Pinky, first of all let me thank you for taking the time to make that post. You have made several good points...
You're welcome. Some of the points raised in that list are, in my opinion, valid indications that the security of Al-Quaeda was less than airtight. This is not surprising; in an operation involving years of planning and preparation and consisting of as many conspirators as the WTC attacks did, some security breaches are inevitable.
What I find so bemusing is the inability of some people to accept on face value what actually happened -- a fanatical terrorist with a personal grudge against the Saudi ruling regime and their military allies (the USA) engineered a spectacular terrorist attack on US soil. What is so hard to accept about this? Why MUST there have been complicity of the US government?
"Well," they say, "It just doesn't make sense that the US intelligence agencies didn't know in advance, therefore they must have deliberately allowed the attacks to occur. There is no other conclusion that makes sense."
These are the same people who routinely trash both the FBI and the CIA as being hopeless bunglers, pointing out failed operation after failed operation ad nauseum -- Ruby Ridge, Waco, various South American ops, Castro assassination attempts, botched hostage rescues, Muammar Khaddafi assassination attempts, etc. This logical inconsistency doesn't faze them a bit. Come on guys, which is it? Either these agencies are competent or they are not.
Note that these same people were the ones clamoring for reductions in defense and intelligence budgets (which Clinton obligingly provided, basically gutting the CIA) once the Soviet Union collapsed. "Why do we need to spend so much on defense? The Cold War is over. There are no serious threats left. Cut defense and intelligence spending and give us universal health care!"
Note also that these are the same people who for months and months refused to believe that Al-Quaeda was even responsible for the attacks, in essence claiming that the US government was "framing" Osama and his merry band, or that some domestic group had somehow managed to plant demolition charges powerful enough to bring down the towers if the plane strikes alone didn't do so.
As for the whole oil "connection", that's another straw man that doesn't withstand even casual inspection. To a certain group of people, EVERYTHING is about oil. I've seen post after post in this forum claiming that the Arab-Israeli conflict, for example, is "all about oil". It isn't. It's a religious war... always has been, always will be. If you don't believe me, ask any of the individuals involved, either Israeli or Palestinian or Lebanese or Jordanian -- if you mention oil as a motive, they'll look at you like you've got bugs on your eyeballs and give you a three hour rant on perceived aggressions and transgressions of "those evil dogs" dating back three millenia. I've even seen a thread here claiming the UN peacekeeping mission in Somalia was motivated by oil (ignoring the fact that there are no known oil deposits in Somalia) and that the UN actions in the Yugoslavian mess was about oil. I don't often get sarcastic here, but allow me a moment of frustration, please -- ADJUST YOUR ALUMINUM FOIL BEANIES, GUYS!
If oil is such a huge motivating factor, why does the UN not lift the economic sanctions on Iraq? Iraq is (or was) one of the largest oil producers in the Gulf, after all. Hell, the US doesn't even NEED Gulf oil... only twelve per cent US oil consumption comes from the Gulf.
The Bush family and it's close ties to Oil companies is no big secret, they are just puppets of big business in my opinion.
So what? Virtually every politician in Texas has been connected with "the awl bidness" for decades now. It's only the largest industry in the state, after all.
Now fast forward to the attacks...despite the warnings, and evidence pointing to an attack, GW let's it happen...
This presumes he both knew the attacks were going to happen and that he chose to let them happen. Neither allegation is even close to having been proven.
in addition to the evidence I've provided...
As I pointed out already, the vast majority of what you have provided does not fit the definition of "evidence".
... why were no fighter jets scrambled to intercept until it was too late?
And what exactly would those fighters do? Blow a domestic commercial airliner out of the sky? When did it become policy to shoot down hijacked planes? Think about this for a second. If the planes had been shot down, the same crackpots who for months refused to believe that Al-Quaeda engineered the attacks would have been screeching their lungs out that Bush murdered hundreds of Americans with no proof.
Anyways...minutes after the attacks, all of a sudden they know exactly who is responsible...Osama.
I don't remember it as minutes, but pretty early on in the game, yes. Why is this hard to believe? If they had in fact been in possession of all the various indications you say they had, it wouldn't have taken a rocket scientist to realize, "Holy shit! All that stuff really WAS true!" and make the connections after the fact. Hindsight is 20-20.
So now the U.S. has the entire world behind it, and backing it so the U.S. can legally go into Afghanistan and decimate the ruling Taliban regime...then installing a U.S. freindly government...
So the motive for letting the attacks take place was to provide justification for a US invasion of Afghanistan in order to remove a rogue regime which was at the time officially recognized by exactly two nations on the entire planet and which had been condemned by every humanitarian organization in the world for years?
That has more holes in it than a hunk of Swiss cheese. Let's look at a few:
1) How did they know bin Laden wouldn't immediately boogie out to Sudan or Yemen or Libya or Pakistan? He had operated out of at least that many terrorist nations in the past, and was undoubtedly welcome in several others. He is a wealthy muslim enemy of America, remember? He can pretty much write his own ticket in a dozen sympathetic nations.
2) What would have happened if the Taliban had caved and either extradited bin Laden or allowed the US free passage to hunt him down and capture him? They were given many, MANY opportunities to do so.
3) Most of the negotiations and "background" events in this oil scenario happened long before Bush even won the nomination of the Republican party as presidential candidate, much less gained the presidency (and he almost didn't get that, as I recall). The points on that list you provided show that the WTC attacks were set in motion years back. So how can the whole thing have been engineered by a Bush/Big Oil cabal?
4) The new government of Afghanistan is being propped up by the United Nations, not the United States per se. And, anyone who has done even a bit of reading into the history of that factionalized nation will realize it will take years for a "stable" government to eventually emerge, and even then it's basically a crapshoot that the new government will allow America to do whatever it chooses. There is probably no more fiercely independent (and ungrateful) and stubborn people in the world than the Afghanis.
5) Why did the US not actually TRY to crush the Taliban? The leaders of the Northern Alliance were on the news every day for weeks wailing that the US was not giving them any support. "You're bombing the wrong places, you foolish infidel dogs!" The repeated US answer was that their mission was to try to capture Al-Quaeda operatives; that their targets were not Taliban strongholds, but Al-Quaeda strongholds, and that if the Northern Alliance didn't like it, tough titties.
6) If, as you assume, the "evil, imperialistic Bush administration" was really planning an invasion of Afganistan to gain an oil pipeline, they didn't need the excuse of a terrorist attack to "justify" it. If they really are as evil as you claim, they would have manufactured some other plausible reason. Enough countries of the world loathed the Taliban's regime to not squawk much if the US had decided to provide some military assistance to the Northern Alliance. Note that even with the US (actually UN -- everyone seems to forget this fact) task force actions going on simultaneously, it was the Northern Alliance rebels who did the vast majority of the work in retaking Afghanistan. There are some military analysts who say that even without the intervention of the task force, the rebels would have won anyway -- it just would have taken longer.
Who had the most gain from allowing the attacks?...Obviously the U.S....
Who had the most to lose? The US. Thousands dead, gigantic amounts of money gone forever, businesses headquartered in the WTC gone forever, thousands of employees of those businesses unemployed.
U.S. economy was ready to bottom out, and war is good for the economy.
This is a common myth propagated by those who have no understanding of basic economics. War is NOT good for the economy. War is BAD for the economy. Huge amounts of money are spent on things that produce no wealth (salaries of military, bombs that get exploded, planes that get shot down), and increase the standard of living by exactly zero. All that money comes from taxes, remember?
Note that the stock market today is below where it was pre- September 11, 2001.
They get to run the pipeline, worth billions of dollars in revenue to the U.S.
Even presuming they do get to build a pipeline (far from guaranteed), the revenue gained from it will be a fraction of the revenue lost from the attacks and the war effort.
They gain a strategic position in the middle east...
Small point, but Afghanistan is not the Middle East. That aside, what makes you think the Afghanis will welcome the US after overthrowing the Taliban? They certainly didn't welcome the US after they had helped the mujahadin oust the Soviets. Besides, in the minds of the Afghans, the US didn't REALLY help at all. Remember the complaints of the Northern Alliance leaders? In their minds, THEY'RE the ones who did all the work. The US was wasting their time bombing the wrong targets, as far as the Northern Alliance is concerned. The Afghanis are an incredibly proud and independent people, as anyone who has ever dealt with them will attest. Ask the Russians, or the British.
pinky
--------------------
|
Threaded
Previous
Index
Next
Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order 
North Spore Mushroom Grow Kits & Cultivation Supplies 
Spores for European Microscopy 
Bulk Cannabis Seeds
luvdemshrooms 
Rono
[Re: 
Edit 
Reply 
mr crisper
1 2 3 all )
Learyfan
wingnutx
Rono
DirtMcgirt
ekomstop
Zahid