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French buy into 9/11 conspiracy
2002-06-26, CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/06/26/france.book

Throughout the spring, and into this summer, a leading bestseller in France has not been some great work of French literature but a $17-dollar paperback called the "Horrifying Fraud." The book casts doubt on the official version of the events of September 11, substituting an elaborate conspiracy concocted by America's military-industrial complex in order to increase U.S. military budgets. It has sold more than 200,000 copies here. Thierry Meyssan, author of "The Horrifying Fraud"...insists, among other things, that it was not a hijacked American Airlines 757 that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 but a missile fired by the military itself. Meyssan said: "The official version is incomplete and on certain points is wrong. In addition to selling hundreds of thousands of copies of his first book, Meyssan's follow-up sold 15,000 copies two days after launch and is now number seven on one bestseller list.

Note: Though this article is almost four years old, we only recently received the above link to the article on the CNN website from a supporter. If you want to be educated on this extremely important topic, I cannot recommend highly enough the Google video "Loose Change," which is filled with verifiable information on 9/11 at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8260059923762628848. I urge to watch even just the first 10 or 15 minutes of this highly educational documentary. By educating ourselves, we can work more effectively to build a build a better world.

10 years later, 9/11 still shrouded in mystery
2011-09-07, Philadephia Inquirer (Philadelphia's leading newspaper)
http://articles.philly.com/2011-09-07/news/30123446_1_al-mihdhar-hijackers-di...

If you think that on the 10th anniversary you know the whole story of 9/11 - and here I'm addressing conspiracy-minded "truthers" and the 13 percent who approved of the job Dick Cheney did as vice president - actually, you don't. The dictum of famed investigative reporter I.F. Stone about all governments - i.e., they lie - is no less true about 9/11 than any other event. Here are [some] questions about 9/11 that remain unanswered. Who killed five Americans with anthrax in fall 2001? Forensics showed that the biological weapon came from American stockpiles. In 2008, the government announced that its ... prime suspect - a scientist at Maryland's Fort Detrick named Bruce Ivins - had committed suicide and that the case was considered closed. But is it? Remarkably, a disputed U.S. Justice Department filing just this July claimed that Ivins didn't have access to the equipment needed to execute the attacks, causing some members of Congress to call for a new probe. Why did so many Bush officials fixate on Iraq in the hours after the attacks? Despite a lack of any evidence tying Saddam's Iraq to 9/11, Bush administration officials looked immediately toward Baghdad. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld questioned whether to "hit S.H." - Saddam - "at the same time" while the Pentagon was still on fire, and Bush immediately pressed Clarke on whether there was an Iraqi connection.

Note: For questions raised about the 9/11 attacks by highly credible and respected professionals, click here and here.

UN human rights official claims 9/11 was US plot
2011-01-25, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8281125/UN-human-r...

A UN human rights official has been roundly condemned for suggesting that the US government may have orchestrated the September 11 terrorist attacks. Richard Falk, a retired professor from Princeton University, wrote on his blog that there had been an "apparent cover up" by American authorities. He added that most media were "unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events" on 9/11, despite it containing "gaps and contradictions". And he described David Ray Griffin, a conspiracy theorist highly regarded in the so-called "9/11 truth" movement, as a "scholar of high integrity" whose book on the subject was "authoritative". UN Watch, a pressure group that monitors the organisation, has called for Prof Falk to be sacked. Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, described the comments as "preposterous" and "an affront to the memory of the more than 3,000 people who died in the attack." But Mr Ban said that it was not for him to decide whether Prof Falk, who serves the organisation as a special investigator into human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories, should be fired by the UN. Vijay Nambiar, Mr Ban's chief of staff, said this was up to the human rights council, a 47-nation body based in Geneva, Switzerland, that was created by the UN in 2006.

Note: Although the title of this article distorts the facts and its tone is dismissive, The Telegraph's quotes from Falk's blog are accurate. For excerpts from his remarks, click here. Richard Falk is only one of many highly-respected scholars and professionals who have raised such questions about the official account of 9/11. For examples of others, click here and here.

Secret services 'must be made more transparent'
2010-08-29, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/secret-services-must-be-made-m...

The secret services must become more transparent if they are to halt the spread of damaging conspiracy theories and increase trust in the Government, claims a leading think tank. A Demos report published today, "The Power of Unreason", argues that secrecy surrounding the investigation of events such as the 9/11 New York attacks and the 7/7 bombings in London merely adds weight to ... claims that they were "inside jobs". It ... recommends the Government fight back by infiltrating internet sites to dispute these theories. The Royal United Services Institute warned last week that the UK may soon face a new wave of home-grown terrorists, when criminals who have been targeted by jihadists while in prison are released.

Note: The report cited in this article advocates UK government infiltration of "conspiracist" organizations and websites. In the US the same recommendation has been made by Obama appointee Cass Sunstein, whose article "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures" has just been fully dissected by WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin in his new book Cognitive Infiltration: An Obama Appointee's Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory.

Report: Pakistani Spy Agency Arms, Trains Taliban
2010-06-13, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=10900484

Pakistan's main spy agency continues to arm and train the Taliban and is even represented on the group's leadership council despite U.S. pressure to sever ties and billions in aid to combat the militants, a research report concluded. U.S. officials have suggested in the past that current or former members of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, have maintained links to the Taliban despite the government's decision to denounce the group in 2001 under U.S. pressure. The report issued [on June 13] by the London School of Economics offered one of the strongest cases that assistance to the group is official ISI policy, and even extends to the highest levels of the Pakistani government. The report ... was based on interviews with Taliban commanders, former Taliban officials, Western diplomats and many others. "Without a change in Pakistani behavior it will be difficult, if not impossible, for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency," said the report, written by Matt Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Note: For lots more powerful information suggestion Pakistani involvement with terrorism and 9/11, watch the highly insightful documentary available here.

The World's Most Wanted Man
2009-09-12, Daily Express (One of the UK's largest-circulation newspapers)
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/126787/The-world-s-most-wanted-man

Thousands of troops from countries including Britain, America, Afghanistan and Pakistan search relentlessly for him. Dozens of CIA agents have no other mission than working day after day on his capture. Yet eight years after the 9/11 outrage on the Twin Towers of New York and the Pentagon in Washington, no one has come close to laying a finger on Osama Bin Laden. Ever since that day when nearly 3,000 people were murdered, America has wanted the leader of al Qaeda dead or alive. But there is a compelling argument, put forward by a respected American academic, that Bin Laden was killed eight years ago. Professor David Ray Griffin, who has written authoritative books on the 9/11 attacks, believes the US has kept the Bin Laden myth alive to bolster the war against terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. What is truly astonishing is that despite an army of investigators, a practically limitless budget and an immense £15million bounty on his head, so little is known about what has actually happened to Bin Laden. In his new book Osama Bin Laden: Dead Or Alive?. “There’s much evidence which points to the conclusion that Osama Bin Laden is no longer alive,” Prof Griffin insists. “We have had no credible intelligence on Bin Laden since 2001.” On Christmas Day 2001, Pakistan’s Observer newspaper carried a report of Bin Laden’s funeral, saying he died a natural and quiet death. “The major pretext for the war in Afghanistan is the expressed need to prevent Osama Bin Laden and his followers attacking the West again. This pretext would be removed by convincing evidence that Bin Laden is dead. Such evidence exists,” [said Prof. Griffin.].

Note: Esteemed scholar and WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin's book, Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?, can be purchased here.

The deep state does not respond to FOIA requests
2009-08-22, Chicago Sun-Times News Group/Rock Creek Free Press
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/beaconnews/news/blogentries/index.html?bbP...

In an attempt to get to the bottom of what really happened on 9/11, citizen investigator Aidan Monaghan has filed dozens of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with federal agencies such as the FBI, SEC, [and] Department of the Navy. Agency after agency has refused to comply with his requests, instead claiming that the information cannot be found, does not exist, [or is "exempt from disclosure."] The FBI has put an exemption on all of their 9/11 information and will release information only if compelled to do so by a lawsuit, of which Monaghan has filed two. The list of FOIAs that Monaghan has filed which have yielded no information is long. He asked the Secret Service for documents that reveal what time former Vice President Dick Cheney entered the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), as well as documents pertaining to the names of persons admitted to PEOC. Reply: no records or documents pertaining to your request. He asked the SEC for a bibliography of the investigation records that were located in the SEC’s offices on floors 11-13 in World Trade Center 7. The reply: did not locate or identify any information responsive to your request. Monaghan asked the Naval Surface Warfare Center for records about the research and development of nano-sized aluminum powders or nano-sized iron oxide powders. Reply: have not found any records responsive to your request. “I’m beginning to wonder if the FOIA is just a lot of theatre for public consumption to provide a perception that yes, government is accessible, it’s transparent,” said Monaghan. “For two years now I’ve tried to pull as much 9/11 info from the federal government as I can, and the most noteworthy thing I’ve found is the absence of information. Material that should be there just isn’t.”

Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.

'If I didn't confess to 7/7 bombings MI5 officers would rape my wife,' claims torture victim
2009-06-25, Daily Mail (a popular U.K. newspaper)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1195484/If-I-didnt-confess-7-7-bombin...

A British man spoke publicly for the first time yesterday to accuse MI5 officers of forcing him to confess to masterminding the July 7 bombings. Jamil Rahman claims UK security officers were behind his arrest in 2005 in Bangladesh. He says he was beaten repeatedly by local officials who also threatened to rape him and his wife. Mr Rahman, who is suing the Home Office, said a pair of MI5 officers who attended his torture and interrogation would leave the room while he was beaten. He claims when he told the pair he had been tortured they merely answered: 'They haven't done a very good job on you.' Mr Rahman told the BBC: 'They threatened my family. They go to me, "In the UK, gas leaks happen, if your family house had a gas leak and everyone got burnt, there's no problems, we can do that easily".' He says he eventually made a false confession of involvement in the July 7 bomb plots. The extraordinary allegations will add to pressure on UK ministers to come clean over the way Britain's intelligence agencies have been allowed to gather evidence around the world in the eight years since the September 11 attacks. Jamil Rahman, a former civil servant from south Wales, is a British citizen who moved to Bangladesh in 2005 and married a woman he met there. He returned to the UK last year. He said: 'It was all to do with the British. Jamil Rahman is one of a number of former detainees who accuse the British Government colluded in their torture abroad. His account echoes that of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed, who said he was tortured in Pakistan and Morocco with MI5's knowledge. The 30-year-old Ethiopian says he was beaten and deprived of sleep to try to make him confess to an Al Qaeda 'dirty bomb' plot, and his treatment is now the subject of an unprecedented police investigation into MI5's conduct.

Note: For lots more on the hidden strategies used to maintain the "war on terror", click here.

D.C. Crash Kills General Who Scrambled Jets on 9/11
2009-06-24, Bloomberg News
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aGu5lX16VTk8

David F. Wherley Jr., the head of the Washington National Guard who scrambled jets over the city during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was among those killed in the worst commuter train crash in the city’s history, officials said. Wherley’s wife, Ann, was also among the nine people killed when a train plowed into the rear of a stopped train during rush hour on June 22, Quintin Peterson, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department, said in a telephone interview. Both were 62 and lived in southeast Washington. Wherley was commander of the 113th Fighter Wing at Andrews Air Force base in Maryland during the September 2001 terrorist attacks and sent up aircraft with orders to protect the White House and the Capitol, according to the 9/11 Commission report. He commanded the District of Columbia National Guard from 2003 to 2008, the unit said in a statement. Wherley flew T-38 training jets and F-105 Thunderchief and F-4 Phantom combat jets during a military career that began in 1969, according to the guard’s statement. It said he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Fordham University in New York City in 1969, and a master’s in business administration from the University of Maryland in 1977.

Note: Could there be something more than a mere accident behind the death of the commander of the air defense forces over Washington DC on 9/11? Many questions continue to swirl concerning what was in the air over the city that morning, what was launched by Gen. Wherley and when, and why no interception of an attack aircraft approaching the Pentagon occurred. He knew more than the public does about what really took place in those crucial hours, but he will now not be available for questioning should a real investigation into the 9/11 attacks take place. For lots more on the suspicions that surround the official explanation and calls by highly respected citizens for just such an investigation, click here and here.

Review: 'New World Order' on Independent Film Channel
2009-05-26, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-new-world-order26-2009may26,0...

"New World Order," which premieres today on the Independent Film Channel, is a film about ... volunteers in an "information war" who see ... that 9/11 was an "inside job," that the military-industrial complex killed Kennedy, and that an international "power elite" is plotting to enslave us all, excepting for those it will kill outright. They are hard to pigeonhole politically, these conspiracy adepts, trusting neither the "socialist Democrats" nor the "fascist Republicans" -- Ron Paul seems to be their man, if anyone is -- yet sounding as often like '60s leftist radicals as right-wing militiamen. They take the 1st Amendment as seriously as any card-carrying member of the ACLU, styling themselves muckrakers and speakers of truth to power, often through a bullhorn. The man with the biggest bullhorn is Alex Jones, an Austin, Texas-based syndicated radio host ... and the point through which all the strands connect in this unexpectedly affecting, nonjudgmental documentary by Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel. Much of what Jones and his fellows and followers believe is, in a general way, hardly controversial. But whether 9/11 was a plot to bring on world government, or whether the government you already have has painted a red or blue dot on your mailbox to indicate whether you will be shot immediately or merely be sent to the "FEMA camps" when the American Armageddon arrives, well, that's a pale horse of a different color. (Still, you'll want to check your mailbox now.) "This is more important than how much Britney Spears' hair sold for on EBay, 'Dancing With the Stars' or who's gonna be America's next idol," says one believer. "People think this is a joke. We're not a joke."

Note: The disparaging tone of this review of the documentary is typical of mainstream media treatment of 9/11 truth activity, but it makes clear that the film itself does not share this attitude.

9/11 widow among victims of crash near Buffalo
2009-02-13, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29176877/

One of the victims of Continental Flight 3407, Beverly Eckert, was a Sept. 11 widow who put her never-ending grief to good use to make the country safer. Just last week, Eckert was at the White House with Barack Obama, part of a meeting the president had with relatives of those killed in the 2001 attacks and the bombing of the USS Cole to discuss how the new administration would handle terror suspects. Obama, addressing business leaders on Friday, referred to her "passionate commitment" to the 9/11 families. "She was an inspiration to me and to so many others, and I pray that her family finds peace and comfort in the hard days ahead," the president said during remarks about the crash at the East Room event. "She was such an important part of all of our work," said Mary Fetchet, another 9/11 family activist.

Note: Mrs. Eckert rejected the $1.8 million payment for 9/11 survivors, as she would have forfeited the right to sue the government for its role in the event. ABC News quotes her on how she had "chosen to go to court rather than accept a payoff from the 9/11 victims compensation fund. I want to know why two 110-story skyscrapers collapsed in less than two hours and why escape and rescue options were so limited. I am suing because unlike ... congressional hearings and the 9/11 commission, my lawsuit requires all testimony be given under oath and fully uses powers to compel evidence." For why Mrs. Eckert and hundreds of other highly respected politicians and professors are calling for a new investigation on 9/11, click here.

The Political Suspicions of 9/11
2009-02-02, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/business/media/02fx.html?partner=rss&emc=rs...

A coming episode of the acclaimed FX drama “Rescue Me” will tackle what may sound like a far-fetched plot line: that the attacks of Sept. 11 were an “inside job.” The actor who espouses the theories on camera, it turns out, also subscribes to them in real life. The second episode of “Rescue Me’s” fifth season, starting in April, may represent the first fictional presentation of 9/11 conspiracy theories by a mainstream media company (FX is operated by the News Corporation). “They’re not discussed a lot in the press,” Daniel Sunjata, the actor who plays Franco Rivera on “Rescue Me,” told reporters at a television press tour last month. In the episode, Mr. Sunjata’s character [describes] a “neoconservative government effort” to control the world’s oil, drastically increase military spending and “change the definition of pre-emptive attack.” To put it into action, he continues, “what you need is a new Pearl Harbor. That’s what they said they needed.” Mr. Sunjata surprised some of the TV reporters when he said that he “absolutely, 100 percent” supports the assertion that “9/11 was an inside job.” The alternative theories “seem to me to make a lot more sense than the ones that are popularly espoused,” he said, calling it admirable that the conversation was allowed within “Rescue Me.” Peter Tolan, an executive producer, said Mr. Sunjata is “well read” and has “done a lot of research.” “Look, obviously not all of us buy in,” he told reporters. “But we went: ‘Wow, that’s interesting, and he’s passionate about it. Let’s use that.’ ”

Note: For a powerful two-page summary of key unanswered questions from major media sources about what really happened on 9/11, click here. To read charges by hundreds of professors and top politicians claiming that the U.S. government is lying about 9/11, click here.

Bush Doctrine enters American vocabulary
2008-09-26, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/26/EDGR135ERL.DTL

Thanks to the Sept. 11 interview of Sarah Palin by Charles Gibson of ABC News, the Bush Doctrine has become part of the American vocabulary. Although it has been a fateful doctrine - it was used to justify the attack on Iraq - many Americans reported that they were as clueless about it as Gov. Palin. So what is the Bush Doctrine? According to international law as generally understood since the creation of the United Nations, a pre-emptive attack is legal only if a country has certain knowledge that an attack on it is imminent - too imminent for the matter to be taken to the U.N. Security Council. Pre-emptive war is different from preventive war, in which a country, fearing that another country may become strong enough to threaten it at some time in the future, attacks it to prevent this possibility. Preventive wars are illegal under international law. This distinction, however, creates a terminological problem: Although preventive war is worse than pre-emptive war, to most ears preemption sounds worse. Many people, therefore, speak of pre-emptive war when they mean preventive war. To avoid confusion, we can use the term pre-emptive-preventive war. Neoconservatives, the most powerful of whom is Vice President Dick Cheney, had long disliked the idea that America's use of military power could be constrained by the prohibition against preemptive-preventive war. In 1992, his last year as secretary of defense, Cheney produced a draft of the Defense Planning Guidance that said the United States should use force to "pre-empt" and "preclude threats." After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the neocons were able to turn their wish into U.S. policy.

Note: This article is by WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin. He analyzes the significance of the 9/11 attacks for the acceptance of the Bush Doctrine in more detail in his recent book The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, pointing out that the author of the document which first made the doctrine official policy was Philip Zelikow, who then later became executive director of the 9/11 Commission.

9/11 Rumors That Become Conventional Wisdom
2008-09-09, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/world/africa/09cairo.html

Seven years later, it remains conventional wisdom [in Cairo] that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda could not have been solely responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that the United States and Israel had to have been involved in their planning, if not their execution, too. “Look, I don’t believe what your governments and press say. It just can’t be true,” said Ahmed Issab, 26, a Syrian engineer who lives and works in the United Arab Emirates. “Why would they tell the truth? I think the U.S. organized this so that they had an excuse to invade Iraq for the oil.” Again and again, people said they simply did not believe that a group of Arabs — like themselves — could possibly have waged such a successful operation against a superpower like the United States. But they also said that Washington’s post-9/11 foreign policy proved that the United States and Israel were behind the attacks, especially with the invasion of Iraq. “Maybe people who executed the operation were Arabs, but the brains? No way,” said Mohammed Ibrahim, 36, a clothing-store owner in the Bulaq neighborhood of Cairo. “It was organized by other people, the United States or the Israelis.” Zein al-Abdin, 42, an electrician, [said] “What happened in Iraq confirms that it has nothing to do with bin Laden or Qaeda. They went against Arabs and against Islam to serve Israel, that’s why.”

Note: For a two-page summary of many reports from reliable, verifiable sources that highlight unanswered questions about what really happened on 9/11, click here.

Officer calls Sept. 11 cases tainted
2008-06-05, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tribunal5-2008jun05,0,79...

When Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his alleged collaborators in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks appear before the war crimes tribunal here today, ousted chief prosecutor Col. Morris D. Davis will not be celebrating. Davis, who has spent half of his life in the military justice system, still considers it "the most ethical process in the world." But the Pentagon's push to prosecute the so-called 9/11 Five is tainted, in his view, by political intrusions, illegal influence applied by more-senior officers and reliance on evidence obtained through coercion or torture. Davis drew the wrath of many in the Pentagon hierarchy when he objected last fall to pressures from Bush administration political appointees to prosecute Mohammed, known in intelligence circles as KSM, ahead of other war crimes suspects whose cases were already researched and on whom vital evidence was declassified. Unless the evidence prosecutors have against Mohammed and his codefendants is declassified, much of their prosecution will be conducted behind closed doors, depriving the American media and public of a clear view of the proceedings, he says. Davis ran afoul of superiors ... when he advised his prosecutors against relying on evidence obtained through waterboarding and other interrogation techniques that have been deemed coercive or tantamount to torture. Davis resigned after political appointees at the Pentagon rejected his judgment on the choice of cases to be tried in the months leading up to this November's election, as well as his advice against building prosecutions on coerced and potentially unreliable confessions.

360 post-9/11 workers have died, including 80 of cancer
2008-05-08, New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/05/08/2008-05-08_360_post911_workers_hav...

More than 360 workers who dealt with the aftermath of the World Trade Center disaster have died, state health officials said Wednesday. Officials have determined the cause of death of 154 of the responders and volunteers who toiled at Ground Zero, the blocks nearby and at the Fresh Kills landfill, where debris from the site was taken. Of those, 80 died of cancer. "It's the tip of the iceberg," said David Worby, who is representing 10,000 workers - 600 with cancer - who say they got sick after working on rescue and recovery efforts. "These statistics bear out how toxic that site was," Worby said. Most of the deadly tumors were in the lungs and digestive system, according to the tally from the state's World Trade Center Responder Fatality Investigation Program. Other deaths were traced to blood cancers and heart and circulatory diseases. Five ex-workers committed suicide, said Kitty Gelberg, who is tracking the deaths for the program. Gelberg said ... there is an overall undercount of workers who have died. Last year, the head of Mount Sinai Medical Center's monitoring and treatment program, Dr. Robin Herbert, predicted a "third wave" of 9/11-related deaths from cancer. Cathy Murray, whose husband, Fire Lt. John Murray, died of colon cancer April 30, "absolutely" connects his disease to his work at Ground Zero. He was diagnosed in June and was 52 when he died, she said. "He was perfectly healthy," said Cathy Murray, 53, of Staten Island. "He never smoked a day in his life, and neither did I. It happened so quick and so aggressive. He was responding at first, but then he wasn't," she added. "And now he's gone."

Note: For a powerful summary of reports from major media sources questioning the official story of what happened on 9/11, click here.

Blame U.S. for 9/11: 'Plots' Thicken in Shocking Poll
2007-11-24, New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11242007/news/nationalnews/blame_u_s__for_9_11_id...

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government had warnings about 9/11 but decided to ignore them, a national survey found. Sixty-two percent of those polled thought it was "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials turned a blind eye to specific warnings of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Only 30 percent said the 9/11 theory was "not likely," according to the Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll. The findings followed a 2006 poll by the same researchers, who found that 36 percent of Americans believe federal government officials "either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action" because they wanted "to go to war in the Middle East." In that poll, 16 percent said the Twin Towers might have collapsed because of secretly planted explosives - not hijacked passenger jets flown into them. And what hit the Pentagon? Twelve percent figured it was a US cruise missile. In the latest Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll, 811 US adults were interviewed Sept. 24 to Oct. 10. Among [other] findings: 42 percent believe the federal government knew in advance of the plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy, compared with 40 percent who call that theory "not likely." 37 percent believe UFOs are real and that the feds have been hiding the truth about them. Eight out of 10 Americans suspect oil companies are conspiring to keep fuel prices high and 50 percent said a conspiracy is "very likely." Only 14 percent felt it was unlikely.

Note: We normally don't use the New York Post as a reliable source. Yet this key news is based on a very reliable poll, which you can read in the Scripps News Service report available here. Sadly, the Post was the only major newspaper to pick up this important news, and they took a heavy editorial slant against 9/11 truth. For a concise summary of major media reports suggesting that the official account of 9/11 cannot be true, click here.

The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us
2007-10-14, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/opinion/14rich2.html?ex=1350014400&en=83a8b...

“Bush lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves. By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.” We must ... examine our own responsibility for the hideous acts committed in our name in a war where we have now fought longer than we did in the one that put Verschärfte Vernehmung on the map. The war was sold by a ... fear-fueled White House propaganda campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top. [But] as the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin. Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo.

Robert Fisk: Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11
2007-08-25, Independent (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2893860.ece

I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard "explosions" in the towers ... the [FBI's] list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East. What about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, whose "Islamic" advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now – we create our own reality". True? At least tell us.

Note: Robert Fisk is an award-winning, veteran Middle East reporter for the Independent. For a concise summary of reliable news reports that raise serious questions about what really happened on 9/11, click here

The Padilla Conviction
2007-08-17, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/17/opinion/17fri1.html?ex=1345003200&en=b04dde...

It would be a mistake to see [the verdict against Jose Padilla] as a vindication for the Bush administration’s serial abuse of the American legal system in the name of fighting terrorism. On the way to this verdict, the government repeatedly trampled on the Constitution, and its prosecution of Mr. Padilla was so cynical ... that the crime he was convicted of — conspiracy to commit terrorism overseas — bears no relation to the ambitious plot to wreak mass destruction inside the United States which the Justice Department first loudly proclaimed. When Mr. Padilla was arrested in 2002, the government said he was an Al Qaeda operative who had plotted to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb inside the United States. Mr. Padilla, who is an American citizen, should have been charged as a criminal and put on trial in a civilian court. Instead, President Bush declared him an “enemy combatant” and kept him in a Navy brig for more than three years. The administration’s insistence that it had the right to hold Mr. Padilla indefinitely — simply on the president’s word — was its first outrageous act in the case, but hardly its last. Mr. Padilla was kept in a small isolation cell, and when he left that cell he was blindfolded and his ears were covered. He was denied access to a lawyer even when he was being questioned. It was only after the Supreme Court appeared poised last year to use Mr. Padilla’s case to decide whether indefinite detention of an American citizen violates the Constitution, that the White House suddenly decided to give him a civilian trial. He will likely never be brought to trial on the dirty-bomb plot. The administration did everything it could to keep Mr. Padilla away from a jury and deny him impartial justice.

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