The Observation Deck

Brett,
When you asked for other people to jump in, I am guessing the majority would not want to because it is like beating your head against a brick wall. I am not a political science major, but how can you refute the facts? You say that the government knows exactly what they are doing with all of this, then how did they not know that terrorist attacks were imminent? I am not saying they were behind the attacks, but are you saying this intelligent government had absolutely no warning they were coming? Which is it, they are more intelligent than the basic population or they are clueless?

Sorry but the facts Jim presented make more sense than anything the government has ever said. The truth is, we are not taught critical thinking in American schools. We are taught to remember "facts" and fictions. Our history books are written by people who want us to hear one perspective, particulary, Anglo Saxon males.

In the words of my favorite author Neale Donald Walsh, "History is supposed to be an accurate and full account of what actually happened. Politics is always one's point of view. History reveals, politics justifies. History uncover, tells all. Politics covers; tells only one side. Politicians hate history truly written. And history, truly written, speaks not so well of politicians either..."

When children critically think, adults feel threatened. When adults critically think, other adults call them paranoid and communists. We are raised blindly to believe everything our religion and government tell us. Why not present two sides of views in history lessons and let the children decide for themselves? I was called a communist for being against the war, by a Republican who had a blank look in his eyes and quoted talk radio, such as Rush. He memorized the angry opinions of right wing radio, told himself that made him intelligent, and called everyone else a "communist". Do you hear how paranoid that sounds? If we are not the "Stepford" citizens walking around believing everything we are told, even when our country is in worse shape than it has ever been, we are called crazy.

You are the one who drank the Kool-Aid Brett. There is a little seed in every person against this war, hoping they are wrong. And there is a little seed in every person supporting this war, with the fear they are wrong. What better way to squash fear than to attack others for believing different?

How do you justify, Brett, giving the money and arms to Bin to keep the Russians out of Afghanistan before he turned them on us? How do you justify the arms deal with Reagan? How can you so blindly believe the government shares all with us, with no hidden agenda? When our own country had the New Orleans tragedy, Bush went on vacation and left a guy in charge that I wouldn't leave in charge of my children. Facts are facts. But keep drinking YOUR kool-aid.

c

Where to begin? Where to begin?

Do I even bother to reply?

My apologies, but unfortunately, this issue is much more in depth than my patience for typing.

First of all, I'm not sure what school you went to, but I assure you, where I was educated, critical thinking was definitely called for. Sure, you could get a professor or two that would only ask for the textbook answer, but like in life, you always knew that there were more sides of the story.

In the words of my favorite author Neale Donald Walsh, "History is supposed to be an accurate and full account of what actually happened.

for better or for worse, history is usually written by the winners. Hence, you mostly get a one sided view. Therefor, we are most definitely required to look further for answers.

I don't fault anyone for looking, but I do consider it faulty logic to pull individual events from the past completely out of context and place them into a time line whose main purpose is to suggest a singularly planned purpose.

Case in point...

How do you justify, Brett, giving the money and arms to Bin to keep the Russians out of Afghanistan before he turned them on us?

How do I justify it? in hind site I don't. But go back and take it in it's original time. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States was looking for any foothold possible to keep the Russian army in check. Any direct confrontation was a risk of imminent escalation. Therefor, the U.S., mostly through covert actions, armed people like Bin Laden. The old "enemy of my enemy is my friend" ploy. The 50's, 60's and 70's are littered with similarly questionable global policies. The government had a decision to make, try to get people like Bin Laden to do our dirty work or do it ourselves. Well, they made their choice. Just like today, we're making our own. That we gave him arms is indeed a fact. That we did so knowing that he would eventually attack us with passenger jets? That's ridiculous.

but how can you refute the facts?

I never refute the facts, just how they are interpreted.

Go look at that list of events. most of them are just normal everyday occurrences. Missiles on the roof of the hotel? they themselves claim that they don't know if this is an isolated occurrence or not. Personnel spread all over the place? On any given day, the percentage of the top people in D.C. is about the same as it was on 9/11.

People like Jim ask us to be critical of things like how long it took Bush to react to the planes hitting the towers. Let me ask you the same thing. For me, I didn't sit up and take notice until after the second plane hit, and even then, it took me a couple of minutes. I was in an office with a television set no more than 20 feet away, and as my co-workers told me about the first strike, I thought "man, that's a shame, I hope it wasn't a big plane", when the second plane hit, my reaction was "what, no, somebody must be just watching a replay".

Did the U.S. have intelligence that there were terror cells inside the U.S. planning an attack, most likely. However, on any given day, they are faced with hundreds of similar threats, on thousands of targets. The problem is figuring out which ones AREN'T false alarms.

Conspiracy theorists love to point to Pearl Harbor as a comparison, but even so, the FACTS that they point to are merely speculative. Did the U.S. have information that Japan was planning an attack. History tells us yes, but then history is a little fuzzy as to how accurate their information was. Did they know it was going to happen December 7th? probably not. Did they suspect an attack on the navel base at Pearl? probably not. I've read a lot of WWII history (written from both sides of the war), and I can honestly say, that there are only a handful of people that have the whole story, and they're all dead. So anything from here on out is purely speculation.

And don't even get me started on Katrina. Most of that would not have been an issue HAD BUSH JUST DECLARED MARTIAL LAW!!!!!!!!

Thanks for a good laugh before going to bed Brett, I needed it!

[quote="Bret Callentine"
People like Jim ask us to be critical of things like how long it took Bush to react to the planes hitting the towers. Let me ask you the same thing. ...

And don't even get me started on Katrina. Most of that would not have been an issue HAD BUSH JUST DECLARED MARTIAL LAW!!!!!!!![/quote]

Bret

Never asked that but, I can play along without getting all upset about being misquoted, and calling for a trial.

The wait, GWB had known all about the first plane before sitting down to read the book. I have no problem thinking it might have been for the best to sit and take a breath. While plans were made to protect the president.

I just do not believe one thing he has said about it. "We did not want to frighten the children" I believe he said. Laughable.

The few things we were able to find out through the greatly constrained 9/11 commission is that they knew there were attacks coming. Now if we want to believe that the "rockets on the hotel" were rare(no other record of this at other hotels), we do know that at least one of the many documents pointing to 9/11 was called "binLadin to attack the US."

But heck in the interest of moving this forward let's throw the warnings away, the hotel away, and the book reading away. Take them out, it still leaves way to much to throw away as chance.

Bret, we either are forced to look at this and think this is the most inept administration of all time, or the most evil.

I always align myself with the voters and the Americans that put people in power, not with the administrations that always seem to abuse those powers. This is because I have never seen an administration that did not fall prey to thinking they were acting in our best interests, even when they knew they were not.

You can argue all day about Pearl Harbor, but look at the presidential notes for that day. The fact remains that the Japanese ambassador was allowed to wait for 6 hours, while the attack was about to happen, then happened. If he had been greeted at the time the appointment was for it would have given Pearl Harbor two hours to get planes in the air, and to get people on guns in the boats in Pearl Harbor.

Think of what that would have saved in lives and costs? I know one of the things it started was a complete rethink of the Navy and the start of building new aircraft carriers, and billions to the one thing General/President Eisenhower warned us of. The same thing that Kennedy later warned us of.

But if you read history, you also know that the entire group of aircraft carriers had been followed from the Coral Sea until they were "lost" in cloudy weather the day before the attack. The military knew damn well where they were headed.

It does bear a very eerie pattern to that of 9/11. Allowing the attack to happen to justify the war that would follow. The war that GWB's advisors had laid out, more than a year earlier, complete with "the need for something big to justify it."

My only point was this country has a history of using us for fodder to justify all sorts of things. Look at the formation of the CIA, and our bio programs. Nothing more than an extension of Nazi Germany. After all what do we do with hundreds of Nazi scientists and spies? To think we are somehow better, now that we also attack countries first without provocation is insane.

I always go back to "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" because it covers so much in such a short book, from a hardcore conservative. That believed it was wrong to kill maybe a million in Asia for business interests and nothing more. A person that realized that our system of government was being hijacked by a few. That 30,000 American died so that Henry Kissinger could date Jill St. John and so that Richard Nixon could get elected.

I think, a very evil crew found a man that wanted to be better than his dad and brother at nearly any cost. A man that had a good heart, but was desperate to finally succeed at something. GWB is being played, and we all are losing.

FWIW


.

I am not sure I can agree with the good heart.

Bret, we have all had some critical thinking, but how much with history? with the government? I don't see that in my teen's education either, as they are too busy trying to pass standardized tests. It hasn't traditionally been taught in religion either. Most religions tell you what is right and wrong from their perspective. They don't encourage all souls that we are all part of God, all intelligent enough to find in our soul the truth. Growing up and confessing "sins" to priests, some whom I now know committed the worst crimes on humanity, can leave one jaded. I wish I knew then what I know now, I would have enjoyed the first part of my life more, not sinning, but knowing I was good As Is, loved unconditionally.

Didn't mean to get off thread, but if you admit some things in history are "fuzzy", why can't you admit the fuzz now? Politics and truth don't mix. Politics is the way that people of power seek to convince you that their self-interest is your own. I am sorry that you are one of the twenty-some percent in this country who still believe your self-interests mean anything to them. Could you really send your son to fight THIS war?

On a very basic level, I find it difficult to believe that you are not suffocating in this air. That away from itellect, and "knowledge", that the wisdom in your soul is not crying out "holy s---" . I am terrified for my children. We are now losing more and more respect with other countries, not seen as the formidable force anymore. There is no out in Irag. I want to pull out all our people and I want to send more in to save them. Either way, we lose. Iraq is more of a mess than it has ever been, and therefore, so are we. We haven't avenged any terrorist attack.

On a very basic level, you are willing to entrust our county's future with Bush, but tell me, please, one single thing he did before he got "elected" to earn that kind of trust. Something humanitarian, something in government that he did for the country, anything. To entrust everything to one who has no record of fighting in a war, or helping the country in any way, is crazy to me.

What is needed is more than a change of Presidents. A change of how things are done is needed, and I do not foresee that to take place.

When the first plane hit the tower, as in any special situation that involves national security, there is a line of "happenings" that are pre-arranged, and this goes back long before 9/11. This involves many people from both sides of the aisle, the military of course, the intelligence community, and depts such as NSA, FBI etc.
Until all the available facts are in, regarding what will be done in the immediate time, the president can't do much until he is advised of what he is supposed to do. Any President. One of the primary duties is to protect the president. Any president.

This is the same no matter who is sitting in the Oval Office, be in now, 20 yrs ago, or if Hillary wins, she will also have to be part of the "plan".

When I was in the military, everything that remotely has anything to do with national security, has procedures. Parties and politics have nothing to do with those procedures.
Example: The SWAT team was most likely not called out on Frye avenue, until it was determined by "procedures" and the "plans" that they should be called out.

If we want things different, then we need to see the procedures changed to our liking.

Now I'm am looking to see who the "possible candidates" of both sides, and the declared candidates are in bed with, or are holding hands with, or are associating themselves with, and their past history, so I can make a good guess, and thats all any of us can really do, is guess, how THEY will react in any case of national security. Will it be any better than what happened with Bush on 9/11. No way to really tell, as I'm not a fortune teller.

In any case, procedures will dictate how things work. Change the procedures while changing the politicians if what is in place is not satisfactory.

A perfect example of this was the running of the Vietnam war by both parties, from half a world away. That was the most frustrating and poor judgement concept by both party's presidents. What was needed in a minute or 2 took hours because of that, or worse, days.


Mark Allan Crnolatas
No matter what statement you make about anything, there is always someone that is prepared to state that your original statement is erroneous.