Replies to post #40239 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[langostino]

Zeev - the lies are piled high and deep

Condeleeza Rice is either the most ignorant fool ever to hold that post, or the most blatant liar ever to hold the post. Or both.

Here, in 1995, an Al Qaeda plot was broken up in the Phillipines with detailed plans (all the way down to flight numbers) to hijack commercial airliners and blow them up ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A10543-2001Sep22

And comment from a Phillipine FBI equivalent expert suggesting there were also alternative plans to crash the plans into "key structurings int he Unites States: The World Trade Center, The White House, the Pentagon, the Transamerican (sic) Tower, and the Sears Tower were among the prominent structures that had been identified in the palns that we had decoded."
http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Printable.asp?ID=10324

And another involving a planned hijack of a single commercial airliner to be crashed into CIA headquarters.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/18/inv.hijacking.philippines/index.html

Intelligence from four countries -- Israel, Russia, Egypt and Germany -- all provided major warnings to the U.S. in the months preceding 9-11, including specific warnigns from Russia about planes being hijacked and used as bombs.

Egypt's warning came in June, 2001 following a video and newspaper interviews from bin Laden warning of imminent attack. In an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro, President Mubarek said bin Laden "spoke of assassinating President Bush and other heads of state in Genoa. It was a question of an airplane stuffed with explosives." This was widely reported, and the G-8 Summit in Genoa was surrounded with anti-aircraft batteries to shoot down any such attack.

In an MSNBC interview on Sept. 15, 2001, Russian President Vladimir Putin reported that Russian Intelligence had notified the CIA during the summer of 2001 that as many as 25 terrorist pilots had been specifically training for suicide missions and that he (Putin) had ordered Russian Intelligence in August to warn the U.S. government "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent attacks on airports and government buildings.

Israel's Mossad also issued specific warnings of more than 200 Al Qaeda infiltrators organized in cells living in the U.S. all aiming to cary out a major assault. This was reported widely in the L.A. Times, WSJ and NY Times.

The German BND also warned of terrorists "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture" in June.

In late July, John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial flights.

On September 7, the U.S. State Department issued a worldwide alert about an impending attack by bin Laden followers (thought to be aimed at overseas - particularly Asian - U.S. installations).

If that is not enough, in considering Condi Rice's absurd comments claiming no reasonable person could possibly have foreseen airplanes being hijacked and used as missiles, consider also that ...

Tom Clancy's 1994 novel "Debt of Honor" contains precisely this plotline (with a terrorist crashing a 747 with full fuel load into the Capitol, killing the President and members of Congress).

Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Robert Patterson, in his NY Times best-seller "Dereliction of Duty", described in detail, details of PDBs on "Operation Bojinka" - the aforementioned 1996 plot by terrorists to use commercial airliners as weapons -- proof that this was known by President Clinton, personally.

Preparation for both the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996 and the Sydney Games in 2000 contained scenarios of commercial jets being used as missiles. The Sydney Morning Herald carried a detailed story on this including this quote from the Sydney police superintendent (Paul McKinnon) -- "In the run-up to the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, there was active consideration of the danger of a fully loaded, fuelled airliner crashing into the opening ceremony before a worldwide television audience”. The L.A. Times ran a similar article in 1996 entitled "Suicide Flights and Crop Dusters Considered Threats at '96 Olympics", detailing the air defense perimeter set up with Black Hawk helicopters and the FBI investigations and screenings at regional airports throughout the area.

And finally, there was the December 1994 hijacking of an Air France DC-10 by Islamic terrorists, who landed the plane in Marseilles and ordered it loaded with 27 tons of fuel - three times the amount necessary to reach Paris - with plans to crash it into the Eiffel Tower. The plane was successfully stormed by French special forces and the details fo the plot revealed in interrogations. This too was covered in the NY Times (Oct. 3, 2001 "Earlier Hijackings Offered Signals That Were Missed").

The 9-11 Commission is a whitewash. They are asking none of the questions that ought to be asked. There is no way to believe that's possible except by deliberate intention.

Instead of interviewing the field level staff, they are interviewing political hacks like Rice, who will provide nothing in the way of real information or insight.

If they were serious, they would be interviewing the people who worked with John O'Neill at the FBI -- looking into why Pickard exiled him and the anti-terrorism group from HQ, then conspired to drive him from the FBI.

If they were serious, they would be interviewing and investingating the circumstances under which Barbara Bodine, former Ambassador to Yemen, and her boss Madeleine Albright, pulled O'Neill and his FBI team's passports and had them "deported" back to the U.S. in the wake of the USS Cole bombing investigation just as they were on the verge of arresting the Al Qaeda people responsible (who also are believed to have helped mastermind 9-11), and seize all their computers. More than a month passed before they were "let back in", and of course the terrorists had packed up and left -- although some computers were recovered from their safe houses.

Who is John O'Neill? He is "The Man Who Knew". I highly recommend watching the PBS Frontline documentary by that title, released in early 2002. The entire program can be watched online. It contains chilling evidence of just how much our goverment knew, how complicit it was, and now, just how much it is covering up its own direct culpability. Had John O'Neill not been killed in the WTC on 9-11, his testimony would make Richard Clarke's look tame by comparison.

Interestingly, you will find interviews given by Dick Clarke dating back well prior to 9-11 and in the program. He has not changed his tune one bit. Those who, in their blind allegiance to the White House, wish to believe Clarke is an opportunist looking to sell a book, had better not watch or read the mountains of documentary material on Clark, as the pesky facts will get in the way of their wished-for delusions.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/

[langostino]

Zeev - just in case ...

you didn't read to the end of my prior post, be sure to check out the PBS Frontline episode entitled "The Man Who Knew", which can be viewed in its entirety here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/view/

Barbara Bodine (former Ambassador to Yemen) and Tom Pickard (former Interim Director of the FBI) should be on trial for treason right now.

It is a national disgrace that the names John O'Neill, Barabara Bodine and Tom Pickard are not front and center at the 9-11 Commission and that Madeleine Albright testified before the Commission and not one question was asked about the State Department's blocking of the FBI's attempts to catch the Al Qaeda bombers responsible for the USS Cole.

[langostino]

Timeline - What if ... ?

And here, a central question the 9-11 Commission should be asking Louis Freeh and the FBI -- why was the request for resources to track down and haul in Almidhar and Alhazmi (2 of the hijackers), made by FBI field agents DENIED.

WHO denied the requests and WHY?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/could/

"Finally, on Aug. 23, 2001, the CIA sent an urgent memo to the New York FBI office seeking help in tracking down Almidhar and Alhazmi. At long last, the significance of the information in its files seems to have dawned on the agency. A quick check of hotels listed by the terrorists as places of residence on their travel entry cards came up empty. One New York FBI agent testified before Congress in September 2002 that he had requested use of "full criminal investigative resources" to find Almidhar. But headquarters denied his request. The reason given was that Almidhar was not under criminal investigation, and headquarters cited the wall between prosecution and intelligence as posing a problem. The agent's e-mail response to FBI headquarters, dated Aug. 29, 2001, was that "Someday someone will die and the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain problems."

Timeline:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/etc/cron.html

Connecting the dots:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/etc/connect.html
(flash movie)

[hap0206]

>>> but I doubt Congress would have provided the authorization without those sixteen words.<<<

Sorry -- completely wrong -- the 16 words:

President Delivers "State of the Union"
The U.S. Capitol
Jan 28, 2003 9:01 P.M. EST

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Still true today as when spoken on Jan 28, 2003

However they could not have had any influence on the war resolution
===========
We were at war with Iraq from 1990 and the congress re-authorized the use of force --

107th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. J. RES. 114
October 10, 2002
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

JOINT RESOLUTION
To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.

Whereas in 1990 in response to Iraq's war of aggression against and illegal occupation of Kuwait, the United States forged a coalition of nations to liberate Kuwait and its people in order to defend the national security of the United States and enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq;

Whereas after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, Iraq entered into a United Nations sponsored cease-fire agreement pursuant to which Iraq unequivocally agreed, among other things, to eliminate its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs and the means to deliver and develop them, and to end its support for international terrorism;

and a bunch more of "whereas's"

#msg-1308431

We will have an election on whether we are "murdering" our troops on falsehoods