It's a proven fact that the CIA has conducted hundreds of thousands of operations, including sugaring the gas tanks of the Hanoi city bus fleet in the 1960s. Hence, I'm not somebody who disbelieves in all conspiracy theories. On the contrary, I tend to suspect them when things look a hair too convenient, and when a conspiracy could plausibly have been at work.
It's the latter factor that makes me scoff at the idea that the U.S. commanded 911, which is what Joe believes.
>
> > Three questions:
> >
> >1. What evidence do you have that anybody in the U.S. elite knew the
> details
> >of the attacks before they were underway? State this evidence.
>
> Why "details?". The "9/11 Commission" report made it absolutely
> clear that Bush jr. personally was officially informed that an attack
> was planned and imminent and that it would use hijacked planes as
> weapons. And that he (having long since consigned the Hart-Rudman
> report to the circular file) took absolutely no action to prevent it.
Agreed, but that's very different from Joe's conviction that Cheney was running the show.
>
> >2. Other than you and your fellow hoaxists, who is ascribing "superhuman
> >powers" to anybody involved? You paint Cheney as a combination of Dr.
> >Strangelove and Hal the Computer. We realists, meanwhile, say this was
> an
> >amazing only partially successful attack conducted by a cell of dedicated
> >zealots.
>
> If you call it "realism" to give blind credulity to the murderous
> hoaxists around (and including) Bush jr. and Cheney, be my guest.
When have I ever given blind credulity to those war criminals? I'm simply saying it's preposterous and entirely unsupported to claim, as Joe does, that they were running the 911 operation.
> >3. What would "prevention" of the attacks have involved? An order
> >to shoot down all airplanes in the air after the first plane hit the
> >WTC? How does one accomplish and then justify that?
>
> What about an order to shoot down all *hijacked* airliners? And not
> *after* the North Tower was hit, but before--given the explicit
> warning given to Bush jr. in August? And, lacking that, why
> didn't he at least order evacuation of the South Tower when he and
> his direct subordinates were perfectly aware that a second
> hijacked airliner was headed straight for it?
Here's where the ice gets really thin for you guys. You start stammering and proposing the impossible. How does one define what a hijacked plane is? How many minutes does it take to react to the first impact, issue a shoot-down order, and get a plane into position to execute it? What do you tell the relatives of the Pennsylvania plane if you shoot it down before the struggle onboard is resolved? Oops? And how does anybody issue an order to an office building from outside that building, when everybody inside it is either already fleeing, or glued to the window?
Why Bush did nothing about the memo is a completely separate and much more important topic -- one from which the "Cheney did it" crap diverts attention.