My first contribution to this discussion group...and I'm going to start off with a zinger!
I just got a bunch of DVDs pertaining to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 put together by an outfit called "The 911 DVD Project."
One of the DVDs is called "Loose Change"...and I know it's been around for a few years now.
Essentially, if you haven't seen it, it totally debunks the official account of what happened and presents an extremely well organized and carefully documented analysis of the events leading up to and taking place on 9/11.  I won't go into the details other then mentioning a few things that stuck out as being quite interesting... Nine of the alleged high jackers have now been identified as being alive and well and living in various places around the world...Cell Phones do not operate at 32,000 feet...There was no identifiable 757 plane wreckage in Pennsylvania or in the Pentagon.
I could go on...but I suggest, if you're interested and care about the veracity of the story being fed to the American public about one of the most important "political" events of our history...then find someone who has the DVDs and take a look for yourselves.     

i've seen all the loose change things on youtube. interesting but i don't think the arguments about the towers being wired for demolition or flight 93 being diverted to ohio are the least bit convincing. ditto cruise missiles hitting the pentagon.

however, there's a video called 9/11: quest for truth (search for truth?) that i think raises more interesting questions about 9/11. you don't have to turn it into a science fiction story to wonder if the government might have had a hand in it.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/film/reviews/7240/9-11-press-for-truth-2006/

You might want to read this while watching "Loose Change":

http://www.loosechangeguide.com/LooseChangeGuide.html

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to ask why the physical evidence does not comport with the official version.

We've had several 9/11 threads.  There are those who believe our government could be that evil, and those who don't.

I've seen all the loose change things on youtube. interesting but i don't think the arguments about the towers being wired for demolition or flight 93 being diverted to Ohio are the least bit convincing. ditto cruise missiles hitting the pentagon.

however, there's a video called 9/11: quest for truth (search for truth?) that i think raises more interesting questions about 9/11. you don't have to turn it into a science fiction story to wonder if the government might have had a hand in it.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/film/reviews/7240/9-11-press-for-truth-2006/

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Loose Change (Version No. 2) is not the type of "thing" you find on youtube.  It's almost two hours of continuous dialogue and clips of the events and the the circumstances surrounding them.  This is not a crudely put together "conspiracy theory" thing. It is a carefully organized and very comprehensive report on the events of 9/11/01 and the facts about those events.  To listen to firefighter after firefighter, or police officer after police officer talk about controlled explosions that they are absolutely certain they heard in the WTC buildings 1, 2 and 7 prevents anyone who's mind is not totally closed from asking what really happened and why?  To see the evidence of the plane landing at Cleveland's airport and dismiss it  as not being convincing makes me wonder whether your eyes are open when the evidence is presented to you.  Finally, to examine the Pentagon attack and not see that a multitude of claims made by the official report are absurd is to simply remain ignorant of facts that stare us in the face.

1. You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.
2. The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master.
3. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
4. You hide, they seek.
5. Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, f*bleep*ing idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.

- Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, emphasis on #3 added for no reason in particular.  Fnord.

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Loose Change (Version No. 2) is not the type of "thing" you find on youtube.  It's almost two hours of continuous dialogue and clips of the events and the the circumstances surrounding them.  This is not a crudely put together "conspiracy theory" thing. It is a carefully organized and very comprehensive report on the events of 9/11/01 and the facts about those events.  To listen to firefighter after firefighter, or police officer after police officer talk about controlled explosions that they are absolutely certain they heard in the WTC buildings 1, 2 and 7 prevents anyone who's mind is not totally closed from asking what really happened and why?  To see the evidence of the plane landing at Cleveland's airport and dismiss it  as not being convincing makes me wonder whether your eyes are open when the evidence is presented to you.  Finally, to examine the Pentagon attack and not see that a multitude of claims made by the official report are absurd is to simply remain ignorant of facts that stare us in the face.

I hear you, tokjct.  On the day itself, 9/11/01, I was too stunned to think "conspiracy."  I wasn't just terrified, I was confused.  At about 5:00 I had seen the instant replay 5 times at least.  Nobody was sure of anything.  Reports estimated six thousand people had died.  I kept flipping through the channels and scanning the radio dial.  I was looking for a critical piece of information I was certain I missed.  That information would explain why the two towers collapsed in a matter of seconds each.  I had only seen that kind of rapid vertical collapse in controlled demolitions.  It didn't make any sense on 9/11 and it still makes no sense.

I didn't see it happen live.  I had the day off.  I slept in and awoke to the national nightmare at 11:00 a.m.  If I had been watching the live coverage and the reports within the hour, I would have heard the reports of those explosions in the buildings.  There was no more talk of those explosions on the lower floors by late morning.  Hushed up.  So I was correct.  I had missed a piece of vital information, but I was not going to hear of it until truth seekers started compiling evidence in the next 24 months.  The case against the official version only gets stronger as the years go by.  

They lied to us.

When you get caught lying and still refuse to tell the truth, people start to think the truth is worst scenario possible.  In the case of 9/11, the ugliest conspiracy theories involves orchestration of the events by members of Bush Administration years beforehand.  We see the greed of the corporations that comprise the military-industrial complex is insatiable.  We see the U.S. government prosecute campaigns of terror and economic usury in other countries for the benefit of corporate interests.  We see how our government is willing to cause death and incalculable human suffering abroad in order to dominate the planet's resources.  I remember the Reagan administration prosecuting illegal wars in Central America.  I remember so-called "Iran-Contra" involved treason of the most vile sorts corrupting our government to it's core, right down to a wicked old man named Ronald Reagan.  I remember the reports of incredible atrocities in Nicaragua and El Salvador our government funded with our tax dollars and had the audacity to lie in the face of irrefutable evidence.  But lie they did.  That was the summer of 1987.  I remember it well.  The media compared Oliver North to James Bond and grinned deviously along with Reagan while he feigned being a fumbling coot who didn't know anything about all that, and aw shucks!  They got away with it.  Reagan left office a national icon.  They named an airport after him.  Som still want to engrave his image on the dime.  The maddening truth about what the Reagan administration had done was right in front of America's collective face, and we did nothing.  I cannot imagine a better green light for even sicker minds, such as Cheney and Rumsfeld, to up the ante.  If it works in other countries, try it at home.  So they did on 9/11/01.  And they got away with it.

Hold on mister, this is where you get off!  Take your tinfoil hat and hit the road!

OK then, what if I'm delusional?  In my living memory did my government give me any reason NOT to suspect them?  They say the 9/11 attacks were a surpise to them too.  Yet, they have not given me plausible explanations for why one hot August day Condoleeza Rice took a memo warning of such an attack and used it for a paper airplane, swoosh, right into the circular file,* or for why the air guard was ordered to stand down when civilian jets were flying off course, or for why there is no evidence of any jet plane at the Pentagon crash site, or for why the collapse of the towers does not comport with laws of physics...

I could go on all night about it with a dozen other questions.

I have heard plausible theories that the Bushies were not behind 9/11.  So why the coverup?  The bigger the coverup, the darker my suspicions.

*hyperbole, but she did ignore the memo.

The whole thing seemed to be a little bit too "neat" for me.

That's all I'm gonna say on this subject.

The whole thing seemed to be a little bit too "neat" for me.

That's all I'm gonna say on this subject.

Wait, wait, wait, before you clam up, what exactly is "the thing"?
:o

Hehe

Not to say that they're right, but that is pretty funny.

hmmm...this is definitely some interesting stuff. ???

Hehe

Not to say that they're right, but that is pretty funny.

That was a good one, eh?  I saw that episode.  The 9/11 conspiracy theory nuts are the government's 9/11 conspiracy!  The reason I thought it was so funny is the same thought crossed my mind.  Set up the total loony-toons to discredit the plausible ones!  

Did you know the Dept. of Homeland Security secretly paid Parker and Stone to make that episode?
:D

gee, it's as clever and funny as other southpark episodes are.

which is to say, it's made by a bunch of grown men who stopped developing at the age of 11. parker and stone have to be among the most over-rated no-talent hacks who ever blighted the airwaves.

gee, it's as clever and funny as other southpark episodes are.

which is to say, it's made by a bunch of grown men who stopped developing at the age of 11. parker and stone have to be among the most over-rated no-talent hacks who ever blighted the airwaves.

Sometimes it's utterly puerile.  I don't expect a heck of a lot from "South Park," but some of their bits are quite clever, even trenchent.  What I've seen of Parker and Stone I haven't liked. 
"I don't like conservatives, but I f**kin' hate liberals."
--Parker or Stone, which one doesn't matter.
They claim to be "libertarian," which too often is a long word for "jerk."
It is ironic that they hate liberals, and yet Norman Lear, pioneer of progressive television and founder of People for the American Way, is a "South Park" fan. 
The people who fought the priggish content codes of the '50s and '60s were neither conservative nor libertarian.  They were liberals,
L-I-B-E-R-A-L-S, liberals.  Before the liberals liberalized our media culture, PC-hating, liberal-bashing humorists such as P.J. O'Rourke and Dennis Miller had no place in "conservatism."
Parker and Stone were born in the '70s, and I don't think they have grip on what it really used to be like.  Wind the clock back to the 1970s.  What people didn't get back then was that the National Lampoon was a right-wing magazine.  P.J. O'Rourke was a pioneer in making naked boobs and toilet humor OK for conservatives.  NatLamp spent most of its time making fun of hippies, feminists, and minorities. 

I see some similarities in "South Park."  Since SP is about kids, a lot of their scripts do focus on erroneous ideas liberals have about parenting and education.  Liberals have some great ideas in these areas, but some of them are pretty darn lame.  So I count myself as a SP fan.   However, I think Parker and Stone should say "Thank you, liberals, for making our program possible!"  They should do so before and after every show!
::)

I have heard these "controlled explosions" theories before. The one thing these conspiracy theorist fail
to realize is the painfully obvious. Do they have any idea how long it would take to prepare one building
for demolition, let alone three. Support beams have to be weakened and explosive charges have to be
positioned precisely. this type of preparation would take weeks. Don't you think, of the few thousand
people who worked in the Trade Centers, someone would have noticed people strolling around with
explosives and oxy-acetylene torches. Even if they were to bring the buildings down, it is physically
impossible to place all the charges necessary in the few hours they had.

I have heard these "controlled explosions" theories before. The one thing these conspiracy theorist fail
to realize is the painfully obvious. Do they have any idea how long it would take to prepare one building
for demolition, let alone three. Support beams have to be weakened and explosive charges have to be
positioned precisely. this type of preparation would take weeks. Don't you think, of the few thousand
people who worked in the Trade Centers, someone would have noticed people strolling around with
explosives and oxy-acetylene torches. Even if they were to bring the buildings down, it is physically
impossible to place all the charges necessary in the few hours they had.
<DEVIL'S ADVOCATE>some highrises in tokyo are pre-rigged to detonate in the event of an earthquake so that they go straight down rather than tip over with much greater destruction and loss of life. some have suggested that the WTC towers might have been pre-rigged in the same way, and the owners just never called much attention to it so as to avoid controversy. i rather think that would lead to some serious building code violations but what do i know about that stuff?

plus there's a lot of hearsay talk from people who worked in the WTC that there were a lot of floor closures, dudes walking back and forth, construction work of various kinds. so there's SOME, i wouldn't say evidence, but reason for the pre-disposed to believe that something like that was going on.</DEVIL'S ADVOCATE>

bear in mind i don't believe that stuff, i agree with you it's too far fetched and what happened doesn't indicate it. they say the building collapse looks like a controlled demolition but they actually don't -- they look like what the govt sez they are, the point of impact was so weakened it buckled and the floors above basically became a projectile that crushed all the floors below them in succession.

now...

does that rule out that the impact points were planned, and then those impact points were wired with detonators to help the collapse along? no, actually, it doesn't. and you wouldn't need very many people for that. there's no reason why the buildings couldn't have been wired to collapse in the way they actually did, with bands of explosives placed along a handful of floors.

david lynch about 9/11.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4GVucYEUj4

honestly i dont think these forensic things are the right questions to be asking. but whatever, that's the direction everyone's going in so...

david lynch about 9/11.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4GVucYEUj4

honestly i dont think these forensic things are the right questions to be asking. but whatever, that's the direction everyone's going in so...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEJmcvTzYfo&mode=related&search=

But...what are the right questions? 

For legit CD to be implemented, the Port Authority would have had to let the towers stand vacant for months and months as CD crews prepared for a CD job of unprecedented magnitude.  When a CD contractor pulls an old apartment building or hotel, they remove all the doors, windows, glass, and conveyance infrastructure.  Imagine trying to do that with the WTC!

The above clip is yet another angle.  Money talks louder than human life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEJmcvTzYfo&mode=related&search=

But...what are the right questions? 

For legit CD to be implemented, the Port Authority would have had to let the towers stand vacant for months and months as CD crews prepared for a CD job of unprecedented magnitude.  When a CD contractor pulls an old apartment building or hotel, they remove all the doors, windows, glass, and conveyance infrastructure.  Imagine trying to do that with the WTC!

The above clip is yet another angle.  Money talks louder than human life.
the right question.

what this is really about is... would the government really do such a thing? are they morally capable? if you think so, then of course, they would be technically capable of it. all the arguments about, oh, it would take all these people and unprecedented secrecy are, frankly, silly. 400 billion dollars a year poured into the defense establishment, unmeasured tens of billions going into covert operations every year... hell yes you could do it easy. you could phone it in. please. the details of how it was done are, frankly, irrelevant, and given the resources available to the people who would be involved, understanding the full details of the operation would be virtually impossible for any average member of the public. it would just be too vast.

that said, in anything like this, most of the resources would go not into the execution but into the coverup. which is why i say the thing i do about the demolition. if you WERE gonna wire the WTC for demolition, you'd do it on a couple floors and then on the big day you'd detonate a handful of floors and let the floors above collapse down on the rest of the tower. the way it obviously actually happened. very smalltime actual technical operation, but, i'm guessing, a HUGE backstop -- lots of people behind the scenes covering tracks, providing cover stories, etc.

This whole theory really intrigues me....it makes me think past the obvious.  One thing I don't get though is the theory of a missile tearing through the pentagon, instead of the alleged plane....if that was the case, then what about the passengers who were supposedly aboard the flight that crashed into the pentagon and killed them....if it wasn't a plane...then what happened to the passengers?

that's another really tough one. the guys who really wanna advocate the cruise missile theory have to go to CRAZY lengths to account for who was actually on flight 77 and what happened to them. there's all this stuff about flying them and the passengers on flight 93 out to an airport in ohio and then taking them out and disappearing them. it's all a bit much. sorta interesting as spy stuff, if you're willing to be that morbid, but it just doesn't hold water.

yeah, i think the planes actually hit the targets and the people who were supposed to be on the planes, were actually on the planes. although the lack of wreckage thing in pennsylvania, to me, that's weird. i dunno what to make of it, though. if flight 93 had been shot in the air by a missile, just as a random act from the air force that then got swept under the rug -- not even necessarily as part of the plot but just, the air force basically did their job and then felt nauseated over it subsequently -- that would account for the weird wreckage patterns.

that's another really tough one. the guys who really wanna advocate the cruise missile theory have to go to CRAZY lengths to account for who was actually on flight 77 and what happened to them. there's all this stuff about flying them and the passengers on flight 93 out to an airport in ohio and then taking them out and disappearing them. it's all a bit much. sorta interesting as spy stuff, if you're willing to be that morbid, but it just doesn't hold water.

yeah, i think the planes actually hit the targets and the people who were supposed to be on the planes, were actually on the planes. although the lack of wreckage thing in pennsylvania, to me, that's weird. i dunno what to make of it, though. if flight 93 had been shot in the air by a missile, just as a random act from the air force that then got swept under the rug -- not even necessarily as part of the plot but just, the air force basically did their job and then felt nauseated over it subsequently -- that would account for the weird wreckage patterns.



yes, as much as it is intriguing...there are holes in the explanations of this conspiracy theory...although these sorts of things have always interested me.  And I agree, the wreckage in Pa has always struck me as mysterious. I live about 35 minutes from there....been there a few times...although I've never been down close to where the plane supposedly crashed...I was only up at the memorial of the site.

I must admit though, after viewing portions of the documentary, "Loose Change", and reading numerous sites that infact agree with this theory, it makes me a lot more openminded as to what part the government might have had in the dealings of 9/11.  My uncle is all into the conspiracy theories, etc...I'll have to see if he's seen this film yet.

That's why the syndicated talk show host known as "Lionel" didn't propose conspiracy theories.  He found so many holes in the 9/11 story, from Manhattan to Washington to Pennsylvania, all he did was ask questions...if this and the other, then why this and why that???
Then callers would phone in and say, "You conspiracy theory nutjobs...,"  and Lionel would say, "What conspiracy theory?  I'm, uh, just asking a few questions here!"
The inonsistencies, the logic gaps, and the contradictions in the official version are so giant and so numerous, a person sounds like a conspiracy theorist just asking about them!
::)

That's why the syndicated talk show host known as "Lionel" didn't propose conspiracy theories.  He found so many holes in the 9/11 story, from Manhattan to Washington to Pennsylvania, all he did was ask questions...if this and the other, then why this and why that???
Then callers would phone in and say, "You conspiracy theory nutjobs...,"  and Lionel would say, "What conspiracy theory?  I'm, uh, just asking a few questions here!"
The inonsistencies, the logic gaps, and the contradictions in the official version are so giant and so numerous, a person sounds like a conspiracy theorist just asking about them!
::)
hear hear.

it rankled me from the day 9/11 went down. the official story is... weird. always has been.

Since I started this particular post relating to the 9/11/01 attack, I'd like to share my initial reaction, as I watched the smoke come out of Tower 1 and then after the second hit, out of Tower 2.  I had turned on my WebTv and was reading the comments and dialogue on alt.discuss.politics.  I decided to ask, what I thought at the time was the most relevant question...I said...Here we have this terrible criminal act perpetrated upon these buildings...Who might be the perpetrators?  What is the MOTIVE of the perpetrators?    I suggested that this was the "Pearl Harbor" scenario that the folks who wrote the Agenda for the New American Century were talking about.  I further suggested that we should all watch and see how many "fascist" type laws Bush and his henchmen will try to slip past the American people.    Who did it? and why?  Those are the questions.

makes sense to me. i thought similar things, that this seemed like it was just too handy how it was going to consolidate all this power for this obviously power-happy new president who up till that time wasn't polling very well. and now we're getting all the wars and all the draconian laws the same bunch wanted all along. >:( makes a bloke... suspicious.

For anyone who is seriously interested in reading an analysis of the entire 9/11 attack, I suggest checking out Dave McGowan's series of commentaries, extremely well documented, on his website...The CENTER FOR AN INFORMED AMERICA.  At last count, I believe Dave had six installments completed.