seriously america!?

[Wren57]

Nice assumptions about mine and Rob's character, Steve. For the record, I haven't been to church in 5-6 years and don't really think Bush is doing that great of a job. 9/11 has nothing to do with whether or not you support Bush, it has to do with members of an organization that hate us and have repeatedly called for jihad against America and Americans hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings. I do look at every argument you present, and when it doesn't fit together with your other arguments, I find online *factual* websites and post *statistics* proving your discrepencies, no whatreallyhappened.com websites and obvious propoganda bullshit. I look at the *facts* of who hijacked the plane, what they did with it, the effectiveness of the plane as a weapon, and the result. I don't know how that could be any more concrete. From that I draw my conclusions.

Just out of curiosity, what would it take for you to believe that terrorists hijacked the plane and brought down the towers? Would you like non-stop video footage of the people shaking hands with bin Laden, coming into the US, going through flight-school, going through airport security, hijacking the plane and flying it into the buildings... then you'd need a camera on every weight-bearing beam in the WTC to ensure they crumpled under the hundreds of tons of weight after being weaked by a giant airplane crashing into them and the jet-fuel burn afterwards. Please answer this question with a real answer and not a "Bush is bad, bad man" answer.

[GT40FIED]

Originally Posted by Wren57

Nice assumptions about mine and Rob's character, Steve. For the record, I haven't been to church in 5-6 years and don't really think Bush is doing that great of a job. 9/11 has nothing to do with whether or not you support Bush, it has to do with members of an organization that hate us and have repeatedly called for jihad against America and Americans hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings. I do look at every argument you present, and when it doesn't fit together with your other arguments, I find online *factual* websites and post *statistics* proving your discrepencies, no whatreallyhappened.com websites and obvious propoganda bullshit. I look at the *facts* of who hijacked the plane, what they did with it, the effectiveness of the plane as a weapon, and the result. I don't know how that could be any more concrete. From that I draw my conclusions.

Just out of curiosity, what would it take for you to believe that terrorists hijacked the plane and brought down the towers? Would you like non-stop video footage of the people shaking hands with bin Laden, coming into the US, going through flight-school, going through airport security, hijacking the plane and flying it into the buildings... then you'd need a camera on every weight-bearing beam in the WTC to ensure they crumpled under the hundreds of tons of weight after being weaked by a giant airplane crashing into them and the jet-fuel burn afterwards. Please answer this question with a real answer and not a "Bush is bad, bad man" answer.

Ask and ye shall receive. Let me start by saying that although Al Qaeda claims to want to declare a jihad on America, they simply don't have the means to pull off an effective attack. The media constantly reported that some dipshit wanna-be pilot crashed an airliner into the pentagon in manuevers that most top gun pilots couldn't pull off (500mph, just feet from the ground).

Actually, the websites you look at are just as suspect as anything I could provide. Face it...everyone has an agenda and they will bend facts to meet their agenda. Any site you could pull a "fact" off of (including government website) is nol ess "propoganda bullshit" thatn anything I could site. You know why facts don't matter here? Because there are no facts readily available to the public...it's ALL speculation. You can accuse me of not knowing the ins and outs of structural engineering (I'll readily admit I'm not a scholar in the subject), but you claim to know better than me. You don't. My guess is that you're a business major which would include nothing in the fields of structural engineering or architecture. No one in the public really knows what brought those buildings down. Not me, not you...no one. So my speculation as to why they came down is as much "common sense" as yours. The reason I asked that no one include Wikipedia is that any poor dumb son of a bitch can add an entry there. There's no filter on what goes up and what doesn't. Sure...if you submit bogus shit it will get deleted...eventually. Until then it's open for anyone to see. If you don't like whatreallyhappened.com (a site I have actually never really looked at aside from those videos), I can find a miriad of others.

What would it take for me to believe the government's account of 9/11? Nothing short of a miracle. Dimes to dollars even if they aren't lying about the official cause (which is virtually implausible), you just know they're lying about something. You know all of that bitching people did about the pantagon attacks? All the government would've had to do is release a few surveillance tapes. At the very least, 3 cameras should have caught the event, but all tapes were confiscated and we were given 5 (count 'em...5) frames of footage that are so distorted it could be anything. Shit...I could chuck a cardboard box at the pentagon and acheive the same results. Somebody somewhere is lying about something and the entire administration is sticking with the lie because if they don't then they all go down.

You don't have to listen to me...just look at some things collected by some people with a LOT more free time than I have:

http://www.rense.com/Datapages/ess911.htm

http://www.prisonplanet.com/911.html

[Wren57]

Originally Posted by GT40FIED

What would it take for me to believe the government's account of 9/11? Nothing short of a miracle... you just know they're lying about something.

Nope, I don't "just know they're lying about something." The sequence of events dating back to the creating of Israel makes perfect logical chronological sense... to me, at least. Another question to you: what war did we start in reaction to 9/11? If you say Afghanistan, I'm going to ask what we have to gain by being in Afghanistan. If you say Iraq, I'm going to point you to a UN resolution that could have been upheld using force regardless of the existance of 9/11. Oh, it was just used to get popular support for a war? Well, it was NEVER a popular war; even before entering Iraq the country was split on whether we should go or not. So, since we can't see eye to eye on the physical evidence, I guess the motive argument can now be addressed.

The only possible motive I can see is that it has led to an expansion of federal and executive powers, but that also is not popular and could've happened without 9/11 due to the SCOTUS being loaded with federalists. Here is where you say "No it couldn't have happened" like you know for sure... well, legally speaking, it still could have happened. If anything, there is going to be a huge backlash against federal power because of all of this... and you don't think that if this is a long-plotted conspiracy, that these conspiracy plotters would think long-term about the political and social consequences?

[GT40FIED]

Originally Posted by Wren57

Nope, I don't "just know they're lying about something." The sequence of events dating back to the creating of Israel makes perfect logical chronological sense... to me, at least. Another question to you: what war did we start in reaction to 9/11? If you say Afghanistan, I'm going to ask what we have to gain by being in Afghanistan. If you say Iraq, I'm going to point you to a UN resolution that could have been upheld using force regardless of the existance of 9/11. Oh, it was just used to get popular support for a war? Well, it was NEVER a popular war; even before entering Iraq the country was split on whether we should go or not. So, since we can't see eye to eye on the physical evidence, I guess the motive argument can now be addressed.

The only possible motive I can see is that it has led to an expansion of federal and executive powers, but that also is not popular and could've happened without 9/11 due to the SCOTUS being loaded with federalists. Here is where you say "No it couldn't have happened" like you know for sure... well, legally speaking, it still could have happened. If anything, there is going to be a huge backlash against federal power because of all of this... and you don't think that if this is a long-plotted conspiracy, that these conspiracy plotters would think long-term about the political and social consequences?

To your first question, I actually think of Afghanistan and Iraq as the same war. I look at one as build up to the other. I think we were promised both would be quick and clean..."shock and awe" and whatnot...and both turned out to be miserable. People have pretty much forgotten about Afghanistan these days, but a friend of mine stationed in Iraq said you couldn't pay him enough to transfer to Afghanistan. Yeah, we could have gone into either country without everything that happened...but who would our allies be? I don't even think England would've back us if all we had was a U.N. resolution. I also think both events just fueled the bias and, in many cases, hatred of islam as a whole in this country. I'm not one of those people who go against racial profiling...I mean in the hypothetical if 19 guys hijack planes and do nasty shit with them and they all happen to be arab, I think it's fair to lean on arabs a bit. But people have used islam to justify a lot of things and they've perverted the religion to suit they're needs. Sure, there are people who'll go crazy with religion, but that's true of just about any religion (and that goes double for this country).

As for motive, if it's not war then it's, as you pointed out, expantion of powers or the suspension of civilian rights. True, we could have done it without any fireworks, but it's amazing how compliable people become with a good dose of fear and an even bigger dose of ethnocentrism and nationalism. Suddenly people looked at the PATRIOT Act...arguably the most unpatriotic document ever written...and just accepted it. Hell...some people even supported it and still do, all in the name of the "greater good". Do you really think this would've flown without the fear of terrorism? You think Jonh Q. Dipshit would think it's ok to suspend habeus corpus and tap people's phones without court orders or the presentation of any evidence? I mean essentially it makes the constitution null and void. I honestly don't think any of that could've been accomplished without a severe catalyst.

And Rob...I'm not exactly sure what you have issue with. Are you asking me why different people have different ideas? That's really beyond me. I know you're not used to people having differing opinions, but it really does happen. And yes...I do enjoy belittling religion because it breeds this sort of sheep-like following where "if he said it, it must be true. Ok...well...I don't have any proof at all really, but HE said it".