rwcole @ 155

Gore fucked up big time in pickin Lieverdoodle- and that was not his only mistake.

Oh, Lieberman. That, apparently, was forced on Gore by Tipper and some of Gore’s soon-to-be former DLC friends. (Gore was a founding member, but started growing apart from the main DLCer a bit over a decade ago; Lieberman, on the other hand, has always been their darling boy.) Gore recognized that Lieberman was the boat anchor that dragged him down, which is why he backed Dean in 2003.

Did not like Lieberman – but he helped Gore win FLA.

Peterr @ 192

My use of “intelligent design” and “evolved” was ironic. I find the various conspiracy theories here to be just as credible as the intelligent design nonsense.

Option 1: Bush (and his cronies) planned and executed the WTC/Pentagon attacks in order to make their friends rich, instigate a war, and all those other things, and did so in a manner so wily, so competent, and so brilliant that no one can pin it on them; or

Option 2: Bush is incompetent, Bin Laden did indeed plan those attacks, and BushCo’s reactions made such a mess of things that all kinds of others found ways to exploit the situation to suit their own advantage, from Hamas to Halliburton.

Occam’s Razor says it’s Option 2.

Hmmmm….I vote for door number 1. The reason being….everything they have managed to achieve ever since, plus, the plethora of evidence…including the unprecedented fall of 3 steel frame buildings on the same day in history…the lack of evidence in the Pentagon wreckage…the thermite evidence….the war games on 9/11….the FEMA prepositioning on the docks on 9/11…the witnesses to the numerous explosions on 9/11…the credible evidence presented by the 9/11 scholars….just to name a few off the top of my head. Until those are addressed to my satisfaction…my personal jury is out.

There was no “thermite evidence”….no thermite traces were found in any of the buildings by the UC Davis group sent to sample the ground and air quality. Neither did they find any nuclear materials, BTW.

What explosions? Explosions have distinguishing features not found in the photos or videos of 9/11. The images captured show dust and other blow-outs expected from a massive building collapse.

The “experts” are not experts in the areas that they are actually making pronouncements about. They lack degrees or credentials in those areas. The Materials Scientists have other, quite reasonable, explanations.
There si a THIRD EXPLANATION not lis5ed above.

That the Bush Administration was aware of a potential attack on the WTC (and perhaps the Pentagon), and instead of being “incompetant” actually did undertake some acts to “respond” AFTER the attack. That would mean that they intended to allow the plan to go forward, which would allow the institution of a National Security emergency in the country and allow them to pin it on Iraq.

In this scenario it was willful “negligence”. Sort of like a poison taster not tasting the food because they themselves want the despot assassinated. The didn’t put the poison there, but they know it’s likely to happen.

But they never realized that the Al Qaida attack would be so successful and major. They likely thought that it would have limited casualties or fail and only kill the passengers of one plane. They underestimated the scale and success of the attacks.

Harbi is not legless, but is a paraplegic, and must be carried or use a wheelchair. His injuries occurred in Chechnya.

In addition to the major al Qaida figures in the video, there are also many of bin Laden’s children. The actual video may have been taken surrepticiously, or at least unofficially. There are small sections in it where the videographer is caught putting on his turban as bin Laden enters without warning. In addition the video had to be editted, as it contains a section from the meeting interpolated into an earlier section with a crashed US helicopter.

Some believe that the effort was a “sting” to catch bin Laden’s confession. But it’s clear that bin Laden doesn’t deny or challenge the Sheykh’s story suggests that he was forewarned about the 9/11 attacks.

OBL has not been seen live since before 911.

That’s not what his followers say.

Sander O…do you have some special knowledge of what bin Laden looked like before 9/11? The known interviews with bin Laden demonstrated his animosity towards the US, and his general association of the US with Israel…and his anger that the US were supporting the Saudi Royals and had military bases “with infidels” in “Al Jazeera” (the Arabian Peninsula). An organization representing the information wing of Al Qaida presented a tape that declared war upon the US a year before the Al Qaida attacks on the US Embassy’s in East Africa.

SanderO @ 85

The tapes of OBL are probably frauds.

Then there are the tapes, some of which admittedly may actually have been earlier recordings that emerged later. Or with sound footage that accompanies an older video with no sound footage. These more recent tapes are most likely efforts by al Qaida itself (or fellow idealogues) to suggest that bin Laden is healthy and still in control.

But it’s simply mind-boggling that the CIA produced tapes like the one where he admits fore-knowledge of the 9/11 attacks with Saudi cleric Sheykh al-Ghamdi. That meeting also had images of not only al Ghamdi (a member of the same Eastern Saudi clan that spawned four of the 9/11 hijackers), but also of Dr. Zawahari (al Qaida’s #2), and the quite famous al-Qaida spokesman. There were other al Qaida figures in that video as well.

To fake this would require that the CIA obtain actors for all of these individuals, not simply bin Laden. They would have to be voiced coached. They would have to be trained in Arabic, and in the case of Zawahiri, the Egyptian dialect. Sheykh al Ghamdi speaks in the rather peculiar dialect found in his tribe, a dialect hat initially confused translators, until a proficient speaker showed up.

Al Ghamdi is also legless, from injuries he sustained in the Majuhadeen war vs. the USSR. He has to be carried everywhere. He is carried into the council with bin Laden by his ever-present aides.

To find someone like him would be amazingly against all probability. To place him together with dead-ringer lookalike actors able to play al l these other characters is simply too incredible to believe.

This video was not presented for “public consumption”. It was made for the Sheykh’s own needs. Unlike the other tapes it rambles on topics that aren’t all that interesting unless one is a Muslim cleric. But it does shown that both bin Laden and al Ghamdi was aware of a (but not the precise) plot and it’s participants (they were Clan members…some with his last name). In fact, bin Laden had told al Ghamdi to await the world shattering events on CNN late that night. So he watched it with a large number of people he had invited. They cheered like it was a football match.

Bin Laden uses the names of several of the hijackers, calls them martyrs. This wasn’t merely something that suggests that bin Laden was “retrospectively” claiming support for the attacks, or merely supporting those that undertook them. It’s a demonstration that he was aware of the specific individuals involved and even gave al Ghandi, in advance, the time that they would occur on 9/11.

Of course, al Ghamdi indicates he “dreamed” about the actual attacks, but it’s essentially a statement that he really wasn’t aware of the precise plot until it was broadcast worldwide. Why would the CIA include something that would exonerate al Ghamdi? Why not go the whole hog?

Yet you say this “confession” video is faked? And the rationale is that YOU really know what bin Laden looks like…and that it’s an actor???

CTuttle @ 192

They didn’t stand by, they enabled it by busting down the barriers between Banks and the Financial market, in that the Banks could bundle the mortgages and put them up for bids… Previously that was solely the Banks’ sphere… Coupled with defunding the SEC and deregulating much of the oversight of the Government, we ended up with the mess we’re in…

But that’s what I don’t understand. They are all supposed to be into financial market stability but they allow a crisis to occur that was easily preventable and that they could see coming for between 2 to 5 years. It’s just mindboggling.

The 2001,2,3 recession impact had the potential to disrupt the continuity of the BusChen regime, much as it does now. My sense is that the consumer was the preferred conduit of financial liquidity — they spend freely when their “disposable funds” are augmented by equity extraction. Ergo — “go shopping”.

A happy consumer is a compliant and politically supportive consumer.

That, of course is the challenge now — to put Humpty Dumpty’s credit card back in business. The political perogative of maintaining power at all costs trumped financial sanity as the funding floodgates obliged both the political continuity of the regulators and the investment objectives by the purchasers of the opaque, but profitable asset backed securities which had a slightly higher yield over the lowered Fed funds rate. The punch bowl only had to last long enough to keep the political machine functioning. They know it has gone bust now but there is nothing left to do but try to bail out the banks…

Na gonna happen. Bye bye BusChen. Recession now says a new Repbulican administration is forming. Pity.

OK, this is where I start opining that the Martians were behind 9/11 but that they were being secretly manipulated by the Neptunians or possibly the Kreeg from the planet Vorcast. It’s so difficult to tell them apart, you know. It could have been the one or the other. Both have a common anti-Earth agenda.

Heh! You got it, Hugh.

Some people just keep picking up Occam’s Razor at the wrong end and then wondering why their fingers are bloody.

Things Come Undone @ 215

News Media readership/viewership has been going down the whole time. By supporting a rightwing message these jokers have been killing newsmedia profits. Imagine what Newsmedia profits would be if the same percentage of people read the newspaper watched the news as did in the 50’s.
Sure cable is taking away viewers or are they? During the writters strike you would expect the news ratings to go up I’m betting KO goes way up the rest not so much.

MSNBC gave the game away when they cancelled Donahue’s short-lived show even though it had the best ratings of any MSNBC show and had a rapidly growing audience. They replaced him with Joe Scarborough, who took something like two years to approach the ratings Donahue got straight out of the gate.

At some point they have to choose between subsidizing right-wing propaganda and actually doing what’s best for their company.

Sounds like we would have a shareholder lawsuit. If we were shareholders I invest opposite the GOP.
I don’t think corporate welfare profits are sustainable. Other GOP companies like Wallmart are immoral.

News Media readership/viewership has been going down the whole time. By supporting a rightwing message these jokers have been killing newsmedia profits. Imagine what Newsmedia profits would be if the same percentage of people read the newspaper watched the news as did in the 50’s.
Sure cable is taking away viewers or are they? During the writters strike you would expect the news ratings to go up I’m betting KO goes way up the rest not so much.

MSNBC gave the game away when they cancelled Donahue’s short-lived show even though it had the best ratings of any MSNBC show and had a rapidly growing audience. They replaced him with Joe Scarborough, who took something like two years to approach the ratings Donahue got straight out of the gate.

At some point they have to choose between subsidizing right-wing propaganda and actually doing what’s best for their company.

My use of “intelligent design” and “evolved” was ironic. I find the various conspiracy theories here to be just as credible as the intelligent design nonsense.

Option 1: Bush (and his cronies) planned and executed the WTC/Pentagon attacks in order to make their friends rich, instigate a war, and all those other things, and did so in a manner so wily, so competent, and so brilliant that no one can pin it on them; or

Option 2: Bush is incompetent, Bin Laden did indeed plan those attacks, and BushCo’s reactions made such a mess of things that all kinds of others found ways to exploit the situation to suit their own advantage, from Hamas to Halliburton.

Occam’s Razor says it’s Option 2.

For those who don’t know about William of Ockham, the guy who gave us “Occam’s Razor”: He was a medieval English Franciscan friar and logician, who contributed much to the intellectual seedbed that would form the basis for the Renaissance a century later.

Occam’s Razor is the principle that given a choice of several explanations for a given thing, the simplest and most logical one is generally the correct one. Or, as William himself stated it:

Frustra fit per plura, quod fieri potest per pauciora.
It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.
or
Essentia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.

Eureka Springs @ 33

I find it difficult to believe al Q or the Taliban really put a hurt on the opium trade considering how strong it appears to be from the get go of our invasion.. It never stops, imo. The players may change but the cash cow continues.

Al Quieda was publicly for this I agree in private they probably ignored it, amoung themselves.
But for rival tribes zero tolerance no state tolerates rival power bases to itself and opium can certainly buy you rival power status.

The Taliban did reduce opium SALES…but they actually never reduced crop production.

Essentially they tried to place it under their control, rather than under the disparate control of the Warlords. By trying to place it under their authority they could reap the tax benefits directly while weakening rivals. Thus they could keep the prices high, while exporting smaller amounts.

There were several cases of opium smuggling traced to cargo the Taliban owned national airline before Clinton and the UN terminated their flights as part of the sanctions placed on them for sheltering bin Laden. The Taliban started storing huge quantities of surplus opium paste in warehouses at that point.