Asturian-American Migration Forum

First, let me say that I shudder to think that any government entity had any foreshadowing of the horrible events of 9-11, much less had an active part in planning and executing it. But, I will also say that there are many unresolved mysteries surrounding the event that make me think that, at the least, we are not getting the full story.

Some of the many questions that bug me:

1. Why did both towers fall down after burning only less than 2 hrs? A skyscraper in Venezuela burned for 17 hrs and still stood. One in Madrid burned for 24 hours and still stood. And, in fact, there are only three documented cases of buildings collapsing because of fire. They are WTC 1, WTC 2, and WTC 7 (which wasn't even hit by an airplane, btw).

2. Steel melts at approx. 2000 degrees F. Jet fuel burns at approx. 1300 degrees F. You do the math.

3. How were all four black boxes on the WTC planes completely incinerated, yet the intact passport of a terrorist, made of paper, was found intact?

4. Why has the government not released the surveillance tapes of the plane hitting the Pentagon?

5. Why did the wings of the Pentagon plane "disintegrate" without breaking out the window frames on either side of the impact area? Where was the tail section wreckage? The engine wreckage?

There are many more, but I won't go on here. And lest you think I've turned into some crackpot nutcase, I'm in pretty elite company:

Here's San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford's column on the subject: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 032906.DTL

And here is New York magazine's take on it: http://nymag.com/news/features/16464/index.html

Finally, here is an excellent video documentary called 9/11 Loose Change that brings up a host of troubling questions surrounding the events of 9/11 and how the facts don't seem to jibe with the official storyline. Please watch this before thinking that it's all bullcrap. It can be viewed for free here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 3762628848

The point here? We deserve a more thorough examination of the events surrounding the most heinous terrorist act in the nation's history. The victims deserve it, and so do we, the Vox Populi.

Hi Xose,

IMO the Bush administration is one of the worst this nation has ever had, if not THE worst. To tell you the truth we don’t need to accuse them of things they did not do in order for them to look bad, it’s that bad really. If you want to point fingers at the Bush administration point at a memo between Bush and PM Blair were they ‘penciled in’ March the 10th to bomb Iraq they did this in January of 2003, in public statements they were saying in March 15th that war was up to Saddam. You could point out at this nation backing out from it’s international commitments withdrawing from they Kyoto protocol, you could point out at 1/4 of a million gallons of oil spilled in the Arctic preserve and the administration doing nothing about it NOTHING not even a recommendation that BP cleans it up. You could point out the de-listing of endangered species by presidential mandate so that corporations can move in and ‘harvest’ the Federal lands, you could point out the more than doubling of the national debt since 2000. You could point out that despite having spent over 100 billion in homeland defense the ports are not secure, you could point out that next year’s budget will have 48 billion spent on homeland security and 1.5 billion in renewable energy. If we reversed the numbers our dependancy on foreign oil would be over in two years. You could point out that a third world nation with NO OIL none NADA zip ZERO squat ZILCH like Brazil with 300 million cars has already declared that next year they will import 0 barrels of oil. Total independence from the oil economy, they will produce/grow/manufacture all of their energy needs, and that includes the fuel needed to power their cities. You could point out that while this administration is proposing BUILDING new nuclear power plants we currently have 55,000 tons of spent nuclear material that is simply waiting for a resting place and that we are currently adding 2,000 tons to that every year. That material will be radioactive for another 50,000 years and we have no place to put it. You could point out that the last time nuclear facilities were built it cost the US taxpayers over 100 billion dollars in cost overruns in 1960's dollars, you could point out that except for ten years in the 70's producing power through conventional means has always been cheaper than the nuclear option. You could point out that after declaring war on Afghanistan because they would not give Bin-Laden up the US army had him corralled in a 20 mile square area (that is about the size of one mountain) and the president himself ordered to not pursue him, you could point out that all the US needed to do was sit and wait eventually the terrorists would run out of food and water they would come out or die. You could point out that walking away was a presidential order. You could point out that this administration is breaking the law it was sworn to uphold. You could point out the many top GOP presidentially appointed personnel that is currently serving time or with a pending trial for breaking the law. You could point out nonsensical orders coming directly from the White House i/e US soldiers lack body armor and civilians are made aware of this, they rally to collect funds manufacture and send the soldiers body armor so that if attacked they would have a better chance of survival, through a direct order the army banned this practice and confiscated all body armor, you could point out that this was a Pentagon directive from Rumsfeld a White House appointee. You could point out that this administration started a bold ‘No Child Left Behind’ program yet failed to adequately fund it, however it held the people in charge accountable for the results, they used funds earmarked for other programs and as a result neither the ‘No child left behind’ nor the other programs came to completion both failing. You could point out that this administration gave NASA a mandate to put a man back on the moon by 2015 and then on to Mars, yet failed to fund the program. As a result NASA was forced to cancel a myriad of scientific programs already in place for (in some cases) decades in order to find the funds to achieve this. You could point out that putting a man on the moon has already been done and there is not a single reputable scientist that says this endeavor will advance science one iota. You could point out that this president lent backdoor support to religion in schools, undermining one of the fundamental tenants of this form of government.

There are a million other things you could point out, from the ridiculous like giving the rich a massive tax break while at the same time acquiring massive debt internationally to the seriously stupid like the consequences of those ridiculous acts, the US now spends 1/4 of it’s income in paying the interest on the debt it has. To put the current US situation in perspective if the US was a person it’s finances would look like this; income $40,000 a year, it spends $30,000 to live, it spends $15,000 in self defense it borrows $ 5,000 a year to cover the shortfall then it borrows another 2,500 to pay for the interest on the debt it already has.

This administration is more than stupid, in fact it is idiotic by anybody standards. But I very seriously doubt it would militarily attack this nation.


That said I watched about ½ an hour of the ‘documentary’ it has got to be the worst researched documentary I have ever seen. I won’t dissect it because it is just not worth doing so, but I will point out somethings that are so simple that even a 14 year old knew better! Lol

-When a plane hits a wall is not the same as when it slams on to the side of a mountain
-Although there were no human remains people can be identified by DNA
-The plane used to depict crash testing in reality was used to test non-flammable fuel
-Planes forced to land, all civilian planes were forced to land not air force aircrafts
-The kinetic energy of an airplane weighing over 200 tons traveling at 450 mph is more than enough to cause the damage seen in the Pentagon, the fuel fire was simply icing on the cake.

I could go on but what’s the point, the man is trying to sell us Bigfoot

I will say this though, it is odd that the video (if it exists) from the Pentagon was not released.


Elí

Where were the remains of the plane?

How could all three WTC buildings HAPPEN to perfectly fall vertically into what seems conspicuously tidy piles of rubble?

Where were the wing marks on the Pentagon?

Why were the "terrorists" not listed in the passenger manifests?

Where were the bodies in PA? Where were they in VA?

This jet fuel must be some magic stuff if it can incenerate whole airplanes into dust (including engines made of titanium alloy) and bring down 101 storey tall buildings....

Where is the footage of the Pentagon impact?

Why were all of the 911 calls released today redacted to remove all the callers' comments?

These are but a few of the questions I'd like to have answered. I think your critque of the movie in question is a snap judgement, but whether you put credence into the movie or not, certainly it seems weird to you to have three major skyscrapers crumble to the ground on the same day when this has never happened before in the history of modern architecture?

I don't know what's true and what's not, but I sure as hell have a difficult time believing the official story, and I think we all deserve real answers to these questions.

I was surprised that the documentary was as convincing as it is. The whole time, however, I was wondering if I was spending 82 minutes of my life watching someone's paranoid fantasy.

What I find troubling is that I can read the mainstream news or watch this documentary and both make fairly good sense. In part this is because I don't have the background to evaluate what I'm hearing. What do I know about airplane crashes, cruise missile hits, or building demolition? How do I know whether the footage of the speakers in the documentary are telling "the truth", just acting, or even digitally altered?

One source of evaluation and critique of the documentary is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_Change_(video)
(Sorry, but you'll have to cut and paste this into your browser's address bar, the forum software can't handle the parentheses.)
Again, I don't have the background to know for sure whether the criticism is valid, but they do support their case by pointing out problems with the logic of the documentary.

One critic, Michael Green, suggests "that the purpose in including both junk and substantive evidence is to discredit the latter. If rotten fish is wrapped in the same package as delicious truffles, few people with good judgment or good taste will attempt to retrieve and salvage the truffles." So was the documentary was a disinformation campaign intended to make us distrust criticism of the official 9-11 story? (Green seems to believe the documentary may be right that the World Trade Center was a planned demolition, in other words, an inside job.)

Hmm. That'd be a conspiracy against a conspiracy theory, wouldn't it?

For me, the biggest problem with the conspiracy theories is that too many people would have to be involved. Wouldn't it be impossible to keep something that expansive quiet for very long?

[Si nadie me pide, no voy a traducir este mensaje. Pero si te importa, dime.]

Art wrote: For me, the biggest problem with the conspiracy theories is that too many people would have to be involved. Wouldn't it be impossible to keep something that expansive quiet for very long?

This is a valid point. But, to play devil's advocate, I don't think it's beyond the realm of the possible.

The people who would be involved in plotting something like this would be professionals at it. High level spies and military leaders, who are highly trained in covert operations/sabotage/weapons and demolition/etc. and who are expert at keeping secrets.

We obviously have people with that skill set working right now at the NSA, State department, and Pentagon. The lower level grunts who would carry out parts of the mission would not be able to see the big picture due to the extreme secrecy involved. They would only know their "job".

This is how terror cells work, as well. The leadership keeps the low-level operatives in the dark, so that if they are caught they won't have enough info to spoil the operation or divulge the identities of the leadership.

Again, let me stress that I'm not saying that this conspiracy theory is right or that the government plotted and executed 9/11. BUT...there are enough things that make no sense to warrant further investigation.

Xose, I think we're pretty close in our thoughts.

It occurs to me that even if we had a supposedly thorough investigation, could (or would) we really trust the results? Let's imagine that the investigators determined that some aspects of the conspiracy theory were true, that "rogue elements" in the military had demolished the WTC without presidential approval or knowledge. We still wouldn't know if it was true that only rogue elements were involved, or how much had been kept from the commission.

Thinking of the Abu Ghraib scandal, how many people really believe that the problem was only with the low-level soldiers? That was the government's conclusion.

So it'd be like with the Warren Commission on the J.F. Kennedy assasination. There is still plenty of doubt about what happened in that case. Maybe this is a simple fact of "history": that we can never know anything absolutely for sure. I wonder what a historian would say about this question: can we know anything in history with a reasonable degree of certitude? (Where's Suronda when we need her?!?)

Last night after watching ‘Ten days that changed America’ in the History channel I was flipping channels and on CSPAN2 I ran into an interesting presentation by Mark Crispin Miller. He wrote a book called ‘Fooled Again’ he appeared knowledgeable and intelligent on the subject. The book is about how the GOP (not Bush) stole the last election, and their motivation for doing so. He apparently has ample proof of this, how the numbers often didn’t up, and the tremendously under reported amount of machines that had ‘issues’ invariably favoring the Republicans. It was extremely interesting, so I searched for a little info on the subject this morning and found out he has a blog http://www.markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/ his intent is to bring the issue of election fraud to the front to prevent it from happening again. I find that a lot more believable than Bush attacking the WTC, if he wanted to declare war on Afghanistan all he needed to do was send a drone over their territory have the Afghans shoot it down and have an escalation that would inevitably end in war, it’s been done before.

Eli wrote:....if he wanted to declare war on Afghanistan all he needed to do was send a drone over their territory have the Afghans shoot it down and have an escalation that would inevitably end in war, it’s been done before.

A staged terrorist attack has been done before as well, 2 times that I know of, although there were probably others throughout history. The attack on the Maine and the fire at the Reichstag were both staged by governments to further their political gains.

Yeah, that the elections were stolen is one thing that seemed obvious to me in both 2000 and 2004. I was particularly amazed by the thuggish tactics the GOP used in Florida in 2000 to stop the recount. Of course the Supreme Court joined the chorus, proving that judicial nominations are about political beliefs.

This savvy quote about 9-11 conspiracy theories comes from an article Xose mentioned in his first post.

In the article, The Grassy Knoll, Mark Jacobson reported ... wrote:People are always coming up with stuff about holograms and planes shooting pods. That’s what happens when the truth is systematically suppressed,” says Monica Gabrielle, whose husband, Richard, was killed in the attacks.

http://newyorkmetro.com/news/features/16464/index.html

It's bizarre that the average New Yorker believes not the official account of 9-11, but one of the conspiracy theories. That alone points to a failure of government to address the issues. Why didn't those in charge of the 9-11 investigation answer the main questions posed by the conspiracy folks? (Or maybe they did and we just haven't read the report?)