War.... (Historical: 9/11 discussion thread)

[Kamog]

Two years already... it sure doesn't feel like it's been that long.

[The Canuck]

2 years after 911, and we have the answer to the question of how this happened, before i tell you i just want you to know, when i read this i felt sick, disgusted, and nearly puked. a report done by the british government and others found "lost" dozens of reports from governments and Groups like the CIA of other countries that warned the U.S. repeatedly of 911, and they did nothing. ill let you decide for yourself why this was, either ignorance by the US... or worse...

heres a small piece of that report commented on by GNN

"First, it is clear the U.S. authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the U.S. of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.

It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with airplanes. Then in 1999 a U.S. national intelligence council report noted that "al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House".

Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, November 6 2001). It seems this operation continued after the Afghan war for other purposes. It is also reported that five of the hijackers received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s (Newsweek, September 15 2001).

Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners. When U.S. agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002).

All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the Last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the U.S. Andrews Air Force base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the U.S. military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a U.S. legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate."

heres the link for the rest

http://www.guerrillanews.com/intelligence/doc2869.html

tis a sad day for us all

[tesco samoa]

hey canuck post the theories in another more current thread... let this one live on as it was then.

Sorry if i offend you there...

[dogscoff]

EDIT: Wrong thread for this, apparently.

[ September 12, 2003, 09:34: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[tesco samoa]

I read this at KOS today.

I arrived for work about 30 minutes early on 9/11. I worked on the 89th floor of Tower 1, World Trade Center.
I had recently met, and became fond of a young lady who worked on the 4th floor of Tower 1. A few days before I asked her out for a date and she gave me her phone number and asked me to call. I couldn't call her, I was too nervous. I decided on the morning of 9/11/2001 to see her before she arrived to work at 8:30. By the time I made my way from the 89th floor to the 4th floor she had probably been at work for 10 minutes. She saw me arrive at her desk and she smiled. We chatted for a few minutes (and yes, I was able to ask her out in this time and she said yes). I would estimate we had talked for about 5 minutes tops when the building felt like it jumped off the grounds and slammed back down. If I wasn't nervous already, I was now. We got to a window with a view to see smoke, black smoke up in the sky. The people at her lawfirm were frantic, trying to determine what had happened. I thought maybe a tower, or A/C or electrical device blew up on the roof. I had no idea. They assured us that the building was safe and for those who needed to stay they could and anyone was free to leave. (We were starting to lose phones so they saw no need for us all to stay). I called up to my office with no luck. I also tried to call several people on cell phones with no luck. I thought about going up to see if I could be of help upstairs. My new friend came with me. She told me, "Rich, I have a bad feeling we need to get out of here now". The elevator took forever to get there (I had no idea if it was out of service or just slow from every floor using it). I kept trying to call my co-workers but no one answered the phones or cell phones. By this time my cell phone wouldn't get a dial tone. We decided to get to the stair case but by that point there were firemen telling us to get out now. We headed for the staircase. There were more people in the staircase than I thought possible. I looked at my watch and it was 9:54. We headed down and I made sure, I held my friends hand as firmly as I could.
It took us 12 minutes to get from the 4th floor to the exterior of the building. There was crap falling from the sky and I knew it was too dangerous to stay there. We ran and ran and ran. When we got a safe distance away I looked up and couldn't believe what I was seeing. Not only had our building been hit but the South tower as well.

My friend said we were still too close to the buildings. I had to agree with her. We went from a pretty good run to a very fast walk. I tried to call on my cell phone again as we were walking--nothing. I started to cry knowing where the smoke was my co-workers-friends were not in good shape. I look at my watch at 10:04 and remembered today was my Mom's birthday. My Mom lives in Illinois and I sent her a card a few days before and had FTD flowers to her that should have arrived there sometime this morning.

We looked back and the south tower was falling and people were screaming. We were a good 15 blocks away but the smoke and debris was moving so fast, so quickly.

Some of my Co-workers were lucky by not being at work, arriving late or not being at the office for whatever reason. Some of my Co-workers and friends were lost.

It's been 2 years since that day and yet it feels like only days ago.

My friend and I became even better friends and we fell in love and married on July 27, 2002. We are expecting our first child today.

The friend of ours who introduced us to each other wasn't able to attend our wedding. She won't get to share in the birth of our child either. She doesn't even know that my friend said yes to going out with me and that we went on our first date. Our mutual friend had the misfortune of being at work on the 89th floor on September 11, 2002 and we miss her dearly.

Please whatever your political views or ideologies, remember those who perished and never forget.

Thanks for listening,
Rich

[The Canuck]

thats just a beautiful story man, that just made me feel alot better about... well... everything, thanks tesco

ps this was probably the wrong thread, sorry about that, i got a bit over anxious postin, should have read more sorry about that, so everyone lets leave this thread for remembering the victims of 911, not bashing the US government, even though they deserve it.

[ September 12, 2003, 03:30: Message edited by: The Canuck ]

[geoschmo]

Anniversary bump.

It seems amazing to me that I've been a part of this community long enough to have shared the events of that terrible day with all of you. I can tell you all personally I'm not proud of everything that I said in this thread, even though for the most part I think we managed to overcome our emotions and keep the converstaion civil. And I'm certainly not proud of everything my county has done since that day in the names of those who died. I've changed a lot in the last five years, not all of it because of what happened on that day.

I thought it would be good for those of us who were here then and those that are new to read and reflect. I would ask that you remember while you read these posts that the emotions were pretty raw at the time. Feel free to post if you wish your feelings now or your reflections of that time. But if you read something posted back then that upsets you, try to bear in mind what was happening at the time before you start replying to specific posts.

Geoschmo

[Will]

Thanks, Geo.

I almost wish I had posted, so I could get a better idea of my own mindset back then. But then again, I know I tried to stay away from anything where I or others would get too hot-headed. For the same reason, I'm saving the news for today to read tomorrow. It's better to just remember instead of dealing with the inevitable twisting that will happen with media. Besides, it's my parent's 24th wedding anniversary, I want to feel at least a little happy instead of sad and angry.

[scJazz]

Yesterday I went to the same bar I was at on the afternoon of 911. I bought the bar a round and offered the same toast I did that fateful afternoon...

To those we've lost, to those left behind, and to vengeance may it be swift!

The bartender remembered me instantly even though I haven't seen him in 5 years.

Sadly, Bin Laden and his pals are still on the loose and radical islamic extremists are blowing themselves and others up all over the world. Why can't they just behave like grown-ups and yell at each other?

[Ed Kolis]

Because we can't behave ourselves and refrain from blowing them up, because they can't behave themselves and refrain from blowing us up, because bin Laden convinced some very gullible people that they could sleep with beautiful virgins if they would just go and blow stuff up

/me wonders what happens to female Muslim terrorists when they die... the only male virgins I can think of at the moment are D&D geeks - is that the reason most Muslim terrorists are men?

Seriously, you know what I was expecting to happen yesterday morning? Something along these lines:

We interrupt this program from an -- AIIIE! PLEASE DON'T HURT ME!!! I'M GETTING TO IT ALREADY!!! *sobs*
*** NEWS FLASH FROM AL-JAZEERA, NEW USA AFFILIATE ON FOX, CNN, NBC, ABC, AND CBS ***
We have planted a nuke in Washington, destroyed your government, and taken control of your broadcast media. Your country is now effectively under control of the Taliban. You should have destroyed us five years ago, but you did not. Foolish Americans. Ha ha ha. Surrender now or we will destroy the Sears Tower, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Superdome, and one as yet unspecified target...

Well, actually they'd probably go and destroy the major targets first - they don't seem to be powerful enough to actually take control of the media yet. But maybe they're just biding their time, waiting for the *tenth* anniversary...