Robert Fisk: Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11

[Aldebaran]

For a man who has managed to keep the CIA in a sensible context throughout his journalistic career, the above is not great.

All he does is pointing out that this is something one should seriously question. A comment aimed at a general public. That for the vast majority acts as I described. (how many people do you think still are brainwashed with the manipulations that Iraq was linked to 9/11?)

Thanks for the advice. Again. If it's okay with you, I think I'll continue to read the text, the subtext and between the lines.

I did that. I can't see anything "conspiraloon" there and I question why a journalist like Fisk risks to get assosiated wiht that type of idiots.

salaam.

 

[Aldebaran]

I'm fairly sure he means ... Do bears shit in the woods?... Is the Pope Catholic? ... Is there any point in asking a question to which the answer is so well known and so entirely uncontroversial?

The point is that nobody besides someone very well informed on the "why" shall be able to point out that this "letter" is weird beyond weird. Do you believe the average non-Muslim shall see anything strange about it?

salaam.

 

[warren]

From Robert Fisk article:

He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the "Fajr" prayer to be included in Atta's letter.

From the letter:

In the morning, try to pray the morning prayer with an open heart. Don't leave but when you have washed for the prayer. Continue to pray.

*it is also unclear who the author is and not as Robert Fisk asserts written by Mohammed Atta, although I stand to be corrected on this.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Oddly the article doesn't seem to exist anymore...

 

[London_Calling]

He damned well should, the answers are in the NIST report.

As NIST says often:

No building in the United States has ever been subjected to the massive structural damage and concurrent multi-floor fires that the towers experienced on Sept. 11, 2001.

A lot of the time they're trying to understand themselves what happened, and how. They do though offer this:

However, when bare steel reaches temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius, it softens and its strength reduces to roughly 10 percent of its room temperature value. Steel that is unprotected (e.g., if the fireproofing is dislodged) can reach the air temperature within the time period that the fires burned within the towers. Thus, yielding and buckling of the steel members (floor trusses, beams, and both core and exterior columns) with missing fireproofing were expected under the fire intensity and duration determined by NIST for the WTC towers.

Still 'best guess' though.

 

[ViolentPanda]

It is in my view very much the case with this governments especially.
It is also no secret that the USA is and always was far too self-absorbed arrogant to take intelligence coming from the outside serious (exception made for the Mossad since the CIA could use them as their teachers a bit more).

With reference to the hyper-selective/condescending attitude to secondary intelligence sources, I believe the issue is rooted in the wider problem of America's position at the apex of the pyramid of cultures based around consumption/immediate gratification.
Samir Amin makes an aside in his book "The Liberal Virusermanent War and the Americanisation of the World" which I see as relevant to the US power elites' seeming inability/unwillingness to engage with outside intelligence sources and/or "bearers of bad tidings". Amin says:
"...one of the major weaknesses of American thought , resulting from its history and its ideology, is that it has no long-term vision. This thought is embedded in the immediate, about which it collects an alarmingly large quantity of data.It believes that it can clarify its immediate choices exclusively through the analysis of "the present", always judging "the past" as irrelevant (the expression 'it's history' is an American synonym for 'without importance'). The future, in these conditions, is always conceived as the simple projection of the immediate."

IMHO f you exist within (and indeed propagate, if you're part of "the system") a culture that constantly lauds immediate gratification and a worship of "the present" over learning the lessons of the past in order to more accurately project the future, why would you choose to give credence to "bearers of bad tidings"? I don't believe that your mention of a systemic attitude of self-absorption and arrogance goes far enough. I believe that there's no more and no less than a situation in play that sets up such a cognitive dissonance in members of the US power elite that, while many know that it is irrational, they're unable to give acknowledgement to anything but their own hypotheses and views supportive of those hypotheses, because their cultural imperatives demand that gratification is not delayed.

</end of rant>

 

[Barking_Mad]

Then when Karl Rove comes out with "we're an empire now – we create our own reality" it only fuels the suspicions.

The article in question states,

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism.

He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

http://www.cs.umass.edu/~immerman/play/opinion05/WithoutADoubt.html

It's a very interesting and curious quote depending on how much you wish to read into the extent of the statement.

 

[ymu]

Ymu: You're wrong consistently here.


Then they should find a new job. I found the answers to some of the questions Fisk asks within minutes of starting to search.

He hasn't even tried to find out what the official report says but he does, explicitly state that it does not answer certain points.

Why on earth are you wasting time trying to defend an article that would be ripped to bits if Jazzz or friends had posted it up? Just because Fisk did some good work once upon a time is no excuse for sloppy half arsed ignorance to be published in a leading newspaper.

How did you debunk the Mohammed Atta letter?

How did you demonstrate that the NIST report was correct when it is still undergoing a legal challenge? You can bet your bottom dollar it will have absolutely every angle in the report defended to the hilt by NIST lawyers and every conceivable expert on the planet, regardless of the cost. Are you honestly saying that it is so impossible that these guys are not fruitloops that you are content to prejudge the outcome?

Is rave back in or summat?

 

[phildwyer]

With reference to the hyper-selective/condescending attitude to secondary intelligence sources, I believe the issue is rooted in the wider problem of America's position at the apex of the pyramid of cultures based around consumption/immediate gratification.
Samir Amin makes an aside in his book "The Liberal Virusermanent War and the Americanisation of the World" which I see as relevant to the US power elites' seeming inability/unwillingness to engage with outside intelligence sources and/or "bearers of bad tidings". Amin says:
"...one of the major weaknesses of American thought , resulting from its history and its ideology, is that it has no long-term vision. This thought is embedded in the immediate, about which it collects an alarmingly large quantity of data.It believes that it can clarify its immediate choices exclusively through the analysis of "the present", always judging "the past" as irrelevant (the expression 'it's history' is an American synonym for 'without importance'). The future, in these conditions, is always conceived as the simple projection of the immediate."

IMHO f you exist within (and indeed propagate, if you're part of "the system") a culture that constantly lauds immediate gratification and a worship of "the present" over learning the lessons of the past in order to more accurately project the future, why would you choose to give credence to "bearers of bad tidings"? I don't believe that your mention of a systemic attitude of self-absorption and arrogance goes far enough. I believe that there's no more and no less than a situation in play that sets up such a cognitive dissonance in members of the US power elite that, while many know that it is irrational, they're unable to give acknowledgement to anything but their own hypotheses and views supportive of those hypotheses, because their cultural imperatives demand that gratification is not delayed.

</end of rant>

You're a miserable old bugger, but I have to say that this time you've hit the nail on the head. Twat.

 

[ymu]

The point is that nobody besides someone very well informed on the "why" shall be able to point out that this "letter" is weird beyond weird. Do you believe the average non-Muslim shall see anything strange about it?

salaam.

No. How could they? Outsiders to any culture have pretty much zero hope of picking up more than a caricature of what that culture is all about.

It's why it's so easy for people who know precisely how many innocent foreign civilians the USG has murdered in the last 60 years still think that "they wouldn't kill 3000 of their own citizens". Que? You what? Really? I don't think they did it, but you really think that's a valid argument? Of course not - it's nonsense.

Same with the run up to Iraq. Ever notice the constant "only leader to have used WMD on his own people". Pretty critical distinction when Churchill gassed the Kurds decades earlier, Vietnam is still a fresh horror in all our minds, and there's only one state to have ever used a nuke in anger.

Pure dissembling and brain-washing. It sounds right. It makes sense. Let's not question it further. When's Big Brother on?

 

[ymu]

Oddly the article doesn't seem to exist anymore...

Does the indie still charge for premium content and whisk the brief freebie away double quick?

It's still in my browser if you want a PM.

 

[Aldebaran]

I don't believe that your mention of a systemic attitude of self-absorption and arrogance goes far enough.

It was a summarized end-result of what you mentioned in that very good analysis

salaam.

 

[disownedspirit]

http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2893860.ece

its in the robert fisk bit

 

[ymu]

Thanks for that reference VP. That's excellent - and sooooo totally in chime with the full quote of the "our own reality" - thanks BM! (Although the latter is still sending shivers down my spine.)

Theorist proposes it. Subject indirectly and unwittingly confirms it. Strong likelihood of being dead on the money.

 

[Aldebaran]

Same with the run up to Iraq. Ever notice the constant "only leader to have used WMD on his own people".

What is the most amazing for me is that the public never seems to realize that any president (or other leader) who sends the nation's army into a war of agression cold blooded murders "his own people".

salaam.

 

[ymu]

What is the most amazing for me is that the public never seems to realize that any president (or other leader) who sends the nation's army into a war of agression cold blooded murders "his own people".

salaam.

Very good point.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

How did you debunk the Mohammed Atta letter?

How did you demonstrate that the NIST report was correct when it is still undergoing a legal challenge? You can bet your bottom dollar it will have absolutely every angle in the report defended to the hilt by NIST lawyers and every conceivable expert on the planet, regardless of the cost. Are you honestly saying that it is so impossible that these guys are not fruitloops that you are content to prejudge the outcome?

Is rave back in or summat?

You're ignoring my posts, again and again.

He states that his questions about the science of it are not answered when they are. In a very consistent manner.The very questions he asks betrays his ignorance.

He states lies in his article, like WTC 7 collapsing in 6 seconds when it took 18 according to seismographs and 15 of which is visible on video.

I KNOW that he gets large portions of the article wrong. He cannot be trusted to get the rest right. He didn't even read the executive summary of the NIST report yet makes statements of it. If warren's right with the quote above it doesn't really look like he read the letter either.

I don't call him or the people suing the government fruitloops, i do call this article a pathetic attempt at reporting that should never have been published. Tell me i'm wrong.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Same with the run up to Iraq. Ever notice the constant "only leader to have used WMD on his own people". Pretty critical distinction when Churchill gassed the Kurds decades earlier, Vietnam is still a fresh horror in all our minds, and there's only one state to have ever used a nuke in anger.

Although, of course, Saddam, if you're taking into account the ethnic and sect-based fault-lines that have always existed in Iraq, could have claimed that he didn't actually use WMDs on his "own people", he used them on a troublesome, despised and geographically-isolated ethnic minority.

 

[fela fan]

I came too late to read all the pages. I got through the first three though.

Good to see the likes of fisk questioning the official 911 narrative. I've wondered when he or pilger or chomsky or any other mainstream alternative writer might get onto the topic.

Of course gore vidal always thought there was an inside story to it all, as did michael meacher from the UK.

But even with such illuminaries as fisk questioning it all, as he himself noted, and as we are well aware on urban, there are plenty of folk who are so quick to bring in the word 'conspiracy theorist'. This of course has far more to do with the failure to go after any potential suspects than the debate by the actual 'conspiracy theorists'.

In other words i find it hilarious, and have done so for a few years now, how those that rabbit on about how the CTers have hijacked the debate while they, the proper serious authority on the subject have been working so hard to keep realistic and serious debate alive. The CTers have ruined real debate.

Oh no!

Kudos to fisk, and maybe others will follow his doubts. It's great to see a big name on board, someone that any punters will find it difficult to ridicule, unlike us normal punters...

 

[butchersapron]

Chomsky already has.

 

[fela fan]

And with fisk being associated with doubting the official narrative, it seems that the bin button has been taken out of the equation...

Ah, as long as you have a name, you have a point.

If you don't have a name, then your message is shit.

 

[fela fan]

Chomsky already has.

Oh, well i missed that. I guess it's pretty recent?

He really is a top class commentator on american foreign policy and i always found it one of my doubts about what happened being that chomsky had never intimated that it could have been something to do with an inside story.

But i remain, on balance, a believer that the US had something to do with it.

As does fisk, and now as you say mate, chomsky.

I always found some satisfying refuge in gore vidal...

 

[London_Calling]

The empire operates by conspiracy, as does business when it can - the whole British Airways saga is exactly that, the bogus WMD campaign the same.

Conspiracies are vital to achieving dubious ends.

Just don't assume they're all David-Ike-never-went-to-the-moon bonkers.

 

[butchersapron]

Oh, well i missed that. I guess it's pretty recent?

He really is a top class commentator on american foreign policy and i always found it one of my doubts about what happened being that chomsky had never intimated that it could have been something to do with an inside story.

But i remain, on balance, a believer that the US had something to do with it.

As does fisk, and now as you say mate, chomsky.

I always found some satisfying refuge in gore vidal...

Bang!

I said nothing of the sort about chomsky. He basically called all the conspiracy loons a bunch of idiots, useful idiots. Fisk says nothing like what you say either. Do have a read of the article that this thread is about.

 

[editor]

He really is a top class commentator on american foreign policy and i always found it one of my doubts about what happened being that chomsky had never intimated that it could have been something to do with an inside story.

Can you clarify this please?

What is odd about Chomsky not believing it was an conspiracy-tastic inside job? He made his opinion of the loon theories very clear a while ago - in fact he believed that the 'truth' nutters and their bonkers tales were actively helping Bush & Co get off the hook.

"I think this reaches the heart of the matter. One of the major consequences of the 9/11 movement has been to draw enormous amounts of energy and effort away from activism directed to real and ongoing crimes of state, and their institutional background, crimes that are far more serious than blowing up the WTC would be, if there were any credibility to that thesis. That is, I suspect, why the 9/11 movement is treated far more tolerantly by centers of power than is the norm for serious critical and activist work. How do you personally set priorities? That's of course up to you. I've explained my priorities often, in print as well as elsewhere, but we have to make our own judgements."

"...I don't see any reason to accept the presuppositions. As for the consequences, in one of my first interviews after 9/11 I pointed out the obvious: every power system in the world was going to exploit it for its own interests: the Russians in Chechnya, China against the Uighurs, Israel in the occupied territories,... etc., and states would exploit the opportunity to control their own populations more fully through "prevention of terrorism acts" and the like. By the "who gains" argument, every power system in the world could be assigned responsibility for 9/11."

"I think the Bush administration would have had to be utterly insane to try anything like what is alleged, for their own narrow interests, and do not think that serious evidence has been provided to support claims about actions that would not only be outlandish, for their own interests, but that have no remote historical parallel. The effects, however, are all too clear, namely, what I just mentioned: diverting activism and commitment away from the very serious ongoing crimes of state."

http://www.debunking911.com/massivect.htm

http://www.debunking911.com/massivect.htm

 

[fela fan]

Bang!

I said nothing of the sort about chomsky. He basically called all the conspiracy loons a bunch of idiots, useful idiots. Fisk says nothing like what you say either. Do have a read of the article that this thread is about.

Were you priming a trap for me mate?

Either way, i have more regard for my own thinking than chomsky's.

But if he calls CTers 'useful' idiots, then i'd like to know what this actually means? How can you have a useful idiot as opposed to just an idiot?

All the 'conspiracy loons' eh? Who are these flock of people? How does one spot one of them, y'know, without any gross generalisation? What do they look like?

 

[butchersapron]

Make your mind up fela. One minute his silence on the issue is causing you serious doubts about your own views, the next you're dismissing his views as beneath you.

 

[editor]

Make your mind up fela. One minute his silence on the issue is causing you serious doubts about your own views, the next you're dismissing his views as beneath you.

Indeed. He's gone from "top class commentator on american foreign policy" to having opinions less worthy than his own in two posts!

 

[ymu]

You're ignoring my posts, again and again.

He states that his questions about the science of it are not answered when they are. In a very consistent manner.The very questions he asks betrays his ignorance.

He states lies in his article, like WTC 7 collapsing in 6 seconds when it took 18 according to seismographs and 15 of which is visible on video.

I KNOW that he gets large portions of the article wrong. He cannot be trusted to get the rest right. He didn't even read the executive summary of the NIST report yet makes statements of it. If warren's right with the quote above it doesn't really look like he read the letter either.

I don't call him or the people suing the government fruitloops, i do call this article a pathetic attempt at reporting that should never have been published. Tell me i'm wrong.

I'm just asking you why you're stating again and again that all of the issues he raised have been answered, when there are two that I think have not been/cannot be answered yet.

Remember, Fisk isn't saying there's a MIHOP/LIHOP style conspiracy here - he's saying there are some odd details that encourage conspiracy theories while they remain unanswered. He noted some he hadn't found a good debunk for. (I'd be very surprised if he ignored your e-mail BTW, as long as it wasn't written in raver stylee - he's a very courteous and conscientious journalist IMO. Then again, he may be swamped after this particular article ).

How do you explain the Mohammed Atta letter? Planted false evidence, obviously - but there are some very real questions about how the US agencies got to the identities of these guys so quickly. If the intelligence was there, enough to plant false trails so soon after, surely the attack was preventable? If it was preventable and wasn't prevented ... who dropped the ball and how are they making sure it doesn't happen again?

How do you justify prejudging the outcome of a court case when it will be a matter of public record soon enough? All he's saying is that people better qualified to judge than most are questioning the conclusions and scientific integrity of the NIST report, and that another NIST report on the weirdest collapse hasn't even been published yet so cannot be scrutinised. That's not unreasonable, even if he underestimates the chance that they are fruitloops.

You claimed to have written to him debunking all of it. I asked how that was possible when the Atta letter appears to be both real and genuinely puzzling, and you don't appear to have evidence that the scientists are actually fruitloops or even have the substance of their arguments to examine.

None of the questions he asks lead inexorably on to a USG conspiracy - he makes it crystal clear he is not a "believer". There's no need to get so hot under the collar about things you cannot yet answer definitively.

I'd have done a way better job with my unanswered questions but that's beside the point. You claiming that all his questions have been definitively answered is just as bad as him claiming that all the questions remain unanswered (except that you make the claim directly, whereas I don't think he does). It doesn't make me want to view you as an objective commentator, that's for sure.

 

[laptop]

How do you explain the Mohammed Atta letter?

Before trying, we need to know to whom it was addressed.

Since wahabiites consider all non-wahabiite Muslims to be bad Muslims, there's a perfectly coherent explanation. Atta's Catholic equivalent might well have spelled out the details of the Mass, out of contempt for the bad Catholics he was addressing...