Did 9/11 Justify the War in Afghanistan?

Using the McChrystal Moment to Raise a Forbidden Question

by Prof. David Ray Griffin
Global Research, June 25, 2010

There are many questions to ask about the war in Afghanistan. One that has been widely asked is whether it will turn out to be “Obama’s Vietnam.”1 This question implies another: Is this war winnable, or is it destined to be a quagmire, like Vietnam? These questions are motivated in part by the widespread agreement that the Afghan government, under Hamid Karzai, is at least as corrupt and incompetent as the government the United States tried to prop up in South Vietnam for 20 years.

Although there are many similarities between these two wars, there is also a big difference: This time, there is no draft. If there were a draft, so that college students and their friends back home were being sent to Afghanistan, there would be huge demonstrations against this war on campuses all across this country. If the sons and daughters of wealthy and middle-class parents were coming home in boxes, or with permanent injuries or post-traumatic stress syndrome, this war would have surely been stopped long ago. People have often asked: Did we learn any of the “lessons of Vietnam”? The US government learned one: If you’re going to fight unpopular wars, don’t have a draft – hire mercenaries!

There are many other questions that have been, and should be, asked about this war, but in this essay, I focus on only one: Did the 9/11 attacks justify the war in Afghanistan?

Read more…

Mohamed Atta loved pork chops, and 49 other things you may not know

about the 9/11 Florida connection.

An Interview With Atta’s American Girlfriend Amanda`Nichols` Keller Part 1

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104×1433886

I just finished Daniel Hopsicker’s Welcome to Terrorland. He exposes the cover story of the Florida flight schools, and the ongoing cover-up. The whole thing stinks of Iran/Contra and CIA drugs. It’s the same, bloody game.

Though his style can be annoyingly breezy, I highly recommend the book. There’s original research you won’t find anywhere else but here and on his website: http://www.madcowprod.com /.

Here are some archived threads that touch on similar material:

“Jeb Bush seized flight school records at 2 AM on September 12″
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph…

“Heroin, Al Qaeda and the Florida Flight School”
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph…

And FYI, here are some notes I kept while reading the book:

1. In Venice Florida, Mohamed Atta lived for two months with an American stripper/lingerie model named Amanda Keller.

2. Atta loved to party. He was out with Keller nearly every night they were together. He was a heavy drinker, snorted coke, was a stylish dresser and wore expensive jewelry.

3. According to Keller, Atta loved pork chops.

4. Keller dumped him after he embarrassed her at a night club by dancing, poorly, atop a speaker (“doing that old ‘Roxbury head bob’ thing, you know”?)

5. Atta revenged himself later on Keller by returning to the apartment they’d shared and killing her cat and kittens, disemboweling and dismembering them in her apartment for her to find.

Building What? How SCADs Can Be Hidden in Plain Sight: The 9/11 “Official Story” and the Collapse of WTC Building Seven

By Prof David Ray Griffin
Global Research, May 30, 2010At 5:21 PM on 9/11, Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed, even though it had not been hit by a plane – a fact that is important because of the widespread acceptance of the idea, in spite of its scientific absurdity, that the Twin Towers collapsed because of the combined effect of the impact of the airliners plus the ensuing jet-fuel-fed fires. The collapse of World Trade Center 7 (WTC 7) thereby challenges the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Center, according to which it was accomplished by al-Qaeda hijackers, even if one accepts the government’s scientifically impossible account of the Twin Towers. This fact was recently emphasized in the title of a review article based on my 2009 book, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7,[1] by National Medal of Science-winner Lynn Margulis: “Two Hit, Three Down – The Biggest Lie.”[2]  

1. Why the Collapse of WTC 7 Created an Extraordinary Problem  

The collapse of WTC 7 created an extraordinary problem for the official account of 9/11 for several reasons.  

 
An Unprecedented Occurrence  

One reason is that, because of the collapse of WTC 7, the official account of 9/11 includes the dubious claim that, for the first time in the known universe, a steel-frame high-rise building was brought down by fire, and science looks askance at claims of unprecedented occurrences regarding physical phenomena. New York Times writer James Glanz, who himself has a Ph.D. in physics, wrote: “[E]xperts said no building like it, a modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire.” Glanz then quoted a structural engineer as saying: “[W]ithin the structural engineering community, [WTC 7] is considered to be much more important to understand [than the Twin Towers],” because engineers had no answer to the question, “why did 7 come down?”[3]

Phone Calls from the 9/11 Airliners

Response to Questions Evoked by My Fifth Estate Interview

by Prof David Ray Griffin
Global Research, January 12, 2010

On November 27, 2009, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Fifth Estate program aired a show entitled “9/11: The Unofficial Story,”1 for which I, along with a few other members of the 9/11 Truth Movement, was interviewed. In the most important part of my interview, I pointed out that, according to the FBI’s report on phone calls from the airliners provided in 2006 for the Moussaoui trial, Barbara Olson’s only call from Flight 77 was “unconnected” and hence lasted “0 seconds.” Although this Fifth Estate program showed only a brief portion of my discussion of alleged phone calls from the 9/11 airliners, its website subsequently made available a 22-minute video containing this discussion.2

Shortly thereafter, a portion of this video, under the title “David Ray Griffin on the 9/11 Cell Phone Calls: Exclusive CBC Interview,” was posted on You Tube,3 after which it was posted on 911 Blogger.4 This latter posting resulted in considerable discussion, during which some claims contradicting my position were made. In this essay, I respond to the most important of these claims, namely:

1. The FBI has not admitted that cell phone calls from high-altitude airliners on 9/11 were impossible.

2. There is no evidence that some of the reported 9/11 phone calls were faked.

3. American Airlines’ Boeing 757s, and hence its Flight 77, had onboard phones.

4. The FBI’s report on phone calls from the 9/11 airliners did not undermine Ted Olson’s report about receiving phone calls from his wife.

The four sections of this essay will respond to these four claims in order.

[Source]

Related Story: Ted Olson’s Report of Phone Calls from Barbara Olson on 9/11: Three Official Denials

Bombshell: Bin Laden worked for US till 9/11

by lukery | Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 05:01:42 AM PDT

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman (audio, partial transcript).

In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained ‘intimate relations’ with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, “all the way until that day of September 11.”

These ‘intimate relations’ included using Bin Laden for ‘operations’ in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These ‘operations’ involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner “as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict,” that is, fighting ‘enemies’ via proxies.

As Sibel has previously described, and as she reiterates in this latest interview, this process involved using Turkey (with assistance from ‘actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia’) as a proxy, which in turn used Bin Laden and the Taliban and others as a proxy terrorist army.

Read more…

No One Could Have Planted Bombs in the World Trade Center Without Being Detected, Could They?

George Washngton Blog | Wednesday, July 8, 2009

As Raw Story notes:

A Government Accountability Office investigator smuggled live bomb components into a federal building in just 27 seconds, then assembled a bomb in a restroom and ventured throughout the building without being detected, a leaked tape revealed Wednesday.

In addition, congressional investigators were able to penetrate every single federal building they probed without any difficulty — 10 in all.

And see this.

Indeed, as I wrote in 2005, there is substantial additional evidence that bombs could have been planted in the World Trade Center without anyone knowing:

• Bomb-sniffing dogs were inexplicably removed from the Twin Towers five days before 9-11
• The Twin Towers had been evacuated a number of times in the weeks preceding 9/11
• Workers in the Twin Towers observed heavy work taking place on supposedly empty floors in the weeks before 9-11; supposedly, the work took place on floors the elevators would not stop on without a special access key (toward the end of the video).
• There was a power down in the Twin Towers on the weekend before 9/11, security cameras were shut down, and many workers ran around busily doing things unobserved.
• Bombs could have been placed during renovation of the elevators in the Twin Towers.
• And — as an interesting coincidence — a Bush-linked company ran security at the trade centers, thus giving it free reign to the buildings

These are just a few of the known, public examples of opportunities to plant bombs. There were undoubtedly many additional opportunities available to skilled operatives. (Remember that tightrope walker Philippe Petit snuck into the World Trade Center with a friend in 1974 with massive amounts of equipment, smuggled the equipment to the top floor and rigged up a highwire for his tightrope walking stunt without being detected). See also this video.

As with all of the other arguments trying to debunk those who question the government’s version of 9/11, the argument that bombs couldn’t have been planted without people observing it is incorrect.

The people still defending the government’s version of 9/11 have simply not spent the time to look at the facts.

Did nano-thermite take down the WTC?

Russia Today | Thursday, July 9, 2009

Could the most audacious terrorist attack in history be a “sophisticated masterpiece of demolition”?

That’s what chemistry professor Niels Harrit has been asking, following his investigation of the World Trade Centre rubble, which has revealed traces of explosives.

RT: Professor Niels Harrit, you examined the rubble that came from the World Trade Center. What did you find in it?

Niels Harrit: Well, in there we find the remains of what we characterize as thermetic material, and this is a very energetic material which can be used either for melting iron, or it can be designed as an explosive.

FBI Believed that Bombs Were Used on 9/11

George Washington’s Blog | Wednesday, Feb 11, 2009

On 9/11, the FBI believed that bombs were involved in the attacks.

How do I know that?

Because, according to the FBI’s website:

Following the massive terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, the FBI dedicated 7,000 of its 11,000 Special Agents and thousands of FBI support personnel to the PENTTBOM investigation. “PENTTBOM” is short for Pentagon, Twin Towers Bombing.

(see also this and this).

Indeed, the FBI told a reporter for USA Today that FBI agents believed there were bombs in the Twin Towers.

Similarly, the Washington Post believed that bombs were involved, as reflected in a September 21, 2001 article containing the following phrase:

In the hours after Tuesday’s bombings . . . .

Many firefighters and policemen also said there were bombs in the Twin Towers.

And perhaps “the premiere collapse expert in the country”, who 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer referred to as a “very, very respected expert on building collapse”, the head of the New York Fire Department’s Special Operations Command and the most highly decorated firefighter in its NYFD history, who had previously “commanded rescue operations at many difficult and complex disasters, including the Oklahoma City Bombing, the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, and many natural disasters worldwide” thought that the collapse of the South Tower was caused by bombs, because the collapse of the building was too even to have been caused by anything else (pages 5-6).

But surely experts have since proven that no bombs were involved. Right?

In fact, structural engineers, architects, scientists and demolition experts and other high-level experts have examined the evidence and think that there were bombs.

Even the former head of the Fire Science Division of the government agency which claims that the World Trade Centers collapsed due to fire, who is one of the world’s leading fire science researchers and safety engineers, a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering (Dr. James Quintiere) doesn’t bevelieve an adequate investigation into 9/11 has been conducted. He has called for an independent review of the World Trade Center Twin Tower collapse investigation. “I wish that there would be a peer review of this,” he said, referring to the NIST investigation. “I think all the records that NIST has assembled should be archived. I would really like to see someone else take a look at what they’ve done; both structurally and from a fire point of view. … I think the official conclusion that NIST arrived at is questionable.”

Nader Calls For New 9/11 Investigation

Independent presidential candidate says he supports 9/11 truth movement

Steve Watson | Infowars.net | Wednesday, Sept 10, 2008

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader pledged support for a new investigation into the events of 9/11 Monday, commenting that the 9/11 Commission was “flawed, right from the get go”.

Nader was questioned by members of We Are Change Ohio at a campaign rally in Cincinnati, Ohio earlier this week.

Asked if he supported the 9/11 Truth Movement and the efforts of activists and victims’ families to expose the lies surrounding the attacks, Nader responded;

“I was there when they were collecting signatures in the audience and I supported it.” Nader commented, referring to We are Change’s activities at the meeting.

“The 9/11 Commission, first of all, it took the members of the great families to push the administration even to have an inquiry, can you imagine an attack like that and the government didn’t even want to have an inquiry?” stated Nader.

Neoconservative forces to blame for 9/11 tower collapses

Posted in Satire by sirsatire on September 10th, 2008

After seven years, scientists are now able to explain why the Twin Towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, even though fires were well below the 1,500C melting point of the buildings’ steel girders.

The discovery that unusual chemical cutting charges and demolition explosives made the girders weak by blowing them to pieces finally puts to rest bizarre scientific theories designed to avoid revealing that Sept. 11 was, in fact, an act of treason committed by the Bush administration for political gain.

Retired physics professor Steven Jones found that steel loses its strength when chemically melted by thermite — or its more powerful cousin thermate — and the steel undergoes a physical transition from big pieces to small pieces due to demolition charges exploding next to it. The steel didn’t collapse — it just became blown-to-pieces. It is an unusual condition caused by the pre-planting of explosives by a team of demolition experts hired as part of a false-flag operation, which was designed to make the American people think they were attacked in order to gain their support in changing from a constitutional republic to a global empire ruled by a neoconservative junta.

“Understanding how neoconservatives behave means we can find the right ‘justice’ to make the U.S. Constitution stronger after acts of high treason,” Jones said. “And if this work can be used in other applications, such as safeguarding democratic republics against would-be tyrants, so much the better.”

Jones also said he was able to rule out an alternative theory based on magnetism by using three of his brain cells while analyzing it, and trying hard not to laugh while doing so.