h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here's an article by a respected (if furious) humanist thinker. She says she has evidence (she provides links and references) that George Dubya and company welcomed a second 'Pearl Harbour' situation that could set America on the road to world domination.

She exposes the sacrifice of his own countrypeople to pursue this cause, which he has, she says, disguised behind the name, 'a war on terrorism'. She presents compelling evidence that Bush knew about September 11th long before it happened, but did nothing to prevent it.

http://www.thehappyheretic.com/current.htm

I'd be interested to hear other points of view on this, especially from those whose family members have been involved in this war.

Thanks for the links Snailrind. But, from where I'm sitting (Canada) none of this is a surprise. The idea of US government agents crashing airliners into the WTC in order to further their plan of world domination was broadcast on the Fox network (on the Lone Gunmen) six months before 9/11. Out here in the world everyone knows that there have always been elements of the US government who have been striving for world domination, and Bush and his cronies were pegged as such from the beginning.

As far as family goes, they almost got my parents, who arrived in lower Manhattan on September 10th and had ringside seats for the crashes and the collapses. (apparently the security on their much delayed flight home was the most lax they'd ever experienced)

I expect this thread will produce some lively discussion. Sadly, I'll be surprised if many people's minds will be changed.

I have been posting on this subject for a while. Condoleeza Rice said that to have the plan for invading Afganistan to be accepted by the public, would involve a pearl harbour size event. And yes she said this before 9/11.

Found it! I've been looking for this link all morning (well, for ten minutes):

http://www.takebackthemedia.com/true911.html

I've heard many people put forward the idea that Bush either knew that the attacks were coming, or even that they were planned by Bush. However appalling the idea may be that one (or more) American could devise a plan to kill so many other Americans in such a callous and headline grabbing way purely to provide supposed justification to send American troops into other countries, I can't in all honesty deny the possibility. Just because these particular Americans may (or may not) dress in combat fatigues and be members of a militia like Timothy McVey doesn't mean they're any less likely to blow up a building. The collapse of the WTC towers couldn't possibly have been more attention grabbing, couldn't possibly have been a greater carrot to dangle in front of the American people as an incentive for war.

I don't generally believe in conspiracy theories, but...

If it was planned, or if it was know about but not stopped, I doubt that Dubya was directly involved. The people pulling his strings would have kept him well away from any kind of incrimination. It would more likely have been kept amongst people who Bush is somehow linked to - people from the New American Century movement.

Now I'll go and have a look at that link.

Ok, so it was a little early in the morning for the 9-5ers but the kind of companies in the WTC would have had people pulling 14, 16, 18 hour days...


Less than 3,000 were in there that morning...

I'm not sure what you mean by that, daSilva. There were less than 3,000 killed, but many thousands more were safely evacuated.

I've heard so many conspiracy theories over the years (from both sides of the political fence and concerning various issues from long before this one about 9/11) that I am very skeptical about all of them.

After reading the linked article, what struck me is this quote:

"An aide walked up to him and whispered in his ear that a jumbo jet had crashed into the first WTC tower. Bush's response to this horrifying news was to nonchalantly continue with the reading lessons of the children."

Now the reason this struck me is not what you're probably thinking, because my reaction to the first crash was much the same. I thought momentarily, "Oh, what a horrible accident, those poor people", but went on with what I was doing as if nothing had happened. It wasn't until after the second one crashed that the thought even occurred to me that this was no accident because you can't have two jets crash into two side by side buildings like that unless somebody planned it that way.

Does anyone know what the aide's exact words were?

Did he say something on the order of "Mr President the plan is right on schedule, the first jet has just crashed into the World Trade Center"? If so, you're right - that would clearly indicate a conspiracy.

Or did he say something more on the order of "Mr President, there's been a terrible accident, a jet has just crashed into the World Trade Center"? If this was the case, he displayed the typically "cool, calm, collected" reaction that any politician would when privately hearing shocking news in a public setting.

If I were reading to a group of young children and heard that news whispered into my ear, I don't think my reaction would have been any different than than what he displayed. I'd have continued on with what I was doing until I was able to excuse myself without causing any concern among the children. Many people try to protect young children from the tragedies of life, and I'd have been one of them.

Essentially, in order to come to the conclusion that this one bit of evidence (his stoic reaction to the news of the first crash) somehow puts him in on the conspiracy, you'd have to first assume he had that reaction *only* because he already knew about it.

Despite my well-documented views about Dubya and all that he stands for, I'm in agreement with you there Lady Scott. If it's true that he wasn't previously aware of the attacks, and the aide was advising him that a plane had just crashed into the WTC, I wouldn't expect any other politician to have acted differently.

Agreed. It seems like the only thing he could have done under those circumstances. I wouldn't count it as evidence of prior knowledge.

I might, however, count records of his having received advance warnings as evidence of prior knowledge....

George for sticking with his reading lesson from those children, even int the face of a crisis.

It may not have been Bush

It was the CIA who were responsible for the other 9/11 in Chile and the CIA who tried to topple Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Colin Powell said at the time that Venezuela didn't have US interests at heart. Maybe they had Venezuelos interests at heart, and just didn't know that this was a crime that they would be punished for.

OK, here we go...

"Here's an article by a respected (if furious) humanist thinker. She says she has evidence (she provides links and references) that George Dubya and company welcomed a second 'Pearl Harbour' situation that could set America on the road to world domination."

First off, Bush didn't "welcome" this. Bush is not a "neocon" (actually, neocons are just 80s neo-liberals with added interventionism) he's a not-very-bright old fashioned conservative who believes in God, family and hard work and all that stuff. Like Reagan, he's easily manipulated. By the so-called "neocons" like Cheney, Rumfeld (who has recently been sidelined) and Rice. He's also manipulated by more liberal people like Powell and straight-up foreign liberals such as Blair.

Bush, since we all seem to have forgotten, did not stand in 2000 on a platform of sort-out-the-terrorists interventionism. Terrorism was seen as a result of Clinton's interventionist foreign policy which was hated by the grass-roots conservatives. This is why the "neocons" sent that letter about American interests being served by Saddam Hussein being removed from power to Clinton (who had always wanted to remove Saddam) rather than to people in their own party. Interventionism is not a vote-winner in the Republican Party. Neoconservatism is not the dominant force.

I have no doubt the neocons welcomed the opportunity that 9/11 opened. But did they create it or even allow it?

Well, first off, they certainly didn't do it themselves. Consider the following.

1. The World Trade Centre was hit. The WTC is one of the centres of commerical America. Why, in short, would the neocons kill their own kind?

2. The WTC was hit at a time of economic problems in the USA. Why would the USA's wealthiest do damage to their own economy and thus their own bank balance?

3. The Pentagon was also hit, there was no need to do this if the only purpose of a conspiracy was to ignite public anger. The WTC had already done that. Also, why would the US elite hit their own military headquarters?

4. Why would this conspiracy then hijack another (possibly two) other aircraft and crash one into Pennsylvania and allow the other to be a source of speculation. What would be the point in this?

Like a lot of conspiracy theories, once you look at it dispassionately and rationally, it simply doesn't make sense.

Also:

It's been mentioned already that someone (Rice, I think) is supposed to have said "Only something as big as Pearl Harbor would allow us to invade Afghanistan". Now, 1) She might never have said this (the internet and even the press are rife with false quotes. The Bush "the French have no word for Entrepreneur" one, for example, is supposedly bogus) and 2) If she was a part of a conspiracy to do just such a thing, doesn't she have more intelligence than to go around explaining it to people beforehand?

On a similar note:

A recent TV programme by veteran American-basher John Pilger questioned the war in Iraq. Pilger noted both Powell and Rice had said, in 2000 or thereabouts that "Saddam Hussein and Iraq pose no threat to America". Again, if both were part of a conspiracy to invade Iraq within years and justify it based on the Iraqi threat to the West isn't this, well, a bit of a stupid thing to go around saying to people?

In a recent argument on this thread someone mentioned the "compelling evidence" that Bush knew about 9/11 and posted a link to an article. I read the article discovered that, in fact, it was accusing Bush not of being complicit in anything but of being an incompetent and useless leader. It also claimed that the Taliban "made preperations for war" before 9/11. A strange thing to do, since they can't have been in on any whitehouse conspiracy. However, they might have been in on anything that bin Laden was planning...

On another note, the a former British cabinet minister recently accused the US of being complicit in the 9/11 atrocities. He cited evidence "from the internet" including the "fact" that jet fighters were not scrambled to intercept more planes for a long time. A left-wing pro-war journalist for the Guardian did some non-internet-based research and discovered that this (and some other "facts" cited) were in fact bogus.

Also consider that out neocon friends were supposedly doing all this to grab Iraqi oil for their own businesses. Currently, a trust fund has been set up, overseen by the UN, to ensure profits from the oil go to rebuilding Iraq. Isn't is a bit odd to create a conspiracy for one single purpose and then to throw that purpose away.

So, if you all read the above with an open-mind and without a desire to believe (and I think this is the main reason for why these conspiracy theories are gobbled up unquestioningly - you might also like to know that there are "Jews rule the world" and "Homosexuals have a secret mission to destroy the family" websites all over the internet basing their deranged ramblings on nothing more substantial that the "evidence" for the USA creating 9/11), then I think we can safely say that the "Bush and his cohorts organised and carried out 9/11" theory is on more than shaky ground.

This does leave us with "did they know and then not act?". This is more probable (although still without any real evidence) although given the total unpredictability of al-Quaida attacks, anyone who lets one be carried out unhindered is either very brave, very stupid or possibly both.

To be honest, I don't think people are buying into this because they believe it. Like so much other hokum, I think people buy into it because they WANT to. Some people have spent their whole lives railing against the wicked old USA and I think they find it hard to face the fact that this is not the reactionary USA trying to snuff out a peaceful, progressive movement but the flawed-democracy USA fighting ultra-right-wing (be honest, have you heard any fundy's? They make Rumsfeld sound like Princess Diana), violent, mysogynistic, reactionary, religious fundamentalists. I don't like neocons and I don't like a lot of what the USA does but by god I don't like bin Laden and his people and, like the socialists who fought under the rightwing Churchill against Adolf Hitler, I know which side I'd rather bread was buttered.

America can't rule the world, it won't be so powerful forever, oil is not the future.

Note: There was some more stuff I wanted to say regarding the "evidence" for the Bush-did-9/11 stuff but this post is long enough. There's some good debunking of the Pentagon Bomb theory on snopes.com for example.

Although it may seem strange, Zagreb, I agree with your assessment of the evidence. A also agree with the general assessment of Bush's reaction to the initial news (i. e. keep on reading. I went on ahead to work even though I knew my parents were in Manhattan at the time.) I do suspect that a number of people in the administration saw the incident as more of an opportunity than a tragedy.

As far as sacrificing 3000 people for the cause: The administration has since demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice tens of thousands of people for the cause. I don't think they would have blinked at killing 3000 in New York. Perhaps they might have hesitated over the financial losses incurred. . .

I see our UK newspaper "The Guardian" is referenced. This newspaper is known for a left of centre point of view.
Oetz

I've been thinking about your post off and on all day, Zagreb, and again, I think you're probably pretty much right. But I have to make a tiny point:

"3. The Pentagon was also hit, there was no need to do this if the only purpose of a conspiracy was to ignite public anger. The WTC had already done that. Also, why would the US elite hit their own military headquarters?"

Actually, the Pentagon was really sort of missed. And a reason to make it seem like the Pentagon was a target was to make it seem like the pentagon and the US elite were not behind the attacks.

But then, I think it far more likely that the "neocons" took excited advantage of the attacks rather than that they planned them themselves.

Yes Zagreb. And the academics certainly lit the way to anyone or group who wished to harm the US. Some of the stuff I've read directly outlined the targets if not the method.

As for your security services not intercepting the enemy, well, the US has made plenty of blunders in the past. At least for the most part you admit to them.
Oetz

Heh, I wrote a bit of fiction about the idea that the 9/11 attacks had been planned a bit back - suprising to see something that looks similar with evidence (?)

All I have seen so far is HTML code that I could have written if I had the time or inclination. Something so important as the 9/11 attacks are likely to spew any number of theories from so many sources that you really can't afford to trust anything without solid evidence.

All I see supporting a claim that it was known about and allowed to happen is word of mouth. However all I see against that claim is that they say they didn't do it. I find the second linked article very manipulative - attributing reasons for the actions rather than stating the facts empirically and the music clearly serves no academic purpose.

I wouldn't claim to be sure one way or the other on this, though I have to say I'd be a lot happier if someone could point me in the direction of an independant report into the incident - you'd expect there to be one for an event of this magnatude.

For an event of this magnitude, whose repercussions have embroiled so many other countries, is an independant report actually possible?