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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
How? How on earth did they benefit from 9/11?
Are you being daft or adversarial?
We are now engaged in land wars on two fronts, one of them in the Arabian penninsula.. there is a third front planned.
Al-Qaeda recruitment is up, as is resentment against the United States and Israel.
This is also exactly what bin Laden, in 1998, claimed he and al-Qaeda wanted to accomplish. Mission Accomplished: al-Qaeda.
...I want to feel bad for all the "conspiracy theorists" because I believe they're ones with one or both of the following afflictions:
1)serious chemical imbalances stemming from inadequate serotonin within the synapses of the brain's hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.
2)unfavorable physical characteristics, e.g. obesity and facial unattractiveness, which have made them feel marginalized and invisible their whole lives, thus they cope by developing mindsets which give them the self-satisfaction of being one of a few who can decipher all machinations of a complicated world. That is, they feel they're smarter than everyone else.
But that is why I can't bear them, it's their haughty smugness and sense of superiority when they delineate their harebrained theories.
Look, bad stuff happens because we're not infallible. There are alot of incompetent people in this world. Unfortunately, many, through serendipity, determination, calculation (a conniving person can be an awful steward) and greed, end up in vital positions of power.
9/11 happened because we had too many incompetent, irresponsible people held important positions. Businesses fail because of them. The Clippers of the NBA and Lions of the NFL suck because of them. And so on.
And to assume that snaggle-toothed boobs with multiple invaginations of blubber hanging over their Levi's will recognize this is foolish, because that would disrupt their own reality to which they've become accustomed...and comforted with.
I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that your meaningful contribution to this discussion is greatly appreciated
Are you being daft or adversarial?
Um, daft I think.
When I think cui bono, I don't think of the people getting hit by the bombs or crushed under the wheels of the tanks.
Quit the opposite.
9/11 is the classic example of someone turning their own fuckups into an opportunity for self-advancement.
According to the official story, al-Qaeda has at least two successful attacks against American interests using different methods each time than those used on 9/11.. the Kenyan embassy attacks and the US Cole.
Al Qaeda also tried to bomb the WTC a second time back in the mid-90s, attempted to simultaneously hijack planes in the Philippines with the intention of crashing them into buildings in 1997, and about a year and a half later attempted to move a large (~dozen) group of people directly into the US over land, via South America.
So all of the key aspects of the 2001 plan had been signaled years in advance. In every case they were caught in the planning stages, through coordinated efforts between the FBI, the CIA, and (in the South American operation) the State Department.
This is part of the "not-quite-so-official" history because, despite appearing in the New York Times over the years, the stories never became part of the "master narrative."
It's also possible that they don't even comprise the whole story of successful American counterintelligence action — it's not reasonable to assume that the NSA was involved too, for one thing, though you'd never see that in print. And there may even have been other thwarted operations that never made the news.
My point is that, just on the basis of purely public, official news sources, one can quickly see that the story of American counterintelligence against al Qaeda was not a story of naive helplessness against an enemy who constantly shifted tactics and couldn't be predicted.
Why didn't those successes become part of the "master narrative"? I don't know. Why are there people who don't remember the assassination attempts against Bill Clinton? Why are there people who remember Desert Storm but not Desert Fox? I'd love to see a news organization like Salon delve into that.
Whatever the reason, the Clinton administration itself clearly didn't share the same myopia. Its counterintelligence worked well against al Qaeda and demonstrated an ability to respond quickly and flexibly — and to plan ahead for the need to take the fight to bin Laden.
And for some reason that entire apparatus went dark in 2001. What rationale do you trust? Perle's and Rice's (published) doctrine about shifting resources away from counterterrorism and toward missile defense? Or Perle's and Wolfowitz' hope (similarly published) for a latter-day equivalent to Pearl Harbor to provide a neoconservative trifecta?
It seems to me that, in firmly concluding that it was a negligent, not an intentional, failure, one has to say, "I accept this written statement of Bush administration doctrine as having been salient, but I reject this other written statement of Bush administration doctrine as having 'not counted'."
I'm not saying that's the wrong choice to make. But I don't see the basis for it.
Amity,
It really seems to me that you are throwing things at the wall in an effort to see what sticks.
Having been involved in actual forensic post-mortem investigations of security breeches, I can tell you that this approach does not help and does not work.
You start with the crime and you work outward from that. You have to start with the 5 "W"s of investigative journalism.. who, what when where and why.
The classic recent example of the failure of using a pre-supposition to guide an investigation is TWA flight 800.
The crash happened on the eve of the Atlanta Olympic games, everyone assumed that it was an act of terrorism, and the FBI was brought in.
Turns out that a known flaw in the design of that particular jet, and airliners in general, brought down the plane.
The evidence I have seen is irrefutable and the reason that safety precautions weren't taken are typical: it cost too much.
It was too expensive to fit jets with systems that would filter inert gas into the fuel tanks, and it was impossible to upgrade the wiring in those sorts of jets.
Greed, negligence and laziness are usually the most plausible causes. Millions of dollars were spent investigating what brought down Flight 800, and in the name of due diligence I cannot blame them, but much time was wasted in tracking down unlikely causes based on presumptive evidence and innuendo.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
