we are going to have a lovely discussion about this video >:3

  • Redbolshevik2 [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Perhaps "facilitated" is the better term. I'm not sure if they outright coordinated with the Saudis, but they did literally everything imaginable to clear the path for them.

    • Ericthescruffy [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      That is a bit more in the realm of possibility.

      I'll concede it's not outlandish to think there was a general stand down to jump start a war. That becomes more plausible if you realize that they probably didn't realize the actual targets or how effective the attacks would be.

      Still Hanlon's razor and the shock doctrine apply...so I still don't buy into that one.

      • Redbolshevik2 [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        So when you say that you've looked into the subject, what exactly have you consumed?

        And I'm sorry, but Hanlon's Razor is some lib bullshit that will have you believing in the Ever-Stumbling Empire that constantly achieved all its goals on accident.

        • raven [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Hanlon's razor reduces a spectrum ranging from "stupidity" to :grillman: to malice into a binary, and forgives every action shy of a cackling supervillain pushing the "dunk people in vat of acid" button as "stupidity" but to do the opposite of that would be as much of a distortion of reality.

        • Ericthescruffy [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I've watched and read countless videos and posts for years on the subject and listened to subsequent counter arguments. Most of it pre YouTube. I was around for the early 00s internet days where these debates we're at their peak.

          I would challenge your characterization on two grounds:

          1. That seems to inevitably lead to a mindset that everything that happens is by conscious rational choice...which I would argue itself is in fact the actual liberal mindset.
          2. unlike some other examples you can point to: I think the suggestion that America achieved all it's policy goals post 9/11 is a helluvah stretch. I grant you certain people made a shit load of money....but it's also becoming pretty clear how much it sped up the decline of the empire.
          • Redbolshevik2 [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago
            1. It's funny how most of the most important domestic incidents in the last century of American history have been perpetrated by Lone Nuts, and almost all of them advanced the interests of the security state. What a wild series of coincidences.

            2. In what material ways has it sped up the decline of the American Empire? As far as I can tell, opposition has quite possibly never been weaker, possibly excepting the immediate aftermath of the domestic assassination campaigns of the 60s and 70s.

            • Ericthescruffy [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              -Depends on how you want to define "lone nut". I don't think anyone is a "lone nut" in the purest sense, in the same way no body is a truly isolated invidual. This gets messy when you start talking things like jfk where Oswald pretty clearly had some kind of ties to intelligence.

              In the case at hand hough: if you want to say America did 9/11 in that they created the material conditions that directly led to the attacks, preach it. If you mean: they planted bombs and thermite and hired crisis actors, this ain't it chief.

              -....we're watching the collapse of the unipolar world right now?

              • Redbolshevik2 [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                What happened to Building 7?

                So you're asserting that if 9/11 had not happened, the state of the American Empire would be more stable? Why is that?

                • Ericthescruffy [he/him]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  3 years ago

                  -It collapsed from debris and fire. Answer my first point. Why were 15 of the 19 hijackers from Saudi Arabia if the whole thing was planned by the United States?

                  -Not really. I haven't really done a deep dive into it as a counter factual but just as a surface guy reading: kinda still think America would have tried to do regime change in Iraq cause they were always gunning for that. Again: I just think it's a bit dubious to claim that 9/11 resulted in America achieving all of its goals.

                  • Redbolshevik2 [he/him]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    3 years ago

                    Lmfao it collapsed from fire and debris. So you do literally believe the official story word for word.

                    I answered your question.

                    I wasn't saying that the US achieved all its goals in response to 9/11, I was illustrating an archetype who casts conspiracy theories aside in favor of coincidence theories, and seems to find it more plausible that the US constantly achieves nefarious domestic and international goals via accident than via conspiracy.

                  • TankieTanuki [he/him]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    3 years ago

                    It collapsed from debris

                    As a matter of fact, the most authoritative report from the NIST said the debris did no significant damage.

                    Other than initiating the fires in WTC 7, the damage from the debris from WTC 1 had little effect on initiating the collapse of WTC 7. [Source: page xxxvii]

      • TankieTanuki [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        One of the major facts that convinced me that 9/11 was an intelligence op is the presence of the NORAD drills (documented by Michael C. Ruppert). The drills were about intercepting hijacked airplanes that were being piloted into skyscrapers, and they were moved to the date of 9/11 from their original schedule. The confusion created by the drills that morning made the attacks possible, and only very senior national security officials would have had the authority to schedule those drills (definitely not Osama bin Laden). To believe that they were coincidentally scheduled by accident or incompetence is outlandish IMO.

        Edit: A video source

        Relevant chapter from Ruppert's book

        • Ericthescruffy [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Absolutely give me sources but just based on a google search this seems like a massive reach and conflation of separate events.

          From what I can find there were no norad drills involving hijacked planes crashing into buildings. There was an exercise involving a hypothetical Soviet bomber, but the surface accounts I see are that it's impact to the response was fairly minimal and may have actually increased response time since all staff were at the ready and in place when a real world shift and adjustment became necessary.

          It seems like this is getting conflated with a separate much smaller simulated exercise for the national reconnaissance office involving a hijacked plane crashing into one of their buildings and impacting satellite communications.

          Again hit me with sources but unless all that's wrong your characterization sounds pretty misleading.

          • TankieTanuki [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago

            I've uploaded the relevant book chapter for you. There is far more than I can include in a single comment. I encourage you to read the whole 24 page long chapter.

            As it turns out, on September 11th, various agencies including NORAD, the FAA, the Canadian Air Force, the National Reconnaissance Office, and possibly the Pentagon were conducting as many as five wargame drills — in some cases involving hijacked airliners; in some cases also involving blips deliberately inserted onto FAA and military radar screens which were present during (at least) the first attacks; and which in some cases had pulled significant fighter resources away from the northeast US on September 11. In addition, a close reading of key news stories published in the spring of 2004 revealed for the first time that some of these drills were “live-fly” exercises where actual aircraft were simulating the behavior of hijacked airliners in real life; all of this as the real attacks began. The fact that these exercises had never been systematically and thoroughly explored in the mainstream press, or publicly by Congress, or at least publicly in any detail by the so-called Independent 9/11 Commission made me think that they might be the Grail.

            That’s exactly what they turned out to be.


            but the surface accounts I see are that it’s impact to the response was fairly minimal and may have actually increased response time since all staff were at the ready and in place when a real world shift and adjustment became necessary.

            This is an outright lie by national security officials to cover their asses. It had the exact opposite effect.

            From the book:

            Aviation Week reported, “Senior officers involved in Vigilant Guardian were manning NORAD command centers throughout the US and Canada, available to make immediate decisions.”8 This confirmed the geographic scope of the exercise. Vigilant Guardian was played up in the press as though it had facilitated a quick- er response. It did anything but that.

            That Vigilant Guardian had a direct impact on the Northeast Air Defense Sector in which all four hijackings occurred was confirmed in a December 2003 original story by NJ.com, a New Jersey-based service also summarizing all major stories published by New Jersey press outlets.

            NORAD also has confirmed it was running two mock drills on September 11 at various radar sites and command centers in the United States and Canada, including air force bases in upstate New York, Florida, Washington, and Alaska. One drill, Operation Vigilant Guardian, began a week before September 11 and reflected a cold war mind-set: Participants practiced for an attack across the North Pole by Russian forces.9

            The story never named the second drill, and the assertion that it was strictly a cold war-type exercise is belied by direct statements of many of the principals involved that day. The NJ.com story also raised another chilling issue.

            Investigators at the September 11 commission confirm they are investigating whether NORAD’s attention was drawn in one direction — toward the North Pole — while the hijackings came from an entirely different direction.10


            The National Reconnaissance Office, a joint creation of the CIA and the air force that operates US spy satellites, was also running an exercise on September 11 th. This one happened to involve a plane crashing into the headquarters of the ultra-secret agency in the Washington, DC suburb of Chantilly, Virginia, just outside Dulles International airport, the origin of Flight 77.

            An Associated Press story dated September of 2002 was headlined “Agency planned exercise on September 11 built around a plane crashing into a building.”


            Vigilant Guardian was a hijacking drill, not a cold war exercise

            There were a number of direct quotes from participants in Vigilant Guardian indicating that the drill involved hijacked airliners rather than Russian bombers.

            General Arnold had been quoted by ABC news as saying, “The first thing that went through my mind [after receiving the hijacking alert for Flight 11] was, is this part of the exercise? Is this some kind of a screw-up?”


            Northern Vigilance pulled fighter aircraft away from NEADS and CONUS

            I found two confirmations of this and a little more information about how extensive the deployment had been. The first, indirect and incomplete, was from NJ.com.

            NORAD confirmed it had only eight fighters on the East Coast for emergency scrambles on September 11. Throughout Canada and the United States, including Alaska, NORAD had 20 fighters on alert — armed, fueled up, and ready to fly in minutes.20

            A more specific confirmation had already come from NORAD itself from the Northern Vigilance website.

            The North American Aerospace Defense Command shall deploy fighter aircraft as necessary to Forward Operating Locations (FOLS) in Alaska and Northern Canada to monitor a Russian air force exercise in the Russian arctic and North Pacific Ocean.21

            The pieces were falling together rapidly. I remembered a story that the National Security Agency (NSA) had intercepted a message on September 10th between two al Qaeda members. CNN reported:

            A message intercepted by US intelligence officials September 10 declared “The match begins tomorrow,” and another declared “Tomorrow is zero hour” — but the messages were not translated until one day after the devastating terrorist attacks.22

            That conversation was between Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, the so-called mas- termind of 9/11, and Mohammed Atta, the reported lead hijacker.23 Could “match” have referred to a wargame? Honegger had suggested this in 2002. The new wargame information now made that conclusion much more attractive.

            It certainly appeared that someone in authority had deliberately interfered with FAA/NORAD operations on September 11th to make sure that some of the attacks succeeded. Richard Clarke’s book, previously edited by the White House, had FAA administrator Garvey referring to as many as 11 off-course/out-of-contact aircraft. Was she saying that she couldn’t tell the wargame inserts from the real thing?

            It would take only a day or two more to find damning evidence that this is probably what she meant. The fact that the CIA had been running a plane-into- building exercise simultaneously with all the military exercises made me very suspicious. The first question that leapt at me was, with all these related exercises running at the same time, who or what was coordinating them? Someone at DoD had to have a regular job of knowing all the exercises being carried out everywhere to avoid SNAFUs. That question and others would require interviews.

    • FunkyButtLovin [comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Know of any grounded articles or videos that cover this well? By grounded I mean not wild Alex Jones-like stories of remote control planes and explosives planted by in the towers. I’ve always been suspicious of it and especially the Saudi role, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence for some of these claims that certain 9-11 truthers have put forward.