I used to use duct tape, but I figured that tinfoiling the whole house was safer.
Posted on 08/30/2006 8:32:01 AM PDT by UnklGene
Call me crazy. I blame terrorists.
How can 36 per cent of people polled think U.S. officials knew of or participated in 9/11?
MARK STEYN
Who is A. K. Dewdney? He's an adjunct professor of biology at the University of Western Ontario, and he has pieced together the truth about what happened on 9/11. You may be familiar with the official version: "To account for the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush White House has produced a scenario involving Arab hijackers flying large aircraft into American landmarks," writes the eminent Ontario academic. "We, like millions of other 9/11 skeptics, have found this explanation to be inconsistent with the facts of the matter."
Instead, he argues, a mid-air plane switch took place on three of the jets. "The passengers of one of the flights died in an aerial explosion over Shanksville, Pa.," he writes, "and the remaining passengers (and aircraft) were disposed of in the Atlantic Ocean." Most of us swallowed "the Bush-Cheney scenario" because we were unaware that, when two planes are less than half a kilometre apart, they appear as a single blip on the radar screen. Thus, the covert switch. Instead of crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the flights were diverted by FBI agents on board to Harrisburg, Pa., where the passengers from all three planes were herded onto UA Flight 175 and flown on to Cleveland Hopkins and their deaths. By then, unmanned Predator drones had been substituted for the passenger jets and directed into their high-profile targets. The original planes and their passengers were finished off over the Atlantic.
But what about all those phone calls, especially from Flight 93? Ha, scoffs Dewdney. "Cellphone calls made by passengers were highly unlikely to impossible. Flight UA93 was not in the air when most of the alleged calls were made. The calls themselves were all faked." Michel Chossudovsky, of Quebec's Centre for Research on Globalization, agrees: "It was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to place a wireless cell call from an aircraft travelling at high speed above 8,000 feet."
So all the "Let's roll" stuff was cooked up by the government spooks. So, presumably, were the calls from the other planes. Flight 175 passenger Peter Hanson to his father: "Passengers are throwing up and getting sick. The plane is making jerky movements." This at a time when, according to professor Dewdney, Flight 175 was preparing to land smoothly at Harrisburg. Or Flight 11 stewardess Madeline Sweeney: "We are flying very, very low. We are flying way too low. Oh my God, we are way too low." Two minutes later, Flight 11 supposedly crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center -- though, as professor Dewdney has demonstrated, by then the plane wasn't even in the state. These so-called "calls" all used state-of-the art voice modification technology to make family members believe they were talking to loved ones rather than vocally disguised government agents. In the case of Todd Beamer's "Let's roll!" the spooks had gone to the trouble of researching and identifying individual passengers' distinctive conversational expressions.
In the end, says Dewdney, Flight 93 was shot down by a "military-looking all-white aircraft." It was an A-10 Thunderbolt cunningly repainted to . . . well, the professor doesn't provide a rationale for why you'd go to the trouble to paint a military aircraft. But the point is, several eyewitnesses reported seeing a white jet in the vicinity of the Flight 93 Pennsylvania crash site, so naturally conspiracy theorists regard that as supporting evidence that the plane was brought down by the U.S. military rather than after a heroic passenger uprising against their jihadist hijackers. "It was taken out by the North Dakota Air Guard," announced retired army Col. Donn de Grand Pre. "I know the pilot who fired those two missiles to take down 93." It was Maj. Rick Gibney, who destroyed the aircraft with a pair of Sidewinders at precisely 9:58 a.m.
Ooooo-kay. We now turn to a brand-new book edited by David Dunbar and Brad Reagan called Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts. Brad Reagan? There's a name for conspiracy theorists to ponder, notwithstanding his cover as a "contributing editor" for Popular Mechanics. First things first: Maj. Rick Gibney is a lieutenant-colonel. At 9:58 a.m. he wasn't in Shanksville, Pa., but in Fargo, N.D. At 10:45, he took off for Bozeman, Mont., where he picked up Edward Jacoby, Jr., director of the New York State Emergency Management Office, and flew him back to Albany, N.Y., in a two-seat F-16B, unarmed -- i.e., no Sidewinders. The white plane was not an attractively painted A-10 Thunderbolt but a Dassault Falcon 20 corporate jet belonging to the company that owns Wrangler, North Face and other clothing lines. It was coming into Johnstown, near Shanksville, when Flight 93 disappeared and the FAA radioed to ask them if they could look around. "The plane circled the crash site twice," write Dunbar and Reagan, "and then flew directly over it to mark the exact latitude and longitude on the plane's navigation system."
Just for the record, I believe that a cell of Islamist terrorists led by Mohammed Atta carried out the 9/11 attacks. But that puts me in a fast-shrinking minority. In the fall of 2001, a coast-to-coast survey of Canadian imams found all but two insistent that there was no Muslim involvement in 9/11.
Oh, well. It was just after 9/11, everyone was still in shock.
Five years later, a poll in the United Kingdom found that only 17 per cent of British Muslims believe there was any Arab involvement in 9/11.
Ah, but it's a sensitive issue over there, what with Tony Blair being so close to Bush and all.
Professor Dewdney's plane-swap theory?
Come on, if you already live in Canada, it's not such a leap to live in an alternative universe.
But what are we to make of the Scripps Howard poll taken this month in which 36 per cent of those surveyed thought it "somewhat likely" or "very likely" that federal officials either participated in the attacks or had knowledge of them beforehand?
Debunking 9/11 Myths does a grand job of explaining such popular conspiracy-website mainstays as how a 125-foot-wide plane leaves a 16-foot hole in the Pentagon. Answer: it didn't. The 16-foot hole in the Pentagon's Ring C was made by the plane's landing gear. But the problem isn't scientific, it's psychological: if you're prepared to believe that government agents went to the trouble of researching, say, gay rugby player Mark Bingham's family background and vocal characteristics so they could fake cellphone calls back to his mom, then clearly you're not going to be deterred by mere facts. As James B. Meigs, the editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics, remarks toward the end of this book, the overwhelming nature of the evidence is, to the conspiratorially inclined, only further evidence of a cover-up: "One forum posting that has multiplied across the Internet includes a long list of the physical evidence linking the 19 hijackers to the crime: the rental car left behind at Boston's Logan airport, Mohammed Atta's suitcase, passports recovered at the crash sites, and so on. 'HOW CONVENIENT!' the author notes after each citation. In the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose logic of conspiracism, there is no piece of information that cannot be incorporated into one's pet theory."
When I was on the Rush Limbaugh show a couple of months back, a listener called up to insist that 9/11 was an inside job. I asked him whether that meant Bali and Madrid and London and Istanbul were also inside jobs. Because that's one expensive operation to hide even in the great sucking maw of the federal budget. But the Toronto blogger Kathy Shaidle made a much sharper point:
"I wonder if the nuts even believe what they are saying. Because if something like 9/11 happened in Canada, and I believed with all my heart that, say, Stephen Harper was involved, I don't think I could still live here. I'm not sure I could stop myself from running screaming to another country. How can you believe that your President killed 2,000 people, and in between bitching about this, just carry on buying your vente latte and so forth?"
Over to you, Col. de Grand Pre, and Charlie Sheen, and Alan Colmes.
The sad reality is that never before has an enemy hidden in such plain sight. Osama bin Laden declared a jihad against America in 1998. Iran's nuclear president vows to wipe Israel off the map. A year before the tube bombings, radical Brit imam Omar Bakri announced that a group of London Islamists are "ready to launch a big operation" on British soil. "We don't make a distinction between civilians and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents," he added, clarifying the ground rules. "Only between Muslims and unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever has no value."
Our enemies hang their shingles on Main Street, and a University of Western Ontario professor puts it down to a carefully planned substitution of transponder codes.
I used to use duct tape, but I figured that tinfoiling the whole house was safer.
Thank goodness I haven't been affected
Well put. Welcome to FR!
If you want to look for conspiracies, ask yourself why all major Media outlets are in lockstep with respect to the non-airing of the pictures & video of the aircraft striking the second tower? Then ask yourself why the feds keep using euphamisms like "War on Terror" when describing the current conflict? It seems like this entire 'War' is being stage-managed to keep the public from.... getting angry at the enemy.
High volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. also
2006israelwar or WOT
..................
Bump!
But to be fair, the good professor has a Ph.D. in biology -- the short bus of science.
I know. And I agree. I was speaking out of frustration. People would, at the least, just turn off the tv. I just find it frustrating and a little maddening the things people are buying now as truth. They hear the detractors, who've ramped up their comments, and it's the easier way to go. Who really wants to have to face the truth that terrorists have struck and would like to again? Not many, but we do it anyway, because we must. Too many, to our folly, are choosing not to. You're probably right, I'm sure you are. I can remember how we even became accustomed to seeing the buildings fall in the months immediately following 9-11. But some of us chose to face the issue, not deny it happened or happened as terrorism
I agree and share your frustration.
Piled higher and deeper?
Regards,
GtG
PS BS = obvious, MS = more (of) same
I wasn't really looking for conspiracies. I'm just wondering how many are buying into this seemingly new idea that the government did it. But I see your point. I don't know why the MSM and the feds would be in step on it.
It seems like this entire 'War' is being stage-managed to keep the public from.... getting angry at the enemy.
Well, it seems to be working. To what end, I can't imagine.
"When you don't believe in something, you will fall for anything.."
Well, there are two sides to everything, just as there are two sides to every piece of flypaper. [Do they still make that stuff?] But the fly had better be damned careful which side it lands on.
Did you hear about the "SUV" that ran over about a dozen people out in San Francisco? I was listening to talk radio when it happened last night & the host (Savage) was asking, "How much anybody wanted to bet that by the morning new shows the story would be about: 1. The dangerous SUV, 2. Speculation about the mental stability of the driver, and that 3. No mention would be made of the fact that the driver's name would make it seem that he were a Muslim.
Sure enough, I'm watching Fox New this morning, and the Radio Host was right on all points.
This same type of vehicular assault by a Muslim driver happened at Duke University a few months back. I don't believe that anyone working in a major newsroom wouldn't remember that incident.
It's like we are fighting the war blindfolded.
That was actually Dana Carvey doing an impersonation. Notice how he's been conspiciously absent from the public eye for a while?
Absolutely spot on.
I think someone is not a "true" Muslim unless they are a member of the specific faction speaking.
However, Muslims don't seem to even care when they participate in mass killings which affect muslims and others alike. I'm sure there were muslims present in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and yet nothing was done to save them.
D
When you don't want the truth, any lie will do...
I hate to break it to you, but your dog's one of Them. You've been under his subtle control for years. Think about it - which one of you gets up, heads over to the can opener, and feeds the other one?
Don't feel bad. They have a lot of us fooled that way. And don't even start me about cats.
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