This is via a hat-tip to Ayaan Hirsi Ali who says: “Very Powerful. Do as Bari urges us to do: Get Up and Fight.” The introduction by Mr. Theodore W. Ullyot, Co-Chairman, Board of Visitors, The Federalist Society — is here.
Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture | The Federalist Society, November 10, 2023 (Washington, D.C.)
The Last Line of Defense By Bari Weiss
GATEWAY PUNDIT notes that the uploaders point about leaving it in “private” on YouTube just doesn’t add up:
…A Gateway Pundit reader pointed out that “YouTube was launched on February 14, 2005.”
Another reader wrote, “YouTube was founded in 2005 and didn’t really take off until the end of that year. That’s at least 4 years where the “I accidentally left it private” explanation doesn’t hold water. In 2001, most of us could barely watch videos on our dial-up internet, much less upload them. We were all glued to our analog NTSC cathode ray tube TVs watching news networks that would have paid good money for this footage. What’s the real story here?”
Another reader said, “The video was posted a year ago. If he really posted it many years ago, all he would have to do is change the setting from private to public, and the upload date would not change. So his story makes no sense.”…
[I made that same point with a buddy]
In a shocking development, a previously unseen video of the September 11 attacks has surfaced on YouTube, capturing a rare angle of the second plane striking the 9/11. (Uploaded Feb 24, 2022):
When two hijacked planes hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, those caught above the point of impact appeared almost certain as doomed to die, especially anyone fatefully trapped in the North Tower.
Yet some people in the highest reaches of the South Tower made it out. For many, their journey down the last intact stairwell was fraught with unfathomable danger and nightmarish terror.
One man who escaped was Joe Dittmar, a father-of-four at the top of the South Tower on a morning when Al Qaeda launched their attack in dreamy blue New York skies.
He says his incredible escape, 20 years ago, still feels like yesterday. Here is his story.
9/11 Counter-Conspiracy Videos
After twenty years, conspiracy theories about what happened on 9/11 are STILL running wild. So we’re attempted to take five of the biggest theories, and get them debunked FOREVER.
Millions of people believe that the World Trade Center was demolished with explosives as part of a vast government conspiracy. One of the core pieces of evidence for this belief is the presence of millions of microscopic iron spheres in the WTC dust. It is falsely claimed these microspheres could only have come from the use of explosives, and so their presence proves controlled demolition. Why does this false belief persist after being debunked over a decade ago?I explain the misconceptions about iron microspheres that keep the belief alive, and how to discuss these misconceptions with 9/11 conspiracy theorists. I’ll show where the WTC microspheres probably came from. There will be a live demonstration of one method of making iron microspheres using materials from the hotel gift shop, along with quick descriptions of ten other methods the fire marshal won’t let me show. This talk took place at the CSICon 2018 in Las Vegas on October 20, 2018
A very good series of a point-by-point refutation by Chris Mohr’s rebuttal to Richard Gage’s 9/11 truth controlled demolition theory (Introduction to Richard Gage’s Blueprint for Truth Respectful Rebuttal.)
A great series by Myles Power – Parts 1-thru-7:
Debates:
Some other video refuting specific past claims of Truthers:
So it recently came to my attention that about 2 months ago Korey Rowe uploaded an HD remake of ‘Loose Change 2nd Edition’ on YouTube. A second edition of the second edition… This was rather fortunate, as in the last year or so I’ve noticed that there are no copies of ‘Screw Loose Change’ online anymore. I have a copy on my computer but the quality is so poor I was considering for a while of remaking it. But upon viewing this HD Loose Change I noticed that the film was completely redone. There was clearer pictures, footage and animations, and even Dylan was brought back in to narrate it all again. But what most surprised me is that the content of it was a little different too. Only a couple of very minor ‘new’ things, most of the changes was the removal of a fair amount of claims. Still, stunned that someone would remake a 2005 conspiracy film in 2018 and not include any of the massive quantity of previously unreleased 9/11 information now available to the public, I figured this would be a great opportunity for me to not only remake Screw Loose Change with HD footage, but also add to it with the plethora of new information which is now available to us compared to when Mark originally produced it in 2006. So without further ado I present: Screw Loose Change – Not Freakin’ Again Edition: Remastered
(Edited for viewing ease 8-14-2018)
This was originally a printed booklet made for my sons then freshmen classmates/friends who thought Loose Change was legit (2006’ish). I printed three booklets — and all the editing and color photos and binding was $250 out of pocket. As I was paying for it, the guy at the counter said he saw the plane hit the Pentagon. He was at his dads work (he was a federal agent), in his office, which had a view of the Pentagon. Right after it hit, the place (he said) turned into a war-zone… in that he said they were literally suiting up with body armor, he said it seemed like they were pulling guns out of the walls. A very interesting discussion to confirm what I was printing.
I updated this post today (9-4-2011) to reflect a recent challenge that there is no evidence a 757 hit the Pentagon. In order to bolster the claim that a passenger plane hit the Pentagon, I added some photos of human remains at the end (from the Pentagon). These are graphic, but unfortunately required to refute these nutters. So as you proceed, there is a warning that some of the images are graphic.
The conspiracies surrounding the Pentagon have come up in recent conversation so I figured I would add this to the liteny of responses I have give on my .com as well as at my older Blogspot site. For now this is almost a straight import (small changes added in this edition). I will add to this later and “spruce it up.” I originally spent $250 dollars on this project during the compilation of info met a young man who was in a federal building with his father and they both saw a passenger plane fly into the building. Personally. His story is an amazing memory for him because as soon as the plane hit, his father and many in the office building he was in went into emergency mode. Bullet proof vests went on and weapons were taken off the wall. Enjoy this critique.
The Loose Change guys say no plane hit the Pentagon. Take note of the very large piece boxed off in red (below). Hello, McFly. There is a worldwide movement against freedom, and it isn’t coming from Bush. It’s coming from Revolutionaries who use propaganda — like the PROOF I just showed you Loose Change used — to change a government they do not like.
Take note that bodies, luggage, and other parts of the plane were all calfdozered. In the above photo there is a red box which I enlarged to the right (click to increase in size). These guys are in hazard type suits because of the decomposing and burnt body parts that they meticulously had to find as rubble was moved. Another ingenuous insertion in Loose Change was this photo they say was the largest portion of the plane found. They make the piece look small by isolating it by itself with showing guys walking around picking up small pieces. Again, perspective is everything. Here is the piece pictured (the original is to the left) next to something else for comparison (right). Obviously one can see the wool [literally] being pulled over one’s eyes. But people gobble this stuff up like Pac-Man, to hell with the facts!
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The question is, why did they choose this photo over the others? I will tell you why, they want the viewer to think only one way so they selectively used photos to make sure the viewer agrees with them. They say “look, this piece is small,” but fail to tell you it is as large as a fender on a truckThis is known as propaganda, and willingly and knowingly telling a lie by deselecting the truth. Loose Change also neglects to show how a semi-truck sized generator was struck (skimmed) by the engine of the plane right before it struck the Pentagon. The photo below shows where the generator was by marking where it should have been with a yellow outline. It was moved 45-degrees by the engine of the 757, which is evidenced by the huge gouge mark in the generator itself (caused by the engine of the plane).
Here is a picture of what these generators look like, intact:
Here is the view of the damaged trailers:
Here are the views and commentary on the damaged trailers fitting with an airliner flying close to the ground:
Another photo that irked me was one of the spools just sitting in front of the Pentagon nice and neat. The problem is that some of these spools had been stacked neatly by this fenced area. As you can see, one of the engines hanging closer to the ground ripped through this area and spread the spools you see pictured. I would be interested to know also if the firemen moved the spools out of the way later in the day fighting the fires.
One should take note that in the right hand side of this photo is the semi-truck sized generators and spools were located allowing more perspective (MOUSE OVER for highlighted area):
And finally, another thing that was so obviously a cover up by Loose Change to make the viewer sympathetic was the bit about the windows not being broken in the Pentagon right near where the wing of the plane hit. First of all, the only real strong part of a plane like the 757 is the underbelly, and the structures of the wings can be clearly seen in the following two pictures after that:
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Of issue as well is the size of the hole a 757 would make in the Pentagon (again, see commentary above in the stripped down L1011). Conspirators say the hole is tiny. I agree! But many do not realize what the diameter of a 757 is. The question becomes then….
WHAT IS THE DIAMETER OF A 757?? ANSWER: 16.5 FEET
Here are some rendered photos often with outlines to show the impact are fitting well with an airliner hitting the Pentagon:
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This footage is of a test conducted on April 19, 1988, at a rocket sled facility at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in which an actual F-4 Phantom aircraft was impacted at a nominal velocity of 500 miles per hour into a rigid block of concrete. This was accomplished by supporting the F-4 on four struts that were attached to the sled track by carriage shoes to direct the path of the aircraft. Propulsion was accomplished by two stages of rockets. The concrete target was ‘floated’ on a set of air bearings. Results: An atomized plane. Cool.
[MISSING PICS]
Another point of “conspiratorial contention” are the intact “windows” in the surrounding impact area of the impact zone. OBVIOUSLY if this wing hit our house the windows would shatter. But the Pentagon wouldn’t have windows like yours or my house.
Duh.
Click on the thumbnail below (you can click once more to zoom even further) and read for yourself about these windows… and then ask yourself: how was I ever duped by such easily falsifiable rhetoric? (Click to enlarge):
You see, they had already begun to retrofit and upgrade the Pentagon in various sections, this are being one:
Here I am going to ad (3-29-07) some simulation videos, it shows the planes thin shell and frame (built that way to make it light as possible for flight) reacting to a high-speed impact with the Pentagon:
Here I will add only one response from the original post, as all are included in my WTC-7 post for further reading. This small response by me should sum up my feeling and journey along the path of going from a conspiracy nut myself to actually dealing with the facts. I deal somewhat with this conspiratorial view of history and my change towards an accidental view of history in my chapter of my book. While most of this chapter I deal with theology, it starts out dealing with some other finite issues. The section worth focusing in on are around pages 7-10 in the section entitled “Learning Curves.”
PHOTOS TO REFUTE SOME CRITICS
This next shot is a hole where an engine entered the Pentagon
All these pieces had to of punch holes…
Below is a 757 wheel
And here are the same pieces at the Pentagon
Here is a landing gear and other parts
Why Weren’t more pieces found?
Here is a COMPLETELY destroyed fuselage
How bout this plane which was almost completely destroyed?
Here is almost no debris left when a A C-130
(a four-engine turboprop aircraft) hit as building
Caution, Pics Below are GRAPHIC!
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Here are some photos of human remains (from the Pentagon)
(This will be a repost every 9/11) Bob Beckwith is the FDNY firefighter who stood next to George W. Bush during his famous bullhorn speech at Ground Zero, just days after September 11th, 2001. His story is incredible, and he shares it with Glenn in a perfect tribute to remember the first responders and other lives effected by 9/11/2001.
Politicians and leaders from both sides of the aisle make mention of this myth that we funded/created Al Qaeda via weapons, training, and money to the likes of Osama Bin Laden. The Daily Caller in 2013 notes some of the positions:
…in just a one-month span, Sen. Paul has — not once, but twice — advanced a conspiracy theory that says that during the Reagan era, the U.S. funded Osama bin Laden.
During John Kerry’s secretary of state confirmation hearing, Paul said ”We funded bin Laden” — a statement that prompted Foreign Policy magazine’s managing editor, Blake Hounshell, to fire off a tweet saying: “Rand Paul tells a complete falsehood: ‘We funded Bin Laden.’ This man is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”
But that didn’t discourage Paul. During a much anticipated foreign policy speech at the Heritage Foundation today, Paul doubled down, saying: “In the 1980’s the war caucus in Congress armed bin Laden and the mujaheddin in their fight with the Soviet Union.”
The only problem is that this is, at best, highly speculative — and, at worst, the perpetuation of an outright myth.
This also puts Paul in the same camp as Michael Moore, who said: ““WE created the monster known as Osama bin Laden! Where did he go to terrorist school? At the CIA!”….
And, this is the crux of the matter: truthers took Michael Moore’s non-evidential presentations and statements and ran with them.
Another example that shows this myth isn’t necessarily one owned by strictly by politicians, as, this conversation on a friends FaceBook shows:
Antony: failed foreign policy means today’s buddies are tomorrows boogiemen.
Hunlsy: I just love the fact they’re fighting us with the weapons and training that we gave them.
Antony: Oh where oh where did Iran get those P3s and F-14 Tomcats?
Antony: it was the US – we used to be buddies with Iranians too. We played both sides of the Iran/Iraq war, which predicated Gulf I.
Hunsly: Likely from the Russians. Regardless, we’re fighting a group, not a country. This group makes all of its IEDs & buys all of their weapons with the money that we gave them.
Here is my short intercept of the above conversation. More info will follow it:
Weapons
This is somewhat of a myth — that we sold the majority of weapons to the Taliban, to Iraq, and the like. For instance, in the following graph you can see that (in the instance of Iraq, which I was told over-and-over-again was weaponized by the U.S.) you have to combine the U.K. and the U.S. to equal 1%.
Moral Position
Much like us supporting Stalin in defeating Hitler, we were aligned with people whom we didn’t see eye-to-eye with in order to beat the USSR during the Cold War (WWIII)… a war that was fought from 1947–1991.
History
And thirdly, the Taliban didn’t exist when Reagan said this:
Reagan didn’t say that about the Taliban because the Taliban didn’t exist yet. He said that of the Mujahedin, the same men who would later go on to fight the Taliban under the name “Northern Alliance”
The Afghan Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (Persian: جبهه متحد اسلامی ملی برای نجات افغانستان Jabha-yi Muttahid-i Islāmi-yi Millī barā-yi Nijāt-i Afghānistān), was a military front that came to formation in late 1996 after the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) took over Kabul. The United Front was assembled by key leaders of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, particularly president in exile Burhanuddin Rabbani and former Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud. Initially it included mostly Tajiks but by 2000, leaders of other ethnic groups had joined the Northern Alliance. This included Abdul Rashid Dostum, Mohammad Mohaqiq, Abdul Qadir, Sayed Hussein Anwari and others.
The Northern Alliance fought a defensive war against the Taliban government. They received support from Iran, Russia, India, Tajikistan and others, while the Taliban were backed by al-Qaeda. The Northern Alliance was mostly made up of ethnic Tajiks, but later included Uzbeks, Hazaras, and Pashtuns. The Taliban government was dominated by Pashtuns with other groups being the minority. After the US-led invasion and establishment of the Karzai administration in late 2001, the Northern Alliance broke apart and different political parties were formed.
The mujaheddin fighters who had previously defeated the communist government and formed the Islamic State of Afghanistan (ISA) came under attack and in 1996 lost the capital to the Taliban. At this juncture the Mujahedin resorted to the creation of UIF because Rashid Dostum and other warlords who belonged to various tribes but to no specific political party did not want to recognize the ISA as a legal entity, so the defeated government devised a military strategy to utilize these forces while not offending their political sensibilities.
In October 1996 in Khinjan, Ahmed Shah Massoud and Dostum came to an agreement to form the anti-Taliban coalition that outside Afghanistan became known as the Northern Alliance.
CNN was doing a special on Afghanistan and Peter Bergen asked for questions from viewers that he would answer. One of the questions is as follows:
Peter Bergen responds:
This is one of those things where you cannot put it out of its misery.
The story about bin Laden and the CIA — that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden — is simply a folk myth. There’s no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn’t have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn’t have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently.
The real story here is the CIA didn’t really have a clue about who this guy was until 1996 when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.
One person in a forum that was similarly challenged pointed out that this surely wasn’t the Taliban because they hated women in any position of authority — look at the pic at the top again.
As you read on, keep in mind Mr. Bergen was not a fan of conservatives, or Republicans. With that in mind, enjoy the rest, it is posted here so it will never disappear on me:
U.S. government officials and a number of other parties maintain that the U.S. supported only the indigenous Afghan mujahideen. They deny that the CIA or other American officials had contact with the Afghan Arabs (foreign mujahideen) or Bin Laden, let alone armed, trained, coached or indoctrinated them. Scholars and reporters have called the idea of CIA-backed Afghan Arabs (foreign mujahideen) “nonsense”,[6] “sheer fantasy”, and “simply a folk myth.”
They argue that:
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri says much the same thing in his book Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner.
Bin Laden himself once said “the collapse of the Soviet Union … goes to God and the mujahideen in Afghanistan … the US had no mentionable role,” but “collapse made the US more haughty and arrogant.”
According to CNN journalist Peter Bergen, known for conducting the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997,
The story about bin Laden and the CIA — that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden — is simply a folk myth. There’s no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn’t have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn’t have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently. The real story here is the CIA did not understand who Osama was until 1996, when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.
Bergen quotes Pakistani Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, who ran the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Afghan operation between 1983 and 1987:
It was always galling to the Americans, and I can understand their point of view, that although they paid the piper they could not call the tune. The CIA supported the mujahideen by spending the taxpayers’ money, billions of dollars of it over the years, on buying arms, ammunition, and equipment. It was their secret arms procurement branch that was kept busy. It was, however, a cardinal rule of Pakistan’s policy that no Americans ever become involved with the distribution of funds or arms once they arrived in the country. No Americans ever trained or had direct contact with the mujahideen, and no American official ever went inside Afghanistan.
Marc Sageman, a Foreign Service Officer who was based in Islamabad from 1987–1989, and worked closely with Afghanistan’s Mujahideen, argues that no American money went to the foreign volunteers.
Sageman also says:
Contemporaneous accounts of the war do not even mention [the Afghan Arabs]. Many were not serious about the war. … Very few were involved in actual fighting. For most of the war, they were scattered among the Afghan groups associated with the four Afghan fundamentalist parties.
No U.S. official ever came in contact with the foreign volunteers. They simply traveled in different circles and never crossed U.S. radar screens. They had their own sources of money and their own contacts with the Pakistanis, official Saudis, and other Muslim supporters, and they made their own deals with the various Afghan resistance leaders.”[14]
Vincent Cannistraro, who led the Reagan administration’s Afghan Working Group from 1985 to 1987, puts it,
The CIA was very reluctant to be involved at all. They thought it would end up with them being blamed, like in Guatemala.” So the Agency tried to avoid direct involvement in the war, … the skittish CIA, Cannistraro estimates, had less than ten operatives acting as America’s eyes and ears in the region. Milton Bearden, the Agency’s chief field operative in the war effort, has insisted that “[T]he CIA had nothing to do with” bin Laden. Cannistraro says that when he coordinated Afghan policy from Washington, he never once heard bin Laden’s name.
Fox News reporter Richard Miniter wrote that in interviews with the two men who “oversaw the disbursement for all American funds to the anti-Soviet resistance, Bill Peikney – CIA station chief in Islamabad from 1984 to 1986 – and Milt Bearden – CIA station chief from 1986 to 1989 – he found,
Both flatly denied that any CIA funds ever went to bin Laden. They felt so strongly about this point that they agreed to go on the record, an unusual move by normally reticent intelligence officers. Mr. Peikney added in an e-mail to me: “I don’t even recall UBL [bin Laden] coming across my screen when I was there.
Other reasons advanced for a lack of a CIA-Afghan Arab connection of “pivotal importance,” (or even any connection at all), was that the Afghan Arabs themselves were not important in the war but were a “curious sideshow to the real fighting.”
One estimate of the number of combatants in the war is that 250,000 Afghans fought 125,000 Soviet troops, but only 2000 Arab Afghans fought “at any one time”.
According to Milton Bearden the CIA did not recruit Arabs because there were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight. The Arab Afghans were not only superfluous but “disruptive,” angering local Afghans with their more-Muslim-than-thou attitude, according to Peter Jouvenal. Veteran Afghan cameraman Peter Jouvenal quotes an Afghan mujahideen as saying “whenever we had a problem with one of them [foreign mujahideen], we just shot them. They thought they were kings.”
Many who traveled in Afghanistan, including Olivier Roy[20] and Peter Jouvenal, reported of the Arab Afghans’ visceral hostility to Westerners in Afghanistan to aid Afghans or report on their plight. BBC reporter John Simpson tells the story of running into Osama bin Laden in 1989, and with neither knowing who the other was, bin Laden attempting to bribe Simpson’s Afghan driver $500 — a large sum in a poor country — to kill the infidel Simpson. When the driver declined, Bin Laden retired to his “camp bed” and wept “in frustration.”
According to Steve Coll, author of “Ghost Wars”, the primary contact for the CIA and ISI in Afghanistan was Ahmed Shah Massoud a poppy farmer and militia leader known as the “Lion of the Panjeer”. During the Afghan Civil War which erupted once the Soviets had left, Massoud’s army was routed by the Taliban (who were being helped by Pakistan’s ISI) and restricted to the northern region of the country. A loose entente was formed with several other native tribal militias which became known as the Northern Alliance who operated in opposition to the Taliban. On September 10, 2001 a camera crew was granted access to Massoud under the premise they were interviewing him for a documentary about the Mujahadeen. The crew members were actually Al Qaeda operatives who detonated a bomb killing themselves and Massoud. The purpose of the assassination was to eliminate a key ally for the US in anticipation of an invasion in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks which were to take place the following day.
And here is another great post responding to the non-evidential/conspiratorial [leftists] on the subject:
“Osama bin Laden was trained and funded by the CIA” – you’ll read the claim everywhere, and it’s rarely opposed: everyone just seems to accept that it’s true. But why? How much evidence have you ever seen presented to support this?
The reality is that there are many people who say this is simply a myth. And we’re not just talking about neo-con friendly journalists, either.
Take Jason Burke, for instance, a major contributor to the BBC documentary “The Power of Nightmares”. In his book “Al Qaeda”, he wrote the following:
It is often said that bin Ladin was funded by the CIA. This is not true, and indeed it would have been impossible given the structure of funding that General Zia ul-Haq, who had taken power in Pakistan in 1977, had set up. A condition of Zia’s cooperation with the American plan to turn Afghanistan into the Soviet’s ‘Vietnam’ was that all American funding to the Afghan resistance had to be channeled through the Pakistani government, which effectively meant the Afghan bureau of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the military spy agency. The American funding, which went exclusively to the Afghan mujahideen groups, not the Arab volunteers [bin Ladin’s groups], was supplemented by Saudi government money and huge funds raised from mosques, non-governmental charitable institutions and private donors throughout the Islamic world. Most of the major Gulf-based charities operating today were founded at this time to raise money or channel government funds to the Afghans, civilians and fighters. In fact, as little as 25 per cent of the monet for the Afghan jihad was actually supplied directly by states.
Page 59, Al Qaeda: The true story of radical Islam, Jason Burke
Steve Coll, former Managing Editor of the Washington Post, also suggests bin Ladin passed largely unnoticed by the CIA, in his book “Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001”:
…According to [Ahemd] Badeeb, on bin Ladin’s first trip to Pakistan he brought donations to the Lahore offices of Jamaat-e-Islami, Zia’s political shock force. Jamaat was the Pakistani offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood; its students had sacked the US embassy in Islamabad in 1979. bin Ladin did not trust the official Pakistan intelligence service, Badeeb recalled, and preferred to fund his initial charity through private religious and political networks.From the beginning of the Afghan jihad, Saudi intelligence used religious charities to support its own unilateral operations. This mainly involved funneling money and equipment to favoured Afghan commanders outisde ISI or CIA control… “The humanitarian aid-that was completely separate from the Americans”, Badeeb recalled. “And we insist[ed] that the Americans will not get to that, get involved–especially in the beginning,” in part because some of the Islamist mujahedin objected to direct contact with Western infidels…
In spy lexicon, each of the major intelligence agencies began working the Afghan jihad–GID [General Intelligence Department, Saudi Arabia], ISI and the CIA– began to “compartment” their work, even as all three collaborated with one another through formal liasons…
bin Ladin moved within Saudi intelligence’s compartmented operations, outside of CIA eyesight…
Page 86/ 87, Ghost Wars, Stevel Coll
In a Q&A session following the release of his book, Coll said:
Wheaton, Md.: There have been accusations from the left that have directly accused the CIA of funding and training bin Laden. Is there any truth to this ? Steve Coll: I did not discover any evidence of direct contact between CIA officers and bin Laden during the 1980s, when they were working more or less in common cause against the Soviets. CIA officials, including Tenet, have denied under oath that such contact took place. The CIA was certainly aware of bin Laden’s activities, beginning in the mid- to late-1980s, and they generally looked favorably on what he was doing at that time. But bin Laden’s direct contacts were with Saudi intelligence and to some extent Pakistani intelligence, not with the Americans.
Peter Bergen expanded on the supposed CIA/ bin Ladin links in his book, Holy War Inc:
But were the CIA and the Afghan Arabs in cahoots, as recent studies have suggested? One author charges: “The CIA had funded and trained the Afghan Arabs during the war”. Another refers to “the central role of the CIA’s Muslim mercenaries, including upwards of 2,000 mercenaries in the Afghanistan war”. Both authors present these claims as axioms, but provide no real corroboration.Other commentators have reported that bin Ladin himself was aided by the CIA. A report in the respected British newspaper The Guardian states: “In 1986 the CIA even helped him [bin Ladin] build an underground camp at Khost [Afghanistan] where he was to train recruits from across the Islamic world in the revolutionary art of jihad”…Bin Ladin, meanwhile, had expoused anti-American positions since 1982, and thanks to the fortune derived from his family’s giant construction business had little need of CIA money. In fact, the underground camp at Khost was built in 1982 by an Afghan commander, with Arab funding.
A source familiar with bin Ladin’s organisation explains that bin Ladin “never had any relations with America or American officials… He was saying very early in the 1980’s that the next battle is going to be with America… No aid or training or other support have ever been given to bin Ladin from Americans.” A senior offical unequivocally says that “bin Ladin never met with the CIA.”
While the charges that the CIA was responsible for the rise of the Afghan Arabs might make good copy, they don’t make good history. The truth is more complicated, tinged with varying shades of grey. The United States wanted to be able to deny that the CIA was funding the Afghan war, so its support was funneled through Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). ISI in turn made the decisions about which Afghan factions to arm and train, tending to fund the most Islamist and pro-Pakistan. The Afghan Arabs generally fought alongside those factions, which is how the charge arose that they were creatures of the CIA.
Former CIA officer Milt Bearden, who ran the Agency’s Afghan operation in the late 1980’s, says: “The CIA did not recruit Arabs,” as there was no need to do so. There were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight…
Moreover, the Afghan Arabs demonstrated a pathological dislike of Westerners. Jouvenal says: “I always kept away from Arabs [in Afghanistan]. They were very hostile. They would ask, ‘What are you doing in an Islamic country?” The BBC reporter John Simpson had a close call with bin Ladin himself outside Jalalabad in 1989. Travelling with a group of Arab mujahideen, Simpson and his television crew bumped into an Arab man beautifully dressed in spotless white robes; the man began shouting at Simpson’s escorts to kill the infidels, then offered a truck driver the not unreasonable sum of five hundred dollars to do the job. Simpson’s Afghan escort turned down the request, and bin Ladin was to be found later on a camp bed, weeping in frustration. Only when bin Ladin became a public figure, almost a decade later, did Simpson realise who the mysterious Arab was who had wanted him dead.
Page 67/68, Holy War Inc, Peter Bergen
This level of hostility to Westerners doesn’t suggest a warm working relationship with the US, and there’s some confirmation in a story retold by Richard Miniter:
…the handful of Americans who had heard of bin Ladin in the 1980’s knew him mainly for his violently anti-American views. Dana Rohrabacher, now a Republican congressman from Orange County, California, told me about a trip he took with the mujihideen in 1987. At the time, Rohrabacher was a Reagan aide who delighted in taking long overland trips inside Afghanistan with anti-Communist forces. On one such trek, his guide told him not to speak English for the next few hours because they were passing by bin Ladin’s encampment. Rohrabacher was told, “If he hears an American, he will kill you.”
Page 16, Disinformation, Richard Miniter
Bin Ladin was himself asked about US funding by Robert Fisk:
Fisk: …what of the Arab mujahedin he took to Afghanistan – members of a guerilla army who were also encouraged and armed by the United States – and who were forgotten when that war was over? bin Ladin: “Personally neither I nor my brothers saw evidence of American help…
And Ayman al-Zawahiri, second-in-command of al Qaeda, explains more in his text “Knights under the Prophet’s Banner”. Here he claims the “Afghan Arabs” had plenty of funding from various Arab sources, and points to other indications that they never supported the US:
“While the United States backed Pakistan and the mujahidin factions with money and equipment, the young Arab mujahidin’s relationship with the United States was totally different.”Indeed the presence of those young Arab Afghans in Afghanistan and their increasing numbers represented a failure of US policy and new proof of the famous US political stupidity. The financing of the activities of the Arab mujahidin in Afghanistan came from aid sent to Afghanistan by popular organizations. It was substantial aid. “The Arab mujahidin did not confine themselves to financing their own jihad but also carried Muslim donations to the Afghan mujahidin themselves. Usama Bin Ladin has apprised me of the size of the popular Arab support for the Afghan mujahidin that amounted, according to his sources, to $200 million in the form of military aid alone in 10 years.
Imagine how much aid was sent by popular Arab organizations in the non-military fields such as medicine and health, education and vocational training, food, and social assistance (including sponsorship of orphans, widows, and the war handicapped. Add to all this the donations that were sent on special occasions such as Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha feasts and during the month of Ramadan.”
“Through this unofficial popular support, the Arab mujahidin established training centers and centers for the call to the faith. They formed fronts that trained and equipped thousands of Arab mujahidin and provided them with living expenses, housing, travel, and organization.”
Changing Bin Ladin’s Guard
About the Afghan Arabs’ relationship with the United States, Al-Zawahiri says in his book: “If the Arab mujahidin are mercenaries of the United States who rebelled against it as it alleges, why is it unable to buy them back now? Are they not counted now-with Usama Bin Ladin at their head-as the primary threat to US interests? Is not buying them more economical and less costly that the astronomical budgets that the United States is allotting for security and defense?”
“The Americans, in their usual custom of exaggeration and superficiality, are trying to sell off illusions to the people and are ignoring the most basic facts. Is it possible that Usama Bin Ladin who, in his lectures in the year 1987, called for boycotting US goods as a form of support for the intifadah in Palestine, a US agent in Afghanistan?….
“Furthermore, is it possible that the martyr-as we regard him-Abdallah Azzam was a US collaborator when in fact he never stopped inciting young men against the United States and used to back HAMAS with all the resources at his disposal?
“Is it possible that the jihadist movement in Egypt can be a collaborator movement for the United States when Khalid al-Islambuli and his comrades killed Anwar al-Sadat, even before the phenomenon of the Arab mujahidin in Afghanistan emerged?”
“Is it possible that the jihadist movement in Egypt can be a US collaborator movement when in fact it brought up its children, ever since the movement started, to reject Israel and all the agreements of capitulation to it and to consider making peace with Israel as a contravention of Islamic Shari’ah?”
Book, His Own Words: A Translation of the Writings of Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri
Richard Miniter has a little more on this in “Dispelling the CIA-Bin Ladin Myth“, and while you may not exactly trust the source, there were further comments worth at least a look on the US State Departments “Identifying Misinformation” site.
Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer discusses two recent protests by Muslims against the labeling of the 9/11 hijackers as Islamic terrorists, and shows how they’re part of ongoing efforts to intimidate Americans into thinking it wrong to oppose jihad terror.
“There will even come a time when anyone who kills you
will think he’s doing God a favor”
(John 16:2 – The Message)
Remember … Meditate … Pray
Throughout the day on 911, but typically the following Sunday, I will add political cartoons as they are released.
I am splitting the post into sections:
I am a BIG fan of editorial cartoons/cartoonists and will let these talented people memorialize this solemn day ~ their talent to catch a big-idea in one image is unrivaled. New frames will be added under the GOLD moniker just below. The newer cartoons will be larger than the older ones. The parameters of the old blog did not allow for bigger. Likewise, the videos embedded throughout work here as they stopped at the old site. Enjoy.
[Note: this does not mean the newer cartoons directly below are themselves “new,” it just means that I recently found them… they in fact may be old.]
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Newer Tributes Below
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These are mainly by fireman/port authority guys in remembrance of those lost
Just a few pictures of steel beams and info
You are looking at what some people believe is a miracle.
Two days after the disaster, a construction worker found several perfectly formed crosses planted upright in a pit in the rubble of the heavily damaged 6 World Trade Center.
The large, cross-shaped metal beams just happened to fall that way when one of the towers collapsed. An FBI chaplain who has spent days at ground zero says he has not seen anything like it on the vast site.
As word of the find has spread at ground zero, exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed rescue workers have been flocking to the site to pray and meditate.
“People have a very emotional reaction when they see it,” says the Rev. Carl Bassett, an FBI chaplain. “They are amazed to see something like that in all the disarray. There’s no symmetry to anything down there, except those crosses.”
This is the Ground Zero cross seen Friday, October 4, 2002, in New York. Father Brian Jordan and a group representing construction workers and victims of the World Trade Center are asking the governor to preserve the ground zero cross and use it as part of the eventual memorial that will be erected at Ground Zero.
From Cox & Forkum’s Site (cartoonists):
In the excellent book Never Forget: An Oral History of September 11, 2001, authors Mitchell Fink and Lois Mathias collected stories from eyewitnesses. Here’s an excerpt from what David Kravette, a Cantor Fitzgerald broker, told the authors about his experience at the World Trade Center:
On the morning of September 11, I was on floor 105, tower 1. I had an 8 a.m. meeting set up with a client. He was bringing by some tech people to do some due diligence on our technology company called E-Speed. I get to work usually around seven, seven-fifteen. At eight, the client called to tell me they were running late. And I said fine. But I reminded him to bring photo ID downstairs. Ever since the last terrorist attack in ’93, the building requires photo ID downstairs. He’s been there before, so he knew the drill. He said, “Fine. No problem.”
At 8:40, I get a phone call from the security desk downstairs, asking me if I’m expecting visitors. I said yes. “Well, they’re here,” they said. “But one of them forgot their ID.”
I’m 105 flights up. The commute to get downstairs takes about five minutes, especially around that time. So I’m annoyed, obviously, because I have to go down now to sign these people in after I just told them to bring ID. I look at this desk assistant across from me, thinking maybe she’ll help out and go down, but she’s on the phone. She’s also about eight months pregnant. She’s a few weeks from maternity leave and she’s on the phone talking to a friend and she’s on a website looking at bassinets and cribs. A very nice girl expecting her first child. So how lazy am I? I decide to go myself. …
… I take these two elevator rides down. I take the elevator from 105 to 78, change, and take the express down to the ground. I got down to the lobby. Our elevator banks actually face the visitors’ gallery. And I started walking over to the visitors’ gallery, I’d say it’s about thirty yards, and they’re standing there waiting for me. And I remember yelling, “Which one of you knuckleheads forgot your ID?”
And as I say this, you hear this really loud screeching sound. I turn around and it’s kind of coming from the elevators. So I run away from it, like ten steps, and look back. And the elevators are free-falling. Then, from the middle elevator bank, not the one I came down on, but from the middle one, a huge fireball explodes in the lobby. This huge fireball is coming right toward me. People got incinerated. And I remember just looking at this thing, not feeling scared, but just sad because I knew I was going to die. But as quickly as it came toward me, it actually sucked back in on itself, and it was gone. It left a lot of smoke and everything was blown out, all the glass and revolving doors leading into the shopping area. All I felt was a big wave of heat come over me, like when you put your face too close to a fireplace. My customer and my general counsel and I just ran out. The three of us ran over the overpass to where the Financial Center is. We went down to where the marina is, where the yachts are. And that’s when we found out what happened, that a plane had hit the building.
I looked up and saw this big gaping hole. I said, “What’s that falling out of the window?”
My general counsel looks at me like I’m nuts. And he says, “That’s people jumping out.” …
Cantor Fitzgerald had four floors in the North Tower — 101, 103, 104, and 105. Nobody got out on those floors. Everyone who was upstairs perished. There were a lot of phone calls to wives and husbands at around nine o’clock saying good-bye, as though they knew they were going to die.
Remembering The Jumpers
On another note, there is an old SNL skit where, coincidentally, John Belushi explains how the Twin Towers will come down via SkyLab:
WHERE WAS GOD?
Where was God at 9/11? Columbia asks the tough questions to an Oxford scholar on 9/11 at a Veritas event:
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Hat-Tip: Gay Patriot
With Libya being right across from Europe and close to Israel… people are a bit worried.
Via Bill Gertz:
Islamist militias in Libya took control of nearly a dozen commercial jetliners last month, and western intelligence agencies recently issued a warning that the jets could be used in terrorist attacks across North Africa.
Intelligence reports of the stolen jetliners were distributed within the U.S. government over the past two weeks and included a warning that one or more of the aircraft could be used in an attack later this month on the date marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, said U.S. officials familiar with the reports.
“There are a number of commercial airliners in Libya that are missing,” said one official. “We found out on September 11 what can happen with hijacked planes.”
The official said the aircraft are a serious counterterrorism concern because reports of terrorist control over the Libyan airliners come three weeks before the 13th anniversary of 9/11 attacks and the second anniversary of the Libyan terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi.
Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the Benghazi attack, which the Obama administration initially said was the result of a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Muslim video.
A senior State Department counter-terrorism official declined to comment on reports of the stolen jetliners.
A second State department official sought to downplay the reports. “We can’t confirm that,” he said.
Meanwhile, officials said Egyptian military forces appear to be preparing to intervene in Libya to prevent the country from becoming a failed state run by terrorists, many with ties to al Qaeda.
Gateway Pundit has some photos:
On Monday the Washington Free Beacon reported eleven commercial jetliners went missing after Islamist terrorists belonging to “The Masked Men Brigade” took control of the Tripoli airport in August. The Masked Men Brigade is linked to al Qaeda and Ansar al Sharia — the group behind the Benghazi terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2012.
The Islamists posted photos of the captured commercial jetliners after they took control of the Tripoli airport.
DebkaFile also reports this about a new type of explosive that is ~ wait for it ~ undetectable:
Credible information has reached Saudi, British and Australian agencies that two al Qaeda branches – IS in Iraq and Syria and AQAP at its base in Yemen – have wrapped up plans to roll out coordinated terrorist spectaculars around the 13th anniversary of the September 11, 2011 attacks on New York and Washington. According to debkafile’s counterterrorism sources, they are preparing to strike simultaneously in the Middle East and a West European city. Next, they will go for US targets in the Middle East and Europe.
There is some good news… “A wide-reaching Egyptian military hunt is on across northern and central Sinai for intruding Hamas and Islamic Jihad rocket squads and the launching sites they have buried beneath the desert surface…” (Debka). Egypt is gettin’ some!
If it is — off the hook — maybe some people will f i n a l l y take this threat seriously. I hate to say it, but it will take this type of act to bring the American malaise to an end.
Then its this:
Rough language ahead, WARNING
