no WAY! the PENTAGON LIED?!?!

[firsty]

i just dont believe it. impossible.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00_pf.html

9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon
Allegations Brought to Inspectors General

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 2, 2006; A03

Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.

Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.

In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted, officials said.

"We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us," said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. "It was just so far from the truth. . . . It's one of those loose ends that never got tied."

Although the commission's landmark report made it clear that the Defense Department's early versions of events on the day of the attacks were inaccurate, the revelation that it considered criminal referrals reveals how skeptically those reports were viewed by the panel and provides a glimpse of the tension between it and the Bush administration.

A Pentagon spokesman said yesterday that the inspector general's office will soon release a report addressing whether testimony delivered to the commission was "knowingly false." A separate report, delivered secretly to Congress in May 2005, blamed inaccuracies in part on problems with the way the Defense Department kept its records, according to a summary released yesterday.

A spokesman for the Transportation Department's inspector general's office said its investigation is complete and that a final report is being drafted. Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said she could not comment on the inspector general's inquiry.

In an article scheduled to be on newsstands today, Vanity Fair magazine reports aspects of the commission debate -- though it does not mention the possible criminal referrals -- and publishes lengthy excerpts from military audiotapes recorded on Sept. 11. ABC News aired excerpts last night.

For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances. Authorities suggested that U.S. air defenses had reacted quickly, that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington.

In fact, the commission reported a year later, audiotapes from NORAD's Northeast headquarters and other evidence showed clearly that the military never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights and at one point chased a phantom aircraft -- American Airlines Flight 11 -- long after it had crashed into the World Trade Center.

Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold and Col. Alan Scott told the commission that NORAD had begun tracking United 93 at 9:16 a.m., but the commission determined that the airliner was not hijacked until 12 minutes later. The military was not aware of the flight until after it had crashed in Pennsylvania.

These and other discrepancies did not become clear until the commission, forced to use subpoenas, obtained audiotapes from the FAA and NORAD, officials said. The agencies' reluctance to release the tapes -- along with e-mails, erroneous public statements and other evidence -- led some of the panel's staff members and commissioners to believe that authorities sought to mislead the commission and the public about what happened on Sept. 11.

"I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described," John Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general who led the staff inquiry into events on Sept. 11, said in a recent interview. "The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years. . . . This is not spin. This is not true."

Arnold, who could not be reached for comment yesterday, told the commission in 2004 that he did not have all the information unearthed by the panel when he testified earlier. Other military officials also denied any intent to mislead the panel.

John F. Lehman, a Republican commission member and former Navy secretary, said in a recent interview that he believed the panel may have been lied to but that he did not believe the evidence was sufficient to support a criminal referral.

"My view of that was that whether it was willful or just the fog of stupid bureaucracy, I don't know," Lehman said. "But in the order of magnitude of things, going after bureaucrats because they misled the commission didn't seem to make sense to me."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company. Material may not be distributed except by Firsty.

[stilltrucking]

It was a cluster fuck up

The civilian air controllers reported to NORAD that one of the plans was two miles north of JFK, NORAD could not find JFK they did not have it on their scopes.

What difference does it make? It is all just history, like the presidential briefing in August 2001 about a plot to fly airplanes into buildings, the WMD's Just history. Lets move on. There are bombs that need dropping. There are infidels that need killing. There is money to be made.

[mnaz]

..... The Southern Hemisphere is starting to look better every day. Maybe Antarctica....

[stilltrucking]

I am sticking right here
Besides I am too poor to leave town
Going down with the ship
But of course I could always go to Israel
Pastor Hagee wants to buy me a one way ticket

[firsty]

here is another story about the same thing, with audio excerpts directly from NORAD on that day. that fucking day.

http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/060801fege01

seriously, does anyone in america need to say anything other than "that day" in order for people to understand that they are talking about 9/11?

on that day, the govt of america either continued or began a coverup of a CIVILIAN tragedy.

this is YOUR government. either leave for antarctica, sure (i hear the summers there are becoming simply BALMY), or do something. come on, folks. 2 yrs ago, people were getting arrested in pennsylvania for mocking george bush with the prisoner abuse scandal, and cindy sheehan was a loud voice. what do have now, after a couple more years? what? a bunch of foolish americans waiting for another election to solve it all? will you get angry again in november when the republicans steal congress by restricting voter access AGAIN?

sorry. that was a tangent.

[stilltrucking]

Tangent?

Is that like when you connect 9/11 to Israel's invasion of Lebanon?

We need more blow jobs in the oval office.

[firsty]

i am fucking sick and tired of the idiots in washington and corporate america determining the fates of americans with their selfish and stupid policies. america is ALLOWING the world to hate us because of the selfishness and stupidity of our CEOs on capitol hill. in that sense, we deserve the hate. we're too stupid or lazy to do anything about it, it seems.

[stilltrucking]

america is ALLOWING the world to hate us because of the selfishness and stupidity of our CEOs on capitol hill

Well fortunately we have many preachers calling for god's wrath to come down and punish their immorality.

I wonder how many babies are going to be born today? How many will starve today? If only all the selfishness and stupidity was restricted to America. Just like I used to believe all the evil in the world was in Germany. There is plenty of selfishness and stupidity everywhere. Sorry about the tangent, I need to stop this. I am only sick and tired of being sick and tired. I got nothing helpful to say. I think I should shut up for a while.

[mnaz]

I voted the last two times. Yeah. Lot of good it did. See, it's like that, in times of blatant, Pervasive corruption, the kind I used to dismiss as confined to various Mexican and South American Swamps, far away. What do you want me to do? Strip naked and run through this year's Pennant Races with a sign strung around my privates, stating the obvious, that Bush and his entire underrated Cabal, will eventually lead us to the Armageddon Playoffs? (Not a bad call, by the way.)

[stilltrucking]

Congratulations Mnaz you have discovered America

mnaz said:

To constantly rail for change with deep-seated anger or brute force is barking up the wrong tree. Ultimately, warriors will be warriors and fools will follow suit, and there isn't a damned thing I can do about it except wake to enjoy another sunrise.

What do I want you to do?


Keep on writing.

"He was pessimist about tomorrow and an optimist about the day after tomorrow."

[firsty]

america certainly doesnt have a monopoly on stupidity. unfortunately, we have a monopoly on most of the world's commerce and military control. not to mention imperialism. for that reason, american citizens opposed to stupidity have more of a responsibility to humanity to do something about it than citizens of other countries who happen to be opposed to the same stupidity.

saying there will always be warriors and there will always be poets and there will always be protestors and hawks and criminals and saints is, frankly, a cop-out. there won't always be those people unless some people become those people. settling for observer status, whether it be 230 yrs ago, watching those warriors in america, or now, waiting for those warriors in america, has always been equally useless.

[stilltrucking]

american citizens opposed to stupidity have more of a responsibility to humanity

Something about that statement bothers me.

Chauvinism R Us

[firsty]

no, what i mean is, we're supposed to be a democracy, and because of america's power, our democracy, unchecked, ruled by stupidity, causes more world harm than it would if america werent so fucking powerful and obtrusive throughout the world. we have a responsibility to have a BETTER democracy than other nations, to strive for the BEST democracy possible, to ensure that our govt, via its disproportionate power, doesnt cause undue harm. right now, the stupidity and laziness of americans causes much undue harm, more harm than does the stupidity of other countries.

[stilltrucking]

I can't argue with that.

[firsty]

ha. that never stopped you before.