posted 04-08-2004 06:16 PM            

" It was all those towelhead people! Kill em!" Lets start another war!"

Architecht: "The conspircy theory is very similar to your Illuminati theory.It the post was very intersting,but you lacked the religious background. Email me at Architect20_05@hotmail.com if you liked to know more."

Uh...its not a THEORY...check the links..they are DOCUMENTED facts.

"Lack the religious background"

What the F* is THAT supposed to mean?

posted 04-08-2004 06:30 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Architect:
The conspircy theory is very similar to your Illuminati theory.It the post was very intersting,but you lacked the religious background.

---

I’m a little confused here too, just like Mech. I’m not sure what your point is in this quote or most of your post. Sorry! Can you please explain further? Are you trying to say that the Japanese architecture is based on some spiritual principle? What does the architecture have to do with the Illuminati and the NWO agenda other than the fact that 9/11 was their orchestration? Who are you talking to - someone in particular, the whole board?

posted 04-08-2004 06:54 PM            

There was a lot of reinforcement of the lower floors from what I recall, extra exterior steel girders as well. Thanks for the link, though. I'll check it out.

Here's more on the David Ray Griffen book from Micheal Rechtenwald and Lori at Citizens for Legit Gov:

Thinking Unthinkable Thoughts --Theologian Charges White House Complicity in 9/11 Attack --by Nick Welsh

"According to author of The New Pearl Harbor, David Ray Griffin, a case can be made that the Bush administration arranged the attack, or allowed it to happen... NICK WELSH: Is there a smoking gun that shows the Bush administration knew 9/11 was likely to happen and did nothing about it? DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: I think there are four. One is the fact that standard operating procedures for dealing with possibly hijacked airplanes were not followed on 9/11. Those procedures call for fighter jets to be sent out immediately upon any sign that a plane may have been hijacked. These jets typically get to the plane within no later than 15 minutes anywhere in the United States. And on that day, there were four airplanes that went for a half-hour or more after they were hijacked without jets intercepting them... And the other smoking guns? The second strongest piece of evidence I would say is the crash at the Pentagon. The physical evidence contradicts so violently the official account, that the Pentagon was hit by a Boeing 757 — Flight 77, that is. The physical evidence, photographs, and eyewitness testimony say that the Pentagon was hit by something that caused a hole no larger than 18 feet in diameter. The story the Pentagon put out, and was published by the Washington Post, was that the hole in the Pentagon was five stories high and 200 feet wide. If you look at the photographs taken by Tom Horan of the Associated Press — that’s just not the size of the hole. But if the hole was only 18 feet wide, it had to have been created by something other than a Boeing. Whatever went into the Pentagon pierced six reinforced walls. This was the west wing, the part of the Pentagon being refurbished and reinforced. These walls were extra strong, and yet whatever it was went through six walls creating a hole about seven feet in diameter in the sixth wall. This had to have been something with a very powerful head on it. A Boeing 757 has a very fragile nose, and would not have pierced through all those walls; it would have been crushed by hitting the Pentagon. And given that it only penetrated these three rings, the rest of the aircraft would have been sitting outside on the yard. And yet the photographs taken just as the fire trucks got there — very shortly after the crash — show no plane whatsoever. What do they show? They show no aircraft whatsoever. And everyone agrees on this. The official story is that the whole aircraft went inside the Pentagon. The problem with that — the firefighters in there would have seen the airplane. They would have seen the engines, they would have seen the aluminum fuselage, but they reported nothing."

posted 04-08-2004 07:09 PM            

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NYC Firefighters WTC
Detonator Conversation
From Larry Jameson
4-8-4

A dear friend of mine was able to make a written transcript of the NYFD video mpeg movie that appeared on Alex Jones Prison Planet. Here, then is the link to the video and the transcript she wrote:
http://www.prisonplanet.tv/discussion_in_firehouse.mpg

This transcript is as close as I can get...more connections to detonators in the building.

1st Fireman: "What the f**k? What do we do? We made it outside. We made about a block."

2nd fireman: " We made it at least 2 blocks and we started running. Floor by floor started popping out."

1st fireman: "It was as if they had detonators,"

2nd fireman: "Yeah, detonators."

1st fireman: "As if they had plans to take down the building. It went boom boom boom..."

2nd fireman: "...all the way down. I was watching it and running. and you just saw this cloud of shit chasing you down."

3rd fireman: "So what'd you do?"

2nd fireman: "You couldn't outrun it. You couldn't outrun it. I behind a battalion car. I hid under an car just waiting to die.

The 9-11 Commission should be hearing this instead of Condaleeza Rice

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posted 04-08-2004 07:37 PM            

No Honest Americans - US Citizens Cheer Their Criminal Nation

Savaging The Whole World

By John Kaminski

From: skylax@comcast.net | http://www.johnkaminski.com
3-30-4

The presidential election, Bush vs. Kerry, what a joke! Two privileged plutocrats, two psychotic perverts from the same demonic college fraternity, neither ever had to hold a job, each advocating continuing crimes against humanity, even against their own people. And to make matters worse, they no longer count the votes honestly. The computer spits out a predetermined total, and the TV whores tell you to believe it. And just like in the election itself, you have no real choice.

Two spoiled children of privilege, born into incomprehensible wealth, constantly gathering more as they go on their immoral ways, devising ever more evil strategies by which to fleece the slaves of the world, preparing to divide America into armed camps, all the while taking their lead from the evil Israelis, who build walls against humanity and murder whomever they please. The few people who try to point out the injustice are either prohibited from speaking or thrown into jail without trial, or outright murdered. The new American way is the old Israeli way. But Americans embrace it, as they continue their sleepwalking march toward slavery and oblivion. Cheering with empty eyes as they go.

Does it not strike you as odd " assuming you are a thinking, feeling human being not yet too retarded by flouride, chemtrails, food additives, antidepressants and demonically engineered food that will eventually poison you to death " that there is not a single principled public figure in America who has pointed out that America's rape of Iraq violates every international law and moral precept that has ever been written by the great minds of the past? That the dispersal of uranium all over Central Asia will kill millions? That the clumsy cover-up of the inside job of mass murder on 9/11 was the ultimate betrayal of all Americans?

What ARE Americans doing? Cowering in their undefendable homes and waiting for the end? Does it not strike you as odd that no one speaks out about America's crimes against the world? Against poor people everywhere? Against its own citizens?

Now the real deal is on the table. A New Orleans judge has ruled that the cops can invade your own home without a warrant. That's the end of the Fourth Amendment, a citizen's protection against unreasonable search and seizure, the very basis of freedom in America. This is merely the expected verification of the Patriot Act, that Soviet-style law that allows the government to control every aspect of your life. Now, no one is safe from American tyranny. 1984 has finally arrived. And no one speaks out against it. How dumbed down we have become (Normal Mental State of Goyim). Nobody even paid attention to the recent 9/11 conference in San Francisco, which was sparsely attended. Same with the recent peace marches marking the first anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq. But that may be because participants were afraid to ask the hard questions, intimidated as they were by a choking climate of mindless flag-waving that refuses to consider the real evidence or challenge the lies that are being told every day by our bought-off media.

The 9/11 critics and those who marched with signs merely nibbled around the edges of the problem, pointing out inconsistencies here and anomalies there. They didn't come out screaming for blood, for retribution, for justice, that America's governmental system is a criminal enterprise that kills innocent people on a daily basis. And as a result, the thugs in power just ignored them and kept telling their same old lies.

There is no evidence Arab hijackers did the dirty deed on 9/11. If there was, don't you think they would have released it, would have trumpeted it to the skies, and said, "Look, here is the proof we were telling the truth." If they had that evidence, you can be sure they would release it. But they haven't released it, which means they don't have it. Forget about all this barking about Richard Clarke and Condoleeza Rice and what Bush knew and when he might have known it. These are all side issues meant to distract you from the real issue.

The real issue is that Arab hijackers DIDN'T do it, or we would have heard the evidence by now, two and a half years later. So the real question is not about the 9/11 panel, or who said what to whom. The real question is who did it. And it wasn't Arab hijackers. So who does that leave?

America is a criminal state, flouting international law and laughing about it. Our president makes jokes about the lies he told to enrich his crony corporate accomplices with the scam in Iraq. He makes jokes about the lies he told that cost the lives of hundreds of American service people, not to mention tens of thousands of innocent civilians abroad. He makes jokes about it. And most Americans laugh with him. And wave their flags. And laugh as they break the law.

There is no law in America now. Only tyranny. Only bought-off judges who allow the rich to steal from the poor, and imprison the poor who break no law at all. At the same time they open the borders so hungry immigrants from Third World disaster countries (disasters engineered by oppression from the United States) can stream into the country and lower the standard of living for everyone else. Except the rich patricians who can get away with anything. They are allowed to commit crimes because it's profitable, and they pay off the judges and politicians who allow them to keep doing it.

You should no longer be nursing the delusion that Americans are suddenly going to awaken and rectify the injustices, and America is going to suddenly return to the bastion of peace and freedom it always insisted it was. It's not going to happen. Too much blood, too many toxic substances and greasy lies have passed over the dam, have been vomited all over the floor of public discussion by those who don't tell the truth about anything.

Nobody in the government is telling the truth about anything, and it has been going on for a long time. Two recent examples have really stuck in my craw. The first was Michel Chossudovsky's story about the three British prisoners released from Guantanamo. Chossudovsky revealed that while we were bombing Afghanistan, the Taliban we were trying to kill were flown out on an American plane with the Pakistani army while gung-ho U.S. gunners continued to kill innocent civilians with their high-tech toys from high in the sky. Rumsfeld, realizing he needed to fill up Guantanamo, had the Pakistanis conduct a roundup of innocent civilians from refugee camps and shipped them to Cuba, where he has supervised the torture and interrogations of people he knew were innocent, like those unlucky British boys, for more than two years.

That makes me want to vomit. What America has become " poisoned and psychotic " simply makes me want to vomit. And there is not a single soul with any power in Washington who will face these issues. That also makes me want to vomit, and makes me very ashamed of my country.

The other story that threw me over the edge happened yesterday when I was researching various chemtrail material and I happened across Mary Sparrowdancer's magnum opus on fluoride, called "The Battle of Darkness and Light" (everyone should read this at http://www.rense.com/general45/bll.htm ). Before she ever got to the really bad part of how the poisonous nuclear waste product called fluoride was put in America's drinking water (can you imagine such a bonehead, suicidal stunt?), she described an episode from the 1980s in which a panel of health experts was commissioned to devise a food chart that would enable Americans to have healthier diets. After they finished their studies and concluded that a healthy diet should be based on plenty of fruits and vegetables, the government bureaucrats shifted all the data and published a document that said healthy diets should be based on heavy consumption of cereals and starches.

The medical results of this prostituted campaign, 20 years later, has resulted in a variety of epidemics: thyroid problems, dental disasters, obesity, and many other maladies that have all reaped trillions in profits for the pharmaceutical industry, which of course is the incestuous first cousin to the petroleum industry. To top it all off, after a long run where gastrointestinal medicine was the leading moneymaker for the establishment drug pushers, a new product has leaped to the top " antidepressants. And it's all-traceable back to that cynical decision by the government to change America's eating habits by changing the data that had been produced by health experts.

That's the kind of integrity we get from Washington. Forget about depleted uranium, funky vaccinations, and needless wars that take our sons and daughters from us for no good reason. The government has been poisoning us with its basic medical information for years, so I guess bombing another country for illegitimate reasons should not exactly come as a surprise to us at this late date, I mean, after all the decades of lies that have been told to us about everything.

I mean, if we accept the poisoning of ourselves without much complaint, how could I be getting upset that we're killing people all over the world for reasons that are proven lies? As I said before in a previous essay, we are much farther down the road to hell than I thought.

And I wonder why I write these words, since there is not a single person, either in the Congress or on television, who is currently pointing out that America is doing anything wrong in any area. Only that one rich person is not being very patriotic by criticizing the way another rich person has chosen to kill tens of thousands of people, and that that first rich person would have done the same thing, but he would have done it differently.

posted 04-08-2004 09:37 PM            

I know there are people out there that are too brainwashed to be saved ( Its called Cognitive Dissonance: It happens when you've been told something for so long that when presented with facts, no matter how compelling, to the otherwise you still won't come to reason.)Yet there are those will stand up.
There has to be or why the f**k are we fighting let alone living for?!!!
I see the first step to freedom as being knowledge and education. For those are the kryptonite to every tyrannical and despotic gov't everywhere. WE must not give up on this quest but we must also not let it blind us. I say get out and pass fliers, pamplets, talk to others, reach out and present facts that are sound and have the evidence to back it up. Use their words and actions against them. Baby steps at first. Let it be a mental awareness that awakens the people. I know that not everyone will remove their blindfold and see the truth. Some will first be shocked and filled with disbelief(I know I was) but eventually reason will sink in.

Also Mech and others, lets remove these poisons (flouride, radiation ovens, aspartme, to name a few) from ourselves and then lets tell others and present them with sound facts and evidence as to why they are poisons. Lets remove the chains that bind us.

posted 04-09-2004 09:16 AM            

Yes, all you can do is change yourself, and hope others will be influenced.

If nothing is done, De-Evolution will surely take control, and we will find ourselves living in a dictatorship.

Wait, we seem to be there already!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

posted 04-09-2004 05:14 PM            

Loved the HOPE in your post! Afterall, if we could wake up, most everyone can!

Even though I protested Vietnam, I didn't know the half of it back then. And now, I know more than I ever have because of the internet, mainly -- talking about world and national affairs to term it benignly. Cspan helps, too. I wouldn't know about flouride, chemtrails, HAARP, the Bush Family, their history, U.S. history, 9/11 theories, our political system, democratic principles, and I've even brushed up on my Constitution. Yes, divide and conquer may be their strategy, but we don't need to be divided if we just press on and educate, individually, other people and get active in politics and civic-minded service. And, of course, we need to practice what we preach whether it be health or individual financial and environmental responsibility, not to mention spiritual values.

Power to the people!

Thanks for writing from your heart!

bc

posted 04-10-2004 10:56 AM            

http://www.independent.com/news/news906.htm

Thinking Unthinkable Thoughts
Theologian Charges White House
Complicity in 9/11 Attack
by Nick Welsh

There’s nothing the least bit wild-eyed or hysterical about David Ray Griffin. In person, he’s disarmingly calm, and speaks in the unflappably precise and deliberate style of a lifelong academic. Which is exactly what Griffin is. A respected philosopher of religion at the Claremont School of Theology since the 1970s and longtime Santa Barbara resident, Griffin is now raising questions that even President Bush’s harshest critics are afraid to think, let alone ask aloud.
In his latest book, The New Pearl Harbor — released just two weeks ago — Griffin all but accuses the Bush administration of taking a dive on September 11 and giving Al Qaeda terrorists an unobstructed shot at the World Trade Center. According to Griffin, a case can be made that the Bush administration arranged the attack, or allowed it to happen. He is aware that he may be dismissed as a conspiracy nut, but given the “transcendent importance” of the issue, Griffin is willing to assume that risk and has taken to repeating Michael Moore’s line on the subject: “Personally, I’m not into conspiracy theories except those that are true.” I met with Griffin over coffee to discuss his book and the September 11 investigation. The following is an edited account of their conversation.

NICK WELSH:
Is there a smoking gun that shows the Bush administration knew 9/11 was likely to happen and did nothing about it?

DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: I think there are four. One is the fact that standard operating procedures for dealing with possibly hijacked airplanes were not followed on 9/11. Those procedures call for fighter jets to be sent out immediately upon any sign that a plane may have been hijacked. These jets typically get to the plane within no later than 15 minutes anywhere in the United States. And on that day, there were four airplanes that went for a half-hour or more after they were hijacked without jets intercepting them.

What’s the official explanation of that?
I’m afraid the press has not done its job. They have not forced government officials to explain why standard operating procedures were not followed that day, nor have they pressed the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) to explain why they didn’t report these hijackings as they were supposed to. The official story is that [the fighter jets] were very late.

And the other smoking guns?
The second strongest piece of evidence I would say is the crash at the Pentagon. The physical evidence contradicts so violently the official account, that the Pentagon was hit by a Boeing 757 — Flight 77, that is. The physical evidence, photographs, and eyewitness testimony say that the Pentagon was hit by something that caused a hole no larger than 18 feet in diameter. The story the Pentagon put out, and was published by the Washington Post, was that the hole in the Pentagon was five stories high and 200 feet wide. If you look at the photographs taken by Tom Horan of the Associated Press — that’s just not the size of the hole.
But if the hole was only 18 feet wide, it had to have been created by something other than a Boeing. Whatever went into the Pentagon pierced six reinforced walls. This was the west wing, the part of the Pentagon being refurbished and reinforced. These walls were extra strong, and yet whatever it was went through six walls creating a hole about seven feet in diameter in the sixth wall. This had to have been something with a very powerful head on it. A Boeing 757 has a very fragile nose, and would not have pierced through all those walls; it would have been crushed by hitting the Pentagon. And given that it only penetrated these three rings, the rest of the aircraft would have been sitting outside on the yard. And yet the photographs taken just as the fire trucks got there — very shortly after the crash — show no plane whatsoever.

What do they show?
They show no aircraft whatsoever. And everyone agrees on this. The official story is that the whole aircraft went inside the Pentagon. The problem with that — the firefighters in there would have seen the airplane. They would have seen the engines, they would have seen the aluminum fuselage, but they reported nothing. Ed Plower, the fire chief, when asked what he saw, said, “I didn’t see any big pieces, no fuselage, no engines, no nothing.” But about a month later, when asked he said, “Oh yes, I saw all that.” His memory had had time to be refreshed.

If what you’re saying is accurate — that it was a missile — then what happened to the plane and all the people on it?
That’s why I stress I’m not trying to give an account of what really happened. I have no idea what happened to Flight 77.

President Bush has also been criticized for behaving somewhat bizarrely that day.
As he and the Secret Service got word that a second plane had crashed into the World Trade Center and that three planes had been hijacked, there could have been no possible doubt in their mind that the United States was under terrorist attack . . . The most horrendous attack the United States had ever suffered. And they would have had to assume that one or more of them were heading toward President Bush himself. And so upon learning about this, the Secret Service surely would have whisked him away immediately. In fact, one Secret Service agent on the scene said, “We’re out of here.” But obviously he got overruled because President Bush stayed there. After Andrew Card reported the second crash on the World Trade Center, the president just nodded as if he understood and said, “We’re going to go ahead with the reading lesson.” And he sat there another 15 minutes listening to the children read a story about a pet goat. This was a photo op and when it was over he lingered around talking to the children and talking to the teacher.
Bill Sammon, of the Washington Times, wrote a very pro-Bush book, yet he comments how casual and relaxed the president was given the fact he’d just learned the country was under attack. He said Bush took his own sweet time and in fact called him “Our Dawdler in Chief.” And then the president went on national TV, going forward with an interview that had been planned and announced in advance . . . then they took their regularly scheduled motorcade back to the airport. In other words, [Bush and the Secret Service] showed no fear whatsoever that they would be targeted for attack, which strongly suggests they knew how many aircraft were being hijacked and what their targets were.

Couldn’t it have been that he was trying to project calm in the eye of the storm, that this was Bush projecting Churchillian resolve in the face of calamity?
People who want to believe such things can, of course, imagine such scenarios. But the president in a situation like that does not make the decisions; the Secret Service team makes the decisions. And the guys in the Secret Service are trained to be ready for a catastrophe like this where they make snap decisions and whisk the president to safety immediately. They would have had an escape route planned; they would have had contingencies planned — they always do. It is at least not very plausible to think they would have remained there and endangered the lives of all the children and teachers at that school in order to exude that Churchillian confidence.

What about the plane thatcrashed down?
We know that on Flight 93, which crashed over Pennsylvania, the passengers were trying to get control of the aircraft. They had decided the hijackers did not have bombs and probably didn’t even have guns. And because their plane didn’t take off until a half-hour after the others, they knew that the others had crashed into the World Trade Center — so they knew they were going to die anyway, even if they didn’t do anything. So as one of the passengers is saying, “They’re doing it, they’re forcing their way into the cabin, they’re going to make it.” As soon as that happened, with the FBI listening in, the plane went down. There was a whoosh, then the sound of wind. And people on the ground reported hearing what Vietnam veterans said sounded like a missile. Furthermore, there was debris from the plan eight miles from the crash site, suggesting the plane had been hit and stuff started falling out. And one of the engines was found over a mile from the crash site. Of course, if it had been a missile that downed the plane, it most likely would have been a heat-seeking missile that would have found the engine and knocked it off.

Why would the government have an interest in doing this?
So the hijackers couldn’t speak to anyone?
That would be a very good reason. If it were a conspiracy and the hijackers knew about it, it would have been very threatening to those who made the plan to have anybody left alive. Again, I don’t pretend to know, but that’s at least a plausible scenario. There were many rumors that day that the plane was shot down, but the government denied it.

You suggest that the World Trade Center buildings must have been detonated with explosives to account for the heat generated and the speed the structures collapsed on themselves. That sounds extreme. What’s the evidence?
The evidence is cumulative — several things that point to controlled demolition. First, a steel-framed building, according to all the reading I’ve done, has never collapsed solely because of fire. They will bend and buckle in a very large all-consuming fire that lasts for a very long time. But they have never collapsed.

But it was not just fire — it was fire and impact at the same time.
The twin towers were very large buildings and extremely well built with a lot of redundancy. Even people who believe the official theory say that the crash of the plane into the towers should have been insignificant, that the shock would have been immediate, but it was over very soon and that the buildings were extremely solid and stable and not moving. In the south tower, much of the fuel from it spilled outside as it collided into the corner. So there was a giant firebomb which looked very impressive, but what that means is that most of the fuel was burned up within a minute, so there was not much fuel inside. Therefore, the fire in the south tower had almost gone out in less than an hour. And that brings us to another strange fact about the towers. If the official story were correct, that the combination of the crash and the fire brought the buildings down, we would expect the north tower to have come down first, because it was hit first. And yet the south tower collapsed first. It collapsed in less than an hour. That makes perfect sense if you’re willing to accept that it was caused by controlled demolition, meaning the building was wired with explosives. And if the official story has it that the buildings were brought down by fire, you’d want the buildings to go down before the fire had completely gone out.

What you’re suggesting sounds like something from. X-Files. But on X-Files, you always had agents Scully and Mulder trying to get the truth out. Here we don’t have any Scullys and Mulders. You’d think this whole new unilateral expression of military supremacy might have opponents within the administration coming unglued and that they’d be leaking info damaging to Bush, but we don’t hear those voices. Why not?
Members of the FBI, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies have taken oaths to not reveal things they’ve been told not to reveal . . . and if they violate this oath, repercussions may occur. You have a wife and children, and somebody says to you, “If you go public with that I cannot guarantee the safety of your family.” Would you go public with that? You have to choose between your family’s welfare and the welfare of the nation, and your story might not do that much good. You might just be denounced as a conspiracy kook. The press would ignore you, belittle you. People might look into your past and find that you had done some things you’re not so proud of. People would learn very quickly to keep their mouths shut.

Let’s say there has been this complicity. To what end?
There were several benefits that could have been anticipated from 9/11. One was the so-called Patriot Act. It did appear that the Patriot Act, given how fast it was rushed into Congress, voting had already been prepared. The Patriot Act is so large that it’s inconceivable it could have been written after 9/11. Rushing it through Congress when most members had not even read a small portion of it was clearly one benefit, giving the government increased powers.
Also, there was the desire to wage war in Afghanistan to force out the Taliban and put an American-friendly government in place because of the desire of Unical and other gas companies to build an oil pipeline, which they felt was too dangerous with the Taliban in power. There was a meeting in Berlin in July 2001, a final effort to get an agreement between the Taliban and the United States that would allow a sort of joint government, where the Taliban would share power with more American-friendly leaders. The Taliban refused, at which point they were told, “If you don’t take our carpet of gold, we’ll bury you under a carpet of bombs.” The Pakistani representative at this meeting said the Americans told him that the war would start before the snows came that October. And after 9/11 happened, there was exactly the right amount of time for the U.S. forces to get organized to begin the war, and the war began on October 7.
Another benefit is that many senior members of the Bush administration had for a long time wanted to attack Iraq. Getting control of the oil there was one motive; the more general motive was to secure a military presence in that part of the world.

Don’t you think it’s a good thing that Saddam Hussein was taken out, and don’t you think Bush had a moral obligation to do so because it was his father who was responsible for building up Hussein in the first place?
Certainly you can say there were some benefits to the people of Iraq. But if we had an obligation to take out Saddam Hussein then we have obligations to take out many other nefarious leaders around the world, many of whom are far worse, believe it or not, than Saddam Hussein. And the sorry history is that we have in fact supported such leaders and that Saddam Hussein was in power only because of American support. He remained in power after gassing the Kurds became common knowledge. Donald Rumsfeld himself visited Saddam at that period. Actually our aid to Saddam went up after we knew that he had done this.

So you think this is mostly about oil.
It is to a significant extent about oil, given the projections that the world is beginning to run out
of oil. The United States wants to get control of it because our way of life, which is so dependent upon oil, is nonnegotiable. And also because military dominance itself runs to great extent on oil. But it’s not just about oil. It’s about geopolitical dominance. And this brings up the U.S. Space command. In the document “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” published in 2000 by the Project for the New American Century — an organization founded by people such as [Richard] Perle and [Paul] Wolfowitz and [Dick] Cheney and Rumsfeld — there is a statement in there that says we need to move forward with this revolution in military affairs. The central feature of this is the augmentation of the U.S. Space Command through which the United States would have what’s called now Full Spectrum Dominance. In addition to having dominance over land, air, and sea, we would have dominance in space. But building the space stations and the satellites for the weaponization of space will be an extremely expensive undertaking. One projection has the first stage of it being about a trillion dollars. So an enormous amount of money has to be shifted from the American taxpayers and other parts of the economy to the military and the space command. The document states that such a revolution in military affairs will probably proceed very slowly absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event such as a new Pearl Harbor.

Hence the title of your book . . . You’ve complained the American media has been asleep at the switch on this. How do you account for this?
It is very difficult for Americans to face the possibility that their own government may have caused or deliberately allowed such a heinous event. Secondly, one can understand that insofar as the media is owned by companies like General Electric, which is one of the largest makers of weapons, stations like NBC that are owned by GE would not wish to publicize these connections. And finally, 9/11 was immediately treated not only as a matter of patriotism but almost as a religious event. Bush declared his war on terrorism from the national cathedral. And so from then on, any questioning of the official account could be and was criticized as being undemocratic and almost sacrilegious.
I at least hope that if we can begin to get a public discussion of 9/11 and of the many, many discrepancies between the official story and what at least appear to be the facts, that some of those people might be emboldened to step forward.

How has researching and writing this book affected you personally?I fear that our democracy is in much worse shape than I had imagined, and that even the appearance of democracy we now have might be quickly swept aside.