a rare political entry

[tiggz]

dude. is this for real? people honestly believe that our government orchestrated 9/11? this is truly the first i've heard of this. i'm at a loss for words. do i trust our government compeletely? no. do i believe that they always have our best interests at heart? no. do i think they killed thousands of people on september 11th for some unknown reason(i'm assuming they're saying it's because the president needed a catalyst for war)? abso-fucking-lutely NOT! how ludicrous is this? really. do any of you think this? if so, please do respond with why you think it's a possibility. i'm truly interested to understand why you would think our government would do something like this.

also Charlie Sheen's comment about the planes "not looking like any commercial jetliner he'd ever seen" is just completely and utterly laughable. what a fucking moron. is he an airplane expert?

this is about as political as you will see me because arguing politics never ends well. i just couldn't get over this though. outraged. that's a good word to describe how i'm feeling.

Comments

Well...

[joriejc2.livejournal.com]

This is the first I've heard of Charlie Sheen...he may not be doing a great service by speaking out, and yes, his commentary on the planes is taking it a little bit too far.

In actuality, from what I have read, no one is saying that the US Government committed the actions. There is no question that Al Qaeda was responsible.

The problem, whether you are a conspiracy theorist or not, is that a lot of WEIRD stuff happened on and around 9/11. For example, research has revealed that a lot of people who were investors in American Airlines put a ton of money into the Futures a few days before 9/11, almost as if they knew that something was going to happen that would make them super rich. If you read Richard Clarke or other experts on the subject, they will also tell you that there were very bizarre lags in the time it took to ground all aircraft. Many people also disagree with the fact that the entire Bin Laden clan was able to fly out of the US shortly after 9/11, while all other aircraft were still grounded. And then of course, there is the fact the fact that even though 99% of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, George Bush had Prince Bandar over to the White House on September 13, 2001. These are the kinds of odd facts that some people think should be explored a bit further to see why they happened.

It's also worth noting, just from a historical standpoint, that US Presidents have risked many lives in the past because they wanted to spark a war for political reasons. Check out the beginning of the Mexican American War. There were lots of reasons why folks like Henry David Thoreau were protesting that war.

Re: Well...

[tiggz.livejournal.com]

i have no idea what the Futures are. care to educate?

bizarre lags in getting thousands and thousands of planes out of the sky? i can understand the utter chaos that was. have you ever seen a map of all the planes in the sky at any given time? it's incredible. so that i'm willing to dismiss as "looking for something to corroborate your theory" and complete conspiracy theory.

what Bin Laden clan? and Prince Andar's visit doesn't sell me either. i'm racking my brain trying to remember how long it took for us to learn the identity of the terrorists. is it possible we didn't know who they were at this point? and even if we didn't, there's no reason to condemn an entire nation(afghanistan, i know, i know) for a few people's actions. the US government didn't support Timothy McVeigh's attack in OK City. just as an analogy.

Re: Well...

[joriejc2.livejournal.com]

Futures is a very complex branch of economics which I am not even going to claim to understand fully. The bottom line is explained thusly:

"Trading skyrocketed in options that bet on a drop in UAL Corp. and AMR Corp. stock in the days before terrorists crashed hijacked United and American airlines jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the 110-story 2 World Trade Center, and Merrill Lynch & Co., with headquarters near the destroyed twin towers, also experienced pre- attack trading of 12 times to more than 25 times the usual volume in so-called put options that profit when stock prices fall, according to Bloomberg data."

in other words, people bought a ton of options that would give them money if the stock in those companies fell. Being blown up tends to make your stock fall, so those folks that did that trading made a ton of money. The CIA monitors the futures to try to get clues about possible attacks. That's why people think it's funky that these attacks were seemingly just totally out of left field for the CIA.

I see your point about the planes in the sky. I think, from reading Richard Clarke's book, that he and his co-workers had tried to work out a plan in case such an attack occurred (there had been talk that Al Qaeda would be capable of using planes as missiles previous to 9/11). The other controversey is whether or not the Air Force was asked to stand down...hard to get at the truth there, which is why I want more investigation just to figure out what really happened, whether it makes the administration look good or bad. My understanding is that the Air Force is instructed to shoot down a hijacked plane when necessary, so there is some question as to how Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon and Flight 93 that crashed in PA were not targeted, since they were flying around after the Tower attacks. And of course, there are people who think that both planes WERE shot down by the Air Force. Again...hard to know the truth, and that's the shame.

There were many many members of the Bin Laden family living in the US. In fact, I believe I read somewhere that one of Osama's distant relatives had done business in the oil industry with the George Bushes at some point. Planes were sent all around the country to pick up all of those family members and get them out of the country.

Whether we knew who planned and acted out the attack is a bone of contention. If you ask many non-partisan members who worked with the administration in 2001, they would tell you that they had been warning everyone about Al Qaeda for years. So, that's another grey area.

You are right that entire countries should not be held accountable. The problem there is with consistency. Saudia Arabia has many omams who preach vehemently against the US, just as omams in Iran and Iraq do. However, we are fighting in Iraq and are smoking cigars with the leaders of Saudi Arabia. In some cases, a consistent approach to diplomacy would probably erase a lot of the uneasiness. And yes, Afghanistan was bombed after 9/11, and we went to war with Iraq after 9/11. Those countries were held accountable and had little to nothing to do wtih the attacks. So again, that is why some people are frustrated in trying to figure all of this out.

Make sense?

Re: Well...

[tiggz.livejournal.com]

thanks for the explanation about Futures. i get it. however, someone can tell me something until they're blue in the face. i tend to not accept it as fact until i see it for myself. so someone saying that i can find all of this out by looking at Bloomberg data doesn't sell me until i see physical proof of said data. i'm a visual learner. can you tell?

i don't doubt that there was murmurings that something of this nature could happen. like i said to someone else, though, we as a nation were just so overconfident and ignorant that nothing like that could ever happen to us. i mean, i know it happened and i still have a hard time believing it because i never feared for my life. we don't(or didn't) have to worry about suicide bombers and the like because we assumed our government was doing everything in their power to protect us. we were wrong. i don't think this was some malicious act by our government though. i think that they felt just as secure as the american public did. since the attacks, i do take issue with the lax security and other things like the attempt to sell our ports to the UAE. i think we're being ignorant in the name of political correctness.

anyway. thank you very much for your viewpoint and for the lesson on Futures.

Re: Well...

[the-partyman.livejournal.com]

I think "futures" are kinda how like, rather than actualy buyying/selling shares, one can sort of "bet" on whether share prices will go up or down. Or something like that.

Re: Well...

[the-partyman.livejournal.com]

oooooh, I think Jorie maybe already explaind it better. Plus she her "..complex.." beats my "or something" hands down!