when I was ten: framing statements in such a way as to imply six or seven different false premises; posing rhetorical questions as though they were unanswerable which have in fact been answered; calling things “incontrovertible” and “beyond dispute” which have in fact been clearly discredited. Like Creationists, he's appropriating the rhetoric of science and reason to lend legitimacy to theories to which Wile E. Coyote would raise serious practical objections.

Matt Taibbi is right: this is all a distraction; the actual conspiracy is totally up-front and out in the open, and the people perpetrating it know that the American people are never going to notice, much less stop them, because they're all too obsessed with the dogged pursuit of this X-Files nonsense.

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Keep cashing the checks Matthew...

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We are still questioning. This is a good site to visit.

http://patriotsquestion911.com/

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Unfortunately, I can only get the top 5 in. The Web-Site has far more information for those with questions.

THE TOP 40
REASONS TO DOUBT THE OFFICIAL STORY OF SEPTEMBER 11th, 2001

... An outline in simple talking points ...


We are continuing to compile the best documentation links for every single point on this page, and intend to post the updated version as soon as possible, and create teaching tools and more from the info. This is a significant and time-consuming process--if you have useful links, please send them to janice[at]911truth[dot]org. Thanks for your help!
If you use the search function with title key words, you will discover that 911Truth.org is home to articles backing virtually every point made below. Much of the basic research is available at the Complete 9/11 Timeline (hosted by cooperativeresearch.org), the 9/11 Reading Room (911readingroom.org), and the NY Attorney General Spitzer petition and complaint (Justicefor911.org). For physical evidence discussion, see Point 7.


THE DAY ITSELF - EVIDENCE OF COMPLICITY

1) AWOL Chain of Command
a. It is well documented that the officials topping the chain of command for response to a domestic attack - George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Myers, Montague Winfield - all found reason to do something else during the actual attacks, other than assuming their duties as decision-makers.
b. Who was actually in charge? Dick Cheney, Richard Clarke, Norman Mineta and the 9/11 Commission directly conflict in their accounts of top-level response to the unfolding events, such that several (or all) of them must be lying.
2) Air Defense Failures
a. The US air defense system failed to follow standard procedures for responding to diverted passenger flights.
b. Timelines: The various responsible agencies - NORAD, FAA, Pentagon, USAF, as well as the 9/11 Commission - gave radically different explanations for the failure (in some cases upheld for years), such that several officials must have lied; but none were held accountable.
c. Was there an air defense standdown?

3) Pentagon Strike
How was it possible the Pentagon was hit 1 hour and 20 minutes after the attacks began? Why was there no response from Andrews Air Force Base, just 10 miles away and home to Air National Guard units charged with defending the skies above the nation''s capital? How did Hani Hanjour, a man who failed as a Cessna pilot on his first flight in a Boeing, execute a difficult aerobatic maneuver to strike the Pentagon? Why did the attack strike the just-renovated side, which was largely empty and opposite from the high command?

4) Wargames
a. US military and other authorities planned or actually rehearsed defensive response to all elements of the 9/11 scenario during the year prior to the attack - including multiple hijackings, suicide crashbombings, and a strike on the Pentagon.
b. The multiple military wargames planned long in advance and held on the morning of September 11th included scenarios of a domestic air crisis, a plane crashing into a government building, and a large-scale emergency in New York. If this was only an incredible series of coincidences, why did the official investigations avoid the issue? There is evidence that the wargames created confusion as to whether the unfolding events were "real world or exercise." Did wargames serve as the cover for air defense sabotage, and/or the execution of an "inside job"?

5) Flight 93
Did the Shanksville crash occur at 10:06 (according to a seismic report) or 10:03 (according to the 9/11 Commission)? Does the Commission wish to hide what happened in the last three minutes of the flight? Was Flight 93 shot down, as indicated by the scattering of debris over a trail of several miles?

http://www.911truth.org/

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The only way in which we will ever discover the truth of 911 is if a foreign agency invades the US, rounds up all the bad guys and prosecutes them.

Look what happened to Saddam.

Think about that scene in 'Mississippi Burning' when the Mayor is chained to the chair, and his black captor is about to explain how a razor blade was used so effectively against a friend of his.

Now imagine Bush, Cheney and all the others are similarly chained to chairs wearing only shorts, and imagine their captors are the friends and families of the victims who lost their lives on that fateful day.

They each have a razor blade in their hands.

"So George, how come you're the only person to have seen the first plane fly into the first tower when no one else did?"

Answer: Well, er, I'm the president of the United States of America, and it's my duty to see things before anyone else.

"And tell me George, how many other days throughout the life of your presidency have you actually read a book to a bunch of school kids at 9 am in the morning?"

"And why did you remain in the school when logic tells us you should have immediately been brought under the protection of the Secret Service?"

Answer: "I wanted to see if the 2nd pilot was going to be as bad at flying as the 1st guy."

"And Dick, tell us why you ordered the air force to stand down? Seems a very strange thing to do on the very day that planes actually did go and fly into skyscrapers."

Answer: "I just felt like it, that's all."

Well, you can all make up your own questions

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It is apparent from many of the Truther's comments that they suffer from a Neo Complex.

They see themselves as Neo in the Matrix, the owners of some forbidden truther that others are blind to.

Because of this belief, they have a sense of superiority, that coaxes their egos. To admit that they are wrong, is to admit that the belief that has consumed their lives for the last seven years is false. Additionally, many of blame Israel (no truly, they are not anti-semites, they just play one on the boards)crowd, would have to admit that their sworn enemy is innocent, and that their hatered was misplaced. Also acceptance of the truth for a truth would mean that the world is more complex and chaotic. That there is not one evil organization and that the biggest, history altering event can be caused by a few nobodies. That life is much more random and less ordered.

I was wrong to hold these people in contempt, they need to be pitied.

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Am I the only reader feeling a little embarrassed for Matt Taibbi? I don't typically post comments to articles, but this was one of the most one-sided debates I've ever read. I'm surprised that Matt agreed to debate David Ray Griffin.

I was very reluctant to entertain the idea that the 9/11 attacks could be an inside job, but as Griffin routinely mentions in his writings, the evidence is simply "overwhelming."

Perhaps Taibbi could next debate Richard Gage, the founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth? If Gage is unavailable, perhaps Taibbi could take on one of their 500 other members?

A big thanks to Alternet for hosting this. It's easy to see why the 9/11 Truth movement continues to grow.

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Oh, boy!... I used to really like Taibbi. If it wasn't for profanity, I would have e-mailed a link to his precious Palin-at-RNC coverage to my Mid-Western relatives who can't get enough of her. That was great!

This exchange, however, is embarrassing. When put next to Dr. Griffin, he really exposes himself as a shallow debater and a phony intellectual. His main position seems to be: "I will ignore all the facts until you show me that from the point of view of perpetrators their acts made sense."

What about the world being full of sick f*cks? It doesn't seem to disturb Taibbi that govt pronounced "Air safe to breathe" or authorized the unprovoked and immoral Iraq war. Remember, these things were not "surprises", as 9-11 is claimed to be. These were premeditated acts. Govt had plenty of time to analyze the dust samples to conclude that the air was NOT safe to breathe, yet they decided to sacrifice the lives of those thousands of rescue workers anyway. (Or did Osama somehow gain access to govt labs who analyzed this crap?)

I agree that Griffin's "harpooned-to-death friend" example wasn't the best one, so I have an alternative, more streamlined one that describes Taibbi's point of view.

Police approach judge Taibbi for a warrant to do some digging in John Wayne Gacy's basement. They show their evidence for the probable cause. "But it doesn't make any sense!" exclaims judge Taibbi. "What could he possibly gain by murdering those dozens of people? It looks just too bizarre to me, so I am going to ignore the evidence and will deny the warrant."

It's a good thing our justice system operates on better principles than that.

It is sad that Matt's brainpower stretches only so far as to line up clever words into continous rant, instead of looking at the FACTS and reaching logical conclusions. Not to mention, doing his journalistic duty and demanding answers. Osama still not indicted? - Who cares! Ted Olson's claims blatantly contradicted by FBI report? - No problem, just a sloppy work by FBI, I am sure! No wonder, he is an entertainment journalist and not an investigative one.

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currently our keepers have to flex a lot of muscle to keep the world marching along the path to one world government... what they get at the end of this exercise is the chance to sit back on the sofa and use their remote control... they're like us in that they're essentially looking for an easier way to get their thrill: one-click, one-channel, one-world fuxoring.

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In response to some friendly prodding by bornxeyed, I have authored and posted a petition at petition on line. That petition demands that the White House release the security camera footage immediately. This is the only way that we can resolve one of the central questions surrounding the events of Sept. 11, 2001 and I see no reason why this is an unreasonable request.

I ask anyone who is interested in the truth, whatever it is, to go there now and sign that petition.

Thank you
http://www.petitiononline.com/911tapes/petition.html

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The governement is guity simple and plain. As long as any eveidence, physically is kept from public scrutiny, BUSH IS the guilty empowerer.

Never forget 911 was a crime scene.
Never forget, all evidence was taken away and destroyed. ALl the steel was "Supposed to have been sent to China for re smelting. That steel equates to $. WHere is the $. Where is the steel.

SO many of the non believers some how latch on to some sick sense of denial that the United States powers are so puritanical. That they have Americas best interests in mind. ...it people...

As a structual steel engineer myself, I watched the original destructions take place and immediately without any question realized that those buildings wheere systematically demolished. Those buildings would never have fallen as the "official accounts" have said.

I feel simply sickened that the American people have no self confidence in themselves and feel they are hopelessly dependent on the Government to think for them and accept it's provided information as gospel.

Too bad. Americans in denial, go back to sleep. keep your heads in the sand. YOu all just keep sucking up what the system feeds you as (false) truths. You probably all Believe oil is fossil fuel too, huh?

Start friggin getting mentally engaged. Or you might as well all join the army and kiss ass the rest of your lives.

Here's the bottom line. If you think 911 was perpetrated by a bunch of inept terrorists with box cutters your dumber than dirt.

The government has nothing to loose by showing the world the evidence..that is unless they are guilty.

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I extend my deepest thanks to both Alternet and the readers. Alternet, thank you for posting this article, because it serves (at least in part) to make up for your previous slander against the 9/11 truth movement and its ideas. I have been surprised and not a little insulted by the way you have treated the movement, and it has caused me to question the integrity and "progressiveness" of the site. This article, which clearly reveals Matt's ignorance and close-mindedness, definitely goes a long way towards absolving you of my distain. I shall look forward to my continued enjoyment of your reporting and analysis. Thank you!

Thank you also, readers! Your comments and subsequent ratings of others' comments have shown where the majority of your sympathies lie. I am pleased to know that you have the critical and analytic capabilities I can respect. I am proud to call myself a friend of and participant in this community.

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and the same claim that you make about delusional truthers can similarly be applied to you.

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There seems to be a lot of Truthers on this forum, yet, as of 10:48 EST, I have only 4 sigs, and one of them is a friend of mine.

Come on people, have the courage of your convictions. If you are afraid of being outed, it's too late if you have posted here. No one is anonymous on teh webs!

I know that this petition will do nothing in and of itself, but a movement isn't much if it doesn't actually MOVE.
Thanks in advance for your help.
http://www.petitiononline.com/911tapes/petition.html

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Is Matt Taibbi writing "in character"? Sort of a written-word version of Stephen Colbert? If so, Bravo! What a superlative performance! This outdoes Colbert's famous 2006 coup! Keep up the good work! Down with those distinguished, poised and overly articulate professor types like Griffin!

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In the movie Zeitgeist they have a segment showing how buildings are demo'd. The explosive or melting agent in the shape of a strap is wrapped around the core column of the building at a diagonal angle, not horizontally like _ but diagonally like

They have a photo in the movie, the implication is it is from the wrecked WTC before the rubble is taken away and one of the steel girders has the same diagonal cut shape, as if it was cut with the agent used in demo'd buildings.


Is this photo really of the WTC?

Is this photo before any cleanup had taken place or girders were cut in order to remove them?

In my mind this is a major piece of potential evidence. If this girder was not cut by a cleanup crew, then how else was the girder melted through at the angle it had been?

It looks just like a cut girder in a demo'd building which would support the hypothesis that the WTC buildings had been demo'd and did not collapse due to the pancake hypothesis.


Judging why people did what they did on 9/11 is pretty pointless if you are looking for the truth, there is no way to know what these people really knew or what they were thinking or why they did what they did.

Hard physical evidence like that photo, if it was from the WTC pre-cleanup is what the 9/11 Truth movement should be focusing on.

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Though I enjoy Matt's writing in RS, I find his manner to be juvenile when it comes to certain subjects, such as 9/11. I base this on his Daily Show appearance and upon this exchange. Ad hominem attacks are a waste of time, but I did find Mr. Griffin most informative.

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I read this exchange carefully, with great interest and an open mind.

An honest, logical evaluation of this debate would be as follows:

1) MT harms himself greatly be resorting to personal insults, pointless sarcasm and emotional outbursts. DRG is always, in contrast, respectful and presents his case methodically and eloquently. One person (MT) gives the impression of being hysterical and close-minded, the other an academic with a rational mind seeking truth. Even if you do not agree with DRG, the hostile, polemical and downright insulting prose directed at him by MT is curious and counterproductive. Why apparently hate someone so much for their own personal views? If that person has theories you think are obviously ludicrous, why resort to calling names? Why not simply demolish their theories: we must conclude that MT cannot counter the main arguments put forward by DRG and so resorts to what can only be described as childish playground taunts.

2) Almost all of DRG main points are ignored by MT. He instead focuses on meaningless issues such as the attempt by DRG to give a courtroom analogy.

3) To my reckoning, at least in this case, MT seems to find logical discourse and intellectual reasoning beyond himself. MT makes many illogical statements and contradicts himself repeatedly, whilst apparently not understanding the points made by DRG.

4) If MT represents the best that those who support the offical version of 9-11 can muster, then I conclude that the offical version of 9-11 is demonstrably false, that we have been lied to and that it was an inside job.

4) It would appear that it is no longer necessary for the likes of DRG to validate their thesis - their facts and assertions are clear - it is the responsibility of people like MT to show us why they believe the official version is accurate. He fails to do that here.

5) Taking in all of MTs points, I am left with no ammunition whatsoever to counter those who agree with DRG.

6) DRG is always polite and factual and appears far more mature and erudite

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I really ought not to be surprised by this, but I am, I'm baffled and saddened that most of the posters here seem to think that this debate was a triumph for their side, that Griffen was cool and factual and civil while poor Mat Taibbi sputtered with irrelevant ad hominem attacks. (I suppose Sarah Palin's supporters think she cleaned Joe Biden's clock in their debate, too.) Sorry, but to me this debate sounded like an inpatient explaining over and over, complete with elaborate notes and diagrams, the byzantine connections between the Russians, Beelzebub, and Ringo Starr in their efforts to infiltrate his thought-patterns with their vicious lies while a doctor asks him repeatedly what medications he's supposed to be on and when he last took them.

To me, Griffen sounds like a relentlessly droning robot, spouting an interminable torrent of misinformation, distorted factoids, and meaningless innuendo that you'd have to waste the rest of your life on earth researching in order to confirm as horseshit. (Luckily, other, more patient people than I have already meticulously disproved pretty much everything he says, which information is out there if you're willing to read things on paper, or even look at websites that don't cater to your preferred delusional system.) He writes like someone who's had the entire right hemisphere of his brain removed: pathologically literal-minded, genetically colorblind to common sense, analogy, or humor, myopically fixated on the microscopic details but unable to grasp the patent absurdity of the whole. He sounds like the guy who's finally worked out a consistent stardate calendar based on a close analysis of every episode but doesn't seem to realize it's just a show, or like Wile E. Coyote, who's got his whole scheme beautifully worked out on the big drawing board but can't see that the fundamental premises are insane. Griffen's degree is in theology--surely at some point he must've come across the name Sir William of Ockham?

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