to the left/liberal readers of this forum

that's right and that information is according to norad's own official timeline. see http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/defense/docs/norad_pr_s18.html
it's even stranger when u consider that these planes fly at speeds of around 1800 miles per hour above 36,000 feet altitude (which is mach 2.5). the distance from the air base to the towers is 153 miles and the planes were 71 miles from nyc when the second tower was hit and after they'd been in the air for about nine minutes. so norad's saying then that it took them nine minutes to fly 82 miles. if u do the maths that works out at about 550 miles per hour. so a big old jet capable of doing 1800 mph flies less than a third of its top speed as it supposedly races towards a grave emergency... doesn't make sense, does it?

 

the following is an excerpt from the record of general myer's testimony to congress on september 13, 2001, two days after the terrorist attacks. he is being asked by senator levin about the air force's response to the jiackings:

LEVIN: Was the Defense Department contacted by the FAA or the FBI or any other agency after the first two hijacked aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center, prior to the time that the Pentagon was hit?

MYERS: Sir, I don't know the answer to that question. I can get that for you, for the record.

LEVIN: Thank you. Did the Defense Department take -- or was the Defense Department asked to take action against any specific aircraft?

MYERS: Sir, we were . . .

LEVIN: And did you take action against -- for instance, there has been statements that the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down. Those stories continue to exist.

MYERS: Mr. Chairman, the armed forces did not shoot down any aircraft. When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACS, radar aircraft and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA system that were hijacked. But we never actually had to use force.

LEVIN: Was that order that you just described given before or after the Pentagon was struck? Do you know?

MYERS: That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck.

http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/mycon.htm

general myer's version of events was retracted some days later and a new story appeared with a timeline showing that norad had despatched f15 planes, for example, in response to the hijacking of flight 11 at 8:52 am.

why was the general unaware of this considering he was the acting chairman of the joint chiefs of staff?

is this just more incompetence?

 

By the way James you seem not to have replied to my quiry to your comment-

“on this thread we are looking at why the air force failed to respond to the attacks”

So why if you were only wanting to talk about the US air forces failure to respond to the attacks on the twin towers did you call the thread “to the left/liberal readers of this forum”? Would it not have been better to have a title about the US air force or the twin towers in the title? Or do you believe that left wingers and liberals have some type of expert knowledge in that field?

Quiet frankly demand that a thread titled “to the left/liberal readers of this forum “ should not discuss anything to do with left-wingers and liberals seems pretty bizarre don’t you think?

 

i answered that over a day ago. go here balbus:
http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1664104#poststop
earlier in this thread i asked that if u wanted me to answer a question u would need to ask me nicely. badgering ppl and trying to disrupt a thread u don't happen to like is not nice in my books. i don't think this infers any over-sensitivity on my part. it's just the way adult ppl behave with each other that keeps things respectful and civil. i answered this question as i have attempted to answer each and every one of your other many questions (and btw i can't imagine why u think i, or anybody else who visits these forums for that matter, am under any kind of obligation to u to answer anything, especially not when u demand it. imo communication works best when it's premised by co-operation and not coercion, surely as a person of the left u understand this?) so far you have not replied to any of my replies other than by reiterating the same 2 questions concerning the name of this thread and my views on property. for instance u posed a reasonable question earlier about 'what do u want us to do [with this information]?' i feel i gave u a considered response yet u have made no comment back. i'm starting to wonder if u don't read anybody's answers u just ask questions.

meanwhile have u looked at the three sources of official information purporting to explain the air force's non-action on september 11? despite the fact that in over 4 years we have only been given three cursory explanations each explanation is different.

from the seond explanation - which included the norad timeline and f-15 response times - i calculated that the f15s that were despatched to the wtc flew there at under a third of their total top speed. these jets were supposedly racing to get there in time before the second tower was attacked. and these times are by norad's own admission. (if u'd like to do your own calculations u can go here for the information at the norad timeline: http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/defense/docs/norad_pr_s18.html)

if one were to calculate the response times of the other f15s one would learn that they too all flew at vastly reduced speeds although it was known at the time america was under attack. hardly seems like a very good way to respond, does it?

 

You said at first that they were the ones you were trying to reach , you said later that you thought they woul;d understand.

But that seemed strange to me and I wondered why you were not trying to reach everyone, and did you think somehow the right and conservatives don’t need reaching out to?

To understand you and therefore the reasons for the strange direction of you thread I wanted to know more about you, and the political conversion you mentioned. But it seems you are reluctant to talk about your political views, which for someone on a political forum seemed strange.

There are many forms of evasion and I have seem the ‘affronted’ one used several times on these very forums, the one refuses to answer questions because they are for offended by the questioner, they claim for example that the questions are not civil or nice.

**

“so far you have not replied to any of my replies other than by reiterating the same 2 questions concerning the name of this thread and my views on property. for instance u posed a reasonable question earlier about 'what do u want us to do [with this information]?' I feel i gave u a considered response yet u have made no comment back. i'm starting to wonder if u don't read anybody's answers u just ask questions.”

As far as I can tell so far you have only asked me one question about the Rumsfeld directive I don’t have an opinion because it doesn’t seem to have the same significance to me as it does to you. It is interesting but I think you are making too much of it would be my reply.

As to you reply to the question of what do you want us to do with the information? Your reply was basically that you didn’t care which isn’t exactly a very satisfactory answer and so it seemed even more imperative to me to the understanding of that reply to understand your political viewpoint.

Which I’m still trying to do.

But I have now discovered from the other thread that you don’t actually know why or how your views have changed so as you are so confused at the moment, I will give you time to think.

 

I originally came to this forum looking to understand the US response to 9/11

To me and many others outside the US the attacks didn’t come as a surprise, there was horror and it didn’t diminish the sympathy but not surprised. Many Americans couldn’t believe that people could dislike their country, they thought they were liked as the bastion of, freedom, democracy and justice. The only problem was that to many around the world the US was seen as the crusher of other peoples freedom, as the block to change and democracy and had given up justice (or never knew it) in the pursuit of it’s own interests.

Many around the world thought that 9/11 would be a wake up call, it didn’t happen and I wondered why.

I have found over the years that in America, myth can be a stronger force than reality.

The idea of manifest destiny, of the American dream and exceptionalism, are preferred to a bloody grab for resources, social injustice and inequality and the triumph of self-interest.

I think Americans will only begin to actually improve their flawed political system, which is behind the many injustices perpetrated in their name, if they stop dreaming, wake up and do something about it.

The only problem is that some Americans only seem to want to create new myths to put off the responsibility of taking real and constructive action.

So we seem to get the idea and belief in conspiracies, which mean nothing can be done because the power to do anything is out of the peoples hands.

**

There has been a theory around for years that FDR ‘allowed’ Pearl Harbour to happen and we now have the theory that the Bush administration (or elements of it) ‘allowed’ (or even planned) 9/11.

They are both interesting theories, but to me the more important question is how radically would the future have been if they had not taken place?

FDR wanted to bring the US into WWII, and even if he’d relayed the warning that the theory claims he had, I think it is likely the Japanese would still have attacked. The difference being they would have meet US resistance and if they had abandoned that attack it is likely they would still have gone for the Philippines (they invaded 3 days later). So FDR would just have used that as the means to enter the war and Hitler would still have declared war on the US.

As to 9/11 well if it hadn’t happened or been thwarted it is likely Afghanistan would not have been invaded. But remember the neo-cons were gunning for Iraq and it’s likely they would have found some pretext and still invaded it (just more likely at a time more convenient for the elections).

The American political system is flawed and needs reforming to me all this talk of conspiracies is just distractions from that goal, especially when those people talking about it don’t seem to have any realistic ideas on how to improve or change things for the better.

 

i'm not affronted. i feel disrespected. world of difference. i feel disrespected by u, for example, when u tell me that my being out in a public forum is no big deal because amongst ur circle of comrades it's no big deal. alright, i'm now asking u:'how do u know what it feels like to come out and be out in a public space, are u gay? do u speak from first hand personal experience?

if u do speak from personal experience and u are gay then i would say to u that u don't know what it was like for me and that i may have had a much worse time coming out than u did. for all i know u may have had an even worse time than me: you may have been bullied, bashed and intimidated daily for several years (which i was), you may have been hospitalised b/c of it and given hideous treatments (which i was), you may have been ostracised and made a pariah by friends, family and neighbours (which i was).. shall i go on?

if u don't speak from experience balbus and u r not gay then i'd like u to seriously reconsider what u have said to me b/c it trivialises and demeans my experience and that is highly disrespectful to me and to poofters everywhere. really, some one claiming to be left wing ought to know better than this.

**

i would be if that were the only point i was making but it's not. what i am trying to show here is a pattern of behaviour that points towards criminality.

ok, rumsfeld altered standard operating procedures on 1 june 2001. this is not of itself criminal. however when u consider that overseas intelligence was coming to the americans from many quarters warning them that al queda was about to attack then the information becomes something much more.

why would u interfere with sop that were shown to be highly effective in order to make it far more difficult for your ppl in the field to respond to hijackings? if u seriously wanted to prevent terrorist attacks wouldn't you be doing everything possible to make things easier and more effective for the usaf to protect the country and the citizenry?

again, we can point to another suspicious change in administrative procedure prior to september 11 which helped to make america more vulnerable to hijackings and terrorism. two months be4 the attacks the federal aviation administration (faa) rescinded the rule that permitted the pilots of commercial airlines to carry hand guns on the plane. since the cuban missile crisis of the early sixties the faa had permitted pilots to be armed in order to defend the plane against hijacking.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27647
apparently the faa say that the pilots rarely used the rule to avail themselves of firearms so therefore they simply rescinded it. this effectively left the pilots unarmed and defenceless against any future hijacking at a time when it was widely known that terrorists planned to hijack planes and use them. again we must ask the question 'why?' and 'who was responsible for changing this rule?'

in and of itself this is not criminal or evidence of guilt but it is another piece of evidence that points towards negligence and criminality. and criminality by someone in a position of enough power to be able to change the faa rules.

the evidence discussed earlier about the military's response to the attacks is also highly suspicious. more in fact. it points to actual criminality or at the very least gross derelection of duty.

why did general myers on 13 sept 2001 attempt to cover up the fact that norad had despatched fighter planes to defend ny and other places during the height of the attacks? to my way of thinking he tried to cover it up b/c he realised that ppl would want to know, like we all do here, why was it then that if they scrambled jets during the attacks they didn't stop the attacks.

calculating the speed at which these jets scrambled to their mission - supposedly to stop the hijacked planes attacking new york - we learn that the f15s travelled at about a third of their top speed. in other words they were set up to fail in their mission by mission control. they had no likelihood of ever arriving at the wtc be4 the hijacked planes and of course they never did.

in the beginning i asked 'why has noone ever been blamed for the failures of that day?' here is an istance where someone has failed miserably in their duty, and i don't mean the f15 pilots. i mean whoever it was that ordered tthem to go at such cripplingly low speeds. that order had to come from someone. was it myers? his deputy perhaps? or was it someone superior to the acting chair of the join chiefs of staff?

these kind of questions can only be answered by a properly constituted and independent commission of inquiry. one that has the power to compel witnesses to give evidence, one that can make deals and get ppl to roll-over and tell the truth and one that can punish the wrong doers.

now i think u would agree that a larger picture is starting to emerge beyond simply one peice of evidence.

u know i'm beginning to wonder if u were abandoned as a small child b/c u display the same sort of helplessness of a small child who feels they need an adult to tell them what to do next. and nobody has said that they don't care balbus. to the contrary. i suggested several ways u might respond to the info but i underlined that it was something that ultimately was up to u to decide and that noone else could tell u what to do or live your reactions for you. another poster has repeated pretty much the same advice. u haven't replied to him or me yet concerning what is your own preference. are u the kind of guy who would go out and organise, or are u the kind to get highly enthused and want to tell the whole world all about it. or are u the kind of guy who shuts down b/c the thought of this being true is just so disturbing to him that he doesn't want to know another thing about it, nor perhaps even, let anybody else know either?

which do u think it is?

that isn't quite true actually. what i said in the other thread was that because of the shock i'm feeling atm political ideology has become less important to me, which is not the same as saying i don't know.

 

if u were a hijacker intent on attacking the world trade centre with the plane u had hijacked u would no doubt have considered carefully the best and most effective way to achieve your objective. u would have looked into the air defence system of the north-east united states and figured out how u were going to get around them.

like the rest of us here the only real experience of seeing how effective these defences are would have come from hearing about and seeing the 1999 incident with payne stewart the golfer. stewart and his crew fell unconscious while flying a private lear jet in october 1999. as soon as stewart's jet veered off course the faa issued a notice to norad to intercept the plane. this was issued at 9:38 am. by 9:54 am an f16 had scrambled and was intercepting the plane. it took an f-16 about 18 minutes to get there. see http://www.statenews.com/print.phtml?pk=23319

if i were a hijacker i would have considered this very important information which showed me that if i hijack a plane as soon as the air traffic controller alerts the military i can expect to have an f-15 or f-16 on my arse ready to shoot me down within 18 minutes. perhaps even less time. perhaps 15 minutes or even 12 minutes if there happens to be a fighter jet nearby. this didn't give the hijackers much time. every minute of exposure to these air defence systems means a much greater chance that the plane will be blasted out of the sky by an f15. therefore it would seem incumbent upon the hijackers to devise plans that would minimise their time in the air.

this however is not what we are told happened. according to the official story the hijackers chose to go by much longer routes than they needed to, to get the hijacked planes to their quarry. in other words the hijackers, we are being told, deliberately settled on a high-risk strategy that would greatly heighten the likelihood of failure, i would say virtually guarantee faliure when u consider the flightpath of flight 11.


image is from usa today as it appears at http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/attack/flight11.html


this is the erratic path flight 11 took to go from boston to new york:

• 7:59 am flight 11 leaves boston airport bound for california.

• 8:15 am air traffic controllers lose radio contact with flight 11.

• 8:20 am flight 11's transponder signal ceases transmitting.

• 8:20 am flight 11 veers northward (see map above). in other words the hijacked plane flies away from its target of new york city and in the opposite direction.

• 8:28 am air traffic controllers are said to see the plane make a 100 degree turn and fly southwards towards new york. for eight minutes the plane had been flying in the wrong direction. this extra eight minutes in the air is about half the amount of time it would take to scramble a jet and intercept flight 11 if the planes flew at top speed.

• 8:46 am the first plane hits the world trade centre tower.

if u were a hijacker wouldn't it make sense to fly to new york by the shortest and most direct route?

wouldn't it be insane to actually fly the hijacked plane in the opposite direction of where u r going adding some extra eight minutes to your journey knowing that standard operating procedures would ensure u were caught and captured within 18 minutes?

unless of course u knew in advance that there would be no air defence systems to stop you.

what other logical alternatives are there?

 

Man, my views on the subject are that the attacks were made by terrorists, but that Bush knew in advance. He just let them fly right in and blow up the Trade Centers. If you think about it, most wars that the U.S. has fought were actually conspiricised by the U.S. One example of this would be the Mexican-American war. Polk wanted the Texan border to be at the Rio Grande, and thought of the reason to attack.

 

Dude, you're on the right track, I'd say.
Try infowars.com

 

along with the new directive the department of defence issued on 1 june 2001 making it harder for the military to prevent hijackings and attacks such as 9/11, a rule change from the federal aviation administration now prevented pilots of commercial airlines carrying hand guns aboard their plane. this rule change served to make any hijacking easier and more likely to be successful.

if the pilots of the hijacked planes on september 11 had been carrying guns would they have been able to foil any hijacking attempt? even though the faa claims no pilots had used the system for forty years can we be certain that pilots - who had heard the rumours al queda was planning to hijack planes and attack america - would not have taken a gun to work for self-protection, with or without official approval? this is something that only an offcial enquiry could find out. in any case, here is an example of another rule change that the government brought in which made america more vulnerable to attack.

you'd almost think the governemnt was working FOR al queda...

Armed pilots banned
2 months before 9-11
FAA rescinded rule allowing guns in cockpits just before terror attacks

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: May 16, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern


By Jon Dougherty
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com

A 40-year-old Federal Aviation Administration rule that allowed commercial airline pilots to be armed was inexplicably rescinded two months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, leading aviation security experts to lay at least some of the blame for the tragedy at the feet of airlines, none of which took advantage of the privilege while it was in effect.

The FAA adopted the armed pilot rule shortly after the Cuban missile crisis of 1961 to help prevent hijackings of American airliners. It remained in effect for four decades.

But in July 2001 – just two months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks – the rule was rescinded.


continue reading this article at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27647

 

Please keep in mind that the websites that feed you these theories are run by liars who are out to con gullible fools. They will never provide you with inconvenient facts and will never ask obvious logical questions.

Payne Stewarts jet was flying on a pre designated flight path with its transponder on and a fighter jet happened to be flying nearby. It still took 20 minutes. From this you claim that "standard operating procedure would "ensure you would be caught and captured in 18 minutes... perhaps 12".

Yet it took well over an hour for jets to be scrambled with the specific intent of intercepting Stewart's plane and get there. Contrast this with a jet which is off the flight path, with no tranponder, and no fighters handily flying nearby.

Another clever tactic, besides lying, using false equivalencies and drawing obviously unsupported conclusions, is to pretend that any discrepancy or unusual detail suggests a conspiracy.

Why? If u knew that Dick Cheney was plotting with u then u would turn north and then turn south after going the wrong direction? Why "if you knew in advance that their would be no air defence systems" would you fly the wrong way? It hardly makes more sense under a conspiracy scenario, but that's not the point, the conspiracy scenario doesn't have to make sense, we're not supposed to question it.

 

Or the other way around...

And it's not that the hijackers were plotting with Cheney, it's not like they all hang out and discuss this.

PB you make good points saying the sites are made by folks out for a quick buck who don't show the inconveinent facts, but that's what the mainstream news is, too, so you have to weigh them next to eachother. The News never tells me the inconvient facts to debunk these things, can you?
I'm talking real contradictory arguements, not "oh you're a conspiracy nut lizard worshipper" not that you do that anyway

 

i'm not claiming that point break. norad are telling us.
see http://911research.wtc7.net/sept11/timeline/norad.html
if u look at their timeline in regards to flight 11 u can see how much time it took for the scramble order to be issued and for the f15 planes to get just outside new york and it's 16 minutes. the f15s in this instance were unable to prevent the hijacked plane from hitting the world trade centre becasue they were not scrambling at full speed and were only flying at a third of their top speed so they arrived too late. had they flown there at full speed they no doubt would have arrived in plenty of time to save the world trade centre and their scrambling time would have been considerably less than 16 minutes. perhaps 12 minutes?

well that would change things if it really did take over an hour to get a jet scrambled. from what i have read about stewart's plane the air traffic controller first alerted norad at 9:38 and military intervention occured at 9:56, some 18 minutes later. where did u find the information that said it took over an hour for the jets to scramble?

u would think that with so many air force bases situated around the north east of america that a scrambled jet would be able to locate a missing hijacked plane, or at least try to. the planes at andrews base (which is 10 minutes away from both new york and washington) are combat ready planes which makes sense since any attack is likely to be against your capital or the country's biggest city so u would want your planes in that part of the world to be ready to fly at short notice.

yet according to general myer's testimony to congress (http://hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1670915#poststop) no jets were scrambled until after the pentagon had been hit at 9:38 am. this is contradicted by norad's official timeline which claims that f-15s were despatched to new york at 8:52 after the order to scramble was issued at 8:46. so according to norad it only took 8 minutes to get a jet scrambled and up in the sky after the order has been issued. unfortunately the f15s were unable to prevent the attacks and got there too late because they were not allowed to fly at top speed (why didn't they fly at top speeds is another pertinent question).

if at 8:52 am it was possible for norad to scramble jets in 8 minutes once the order was given then why was it not possible for them to scramble jets to stop the plane hitting the pentagon at 9:38 am? that gave them ample time to get their jets up and scrambled. and even if they only let their jets fly at a third of their top speed (and why you would do that defies common sense) it still could have been there to do something, don't u agree?

i don't know why. but the official story doesn't make much sense either and that's what we're questioning now.

if u believe the official story then u would also have to believe that genuine hijackers deliberately made their mission harder and more likely to fail by travelling in the wrong direction. i'm afraid that is far too big a leap of faith for me, and for the many people who question the official story, to take.

what we are doing here is looking at the evidence to try and determine a workable hypothesis. proposing an hypothesis that the hijackers knew in advance that there would be no air defences to stop them fits in with the known facts. how? because despite their bizarre flightpaths no air defences did stop the hijacked planes which we all know is painfully true. but yes, it is only an hypothesis at this stage. that's why there must be an offcial and independent commission of enquiry into all these things. there are far too many unanswered questions.

 

i know alot of ppl think like that snowman: that bush etc 'let it happen'. i think tho what we've been talking about here strongly suggests more than that. for instance, changing the standard ops so that it made it harder and more time consuming to respond to hijackings is more than just letting the hijackings happen. that would seem to be actively facilitating it. and that's what donald rumsfeld did. his behaviour actively assisted the hijackers in successfully carrying out their plot. on the day of sept 11 rumsfeld was not to be found yet he personally changed standard ops 3 months before so that the military had to get his approval first before they could do anything.

that's right. whenever a bigger and more powerful country wants to invade a smaller and weaker one they generally need a pretext. 'oh, we're invading u b/c u're not white and christian like we are so we have to civilise u', or more recently: 'we're invading u b/c u've got weapons of mass destruction' 'or 'u've got something to do with 9/11' which were the big two lies the us used as their pretext for invading iraq. 9/11 has served as the pretext for alot of nasty things. wars and invasions is one thing. abolishing ppl's civil liberties is another. spending up big with taxpayers' money on military contracts for corporate friends is another.

 

sorry pointbreak the link i gave u to norad's timeline isn't working. try this link instead:
http://911research.wtc7.net/sept11/timeline/norad.html
that timeline is based on norad's official press release of which a copy can be found here: http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/planes/attack/presrelNORADTimelines.htm

 

how long did it take to scramble jets that morning according to the 9/11 commission? here is their timeline:

• At 8:37:52, Boston Center reached NEADS. This was the first notification received by the military-at any level-that American 11 had been hijacked… NEADS ordered to battle stations the two F-15 alert aircraft at Otis Air Force Base in Falmouth, Massachusetts, 153 miles away from New York City…

• F-15 fighters were scrambled at 8:46 from Otis Air Force Base…

http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.htm

it took neads from nearly 8:38 until 8:46, that is about 8 minutes, to scramble jets. it doesn't take a very long time for these professionals to get ready to do a job they were expertly trained to do, even at the height of a grave emergency. this is b/c they followed standard operating procedures to do their job and these did not fail them.

at 8:46 the first tower at the wtc was hit. to tell us that no fighter jets were scrambled by 9:38 am to protect washington and the pentagon - that is, some 52 minutes after the otis f-15s were scrambled and the first tower attacked - defies belief.

if it only takes about 8 minutes to scramble a jet wouldn't u have expected neads to automatically scramble as many jets as possible to combat these terror planes remembering that at this time they didn't know how many planes there were? common sense tells u they would have prepared themselves for the worst, not sat about and done nothing. they should have had many jets ready and waiting to be airborne by 9 o'clock at the very latest.

it becomes more and more suspicious that on this morning the air force had been stood down. that would explain why no jets were scrambled in time to prevent the attacks and the murders of some 3,000 people. only a president or a vice-president or a secretary of defence would have the power to call and enforce a stand down of the entire air force.

bush, cheney and rumsfeld must be asked some hard questions about their behaviour that day and we must get some honest answers.

 

i imagine you're referring to me which is a shame b/c there've been few gratutitous insults like this so far but your comment deserves a reply anyway. you hear it alot, don't you? well let's test it to see if it has any truth:
i'm making four claims here and they're these:

• rumsfeld changed sop in june 2001 which worked to the detriment of the air force and to the benefit of the hijackers. my source for this is the department of defence.

• faa rules were changed two months before 9/11 which worked to the detriment of hijack control and to the benefit of the hijackers. my source for this is the world net daily.

• general myer's tried to cover up the fact that jets had been scrambled during the attacks (and not after as he claims) b/c he thought, i believe, such an admission would beg the question: if jets were scrambled why didn't they stop the attacks? my source for this is the transcript of myer's testimony to congress.

• norad scrambled jets to respond to the hijackings and first attack but these jets were only allowed to fly at a third or less of their top speeds which ensured they arrived too late to prevent the second attack on the wtc. my sources for this are the norad press release of september 2001 and the 9/11 commission report of 2004.

by contrast pb, your claim "Yet it took well over an hour for jets to be scrambled with the specific intent of intercepting Stewart's plane and get there" is a statement quite unsupported by any references, sources, links or evidence. it is in fact assertion by you and assertion only. anyone reading that is entitled to reject it out of hand.

do u mean i'm lying? or do u mean the department of defence website, the norad press release, and the congressional transcript of general myer's testimony are all lying? please elaborate and try not to use the words liars and lying if u can help it.

now, i am not using false equivalencies nor am i drawing unsupported conclusions. i am merely presenting my evidence from source material (bar the worldnetdaily report) which is all linked, and from this i construct an hypothesis.

the equivalency drawn between norad's response times to stewart's wayward plane in 1999 and their reponse times to the hijackings in 2001 is in no way false. it is an apt and appropriate parallel and norad and the 9/11 commission support such a parallel. both incidents (stewart and 9/11) tell us that it doesn't take very long for norad to scramble jets if they have to, or if they want to, more to the point. 8 minutes in fact.

it certainly doesn't take an hour to prepare a jet for scrambling like you claim with no evidence whatsoever: that would be a false equivalency of your own i think, but i'd certainly not call it lying.

the fact that the scrambled jets then flew at vastly reduced speeds - while rushing across the skies to save new york we are told - is supported entirely by norad's evidence and the commission's own conclusion. it's not hearsay nor unsupported conjecture, pb. it's based solidly on the evidence.

now, we are all free to draw our own conclusions from this. to my way of thinking this is not merely a discrepancy or an unusual detail. sabotaging your own side's rescue efforts strongly suggests complicity in the crime. it also suggests treason. such a view is made stronger when u consider that no jets were scrambled to protect washington - the national capital and home to the president, military-industrial complex and the congress - even though there was ample time, more than 50 minutes from the time of the first wtc attack at 8:46 in fact, to scramble many many jets to provide a cordon of security around washington. yet not one jet challenged the a/c that crashed into the pentagon at 9:38. not one.

 

The Left is running dead on September 11 truth.

At this time two of the truth movement’s most forceful advocates are Michael Ruppert (author of ‘Crossing the Rubicon”) who is an ex-Republican and David Ray Griffin (author of “The New Pearl Harbour” and “9/11 Commission: Ommission and Distortions") who is a mainstream theologian. Neither is a man of the Left. In fact you would be hard pressed to find one prominent leftwing person actively advocating for 9/11 truth.

Recently Howard Zinn the people’s historian wrote in support of the 9/11 truth movement and this has to be highly encouraged, and of course Gore Vidal has been a constant sceptic and wonderfully articulate critic of Bush and the bogus war on terrorism and has shown his complete willingness to at least consider what it is people such as Ruppert and Griffin are saying.

But that’s not the same thing as being an adocate for Truth. In fact what we see are prominent people of the Left (identities such as Alex Cockburn of Counterpunch, David Corn of the Nation, and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!) actively working in tandem with the Bush Administration and their numerous mouthpieces in downplaying or opposing 9/11 Truth. And others, such as Noam Chomsky whose voice in this matter would be incredibly powerful, remain strangely silent.

That seems to me rather a bizarre situation. Consider this: the 9/11 Truth movement is not only asking questions about the 9/11 attacks themselves but many of its exponents are also fierce critics of bourgeois democaracy and (in Ruppert’s case) global monopoly capitalism yet they find themselves, on this issue, way to the left of someone like Alex Cockburn or Noam Chomsky.

Those on the Left who attack 9/11 truth are now in a position of defending the likes of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld and you see this complaint on left forums around the place: "I don't want to defend Donald Rumsfeld, or Dick Cheney but ...".

If you have been following this thread from the beginning you will realise that having to defend the likes of Rumsfeld is untenable because the plain and simple evdience tells us that the Bush Administration is lying and engaged in a cover-up. As a person of the Left it's now up to you to educate yourself further on this issue and start to act.

The 9/11 Truth Movement presents the Left with an unique opportunity to educate people about the nature of capitalist democracy, war, oil, government budgets and scoial justice, and many other subjects that have always been vital concerns to the Left and progressive movements.

It's time that everybody calling him- or herself a progressive, a liberal, a socialist, a social-democrat, an anarchist, or an independent to familiarise themselves with the issues around 9/11 and to start advocating for this issue and to start organising their community, workplace, union, school, college and university now. Don’t let us stand around and pretend this is not happening.

That’s not the way for the Left to win.

 

that's interesting. i bet there a heaps of ppl out there with a story to tell that could explain all of this. they need to be called and to give evidence at some sort of commission of inquiry. that's the only way we'll ever find out the whole truth. but in the meantime, my god, we have every right to be extremely suspicious.