911 question

[Dreepa]

Ok I know that many here are involved in the 911 'thing'.

I have a friend who has watched every video many times over. Has 'researched' it... but I guess my question is... what does it get you?
Even if the worst of it is true.... how does it make us more free?
Wouldn't it be better to spend time working on something that can actually make NH a better place to live?

Just wondering.

[Braddogg]

I like the way Wilt Alston put it, at the end of this article he penned on how ridiculous the government story is:

I appreciate this chance to clear my conscience of a few things that have been bothering me. As is my habit, after a particularly fruitful bit of (hopefully) intellectual catharsis, I now have a plan of action.

I plan to watch tonight's new episode of "NUMB3RS" in just a few minutes. After that, I plan to watch a new episode of "Dr. G. - Medical Examiner." Thank you for your support. Feel free to develop your own plan.

[Insurgent]

Ok I know that many here are involved in the 911 'thing'.

I have a friend who has watched every video many times over. Has 'researched' it... but I guess my question is... what does it get you?
Even if the worst of it is true.... how does it make us more free?
Wouldn't it be better to spend time working on something that can actually make NH a better place to live?

Just wondering.

Everyone might have different motivations, but for me it's about knowing truth. 9/11 is probably the biggest event which will happen in many of our lifetimes, and investigating events surrounding it are imperative to understanding the world we live in. Somewhere in the Bible it says something about knowing the truth and the truth making you free 

I just ran across a phenomenal quote which really sums up how I view research in to events surrounding 9/11. Taken from here:
http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com/2007/05/epa-whistleblower-alleges-more-fraud.html

"9/11 research is a rabbit-hole of Byzantine complexity full of snares and delusions and peopled with false friends, lunatics, earnest lost souls and a few heroes. It's not necessary to understand all the nuances of science and bureaucracy that allowed the government to get away with mass murder, blame it on swarthy foreigners (of whom many are eager accomplices) and use the incident as (in the words of the Cheney, Jeb Bush et al cabal, the Project for a New American Century) "a new Pearl Harbor." At this critical juncture in human history, it's only necessary to understand why they did it. The motive was Peak Oil, a disaster which will affect everyone on the planet, about which all must enlighten themselves and for which all must prepare."

9/11 and Peak Oil are inseparable issues http://www.oilempire.us/911peakoil.html

[Caleb]

Several issues are at stake, Dreepa.

1)  9/11 is a gigantic white elephant in the room. You can say, "Shouldn't we just try to make New Hampshire more free?" But the main threat to New Hampshire's freedom is the federal government. And 9/11 is the fedguv's catch-all reason for instituting its tyranny. So how do you increase freedom if you ignore 9/11?  I realize that there are a number of non-truthers (Error and Ian come to mind) who say, "Ok, we need to address 9/11, but we don't really need to know who did it, it is enough to simply look at the fedguv's reaction to it, and that is enough to show that the government has gone overboard." Ok. Fair enough. It's enough to convince you, because you are already predisposed to liberty-oriented ideas. But even in the liberty community it isn't always sufficient. Mvpel is a good case, of a very intelligent person who is predisposed towards liberty-oriented ideas, but as a result of buying into the line that "terrorism" is a real threat has been willing to take non-liberty positions. If we can't convince even all of the libertarians when we focus on only the reaction to 9/11, how can we possibly convince the mainstream?  Like it or not, most of your fellow Americans are going to view the government's response at least partially justifiable as long as they accept the major premise: to wit, that America is under foreign attack by individuals who are carrying out a holy war in the name of fundamentalist Islam.

2)  Why shouldn't we question 9/11? Why should there be certain topics that are taboo to question? Why, in a free society, should certain topics subject individuals to intellectual intimidation? Why, in a free society, should a university professer have his qualifications questioned and his job jeopardized because he researches this issue? Intellectual intimidation has no place in a free society.

3)  Talk with an individual who believes that the government committed 9/11. You won't find a government apologist. Rather, you will find an individual who is ready and willing to question the government. Furthermore, you will almost always find someone who is passionate enough to do something. It's hard not to get worked up when you believe your government is willing to do something like that. 9/11 truthers are, in short, the precise sort of people we are wanting to attract, and it seems like a good strategy to try to create as many 9/11 truthers as we can.

4) Because the government's version of events, on examination, is so silly that I wouldn't feel comfortable espousing such nonsense. Isn't truth why we are all here, after all?

[Lasse]

Here's what I don't get.

If the government did it, they would not have created this elaborate plan requiring hundreds or even thousands of government employees to be 'in on it', and explosives and all sorts of cutting of beams and whatnot which would have left all this 'evidence' truthers claim to have found - they would have either hired the hijackers themselves through deniable third men, or, even more easily, installed some form of hidden remote control on the planes.

Why does no 9/11 truther mention this? Because if they did this, it could not be proven. There would be no 'evidence' for them to 'discover'.

It would seem that any scenario which is not 'researchable' by going through unclassified stock photography is completely uninteresting and out of the question.

[error]

The real question is:

Why bother with a controlled demolition at all?

Crashing planes into the buildings was horrific enough, and guaranteed to kill thousands, even if the buildings somehow withstood the impacts and resulting damage. It would have been more than enough to justify the crackdowns and preemptive war which we now suffer.

[Ruger Mason]

How about this:  if 9/11 was a government conspiracy to justify an invasion of Iraq, and the hijackers were fictional, as ZEITGEIST and Loose Change both suggest, why oh why did the Feds make the fake hijackers Saudi?  If they had made the fake hijackers Iraqis, they'd have had no problems justifying the war to the public, to Congress or to the UN.  But friggin' Saudis???  Stinkin' government incompetence!   

[Caleb]

they would have either hired the hijackers themselves through deniable third men, or, even more easily, installed some form of hidden remote control on the planes.

 Uh ... have you ever read 9/11 truth material? Many 9/11 truthers don't speculate as to how the government did it, because, as you have noted, it would mostly be speculation. Those that do speculate as to how it was done, invariably suggest just what you have noted. First, that there is no way in hell that the government would shut down its defenses and let the terrorists go about their business doing whatever they wanted. Too unpredictable and out of their control. The easiest way to control it would be by controlling the planes. (remote control). Also, much of the planning and implementing was done by ISI, so the number of individuals who were directly involved was small.

Crashing planes into the buildings was horrific enough, and guaranteed to kill thousands, even if the buildings somehow withstood the impacts and resulting damage.

Most truthers speculate that the government was actually trying its best to keep casualties as low as possible, while maximizing the psychological value of the attacks.

There was also a financial incentive, when you research the ownership of the buildings and who stood to profit from collecting the insurance money, and the political connections involved.

But there is a larger issue, and that is this: If it can be shown that the government lied, it doesn't really matter whether any truther can give a complete account of every detail of how everything happened. The government has been caught with its pants down, lying about 9/11, obstructing justice, and concealing and destroying evidence. In a criminal investigation, a person who behaves in such a manner becomes the prime suspect.

[error]

You can smite me all you want. It's easier than confronting the truth.

[Caleb]

How about this:  if 9/11 was a government conspiracy to justify an invasion of Iraq, and the hijackers were fictional, as ZEITGEIST and Loose Change both suggest, why oh why did the Feds make the fake hijackers Saudi?  If they had made the fake hijackers Iraqis, they'd have had no problems justifying the war to the public, to Congress or to the UN.  But friggin' Saudis???  Stinkin' government incompetence!   

Wow!  That's a really easy one. I don't know if you remember, but shortly after 9/11, the talk of right wing radio was all about how "the Saudis aren't really our friends". The rhetoric got so thick that the Saudi ambassador made a speech to the American people, pleading that his country was on America's side, that the saudis love America, etc. Bush was even meeting with Putin, early on after 9/11, supposedly forging an oil agreement with Putin so as to do an end around the Saudis. Then suddenly, as quickly as it had come, the anti-saudi rhetoric was gone.

There is no doubt in my mind that 9/11 was about controlling the world's oil supplies. Not, mind you, necessarily trying to lower costs to American consumers, but more a game of trying to control the world's flow of oil. And if you want to control the world's oil supplies, you better deal with Saudi Arabia. It's not always necessary to attack someone and set up a new government to accomplish that. That's actually kind of an inefficient way of doing it. It's much easier to control the guys who are already in power. Having a majority of 9/11 hijackers being from Saudi Arabia ... and pressure from the right to "do something" about the Saudis no doubt increased the American leverage against the Saudis with our Saudi "friends" to keep them on the team. Also, somewhere there is an article by a journalist who interviewed a Riyadh embassy official who has maintained that the Saudi Ambassador would routinely approve visas for people who had failed background checks. So, it might make sense in that overall perspective that the people would be "Saudis" because they had been trafficked through the corrupt embassy in Riyadh.

[Caleb]

You can smite me all you want. It's easier than confronting the truth.

I didn't smite you. In fact, I gave you karma last night after you whined about people smiting you.

[Caleb]

Ok, here it is, I found the Springman interview. Springman was a consular official in Jeddah, not Riyadh, as I had earlier said.
-----

Transcript of CBC (Canada) Interview with Michael Springman
Former State Department Official In The US Visa Bureau, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Interview Date 3 July 2002

Springman: Well it began in Jeddah when I was repeatedly told to issue visas to unqualified applicants. This went on for quite some time, during most of my tour there.

CBC: When you say unqualified applicants, what kind of qualifications didn't they have?

Springman: Under the American immigration laws, you need to demonstrate that you are going to the United
States for a specific purpose, and typically in such a situation you are going to sign a business deal, or you're going to go as a tourist to see the Grand Canyon, or you're going as a student to study a particular course of study. And these were people that had no job; in one instance he was a Sudanese, who was unemployed in Saudi Arabia, and a refugee from the Sudan. But he got a visa for National Security purposes, after it was taken out of my hands by the chief of the consular section. The King's barber's secretary apparently got a visa. There were other people in similar situations that really demonstrated no clear idea of what they were going to do.

CBC: All right, King's barber's aside, to be the Devil's advocate your superior from time to time overruled your findings. Why is that unusual?

Springman: Well it's unusual because in State department practice, you are supposed to have new concrete and substantive information that was not available to the fellow who adjudicated the visa at the beginning. And this was never done.

CBC: So what do you think you were dealing with here; it all sounds a bit like a case of visa fraud perhaps, but why to you think there was anything more than that?

Springman: Well initially I thought that is what it was. There was visa fraud. I had been told by one contact that the price for a visa at the American consulate was the equivalent of $2500 US. But once I got back to the United States, and was out of the foreign service, I ran across a couple of people with ties to the American government, that told me another story; that the CIA was recruiting fighters for the Afghan war against the then Soviets, and that their asset, Osama bin Laden was working with them. They had a recruiting office in Jeddah, they had a recruiting office in Riyadh, and third one somewhere in the Eastern province. And they would send these people to Jeddah, the fifth largest visa issuing post in the Middle East, for visas. They would apparently run these people straight over from their recruiting office over to my visa window. Well obviously, when they were not good solid businessmen, or good upstanding upper class people I would refuse them.

CBC: How many would you estimate that got into the United States that shouldn't have through this back door?

Springman: Well, in my case I would say as many as 100.

CBC: And when you questioned them, what would they say were their reasons for expecting to get a visa with such slight credentials?

Springman: There was one instance of two Pakistanis who came to me, and they wanted to got to an American auto parts trade show. They couldn't name the show, and they couldn't name the city in which it was going to be held. And then the case officer came over and called me on the phone, and said, "Give them a visa". I said "No, it doesn't wash". "Well, we need it, I'm sorry." Then he went to the head of the consular section and got me overruled, and they got their visas. But when I complained to the powers in the consulate, and the people in Riyadh, I was told to keep quiet, that there was reasons for doing this, that it wasn't a case of my poor judgment, it was this and it was that. This simply fueled my suspicions that something untoward was going on.

CBC: Was there ever any pattern to these applicants that you could see? To their situations, their skills, their nationalities?

Springman: They seemed to basically people with no real skills. Their nationalities for the most part were Pakistani, Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese. They were young, in their 20s and their 30s say, and they seemed to have no ties to any place in particular.

CBC: Where did Afghanistan seem to fit into this whole pattern? Because it seems they were going to the US to collect or be rewarded for some past deed, or to be trained for another. Where did Afghanistan fit in?

Springman: Afghanistan was the end user of their facilities. My sources told me that they were coming to the United States for training as terrorists, and they would be sent back to Afghanistan. But then the countries that had originally had supplied them certainly didn't want them back. These were people that had been given skills in overthrowing governments, destroying armored columns and things like this, and the various governments in the region frankly didn't want them back, because they thought they might apply these skills at home.

CBC: So if your theory is true, you can demonstrate a relationship between the CIA and Osama bin Laden dating back as far as 1987.

Springman: That's right. And as you recall, they believe that this fellow Sheikh Abdel Rahman over in New York that was tied to the first Trade Center bombing, had gotten his visa from a CIA case officer in the Sudan. And that 15 or so of the people who came from Saudi Arabia to participate in the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon had gotten their visas through the American consular general at Jeddah.

CBC: Well what does that suggest? That this pipeline was never rolled up, that it is still operating?

Springman: Exactly. I had thought it had been, because I had raised sufficient hell that I thought they had done it. I had complained to the embassy in Riyadh, I had complained to the diplomatic security in Washington, I had complained to the General Accounting Office, I had complained to the State Department Inspector General's office, and I had complained to the Bureau of Consular Affairs at the State Department. Apparently the reverberations from this where heard all over the State Department.

CBC: And if what you say may be true, many of the terrorists who allegedly flew those planes into those targets got their US visas through the CIA and your US consulate in Jeddah. That suggests an relationship ongoing as recently as September [2001]. What was the CIA presumably recruiting these people for, as recently as September 11th?

Springman: That I don't know. That's one of the things that I tried to find out through a series of Freedom of Information Act requests starting 10 years ago. And at the time, the State Department and the CIA stonewalled my requests; they are still doing so.

CBC: If the CIA had a relationship with the people responsible for September 11, are you suggesting that they are in some way complicit?

Springman: Even through omission or failure to act.

CBC: Do you have any evidence, any paperwork from all of these years that might go towards supporting all of this?

Springman: Regrettably not. I had something at some point. My predecessor in Jeddah had begun a file of people with peculiar attributes who got had got visas. I kept it up, I added to it. I learned later on after I had left, that this file had been mysteriously been shredded.

CBC: But you complained, and you complained and you complained, but what eventually happened to you?

Springman: My appointment in the State Department was terminated, and I was never given a coherent statement why.

CBC: You will above all will appreciate that conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen these days with regard to September 11th, what makes yours different or any more credible than the others?

Springman: I have floated around the international affairs community for the past 20 years. I was in the middle of this in Jeddah; I knew people in the foreign service, I knew people out of it, I knew people in the CIA. I had at one time great respect for the CIA, but this operation in Jeddah was so peculiar, so strange, and it went against anything I had ever seen or heard in my 20 years in government, that I thought that what these people were telling me about CIA involvement with Osama, and with Afghanistan had to be true because nothing else would fit. By the attempts to cover me up and shut me down, this convinced me more and more that this was not a pipe-dream, this was not a machination, this was not a conspiracy theory.

CBC: But when you take the events of 1987, when visas were being issued to people unqualified for them, and suggest that happened again to the same people responsible for the attacks in New York and Washington: that's a quantum leap. How do you justify that?

Springman: For all I know, and for all we know, this might not have been the intended consequence. It could have been a mistake, it could have been a misjudgment. Or for all that we know, it could have been an effort to get the US directly involved in some fashion. I mean it's only a few thousand dead, and what's this against the greater gain in the Middle East.

CBC: But you're quite sure that Mohammed Atta and others had their visas issued in Jeddah?

Springman: This is what I was told by reading an article in the Los Angeles Times.

CBC: Well, an intriguing tale and we thank you for telling us.

Springman: You're quite welcome.

[Insurgent]

Correct me if I'm wrong, Dreepa but I think the intention of your thread was evoke personal responses about motivation for discussing 9/11 truth.

As is often the case with any threads that get in to any discussion about 9/11, certain revolving arguments seem to get re-hashed over and over. The appropriate thread to get in to in-depth, detailed discussions is here:
http://newhampshireunderground.com/forum/index.php?topic=1747.0

[penguins4me]

I used to think along the lines that Caleb claims Mvpel does: that terrorism is a real threat and needs to have drastic measures taken to address them.

... until - in late 2001 - I unknowingly took an 10" fixed-blade knife in my carry-on bag on an international flight (sound familiar?) from the East Coast and from Europe back to it.

... until I counted the number of people murdered and compared them to automobile fatalities (from ~93-2001, ~4,000 murders vs. ~400,000 killed in/by autos).

... until I asked myself to name one thing the gov't does well - and couldn't name even one thing.

If we get rid of gov't, or most of it, and allow people to actually take responsibility for their own well being, this largely ceases to be a problem. Sure, there will still be murderous thugs in the world and in our country, but how is that different from any other point in history?

[Russell Kanning]

If the government did it, they would not have created this elaborate plan requiring hundreds or even thousands of government employees to be 'in on it', and explosives and all sorts of cutting of beams and whatnot which would have left all this 'evidence' truthers claim to have found - they would have either hired the hijackers themselves through deniable third men, or, even more easily, installed some form of hidden remote control on the planes.

I used to think this too .... then I saw enough evidence that the government really is behind 9/11. It really is that simple for me.