Apalling argumentative skills

reply to post by bsbray11


The un-explainable world of terrorist attacks and coincidences....

London Bombing
Strange Coincidences Suggest Cover-up


"At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now."
-- Former Scotland Yard Official Peter Power on BBC Radio, 7/7/05


Many strange facts from highly credible sources have come in regarding the London bombings. The most astonishing is the following conversation which took place the afternoon of the London bombing on BBC radio. The BBC host interviewed Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, which bills itself as a 'crisis management' advice company. Peter Power was a former Scotland Yard official.

A Coincidence?

POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.

HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this, and it happened while you were running the exercise?

POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning. We planned this for a company, and for obvious reasons I don't want to reveal their name but they're listening and they'll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met. And so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one, and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking.

Below is another excerpt on this matter from the website of CBC, Canada's public broadcasting TV network:

"CRISIS PLANNING: When there is an emergency like the London bombings, the public instinctively turns to professionals for help. We speak to two experts who are in Toronto today for the World Conference on Disaster Management. Adrian Gordon is the Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Emergency Preparedness, and Peter Power is Managing Director of a London-based consulting firm that specializes in crisis management, Visor Consultants - which on the morning of July 7 was co-incidentally running a security exercise for a private firm, simulating multiple bomb explosions in the London Underground, at the same stations that were subsequently attacked in real life."

Swap the names *FEMA/NORAD* with *Visor Consultants* and you have a coincidence that is beyond rational comprehension.

And we don't have to look too far for the first example of appalling argumentative skills.

(By the way, to the OP... I do agree with your position, but I'd have been happier to see the post without spelling errors. Please, don't get me wrong, I think this is the first time ever I've upbraided anyone on here for poor spelling, but in this case I think because of the way you couched your argument I'm going to break a rule and say that it's "appalling", double p, and "aisle" not "isle".)

But here we go... first whopping illogicality coming up...

Originally posted by GoodOlDave

Originally posted by suzque66
Any discussion on anything non-mainstream takes a lot of conviction to even follow through with after 10 minutes.

To some, a disbelief of or confrontation of their government/systems that they assume are a higher power, is not possible.

Some people actually put so much (or more) faith in the system they live in/under that it would be like showing them that quotes from the bible are actually defamatory to mankind--an impossibility.

Brushing everyone off who disagrees with your position

Hold it right there... that's a distortion of what suzque66 wrote. You might like to review the difference between the concepts of "some people" and "everyone". Intellectual dishonesty, laziness or ignorance? I don't know and wouldn't like to say which. But it's definitely one of those.

as "someone who puts too much faith in the system" is an intellectually lazy, "one size fits all" explanation

How funny. That argument, in view of the flaw I've just exposed, is deeply, deeply ironic and hypocritical.

meant more to rationalize why the truthers

Did you read the OP at all? Or did you just decide to be pejorative in a stolid and unimaginative way?

are having so much difficulty getting the mainstream public to accept their conspiracy scenarios, than anything else.

Poll suggests one-third of Americans believe 9/11 was an inside job

Granted it's a small sample size, but that's still a hugely significant statistic. Even if you factor in a huge margin of error, it's still a lot of people.

On this page you have a number of poll results showing huge amounts of people at least falling into the LIHOP camp: half of New Yorkers, a majority of Canadians, a third of Germans, and so on. There was also a Zogby poll that said two-thirds of New Yorkers wanted a new investigation.

It's akin to some self-perceived macho guy saying, "well, she must be a lesbian" to rationalize why a woman won't go out with him, to avoid having to face the ugly truth that he's really a putz.

No, it isn't. You're distorting the position to make the analogy possible. Perhaps the choice of that analogy is revealing.

No, the fact is, if the truthers want to convince us mainstream public

Interesting assumption that you represent the mainstream public. In view of the links I've posted, it's not necessarily a safe assumption, of course.

Nice use of the t-word again. It seems, like the appalling and ubiquitous emoticons (for people simply too lazy to put whatever muddled feeling they want to express into words), that the t-word appears in inverse proportion to the coherence of the post.

then we need to have actual FACTS to back the claim up. Not innuendo, not five degrees of separation Kevin Bacon games, not cute internet flicks made by college students in the dorm room, not "undisclosed secret intelligence reports from anonymous sources", but actual FACTS. How about an insider coming forward to spill the beans? How about even one of the 50,000 or so people who worked in WTC witnessing seeing strange devices planted throughout the structure before the attack? How about documenting how the 9/11 commission report is lying to us?

This has all been done. The fact you seem unable to realise this is, frankly, odd. There are plenty of threads on ATS that present exactly these kind of facts.

Of course, many facts are missing. Passenger lists that include the names of the hijackers, for example. Their absence also points to a conspiracy, though it's not conclusive.

Like most rational people, I have a set level of acceptability where, if you present enough evidence to meet that level, i can accept the scenario as legitimate. To date, the truthers have been horribly dearth in providing anything even remotely resembling evidence.

FYI, "dearth" is a noun, not an adjective.

It's as if they demand we need to believe these conspiracy stories FIRST in mindless obedience, which then will allow us to accept the innuendo, the five degrees of separation Kevin Bacon games, the cute internet flicks made by college students in the dorm room, and the "undisclosed secret intelligence reports from anonymous sources" as credible evidence.

How very odd. The long passage I've emboldened here appears word for word earlier in the post. What are we to make of this? That you've cut and pasted something from somewhere else? That your mind runs in very limited tracks to the point that you repeat yourself with unusual accuracy? That you c&p-ed it from your own post because you just couldn't have expressed it any better and have a somewhat strange conception of the art of rhetoric?

I'm sorry, but this ploy didn't work on me when the religious cults tried it so it's certainly not going to work on me when the truthers try it.

Lovely! Start your post by misrepresenting what the other poster said, and then by extension smear "truthers" as cultists.

Fantastic hatchet job... but only for people who don't read or think very well. I'm looking at the number of stars your post got. So seven people have failed to look past the blatant shortcomings in your post.

Par for the course round here, I'm afraid. Most ATS posters have appalling argumentative skills.


[edit on 25-7-2009 by rich23]

Originally posted by GoodOlDave
I've talked to many, many, MANY self declared members of the truth movement, and I have yet to meet ONE truther who actually read the 9/11 commission report.

That's because it's a pack of lies. Why waste time on something you're sure is tainted?

I have read enough of the report to confirm that the most significant omissions and distortions that are supposed to be in it, actually are in it. I'm not going to waste my time beyond that.

But the obvious elisions and internal inconsistencies are enough to damn the thing without even recourse to the facts. Its own internal contradictions mark it out as the biggest con-job since the Warren Report.

reply to post by rich23


An erudite, accurate and entertaining antidote to GoodOlDave's six star stinker. Thanks - I needed that.

GoodOlDave
The press certainly is free I.E. not controlled by the gov't,

By declaring this certainty, you reveal both your complacent outlook and your debating technique. Conflating "free press" with "not controlled by the gov't", you suggest a press not directly under government control must, by definition, be free.

These tricks are effective, I'm sure, to minds already disposed to take comfort from any defence of the official story. Others will know your certainty is substantially misplaced. The press is anything but free from government and other powerful influences.

If the government directly and overtly controlled the press, its propagandising would be weakened. When the State Department and other federal agencies produce and distribute Fake TV News, it's only effective because it is broadcast by ostensibly independent media. Government agencies' deep penetration of mainstream media is meticulously documented in Hugh Wilford's The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America.



[edit on 25-7-2009 by EvilAxis]

Originally posted by EvilAxis
reply to post by rich23

 

An erudite, accurate and entertaining antidote to GoodOlDave's six star stinker. Thanks - I needed that.

Most kind. And, indeed, right back atcha.

I've often noted that there'll be a post like GoodOlDave's that will get stars, shall we say, above its merits, and I have to shake my head and wonder where these stars come from. It's not as if the people who give them seem to contribute anything to the thread independently.

Perhaps I'm cynical, but I do find myself wondering about sock puppets. And I've definitely seen signs of that in the past on ATS.

Originally posted by GoodOlDave
I invite you to show me why I am incorrect in anything I just posted here.

With pleasure.

Many of those things you're saying weren't covered in the report (I.E. gross negligence and breakdown in communications) WERE covered, and many of the things you're saying is wrong in the report (I.E. how the fires instigated the collapse) WASN'T covered becuase that's not what the report was for.

What it was for?

Well, the function of the report can be looked at in a lot of different ways. From my point of view, it was clearly a coverup/damage limitation exercise. One of the tricks of commissioning a public report is to first limit the scope of its enquiry to make sure that, right from the start, you exclude as many awkward areas of inquiry as possible.

Another germane example is the "inquiry" into the death of Dr. David Kelly. Not a formal inquest, but something over which the chairman had much more control over what went on.

Now back in the eighties there was a fantastic BBC TV programme called "Yes Minister", written by people who'd been involved in government and had a really good idea of what was going on. One episode, which might have been entitled "A Safe Pair of Hands", dealt with exactly this subject. So framing the inquiry correctly was a crucial issue that the programme dealt with very wittily: and the 9/11 Commission played out another of the tricks the programme mentioned with eerie precision,

So what you want is to make sure the inquiry doesn't ask awkward questions, and you want it headed by someone you consider "a safe pair of hands". The trick is not to introduce your choice directly. What you do is maky your first choice so hideously unacceptable that the guy you really want in looks fine by comparison.

Remember the first choice to head the commission? Step forward neofascist war crim Henry Kissinger. The brief spectacle of him and Dubya licking blood off each other's hands was enough to make the real candidate look great. I watched all this unfold with a sense of wonder that no-one in the media was making the connection. I still expected someone in the media to have some sort of independent thought. Naive, I know, but hope dies hard.

Truth never has to run and hide from falsehoods, you know. It's falsehoods that have to run and hide from the truth.

Trying to establish what actually happened is extremely difficult given the secrecy within which the USG, and particularly the Bush Administration, wraps itself. Therefore it's important not to waste time on lies. It was on ATS that I came across the quotation about "if you can get someone asking the wrong questions, you don't have to worry about the answers they'll come up with."

It has nothing to do with wanting to find the truth and everythign to do with wanting to protect a personal agenda. I say this becuase it's becomign increasingly obvious from their behavior that the goal of the conspiracy proponents isn't to learn the truth on anything, but for the conspiracy proponents to actively convince others to believe what they themselves want to believe, regardless of what the truth really is.

Again, one could look at the above as a classic case of projection.

A clear-eyed, unsentimental view of history reveals one consistent theme: governments lie. For years the US denied any involvement in the 9/11 coup in Chile in the seventies that introduced the fascist regime of Pinochet and cost thousands of lives to US-trained death squads. Eventually enough documentation emerged that this lie could not be sustained.

The supine media which you glorify as a "free press" are pathetic to anyone who's seen journalists actually doing their job, admittedly rare these days. One interviewer on the BBC (this was in the seventies, when there was still some spine in that institution) said something like the following. I've substituted the words "Larry King" for "Jimmy Young" to update the cultural reference and make it comprehensible to US readers...

"Basically, there are two kinds of interviewer. There's the Larry King 'I'm just so lucky to be talking to this tremendously important person, I wonder what they have to say?' school... and then there's me. When I'm interviewing a politician, my constant thought is, 'what is it that this lying bastard is lying to me about right now?' "

I can only speak for myself, but I'm interested in finding out the truth of what happened, as far as it can be told. I'll debate in these forums, but I'm really here to soak up all the news that people bring to the forum that I wouldn't run across otherwise.

It should be little wonder then why the conspiracy proponents are encountering such great difficulty in convincing mainstream public of anything.

I've answered this in another post. Your idea of the mainstream public and their beliefs is self-serving and doesn't fit with the polls.

[edit on 25-7-2009 by rich23]

Originally posted by GoodOlDave

Originally posted by kinda kurious
Ruh Roh. I thought we were discussing 'Argumentative Skills."

We ARE discussing "argumentative skills". I'm pointing out the fallacy of using the argument that the 9/11 commission report is dishonest when the critics making such a claim never even read the thing to even know why the report is dishonest.

No? Then you've never heard of David Ray Griffin's The 9/11 Commission Report, Omissions and Distortions, which takes the thing apart almost line by line.

I've read his book and checked it against the official report in enough places to convince me that he's not quoting out of context or misrepresenting the obvious meaning of any paragraphs he references.

[edit on 25-7-2009 by rich23]

See, the picture that's emerging through the good works of independent investigators like Webster Tarpley and Daniel Hopsicker is rather different from the one you want to project, Dave...

Originally posted by GoodOlDave
What do you mean, "excuses"'? It says right in the article the place is where pilots from other countries are being sent for training. It even says two of the hijackers used to be Saudi Air force pilots. That explains right there why they were there- the Saudi gov't sent them there back when they were in the Saudi service.

At the beginning of Core of Corruption (carefully compiled from open news sources) you can see that people were blowing whistles about the hijackers, some of them known terrorists, being issued visas by the US embassy in Saudi Arabia. The whistleblowers were told to shut the hell up. FBI agents tracking Atta were warned off.

It would be really, really weird for the military to be an intentional participant because they're openly admitting all of this and are cooperating with the investigation.

Are they admitting the part where Atta used to go to the US military part of the airfield in Venice Fl. to get his coke supply? Daniel Hopsicker's interview with Amanda Keller (ex-stripper and Atta's sometime squeeze) is interesting viewing.

All you've done with this is to prove there really were foreign hijackers with the specialized piloting skills to pull off the 9/11 attack. You do realize that, right?

If you think that constitutes proof of your assertion your grasp on logic and argument is even more tenuous than I'd thought. It also ignores, wilfully, one might say, all the evidence from their instructors that they were all hopeless pilots. I think it was Hani Hanjour who got as far as taxiing his Cessna to the end of the runway but then bottled it and just ran off leaving the plane where it was!

Suuuure those guys had the skills to pull it off. Got some prime real estate you might be interested in btw.

The major media has never attempted to follow those lines of investigation from everything I have seen, even without knowing any details of the issue yet.

ALL right then, give it to Michael Moore. You know as well as I do that he doesn't care about shoving microphones in people's faces and asking embarrassing questions.

Not that I have any brief for Moore, who has completely fudged the real issues, but sometimes, "shoving microphones in people's faces and asking embarrassing questions" is just what it takes. If your so-called free press were doing its job, that's what they'd be doing.

Originally posted by bsbray11
though. If you are a truly brave soul maybe you'll try both perspectives on some day rather than just attacking the one from the other side?

What a fascinating idea! All right, just to play the devil's advocate, let me consider how such a conspiracy could have been pulled off according to the available facts...

First off, they wouldn't need armies of secret agents or tons of planted explosives. This is 2009, not 1950, and all they (whoever the "they" is) would need to do is to master the technology people rely on, 'cause people today are such slaves to technology they'd drive their car off a cliff if their Tom Toms directed them to. Second off, pinch yourself, it's true- there really is a world out there beyond the borders of the US, and it does contain people who genuinely don't like the US and would naturally have their own agendas separate from what the US is doing.

Arguing that maybe, JUST MAYBE, it really was a staged attack, I would say the idea to launch a staged attack started in 1993, after the first amateurish attack from Al Qaida. After analyzing the design of the WTC to determine why the building survived, they ("they" as in the conspirators) saw the buildings had a weird design and were really designed like two vertical rolls of livesavers, with each floor just hanging over the floor below it and waiting to collapse in a giant domino effect. After watching a few WWII movies the orchestrators decided that a really good whack by a large 500 mph jet aircraft would destroy the supports of one of the floors, cause it to fall, and cause the remaining floors to collapse in turn in a chain reaction.

The method would have come when their Electronic Warfare division (which the US possesses second to none) eavesdropping on everyone learns that Al Qaida is planning to send a bunch or terrorists over to the US. Some bright conspirator or another would have come up with the idea to kill two birds with one stone and destroy the WTC *and* frame Al Qaida at once.

First step- The Eletronic Warfare division would be able to intercept any communications between this group and al Qaida to pass along bogus messages. In this way, the hijackers could be led to believe by this interception they were instructed by Bin Laden to hijack four planes and fly them to the mideast to hold for ransom. Bin Laden in the meantime would be led to believe these guys were just biding their time for a future operation.

Second step- replace the automatic pilot system boards on four aircraft with compromised boards that can be commandeered by remote control at a given time. This would why the hijackers took off from so many different locations- those airports were where the rigged aircraft happened to be located, when the operation commenced.

Third step - Send the group a fake command to go hijack specific aircraft at specific locations at a specific time, without telling them the planes are rigged. Remember the passengers on these craft contacting the outside world on cell phones? The Electronic Warfare division would have made sure they *could* contact out, amplifying the signal if necessary, to give the world eyewitness accounts the craft were being hijacked by terrorists.

Fourth step- Once the aircraft were hijacked, switch on the compromised automatic pilot boards to that the craft can be commandeered by remote control. Now the hijackers are trapped just as much as the passengers are.

Fifth step- Steer two of them into the WTC buildings. To the conspirators horror, the aircraft were NOT, by themselves, powerful enough to bring down that first floor and start the domino effect they had hoped, BUT unknown to them the massive fires caused all sorts of warpage and deformation of critical key supports, and IT caused the first floor to collapse and start the chain reaction. Ah well, we can't be experts at everything.

Sixth step- the conspirators wanted to hide the fact it was an inside job so they knew some collateral damage would be necessary, so they flew a third compromosed aircraft into the Pentagon. The building is out in the open so it would be easier to hit than the White house or Congress.

Seventh step- Unknown to the conspirators, aircraft #4 had an upgrade on some other component which made the commandeered automatic pilot incompatable. The board started sending the plane jibberish instructions so instead of being controllable remotely the plane took a nosedive into a field in Pennsilvania. Noone can be an expert in everything.

Eighth step- Inspired by comments from bystanders how the towers appeared like a controlled demolitions collapse, the electronic warfare division starts whispering on conspiracy boards how the buildings were really destrouyed by controlled demolitions, laser beams from outer space, nukes in the basement, and all sorts of cover stories, and let the conspiracy people cause all sorts of distractions.

In this way...

a) You wouldn't need hordes of secret agents, manufactured evidence, or any super technology noone has ever heard of, or relying on everyone in the world to be as stupid as a bag of hammers. All you need is a sufficient control of technology which only a tiny percentage of people fully understand anyway.

b) the planes and the fires really DID cause the collapse of the bbuildings. It's just that it was someone ELSE controlling them, not Al Qaida operatives

c) Al Qaida is humiliated becuase they think the terrorists they sent over decided to pull off the stunt on their own. SO, they clam up and hide from the impending juggernaut heading their way.

d) becuase they know Al Qaida can't say anything, the Electronic warfare division make all sorts of fake broadcasts of admitting they were behind the attack, since Al Qaida certainly isn't going to say "yeah it was our operatives who did it, but that's not us admitting we did it"

d) all your imagined secret conspiracies are cover stories to let you bicker over stupid crap like controlled demolitions to hide the REAL cause of the attack- electronic hacking. You are literally a pawn in their operation.

There, THAT is how i would imagine a 9/11 conspiracy would have been staged that still conforms to the known facts. There are still a lot of problems in this theory but nonetheless if you proposed this instead of making weird crap up all the time, you *may*, just *may* have had a point.

Why were the bomb sniffing dogs removed weeks prior to 9/11? Coincidence?

Originally posted by rich23
Hold it right there... that's a distortion of what suzque66 wrote. You might like to review the difference between the concepts of "some people" and "everyone". Intellectual dishonesty, laziness or ignorance? I don't know and wouldn't like to say which. But it's definitely one of those.

You are splitting hairs in your argument and you know it. It's blatantly obvious her point was (becuase she came out and actually said it) that she felt the reason people weren't taking these conspiracy accusations seriously is becuase they're too horrified at the prospect at the gov't ever doing anythign wrong. It's a complete evasion of the OTHER obvious reason, namely, that the conspiracy movement is suffering from ghastly credibility problems (I.E. no planes, lasers from outer space, nukes in the basement, etc etc etc.) becuase she didn't want to face the ugly possibility that the conspiracy movement is having credibility issues. Whether she means "some" or "all" in her statement is entirely moot.

How funny. That argument, in view of the flaw I've just exposed, is deeply, deeply ironic and hypocritical.

I'm glad you're amused. Would you please explain how my statement above is incorrect?

Did you read the OP at all? Or did you just decide to be pejorative in a stolid and unimaginative way?

One would think that to be pejorative AND stolid, particularly in a forum devoted to discussing sensitive issues like controversial conspiracy theories, one would necessarily need to take great care in being imaginative in expressing it, or else it wouldn't really be stolid.

Do you even know what those words mean?

Granted it's a small sample size, but that's still a hugely significant statistic. Even if you factor in a huge margin of error, it's still a lot of people.

You are overlookign the obvious fact that the belief in something does not by itself prove the thing is correct. All it means is that someone is very very good at convincing people of things. I don't contest the fact the conspiracy proponents are very very good at convincing people of things, and in fact I'm here to illustrate they are very, very good at convincing peopel of things. Specifically, I'm here to illustrate all the artful ways these conspiracy web sites are employing deceit to deliberately sucker their audience into believing things which are patently not true.

I will happily give you all the concrete examples of this that you'd like.

9/11_world=complete_911_timeline_9_11_criticism]this page[/url] you have a number of poll results showing huge amounts of people at least falling into the LIHOP camp: half of New Yorkers, a majority of Canadians, a third of Germans, and so on. There was also a Zogby poll that said two-thirds of New Yorkers wanted a new investigation.

A duplicitous statement. Nowhere does it say WHY they want a new investigation. I too wouldn't mind another investigation, not becuase of any imagined secret conspiracies but becuase I'd like to know exactly how badly the gov't f**ked up in its responsibility to stop the attack.

Thus, statistically, if I lived in NY then I'd be one of those two-thirds majority, and thus, I can definitely say you wouldn't be represening me.

Interesting assumption that you represent the mainstream public. In view of the links I've posted, it's not necessarily a safe assumption, of course.

Seeing that the only place I can even find you conspiracy people is on these conspiracy chat boards...and I even went to a 9/11 memorial at ground zero a few years back specifically to look for you people, and I STILL couldn't find any of you...yes I can say I represent the mainstream public, or I should say, I represent the mainstream public much more accurately than you do.

This has all been done. The fact you seem unable to realise this is, frankly, odd. There are plenty of threads on ATS that present exactly these kind of facts.

Coome on, now, be realistic here. I've been chatting with you conspiracy people for a long, long, LONG time, and not one of you has ever been able to produce even one fact that supports your claims. All you DO have is innuendo, five degrees of separation Kevin Bacon games, cute internet flicks made by college students in the dorm room, and "undisclosed secret intelligence reports from anonymous sources". All you're doing is rehashing them in new and exciting ways.

Accusing people in the NYPA to be collaborators in the conspiracy, trying to claim Bush has secret ties to the Nazis through his grandfather, and claiming the wreckage at the Pentagon was all planted, isn't proof that would stand up in any court in the land. It's obvious the conspiracy theorists rely on such unsubstanciated accusations specifically becuase they DON'T have any evidence that would stand up in any court in the land.

Of course, many facts are missing. Passenger lists that include the names of the hijackers, for example. Their absence also points to a conspiracy, though it's not conclusive.

The hijackers were not absent from the passenger lists, so the claim it supposed "points to a conspiracy" is fundamentally flawed.

Originally posted by rich23
No? Then you've never heard of The 9/11 Commission Report, Omissions and Distortions, which takes the thing apart almost line by line.

Yes I have heard of it. I haven't read it but I know what it contains...

Give David Ray Griffin your money

His "ommissions and distortions" are entirely things which are either unproven or can never be proven (I.E. bin Laden being in a Dubai hospital, the US deliberately allowed Bin Laden to escape), things which are outright falsehoods (I.E. there were no arab names on the passenger list, the WTC steel was all quickly shipped overseas), outright innuendo (I.E. Silverstein's "Pull it" remark, Bush's relatives involved in WTC security) or things which the report wasn't even set up to cover to begin with (I.E. Why Bush stayed at the elementary school as long as he did, Unocal's dealings with the Taliban). That's not even counting all the things which have absolutely nothing to do with anything (I.E. Rumsfeld was one of the strongest advocates of the US space Command, the time when Jane Garvey joined Richard Clarke's videoconference). So flipping what?

I've read his book and checked it against the official report in enough places to convince me that he's not quoting out of context or misrepresenting the obvious meaning of any paragraphs he references.

When he implies there are "signs" flight 93 *may* have been shot down, without telling you that the commission report specifically says NORAD openly admitted they were actively hunting flight 93 and they would have destroyed it had they found it, yes, he IS quoting it out of context and yes he IS misrepresenting what he's referencing. The military obviously isn't going to openly admit they would have destroyed it if they had found it only to turn around and deny they actually destroyed it.

I'm sorry, but a bullsh*t artist is still a bullsh*t artist, regardless of which side of the aisle he's sitting on.

Originally posted by rich23
Daniel Hopsicker's interview with Amanda Keller (ex-stripper and Atta's sometime squeeze) is interesting viewing.

Yes it is, especially since it was from Keller that we got the information that Atta was an accomplished pilot with licenses from numerous countries, plus, that he was such a hard core sociopath that he dismembered her kittens when she broke up with him.

If you're goign to accept some of her testimony then you'll necessarily have to accept all of her testimony.

If you think that constitutes proof of your assertion your grasp on logic and argument is even more tenuous than I'd thought. It also ignores, wilfully, one might say, all the evidence from their instructors that they were all hopeless pilots. I think it was Hani Hanjour who got as far as taxiing his Cessna to the end of the runway but then bottled it and just ran off leaving the plane where it was!

How the heck can they be "hopeless pilots" when your OWN SOURCES just said several hijackers were former Saudi Air Force pilots who received advanced training at a US flight school, IN ADDITION TO the ringleader having pilot's licenses from several countries. The statements obviously contradict each other, so obviously only one statement or the other can be correct.

Good grief, talk about a tenuous grasp on logic.

Originally posted by GoodOlDave

Originally posted by rich23
No? Then you've never heard of The 9/11 Commission Report, Omissions and Distortions, which takes the thing apart almost line by line.

Yes I have heard of it. I haven't read it but I know what it contains...

Give David Ray Griffin your money

What a very odd thing to title your link. In fact, it's a smear. Where on the page you linked does he ask for money? He's published a book, but you yourself have admitted that you know what it contains because he's posted the summary on your link.

Not exactly the hard sell, then, really, is it?

Therefore, why call the link Give David Ray Griffin your money if you haven't had to shell out? It looks like a rather pathetic ad hom smear to me.

The link is also useful because it lists 115 points, of which the first one is that some of the alleged hijackers are still alive. This is irrefutable and I'm glad you don't try, in your cherrypicking way, to refute it, simply because it would have been embarrassing.

His "ommissions and distortions" are entirely things which are either unproven or can never be proven

Incorrect. Alleged hijackers have come forward to deny their involvement and claim identity theft.

There are plenty more examples in that 115-strong list but they've been done to death on other threads.

As for the ones you list, I'll just ask you to disprove just one thing:

there were no arab names on the passenger list

So please provide original passenger lists for all flights showing the names of the alleged hijackers.

When he implies there are "signs" flight 93 *may* have been shot down, without telling you that the commission report specifically says NORAD openly admitted they were actively hunting flight 93 and they would have destroyed it had they found it, yes, he IS quoting it out of context and yes he IS misrepresenting what he's referencing. The military obviously isn't going to openly admit they would have destroyed it if they had found it only to turn around and deny they actually destroyed it.

I'm glad you have such a fine grasp of the military mind. Can you refer me to the part of the 9/11 Commission Report you're talking about so I can make up my own mind on this?

As for 93, my current thinking is that it was indeed shot down but didn't crash in the alleged crash site. That seems to be the safest thing one can say about it.

[edit on 2-8-2009 by rich23]

Originally posted by Grambler
Lastly, I would just like to say that I personally have three friends that refuse to listen to me about 9/11, because they have dealt with smug, better than thou people in the past on the issue, so it really does make a difference. Personal attacks not only do nothing to help prove your point, they can in fact convince people your wrong.

I don't believe this paragraph. Your "friends" won't here you out. Sorry. Don't believe it for one second.

So was only that paragraph made up? Or was more of the post invented as well?

Vas

Originally posted by GoodOlDave

Originally posted by rich23
Daniel Hopsicker's interview with Amanda Keller (ex-stripper and Atta's sometime squeeze) is interesting viewing.

Yes it is, especially since it was from Keller that we got the information that Atta was an accomplished pilot with licenses from numerous countries, plus, that he was such a hard core sociopath that he dismembered her kittens when she broke up with him.

If you're goign to accept some of her testimony then you'll necessarily have to accept all of her testimony.

Firstly, there's the possibility that Atta may have overstated his own competence to Keller to impress her. Secondly, I don't recall from her testimony that he "had licenses from numerous countries". If you can refer me to a link where that is stated I'd be grateful. Thirdly, being a hard-core sociopath doesn't necessarily translate into being the kind of fanatic who'll willingly lay down his life for jihad.

Atta could fly... but if he was so good, why did he and Marwan al-Shehhi abandon their Cessna having stalled it on the runway at Miami International? More to the point, why wasn't a threatening phone call from the FAA ever followed up?

NYT - "A Nation Challenged"

One former flight instructor said a Federal Aviation Administration official placed an angry call on Dec. 27, threatening to investigate the maintenance record of the plane as well as the two pilots.

''Whatever came of that, I don't know,'' said Dan Pursell, who was then the chief instructor at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Fla., the flight school where Mr. Atta and Mr. Shehhi earned their pilot's licenses and had rented the Piper Cherokee that day. ''They said I'd hear back from them, which I never did.''

(I'm sure you'd dismiss this as mere bureaucratic incompetence, but it does fit the pattern of the hijackers being monitored, indeed at times protected, by the security services.)

And it seems as if Atta and Al-Shahhi had merely flooded the engine. This, one would have thought, is a fairly elementary error that a good pilot would a) not commit in the first place and b) would know how to correct had he needed to.

And of course there's Hani Hanjour, whom in my previous post I'd erroneously accused of doing what Atta and Al-Shahhi did in abandoning their Cessna, and who is supposed to have pulled off the trickiest piece of flying that day... NYT on Hani Hanjour - "A Trainee Noted for Incompetence"

Ms. Ladner said the Phoenix staff never suspected that Mr. Hanjour was a hijacker but feared that his skills were so weak that he could pose a safety hazard if he flew a commercial airliner.

''There was no suspicion as far as evildoing,'' Ms. Ladner said. ''It was more of a very typical instructional concern that 'you really shouldn't be in the air.' ''

....

Ultimately, administrators at the school told Mr. Hanjour that he would not qualify for the advanced certificate. But the ex-employee said Mr. Hanjour continued to pay to train on a simulator for Boeing 737 jets. ''He didn't care about the fact that he couldn't get through the course,'' the ex-employee said.

Staff members characterized Mr. Hanjour as polite, meek and very quiet. But most of all, the former employee said, they considered him a very bad pilot.

''I'm still to this day amazed that he could have flown into the Pentagon,'' the former employee said. ''He could not fly at all.''

How the heck can they be "hopeless pilots" when your OWN SOURCES just said several hijackers were former Saudi Air Force pilots who received advanced training at a US flight school,

Please show me exactly where my sources said that. Which hijackers were ex-Saudi Air Force? Which US Floght School? Not Huffman Aviation, that's for sure. And which of my sources said this, and where?

The statements obviously contradict each other, so obviously only one statement or the other can be correct.

Which is why I'd like exact references so I can look into this assertion in detail, thanks.

reply to post by rich23


On the morning of 9/11 on officially released passenger lists provided by the airlines to the media, not one of the alleged hijacker's names appears. No obvious Arabic names appear on the first passenger manifests supplied to the Mainstream Media on the morning of 9-11.

The earliest manifests provided by the airlines show:

American Airlines Flight 11 shows 86 people on board, none of whom were alleged hijackers or Arabs

United Airlines Flight 175 with 56 people on board shows no alleged hijackers or anyone of Arab name or obvious descent.

American Airlines Flight 77 with 56 people aboard, none of whom were alleged hijackers or Arabs.

United Airlines Flight 93 with 45 people on board, none of whom were alleged hijackers or Arabs.

source

The 2006 Moussouai Trial exhibits showed:

Flight 11 with 87 people on board plus 5 hijackers

Flight 175 with 60 people on board plus 5 hijackers

Flight 77 with 59 people on board plus 5 hijackers

Flight 93 with 40 people on board plus 4 hijackers

source

Obviously the passenger lists do not add up let alone with the 19 added hijackers, many of whom had stolen identities according to FBI Director Robert Mueller. The FBI still has no clue on who the 19 alleged hijackers really were. The FBI has no hard evidence on their alleged bossman Usama bin Laden nor have they ever brought charges against Osama who denied publicly any involvement in 9-11. Now the tortured into submission Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has officially replaced Usama bin Laden as the official Mastermind of 9-11. It appears that Osama was telling the truth doesn't it?

243 originally on board on 9-11-2001 supplied by the airlines
246 in 2006 plus 19 hijackers for a total of 265 on board supplied by the FBI

Then only a total of only 11 families out of the 243 or 246 alleged passengers and crew on board applied for compensation from the 9-11 Compensation Fund

And only 2 family members from the 243 or 246 people allegedly aboard the 4 destroyed 9-11 aircraft bothered to show-up at LAX and SFO airports to inquire about their missing family members.

LAX and SFO airports were quickly evacuated and shutdown by the PTB when a reporter showed up to interview the family members.

post by SPreston

post by SPreston


[edit on 8/2/09 by SPreston]

Originally posted by GoodOlDave
You are splitting hairs in your argument and you know it. It's blatantly obvious her point was (becuase she came out and actually said it) that she felt the reason people weren't taking these conspiracy accusations seriously is becuase they're too horrified at the prospect at the gov't ever doing anythign wrong. It's a complete evasion of the OTHER obvious reason, namely, that the conspiracy movement is suffering from ghastly credibility problems (I.E. no planes, lasers from outer space, nukes in the basement, etc etc etc.) becuase she didn't want to face the ugly possibility that the conspiracy movement is having credibility issues. Whether she means "some" or "all" in her statement is entirely moot.

You may notice that I've admitted to factual errors in other replies to you. That should be an indication that I care about the facts more than bolstering my ego. Your evasion on this point indicates that you don't care about the facts, and are happy to quote the disinfo end of the spectrum to support your purposes.

How funny. That argument, in view of the flaw I've just exposed, is deeply, deeply ironic and hypocritical.

I'm glad you're amused. Would you please explain how my statement above is incorrect?

I was referring to your "one size fits all" dismissal when you were doing exactly the same thing. Never mind if you don't get it.

Did you read the OP at all? Or did you just decide to be pejorative in a stolid and unimaginative way?

One would think that to be pejorative AND stolid, particularly in a forum devoted to discussing sensitive issues like controversial conspiracy theories, one would necessarily need to take great care in being imaginative in expressing it, or else it wouldn't really be stolid.

Do you even know what those words mean?

Rather better than you, I think. Why would one "need to take care in being imaginative in expressing it" in order for it to be stolid? According to my trusty Concise Oxford, stolid means, among other things, "apparently stupid", as well as being phlegmatic and unemotional.

Nothing to do with being imaginative. Quite the opposite.

I was accusing you of sullying your argument with dull-witted ad hominems, or pejoratives. My point stands and all you've done is expose your ignorance of the words when you could perfectly well have looked them up. And you've already misused the word "dearth", so it's not as if I have any reason to consider you an authority on English usage. I'd suggest you check your facts, but you seem singularly uninclined to do that whether it's to do with 9/11 or the English language.

But I don't think you're stupid. At least not as stupid as you plainly think I am. You expect me to fall for this?

Granted it's a small sample size, but that's still a hugely significant statistic. Even if you factor in a huge margin of error, it's still a lot of people.

You are overlookign the obvious fact that the belief in something does not by itself prove the thing is correct.

No, I'm not overlooking that obvious fact. What I'm doing is countering your idea that only a few pitiful people think there's something deeply wrong with the OS. That was the point you were making, and it's to do with how many people believe somthing, not with whether that belief is correct.

Either you're clever and slippery, or stupid enough not to see that that's not a reply to the point I was making.

9/11_world=complete_911_timeline_9_11_criticism]this page[/url] you have a number of poll results showing huge amounts of people at least falling into the LIHOP camp: half of New Yorkers, a majority of Canadians, a third of Germans, and so on. There was also a Zogby poll that said two-thirds of New Yorkers wanted a new investigation.

A duplicitous statement.

Hmmm... not content with failing to understand the words "pejorative" and "stolid", you misuse the word "duplicitous".

Nowhere does it say WHY they want a new investigation. I too wouldn't mind another investigation, not becuase of any imagined secret conspiracies but becuase I'd like to know exactly how badly the gov't f**ked up in its responsibility to stop the attack.

You might choose to characterise the Zogby poll as insufficiently accurate, but you cannot say it wasn't taken, or that I've misquoted it. Where is the duplicity? I'm trying to say that the idea that the OS doesn't stand up to scrutiny is not a fringe idea, and those data support it.

This bit's pretty funny, though.

Seeing that the only place I can even find you conspiracy people is on these conspiracy chat boards...and I even went to a 9/11 memorial at ground zero a few years back specifically to look for you people, and I STILL couldn't find any of you...yes I can say I represent the mainstream public, or I should say, I represent the mainstream public much more accurately than you do.

If I wanted to physically get in touch with people who think that 9/11 is a false flag op, I'd do rather better than that. It shows a rather stolid, unimaginative approach.

And I just looove that "you people". You need to calm down, mate.

Oddly, though, at this point in the thread, I find myself wondering, Is GoodOldDave a real person or some sort of automated conspiracy-buster bot?

Now, I don't believe AI is ever going to actually happen, and GoodOldDave has put up a rather better effort than even the most intelligent AI program... but he does have a habit of repeating himself.

From your first post:

Not innuendo, not five degrees of separation Kevin Bacon games, not cute internet flicks made by college students in the dorm room, not "undisclosed secret intelligence reports from anonymous sources", but actual FACTS.

...

It's as if they demand we need to believe these conspiracy stories FIRST in mindless obedience, which then will allow us to accept the innuendo, the five degrees of separation Kevin Bacon games, the cute internet flicks made by college students in the dorm room, and the "undisclosed secret intelligence reports from anonymous sources"

Now despite the fact that I drew attention to the fact that this seemed to have been cut and pasted from somewhere (few people express themselves in exactly the same way if they're just writing stuff off the top of their head)... what do we have here?

All you DO have is innuendo, five degrees of separation Kevin Bacon games, cute internet flicks made by college students in the dorm room, and "undisclosed secret intelligence reports from anonymous sources". All you're doing is rehashing them in new and exciting ways.

Whereas you don't seem to want to bother with new and exciting ways of rehashing your stuff. You write the same paragraph word for word when I've already called you on it. How weird, lazy, and unimaginative is that?

The hijackers were not absent from the passenger lists, so the claim it supposed "points to a conspiracy" is fundamentally flawed.

As ever, you seem happy to make these assertions without recourse to sources. Please provide a source for these wonderful passenger lists so we can all see them. I might be out of date on this, but I've yet to see them in all their glory.

Please be kind enough to answer the points I've raised, preferably without recourse to GoodOldDave's all-purpose Kevin Bacon paragraph. And try to do it without misusing any more perfectly good English words, thanks.

[edit on 2-8-2009 by rich23]

reply to post by SPreston


Awww... I wanted Good Old Dave to tell me that. Or at least come up with something.

Thanks for the post, though. A nice summation.

Originally posted by rich23

What a very odd thing to title your link. In fact, it's a smear. Where on the page you linked does he ask for money? He's published a book, but you yourself have admitted that you know what it contains because he's posted the summary on your link.

Did you not even read the link? The whole reason he wrote that was to entice people to buy his book. That's why he only posted a summary, with page identifiers to Learn more. Don't you find it even remotely odd that this guy is promoting the idea that the gov't murdered 3,000 people and you need to pay him to find out "the truth"? Heck, you can get the 9/11 Commission report for free.

Damned straight, I'm going to smear this snake oil peddler. "If it quacks like a duck" and all that.

The link is also useful because it lists 115 points, of which the first one is that some of the alleged hijackers are still alive. This is irrefutable and I'm glad you don't try, in your cherrypicking way, to refute it, simply because it would have been embarrassing.

Talk about cherry picking. This does not refute the fact that the main ringleaders (I.E. Atta, Hanjour, etc.) were correctly identified. Instead of trying to refute Atta having extensive flying skills and training, because we both know he can't, he instead has to focus on the minor players, who had a less critical involvement in the plot.

You're admitting yourself that these people may have had their identities stolen by the actual hijackers. I agree with you that's a distinct probability, as that scenario is much more reasonable than any absurd "controlled demolitions" claims. Why are we even arguing, then?

So please provide original passenger lists for all flights showing the names of the alleged hijackers.

Yet another conspiracy story smack down

I'm glad you have such a fine grasp of the military mind. Can you refer me to the part of the 9/11 Commission Report you're talking about so I can make up my own mind on this?

"United 93 and the shootdown order", Page 40