Saturday, January 07, 2006

The Next Great Bumper Sticker

Ever wishing to present high quality information on the State of the World today, here is partial presentation of an article from THE news site Signs of the Times. It is a cogent analysis of the various arguments that A 757 Did Hit The Pentagon, the government is On Top of It, and You Can All Go Back to Sleep. As Mr. Quinn decisively proves:

NOT!

Follow along the paths of logic as Mr. Quinn unravels the mental gymnastics folks will go through to convince the rest of us that all is well. You can't say they don't do their jobs with enthusiasm. Aamazing what a motivator fear can be.

Blue Ibis

To view the many photos and links backing up Mr. Quinn's arguements, just follow the link in the title of the article below. Be ready to catch your jaw when it drops. And then clear a space on your rear bumper:

Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn't Impact the Pentagon on 9/11 and Neither Did a Boeing 757

by Joe Quinn

After the release of the QFG Pentagon Strike Flash Animation on August 23rd, 2004, a veritable onslaught of new articles were published that sought to dismiss the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory. One such article, that is frequently referenced by certain '9/11 researchers' was authored by a member of the forum at the "Above Top Secret" (ATS) website. Interestingly, the article was written just a few weeks after the release of the Pentagon Strike Flash animation, which by then, was winging its way around the world and into the inboxes of millions of ordinary citizens. Perhaps you were one of them...

The claim that promoters of the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory were doing immense damage to the truth/accountability movement was raised in Mike Ruppert's book Crossing the Rubicon. In a stunning piece of warped logic, Ruppert claimed that, while he is quite convinced that it was not Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon, he chose not to talk about or deal with the subject as part of his overall case for conspiracy because of the "implications". According to Ruppert, the "implications" are that anyone that suggests that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, is then forced to answer the question as to what actually happened to Flight 77. If that's the case, then we better just wrap up the whole 9/11 Truth Movement and go home and have a beer.

Ruppert balks at the idea of offering an answer to this question to his readers because, he claims, most people would be unable to accept it, and, he suggests, 9/11 researchers serve only to alienate the public support that they wish to attract by stretching the boundaries of the collective belief system. What Ruppert doesn't explain is why any member of the public would happily accept that U.S. government officials participated in the slaughter of the passengers on Flights 11 and 175 and the occupants of the WTC towers (as he details in his book) yet would be unable to accept the idea that the same government officials played a part in disposing of the passengers of Flight 77 in a much less imaginative way. Let's be honest here, in the context of 9/11 being the work of a faction of the US government and military, the answer to the question as to what happened to Flight 77 if it didn't hit the Pentagon is quite obvious - Flight 77 and its occupants were flown to a specific destination and “disposed of” by the conspirators. That's pretty simple; cut and dried; no need for much stretching there! But, for some reason, Ruppert (and others affected by this paramoralism) seems to think that killing thousands of citizens by crashing airplanes is easier to accept than cold bloodedly murdering them "in person," as it were.

Since Ruppert's declaration about the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory, many other "9/11 researchers", such as Mark Rabinowitz and Jim Hoffman, have seized upon Ruppert's idea and even expanded upon it by suggesting that the "no planers" are actually government agents trying to discredit the REAL 9/11 researchers with the 'kooky' "no plane" theory.

In order to really understand the insidiousness of this patronising claim that the public could not accept the implications of the idea that a Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon, let's look at the "evidence" as presented by the ATS member that it really was Flight 77 that impacted the Pentagon that bright September morn.

First, however, I would like to make a few observations about 9/11 research in general.

Anyone who takes on the formidable task of digging into the events of 9/11 is immediately at a disadvantage because the US government has already declared the case closed. The government knows how it happened and who did it and have informed the entire world. As a result, there is no possibility of access to the raw data, to the crime scene or analyses of same. Here is where we meet the major obstacle: since the US government is the prime suspect, we cannot simply take as truth everything - or anything - that they say in relation to the case.

Investigation of the 9/11 attacks should be approached like any murder investigation. When confronted with a murder case (like 9/11) and a suspect that has a history of deceit and murder (like the US government and its agencies) and who had an opportunity and a motive to commit the murder, do you take as fact any claims by the suspect that he did not commit the murder? Do you seek to fit the facts around his claim that he did not commit the murder? When you confront evidence that suggests that the suspect is lying about his account of where he was and what he was doing, or you find inconsistencies and logistically impossible scenarios in his account, do you ignore these and focus only on the fact that he said he did not commit the murder and try to find and present evidence that backs up his claim to innocence?

The fact is that researchers coming to the 9/11 investigation after the fact, and after the case has been officially closed, are not only confronted with the task of trying to find out what actually happened - they also face the already well established public belief, by which they themselves are also influenced, that the official story is the truth. The best approach for any 9/11 researcher with honest intentions is to, if possible, wipe from their minds the official version of events and take the attitude of someone who has just returned from a 5 year trip to the outer reaches of the solar system, during which time they had no communication with planet earth. Start with a beginner's mind, turn off the sound of all the conflicting voices and their claims, and just LOOK at the evidence without prejudice.

Now, if the person with a truly open mind is given all of the publicly available evidence and has been additionally furnished with knowledge of the effects of airplane crashes and that of missile impacts, what would such a person conclude about the most likely cause of the Pentagon damage? Of course, not all of the evidence was made available to the public, but there is still sufficient visual evidence from "ground zero" (both in terms of place and TIME), to form a pretty good "best guess". For a definitive conclusion to be reached, the "private" evidence, like the video tapes of the event that the FBI confiscated, would have to be released, and we don't expect that to happen any time soon. Of course, the fact that the definitive evidence of the videos has not been released is in itself a key piece of evidence that suggests that the official story of what hit the Pentagon is not the real story.

The purpose of this small introduction is to prepare the reader for the fact that, in his attempted rebuttal of the no 757 at the Pentagon theory, the ATS article author, CatHerder, appears to have succumbed to the influence of the mainstream media shills that have incessantly parroted the official government story about what happened on 9/11 for the three years prior to the writing of the article. As such, he has failed to don the mantle of objective observer of the available evidence that is so crucial to finding the truth, and instead exerts a lot of effort to make the available evidence fit the government claim that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on the morning of September 11th 2001. Either that, or he/she is part of the "official government cover-up." After you read everything below, you can make a call on that one yourself.

Here is the ATS article as it appears on the ATS site with my comments interspersed in blue text.

Evidence That A Boeing 757 Really Did Impact the Pentagon on 9/11

by "CatHerder", Member, AboveTopSecret.com/forum
September 11th, 2004

Did a 757 hit the Pentagon on 9-11

First let's start with the factual information available on hand.

The 757-200
As we can see from the freely available information for the Boeing 757 (from the Boeing website). The 757 is a midsized commercial airliner designed for short haul and medium haul routes (Medium Range Transport (MR-TR)), although since its release, and the subsequent discovery of the Wake Vortex it leaves behind the FAA has classified the 757 as a "Heavy" aircraft; the FAA places the 757 in the Geometric Design Classification IV, and an ATC Operation Class C. (source)

The 757-200 dimensions:
Tail Height: 44 ft 6 in (13.6m)
Length: 155 ft 3 in (47.32m)
Wingspan: 124 ft 10 in (38.05m)
Body Exterior Width: 12 ft 4 in (3.7m)
Fuel Capacity: 11,489 us gal (43,490l / 43,490kg)
Maximum Takeoff weight: 255,000lb (115,680kg)
Typical Cruise Speed: 0.80 Mach (573.6mph / 956kmh)
Engines used on a 757: Two 166.4kN (37,400lb) Rolls-Royce RB211-535C turbofans, or 178.8kN (40,200lb) RB211-535E4s, or 193.5kN (43,500lb) RB211-535E4-Bs, or 162.8kN (36,600lb) Pratt & Whitney PW2037s, or two 178.4kN (40,100lb) PW2040s, or 189.5kN (42,600lb) PW2043s. (source1) (source2)
Auxiliary Power Unit: Honeywell GTCP331-200


left portion: source1 right portion: source2 (height and width notation to graphic added by me)

Next, let's look at the Pentagon.

The Pentagon

The Pentagon was designed in the early 40's and was completed in only 16 months on Jan 14, 1943. The shortages of materials required for war production raised many design and construction problems. The use of reinforced concrete in lieu of formed steel for the building made possible a saving of 43,000 tons of steel, more than enough to build a battleship. The use of concrete ramps rather than elevators further reduced steel requirements. Drainage pipes were concrete; ducts were fiber, interior doors were wood. An unusual wall design - concrete spandrels carried to window sill level - eliminated many miles of through-wall copper flashing.(Source1) (Source2)

Recent renovations and upgrades to the building were nearing completion on the side hit on 9-11 and performed reasonably well considering they were not designed to withstand aircraft impact. On September 11, when an American Airlines Boeing 757 crashed into the Pentagon, home of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), about 20,000 people were at work in this, the largest office building in the world. Yet according to the DoD casualty update on October 1, only 125 Pentagon employees were killed along with the 64 from the fated airliner. (source - Architecture Week)

The exterior walls had been reinforced with steel beams and columns, bolted where they met at each floor. Some of these reinforced walls very near the point of impact remained in place for a half hour before collapsing, allowing uncounted hundreds to escape. "Had we not undertaken this effort," said Evey at a press briefing on September 15, "this could have been much, much worse."

Now, I'm sure everyone can agree that the above information is a matter of public record, and none of it is incorrect, altered, or misquoted in any way to support either side of the case. It is all merely factual information that we will refer to in the following sections.

[Note: I was unintentionally misleading in a previous post when I said the Pentagon didn't use a steel beam construction - while that is still true for the original design, it was reinforced in various areas during the upgrades to include steel beams and columns in some areas of the renovations.]

Quoted from ArchitectureWeek.com :

In addition to major overhauls of the mechanical and electrical systems, the Wedge One renovation included the fire sprinklers, automatic fire doors, and the steel which saved many lives on the day of the attack.

The blast-resistant windows were nearly two inches (5 centimeters) thick. Some of them remain remarkably intact and in place adjacent the point of impact. Some were popped out of their frames by the force of the exploding jet fuel, but they fell without breaking or splintering.

Also on the exterior walls, between the steel columns, the renovation crew had placed Kevlar cloth, similar to the material used for bullet-proof vests. This had the effect of holding together building materials so they wouldn't become deadly projectiles in an explosion.

Looking At the Big Picture

From facts contained above, we can all agree that:

• The length of the outside wall on any side of the pentagon is 921 feet.

• The wingspan of a 757 is 124 feet 10 inches.

• Now, everyone can agree that 921/125= roughly 7.4 right?


Given the size of the 757, and the size of the Pentagon, the damaged area fits in perfectly with the dimensions of both the aircraft and the building.

The above "opening gambit" is very telling since it delivers hard facts, one after the other, all of which are accurate. It is in this last statement that the twisting begins. The fact that the length of the Pentagon is equivalent to 7.4 757's wing to wing, or that the width of one 757 equals 13.5% of the facade of the Pentagon has no bearing on the actual damage done. Indeed, given the weight and speed of the 757 that is alleged to have impacted the building, the actual damage done to the Pentagon is entirely inconsistent with an aircraft of the size, weight, and speed of a 757. In other words, the argument actually supports the "no-Boeing" theory better than it supports "Flight 77 hit the Pentagon."

Look at the hole in the building


Here is the hole in the building - it's been reported by at least a dozen different sources (including conspiracy theory sites) to be a 16 to 20 foot hole. That is really interesting when you take into account the fact that the 757 body is 12 ft 4in wide and 13 ft 6in high. (Here is where I was mistaken in the past, like so very many others I was led astray by the HEIGHT of the aircraft, which is actually the measurement from the wheels-down to the tip of the tail. That measurement is for aircraft hangar clearance, not the SIZE of the aircraft.) The 757 is basically a cylinder that is 13 feet across. It then should not be surprising that it would create something around a thirteen foot hole in the side of the building.

Here is the next twist. The Boeing 757 is not simply a 13ft wide cylinder; if it were, then the damage to the Pentagon might be more plausible. The reality, however, is that a Boeing 757 is a 13ft wide, 155 ft long cylinder with a tail fin that extends 45 ft into the air. Add to that the fact that there are two 6 ton steel engines slung under each wing about 6 feet to each side of the cylinder body. The wings extend out on each side for 50ft + making for a total aircraft width of 125 feet, a total length of 155 ft and a maximum height of 45 ft. It comes as no surprise then that this large commercial aircraft weighs in at over 90 tons fully loaded. On take off from Washington Dulles airport, Flight 77 weighed approximately 82 tons.

The above nonsensical argument would have you believe that the only thing to consider is a "13 ft wide cylinder" that just magically lost everything else, or that everything else just "folded up" and flew inside the building plastered to the side of that 13 ft cylinder. Even if the wings could do that, we are still left with the two 6 ton engines that were NOT dropped off on the lawn, and which, together, are as wide as the cylinder body!

Look at the nose-on view of a 757 - you can see the body is slightly less than 1/3 the size of the height of the aircraft. The tail certainly isn't going to punch a hole through a reinforced concrete wall; that is why there is no 40 foot hole in the front of the Pentagon in any photos. A 40 foot object didn't hit it, a 13 foot object did.

Again, this is not JUST a "13ft object" by any stretch of the imagination. By now it should be obvious that the author is attempting to subtly manipulate the reader by reducing a large, 82 ton passenger aircraft to "a 13ft object".

Think about this.

Is "a 13ft object" a reasonable description of a Boeing 757? Is it reasonable for the author to reduce a large plane that can carry up to 200 adult human beings to "a 13ft object"? We could take this unreasonable definition one step further and flesh out the image that our author is trying to plant in our heads and say that, according to our author, the Boeing 757 that he/she alleges hit the Pentagon, was comparable to a large SUV, or a similar "13ft object".

While it is reasonable to state that the tail of a 757 may not necessarily have punched a hole through the facade of the Pentagon, can we expect to at least see some evidence of the tail having hit the facade? More than that, we must consider the forward momentum of those two, inescapable, 6 TON steel engines that were neither dropped on the lawn, nor were they smashed like pancakes against the side of the "13 ft cylinder." If I struck the facade of the Pentagon with a sledge hammer, is it reasonable that I would be able to cause some observable damage? The outer 6 inches of the facade of the Pentagon is made of soft limestone, yet our author sees no problem with claiming that such a soft surface, when struck by a piece of aircraft weighing SIX TONS and traveling at hundreds of miles per hour, would in no way leave any significant and observable damage.

While the "cylinder body" that our author keeps referring to is indeed 13ft 6in high, he omits the fact that the engines extend 5 feet below the body and over six feet to either side, meaning that, if the aircraft were actually able to successfully fly at just 1 inch above the ground (highly unlikely), the height of the "cylinder body" above the ground would be at least 18 ft 6 inches! Let us repeat that: if a Boeing 757 were actually able to fly at just 1 inch above the ground, the height of the "13 ft cylinder body" would be at least 18 feet 6 inches! Now, add to that the fact that the plane also includes those two bothersome 6 TON engines, AND a tail fin that protrudes 25 feet above the top of the cylinder body making for a total aircraft height of just less than 40 feet with wheels up. Obviously then, we can reasonably expect that the damage to the facade of the Pentagon would have extended up to this height IF it was a 757 that hit the building.

However, according to the official Pentagon report:


"The height of the damage to the facade of the building was much less than the height of the aircraft’s tail. At approximately 45 ft, the tail height was nearly as tall as the first four floors of the building. Obvious visible damage extended only over the lowest two floors, to approximately 25 ft above grade."

Look at this close up of the above photo:

The top of the hole in the middle of the white box is at the same level as the top of the windows of the second floor, or about 23-25 feet from ground. The three windows above this are the windows of the third floor. The foam covered window to the top right is the fourth floor. As noted by the Pentagon report, this area (above the center hole) is where the tail should have struck, but there is no evidence of any damage that we would expect from such an impact. What's more, the tail fin was definitely not dropped on the lawn along with the two 6 TON engines.

Conclusion? The tail fin of a Boeing 757 did not strike this area.

What does that suggest? That a Boeing 757 was not involved in the attack.

Is that logical enough?

However, from the point of view of the author on the ATS forum and the U.S. government, we are not allowed to use such logic. Instead, we must give in to emotional blackmail and then engage in implausible mental gymnastics to try to explain how a 757 really could have been involved in the Pentagon attack; and all because the US government says so - a government that has made lies the core aspect of its domestic and foreign policy from day one.

In terms of the damage that should have been caused by the other parts of a 757 (you know, the large aircraft that our author has reduced to a mere 12ft 4 in wide cylinder), the official
Pentagon Building Performance Report stated that:

"The projected width [of damage to the facade] was approximately 90 ft, which is substantially less than the 125 ft wingspan of the aircraft"

Indeed, but there is no explanation of why there is no damage to the facade where the wings should logically have struck. Could it be that an aircraft with the wingspan of a 757 was not involved?

Conspiracy theory?

No, just the most obvious and logical explanation.

The Pentagon report also made note of the fact that:


"With the possible exception of the immediate vicinity of the fuselage’s entry point at column line 14, essentially all interior impact damage was inflicted in the first story: The aircraft seems for the most part to have slipped between the first-floor slab on grade and the second floor."

That is impossible as the following graphic will show. Note the pink line, where the "13 ft cylinder" is supposed to have slipped "under."


Another 9/11 researcher, who is naturally skeptical about the claim that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, produced the above graphic and posed some obvious and logical questions about the feasibility of the official story quoted above. Given the height of just the fuselage (leaving out the 25 feet of tail fin), how is it possible that the immediate damage and the debris of the plane were "largely confined to the first floor"? And remember, we are talking here about a scenario where the plane is flying at just one inch above the ground!

What is more, evidence from photos of the site show cable spools that were clearly untouched by any incoming aircraft, suggesting that the aircraft would have to have been flying above the maximum height of the spools (some 6 feet) when it hit the Pentagon. In this case, the damage should have been almost entirely to the second floor!

Of course, this is not the case, which leaves us with the logical deduction that it is highly improbable that a 757 was involved in the attack on the Pentagon, and that a much smaller and more nimble aircraft was used.

Among those 9/11 researchers that claim that a 757 hit the Pentagon, much is made of the fact that the Pentagon facade was built with "steel reinforced concrete walls". This fact is used to explain the extremely limited immediate damage to the Pentagon facade. But how much credit are we going to give to brick and concrete that has been reinforced with relatively thin steel bars? Is such a wall indestructible? If the tail fin and wings of a Boeing 757 traveling at 400mph+ hit such a wall, could we at least expect them to leave a dent? A little scrape even?

Not at the Pentagon apparently.

Consider the picture below showing the impact hole at the WTC North Tower:

The facade of the WTC Towers were made of
prefabricated steel yet as we can see from the imprint of the plane, these steel lattices were in no way strong enough to stop the massive kinetic energy of the entire aircraft impacting the building, including the wings and tail fin and leaving a roughly 757-shaped hole in the facade.

To provide a scale reference, a survivor of the initial impact has been circled in the above photo (click the picture for a close up).

Given that I am no structural engineer, however, I cannot make any claims as to the comparative strength of the steel reinforced brick and concrete walls of the Pentagon versus the steel facade of the WTC towers and will allow for the idea that the wall of the Pentagon was stronger than that of the WTC. We can even theorize that it is due to this comparative strength difference that there is not a similar 757-shaped gaping hole at the Pentagon. However, as noted, the facade of the Pentagon was made of soft limestone 6 inches thick. Can anyone explain why a similar shape as that in the picture above does not appear in the soft limestone facade of the Pentagon?

In fact, there appear to be no pictures of the Pentagon facade immediately after the attack that show a clear picture of the exact extent of the damage. That's because all press personnel were restricted. We only have photos because a civilian managed to take them in spite of the "cordon sanitaire." What IS clear is that, as the Pentagon report noted, the Pentagon facade bears NO evidence of damage from parts of a 757 at ALL. One notable explanation for this mysterious lack of damage offered by official government story enthusiasts is that by some mysterious force of nature, the wings and tail must have sheared off before impact. Of course, in such a case, we would expect to see at least some recognisable debris of the wings and tail section outside the building. Yet, as anyone who has carefully inspected the evidence at the scene can attest, there is no such debris.

According to official story enthusiasts, the complete lack of any debris from the wings that we are told somehow sheared off, is not a problem: they simply disintegrated on impact and were rendered little more than confetti that blew away in the breeze (I kid you not; this was actually suggested by several "researchers"). But in this unlikely case, how do we explain that the 125 feet long wings of a 757 disintegrated, yet a fairly slender tree standing just a few feet from the front of the Pentagon - and in the direct path of the alleged 757 - was still standing, albeit severely charred? (Charred tree branches visible in center of image) What's more, this explanation completely omits mention of the two six TON engines attached to said wings.

Can we now at least accept as a possibility the idea that a 757 was not involved in the attack on the Pentagon?

Why is it so difficult for our author to accept this? The answer would seem to be that since the official government story does not allow for such a scenario, like all good and obedient citizens, our author feels compelled to believe what the government says, regardless of the massive historical evidence showing that, on several occasions in the past, the U.S. government has allowed, facilitated, or actually carried out, attacks on its own citizens and interests in order to achieve some specific goal, usually associated with waging war on other nations - wars like the 2003 invasion of Iraq that was a direct result of the 9/11 attacks, including the attack on the Pentagon. Either the ATS author is such a "good and obedient" citizen, or we must conclude that said author is an agent of said government.

If we peruse other postings made by the ATS author on the subject of 9/11 in general, it seems that he/she accepts the idea that there was some level of complicity in the 9/11 attacks on the part of the US government. Yet he/she appears to have no problem with using the claims of the same U.S. government to back up his argument that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.

For the record, I have nothing against the US government per se, and have no desire to accuse the Bush administration or anyone else unjustly. But in the case of the 911 attacks, there is significant and compelling evidence to suggest that something is not right with the official version of events and that members of the US government are lying about the true nature of those events. In this case, there is a case to answer, and my sole aim is to get at the truth, whatever that truth may turn out to be. In pursuing this objective, I will look at the facts and the facts alone and draw conclusions based on what those facts suggest, alone.

At this point, we are approaching the paradox that is at the heart of the argument of the "no 757 " debunkers. They clearly are well aware that there is a serious problem with the lack of damage and debris at the Pentagon, yet that does not deter them from continuing with their increasingly unbelievable theories in an attempt to prove that the official government story is correct. At the same time, after coming up with bizarre explanations for the lack of damage and debris, they are then forced to deal with the fact that, while the damage to the Pentagon facade is not consistent with the impact of a large commercial airliner, the damage to the interior of the Pentagon is even less so.

Now, let's return to the ATS forum post.

***************************
This is only the first third of this article. Read it in full for a point by point debunking of the PTB spin on this assault on American citizens. I leave the last words to Mr. Quinn.
*****************
We notice that never, in any of the two major "debunking" articles that followed fast on the heels of the Pentagon Strike video, was the video ever even mentioned by name, nor was our website mentioned. Other books, other researchers, other web sites were mentioned, but the deliberate avoidance of Signs of The Times - the origin of the Pentagon Strike, was conspicuous. We notice the same trend in the Above Top Secret forum.

Again we point out: debunkers are sent in only when damage control is needed. And damage control is only needed when it is thought that there might be damage. That means that the Pentagon Strike is understood clearly, in the minds of the perpetrators, to be the weak link in their chain of lies.

Debunkers are sent in not to give answers to the outstanding questions, but to push the emotional buttons of the public, to reassure people who really want "a reason to believe" that their government is not lying to them.

It should be clear by now that I am suggesting that there is much more to the 9/11 attacks than most people are aware and what really happened is very, very different from the official story.
Now we get to the interesting part.

If Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon what did, and how?
Two emails received by Signs of the Times about one year ago, (identities concealed to protect the correspondents) are quite informative:

Email #1
Greetings, I have stayed out of this arena for a reason, but can no longer. I am a Maintenence Mechanic here in the assembly plant in [XXX] where we build these great aircraft. 747's-757's and 767's.
Lets do some math for a minute, because those who believe a 757 hit the pentagon, must also believe in the tooth fairy.
The melting temp for brake shoes on a 757 is about 3000 degs., the landing gear struts are solid cast aluminum; the center shafts for the engines are solid titanium. The flame temp for low grade kerosene, (jet fuel) is around 800 degs.

If the 757 was full of fuel, thats 14 pounds of aircraft per one gallon of fuel. Its impossible to "completely incinerate" a 757 at that fuel-to-material ratio. It would be the first time in history it did, and would defy the laws of physics, period.

No 757 hit the pentagon. Where's the engines, landing gears, APU's, stringers, fuel cell walls, wing join assemblies? These are impervious to fire, and, all have survived the worst fires ever seen on aircraft, and I've seen them all.

Oh by the way, if the 757 was "completely incinerated" as the gov't would have the lemming masses believe, how did they come up with DNA from the ashes for every passenger on board. DNA from ASHES!!!?? What a crock of shit. Once you do the math, you'll quickly know that no 757 hit that building, those who say one did, are liars, or have been told to be liars lest they end up like Vince Foster and a few hundred others like him.

Email #2
[...] I am probably one of the most qualified people that you will meet to judge some of the info about the Pentagon attack. I have served in the U.S. Army for a number of years now, I have not only dealt with weapons of every type you can imagine, I have also had a great deal of experience with aircraft, not to mention my brother is an analyst for the military who deals with a great many things.

First of all I can guarantee that no missile did this (damage to the Pentagon), none of the patterns add up for such a thing to work, damage ratio is wrong, flight path is wrong, style of impact is wrong. Also think of the item it was hitting, a hardened building made of concrete and steal, all reinforced. Also I can tell you no large aircraft did this [...]
I'm starting to think that maybe it was a TL AM type 2 block 4, better known as a tomahawk type 2 bunker buster with booster and hardened warhead.

While most would say this is absurd because a weapon like that would have completely leveled the Pentagon and a good deal around it, I am however still inclined to believe that this might possibly be what did it. This is my thinking on the matter: the new TLAMs are programmable to pick entry point and detonation point, the hardened warhead on them allows them to penetrate the hardest of buildings and they hit going much faster than the old type 1s that are commonly seen in war footage and test footage.

I think that somehow one of our new type 2s found itself set on a guided path to the Pentagon with a side impact and center detonation programming, but for some reason the warhead didn't go off. That would give it the energy to do the damage and drive through the walls like it did, but by never exploding, it would still leave most of the building perfectly intact like what was seen at the pentagon. The only problem I can see with this scenario is there would have been no fire had this happened, unless something inside the building started burning.

Now they could have just mounted a much weaker warhead on the thing for the sole purpose of starting the fire. If this is what happened though, then someone wanted it to happen like this, to mount a type 2 with a weak warhead not to mention set it on a path with the parameters that would be needed for this. For no one to use the "safety" and blow it up mid flight, it would have to be pretty damn deliberate.

Also the type 2 matches closer to the size proportions of the object that was captured on video. I'm still only going on speculation here as are most of the people who know that they are being lied to.

To tell you the truth, I don't even think that the fire was at the low burning temp of 800 degrees, a fire that hot would have gone farther to bursting the windows and distorting the structure of the building. The more I look into and use my knowledge of missiles, the more I'm starting to think that maybe it was something we haven't seen before and to not take the risk of disclosing to the public that a test project went wrong or that someone did this with something new of ours. They made up the entire pentagon part of 911, at the very least, and went through a whole lot of trouble doing it.

From the evidence presented, we can propose that, due to its suitability for the task in hand, it was a global hawk-type craft complete with a payload of one missile with a shaped charge hardened war head and secondary war head that struck the Pentagon on September 11th 2001. The first shaped charge war head opened the main hole in the Pentagon facade, the second war head detonated inside doing the rest of the damage and creating the 'T bar' of the final inverted T shape in the facade. The global hawk was swallowed by the hole and the war head explosion. The hardened war head continued on through the other 5 walls coming to rest in Ring C, leaving that neat 8ft wide hole. The war head was then confiscated, much like the various tapes that were witness to the event.

For its part, Flight 77 landed, probably at a military airfield in Ohio around the same time that the Global Hawk and missile struck the Pentagon. All passengers and crew on board Flight 77 were dead by that time, except for one, two or three people. The bodies were "disposed of", and some of the remains were used for identification by the state pathologist.

Shocked? Outraged? You have every right to be, but not at us, or anyone else that points out the logical explanation of the problem. There exists overwhelming evidence to show that, as a general rule, corrupt people in positions of great power do not flinch at murdering their own citizens if it serves their purposes to do so. In some cases, they will murder their citizens - and others - because it gives them pleasure. Such people also, historically, are advocates and practitioners of torture. If you disagree then you disagree with historical fact. Welcome to the real world.

As Laura Knight-Jadczyk notes in her book 9/11:The Ultimate Secret, the attack on the Pentagon is the Achilles Heel of the entire 9/11 coverup, and for one very good reason: while we all saw repeated footage of Flight 11 and Flight 175 crash into the WTC towers, and we all saw the wreckage of Flight 93 and have hundreds of eyewitness testimonies that a commercial airliner did indeed crash in Pennsylvania, there is no reliable evidence that a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon on September 11th 2001. No one has seen any footage that shows Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon, and the tapes that actually exist that could easily and immediately prove what did hit that day, have been confiscated by the FBI and the U.S. government studiously refuses to release them.

The US government claims that a Boeing 757 impacted the Pentagon on 9/11, many people dispute this, yet the same American government refuses to release video tapes that would put the matter to rest and show once and for all what hit the Pentagon. Use your head and ask yourself, "why?"
There is one very obvious answer.

I realise that this theory presents more questions than answers. But since the complete answers to what really happened on 9/11 (and much more) are contained in the book "9/11: The Ultimate Truth", it would be remiss of me to present them here. Suffice to say that Truth is much stranger than fiction.


, , , , , ,

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

OK, Enough Whining. Time for Solutions!

Here's a cheering thought for the holidays: Some practical suggestiong for repairing the horrendous messs the US is in and by extension, all the rest of the world (that's you honey!). Read, take heart, but remember:

It can only happen when ACTION is taken. Blog, write, call. Put pressure on the folks who's salaries YOU pay.

That an interesting New Year is upon us if certain. Be part of what may make it happy.

Blue Ibis

Big Lies: Who told the worst political untruth of 2005? It’s a shame the list of contenders is so long.

By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Dec. 22, 2005

Every holiday season, we on "The McLaughlin Group" hand out news awards. Some categories, like "Biggest Winner," are easy (My choice was Chief Justice John Roberts, with the oil companies as runner-up). Others are a struggle to fill, like who to insult with the “Overrated” award.

In compiling this year’s list, I had the highest number of entries for the category, “Biggest Lie.” I chose the White House declaration that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby had nothing to do with leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent. They were the principal participants in the effort to discredit former ambassador Joe Wilson because he had raised doubts about one of the pillars of their argument for war, namely that Iraq had tried to buy yellowcake uranium to make a bomb.

Read the whole article here.

Comment: It's a strangely schizophrenic state for the United States to be in: on one side, you have Bush, Cheney and the gang loudly proclaiming "their reality," and on the other, you have more and more mainstream media outlets loudly proclaiming that Bush, Cheney, and the whole White House gang are out and out liars.

Two years ago, almost NONE of the mainstream media sources were calling Bush and Cheney liars; that was the purview of the alternative news sites and bloggers. But the issues have grown so large, so frightening that even the moderates and former Bush supporters are joining the general clamor for something to be done.

There's a problem, however, as Eleanor Clift points out above:
"The polls show that a majority of Americans no longer trust this team, which is why Bush and Cheney are hitting back hard at their critics. ... We have no mechanism to deal with a president who has lost the trust and confidence of the American people and has three years remaining in office. Impeachment is a nonissue; it’s not going to happen with Republicans in control of the House and Senate."

Recent polls (uncooked ones, that is) show that over 80 % of the American People want Bush impeached. But, as we pointed out a day or so ago, that's not the answer. If you impeach Bush, you get Cheney, if you impeach Cheney, you get Hastert, if you impeach Hastert, you get Stevens.

What we need is a way to get rid of an entire government.

The problem seems to be that our Founding Fathers did not include in their deliberations, any situation such as the United States is faced with today: a gang that has fixed elections, assassinated opposition, blackmailed and stacked the Congress to pass laws that essentially create a dictatorship.

Some other democratic governments have made provisions for just such contingencies. Typically, when parliaments vote 'no confidence,' or where it fails to vote confidence, a government must either: 1. resign, or 2. seek a parliamentary dissolution and request a General Election. We think that such provisions still leave something to be desired in that there is no way to factor in the voice of the people

In view of the situation, we here at Signs do have an idea. Since it is now obvious that 80 % or more of the American people want Bush OUT, it is not very likely that any of them will be voting Republican in the next congressional elections. If a Republican majority is returned to Congress, we can then be almost certain of vote rigging. So, the thing to do first is deluge all state governments with demands for voting systems that have a paper trail to ensure that no more elections are stolen.

Then, the people must put their energy into demanding new legislation. This legislation should be a bill introduced in Congress to the effect that a petition of citizens can invoke a national referendum of confidence/no confidence. Such a referendum will be 1 person = 1 vote, no "electoral college," no steps between the will of the people and the representatives of the people. If the will of the people is "no confidence" in the reigning government, they must all resign and a new election will be held. There ought to also be new legislation regarding elections, election financing, Congressional perks and power brokering.

So, here are some general ideas:

Government Should Be In The Hands Of Those Who Wish To Serve And Who Are Qualified By A Thorough Psychological Testing Program As Well As Extensive Background Investigation by something equivalent to a Grand Jury. Governing powers should certainly never be in the hands of those who are evaluated according to "electability" in terms of looks, or budget. Government should be made undesirable to those who seek money and power. Honor and the High Regard of the People should be the main rewards of statesmanship. Therefore, the following should be enacted as Constitutional Amendments:

A. Outlaw Expensive Political Campaigns. The Top Five qualified candidates should be given equal media representation gratis so that each can clearly state their positions and platforms. Money must be divorced from power in a Democracy.

B. Outlaw Lobbying And Special Interest Groups. Each Act Of Legislation should be clearly written so that all people can understand it,and no bills should be "conglomerates" where an unpopoular measure can be piggy-backed on a popular one.

C. All Elected Officials should be elected by Majority Vote of the People only. The Electoral College needs to be dismantled.

D. Salaries Of Elected Officials should reflect an average of the incomes of their constituents. In this way, they will have a better idea of how everybody else lives and will be more motivated to solve the problems of the people they serve.

Legislators and government officials should be provided with simple apartments, paid for by the government, where they can live while performing government functions if they must live away from their normal homes while doing so. Expensive residences, parties, cars, trips, and other so-called perks must be outlawed. Entertainment for visiting heads of state from other countries can be handled via special programs for same.

E. Outlaw Honorariums, Speaking Fees, Consulting Fees, Gifts etc, for elected officials while in office. If they can't live on their salaries, how do the expect anyone else to do so?

Such measures as the above are simple and would quickly result in social adjustments relating to government. With individual riches and power eliminated from the government equation, only those who truly seek to serve will be motivated to run for government office.

Naturally it is to be expected that great resistance to such ideas will issue from those possessing great wealth and power. The wealthy and powerful control not only the government, but also religions, social customs and social institutions. They have access to very clever theoreticians who invent very clever theories to justify everything they do. The result of these machinations can be seen all around us today. Never before has humanity been so precariously balanced on the edge of a chasm of fire, from which no one will emerge if we fall in.

Popular Theory holds that, while concentrated wealth may seem unfair, it is "good for economic prosperity." A couple of con-artists once made an Emperor a New set of clothes, too.

We believe in prosperity and comfort and freedom from want for all. Indeed, those who are more industrious and ambitious will naturally have more than others: that is the nature of a free market. We have no issues with that. However, we believe that those individuals who are less "equal" in terms of intellect or ambition, but who are still the majority of humanity, should be able to establish and maintain a basically comfortable and fulfilling lifestyle. The people who are content flipping burgers and collecting the trash should be able to live without stress, too.

Since our current major problems are actually Economic, we think immediate measures must be taken. These measures are based on the ideas of Dr. Ravi Batra, Professor Of Economics at Southern Methodist University.

A. Enact taxation in proportion to benefits received from the government. Since "Defense Of Our Way Of Life" is the Primary Benefit we receive, and is the major part of the Federal Budget, those who have the most to protect should pay the most taxes for that service.

Those who have accumulated great wealth in the United States have been vigorously protected at great expense of life limb by the common people from the time of The Revolutionary War until the present. That is to say, that the wealthy have been protected at the expense of the poor and middle classes and yet, the poor and middle classes are getting poorer and less able to survive while the rich are getting richer and sending more of the sons of the poor and middle classes off to die to enable the rich to get richer. For this reason, such a Wealth Tax should be retroactive when possible.

This Tax should be imposed on net worth including Stocks, Bonds, Real Estate, Precious Metals, Paintings Etc. An Exemption of an amount to equal twice the average cost of living in a given region should be allowed for everyone for personal and living expenses. The next double amount of the average cost of living would be taxed at 2%, the third at 3%, the fourth at 4%, and so on up to 10% of everything above 10 times double the average cost of living.

As can easily be seen, this would instantly remove the tax burden from the poor and Middle Classes entirely.

This Tax Rate would also generate revenues amounting to well over $300 Billion, based on $15 Trillion in total wealth.

This tax would apply to all foreign investors as well. This money should be used to immediately balance the Federal Budget. At the same time, government spending must be frozen and capital controls against moving money out of the country enacted.

Several things would result from this plan.

1. The tax would only fall on those who could afford to pay.

2. It would stimulate those of wealth to divest themselves of speculative paper and invest in actual industry. REAL jobs would be created and expanded.

B. Financial Institutions Must Be Regulated, and not by themselves as is the current situation with the so-called "Fed."

C. Charge Foreign Countries For Defense. It is cheaper for foreign governments to pay the U.S. than to establish and maintain their own standing armies. That is one of the reasons the U.S. has so many military bases all over the world. Ten years agoa, as much as $290. billion of the U.S. Defense Budget was spent on defense abroad. Today, that figure is so unbelievable that the U.S. is in imminent danger of economic collapse.

Following WW II, America offered a sefense umbrella to impoverished allies. At that time it was the world's largest banker. Those surpluses have declined turning America into the world's largest debtor. We can no longer compete in world trade because of our defense spending. Charging 1 To 2 percent of other nation's GNP for defense would bring in hundreds of millions annually. It can be said that the Iraq War is being fought on behalf of Israel, therefore, Israel should pay for it. Any wealthy individuals in the U.S. holding dual Israeli/American citizenship ought to pay double the Wealth Tax: once for the U.S. and once for Israel.

If other countries imposed a wealth tax as well, they would easily be able to bring their books into balance. But, as we have noted above, it is the wealthy who have risen to power on the blood, sweat and tears of the common man with the predictable result of today's embarrassing situation of the U.S. being stuck for the next three years with a president and administration that over 80% of the people do not want. It is the "love of money" for its own sake that has brought this evil on America.

In closing we would like to say: We believe in government of the people, by the people, and for the people - and we desire to see that it does not perish from the Earth!







Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Halle-freakin'-lujah!

A flicker of hope that sanity may yet prevail in the U.S. educational system. Aren't you tired of being the laughingstock of the world on this?

Blue Ibis

Judge rules against 'intelligent design'

Idea shouldn't be taught in science class in public school, judge rules
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:56 a.m. ET Dec. 20, 2005


HARRISBURG, Pa. - A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the "intelligent design" explanation for the origin of life cannot be taught in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district.

The Dover Area School Board violated the Constitution when it ordered that its biology curriculum must include "intelligent design," the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled.

The school board policy, adopted in October 2004, was believed to have been the first of its kind in the nation. Eight families then sued to have intelligent design removed.

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy," Jones wrote, "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

[It's ironic only if you don't realize these folks are taking a page from the Neocons. They set the pattern. Look at the touted reasoning for the Patriot Act, and then look how it's being applied.]

The board's attorneys said members sought to improve science education by exposing students to alternatives to Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection causing gradual changes over time; intelligent-design proponents argue that it cannot fully explain the existence of complex life forms.

The plaintiffs argued that intelligent design amount to a secular repackaging of creationism, which the courts have already ruled cannot be taught in public schools.

The Dover policy had required students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade biology lessons on evolution. The statement says Charles Darwin’s theory is "not a fact," has inexplicable "gaps," and refers students to an intelligent-design textbook, "Of Pandas and People," for more information.

Jones said advocates of intelligent design "have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors" and that he didn't believe the concept shouldn't be studied and discussed.

[Bona fide and deeply held beliefs -- also known as "wishful thinking" drives a lot of public policy these days, eh? Try Signs of the Times for a daily run-down on this phenomenon.]

"Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom," he wrote.

The dispute is the latest chapter in a long-running debate over the teaching of evolution dating back to the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which Tennessee biology teacher John T. Scopes was fined $100 for violating a state law that forbade teaching evolution. The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed his conviction on the narrow ground that only a jury trial could impose a fine exceeding $50 and the law was repealed in 1967.

Jones heard arguments in the fall during a six-week trial in which expert witnesses for each side debated intelligent design’s scientific merits. Other witnesses, including current and former school board members, disagreed over whether creationism was discussed in board meetings months before the curriculum change was adopted.

The controversy also divided the community in southwest Pennsylvania and galvanized voters to oust eight incumbent school board members who supported the policy in the Nov. 8 school board election. They were replaced by a slate of eight opponents who pledged to remove intelligent design from the science curriculum.

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.






Monday, December 19, 2005

Achtung!! An SS of Our Very Own

Do you feel safer now? A toe out of line and you could be the next "terrorist suspect" with your own personal security letter courtesy of the FBI and CIFA

I'm running out of the energy to be outraged . . . . . .

Blue Ibis

Testing the limits of wartime powers
Bush’s disclosure on domestic spying raises legal questions


ANALYSIS

By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer
The Washington Post
Updated: 12:56 a.m. ET Dec. 18, 2005

In his four-year campaign against al Qaeda, President Bush has turned the U.S. national security apparatus inward to secretly collect information on American citizens on a scale unmatched since the intelligence reforms of the 1970s.

The president's emphatic defense yesterday of warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens and residents marked the third time in as many months that the White House has been obliged to defend a departure from previous restraints on domestic surveillance. In each case, the Bush administration concealed the program's dimensions or existence from the public and from most members of Congress.

Since October, news accounts have disclosed a burgeoning Pentagon campaign for "detecting, identifying and engaging" internal enemies that included a database with information on peace protesters. A debate has roiled over the FBI's use of national security letters to obtain secret access to the personal records of tens of thousands of Americans. And now come revelations of the National Security Agency's interception of telephone calls and e-mails from the United States -- without notice to the federal court that has held jurisdiction over domestic spying since 1978.

Waging an adamant defense

Defiant in the face of criticism, the Bush administration has portrayed each surveillance initiative as a defense of American freedom. Bush said yesterday that his NSA eavesdropping directives were "critical to saving American lives" and "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution." After years of portraying an offensive waged largely overseas, Bush justified the internal surveillance with new emphasis on "the home front" and the need to hunt down "terrorists here at home."

Bush's constitutional argument, in the eyes of some legal scholars and previous White House advisers, relies on extraordinary claims of presidential war-making power. Bush said yesterday that the lawfulness of his directives was affirmed by the attorney general and White House counsel, a list that omitted the legislative and judicial branches of government. On occasion the Bush administration has explicitly rejected the authority of courts and Congress to impose boundaries on the power of the commander in chief, describing the president's war-making powers in legal briefs as "plenary" -- a term defined as "full," "complete," and "absolute."

["Things would be so much easier if this were a dictatorship. If I get to be the dictator, of course." --GWB]

A high-ranking intelligence official with firsthand knowledge said in an interview yesterday that Vice President Cheney, then-Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet and Michael V. Hayden, then a lieutenant general and director of the National Security Agency, briefed four key members of Congress about the NSA's new domestic surveillance on Oct. 25, 2001, and Nov. 14, 2001, shortly after Bush signed a highly classified directive that eliminated some restrictions on eavesdropping against U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

In describing the briefings, administration officials made clear that Cheney was announcing a decision, not asking permission from Congress. How much the legislators learned is in dispute.

Extent of policy shift disputed

Former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who chaired the Senate intelligence committee and is the only participant thus far to describe the meetings extensively and on the record, said in interviews Friday night and yesterday that he remembers "no discussion about expanding [NSA eavesdropping] to include conversations of U.S. citizens or conversations that originated or ended in the United States" -- and no mention of the president's intent to bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

"I came out of the room with the full sense that we were dealing with a change in technology but not policy," Graham said, with new opportunities to intercept overseas calls that passed through U.S. switches. He believed eavesdropping would continue to be limited to "calls that initiated outside the United States, had a destination outside the United States but that transferred through a U.S.-based communications system."

Graham said the latest disclosures suggest that the president decided to go "beyond foreign communications to using this as a pretext for listening to U.S. citizens' communications. There was no discussion of anything like that in the meeting with Cheney."

The high-ranking intelligence official, who spoke with White House permission but said he was not authorized to be identified by name, said Graham is "misremembering the briefings," which in fact were "very, very comprehensive." The official declined to describe any of the substance of the meetings, but said they were intended "to make sure the Hill knows this program in its entirety, in order to never, ever be faced with the circumstance that someone says, 'I was briefed on this but I had no idea that -- ' and you can fill in the rest."

By Graham's account, the official said, "it appears that we held a briefing to say that nothing is different . . . . Why would we have a meeting in the vice president's office to talk about a change and then tell the members of Congress there is no change?"

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), who was also present as then ranking Democrat of the House intelligence panel, said in a statement yesterday evening that the briefing described "President Bush's decision to provide authority to the National Security Agency to conduct unspecified activities." She said she "expressed my strong concerns" but did not elaborate.

Just one in a series of disclosures

The NSA disclosures follow exposure of two other domestic surveillance initiatives that drew shocked reactions from Congress and some members of the public in recent months.

Beginning in October, The Washington Post published articles describing a three-year-old Pentagon agency, the size and budget of which are classified, with wide new authority to undertake domestic investigations and operations against potential threats from U.S. residents and organizations against military personnel and facilities. The Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, began as a small policy-coordination office but has grown to encompass nine directorates and a staff exceeding 1,000. The agency's Talon database, collecting unconfirmed reports of suspicious activity from military bases and organizations around the country, has included "threat reports" of peaceful civilian protests and demonstrations.

CIFA has also been empowered with what the military calls "tasking authority" -- the ability to give operational orders -- over Army, Navy and Air Force units whose combined roster of investigators, about 4,000, is nearly as large as the number of FBI special agents assigned to counterterrorist squads. Pentagon officials said this month they had ordered a review of the program after disclosures, in The Post, NBC News and the washingtonpost.com Web log of William M. Arkin, that CIFA compiled information about U.S. citizens engaging in constitutionally protected political activity such as protests against military recruiting.

In November, The Post disclosed an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, using FBI demands for information known as "national security letters." Created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, the letters enabled secret FBI review of the private telephone and financial records of suspected foreign agents. The Bush administration's guidelines after the Patriot Act transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.

The Post reported that the FBI has issued tens of thousands of national security letters, extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans. Most of the U.S. residents and citizens whose records were screened, the FBI acknowledged, were not suspected of wrongdoing.

Surge in domestic surveillance

The burgeoning use of national security letters coincided with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks -- and to share those private records widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed.

Yesterday's acknowledgment of warrantless NSA eavesdropping brought the most forthright statement from the president that his war on terrorism is targeting not only "enemies across the world" but "terrorists here at home." In the "first war of the 21st century," he said, "one of the most critical battlefronts is the home front."

Bush sidestepped some of the implications by citing examples only of foreigners who infiltrated the United States -- Saudi citizens Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers. But the most fundamental changes undertaken in the Bush administration's surveillance policy are the ones that have broadened the powers of the NSA, FBI and Pentagon to spy on "U.S. persons" -- American citizens, permanent residents and corporations -- on American soil.

Anxiety about threats, countermeasures

Roger Cressey, who was principal deputy to the White House counterterrorism chief when terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center and a wing of the Pentagon, said "the amount of domestic surveillance is an admission of fundamental gaps in our understanding of what is happening in our country."

Those anxieties about unknown threats have ebbed and flowed since World War I, according to a bipartisan government commission chaired by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. President Woodrow Wilson warned against "the poison of disloyalty" and another loyalty campaign created black lists of accused Communists in the 1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Army and the NSA collected files and eavesdropped on thousands of anti-Vietnam War and civil rights activists.

Congress asserted itself in the 1970s, imposing oversight requirements and passing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said FISA "expressly made it a crime for government officials 'acting under color of law' to engage in electronic eavesdropping 'other than pursuant to statute.' " FISA described itself, along with the criminal wiretap statute, as "the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . may be conducted."

No president before Bush mounted a frontal challenge to Congress's authority to limit espionage against Americans. In a Sept. 25, 2002, brief signed by then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, the Justice Department asserted "the Constitution vests in the President inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority."

'We only do it on Tuesdays'

The brief made no distinction between suspected agents who are U.S. citizens and those who are not. Other Bush administration legal arguments have said the "war on terror" is global and indefinite in scope, effectively removing traditional limits of wartime authority to the times and places of imminent or actual battle.

"There is a lot of discussion out there that we shouldn't be dividing Americans and foreigners, but terrorists and non-terrorists," said Gordon Oehler, a former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center who served on last year's special commission assessing U.S. intelligence.

By law, according to University of Chicago scholar Geoffrey Stone, the differences are fundamental: Americans have constitutional protections that are enforceable in court whether their conversations are domestic or international.

[Really?? Tell that to Jose Padilla]

Bush's assertion that eavesdropping takes place only on U.S. calls to overseas phones, Stone said, "is no different, as far as the law is concerned, from saying we only do it on Tuesdays."

Michael J. Woods, who was chief of the FBI's national security law unit when Bush signed the NSA directive, described the ongoing program as "very dangerous." In the immediate aftermath of a devastating attack, he said, the decision was a justifiable emergency response. In 2006, "we ought to be past the time of emergency responses. We ought to have more considered views now. . . . We have time to debate a legal regime and what's appropriate."

Staff writers Charles Lane and Walter Pincus and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

© 2005 MSNBC.com







Sunday, December 11, 2005

WHAAAAAA!!!! Don't tell me what to do!

Okay. There's just nothing to say after finding something like this, other than maybe "please tell me it's a joke". Get me off this continent. Hell, get me off this planet.

Blue Ibis

Bush - Constitution
'Just A Goddamned
Piece Of Paper'

By Doug Thompson
Capitol Hill Blue
12-9-5

Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.

Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

"I don't give a goddamn," Bush retorted. "I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."

"Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said. "There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution."

"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"

I've talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution "a goddamned piece of paper."

And, to the Bush Administration, the Constitution of the United States is little more than toilet paper stained from all the shit that this group of power-mad despots have dumped on the freedoms that "goddamned piece of paper" used to guarantee.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, while still White House counsel, wrote that the "Constitution is an outdated document."

Put aside, for a moment, political affiliation or personal beliefs. It doesn't matter if you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent. It doesn't matter if you support the invasion or Iraq or not. Despite our differences, the Constitution has stood for two centuries as the defining document of our government, the final source to determine ­ in the end ­ if something is legal or right.

Every federal official ­ including the President ­ who takes an oath of office swears to "uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says he cringes when someone calls the Constitution a "living document."

""Oh, how I hate the phrase we have-a 'living document,'" Scalia says. "We now have a Constitution that means whatever we want it to mean. The Constitution is not a living organism, for Pete's sake."

As a judge, Scalia says, "I don't have to prove that the Constitution is perfect; I just have to prove that it's better than anything else."

President Bush has proposed seven amendments to the Constitution over the last five years, including a controversial amendment to define marriage as a "union between a man and woman." Members of Congress have proposed some 11,000 amendments over the last decade, ranging from repeal of the right to bear arms to a Constitutional ban on abortion.

Scalia says the danger of tinkering with the Constitution comes from a loss of rights.

"We can take away rights just as we can grant new ones," Scalia warns. "Don't think that it's a one-way street."

And don't buy the White House hype that the USA Patriot Act is a necessary tool to fight terrorism. It is a dangerous law that infringes on the rights of every American citizen and, as one brave aide told President Bush, something that undermines the Constitution of the United States.

But why should Bush care? After all, the Constitution is just "a goddamned piece of paper."

Monday, December 05, 2005

Gobsmacked . . . . .

There are times when you can read/hear things and your brain just can't seem to process what your eyes/ears are presenting to it. As in John McCain, WHO HAS EXPERIENCED BEING TORTURED saying [below]"while he would not compromise on the torture language, said they were in discussions "about other aspects of this to try to get an agreement."

SAY WHAT? WHAT "OTHER ASPECTS"??

It has been well established that any information gained by this disgusting activity is nearly always useless. People will say anything to stop the infliction of pain.

WHAT IS THERE TO DISCUSS???? WE ARE TALKING ABOUT INFLICTING PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHYSICAL PAIN ON HUMAN BEINGS! And no weaseling that "we didn't actually do it, Syria/Egypt/toady of your choice did". If the US set up the conditions with their rendition process, they are responsible.

And for a man with his history and experiences, what sort of hold do "they" have on him, that he could be making such absurd statements?

Blue Ibis

P.S. For an insight into how the world can be led into such madness, even though populated by mostly reasonable human beings, see Laura Knight-Jadczyks' new article on Ponerology - the study of evil



McCain: No compromise on torture ban
Arizona senator appears on NBC's 'Meet the Press'


The Associated Press
Updated: 2:02 p.m. ET Dec. 4, 2005


WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain, a prisoner of war who was tortured in Vietnam, said Sunday he will refuse to yield on his demands that the White House agree with his proposed ban on the use of torture to extract information from suspected terrorists.

"I won't," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press" when asked whether he would compromise with the Bush administration. He is insisting on his language that no person in U.S. custody should be subject to "cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment."

The Arizona Republican said he had met several times with the president's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, on the issue, and both McCain and Hadley said Sunday they were working toward an agreement.

Hadley, on ABC's "This Week," repeated President Bush's assertion that the United States does not torture and follows international conventions on the treatment of prisoners.

He added, "We're trying to find a way ... where we can strike the balance between being aggressive to protect the country against the terrorists, and, at the same time, comply with the law."

"We're working it. We're not there yet," he said on "Fox News Sunday."

McCain, while saying he would not compromise on the torture language, said they were in discussions "about other aspects of this to try to get an agreement." He did not elaborate.

McCain, a Navy flier who was captured by the North Vietnamese and tortured during the Vietnam War, sponsored an anti-torture measure that has passed the Senate by a 90-9 vote.

But the White House said it could not accept restrictions that might prevent interrogators from gaining information vital to the nation's security and has threatened a presidential veto of any bill that contained the McCain language.

[Guys, if "We don't torture!", then why threaten the veto? Or even, why do we need this bill in the first place???]

McCain noted that intelligence gained through torture can be unreliable and he said the practice hurts the U.S. reputation abroad.

© 2005 MSNBC.com







Friday, November 18, 2005

Words From a Real Mother

Though I've been following the debacle that is the Iraq war from the beginning, I somehow missed this completely heartless remark made by the mother of our "president". No wonder he can send so many beloved sons and husbands to die for nothing. How could you ever feel compassion for anothers with such a background?

Blue Ibis

Open Letter to George's Mama

By Cindy Sheehan
16 Nov 2005

Dear Barbara,

On April 04, 2004, your oldest child killed my oldest child, Casey Austin Sheehan.

Unlike your oldest child, my son was a marvelous person who joined the military to serve his country and to try and make the world a better place. Casey didn't want to go to Iraq, but he knew his duty. Your son went AWOL from a glamour unit. George couldn't even handle the Alabama Air National Guard. Casey joined the Army before your son became commander in chief. We all know that your son was thinking of invading Iraq as early as 1999. Casey was a dead man before George even became president and before he even joined the Army in May of 2000.

I raised Casey and my other children to use their words to solve problems and conflicts. I told my four children from the time that they were small that it is ALWAYS wrong to kick, bite, hit, scratch, pull hair, etc. If the smaller children couldn't find the words to solve their conflicts without violence, I always encouraged them to find a mediator like a parent, older sibling, or teacher to help them find the words.

Did you teach George to use his words and not his violence to solve problems? It doesn't appear so. Did you teach him that killing other people for profits and oil is ALWAYS wrong? Obviously you did not. I also used to wash my children's mouth out with soap on the rare occasion that they lied…did you do that to George? Can you do it now? He has lied and he is still lying. Saddam did not have WMD's or ties with al-Qaeda and the Downing Street Memos prove that your son knew this before he invaded Iraq.

On August 3rd, 2005, your son said that he killed my son and the other brave and honorable Americans for a "noble cause." Well, Barbara, mother to mother, that angered me. I don't consider invading and occupying another country that was proven not to be a threat to the USA is a noble cause. I don't think invading a country, killing its innocent citizens, and ruining the infrastructure to make your family and your family-friendly war profiteers rich is a noble cause.

So I went down to Crawford in August to ask your son what noble cause did he kill my son for. He wouldn't speak with me. I think that showed incredibly bad manners. Do you think a president, even if it is your son, should be so inaccessible to his employers? Especially one of his bosses whose life George has devastated so completely?

I have been to the White House several times since August to try and meet with George and I am going back to Crawford next week. Do you think you can call him and ask him to do the right thing and bring the troops home from this illegal and immoral war in Iraq that he carelessly started? I hear you are one of the few people he still talks to. He won't speak to his father, who knew the difficulties and impossibilities of going into Iraq and that's why he didn't go there in the 1st Gulf War. If you won't tell him to bring the troops home, can you at least urge him to meet with me?

You said this in 2003, a little over a year before my dear, sweet Casey was killed by your son's policies:

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" (Good Morning America, March 18, 2003)

Now I have something to tell you, Barbara. I didn't want to hear about deaths or body bags either. On April 04, 2004, three Army officers came to my house to tell me that Casey was killed in Iraq. I fell on the floor screaming and begging the cruel Angel of Death to take me too. But the Angel of Death that took my son is your son.

Casey came home in a flag draped coffin on April 10th. I used to have a beautiful mind too. Now my mind is filled with images of seeing his beautiful body in his casket and memories of burying my brave and honest boy before his life really began. Casey's beautiful mind was ended by an insurgent's bullet to his brain, but your son might as well have pulled the trigger.


Besides encouraging your son to have some honesty and courage and to finally do the right thing, don't you think you owe me and every other Gold Star parent an apology for that cruel and careless remark you made?

Your son's amazingly ignorant, arrogant, and reckless policies in Iraq are responsible for so much sorrow and trouble in this world.

Can you make him stop? Do it before more mothers' lives are needlessly and cruelly harmed. There have been too many worldwide already.

Sincerely,

Cindy Sheehan
Mother of Casey Sheehan
Founder and President of Gold Star Families for Peace
Founder of Camp Casey Peace Foundation

Comment: Read again Sheehan's words:

You said this in 2003, a little over a year before my dear, sweet Casey was killed by your son's policies:

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" (Good Morning America, March 18, 2003)

Now I have something to tell you, Barbara. I didn't want to hear about deaths or body bags either. On April 04, 2004, three Army officers came to my house to tell me that Casey was killed in Iraq. I fell on the floor screaming and begging the cruel Angel of Death to take me too. But the Angel of Death that took my son is your son.

Casey came home in a flag draped coffin on April 10th. I used to have a beautiful mind too. Now my mind is filled with images of seeing his beautiful body in his casket and memories of burying my brave and honest boy before his life really began. Casey's beautiful mind was ended by an insurgent's bullet to his brain, but your son might as well have pulled the trigger.

Aside from being a very powerful indictment of Bush and Co., Sheehan's words are as close to the truth of the matter as you are likely to get. The sad reality is that there is nothing inflammatory about calling the current member of the American executive "murderers", it is simply a cold hard fact. The U.S. population, like that of Britain, Australia, Italy and many other countries, is being governed by men and women who are very clearly guilty of war crimes.








Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Fighting the Good Fight

An update on one of my favourite truth-speakers, George Galloway. Remember him? He bearded the lion in the den of the Congress, daring anyone of them to charge him in the oil for food scandal, then administered a collective tongue-lashing to the feckless rubes we elected to Congress due to our laziness and stupidity. We can only dream of a statesmen that would say what needs to be said about our governments abysmal actions worldwide. If you want to talk embezzelment, let's start at home. Halliburton, anyone?

George has dared Congress to charge him formally with these crimes. He knows that they can't make them stick. From his detractors we've heard not a single subastatiated fact. Just a smear campaign that puts words in the mouth of a prisoner of the US. Some Independent Inquiry Commission, huh? It seems the US is perfectly happy to use the UN when it's playing along with the US agenda

Pity no one is paying attention.

Blue Ibis

Aziz denies naming British MP in graft probe: lawyer

By Dina al-Wakeel Sat Oct 29, 5:18 PM ET

AMMAN (Reuters) - Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz has denied telling investigators that maverick British politician George Galloway profited from the U.N. oil-for-food program for Iraq, Aziz's lawyer said on Saturday.

U.S. congressional investigators said this week they had evidence that Galloway profited from the defunct U.N. program created to protect Iraqis from the harsh effects of sanctions against their government.

The U.N.-established Independent Inquiry Committee, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, also named Galloway in a report issued this week as one of several politicians who were given favors by Saddam.

Congressional investigators said that, under questioning Aziz, said he had discussed oil allocations with Galloway and confirmed the authenticity of a letter in which the British member of parliament requested a bigger oil allocation.

"These are lies...he (Aziz) denied this," Aziz's lawyer Badia Aref told Reuters.

"It is part of a media campaign aimed at smearing Galloway's reputation," said the lawyer, who last saw Aziz on Tuesday.

Aref said Aziz confirmed that Iraq had participated with some $45,000 in the Mariam Appeal cancer charity set up by Galloway, but only to help sick Iraqi children.

However, Tom Steward, spokesman for U.S. Senator Norm Coleman who chairs the Senate subcommittee on investigations, said Aziz's retraction was suspect.

"Chairman Volcker believes Tareq Aziz changed his testimony because Iraqi prosecutors were breathing down his neck and concluded Aziz's retraction is not credible," he said in a statement. He said there was "a solid bedrock of evidence" suggesting Galloway received oil-for-food money.

Galloway himself told the subcommittee earlier this year that he was not an oil trader and had never spoken to Aziz about Iraq providing financial support for the Mariam Appeal.

He has also rejected the latest U.S. accusations that he profited from the oil-for-food program.

Congressional investigators say Galloway personally solicited and was granted oil allocations from the Iraqi government for 23 million barrels from 1999 to 2003. They say Galloway's wife received about $150,000 in connection with the allocations and the Mariam fund received at least $446,000.

Aziz, a Christian who was the public face of Saddam's government abroad, was arrested after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. No formal charges have been brought against him yet. "Nothing is clear yet...the man cannot remain in these conditions...his health is deteriorating," Aref said.


Comment: Armed only with the truth, Galloway so infuriated the U.S. ruling class at the Senate hearing in May this year that they will stop at nothing to have their revenge. Of course, we shouldn't be surprised that the Bush regime would deliberately fabricate evidence in order to further their political and personal goals, after all, look at the last 5 years.







Thursday, October 27, 2005

Is This Why We Support "Our Troops"?

Yet another reason for the US citizen to hang their head in shame. That is, if they were even paying attention. Did Cindy Sheehan's son and so many other sons and daughters die to defend this sort of disgusting arrogance?

Once again, thanks to the Signs Team for bringing this to the blosphere. G-d knows we'd never hear it on CNBC or FOX.

Blue Ibis

U.S.: License to Abuse Would Put CIA Above the Law


Source: Human Rights Watch
26 Oct 2005

(New York, October 26, 2005) – The Bush administration is now the only government in the world to claim a legal justification for mistreating prisoners during interrogations, Human Rights Watch said today. The administration recently approached members of the U.S. Congress to seek a waiver that would allow the CIA to use cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment on detainees in U.S. custody outside the United States.

While many other governments practice torture and other forms of mistreatment and have records of abuse far worse than the United States, no other government currently claims that such abuse is legally permissible, Human Rights Watch said.

"The administration is setting a dangerous example for the world when it claims that spy agencies are above the law," said Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch. "Congress should reject this proposal outright. Otherwise, the United States will have no standing to demand humane treatment if an American falls into the hands of foreign intelligence services."

Earlier this month, in a 90-9 vote, the U.S. Senate approved a measure sponsored by Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham that would prohibit the military and CIA from using "cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment" in the case of any detainee, anywhere in the world.

But last week, Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA director Porter Goss met with Sen. McCain to propose a presidential waiver for the proposed legislation. The proposed waiver states that the measure "shall not apply with respect to clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States, that are carried out by an element of the United States government other than the Department of Defense."
[...]







Monday, October 17, 2005

Don't Get Too Excited

I've been traveling and will be commenting on that experience soon. In the mean time here is another excellent op/ed from the Signs of the Times team.

Blue Ibis

False Hopes
Signs of the Times

Now that Bush and his administration are in deep trouble -- his approval ratings are way down, the war in Iraq is so far out of control that only the most rabid Bushistas are not seeing it, the White House is under investigation for leaking secrets, Hurricane Katrina brought to the screens of CNN and Fox the structural racism of American society and the Bush Administration's lack of concern for the plight of the poor and Blacks, gas prices are at historical highs, the US economy is on the verge of a major crash after being kept on life support via consumer debt, and stories that have long been found only on the Internet about Bush's drinking and drug problems, not to mention his abusive treatment of staff, are finally making it into the mainstream press, and so on --, we are going to see a lot of proposals for what should be done. What will be common to most of them is that they will completely miss the mark.

The current investigation of Patrick Fitzgerald, should it finish by handing down indictments to major figures of the Bush Reich, has been focused on a very small and relatively unimportant element of the litany of horror stories that have been such an integral part of this administration since it stole its way into office through a Supreme Court fiat. Outing a CIA spy is really a trivial matter. They should all be outed. There are reports, however, that Fitzgerald may be enlarging his investigation to look at the so-called faulty intelligence planted by the neo-cons in the press prior to launching their war on Iraq.

But still...

If Karl Rove or Scooter Libby, or even George W. himself, were to be named by Fitzgerald, prosecuted, and even convicted, do we actually think it would change anything? Do we think that any of these three men were actually involved in the organisation or carrying out of the events of 9/11?

We think not.

So if the public face of the new American fascism is removed, what about all of the others, the real power, the names we don't know? They'll still be in place. And this is why we think that all the hoopla will be much ado about nothing, sound and fury signifying yet another hoodwinking of the American public into believing the "system works", just like with Watergate and the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Well, yeah, it does. It works very well for those in control. It just doesn't work for what it claims: protecting and ensuring the freedom of the US people.

However, there is another degree of control that no one is talking about, a level of control that is so outlandish and preposterous for most of us that we laugh it off and consider the person making such a proposition as deranged. Yes, friends, we are speaking of the control that comes from hyperdimensional realities and our hyperdimensional overlords. You remember them; they consider us as livestock to be bred for their needs. If coming to the conclusion that the neocons and Israel were behind 9/11 is a bridge too far, how much further is it for the man on the street to consider that we are ruled by time-traveling beings who appear to us as gods and aliens in order to better manipulate us? Who have filled our heads with monotheism in order to divide us, to set us one against another, and if that doesn't work, then, whup, let's bring out the New Age and the occult, black magic and paganism, Planet Nibiru and the other fads of millennial thinking.

If you were holed up in the White House and saw that you were becoming encircled by enemy forces, what would you do? It is easy to suggest that Bush & Co could order another "terrorist" attack on the country, however, it is clear that Bush is but a puppet when it comes to such things. What if his puppet masters didn't want to help him out? What if he has become expendable?

That doesn't exclude the possibility that Bush and Rove could have their black ops experts pull off a little attack of their own, the way MI5 put terror back on the front pages in July in London, but it is risky because not everyone has the experience and know-how of Israeli intelligence when it comes to false flag operations. London was to a certain extent a bungled affair. Too many loose ends. It is only the complicity of the press, that watch dog that seems to forever feast on a piece of stray meat thrown its way when it should be doing its job, that the false flag nature of the bombings haven't come to light in the mainstream media.

We seem to have entered a period of turbulence, perhaps a phase transition. The new state into which we pass will depend upon the energy that is put into the system now, while it is beginning to boil. There are two choices, either the energy of creation or the energy of entropy. Creation is intimately linked to our ability to see the world as it is, free from any and all illusion. In our case, these illusions have to do with the social programming we receive in school, the emotional programming that comes from our relationships in our families, with our friends. If we continue to believe the lies we have been fed all of our lives, then we will remain embedded in a reality of lies, of chaos, of disorder, violence, hunger, and aggression. We will be swept down into the maelstrom of entropy.

Subjectivity is our enemy. It is what holds us prisoner to our personalities, unable to reach deeply inside to touch our real selves.

Only by staring the world in its face, working through the emotional chains that hold us, consciously revisiting our upbringing and identifying our programming, and then learning how to make a different choice when the programme starts to run will be be able to face the world in front of us calmly, steadfastly, and with the clear gaze that will enable us to respond creatively.