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US planning to attack taleban before WTC bombing

No, the only sin at the present time is to read too little into
it.

George Bush, the only President to come to real power
by a coup some months after his election?
 
James Whitehead said:
George Bush, the only President to come to real power
by a coup some months after his election?
Click to expand...
:confused:
Okay I bite. Do you care to explain that James?

Niles
 
Maybe it's to add credence to the attitude that it doesn't matter if he's only the prime suspect - the're gonna bomb Bin Laden anyway.
 
Explanations are thin on the ground right now, Niles, but
the Cui bono? test suggests that Bin Laden will not be a
net beneficiary here.

Bush has the unconditional support of the American people and
Bush will give his unconditional support to the Military. From
the link above we see that America was planning a move which
would not have been popular.

It is very hard to imagine any American could have contemplated
the events of the eleventh in a coldly realpolitik framework. But
all I can find are negatives. No claim of responsibility, no clear
advantage to the Most Wanted suspect and plenty of dogs which
did not bark.
 
James Whitehead said:
<snip good points, well made> It is very hard to imagine any American could have contemplated the events of the eleventh in a coldly realpolitik framework. But all I can find are negatives. No claim of responsibility, no clear advantage to the Most Wanted suspect and plenty of dogs which did not bark.
Click to expand...

My thoughts are not quite as coherent as yours ATM but I agree. There's something long rotten in the [United] States of America (to paraphrase old Will) and something just does not add up. As you point out nobody seems to profit. This hurts everyone. IT's almost as if someone said "It's getting too peaceful, lets start a war!"

Niles.
Sufficently more petrified than yow!
 
Re: read this

Atomcat said:
read this article it scares me senseless.

mainly because i live in the USA and love it, but this is very creepy.

http://www.guerrillanews.com/counter_intel/boom_bust_echo/index.html
Click to expand...

Love to, Atomcat. But can't get the link to respond. Can you paste the contents here, or are they too long?


UPDATE: Managed to get the page at last, but couldn't get the article link, then the whole page tripped out, and I couldn't get anything back for the guerillanews.com address. Weird. However, that facing page's content is reproduced below:




CounterIntelligence



Boom, Bust and Echo: A Dark Theory Behind Black Tuesday



Mainstream news coverage of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center has left little room for speculation about the true identities and intentions of its masterminds. As television monitors around the world broadcast recurring images of the once mighty Manhattan skyline, now reduced into a smoldering pile of dust and rubble, forces are gathering to inflict what is sure to be one of the most brutal retaliatory strikes in the history of modern combat. And, despite the lessons learned from Pearl Harbor, Vietnam, and Oklahoma City, both the U.S. Congress and the American public have been pushed to the brink of entering a long and difficult battle against an indistinguishable foe in a heretofore unconquerable land.


But do we know all the facts of the story? Are there alternative theories to explain the events that transpired with such dramatic choreography before the horrified eyes of an entire nation? We believe there are. In this first installment of GNN's CounterIntelligence, Stephen Marshall discusses the attack with former LAPD narcotics detective and author Michael Ruppert, best known for exposing elements of the CIA's drug smuggling operation in Central America during the 1980s. With surgical detail, Ruppert examines the possibility of an imminent global financial meltdown and how the terrorist strikes may be part of a larger, much more complex network of interests than the mainstream media is telling you about.


>>CounterIntelligence: Mike Ruppert
 
For those who couldn't get the article to open:

Post 1 of 2....
------------------------------------------------------------

Stephen Marshall: Hello Mike. First question I guess… what was your initial reaction to the images being broadcast from New York on Tuesday and what were your first thoughts regarding the coverage.


Michael Ruppert: From the moment it happened we began hearing the name Osama bin Laden and there is an enormous body of evidence building already that Osama bin Laden is not and was not capable of pulling this off by himself. Period.


Historically, it is extremely well documented that Osama bin Laden is and was a creation of the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1980's when he joined with Mujahedeen Freedom fighters in Afghanistan. He worked with Gulbadin Hekmatyar who was running six heroin factories under CIA protection in Pakistan and Afghanistan. As recently as 1996, the U.S. government had secret agreements with the government with the Sudan to allow him sanctuary there for the purposes of monitoring him. In 1997-1998 after the cruise missile attacks on the El Shifa pharmaceutical factory, which were absolute disasters for the U.S. because no weapons were made there. The U.S. intelligence community had ample ability to know and to track his movements. I have just learned that from 1998, Reuters is reporting, that a green light was given for covert operations against bin Laden and when you couple this with the fact that we know now, from European reports from Germany, France and Israel, that advance warning had been given to the U.S. government of an imminent attack, the current U.S. government position on this is really not sustainable.


So let me get this straight. Because you have been really clear in our past conversations about the murky world of intelligence communities and the whole business of war. And you have discussed the fact that there is always some group or faction that benefits directly from an armed conflict. But are you saying that, even in this case, with the horrific damage done not only to the financial center of New York and the United States, but also to the psychological well-being of the American population, that some faction of the U.S. government had foreknowledge of these attacks?


I absolutely believe, at this moment, that the United States government had foreknowledge of the attacks and allowed them to occur.


OK. So then please explain who would have directly benefited from his tragedy and how will the ensuing domino effect of military escalation play into the hands or interests of those people?


First of all, just two days before the attack, on September 9, I issued an urgent bulletin to all of my subscribers indicating a pending economic collapse of unbelievable proportions. Based upon what I had already predicted and what was already occurring, a rapid deflation of the Dow, having lost 900 points in three weeks before the attack. And two other factors, one of which is an artificially suppressed gold price which is, according to a suit filed in Boston by GATA - the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee - a design by the U.S. Treasury and major banks to keep gold prices low so that investor confidence would stay high but also because gold, physical gold, had been leveraged forward in multiples to an amount many times greater on paper than there is gold in actual existence. This is a suit that was threatening to come to the surface. Historically, investor confidence is gauged, is pegged to gold because if gold prices remain low, investors will assume no inflation and healthy markets. The minute gold prices rise, investor confidence sinks. And this has been an artificial ploy by the U.S. government which surfaced actually and was exposed in 1998 with the collapse of a company called Long Term Capital Management which almost toppled the U.S. economy and forced the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury to intervene, exposing artificial manipulation of gold prices.


The second economic bomb that was ready to go off and which I warned about on Sept 9 was a 30 trillion dollar derivatives bubble spearheaded by JP Morgan-Chase (JPM) and 30 trillion would have collapsed the economy. Basically, the simplest form of derivative is a stock option where you can buy an option to purchase a share of stock trading at $80 for $1 and you can tie up trillions of dollars with little amounts of money. But if the economy fails you then become liable for the trillions of dollars that you have tied up. Excellent posts on this issue were placed at a website called lemetropolecafe.com that I strongly recommend people look at. And what I had said on September 9 was, 'look, this is going down and we're all going to burn.' And that was two days before the attack.


Now, given the fact that the economic indicators were for a recession, if not depression, by the end of October (for which the US government and Wall Street would have had to have taken responsibility), the now certain global recession that will follow, the World Trade Center attacks, now has someone convenient to blame it on.


Right. Got it. Now I wanted to push this over to another focus of emphasis, namely the Bush Administration and his stacked line-up of advisors who are veterans of the business of war. Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and even Condoleezza Rice. This seems to be a very professionally managed media campaign. In fact, many of the first people to appear on the networks after the attack were right out of George Bush Sr.'s cabinet.
 
Post 2 of 2
----------------------------------------------------
What kind of public consensus are they trying to mould? What do you see as their next course of action and how will that alleviate the imminent economic collapse you have described?


Well, to answer the last question first, most Americans who subscribe to the government line will believe that the economic impacts of this were the result of someone else's wrongdoing rather than wrongdoing that originated in the United States and on Wall Street and in Washington. So, there is somebody to blame. It will focus attention. It will, in a sense, psychologically condition people to hardships that are very certain to come. And I can not emphasize strongly enough that the American people have not even begun to grasp the economic impacts of what is happening.


Do you mean economic impacts that are a direct result of the attack on the World Trade Center or those that were already being felt as tremors in the markets over the past few months?


I mean the attacks. The markets of the world are going to respond to this. America will never be viewed as a safe haven for capital again. At least, as safe as it was. In addition, if there are subsequent attacks, which I consider to be likely at this point. I give a 51% probability that there will be additional terrorist attacks. Confidence in the United States as a safe place to put capital will be further diminished, which will result in capital flight. But there is a domino cascade effect from this in that the international markets which were already in recession if not depression - Japan being the first that comes to mind, having reached new lows in their stock market prior to the bombing - were looking to the United States for continued orders of consumer imports to sustain their economies. Consumer confidence in the U.S. is wiped out. Wall Street, before the bombings was pointing to consumer confidence as the one thing that would keep Wall Street from absolutely tanking. Well, that whole issue has been turned upside down. So I think that in the short term you'll see massive movements by central banks around the world to make everything look normal.


But it cannot last.


You will see gold prices eventually soar. You will see investments in U.S. markets diminish and the other markets around the world who are over, if not at the precipice, will definitely be way over it now.


OK. Let me change tack again and ask you this. For most of the people watching the news and following all of the intelligence coming out of the Pentagon, this attack was the product of a deep hatred for Americans by so-called religious zealot. Who acts on behalf of a foreign people who live in a distant land and who have different values than us. That's the official story. But you are here telling us that it is actually all linked to an imminent economic collapse. How do we reconcile these two explanations? Do we have to extend our understanding of this to a broader perspective that is a nexus of the two or are we being fed this line about the attacks being a product of the jihad or religious war?


How would you explain it to a classroom of students who might ask, what does this economic collapse have to do with a bunch of religious fanatics living in Afghanistan?


Let's take a look at one historical model that we absolutely know. Anyone who's watched the History Channel in the last year as seen the revelations that the United States had broken the Japanese code and knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor well before it occurred. The historical paradigm prior to that is in the 20's and 30's, the U.S. and the British had been closing Japan off from its access to oil from Indonesia, Malaysia, South East Asia and everything else. In other words, economically, Japan had been backed into a corner. We knew that the Japanese were going to attack - and the History Channel has eyeball witnesses and US government documents, this is out of the bag now - and yet because it suited political and economic and social purposes to bring the US into World War II, we allowed it to happen. And I think we need to learn from that lesson.


And I need to make something else very clear here. I'm an ex-cop, and you know that. I watched the firemen and the policemen in New York and I wept. Because that is who I am and what I am and that's America. What America is not is what has been done around the world to cause enormous anger at the United States, whether it be the genocide of 2 million people in Rwanda for U.S. economic interest. The attacks in Kosovo which have left large portions of that landscape radioactive for a million years. The radioactivity and D.U. and leukemia in Iraq that is there from ten times the amount of depleted uranium. The million displaced persons in Colombia, the genocides in East Timor. All of these are related to U.S. foreign and economic policy and there are a lot of people in the world who do not like us and, you know what, they have good reason. And that's not to justify these attacks.


You know, we create the enemies and, in this particular case I suspect investigation by my self and others will bear this out, the United States government knew about these attacks well in advance and may have even encouraged them quietly or from acts of silence.


Two quickies. How would you characterize the media coverage thus far and how do you expect it to run as this thing expands into a large-scale conflict?


The media coverage is in lock-step with Desert Storm and every other major government operation of the last two decades. I've seen little critical thinking on the part of the major media. Most of the critical thinking is coming from… and we are having an impact from the alternative media in terms of influencing some of the stuff that's getting on the air; questioning bin Laden's roots, connections to the CIA and so forth.


True.


There's a lot more stuff that the major media could be doing that they are not.


OK. Last question. This may verge a bit onto the side of conspiracy theory but here goes: As I watched the initial broadcasts after the attack and saw the steady stream of Bush advisors, and his cabinet members... they just seem so at home with it all. And then I stopped for a second and tried to visualize Gore in the middle of this. And I couldn't. It's like he was never meant to get to this point. And then I thought back to the election and all of that. I guess what I am saying is that this whole thing just smacks of a certain character, a very Bush-like international terrorism, middle-east-crisis type thing. You know what I am getting at?


Well my take on it is that this economic crisis would have been here no matter who was President. I think that what we're seeing, though, is a trademark Bush conservative war-oriented approach which is the way that the Bush faction would traditionally respond to this crisis.


Deep cover. Deep politics, right?


You got it.


Thanks for your time Mike.


You're welcome, Steve.
 
just so people know, there's more posts on this theme on general forteana>hmm 9-11 terrorist bombing.
 
also interesting - Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, quoted in the BBC article as being anti-Taleban and a leader of opposition forces, is claimed in the material above to have also been involved with OBL and the CIA. Curiouser and curiouser said Alice...

So the Anti-Taleban opposition leader used to be friends with the CIA and OBL, and is now living in Iran, and OBL there in Afghanistan with the blessing of the Taleban. Must have fallen out over a girl ;)
 
You know, there is supposed to be a document held in the British Library which dates to around 1780, which is said to predict WW1 & WW2 as future orchestrations of a long-term Iluminati/Freemasonic conspiracy of occasional war (which has its obvious benefits for certain circles of military-industrial power - an argument that has been suggested as a motive behind JFK's assassination and the policy U-turn toward stepped-up military involvement just days after his death by successor Lyndon Johnson). Is not the United States a nation founded on the principles of Freemasonry?

Typically, I can't find the book with the reference, which would give details of the document. I don't suppose anyone knows anything about this?
If validated, the scary thing about the document is that it is also supposed to detail the machinations toward a third world war, this time a Western/Zionist-Islamic confrontation, due to take place...well, about now.

It;s easy to see it all as apocalyptic paranoia, which it probably is. But then you read some of the references posted here (including one or two from reputable news sites like the BBC's), and the idea suddenly doesn't seem to be quite proposterous after all.

Maybe David Icke is right (sans lizards, of course)?
 
Hermes said:
You know, there is supposed to be a document held in the
Maybe David Icke is right (sans lizards, of course)?
Click to expand...
lol
Who knows. Maybe David Icke knows a bit too much. May be he's behind the whole thing. ;)
 
now we're getting into deep shit! Could all be anti-mason nonsense, of course, but the prospect that the history of the last century, and longer, has been the chess game of some weird cult, is indeed a frightening one. There are many, if hard to find, books on masonic tradition, steven knight (i think) has written several informative ones including 'the brotherhood'. Maybe it's in one of his - his research seems pretty thorough.

It's quite eerie how calm everyone in the US govt has been, how Bush didn't look surprised, and showed no emotion until he made his second public address. Did he know it was coming. That 5000 people dies in that event is strange. There should have been over 40,000 in the buildings, and they managed to evacuate 35,000 with no lifts, and no outside help, (not to mention bosses and security guards demanding that people went back to their desks).

I had a theory that FMD was a mass animal sacrifice by the masons, so maybe a mass human sacrifice would be the next logical step.

Many American's, perhaps quite rightly, are disgusted and affronted by anyone that even hints that the US was in some way responsible, whether through foreign policy, lax security, or coverup, for Black Tuesday. However, 'right thinking' people also vilified those that thought JFK had been offed by shadowy figures, and know that's part of the canon of myth.

Perhaps we'll never know, but if any of the material about Kissinger and the Bilderbergers is even vaguely true, I'd not be surprised.

Also it should be pointed out that Masons have no allegiance to country, ideology or morality, only the Architect, and people (the masses) are like pawns to them. What better pawns to use than the rich and powerful businessmen and women of the WTC.
 
Freemasonic Free-association

Well, I think that the masonic ideas about religion etc. were intended as a positive thing. At a time when religion and other such factors were still very divisive, the idea that anybody who believed in God, regardless of race or sect, could be a mason represented the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment that the masons stood for.
However, if I were a less level-headed person, I might point out the similarity between the twin towers of the WTC and Jachin and Boaz, the twin pillars at the entrance of Solomon's Temple, of which representations are supposed to flank the entrance of every masonic temple. And I might point out that the other target, the Pentagon, if you connect its five corners with interlocking straight lines, could be used to draw a pentagram, not only a magically potent symbol, but also one used in every masonic temple (where I believe it represents Venus (or Lucifer, of course), the morning star)...[looks, aghast, at what he has just typed]
Er...I'll get me coat...
 
A look-in from Mount Olympia

dot23 said:
now we're getting into deep shit! Could all be anti-mason nonsense, of course, but the prospect that the history of the last century, and longer, has been the chess game of some weird cult, is indeed a frightening one. There are many, if hard to find, books on masonic tradition, steven knight (i think) has written several informative ones including 'the brotherhood'. Maybe it's in one of his - his research seems pretty thorough.


Also it should be pointed out that Masons have no allegiance to country, ideology or morality, only the Architect, and people (the masses) are like pawns to them. What better pawns to use than the rich and powerful businessmen and women of the WTC.
Click to expand...


The book I mentioned earlier is called 'The Dark Gods' (1985) by Anthony Roberts & Geoff Gilbertson (Panther-Granada; ISBN 0-586-06233-51). I wish I could find the thing to get the name of the document. Anyone with a copy of this book, please come to my rescue.

On the face of it, you might dismiss it as a forerunner of the David Icke kind of paranoid speculation that has always attached itself to the hidden - therefore, dark & nefarious - agendas of 'secret' societies throughout the ages, from the Templars, to modern day Freemasonry, the Bilderberg Group, the CIA, etc.
Colin Wilson, who provides a Foreword, acknowledges this, whilst at the same time uneasily conceding that the threads of order and consistency that run through all the madness just might reflect some degree of truth.
Whether the seemingly pre-planned course of humanity is attributable to the actions of the Dark Gods (as the authors argue) who hover invisibly like stage directors behind the scenery, directing the planet toward destruction (the Principalities and Powers - agencies of supernatural darkness - of the New Testament); or is simply the outcome of a purely human manifesto, matters little. If true, it would mean - to use dot23's apt analogy of a chess match - that none of us have free choice and an unwritten destiny, but are in fact all pawns trapped in a huge and deadly game whose stakes are, at very least, wordly power and wealth, and maybe..just maybe..our very souls.
In a game where White unambiguously faces Black, a huge irony of this current match is that both parties believe they are playing for White...
 
As Piltdown says, the Masonic agenda was once a very
positive one. All Men as Brothers was a serious agenda
of international enlightenment.

During the nineteenth century, under a multitude of names,
the Masons set about a broadly humanist artistic project. It aims
to connect people with their roots, outside of a Christian
tradition. The Masons were politically very varied and could
include figures as contrasting as Burns and Scott.

The Masonic basis of the American Revolution is a matter of
history and the triangle of Masonic influences in the nineteenth century
has its corners in Scotland, Germany and New England.

Something very dark occurs in Masonry towards the end of the
nineteenth century. It could best be seen by comparing The Ode
to Joy with The Birth of a Nation, both steeped in symbols of the
Craft.

The suspicion that what we see is a performance and that a deeper
structure lies beneath can easily become madness. Yet this week,
a remark of Gore Vidal's came to mind. He was being interviewed on
television shortly after Blair had been elected PM. The interviewer
suggested that Blair was a breath of fresh air, untainted by all the
sleaze of the Tory years. Vidal, making a Masonic gesture, said bluntly
that Blair had the mark of Cain upon him. Mischief making? I thought so
at the time. :eek!!!!:
 
Airline lay-offs

Further to the discussions on this thread, does anyone else feel in anyway suspicious over the close-on-the-heels reactions of airlines in terms of declarations of job losses and cuts after the WTC/Pentagon disaster?

A number of airlines have made what might be argued as hasty, if not unpatriotic and irresponsible, decisions to cut their fleets almost before the WTC dust has settled. Look at Virgin, American, Boeing. The justification, of course, is the projected fall-off in demand for flights following the tragedy.
You'd think that under the circumstances they'd at least wait and see if that actually happens first, particularly following Bush's encouragement toward consumer spending to prevent deepening economic misery.
On the other hand, maybe it is a wise decision. Passenger fears will play a part, and increased pricing will undoubtedly result from bolstered security measures. And share-owners, as usual, will not take the rough with the smooth in the form of reduced profit margins, but let the costs fall back on the workforces.

But what makes me a little unsure is the revelation that the industry was already experiencing that fall-off even before the disaster, and may have been well poised for their decisions that followed September 11...

The wake of the disaster reveals that passenger quotas were much reduced on the flights concerned, and were likely selected for this reason (smaller numbers offer less resistance) - reflecting a recent downturn in demand - an indicator in itself, one of the linked articles suggests of 'an already reeling U.S. economy'.

From the CNN article: 'Three of the transcontinental flights departed for the West Coast with at least two-thirds of the seats empty. Only 37 of the 182 seats were occupied -- including four by hijackers, at least two in first class -- as United Airlines' Flight 93 left Newark for San Francisco.

The only flight that was even half full proved to be American Airlines' Flight 11, a wide-body Boeing 767 that left Boston bound for Los Angeles with 81 passengers.

Through July, airlines in the U.S. reported flights on average were 71 percent capacity this year.

All four of the hijacked flights had passenger loads significantly down in comparison with similar flights in June, the second quarter this year and last September...'

The pervading irony seems to be that economic downturn in the industry accommodated the hijackings that led in turn to a more serious and widespread economic depression, which now gives the airlines the unquestioned excuse to streamline their operations.
What I would like to know, if the hijackings were part of a longstanding plan requiring possibly years of forward planning, is: How did their know the passenger quotas would drop in time? Or did they simply lie low until that condition of their operation was fulfilled?


http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/19/hijacked.planes/index.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1544000/1544050.stm
 
I've just been reading some of the articles linked from the first guerillanews.com link. This one is particularly fascinating -

"The JPM Derivatives Monster"
http://www.guerrillanews.com/counter_intel/boom_bust_echo/zelotes_paper.html

it links together several very well known economic disasters (the collapse of Barings Bank, Long Term Capital Management, etc.) as all to do with derivatives trading - a dangerous pastime which he likens to playing with magic that we cannot control.

Now the relevance of this is the author of the _original_ article suggests that a "derivatives overhang" causing a massive global economic recession was imminent before the terrorist attacks, and cites "The JPM Derivatives Monster" as evidence - and he predicted this on 9 Sep 2001. In case you skimmed the article, he says he believes that the US government knew about the terrorist attacks beforehand but allowed them to go ahead in order to be able to point the finger at terrorists for the impending economic recession.

I'm still reading "The JPM Derivatives Monster" now - it's quite long.
 
Conspiracy theorist? Moi?

Certainly, I seem to recall that British Airways, for one, announced a couple of weeks ago that they were planning to let a lot of people go, and today they announce they're increasing the number...
Something I saw on the news last night made me think. Apparently, Britain "just happens" to be sending a) our largest Royal Navy taskforce since the Falklands and b) fully a quarter of the British Army to the Middle East for a "long-planned exercise". Apparently, they started leaving shortly before the terrorist strikes in the US. Now, our few toy boats and YTS trainees can't compare to the imperial legions Gaius Caligula Bush is going to send, and I'm not one to put about unsubstantiated rumours and theories, but it makes you think, doesn't it?
 
Spookily, the Sunday before the WTC attacks, two of my friends (who are American and anti-Bush) said that they thought George W. Bush would have to start doing something soon to maintain his popularity, and to divert the people's attention from the failing economy...
They concluded that he would start a war, which would be 'good for business'...
 
Well, given Bush's reputation and his actions in his first few months in office (eg. all that sabre-rattling with regard to China), you didn't have to be Henry Kissinger to see that the chances of his completing his first term without having a war with _somebody_ were minimal.
If I were a less cautious person I might say that Bush seems to be the prime beneficiary of the current crisis - from much-mocked political dumbo to mighty war-leader in a week or so. One can only hope that this crisis comes too soon after his first election to help him too much in 2004, but I wouldn't bet on it. Depends how long he can spin out the "war on terrorism"...
 
Well, I suppose if you count...

1) a gross economic distaster
2) an indeterminate enemy
3) five thousand US citizen fatalities, and
4) the loss of tens of thousands of American jobs

...as being advantageous for an American president, then yes, Bush is a lucky guy. He now has the unenviable task of striking a balance between WWIII and being seen as ineffective and unable to protect his own people. There are easier ways of gaining popularity.
 
The stupidity of US Presidents is a puzzling phenomenon.
No really stupid person is going to become President but
intellectuals need not apply.

I don't think anyone seriously thinks that Bush had a clue
what was happening last week. The point is that America is
now effectively in the hands of the Military. Blank cheque.

And the usefulness of the Military and Intelligence Forces in
protecting the American people has just been demonstrated.

The conspiracy which is hinted at is that dogs did not bark,
maybe recognizing the realpolitik consequences of a high-
profile attack on the US.

Incidentally, the spectacular "Success" of the attack on the
WTC may have surprised even those who planned it? I
expect the plan had overkill written into it. Did they expect
more than one plane to actually reach its target?
 
I think the really worrying thing now is that we don't know just how big a response to this is really going to be. The attorney general has already said that a number of foreign governments could be involved so the possibility of attacks on countrys other than Afghanistan is raised. Add to that Bush's "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." statement and then you've got reason to attack anyone who doesn't do exactly what the US tells them.

It must be worrying enough for people in Afghanistan right now, but if I was in Iraq, Libya or Syria then I'd be getting a bit nervous about all of this.
 
One can only hope that this crisis comes too soon after his first election to help him too much in 2004, but I wouldn't bet on it. Depends how long he can spin out the "war on terrorism"...
Click to expand...

I don't know if anyone saw yesterday's Times newspaper, but the headline story was of 'secret' plans by the US and Britain for a 10 year war - 'Operation Noble Eagle'. Similar the 'wars' waged against drugs and poverty - which were notoriously succesful... This would possibly involve more shooting though.

Here's the link:
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-2001325245,00.html

bye

Martin
 
Mr. Bingo said:
Well, I suppose if you count...

1) a gross economic distaster
2) an indeterminate enemy
3) five thousand US citizen fatalities, and
4) the loss of tens of thousands of American jobs

...as being advantageous for an American president, then yes, Bush is a lucky guy. He now has the unenviable task of striking a balance between WWIII and being seen as ineffective and unable to protect his own people. There are easier ways of gaining popularity.
Click to expand...

I wasn't accusing anybody of anything, and I certainly wasn't suggesting the US government was "behind" the terror attacks, I haven't lost that many marbles yet, but look at it this way:

1) A gross economic disaster that was very likely going to happen anyway, exacerbated by Bush's idiotic trillion-dollar tax cut, which he insisted on against all sane advice. Things were getting to the stage where, a few weeks ago, they were talking about cutting pensions, benefits payments etc. just to cover the federal govt.'s costs. Yes, this downturn is more abrupt, but at least it can be blamed on someone other than Bush and his advisers.
2) An indeterminate enemy that, hydra-headed, will pop up again and again no matter how many of them you kill. Like the "war on drugs", "war on crime", "war on communism" etc. etc., this can be exploited for near-endless political mileage, even if it is impossible ever to "win". Good enough to get Bush back in in 2004, anyway.
3) Five thousand fatalities, while representing a tremendous tragedy for the American people, don't impact upon Bush's political calculations at all, except insofar as five thousand means he can take much more muscular action than if it had only been five, or fifty. Sorry if this seems cynical, but Bush and his team don't strike me as the most big-hearted bunch of people ever to hold high office.
4) See 1). Huge job losses that may have happened anyway, and were certainly on the cards, due in no small part to Bush's own economic policies. Now, he can blame somebody else.

Add to this the fact that Bush, in the eyes of many Americans, didn't even get elected fair and square, yet now he has something like ninety percent approval ratings in the polls. Far from being seen as ineffective and unable to protect his people, Bush is now grandstanding like a latter-day Winston Churchill, and the American people in their (understandably) vulnerable frame of mind at the moment are lapping it up. See all those stars and stripes waving and hear the calls for vengeance, and know that this tragedy hasn't hurt Bush's political career one bit. We will have to wait some months, I'd imagine, before we see how long this popularity endures, but at the moment it's real, and for the moment any criticism of Bush is widely seen as churlish, if not grossly unpatriotic.

Now, this is not to suggest any conspiracy theory about Bush's involvement or foreknowledge of the events of Sept 11, merely to suggest that he wouldn't be a politician if he couldn't turn crises like this to his advantage.
 
In case anybody is still following this thread, I read yesterday in the Daily Hate Mail that GW Bush's first job after Harvard business school (if you believe he got through that on his wits alone, you'll believe anything) was to team up with a certain Salem bin Laden in the creation of a texan oil company. Yes, that's Salem bin Laden! Older brother of Osama, also heir to a small fortune after the death of their father (in a plane crash in 1968 or 66), Salem died in a plane crash in 1983.

Keep it in the family? Who knows, but if he knew Salem (presumable very well) he knew of Osama (if only by name) and presumably, so did Daddy!

Strangely, I'm finding it hard to find an on-line article about it, but it gets a brief mention in the Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk search for 'Salem bin Laden'
 
Well, that's interesting. Especially when you think about bin Laden's former career as a CIA stooge in the 1980s and Daddy Bush's ties to that organisation. (Of course, Bush Sr. says his involvement was limited to his brief period as CIA director in the 70s, but some have tried to demonstrate stronger links, going back into the early 60s - certainly, in crazy American conspiracy-folklore, Bush Sr. enjoys a position in the pantheon of evil only slightly less than that of Kissinger).
Now, none of this probably has any real bearing upon the current tragedy, but you can see how this story will probably be grist to the mill of the conspiracy theorists in months and years to come. It's inevitable that an event like this will generate such theories (and already has).
The thing that still worries me is the "coincidental" British military build-up in the Middle East, starting a couple of months before the terrorist attacks. A sizeable chunk of our armed forces (25 percent?) is involved. Even the bloke on the news the other day acknowledged that it's "an extraordinary coincidence". Just when you think you don't believe in conspiracy theories, something like that pops up to make you think.
 
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