I’m not sure whether he’ll be labelled crazy, but you can bet the farm that he’s gonna be labelled a liar.

Which is of course true, since they all were.

We all have to learn never again to say “I don’t think they would do that.” about nefarious if not treasonous political activities of the GOP. We should have learned it from Ronald Reagan, the master, whose operatives negotiated the delay in the release of the Iranian hostages. Or maybe its our fault for not insisting on investigation and impeachment for that episode of treason.

Ashcroft’s spokesman already suggested it’s time for Tom Ridge to use his famous duct tape.

Guess it is our fault then, because I still can’t for the life of me figure out why the hell Bush and/or Cheney weren’t impeached, and why in the hell neither is facing any kind of charges now.

If they can get away with torture, warrentless wiretapping, assassinations, and ending habeas corpus for an AMERICAN CITIZEN ARRESTED ON AMERICAN SOIL, then what, what incentive is there for ANY President (including this one) to ever follow the rule of law???

what incentive is there for ANY President (including this one) to ever follow the rule of law???

There isn’t any. This has been another case of simple answers to simple questions.

Compared to all the other treasonous crimes of the Bush Administration, manipulating the fear codes seems kind of quaint.

Sadly.

IOKIYAR

EXCELLENT post!! Way to go Blue Texan!!

The evidence for the treasonous incompetence, cynical opportunism, corruption and just plain lawbreaking by the Bush/Cheney cartel is all around us. Yet our craven corporate media still refuse to recognize this. What the hell would it take? Darth Cheney eating a live baby on network television? Nah, that probably wouldn’t do it either. Bill O’Reilly would insist it was a Muslim terrorist baby.

The best lie so far

“We went over backwards repeatedly and with great discipline to make sure politics did not influence any national security and homeland security decisions,” former White House chief of staff Andy Card told POLITICO. “The clear instructions were to make sure politics never influenced anything.”

I agree. It wasn’t just Dean and it wasn’t just the political use of threat levels. As you point out in your next comment, it was everything about the Bush/Cheney Administration. If impeachment ever meant anything, it should have been applied to them. Obama could start a major jobs program just hiring people to investigate and prosecute all of the crimes committed by that Administration. But as we have seen, Presidents and our political Establishments in general think their prime consideration is to cover for each other rather than represent the will and wishes of those who elected them.

Short Ride was read into 9/11 before it happened. Since the event, he’s been employed to cover Tel Aviv’s involvement in the CD of the towers.

It’s automatic with them, like breathing.

Hell, way out here in New Mexico I knew the threat levels were going up and down in direct relationship to Bush’s political insecurity in 2004. Essentially every facet of the Bush presidency was predicated upon lies and deception. Why should this surprise anybody?

The Republicans have long embraced lying as their primary modus operandi. They lie. That is simply what they do. And then they breathlessly protest that it is un-American to accuse them of such behavior.

yes, yes Blue Texan – most excellent !

firedogs – is Ridge doing this with an eye towards National Office or is it just the usual vanity-bestseller gambit ???

whatever the PUKES SAY……….think THE exact OPPOSITE

If memory serves, we used to joke about the threat levels going up and down according to political convenience even back then.

This reminds me yet again why I will always love Howard Dean.

This also reminds me of why the GOP/Media Complex will never, ever forgive him, not just for being right about Iraq and terror alerts and pretty much everything over the past eight years, but because when he stood up at the Democratic Winter Weekend in February of 2003 and said “What I wanna know…”, he made it impossible, from that moment on, for the GOP/Media’s pro-invasion darlings, Lieberman and Gephardt, to get the Democratic nomination in 2004. Yes, they eventually did destroy his candidacy, but at the cost of their own — and of allowing John Kerry to be the last man standing.

Every single thing from his lips that the GOP/Media called a “gaffe” was in fact the absolute stone-cold truth that needed to be said, and his taking the point and the flak for saying it helped make it possible for others to follow.

Yes, we did. It was so blatant.

[Edited by Moderator: Name calling and personal attacks will not be considered acceptable behavior on this site. Please be respectful of other commenters’ opinions.] CD of the towers would involve weeks of work to place the explosives.

Cutting walls, drilling concrete, opening walls, running wires. How you ever seen a tidy construction site, ever?

150 tons of Avter, JP54, would do the job well.

The lies were in the making years before September 11, ‘01. The official lie was passed out to the major news media before the first tower was struck. From that point on, the networks were simply reading from the prepared scripts.

Dean was right, as we were!

You are absolutely correct. There were floors closed off during the weeks prior to 9/11. Employees of the towers reported loud construction work from the blocked off floors occurring during that period.

During that period there were numerous power outages, meaning all the security devices were temporarily disabled. There were also periodic evacuations.

Absolutely, from the moment I started reading this blog, the snark following the “raising of the alert” was brilliant.

Nor will Rahm and Obama forgive him.

Nah. They don’t even know he exists anymore — at least Rahm apparently doesn’t.

Anyone else wish that this man had been President back in 04? Not just because Bush wouldn’t be in office, but because Dean would be?

Could we not continue to redo 9/11. It will never be resolved for some and it’s getting tiresome.

The best Lie, published by some of the worst liars. “politico”

Oh, they are aware of existance and his whereabouts.

Yupper. But because the media has long since been bought up, bought off or scared off by rich conservative interests per William Simon’s game plan (Google “robert parry william simon ‘A Time for Truth’” for more on this), they will never honestly report on it.

(reply to Hugh @ 11 – I forgot to enable Javascript again)

It was something I remember joking about, at least with friends. There were never any published criteria that I was aware of that explained what those levels meant, or how they were arrived at. It was all so hand-wavy as to be useless.

Dean is a decent, honest person, a true liberal. Hes aggressive, without guile and hes not to photogenic. he never had a chance.

Ah, but they don’t think of him as a threat — or dream that he and Terry McAuliffe would ever be on the same side (and the correct side!) of an issue, as they are now on the public option.

Larry Flynt at HuffPo has an interesting idea about what to do to try to get our country back, get the political establishment to listen to us.
The fact that Cheney and Bush not only were not impeached but have not been prosecuted for their many crimes speaks volumes about the corporate ownership of America.

??? The theme of this thread is the lies of the Bush Administration. Was 9/11 a singular event during which the Bush crowd told only the truth? There seems to be a disconnect here.

Great post, BT, thanks.

Here’s my prediction: No one will apologize to Dean.

Yupper. If he had a chin tuck he might have had a chance; then he wouldn’t look like he’s choking in his suit collar whenever he goes in front of a camera.

RRRRAAAAWWWW!!!!!1111

Unfortunately, the “scream” did him in.

McShame and Liarman are wandering around looking for the border between Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of course not, because they’d then have to admit their role in backing Bush, perhaps even that they were wrong to back Bush so strongly and universally. And that would blow to smithereens the whole myth of the “liberal media” that they use to give themselves permission to be the RNC’s stenographers.

What a marvelous way to pick someone for the toughest political job in the world. And yes, I think you’re probably right.

Yes, my manners are lacking.

Great post BT, merci.

We would always joke about the levels being raised and lowered too. One time we were driving back to the states from Canada and the US guards insisted on additional information from us (more than when we’d crossed into Canada a week earlier) – more identification than we had on us for my then-10 and 13 year old sons. The immigration guard said “Don’t you realize it’s Level Orange!” My husband looked at me and said “What is Bush trying to get accomplished this time?” Pissed off the guard but I had a good laugh and they didn’t strip down the car or us, eventually let us through.

Oh the “the scream”. Well its pretty well established that it was the corporate media the “did him in”, and not anything hes said, or screamed.if it was me and a microphone thats not what i would have screamed.

We need to thank Larry Flynt for educating us to that fact.

He was done before then, but that was, as many folks pointed out, misleading: The audio that gave us the “scream” was taken from a mike that chopped out most of the crowd noise, so the folks listening on the radio or TV didn’t hear the fact that he HAD to yell to be heard.

Even so, the mere fact of his candidacy kept the most blatant pro-invasion Dems, Gephardt and Lieberman, from being rewarded for their perfidy with spots on the 2004 ticket. And that alone made Dean’s candidacy worthwhile.

You know that this thread is not about 9/11. It gets brought up over and over in all sorts of threads and it’s useless. NO ONE will ever know exactly what happened. If we could fix it, fine, but we can’t. We just have more immediate problems that we CAN fix – let’s do that.

right! and look what we have now. a cute amateur who was rolled by the coporate elements of his own party,probably before he was even sworn in.

you guys want to know what else went up or down based on political perception of the bush adminsitration?

twas the price of gas, went down when something bad was going to be reported, went up when he did something that gained political traction

I remember placing a bet with someone during the summer months, I said, “why do you think gas prices are going down right at the heart of demand?

why do you think they went up during the season demand usually forces prices down?

it was absolutely predictable which direction the price of gas would take according to republican political expedience

Pissed off the guard but I had a good laugh and they didn’t strip down the car or us, eventually let us through.

Good thing for you they had professionals on duty that day. Some cops seem to mistake being pissed off for having observed a disturbance of the peace.

??? The biggest crime in U.S. history, and you’re claiming NO ONE will ever know exactly what happened?

Wow. Just wow.

It went beyond tiresome a long time ago.

Which was probably our first clue that he would have made on awesome president, you know? The guys who don’t stand a chance. They would be great.

…Usually. Some people who don’t have a chance, they don’t deserve the chance.

The truth can be quite shocking at times.

and anyway.there have been bigger crimes in US history.

I’m not stupid. No one will ever know because the evidence is gone – Cheney wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave anything around. I didn’t say that we shouldn’t know – I said we wouldn’t know and that’s awful but can you solve it? I can’t.

????? This thread is a total mind-fucker! Half the comments refer to what huge liars the BushCo folks are, and here it’s claiming that BushCo represents the truth regarding our favorite topic.

its not my favorite topic.

There is a mountain of evidence. There are videos from outer space showing the pools of molten steel (note: 2550 F) glowing days after the collapse of the towers. Jet fuel burns over 1000 degrees less than that.

It’s called physics, man. Contrary to popular belief, the laws of physics were not suspended on 9/11/2001.

i believe more than ever that we are actually ruled by a few powerful insdutries, banking and insurance, defense and energy. If dean had something they wanted, he would have been president.

Thank gawd we’re not talking about the Kennedy assasination.

When Holy Joe says something is “outrageous” you can bet it’s true.

right, and perfectly reasonable

i always thought that is what they were doing. these were not honorable men. witness DOJ, witness weapons, witness plame, witness brownie, witness the entire 8 years.

or the archduke franz ferdinand

You contribute to the conversation constructively and intelligently when you choose to. But your 9/11 conspiracy theories get really, really tiresome and tin-foil-hatty, IMO.

Sorry to be OT but I’m really sick of people saying “Obama is so brilliant.”

Oh, I’m sure that’s next up.

we are all cooperative witnesses, if there’s ever a trial. not likely

He may be brilliant but he isn’t smart. I’ve always thought there was a big difference. He’s now chewing off his own foot.

The bubble has enveloped him.

no, hes chewing OUR feet off, the progressives.

I disagree.

It can be resolved and it should be investigate and it won’t be investigated if people are not made aware of all the disinformation that was spread following the incident.

I was not satisfied by the 911 commission report which raised more questions then it answered to anyone who is capable of critical thinking.

This was a mass murder and the consequences of it were:

More mass murder
two wars
a loss of civil liberties
the theft of an election
domestic spying
torture
trampling on the constitution and the laws of the USA and the international community

the fall out was enormous and we need to find out the truth.

This thread is about the disinformation campaign conducted during the years 2001-2008. I detect a concensus that the campaign was suspended for the brief period following 9/11/2001, during which time only the truth was espoused.

Do I have that right?

There is enough evidence to disprove the accept conspiracy theory.

And the explanation for the collapse of those towers is not based in fact. It’s complete hooey.

But what happened, who did it, how it was planned and so forth can only be known if a thorough investigation goes forward.

here’s the problem ghost of sept. eleventh, we don’t want to talk about 9/11 every thread, some of us are on board with your point but we have to have other topics, if you want go ahead and post a diary but leave 9/11 from other threads, discussing that event on these threads is counter productive to the task at hand

I don’t understand how the left can accept the lies of the right and not see that the 911 commission report was lying on steroids.

And it the event it covered up had consequences of staggering proportions such as the Iraq was which everyone decries on this site. Was 911 the excuse given?

I agree but I suspect he is relating the lies of 911 to the lies of the right… It was the ultimate one of the past decade.

Yep. “Video Killed the Radio Star Presidential Candidate”

At least ghost isn’t carrying on about the missile plane that slammed into the Pentagon.

Oh shit I’m sorry, opened my big mouth again.

I want to get back to the price of gas and political expedience

I wonder if it would create a bigger social fire storm if someone admitted they manipulated the price of gas according to political necessity

I know it happened, how would the public react if they were told in no uncertain terms that’s what the adminsitration did

I think it would be interesting to see if republicans became more upset then manipulating fear to protect their man

Ghost, you’re absolutely right! No fire ever burns any hotter than when it is first ignited. Never. Can’t happen. No sir. Unless laser beams from Uranus are involved, that is.

But we seen in spades that congress critters are not accountable for the lies OR their misdeeds.

We have more than a lying problem, we have an accountability one.

We live in an Orwellian world.

No

Energy is not a free market, there is hardly competition. It is completely manipulated and the players use cycles to drive the price up and down and make money on both tracks.

poltical expedience designed to keep republicans in power would not bother those who vote republican

however it MIGHT bother them if those same people used the price of their gasoline to accomplish that goal since they were the ones that suffered

I am just wondering out loud how they would react if they found it to be true

I agree. This has been done to death. I’m fighting the temptation to discuss this, because I can’t stand seeing this nonsense repeated endlessly. But I’ve discussed it before, patiently explained what nonsense it is, and people have just gone on to other nonsense. Please, take it somewhere else.

Snark like that is juevenile. If you had any understanding about the temperature / color of flames and the properties of steel you wouldn’t make suck a silly remark.

Open flames from building materials will not melt the steel of the core columns in 40 minutes. IMPOSSIBLE.

perris

It boils down to $$$. 9/11 was the hoax that precipitated the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which are still continuing 8 years later and still consuming huge amounts of $$$ which could be better used for a host of other problems.

Exposing the hoax will lead to the termination of the bogus wars, and the ending of the $$$ hemorrhage on our treasury.

yup

however during the bush years gas prices didn’t follow typical market pattern, they followed political expedience pressure for the gop

707

I love to joke with my 10 and 13 year old about *pick a topic* on Uranus. We howl with laughter no matter how old that joke gets.

“You can only grow up once but you can remain immature forever.”

I don’t think they would accept it even if it hit them in the face.

do it on a thread for it, not on a thread we are using to accomplish something else

let’s move on

now, about the price of gas during these very same terror alerts, I want to talk about that

See

The Century of the Self

which explains how we americans are played like mindless automatons

The 4 part series will blow your mind.

there’s something about their gun and their car that drives them bat shit, show them their “man” hurt their car and they might go after him

don’t forget, for these bigots, they can blame the election of obama on bush, if we can get them to go after bush we might actually be able to work with them accomplishing accountability

Speaking of the topic of this article, I think John Kerry owes Dean an apology. See Glenn’s article for documentation. Even if Kerry didn’t want to admit that the levels were a fraud, he could have at least noted that there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to them. Instead, he tried to appear “serious”, and lost the election anyway.

People can’t not buy fuel. It is a necessity or an addiction. It’s not a free market but should be a national resource made available at net cost.

Since it is a monopoly business it will ALWAYS have price manipulation.

Read

The Oil Drum – http://www.theoildrum.com/

it’s all there.

Bush and Kerry were both Bonesmen. Kerry had more allegiance to Bush as a Bones brother than he had to the electorate.

The nation had largely been manipulated to be motivated like a pavlov dog to fear of terrorism.

This was PRECISELY the plan. And they proved time and again it worked like a charm.

I live near Lancaster County, PA where the Amish still travel and farm with horses. They had the oil cartels figured out quite a while ago.

I don’t buy that.

Kerry became a part of the establishment and was read the news and would not rick the boat.

Seems as if the same is / has happened to Obama.

And merkins were taught to hate chavez and Venezula because he was messing with OUR oil as opposed to him actually trying to use some of the oil wealth for the local people of his country.

And boy does the right dispise Chavez and want to over throw him as if HE is a threat to the USA.

By the way Lanny Davis is in deep with corporations who want in in Hondurus. Davis is a scumbag.

Straw man. Steel doesn’t have to “melt” to collapse. As for “color of flames” you obviously saw something a retired NY deputy fire chief has never seen in any building collapse/fire – melted steel. I’m not going to bother with cites; this was the second entry on a Google for “melt steel”. And I’m not going to bother arguing with any more dining room tables like you.

You misread my comment. What you said is what I intended to say — Kerry was not going to rock the boat.

Just finished a book by Mark Lane, in which he describes the tactics the CIA uses to quell opposition. Some of the posters here would seem to be tood candidates for employment with the agency.

I think John Kerry owes Dean an apology.

Agree. So do a few other Dems.

Even if Kerry didn’t want to admit that the levels were a fraud, he could have at least noted that there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to them. Instead, he tried to appear “serious”, and lost the election anyway.

I have mixed feelings about this one to this day. The CW says you stay completely away from such an explosive charge, since there was no way to prove it.

But it always seemed to me that our nominees from 2004 and 2000 both decided early on not to go after Bush & Co directly on their integrity, honesty and competence, and avoided such direct attacks at the expense of really taking to the opponent and winning in a hardball, but fair, way, in what was after all a contest being played the hardball way by the Repubs and all their MSM friends.

In essence, Kerry, like Gore before him, tried to win on points, using Queensbury rules of gentlemanly conduct, rather than going for the knockout punch. It would have been high risk/high reward, for sure, but when you go up against Rove, the corp media, and the fact that the Thugs controlled the election machinery in one key tossup state, you needed to hit hard.

The steel did not just collapse, it MELTED. It needs 2550F to reach the molten state. Thermite will achieve those temperatures.

The esteemed elite in both parties have stretched the truth to say the least. Bush lied to the American people when it came to the war in Iraq. Over 4,300 men and woman have died for that lie and continue to do so. Tom Ridge is just another piece of crap for a human being who was probably more interested in some day writing a book rather than coming forward as a whistle blower. I wouldn’t be surprised if he met with a sudden accident. I wonder of the CIA has a current contract list for Blackwater?
It never seems to change in Washington. Someone lies and someone dies. yet we as a people always fall for the same nonsense.

I won’t argue credentials. I have been an architect for over 35 years.

I imagine the CIA has Blackwater on speed dial.

Steel does lose strength as it is heated above certain temperature. No doubt about that. But this takes longer than the open fires burns and the there was also ample means for the heat to be conducted away from the steel. The core columns were sections with over 2″ thick members and this is going to take quite a long time to soften from fires of jet fuel which likely burned in less than 45 minutes as it was not contained.

You need to think this through.

There is a photo of a women standing in the hole in the side of the tower indicating that the temps at THAT time in THAT location were not very high.

true and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died too.

We were all hot an bothered about Halabjah deaths so we showed em white phosphorous and cluster bombs. We leveled Falujah. We wanted to stop Saddam’s killing and we did it x10

I wonder if any of the leagal minds on the blog know what it takes to recall our government? It’s time to hit the reset button.

I guess I can understand Obama’s concept for no impeachment for the previous administration folks, but it certainly doesn’t give me a warm, fuzzy feeling about future administrations.

What’s to keep others from doing the same thing, pointing to the Bush League and saying, ‘but they did it before we did’?

It’s long past time to federalize the oil industry. THAT would pay for health care! :^)

Don’t worry everybody. Obama will look at the reports and tell us whether Ridge’s statement is true or not because Obama is all about open and honest government and he is president now.