Posted on 09/10/2006 8:12:29 PM PDT by BlackjackPershing
The search continues for the numinous or hieroglyphic significance of the date September 11. Believers in propaganda by deed, like Gavrilo Princip and Timothy McVeigh, usually choose to invest themselves with portentousness by selecting an anniversary that will freight their murder with meaning. Often, it is a date that only meant something to a very limited or arcane circle until its true value was unveiled to a stunned world. Thus Princip chose the date of Serbia's 14th century defeat in Kosovo and McVeigh chose the anniversary of Janet Reno's bloodbath at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. I've also frequently heard it suggested that the timing of the recent attacks was linked somehow to the signing of the Camp David agreement in September 1978.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
I concur...
Gee, with a few, reasonable numerological expressions (9/11/01 ---> 9.111) you manage to find a corresponding Koranic verse preaching killing and dying for Islamic hatred being rewarded by the Moon-God Demon, Allah. What are the odds of that?
Answer: About the same as browsing over to DailyKOS and finding something stupid.
Then Spain on 4/11 was just a coincidence?
I think 9-11-2001 was chosen because of the weather report, very clear so that the terrorist pilots would be sure to see the targets.
The very absence of weather problems that day allowed us to land 6,000 planes across the US rapidly without even one mishap...which was a miracle IMO.
No, I think the 11 was not coincidental for that group.
You bet American Christians are on the right side of defeating Islamic terrorists. But we have another enemy standing in our way, it's called the ACLU and the democrat party. Unless we convert to Islam, we are subject to Muslim hostility and beheadings. This is what their Koran teaches them. These are not nice people as Oprah would have us believe. Convert or Die is their slogan. Never forget that.
That all depends doesn't it? It depends on who is in charge.
Yes, approximately. Bin Laden allegedly originally planned the attacks to take place May 12, 2001, 7 months after the USS Cole attack, but it got pushed back a couple times for primarily operational rather than symbolic reasons, at least according to the witnesses cited in the 9/11 Commission Report. I was just going over this question the other day because I was trying to determine if there was any way the hijackers could have timed the attack to coincide with Operation Vigilant Warrior, the NORAD war games that were being run on 9/11, or whether this was just a coincidence. I am not done looking into this, but from what I've been able to find so far the date was a contingency date rather than Bin Laden's original preference, and the final date was not settled until sometime between mid-July 2001 and the third week of August 2001. From the 9/11 Commission Report:
According to KSM,Bin Ladin had been urging him to advance the date of the attacks. In 2000, for instance, KSM remembers Bin Ladin pushing him to launch the attacks amid the controversy after then-Israeli opposition party leader Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.KSM claims Bin Ladin told him it would be enough for the hijackers simply to down planes rather than crash them into specific targets.KSM says he resisted the pressure.177
KSM claims to have faced similar pressure twice more in 2001. According to him, Bin Ladin wanted the operation carried out on May 12, 2001, seven months to the day after the Cole bombing.KSM adds that the 9/11 attacks had originally been envisioned for May 2001. The second time he was urged to launch the attacks early was in June or July 2001, supposedly after Bin Ladin learned from the media that Sharon would be visiting the White House. On both occasions KSM resisted,asserting that the hijacking teams were not ready.
Other evidence corroborates KSM’s account. For instance, Mihdhar told his cousin that the attacks were to happen in May,but were postponed twice, first to July,then to September.Moreover,one candidate hijacker remembers a general warning being issued in the al Qaeda camps in July or early August, just like the warnings issued two weeks before the Cole bombing and ten days before the eventual 9/11 attacks. During the midsummer alert, al Qaeda members dispersed with their families, security was increased, and Bin Ladin disappeared for about 30 days, until the alert was canceled.179
SNIP
Bin Ladin told Binalshibh to instruct Atta and the others to focus on their security and that of the operation,and to advise Atta to proceed as planned with the targets discussed before Atta left Afghanistan in early 2000—the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the White House, and the Capitol. According to Binalshibh,Bin Ladin said he preferred the White House over the Capitol, asking Binalshibh to confirm that Atta understood this preference. Binalshibh says Bin Ladin had given the same message to Waleed al Shehri for conveyance to Atta earlier that spring. Binalshibh also received permission to meet Atta in Malaysia.Atef provided money for the trip,which KSM would help Binalshibh arrange in Karachi.141
In early June,Binalshibh traveled by taxi from Kandahar to Quetta,Pakistan, where al Qaeda courier Abu Rahmah took him to KSM.According to Binal=shibh, KSM provided a plane ticket to Malaysia and a fraudulent Saudi pass-port to use for the trip.KSM told him to ask Atta to select a date for the attacks. Binalshibh was to return to Germany and then inform KSM of the date.KSM
SNIP
Binalshibh says he told Atta that Bin Ladin wanted the attacks carried out as soon as possible. Bin Ladin, Binalshibh conveyed, was worried about hav=ing so many operatives in the United States.Atta replied that he could not yet provide a date because he was too busy organizing the arriving hijackers and still needed to coordinate the timing of the flights so that the crashes would occur simultaneously.Atta said he required about five to six weeks before he could provide an attack date. Binalshibh advised Atta that Bin Ladin had directed that the other operatives not be informed of the date until the last minute.Atta was to provide Binalshibh with advance notice of at least a week or two so that Binalshibh could travel to Afghanistan and report the date per=sonally to Bin Ladin.146
As to targets, Atta understood Bin Ladin’s interest in striking the White House.Atta said he thought this target too difficult,but had tasked Hazmi and Hanjour to evaluate its feasibility and was awaiting their answer.Atta said that those two operatives had rented small aircraft and flown reconnaissance flights near the Pentagon.Atta explained that Hanjour was assigned to attack the Pen=tagon, Jarrah the Capitol, and that both Atta and Shehhi would hit the World Trade Center. If any pilot could not reach his intended target, he was to crash the plane.If Atta could not strike the World Trade Center,he planned to crash his aircraft directly into the streets of NewYork.Atta told Binalshibh that each pilot had volunteered for his assigned target,and that the assignments were sub=ject to change.147
SNIP
On August 3, for example, Atta and Binalshibh discussed several matters, such as the best way for the operatives to purchase plane tickets and the assign=ment of muscle hijackers to individual teams.Atta and Binalshibh also revis=ited the question of whether to target the White House.They discussed targets in coded language,pretending to be students discussing various fields of study: "architecture"referred to the World Trade Center,"arts"the Pentagon,"law" the Capitol,and "politics"the White House.166
Binalshibh reminded Atta that Bin Ladin wanted to target theWhite House. Atta again cautioned that this would be difficult.When Binalshibh persisted, Atta agreed to include the White House but suggested they keep the Capitol as an alternate target in case the White House proved too difficult. Atta also suggested that the attacks would not happen until after the first week in Sep=tember, when Congress reconvened.167
SNIP
Perhaps most significant,however,was the purchase of plane tickets for Sep=tember 11.On August 23,Atta again flew to Newark,probably to meet with Hazmi and select flights.All 19 tickets were booked and purchased between August 25 and September 5.171
It therefore appears that the attack date was selected by the third week of August.This timing is confirmed by Binalshibh,who claims Atta called him with the date in mid-August.According to Binalshibh,Atta used a riddle to convey the date in code—a message of two branches,a slash,and a lollipop (to non-Americans, 11/9 would be interpreted as September 11). Binalshibh says he called Atta back to confirm the date before passing it to KSM.172
like i said, christians are united.
????????? What is DailyKOS?
bttt
Looks like an interesting book. Is is still in print/available?
Only the epicenter of anti-American liberalism.
That looks like a good book. I am going to check it out. Thanks.
As far as I'm aware (and as many others have pointed out) it was largely coincidence. As for the notion that it was related to the Coptic New Year, which someone else pointed out, if it were, then it was an attack on a very ancient civilization which long predated monotheism amongst the Copts. The Coptic new year is around 3500-4000 years old and is timed to coincide with the flooding of the Nile and some constellation...Sirius, I think. Besides, most Copts, even those who utilize the old calendrical dates for Christmas, etc., use the Western new year, same as most of us probably do. It gets a bit confusing sects because some do stick to the Coptic calendar, a few use the Julian calendar, but most use the Gregorian for what are largely deemed secular holidays.
/Brother, sister-in-law and many, many in-laws are Coptic. I never know when to wish them what, so I've given up!
In the American midwest, mostly.
I would say that since they needed to make it difficult for us to use the Northern Alliance to retaliate against bin Laden - and because the Taliban wanted to expand into the Central Republics- that the hijackings and the assassination of Northern Alliance leader Masood would have to occur at the most advantageous time for a Taliban all-out offensive against the Northern Alliance. This had to narrow the window somewhat. [If the US had reacted a bit slower after 911 the Taliban may had planned on denying us bases to Afghanistan's north.]
The hijacking plotters for the US attack would have to select a weekday during business hours to insure the maximum number of casualties at the WTC towers and the Pentagon.
That doesn't limit their options much, but it does limit choices a little more.
Since they were going to try for the White House and failing that, choose the Capitol, then they had to select a date where Congress was in session AND a day on which the President would be in the White House.
Now it gets tough...
They couldn't be too choosy over the locations from which their flights would leave. They had to take what they could get. They also had to take flights that used the type of aircraft on which they had trained.
Now it's REAL tough.
How to insure that bin Laden's favorite target and incidentally, the same target Saddam Hussein's kid's newspaper had referred to in its "Frank Sinatra" & "tunnels of the White House" article that summer... would be worth it, with the Pres and possibly even the VP there in the event it could be hit?
We all know Bush was in Florida that morning, so what did they expect to hit except a white building with Cheney in it?
There was a story about a curious incident that morning in Florida where some ME types pretended to have a scheduled interview with the Pres at his hotel before he went on to the school- they were turned away. To bad the Northern Alliance's Masood did n't turn away reporters when he had the chance.
But ... how many know Bush was scheduled to return to the White House that morning for a meeting and not go visit some other Florida locale? There was a meeting scheduled for him to attend. Who would know about it and its timing better than one or more of the attendees, some of whom would probably like nothing better than to see Bush's face when the WTC towers & Pentagon would be burning?
Why didn't Bush attend the meeting, whose attendee's were in Washington ready to go in?
One reason was that Bush was on Air Force One and AF1 was taking evasive action while the situation was still not fully known and aircraft were still trying to land on command.
We all know about the phoned-in message to the White House about the codes of Air Force One that morning. How did the caller know the info needed to make that threat?
Why threaten AF 1? To get it to land in DC right away?
Other reasons to schedule that date may depend on the need to coordinate with the second wave against the West Coast, for which some suspects had tickets.
Yet another reason could be to coordinate with the anthrax attack- depending on when the perp[s] obtained the anthrax.
I doubt very much that the date itself has significance to the plot since there were already so many requirments to be met- I'm sure muslims could subscribe importance to an date just as they label every former church, city, or other desirable property "one of the Holiest Sites in Islam." Bin Laden knew it would have significance all its own before the sun set that day, whether it was an anniversary of something or not.
There also could have been a need to coordinate with Ansar al Islam's assassinations of Kurdish leaders in Iraq.
I think they had hopes of denying us airfields in Afghanistan and Iraq and thought they could do that by eliminating our potential 'friendlies.'
Remember the 2001 calender that in the ME (Egypt IIRC) that had picture of the NY syline and a firery plane crashing into the harbor?
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