The point of conspiracy theories?

[fela fan]

Can I just point out as well that the thing with the planes was actually a policy decision that had been made previously and was being done to save money (and of course it's hysterical that lefties are in fact criticising the USG for flying less planes - can you imagine if the US had taken the threats seriously and had whole fleets of planes up? Then they'd have been accused of paranoia and warmongering and scarfication of the peoples )

Kyser, the policy decision was made back in 1997. In the light of so many warnings, why was the decision not amended? I mean warnings are coming in for two years or so, but in the same time period, they dogmatically continue to reduce the number of jets that can protect US airspace.

Remember, the first thing bush did upon getting power was to resume Reagan's star wars. So they are prepared to defend themselves from nuclear crap, but continue to allow their US airspace defences be reduced from 100 to 14 jets??

It doesn't make sense on its own, never mind the fact that the backdrop is of countless warnings of flying bombs coming towards New York and the Pentagon...

 

[Loki]

I can only post at the minute through my friday evening beers, not so many tonight though, but i may be more lucid tomorrow, let's see...

But look man, warnings are warnings, intelligence is in operation to deal with such things. It's why they exist. In 1997 they took the decision to reduce the number of jets defending US airspace culminating in only 14 jets in 2001, from 100 jets.

The warnings were coming in before this year. Yet the jets were reduced.

As for how many warnings they had, fucking plenty!! From all over the shop.

How often? Bloody often, all the time!

And you don't shut airports down because of a warning. But what you do do is be prepared.

Ask yourself: with so many warnings, from so many countries, why do you have such unpreparedness when the attacks begin? Why don't you reverse the decision to reduce the number of jets defending US airspace?

And why did members of the US administration find it so necessary to tell us they had no ability to imagine such a kind of attack? When they'd had so much intelligence telling them that planes would be used as flying bombs?

fela how is it possible to be prepared against a terrorist organisation that attacks quite random targets? Could anyone have prepared themselves against the Bali or the Madrid bombings? I honestly can't say that prior to seeing the terrible events unfold on 9/11 I even contemplated AQ hijacking planes and slamming them into the WTC. And neither, I think, did you. Hindsight is a fine thing.

So how was the USG supposed to know that whatever reports they received about this one were any more serious than the dozens/hundreds of others they recieved?

If you were in the USG's position could you honestly say you would have known that this particular threat was more real than the others? How?

 

[fela fan]

deleted coz clicked the wrong button!

 

[fela fan]

I honestly can't say that prior to seeing the terrible events unfold on 9/11 I even contemplated AQ hijacking planes and slamming them into the WTC. And neither, I think, did you. Hindsight is a fine thing.

So how was the USG supposed to know that whatever reports they received about this one were any more serious than the dozens/hundreds of others they recieved?

If you were in the USG's position could you honestly say you would have known that this particular threat was more real than the others? How?

No, i had never contemplated it either. But we're not privy to intelligence!!

Like this:

"In early August, the British gave another warning, telling the US to expect multiple airline hijackings from al-Qaeda. This warning was included in Bush's briefing on August 6, 2001. [Sunday Herald, 5/19/02]"

[I believe that is the document that the commission forced into the public eye about a week back, the first time ever.]

and this

"In June 2001, German intelligence warned the US, Britain, and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack "American and Israeli symbols which stand out." "

[american symbols that 'stand out' eh? Doesn't get more clear than this!]

and this

"Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly stated that he ordered his intelligence agencies to alert the US in the summer of 2001 that suicide pilots were training for attacks on US targets. [Fox News, 5/17/02]"

It was all rather specific - Al Q, planes, hijackings, american symbols. And being a member of the intelligence community, it is their job (not ours!) to analyse the info they get. By seeing patterns, and by seeing warnings that keep mentioning the same theme, one would think that if they did their job properly, far from suffering from warning fatigue, they'd have a very clear picture as to how to defend themselves.

Meanwhile, amidst all these warnings, the defence of US airspace is being downgraded. And don't forget that OBL had tried it on with the WTC before.

So for members of the administration to come out and say they could not have conceived of such a style of terrorist attack is just lies.

They knew what was being planned, and they let it happen. Not only did they let it happen, they seemed to actively help it along by downgrading their defensive systems.

 

[pbman]

I wonder how the american public would react to the knowledge that their government had had so many warnings (and many quite specific, not just the general ones) leading up to the attacks, and yet had so spectacularly let them go? And that the USG in the midst of these warnings significantly reduced their capabilities of reacting to such emergencies by reducing their fighter jet squadron from 100 to 14?

And how might they react when they recall various members of the administration lying through their teeth by saying after the attacks that there was just no way they could have imagined planes being used as hijacked missiles flying into buildings? When it's clear they knew all about such a scenario.

Sorry everyone, but warning fatigue looks less and less likely the more you try to accept it.

By a clue some day. What whuold you have done then?

Start profiling arabs?

Give me exact recomendatios that would have prevented 9/11, that the president/law enforcement should have done.

 

[fela fan]

By a clue some day. What whuold you have done then?

Start profiling arabs?

Give me exact recomendatios that would have prevented 9/11, that the president/law enforcement should have done.

Don't know what 'by a clue some day' means.

You're ignoring the point by saying what would i do about it. I'm not in the intelligence field whose job is to use intelligence to foil terrorist plots. Like this for example:

“In January 1995, acclaimed 9/11 "mastermind" Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others were within weeks of implementing a massive plot named Operation Bojinka when they were foiled by authorities in the Philippines. This plot involved the simultaneous bombing of up to a dozen passenger airliners flying over the Pacific Ocean. But in some variations of this plan, planes were to be hijacked and flown into "key structures" in the United States. According to a US intelligence analysis shortly after the plot was uncovered, "The World Trade Center, the White House, the Pentagon, the Transamerican Tower, and the Sears Tower were among the prominent structures that had been identified in the plans that we had decoded." [Village Voice, 9/26/01] One pilot, Abdul Hakim Murad (who incidentally learned to fly in US flight schools), confessed that his role was to crash a plane into CIA headquarters. [Washington Post, 9/23/01]”

and this

“Bojinka was only the most spectacular of many failed plans to use planes as flying bombs. In January 1996, US intelligence received information concerning a planned suicide attack by individuals connected with al-Qaeda. They wanted to fly from Afghanistan to the US and crash into the White House. In October 1996, an Iranian plot to hijack a Japanese plane over Israel and crash it into Tel Aviv was exposed. [Senate Intelligence Committee, 9/18/02]”


Have a complete read yourself mate:

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essayairdefense.html

 

[pbman]

Don't know what 'by a clue some day' means.

You're ignoring the point by saying what would i do about it. I'm not in the intelligence field whose job is to use intelligence to foil terrorist plots. Like this for example:



http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essayairdefense.html

But it is you who by your own admition can't answer of aperently understand, that everything that could have been done, was done.

Before 9/11 their is no way in hell bush or anyone ese could have changed the airline security. Teh increased security cost the airlines billions and billions and almost put severl out of buisness.

He didn't have the backing of the people for that, no matter what his inteligence.

And dodn't give me those crappy links on the hearings, i watched most of them on tv.

And what was on tv isn't in your links.

Yo know so little that talking to you is like talking to a brick wall.

No offense.

But you and none of your crapy links can answer the question of what should have been done, that bush could actaully do, that he failed to do.

When bush got the memo, on possible attacks they told him they had aroudn 65 seperate ongoing investigations into preventing these terroist attacks.

65

You think anouther 5 or 10 would have prevented it?

And have you heard about the "wall of seperation between inteligence and law inforcement?

Do you knwo were it came form and who is responsible for it?

Do you knwo that the person responsible could be questioned becouse she was on the 9/11 investigaition committtee?

Don't you think thats stupid? that such a key person is onthe committee to cover her own envolvmetn?

****************************************

Sept. 11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick wrote a 1995 memo that established a "wall" between the criminal and intelligence divisions, hindering the ability of the U.S. government to detect the Sept. 11, 2001, plot, according to testimony today by Attorney General John Ashcroft.


Jamie Gorelick

The document by Gorelick [pdf file], who served as deputy attorney general under President Clinton, helped establish the "single greatest structural cause" for Sept. 11, which was "the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents," Ashcroft said in his prepared statement.

Gorelick was a Democratic appointee to the commission probing how the government handled the threat to terrorism leading to the 9-11 attacks.

"Government erected this wall," Ashcroft said. "Government buttressed this wall. And before September 11, government was blinded by this wall."

She is responsible for this wall that prevented the entelignce servass. from sharing info with the law enforcment/prevention servaces.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38022

Have a complete read yourself mate:

 

[fela fan]

But it is you who by your own admition can't answer of aperently understand, that everything that could have been done, was done.

Before 9/11 their is no way in hell bush or anyone ese could have changed the airline security. Teh increased security cost the airlines billions and billions and almost put severl out of buisness.

He didn't have the backing of the people for that, no matter what his inteligence.

And dodn't give me those crappy links on the hearings, i watched most of them on tv.

Read properly. Fighter jets aren't part of any airline. The US had 100 of them to defend the skies of US airspace (airlines don't do that job) and in the midst of all these warnings reduced that number to 14.

Read properly again. I didn't provide any links on the hearings.

You call me to do research. I do. You don't read it. Oh well. Every link from that website comes from mainstream media around the world, mostly from US and UK papers, media. If their crappy, which sources are not crappy?

 

[pbman]

Read properly. Fighter jets aren't part of any airline. The US had 100 of them to defend the skies of US airspace (airlines don't do that job) and in the midst of all these warnings reduced that number to 14.

Read properly again. I didn't provide any links on the hearings.

You call me to do research. I do. You don't read it. Oh well. Every link from that website comes from mainstream media around the world, mostly from US and UK papers, media. If their crappy, which sources are not crappy?

Theri is no way in hell anyone could have used fighters before 9/11 to prevent an attack. To even sujest if shows how out of touch you are.

And this is the first sentance of your link. It reverences teh 9/11 commistion many times.

On May 22 and 23, 2003, the 9/11 Independent Commission held its second set of public hearings, focusing on the issue of air defense.

You call me to do research. I do. You don't read it. Oh well. Every link from that website comes from mainstream media around the world, mostly from US and UK papers, media. If their crappy, which sources are not crappy?

It not the source thats crappy its the idea, witch has been descrideted many times. Shooting down planes wasn't a realistic option.

And all the inteligence warning of the attacks is pointless when its aginst the law for the inteligence services to share info, with the enforcment servics, don't you agree?

As an example, Landmark quotes former Chief Assistant United States Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy, who said Gorelick was "an architect of the government's self-imposed procedural wall, intentionally erected to prevent intelligence agents from pooling information with their law-enforcement counterparts."

Writing in National Review Online, Ethan Wallison, notes during questioning of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Gorelick pointed to a report from 2001 that indicated, in her own words, that "we have big systemic problems. The FBI doesn't work the way it should, and it doesn't communicate with the intelligence community."

Damn its rather pointless if the CIA or NSA have the intelignece but can't share that info with the FBI. The cia can't legaly operate inside the us, and the nsa doesn't have the manpower to do so.