I have done 4 Presidential Secret Service VIP support missions since 1986.  Reagan.  Bush Sr.  Clinton.

I think I know just a bit about USSS protection protocol.

On the day of 9/11, what occurred?

- President Bush was at an elementary school with a USSS TRAVEL TEAM. 

What was the threat?

- Airplanes being used as flying missiles.

When President Bush was told by Andrew Card that the SECOND was hit… that America was under ATTACK… what happened?

- Nothing.

President Bush was allowed to remain in harms way. 

There was ZERO way to know where, or how many, airplanes had been hi-jacked.  Remember?  NORAD couldn’t track them.  FAA couldn’t track them.  Military response fighter aircraft couldn’t be led to them.

Was President Bush hustled from a KNOWN TARGET by the USSS?  Was he taken, with utmost haste, to a secure place?

NO.

Why?  Because, according to every response, he was “never in any danger”.

How did they KNOW THAT?  They couldn’t have known… UNLESS… they ALREADY knew the targets… ALREADY knew that not ONE plane was supposed to go south into Florida.

Answer me this ONE question from someone who works with, for, now or in the past… the USSS… why President Bush was left in harms way by the team devoted to his protection.

Nobody can, has, ever answered this question.

Yes, this is where conspiracy theories grow, on the damp, moldy underside of rational thought, empiricle evidence, and scientific method usually inhabited by critical thinkers.

Proving that the word “conspiracy” has legitimate uses does not in any way legitimize YOUR use of the word as applied to 9/11 “conspiracy” theories.  Even the word “theory” is a misnomer here, as it implies some legitimacy and empirical scientific credibility.  But there is none.  Only “unanswered questions”, speculation and “what if’s”.  Fine for those who are are not burdened by the weight of actual evidence, established facts (not to mention common sense), and who believe that the mere fact that they are not in the mainstream actually makes them right.

” The fear inherent in your post is understandable: who really WANTS to believe that their government is capable of murdering 3,000 of its own citizens”

The fear is that someone is going to post a sad and long post about the 9/11 denial movement, with the same facts that have been debunked time and time again.  Any time anything having to do with 9/11 shows up on truthdig someone with the same grasp of reality and logic as the flat earthers and the creationists pops up to prove that 9/11 was caused by jews/bush/bilderburger/ted turner/or some other group. I was not wrong to fear it.

snipped lots of things about the 9/11 commission
Look, if you think that the 9/11 commission was going to go around laying blame, and calling people out, i think you need to take some time to really look at the workings in washington.  Everyone is covering their own asses, thats just how it goes.  Tell me, can you tell me one place where the criticisms of the members of the commission go against the events of the day of 9/11?  Or where there is any support for 9/11 being an inside job?

” Setting aside your insupportable claim that David Ray Griffin has been “proven wrong numerous times” (he has been challenged, but never “proven wrong”)”

Um, here is just one example, where he has been proven wrong.  It took me about 1 minute to find this information.  Man, you must have studied this topic really well for what, 15 seconds?

http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2007/09/aa-77-airfones-final-story.html

D.R.G. is doing nothing but pushing BS to people and selling books while doing it.  You have fallen for it, i won’t.

” I fully understand that many people simply cannot wrap their minds around the idea that 9/11 was a “false flag operation” - an event in which their own government was complicit in both the planning and execution.  Yet given the above, it seems more and more likely that that is in fact the case.”

Please provide some FACTS for you statement that it was a false flag attack, other than some mealy mouthed whining about conflicts of interest and washington insiders covering their asses.  Bring me something tangible and you can change my mind, keep going on about how so and so wrote a paper with so and so is BS.  Great claims require great evidence.  Put up or shut up.  And please stop making those on the left who are sane look like idiots with this drivel.

I can’t buy into the theory that 9/11 was engineered in its particulars by the neocons.  However, their willful neglect toward the warning signs amounts to pretty much the same thing.  Just as Roosevelt and Stimson knew their antagonizing the Japanese economically, combined with the predominance of militaristic thinking in the island nation, was going to result in an attack that would provide a way into the European war, the architects of the Iraq invasion knew the odds were in favor of a terrorist attack that would put wind under the wings of their agenda. 
One has to imagine that 9/11 outdid their wildest, wettest dreams.  Never mind that it wasn’t really that big a deal – imagine Europe and Japan after WWII, entire cities flattened to the ground – certainly not big enough to “change the world.” But it was dramatic enough – and made more dramatic by the treatment it received in the media – to ensure that America’s wishful, mythical-cowboy self-image, combined with the reality of America’s sniveling fear born of living too comfortably for too long, would make it easy to sell violence against anyone with an Arabic name, anywhere.  So in that sense, yes, there was a conspiracy, i.e. to use 9/11 to its fullest potential for justifying military action abroad and curtailment of basic freedoms at home.  But it never would’ve worked if pampered Americans hadn’t reacted with fear and loathing, hadn’t completely rejected the notion – or even the value of considering the notion – that we might have brought the attack on ourselves through our own actions in other people’s countries. 
So, who’s to blame?  The American people, more than any people in history, have the means to control what their leaders do, if they choose to exercise those means.  But we cowered under our kitchen tables and told BushCo to go ahead, do whatever it takes so no one hurts us in any way however small.  BushCo is what BushCo is; we’re to blame for the mess because we didn’t stop them.

niloroth:

“...only a matter of time before someone decided to bring up the 9/11 denial movement…D.R.G. have been proven wrong numerous times, the “facts” of the 9/11 denial movement are lies…your opinion is about as substantial as the flat earth movement.”

The fear inherent in your post is understandable: who really WANTS to believe that their government is capable of murdering 3,000 of its own citizens in order to advance a political agenda - even one that most of us KNOW is there, re oil, money and power?

The phrase “conspiracy theory” is comprised of two words: “conspiracy” (the planning and/or execution of an act, usually illegal, by two or more persons) and “theory” (a belief supported by evidence).

The “official story” of 9/11 is no less a “conspiracy theory” than the alternative theories: the government claims there was a conspiracy by OBL and Al Qaeda to hijack commercial airliners and fly them into buildings (WTC, Pentagon, and most probably the Capitol).  The evidence provided to support this “theory” is The 9/11 Commission Report.

Setting aside your insupportable claim that David Ray Griffin has been “proven wrong numerous times” (he has been challenged, but never “proven wrong”), The 9/11 Commission Report is rife with errors, omissions and distortions.  As well, the number of conflicts of interest among the Commissioners is dizzying, not least that six of them had fiduciary and/or directorship responsibilities to the two airlines involved (American, United), as well as to the maker of the planes (Boeing).  And the executive director of the Commission, Philip Zelikow, is a Bush crony who was a member of the neocon Aspen Strategy Group (along with Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle et al) and the Bush-Cheney transition team, as well as being a close friend of Rice (they even wrote a book together).

Yet even setting all that aside, we are all watching as the Report unravels at lightning speed; indeed, even Kean and Hamilton, who led the Commission, have called the Report “fatally flawed,” and complained publicly about being “stonewalled” by the White House.  A new book (“The Commission”) puts much of these criticisms together.

Given that the Report represents the ENTIRE supporting evidence for the government’s “official story” of 9/11, and given that (i) it is rife with errors and omissions, (ii) the Commission was rife with conflicts of interest, and (iii) even the two chairs of the Commission admit to its weaknesses, the “official story” is becoming increasingly less likely, while evidence for alternative theories grows.

I fully understand that many people simply cannot wrap their minds around the idea that 9/11 was a “false flag operation” - an event in which their own government was complicit in both the planning and execution.  Yet given the above, it seems more and more likely that that is in fact the case.

Peace.

before someone decided to bring up the 9/11 denial movement.  Your post was full of things that while you believe them, do not in fact have any relation to reality.  D.R.G. have been proven wrong numerous times, the “facts” of the 9/11 denial movement are lies, and the reason that neither author you mentioned have said anything about 9/11 being an inside job is most likely because they have actually looked into the real events of 9/11 and realized that your opinion is about as substantial as the flat earth movement. 

Please just go back to prisonplanet and leave the rest of us alone.  The left does not need your ignorance.

Not ‘everything’ changed that day.  One thing changed: America, or perhaps her true colors finally shown through.

Our collective response of fear and violent anger…goaded on by politicians and the media…reduced whatever was left of a proud nation to subservient totalitarians.

Were the attacks “justified”?  Hardly, an act like that cannot be justified.  Did they have a long string of reasons behind them?  Certainly.  We the People found ourselves innocent without even questioning our guilt.

As Jaded Prole states, the attacks allowed the government to institute its fondest desires.  And to those who think that those desires are only of Bush, or only of Republicans: you are repeating the innocent without question mistake.

The attacks exposed our collective myth for what it is: a myth.  We are not strong, brave, and courageous.  We do not value liberty and freedom.  We cowered in our suburbs, afraid that dark skinned people might attack our cul-de-sac next.  We traded everything that made us great for an illusion of security…without a second thought.  We were exposed for the snivelling, fear driven, violence soaked bully that many in the world already saw.

And now, after the fact, our behavior stands naked and bare.  Our rationalizations still appease our shriveled consciences.  But the larger question is this:  the next time tragedy strikes America, will the world reach out to us in compassion?

The world did not change. A preconceived policy was carried out. Jollimore states, “It is acknowledged by all reasonable parties that no one could possibly have had this coming . . .” The reality is that there were rather detailed warnings by people who did see it coming. While for many, the experience of vulnerability was paradigm shift, for the many others in Panama, Iraq, Chile, Yugoslavia and elsewhere, it was more an acknowledgment that the US had now joined the rest of the world’s experience, an experience often foisted on them by us.

For a cabal intent on aggression, a cabal that had been informed on more than one occasion, it was just what they needed to turn an unpopular president into a “war hero and protector” and give them everything they needed to achieve their foreign and domestic goals through the manipulation of fear.