Question About Afghanistan Invasion

I have a simple question for those who supported the United States invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. It is my understanding that at least one of the reasons the United States invaded Afghanistan was to target Osama bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda who the U.S. suspected were responsible for 9/11.

The United States invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.

The only real evidence that I have seen that the U.S. had around the time to connect Osama bin Laden to 9/11 was that grainy videotape the Pentagon released on Dec. 13, 2001 that allegedly shows OBL taking credit for 9/11. However, besides the allegations that this video may be a fake, the video was said to have been made in "early November" of 2001, one month after the invasion.

So my question is...

What evidence did the United States have on Osama bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda for being responsible for 9/11 to justify their invasion of Afghanistan to go after them?

Please post your answers in the comments section.

The Reagan Shooting Conspiracy

If I had to think back for the one goverment conspiracy theory that got me convinced that government conspiracies really do happen then this is it, the assassination attemp of President Ronald Reagan in the spring of 1981.

Reagan was the first U.S. President to be shot since JFK and if you were around back then, you probably remember where you were when you heard about it. The shooting was also caught on video and shown on TV over, and over, and over again.

So what was the government conspiracy about this shooting? I mean some young screw-ball nutcase shot the President -- along with a couple of other people who were in the way -- to try to satisfy his sick twisted fantasies of impressing the young Jodi Foster and afterwards was found guilty by reason of insanity and locked up in a mental hospital for the rest of his life where he belongs. Seemed like a case that was pretty open shut and end of story, right?

Well that's what I thought for so many years, until I found out something very interesting about John Hinckley Jr, the alleged shooter. Looks like Hinckley's family had some powerful friends in very high places. How high? Try the man who would have became President if Reagan had died; George Herbert Walker Bush...

And to further add to the incredible revealation that the shooter's family and the President's own Vice President were aquanted, a huge story like this should have been reported over and over again on every TV news station and plastered on the headlines of every newspaper in the country, but only a few newspapers that can be counted on one hand picked up the story and almost no mention on TV. A total media blackout that should have been the most talked about topic at the time, even more than the shooting itself.

Of course there is one more part of this conspiracy that's even more astounishing then the connection between Vice President Bush and the shooter and that is that John Hinckley Jr. did not shoot Reagan (yes, you read that correctly).

Click here for more about this conspiracy.

Why BushCo Hates Chavez

I've been wondering what's the big fuss over Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez lately and why the NeoCons hate him so much that some even have called for his assassination.

Well now I know why...

"Oil-producing nations have all the bargains. The country with the world's cheapest pump prices is Venezuela, where a gallon of gas goes for 12 cents." -Washington Post (08/28/05)

Silverstein's First Public "Pull It" Response

I just stumbled across the first real public response for Larry Silverstein's "pull it" remark. It comes from the U.S. State Department's Spreading Disinformation, I mean "Identifying Misinformation" website (paid for at taxpayers expense of course) posted on Sept. 16, 2005 that included in a rebuttal to, among others, a section about the WTC 7 from the new 9/11 conspiracy book, 9/11 Revealed...

"The book suggests that the 47-story World Trade Center 7 building, which also collapsed on September 11, was intentionally demolished, citing a comment by the property owner that he had decided to “pull it.” The property owner was referring to pulling a contingent of firefighters out of the building in order to save lives because it appeared unstable."

It State Dept's site posts a statement released by Silverstein Properties spokesperson, Mr. Dara McQuillan, on Sept. 9, 2005 that says the following:

"Seven World Trade Center collapsed at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001, after burning for seven hours. There were no casualties, thanks to the heroism of the Fire Department and the work of Silverstein Properties employees who evacuated tenants from the building.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) conducted a thorough investigation of the collapse of all the World Trade Center buildings. The FEMA report concluded that the collapse of Seven World Trade Center was a direct result of fires triggered by debris from the collapse of WTC Tower 1.

In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building.

Later in the day, the Fire Commander ordered his firefighters out of the building and at 5:20 p.m. the building collapsed. No lives were lost at Seven World Trade Center on September 11, 2001."

Then the USINFO site goes on to say...

"As noted above, when Mr. Silverstein was recounting these events for a television documentary he stated, “I said, you know, we've had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is to pull it.” Mr. McQuillan has stated that by “it,” Mr. Silverstein meant the contingent of firefighters remaining in the building."

Just what I thought, he gives the "pull out the firefighters" response! "It" referred to "the contingent of firefighters"??? Yeah right! If that was the case, Silverstein would have said "pull them out", not "pull it". No one misspeaks that bad. The word "it" clearly refers to the building (singular), not a "contingent of firefighters" (plural). How condescending that he would refer to a contingent of firefighters as "it".

Also, it's already been reported that the FDNY never sent any firefighter "contingency" inside the WTC 7 and this order was made at 11:30 am...

"With the collapse of both towers by 10:30 a.m., larger pieces of the twin towers had smashed parts of 7 World Trade and set whole clusters of floors ablaze. An hour later, the Fire Department was forced to abandon its last efforts to save the building as it burned like a giant torch.

Falling debris also caused major structural damage to the building, which soon began burning on multiple floors, said Francis X. Gribbon, a spokesman for the Fire Department. By 11:30 a.m., the fire commander in charge of that area, Assistant Chief Frank Fellini, ordered firefighters away from it for safety reasons." - New York Times (11/29/01)

and then FEMA reported that the FDNY never even attempted to fight the fires in the 7...

"In addition, the firefighters made the decision fairly early on not to attempt to fight the fires, due in part to the damage to WTC 7 from the collapsing towers. Hence, the fire progressed throughout the day fairly unimpeded by automatic or manual suppression activities.

It appears that the sprinklers may not have been effective due to the limited water on site and that the development of the fires was not significantly impeded by the firefighters because manual firefighting efforts were stopped fairly early in the day.

WTC 7 collapsed approximately 7 hours after the collapse of WTC 1. Preliminary indications were that, due to lack of water, no manual firefighting actions were taken by FDNY." - FEMA (05/02)

So there is a conflict of facts here with the Silverstein spokesperson saying the Fire Commander called in the "afternoon" to say firefighters were attempting to contain the fires in the building and the news and FEMA reports saying the firefighters never attempted to put of the fires and had already been called back in the late morning and not "later in the day" as the spokesperson claims.


(See also Silverstein Properties Boycott.)

Is Barbara Olson still alive?

Barbara Olson was supposedly a passenger on Flight 77 and of course died when it supposedly crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. She was the 3rd wife of U.S. Solicitor General and BushCo member, Ted Olson. Mr. Olson claimed that Barbara had called him collect from her cellphone twice from Flight 77 after it was hijacked (yes, called him twice from her cellphone on the plane ... collect).

Many 9/11 truthers believe Ted Olson totally made up this story that she called him twice from the plane as part of the government's 9/11 conspiracy plot since, among other things, calling someone collect from a cellphone is absurd and that her alleged calls to him was the only source from all the alleged phone calls from any of the four hijacked planes that said the hijackers used "boxcutters". Of course it shouldn't come to anyone's surprise that Ted Olson would make this story up that his wife called him from the plane since Ted has admitting in public before that the government lies.

Many truthers believe that Barbara was either in on the conspiracy plot too and is still alive or that she was one of the many unlucky ones chosen that day to be a doomed passenger. For those who think she might still be alive, it has been rumored that she is alive and well in Europe. Well, maybe not too well after this one...

9-11 crash victim Barbara Olson arrested in Europe

Germany--September 22, 2005--TomFlocco.com--French and American intelligence agents have arrested Barbara Olson, the wife of a former Bush administration official, a few days ago on the Polish-German border, according to agents close to and with knowledge of the incident.

The alleged 9.11 Pentagon crash victim was found to be in possession of millions in fake interbank Italian lyra currency, according to the agents.

Olson was also reportedly in possession of a fraudulent Vatican passport and was held on charges of counterfeiting.

Now of course we need to take a sensational story like this with a grain of salt, a BIG grain of salt, but none the less it definitely has everybody who's following the 9/11 conspiracies on the edge of their seats just asking "what if?!" How will the U.S. government explain this one to the people if Barbara Olson was found ALIVE and well? A discovery like this would blow the top off the 9/11 conspiracy cover-up.

Some say though that Tom Flocco has lost all credibility by posting this story. Apparently Flocco made some errors on his first post of this story by spelling Barbara's last as "Olsen" (the correct spelling is "Olson") and it said she was arrested at the "Polish-Austrian" in which these two countries don't share borders.

Flocco has since corrected these two minor errors:

[We have changed the location of this report to the Polish-German border to correct the original phoned-in intelligence report we received. When we went back and questioned this location, We were given the Polish-German border as the correct location. The spelling of Olson’s name was corrected within 60 minutes after the story was posted. TF]

It's also mentioned in the article that Flocco reported Barbara was arrested with millions in fake interbank Italian lyra currency, but that the Italian lyra is no longer tenable currency.

I will agree that Flocco's reputation is definitely on the line by posting this story. He's going to have some explaining to do if this story doesn't pan out.

Of course I will be one of those many 9/11 skeptics that will be remaining at the edge of my seat to see if this story pans out or not!

You Can't Handle the Truth!

One of my favorite lines comes from one of my favorite movies, A Few Good Men, during a heated courtroom cross examination by Tom Cruise (Lt. Daniel Kaffee) to the great Jack Nicholson (Col. Nathan R. Jessep)...

Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I think I'm entitled to them.
Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Jessep: You can't handle the truth!

You can't handle the truth. Wow. So powerful. So to the point.

I was reminded of this line when reading through a Village Voice article about the 9/11 inside job protests at ground zero this past Sunday. It contained a quote from a 9/11 victim's family member about their thoughts of 9/11 being a conspiracy. I've omitted the person's last name, because I'm not bringing up what they said to try to embarrass them, but rather to illustrate my point...

9-11 Conspiracists Invade Ground Zero

"It seemed most family members did their best to ignore the speakout. "That's what this country is about, that people can say what they want even if I don't agree with it," said Rudy..., whose brother William died in the North Tower, leaving behind a wife and two kids. "To have more fingerpointing and Congressional hearings, where does that get us? I can't live with myself to think that that was a conspiracy," he said, clearly pained at the thought of even having to address such a question." -Village Voice (09/12/05)

This person's comment exemplifies why I think people don't believe in government conspiracies. It's not that they don't believe they happen, they don't want to believe they happen. They can't handle the truth.

I'm mean you really can't blame this poor guy for not wanting to think that factions in his own government might have been the one's who were really behind the murder of his brother and almost 3,000 others in his country when all this time his government has been telling him that it was some evil group of foreign terrorists who were responsible. It's like if your parents were murdered in their home and one of your siblings, who was living with them, told you that it was some intruder who broke in in the middle of the night who killed them and you lived for years with the belief that the culprit was some low-life scumbag that you didn't know, but then later after re-examining the case, all the evidence points that it was your own sibling who really did it.

For not wanting to even think about questioning his own government on this, this person will never find out who really murdered his brother and if no one else questions things, the real culprits will likely remain free to kill again.

Yes, the truth can be quite painful. It can make us choose to live the comfortable lie instead. It can make us live in denial, but at what point does a country suffer when most of it's citizens live in denial? I can think of a dozen brutal dictators in the last half century that were glad their citizens choose to live in denial rather than wake up to the cold hard realities of what was going on at the time before these dictators rose to power.

When it comes to questioning potential government corruption and/or complicity in a crime, such as with 9/11, the people shouldn't fear the truth. They should fear not getting at the truth.

So let me end by giving you one of my other favorite lines...

"The truth shall set you free!"