Pretty long article but Robert Fisk raises some interesting points without coming across as a lunatic.

Robert Fisk: Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11

Monday, 27 August 2007

Britain's most highly decorated foreign correspondent. Fisk has received the British International Journalist of the Year award seven times. His specialty is the Middle East, where he has spent the last twenty-three years. Currently the Beirut correspondent for the London Independent, Fisk has covered the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, the Persian Gulf war, and the conflict in Algeria. This article was published Aug 25 2007:

Each time I lecture abroad on the Middle East, there is always someone in the audience – just one – whom I call the "raver". Apologies here to all the men and women who come to my talks with bright and pertinent questions – often quite humbling ones for me as a journalist – and which show that they understand the Middle East tragedy a lot better than the journalists who report it. But the "raver" is real. He has turned up in corporeal form in Stockholm and in Oxford, in Sao Paulo and in Yerevan, in Cairo, in Los Angeles and, in female form, in Barcelona. No matter the country, there will always be a "raver".

His – or her – question goes like this. Why, if you believe you're a free journalist, don't you report what you really know about 9/11? Why don't you tell the truth – that the Bush administration (or the CIA or Mossad, you name it) blew up the twin towers? Why don't you reveal the secrets behind 9/11? The assumption in each case is that Fisk knows – that Fisk has an absolute concrete, copper-bottomed fact-filled desk containing final proof of what "all the world knows" (that usually is the phrase) – who destroyed the twin towers. Sometimes the "raver" is clearly distressed. One man in Cork screamed his question at me, and then – the moment I suggested that his version of the plot was a bit odd – left the hall, shouting abuse and kicking over chairs.

Usually, I have tried to tell the "truth"; that while there are unanswered questions about 9/11, I am the Middle East correspondent of The Independent, not the conspiracy correspondent; that I have quite enough real plots on my hands in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, etc, to worry about imaginary ones in Manhattan. My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?

Well, I still hold to that view. Any military which can claim – as the Americans did two days ago – that al-Qa'ida is on the run is not capable of carrying out anything on the scale of 9/11. "We disrupted al-Qa'ida, causing them to run," Colonel David Sutherland said of the preposterously code-named "Operation Lightning Hammer" in Iraq's Diyala province. "Their fear of facing our forces proves the terrorists know there is no safe haven for them." And more of the same, all of it untrue.

Within hours, al-Qa'ida attacked Baquba in battalion strength and slaughtered all the local sheikhs who had thrown in their hand with the Americans. It reminds me of Vietnam, the war which George Bush watched from the skies over Texas – which may account for why he this week mixed up the end of the Vietnam war with the genocide in a different country called Cambodia, whose population was eventually rescued by the same Vietnamese whom Mr Bush's more courageous colleagues had been fighting all along.

But – here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93's debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I'm not talking about the crazed "research" of David Icke's Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.

I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering – very definitely not in the "raver" bracket – are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be "fraudulent or deceptive".

Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard "explosions" in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let's claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA's list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.

But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose "Islamic" advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the "Fajr" prayer to be included in Atta's letter.

Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now – we create our own reality". True? At least tell us. It would stop people kicking over chairs.

Independent

Fisk Joins the Troofers

Sat, Aug 25, 2007 at 8:29:05 am PDT

and yet, as amusing as that cartoon is, it doesn't refute the point

ME thinks you are treading in a minefield boys. The locking of the political forum was to curtail political conversations for the time being... it would be wise to honour that moratorium until such time it reopens.

^^^ Absolutely right ^^^ but this new guy from NZ is now showing his true colors by questioning the September 11th. I thought a short response was necessary.

Over & Out...

Originally Posted by phoenix80

^^^ Absolutely right ^^^ but this new guy from NZ is now showing his true colors by questioning the September 11th. I thought a short response was necessary.

Over & Out...

no, you're wrong.


i was posting an article that poses some questions, an i for one dont subscribe to "blind faith" on ANY subject. and, like it not 9/11 poses a lot of questions, FOR BOTH SIDES...and has had a greater affect on the world than any event in the last 60 years. you'll also note that i haven't pointed out my position on the article at all....so, once again P80 makes an assumption and comes out swinging

so there it is.


oh, and once again, the "new guy" swipe. grow up P80, im here to stay

Every major event poses large questions.
What we need is a comparison of 9/11 to other comparable events.
- Pearl Harbor is also controversial.
- The Holocaust is also debated (!!)
- People in Cambodia these days often don't know or don't believe in the killing fields that existed in that country just decades ago apparently as well.
- JFK's death probably tops them all.
Basically any world event of great magnitude has left unanswered questions which many skeptics use as "proof" on their agenda.
I think people should in fact try to compare these events with major accidents that insurance companies investigate. I think that would be a fair comparison. If the conclusions that insurance companies come up with on many disasters is similar to those of major events like 9/11 or JFK, then we know that the lack of proof is not proof at all. If there is a consistently huge difference, then the skeptics have something worth chasing.
I see where the cartoon from P80 is about but yeah I don't think that is very helpful here.

N.B. non-political post here, boss. It is merely a greetings card to all Americans, God Bless 'em.


Any American who considers that 9/11 was a home conspiracy should take a long hard look at themselves. Where are the mind-benders taking you? Take strength from your flag, wave away those who would sap your power. Your own USA take on right and wrong is sufficient. Don't let the monsters grind you down.

PS. wish you were here.


HUH

We have locked the political forum for a reason.

All cautioned not to misuse other forums for postings of political nature.

Deviation from this directive will result in a temp ban for all those involved.


Oh yeah thread locked.