Open for Debunking: 25 things we've learned since Sept.11th, page 1

Good afternoon fellow ATS'ers. I've recieved this in my yahoo account mail and thought I would share this with you all. These are interesting and since we have so many threads on 9-11 none really address these points. So, this is obviously open for discussion since i'm posting it here, let's keep it civil, and try and keep emotion out of it, because you really don't make sound points when you use emotion over logic. Let the debunking begin!

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25 Things We Now Know Three Years After 911

By Bernard Weiner
Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers
9-4-4

The Republican Party -- in a shameless , all-too-obvious attempt to manipulate the tragedy of 9/11 for partisan ends -- chose New York City for its nominating convention. Must have seemed like a great idea at the time.
Their coming to Manhattan not only infuriates New Yorkers, who were badly played by Bush&Co. after the attacks, but enables the rest of us in the country to use Ground Zero as the backdrop for examining the gross failures and crimes of the Bush Administration since that tragic day in September 2001.

So, here is an update* of things we've learned during the three years since 9/11 -- documented mostly from government papers and respected journalistic accounts -- about the Administration that rules in our names.

If you find this compendium useful, you might want to make this list available to your friends and colleagues, especially to those still uncertain which presidential candidate they will vote for ten weeks from now.

THE 9/11 ATTACKS/COVERUP

1. Immediately after the destruction of the Twin Towers, Bush's Environmental Protection Agency tested the air in and around Ground Zero. Anxious Lower Manhattan residents, worried about possible airborne toxic particles affecting them and especially their children, were assured by the EPA on September 18 that the tests indicated it was safe for them to return to and live normal lives in their homes and apartments and businesses. It wasn't until two years later that the EPA admitted that they had lied to New Yorkers: The Bush Administration knew from their own test results that the toxicity revealed was WAY over the safe levels. Typical Bush&Co. pattern: secrecy, lies, denial, coverup.

2. There is no evidence that Bush&Co. ordered Osama bin Laden -- who had been on the CIA payroll in Afghanistan when he and his forces were battling the Soviet occupiers -- to launch terrorist attacks on the U.S. Resurgent radical Islam is a genuine phenomenon, with its own religious and political roots. There definitely are Bad Guys out there.
What is well-documented is that the highest circles around Bush were quite aware in the Summer of 2001 -- as a result of fairly detailed intelligence frantically being passed on to them by other governments in the months and weeks before 9/11-- that a massive terrorist attack was in the works, which likely would involve hijacked airplanes aimed at icon American economic and political targets. (The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing, entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," talked about al-Qaida wanting to strike the nation's capital, preparations for airline hijackings, casing of buildings in New York, terrorists in the U.S. with explosives, etc.) Bush went to ground in Texas, the FBI told Ashcroft to stop flying commercial jets, etc. The attacks finally came on 9/11.
Bush could have assumed command immediately; instead, 27 minutes went by while he sat in a schoolroom and then posed for photos. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, somewhere on the Pentagon premises, was strangely missing from action, uninvolved in defending the country until after the horrific events had unfolded. Even though the protocols were clear, NORAD could not reach Rumsfeld and did not scramble jets until long after the horrific mass-murder attacks were over. When Bush did emerge from the school, he claims he could not reach Cheney or the White House by phone. (Passengers using cell phones on the final doomed jet had no problems reaching their loved ones and emergency centers all around the country.)
In short, the key Administration officials responsible for protecting America, and coordinating its responses to attacks, were not available, either out of incompetence and confusion or out of more nefarious motives. As Nina Moliver, a 9/11 sleuth puts it, "On 9/11, there was a grand stall. A stall for time. I learned this from a glance at the findings of the 9/11 commission. How could ANYBODY miss it? Bush and Rumsfeld didn't 'fail' on Sept 11. They succeeded masterfully." A bit far out, to be sure, but if the Bush circle knew something was coming that morning -- and numerous others did, including the mayor of San Francisco -- it's certainly a theory that can't be ruled out.

3. We know that the future neo-conservative architects of Bush foreign/military policy, members of The Project for The New American Century (PNAC), knew that their ideas were too extreme for most Americans to swallow. They noted that "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."
Again, there is no proof of coordination by the Bush Administration with the al-Qaida terrorists who carried out the terrorist attacks, but BushCheney and their closest aides were aware on 9/11 that they now had the "Pearl Harbor" that would clear the way for their agenda to be realized.

4. We know that Bush and Cheney, early on, approached the leaders of the House and Senate and urged them not to investigate the pre-9/11 activities of the Administration, because of "national security." The coverup was beginning.

5. The 9/11 Commission examined how the intelligence community screwed up the pre-9/11 intelligence -- thus effectively laying the blame on lower-level agents and officials -- but says it won't issue its report on how the Bush Administration used or misused that information until AFTER the election. The coverup continues. Many victims' families are furious.

6. We know that the Bush Administration has been able to obtain whatever legislation it needs in its self-proclaimed "war on terror" by utilizing, and hyping, the understandable fright of the American people. The USA PATRIOT Act -- composed of many honorable initiatives, and many clearly unconstitutional provisions, cobbled together from those submitted over the years by GOP hardliners and rejected as too extreme by Congress -- was presented almost immediately to a House and Senate frightened by the 9/11 attacks and by the anthrax introduced into their chambers by someone still not discovered. Ridge and Ashcroft emerge periodically to manipulate the public's fright by announcing another "terror" threat, based on "credible" but unverified evidence; these announcements can be correlated almost exactly to when Bush seems to need a headline to distract the public from yet another scandal or significant drop in the polls.
ATTACK ON IRAQ

7. We know that a cabal of ideologically-motivated Bush officials, on the rightwing fringe of the Republican Party, were calling for a military takeover of Iraq as early as 1991. This elite group included Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Woolsey, Bolton, Khalizad and others, all of whom are now located in positions of power in the Pentagon and White House, and, to a lesser extent, State Department.
They were among the key founders of the Project for The New American Century (PNAC) in 1997; among their recommendations: "pre-emptively" attacking other countries devoid of imminent danger to the U.S., abrogating agreed-upon treaties when they conflict with U.S. goals, making sure no other country (or organization, such as the United Nations) can ever achieve parity with the U.S., installing U.S.-friendly governments to do America's will, using tactical nuclear weapons, and so on. In short, as they put it, the goal is "benevolent global hegemony" -- or, in layman's English, a kind of neo-imperialism.
All of these extreme suggestions, once regarded as lunatic, are now enshrined as official U.S. policy in the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, published by the Bush Administration in late-2002.

25 things we know since September 11